- There are no must-have perks, but some are nice to have from the get-go and to always have on main characters. Pet Pal allows to get tips in many areas from local animals and creatures, talk to the rats, talk to the cats. Politician will boost your main chatter's Charisma so he can easier convince people to lean his way. Crafting and Blacksmithing can be boosted this way as well. This means that preferably one of your starting characters should be the social type, covering charisma and barter (possibly leadership as well) with perks to that end. And the other the crafty type with crafting and blacksmithing, possibly also loremaster. Do yourself a favour and add those on top of their classes, regardless of what those classes are to begin with.
- Get ranged abilities for all of your characters. You want to be spending your APs on dishing out damage rather than on moving your guys around. So build a team of archery and magic. Let enemy waste his APs on getting close to you while you barrage him. Give them crossbows, give them ranged skills. Try to stay away from enemies rather than charging at them. Leave charging to summoned creatures, they can sponge damage for you.
- When you evaluate your party, think how you are going to be able to fight a group of explosive enemies rushing at you. Not how you are going to charge enemy and cut him to bits and pieces.
- Hybrides suck. They just don't work at the moment with how attributes apply to skills. Make a pick of the main attribute for each of your characters. I'd suggest two INT characters (to cover all schools of magic), one DEX character (preferably an archer, but could also be a Rogue), and one STR character (tankish type to make use of all the many Man-at-Arms abilities). Then attempt to max those. If you try to go in as a party of Wayfarer/Battlemage/Shadowblade/Cleric, you'll get rofl-stomped by monsters right outside the gates, while the best items and spells are either heavily penalized or unusable in your inventory.
- Don't use default companions. Make your first 1k (steal paintings and sell), and get two lvl1 hirelings that complement your starting two the most. As soon as you hire them, fire them from your team, then rehire - this way their XP will be equal to your main two's, and you get to spend the points as you like.
- Prioritize healing spells and buff/debuff spells for all characters, both when you learn and when you fight. If you have a choice of Power Stance and Cure Wounds, always pick Cure Wounds. If you have a choice of hitting an enemy for 20 damage or slowing him down, slow him down.
- Spread out, you don't want your guys to be too close to one another. Cover more ground, weaken enemy's AoE skills by preventing them from being applied to everyone on your team with one shot.
- You can use the Air/Teleport spell to drop one enemy on top of another, doubling the damage, if you aim close enough. Drop one archer onto another, drop a knight on top of enemy mage. Possibly the best of all the starting skills. It's always my opening move.
- Combos. Combos, combos. Drop a boulder somewhere to spread poison, then ignite it all to blow it to bits. Wet a monster and then freeze him. Always think how to combo spells and skills. This gets especially scary when two mages covering all schools combine their skills with an archer who, with a wide array of arrowheads at his disposal, can pretty much every round detonate or freeze someone.
- Witchery. You might think that fireballs solve all problems, but in reality it's manipulation spells that allow you to force enemy to waste his rounds and APs on recovery. Buffs and debuffs are extremely strong in the game, and a key part to master if you find combat too difficult. A little bit of ice on the ground to trip enemy charge, a little bit of blind, a little bit of slow, a little bit of stun. It all gives you way more advantage than four or even eight damage spells.
- Summoning. Summon a spider, a wolf, a whatever. Then Haste it, Armor it, then watch your enemies waste their APs on trying to kill the thing that you can resummon after it's dead. You like rushing forward, rush with a fully buffed summon, make him chase enemy mages and archers out of combat, while you deal with melee opponents.
- Perception, you need one of your character to be a perceptive one. You just do. Otherwise you'll be walking onto mines all the time, and miss all the important buttons and such. Might be easiest to put it onto a DEX character.
- Ignore nasty deeds skills. And I mean - all of them. You don't need either of sneak, pickpocket or lockpick. Ignore telekinesis, whatever little telekinesis you need, you'll get from items.
- For gear you want items that boost skills first, then items that boost attributes, then everything else (resistances, life etc.). +1 skill is just that, +1 at a low level. But at +4, it's worth many more points. This also heavily dictates perk choice.
- For levelling, you want to conserve points and rather bee-line one specific skill than spread out into a thousand different things. Don't put your skill points into just anything, conserve them for later to boost character-defining skills.
- Steal everything. Craft everything. Sell it all afterwards. Always sharpen all your blades, reinforce all your armors.
- Do not purchase any of the crafting items, you'll find all the quills, looking glasses and mortars while looting the city.
