hi. thought i would give back for all the help i got here from peeps really big help. anywho lets get started. this is a spoiler i will give some but not all that i know of if you dont want to read a spoiler then i would suggest going back.
1.inv bed. to the NE of the cursed abby lies a small house. inside the house there is a locked hatch that you need lockpick skill of 3 to open. oh the key to the house is in a haystack right infront of it. you may think the treasure is the loot from the hatch but you are mistaken. the real treasure is the bed itself. you can put it into your inv and click it whenever you need to rest no need to carry around straw to make beds.
2. charms. charms are basically one of the single most important things in the game apart from lockpick skill. to apply charms, they look like little crystal balls with symbols on them. you have to put one point into enchant weapon. it says weapon but it works for armor and rings to. you can tell if an item can have charms applied to it by reading if it has a charm value. to apply a charm you simply click on the piece of gear you want to put charms on while it is equiped.
trick is to save up a chitload of charms, i mean 10 to 15 of the suckers. then just keep clicking on the piece of gear it will keep coming up with more plates to put charms into. always make 3 more than the amount of charms you need and save before hand just incase you run out of slots. using this will really make the game almost too easy so use at your own risk.
3.item digging. i learned this by mistake but it has helped me 10 fold. lets say for instance that you need a white strn charm from the merchant in ars magincana. make sure you havent visited him recently. you can speed up the process by clicking the bed in your inv that i mentioned earlier. save right outside of the merchant you need a certain item from. then go and click on them and begin trade scan through if they dont have it load the saved game and go click on them again you can sift through their entire inventory pretty quick. the one exception to this are the dwarf smiths in the dwarven halls in the dark forest. they have so many items it is not even funny you can litterally spend hours sifting through their items. they are prob my fav merchants in the game you save right infront of the jewelers house. run towards the smith you will be greeted by one of them click trade sift through. get something if you need it if not go to the next smith he is right next to the fire. click on him ect ect. by the way they sell swords that are better than the holy sword you obtain through a quest.
4. lockpicking and embrace shadows. lockpick and embrace shadows are by far and away 2 of the best skills if not the best skills in the game. you can gain countless riches from these skills. best way to get started is once you get level 10 to 15. head to verdistis it is north of ars magicana follow the road up and enter verdistis. inside the building to your right and a little north there is a bar go behind the bar and go down the hatch, go through the door to your right and you will enter another bar. at this bar lies finnigin. he asks you to retrieve his fathers magical lockpicks. thing is they dont get used up like the reg lockpicks you can use them over and over and over plus, they give 20 agi for just being in your inv. now onto embrace shadows. this skill is insane..... lets say you enter a house and there is a cuboard and a chest containing items but there is a person standing right in the middle of the room that will obviously catch you stealing. go around the room and click on all the lights, candles, lamps, ect.. kind of funny they just stand there and watch you kill all the lights.... target the person that would normally catch you stealing from them and click embrace shadows, you will vanish and you can plunder all you wish. sometimes they will follow you around while you are stealing from them. dont be alarmed, they cant see you, they just follow you around for some reason. dont fully understand it myself.... the armor merchant in ars magicana has really nice items you can steal. he follows you around but like i stated earlier he doesnt catch you and you dont lose reputation with him.
5.alchemy. all you need to do is put one point into this skill. that is all you will need there are potion sellers all over the place esp the one in ars magicana. reason you need one point in this skill is to mix potions with each other. only mixing you will ever be doing is blue with red they create a white potion called restoration( minor, super,) basically minor gives back half your hp and mana reg restoration gives back full of both and super does the same as reg restoration. these are the only potions you will need. the game tries to get you to buy needless potions like sta and shadows.... yes embrace shadows uses sta but if you have even just a few points into constitution you wont have any problems.
6.meteorstrike. this is intended for when you first start the game. your gear will suck you wont have any good weapons ect. basically put 2 points into this skill and you can cut through the monsters in the catacombs. this works extremly well against sub bosses like skeletal guardians. get a distance away unload meteorstrike till you run out of mana or they get close run away again hit the space bar to pause the game refresh mana , repeat till they die.
7. stealing for fun and profit. best example i can give is take advantage of situations for instance when you first start the game lanilor will become frozen by mardaneus. what should you do go save him? help him? not if you are smart... he will get his help in time first you have free rain through his house take anything you want. thing about this game is you can steal anything from people while they are in a different room or outside of their house and when they return they wont do anything they seem to miss the point that all of their wears are now missing.
think that is all i am going to give at this momment once again thanks to all you peeps that helped me when i started and GL new gamers this game is a blast there are many more tricks out there but im just going to let you find them out for yourself (dont want to kill all of the fun of the game =) ), peace
