A few tips we seem to be settling on as helpful:
1) Make sure you have one person who has very high Lucky Charm skill, and have them do all your looting. This will make a dramatic difference in your overall gear quality even very early on. By midgame it almost becomes a loot flood.
2) Do you have a thief? One guy in your party tiefing skillbooks can make a big difference.
2) How does your team fit together with each other?
What seems to be working for most people is picking either physical or magic damage types, then having everyone in the party do the same kind of damage, so that you can focus fire down enemies faster. An example model party might be something like:
- Warfare / Necromancy, splash Geomancy
- Summoning / Leadership , splash Hydromancy
- Huntsman / Ranged, splash Pyro
- Scoundrel / Polymorph, splash Aero
Everyone in this group can do heavy physical damage -- summoner via Wood or Blood pets, everyone else via different types of weapons and/or Necromancy.
With one person having Persuasion (probably your pet pal person, likely your summoner), one person having lucky charm, one person with thieving (probably the scoundrel since Shadowblade base class gets a point in thieving at start).
You can only steal from each vendor once, so at like level 2 or 3 go through and steal some basic elemental skillbooks (restoration, etc.), then at level 4 or 5 go through and steal from the remaining vendors to fill out your primary skills (ie. warfare, necro, etc.)
Each person specializes in their damage stat (strength or finesse for this party) and Memory (to use those skills you stole), except the summoner who takes Wits up to about 20 instead of a damage stat, so you can find secrets.
Have as many summons as you can especialy early on -- you'll want your Necromancer to start with Bloated Corpse, etc.
