By beating the game sequentially and not hiring master NPC, I want to not exploit NWC dungeon, Shrine of God, early Stable price fixing quest, etc.

For spells, I find self magic to be utility based and do not benefit as much as elemental spells for damage, so I plan to leave them at expert level until elemental schools are mastered. For elemental, Fire and Air are the strongest offensively while Water is more utility based and Earth is rather tragic. However, since each character can only master one school, I will get Earth to see how strong it is early on with mass distortion and rock blast.

For weapons, I think dagger and bow will make up some of my early offensive power, until I get more spell points and ranks in elemental magic.

Generally, I find the self spells to be pretty weak and do not scale well with level, so my plan is to get master with them and leave them while focusing on elemental schools and bow, which will be my best offensive options.

With other skills, I decided that everyone will get master bodybuilding, meditation and eventually repair items. For the other misc. skills, one character will focus on each of perception, identify items, disarm trap, and merchant.

In the end, I decided on the following skill distribution:

I'd have given the first one Water, Merchant, and Perception, taken all 3 to expert as quickly as possible, and then concentrated on Water (to get Lloyd's Beacon and Town Portal at Master level) and next Merchant.

I'd have given the second Fire and Body, again got both to expert and then concentrated on Body (for fast healing). When those were both done, I'd have switched to Repair.

I'd have left the third as you had him, got all 3 skills to expert, and then concentrated first on Identify and then on Air (for Fly).

I'd have given the fourth Earth, Spirit, and Disarm, and after raising all 3 to Expert, I'd have concentrated on Disarm, followed by Spirit (for Heroism).

You obviously did it differently, but those would have been my choices.

[b] Druid 1 – Water, body, disarm trap [/b]

This is my utility character as both water and body scale badly with rank.

I will level body and disarm trap to expert, then master disarm trap. I will then dump remaining skill points into water as I need at least some damage from this character. In a regular game, I would get master water first for its utility, but since I will plan sequentially, there is less need for it.

[b] Druid 2 – Fire, merchant [/b]

This is my main damage dealer as fire scales the best with ranking and has the only strong PBAOE skill I have access to. Therefore, I did not straddle this guy with a self magic, only merchant, which will be leveled after I reach fire master.

[b]Druid 3 – Air, spirit, identify items [/b]

Air is the second strongest offensive skill, so I paired it with spirit, which will only need to be level to rank 4 for master.

[b]Druid 4 – Earth, mind, perception[/b]

Earth is slightly better than water for damage dealing, and has major potential in the mid game when mass distortion actually affects enemies. Later on, most enemies will be immune to magic damage.

Therefore, I paired Earth with mind and perception. Perception does not need to be leveled past expert 6-7 while mind is only needed for utility of telekinesis and restore status ailments, so expert is all I need.

Furthermore, with telekinesis, I won't need disarm trap past rank 7 mastery as in the late game I will only open chests with it.

Overall, my plan is to bow skill and some decent bows first, so that I can clear the first 5-6 places, then get offensive magic along with meditation and bodybuilding so that I can complete the early dungeon quests (less room to move around in dungeons so bow is less effective). I will then get master elemental magic for the middle game as well as expert self magic for utility.

With these skills, healing becomes unnecessary since you are always just a few clicks away from healing at a temple. There is definitely more skills involved if these skills are taken out of the equation.

I had kind of regretted giving everyone fire magic (makes everything too easy) and thought about starting over with a druid, paladin and two knights, but I had never considered giving up the beacons.

They spotted an attractive blonde merchant near the temple and decided to retain her services for the foreseeable future as training and shopping will be costly.

The party decided that they are far too weak to tackle even the wimpiest green goblins, so they took a carriage ride to Ironfist, where they were awarded a further 5000 gold for delivering a letter already in their inventory.

The party decided to receive some bow training and purchased four crude looking bows before heading back to New Sorigal.

Once arrived, they decided to clear the land of orcs and apprentice mages, but will leave the dungeons intact for now. After countless hours of fighting and inhaling liquids from the healing fountains, the party was tired and it was dark.

Before heading to the inn to call it a night, the party visited the shady bucanner’s lair to learn some miscelleaous skills. The party also decided to test their chemisty skills. Fortunately, they have access to the Internet and was able to mix four essences of endurance, and four essences of accuracy.

Both were relatively straightforward, though there were some tricky parts where I needed run around to create distance for the bow. Unfortunately, my melee damage is 1 right now, with starting staves, but thankfully I have Magic Arrow from Earth!

After turning in all of the quests, I headed to Ironfist again to get bodybuilding for everyone. Along the way, I hired a duper.

Back to battle, and this time, to clear Ironfist of all follows of baa and lizard people as well as weird skeleton bats. Not why they were all chilling with each other rather than fighting among themselves. Who knew acolytes, lizard people and bats would make good friends?

It took a while, but I eventually cleared all of Ironfist of baddies. I trained some more, and upgraded to expert bow (8000 bucks!)

We then spent the next day and half clearing Mist and surrounding islands of Acolytes and Gypsies. With so much room to maneuver and numerous rivers, it was quite safe and easy.

We spoke with the conspicuously named Albert Newton before catching a ship to one of the smaller islands in Bootleg Bay. After sinking some points into Water Magic, we water walked our way to the main land and drink from the fountain of magic.

We decided not to waste our first shrine bonus on Might as it does very little to help our mages. We will wait for February to do it in Mist.

Bootleg Bay is considerably tougher to clear up due to the stronger ranged and magic attacks from the enemies, but we managed to clean it up without much trouble in a few days.

Finally, we were on our way to Free Haven! As soon as we arrived, we were greeted by groups of pissed off journeymen and mages, no doubt from murdering hundreds of their apprentices.

We ran like the wind to Osric Temper to get the quests before arriving finally in the town. We spent a few more hours running around to complete the knight promotion and to gather a few extra herbs.

We decided to mix more black options (intellect, personality) before training once again. This allowed for master disarm training, as well as expert fire, air, and earth.

No matter! I reinstalled the game, this time with Greyface patch, and decided on a new equally challenging game of KKPA. I will start a new thread with my personal rules and restrictions.