Stats
Understanding the stats of your party is key to your success.
Health
Each character has red and blue bars next to their portrait on the marching order menu at the bottom of the screen. The red bar is your health while the blue bar represents energy. If the red bar drains, you die. Health is the ability to resist pain and withstand injuries. Character class and Vitality affect the number of health points gained at first and at subsequent character levels.
Feed your characters so that they regain health and energy when they rest. Rest when you need to regain health. The Rest option is on the tab on the left side of the screen. Improving the Vitality attribute makes this bar (and stat) grow much faster during level-ups.
Energy
Energy is the ability to act. Strenuous activity—such as special attacks and spellcasting—consumes energy, and running out of energy prevents these actions. Willpower affects the number of energy points gained at first and at subsequent character levels.
Mages’ spells depend on energy, so it’s very important to manage this. Ranged weapons (missile type or thrown) are unaffected by the status of energy; these are not special attacks.
Protection
Protection is the combined protection value of all equipped armor, clothes, and other defensive gear. Protection decreases the physical damage of attacks against characters during melee attacks. To raise this stat, your frontline characters must wear heavy armor, which means you need to assign points to Strength, but the rub is that this is one of the last attributes you want to increase early in the game. You probably won’t max out this stat your first time through without a serious amount of grinding—continually defeating respawning monsters. Instead, spend your points on Dexterity or Vitality early on.
Evasion
Evasion affects the character’s chance of evading physical attacks. The damage from an evaded attack is completely negated. Evasion is determined by Dexterity, equipped shields, and other gear. This stat increases the chance that you’ll completely dodge an enemy’s melee attack. Keep in mind that elemental attacks do not count as melee attacks and that resistance to shock is the stat associated with those types of attacks. Don’t put all your faith into this stat; you can move and dodge while fighting to avoid enemy attacks, and it’s highly recommended that you do.
Damage
This is the amount of damage you deal with a physical attack. Damage is based on your Strength for melee and throwing weapons and your Dexterity for missile weapons. Skills and equipment give you additional bonuses to damage. Increasing this stat strengthens the damage from all non-magical attacks.
Accuracy
Accuracy affects your character’s chance of hitting a target in melee combat. It determines how many times you successfully hit a monster during the confrontation. Every point of a selected weapon skill adds one point to your Accuracy with that weapon, which is why you should use all the points earned at level-up on your favorite weapon. Accuracy is determined by Dexterity skills and equipped weapons. Keep in mind that the battles are live and that the moment you press the attack button matters. Learn the timing of the monsters’ attacks so you can interrupt them during their animations, creating a counterattack while canceling their attack.
Resistances
Resistance is the amount of a certain type of attack you are resilient to: fire, cold, poison, or shock. This is percentage based, so if you’re 50 percent resistant to fire then you will receive 50 percent less damage from a fire attack. Mages can reach 100 percent resistance to an element, which makes them completely invulnerable to that element. You can raise your resistance by using items that add more resistance as well as by upgrading Dexterity and Vitality to the max.
Max Load
Load affects the movement speed of the party. If one or more prisoners are burdened (yellow bar), movement speed is diminished. If one or more prisoners are overloaded (red bar), the party can’t move. Things that will weigh you down: food, torches, weapons, armor, treasures, skulls, rocks (and other nonessential items used for pressure floors). Increasing your Strength to improve your carrying capacity is not advised, as this is the least of your worries. Distribute the loads across your party members and give the heavy load to your minotaur (if you have one in your party).
Attributes
When creating characters at the beginning of a game, you have 10 extra points to distribute to one of these four attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Willpower. This is the best time to shape your character; it’s difficult to make big changes to this once on the adventure. Think about what kind of character you want to build and think about the weapons they’ll carry so you know what attributes do or do not need to be raised (since a weapon may raise the skill enough to be plenty effective in battle).
Strength
This affects your carrying capacity and damage with melee and throwing weapons. Increasing this stat with level-ups raises your carrying capacity by 3 kilograms per point and +1 Attack Power for every two points of Strength. You need around 15 Strength to carry the heaviest set of armor in the game. A minotaur carries 15 kilograms more than all the other characters.
Dexterity
Dexterity affects your accuracy, evasion, and damage with missile weapons. Increasing this stat with level-ups raises your accuracy, evasion, and resistance to shock and fire. Dexterity helps you survive melee combat, so your frontline attackers, especially, need to focus on increasing it. The more you add to Vitality and Dexterity, the better your resistance gain per point invested.
Vitality
Vitality represents the overall health and stamina of your character. It affects the number of health points gained at first and at subsequent levels and helps to get rid of harmful conditions. Boosting Vitality lowers the duration of poison and sickness, which means you wouldn’t have to carry around potions. The more Vitality you stack in the beginning the more health you gain over the course of your adventure. Invest a lot here when you are creating a character.
Willpower
Willpower is the force of the mind and the ability to manipulate arcane powers. It affects the number of energy points gained at the first level and at subsequent levels. Do not have less than 10 Willpower while using axes, maces, and swords; they consume a lot of energy, which is directly related to Willpower. Willpower increases your max energy gains at level-ups. However, if you plan to use a dagger or any thrown or missile weapon, don’t bother with Willpower, as they do not need energy to be used. Mages can use Willpower to cast more spells per encounter, since they do require a minimum amount of energy to fire.