There are a lot of important things to learn about this awesome game if you are trying to get the most out of it. The number 1 most important thing in any game, though, is to have fun. I'm going to tell you how to crush the game from a systems stand point, but I'm not telling you this is the only way to do things. Different people like different things and have different ideas of fun, so use my advice as it suits you. My goal with this guide is to help people avoid having to use trial and error to figure out basic things about the game, like the relative values of Protection, Evasion, and Resistances.

Understanding these numbers is the key to building an effective party. Use this section as a handy reference until you've memorized what all of these things do.


Health
When the red bar is empty, you die. Focus on improving your Vitality attribute and this number will grow more quickly on level ups. Press "r" to rest and refill the red bars often.

Energy
Used whenever you attack, but doesn't stop melee or ranged attacks from firing. Mages need a minimum amount of current Energy to cast spells, though, so running out during combat is a bigger deal for them. Melee special attacks consume lots of Energy and don't go off unless you have enough to pay for them. Ranged weapons (Throwing and Missile) don't actually have special attacks, so Energy is completely irrelevant for them. Improve your Willpower early in the game to gain more Energy per level up.

Attack Power
This number improves your damage from ALL non-magical sources. There are various ways to improve this universally for your characater, like the Aggression, Fist Fighter, and Head Hunter (Minotaur only) traits.

Accuracy
This determines how often you actually hit the monster in front of you. By learning the timing of monster attacks you can actually inturrupt them in the middle of their animations when you land hits on them, negating their own attack with your "counter attack" of sorts. This doesn't work if you miss, so try not to! Every point of a chosen weapon skill adds +1 to your Accuracy with that weapon, which is one reason why later on I suggest you dump each level up into your weapon of choice and ignore everything else.

Protection
Reduces the damage you sustain when hit by monsters in melee combat. The armors that offer the most protection are also VERY HEAVY and require that you gain Attribute points in Strength, which is slightly less useful than Vitality or Dexterity in the early game on a front line character. You won't have enough skill points to max out your primary Skill and also get Light or Heavy Armor Proficiency in a single run through the game without pointlessly grinding respawning monsters. Bleh.

Evasion
Determines your chances of dodging enemy attacks completely in melee combat. Protection and Evasion defend you from the same damage source, and ONLY that damage source: enemy melee attacks. Elemental attacks like the ball lightning that Wyverns spit does not count as a melee attack, only Resist Shock will do anything about that. Also note that it is NEVER a good idea to just stand still letting monsters try to eat you. The game is designed around you being a dancing fool, so dance.

Resistances
Each Resistance number is percent based. If you have 33% Resistance to Cold, then you take that much less damage from all sources of Cold damage. Mages can get +100 Resistance to the element they are focusing on, which makes them completely immune to that element in combat. Raise your resistance by stacking Vitality and Dexterity to the sky. Look for items that add more as well.

Weight Limit
How much you can carry. Food, torches, weapons, armor, treasure, skulls, and junk items for pressure plate puzzles all have weight. You can improve your carrying capacity by investing in Strength, but I don't recommend it. The only thing heavy enough that you would actually need Strength to use it is heavy armor, and heavy armor provides ONLY Protection, which as we've discussed is not a very useful stat. You become encumbered BEFORE you reach your Weight Limit number, so be careful and distribute your dungeon junk evenly unless you've got a Minotaur in the party (they can carry 15kg more than other races before other modifiers).

These are the Attributes you can assign 10 extra points into during character creation. This is your best opportunity to shape the future of your character as Attributes tend to be difficult to raise after the game begins (unless you go Unarmed). Every Skill line raises Attributes by small amounts (except Unarmed), so figure out which Skill like you are going to focus on before placing points during creation. For example, if you have a Human go Axes, they will have roughly enough Strength to wear the Valor set just from the +4 Strength they gain by 50 points in Axes, so you don't need to also raise their Strength all the way to 15 during character creation just to wear heavy armor.

Strength
If you want to wear Heavy Armor, Strength is required. You simply cannot wear the heaviest armor set in the game without around 15~ Strength unless you create a Minotaur (they can carry 15kg more than other races by default). Even then, you won't be carrying anything else while wearing the Valor set without further investment in Strength. Besides increasing your carrying capacity by 3kg per point, you also gain +1 Attack Power per two points of Strength. Considering how precious your Attribute points are, this is not really a good way to improve your Attack Power.

Dexterity
Boosts your Accuracy, Evasion, and Resistance to Shock & Fire (most common elemental damage sources) all at once. It is especially useful for front line weapon users since Evasion is great at helping you survive melee combat, and missing your own attacks less is always good. The important thing to remember about Resistances is that the more you stack Vitality and Dexterity, the bigger your Resistance gain per point invested becomes. This makes stacking Vitality and Dexterity even sexier than it already was. Later in the game the Accuracy boost from Dexterity becomes largely irrelevant as you will gain 50 just from your weapon skill.

Vitality
The only thing in the game that protects you from all sources of death is more maximum Health, and Vitality boosts your Health gain on level up. After that, Resistances protect you from things that Evasion and Protection do not, and this stat provides Resistance to Cold & Poison. Vitality also lowers the duration of Poison and Sickness, which is pretty handy if you don't want to use potions to deal with these bad status effects. Finally, the more Vitality you stack early on, the more Health you gain over the course of the game. For this reason I give Vitality a lot of weight during character creation. No other stat will pay off as highly over the course of the game. Note that Health gains from Vitality are independent of class, so even your Rogues and Mages can end the game with a relatively large amount of Health if you invest early.

Willpower
It does nothing for you defensively or offensively, it simply increases your maximum Energy gains when you level up and maybe Energy regeneration rate. Melee weapons consume Energy when you attack, and a lot when special attacks happen. You can have zero Energy and still perform regular melee attacks without a problem. I do not recommend having less than 10 Willpower while using Fighter weapons (Axes, Maces, Swords) as they tend to consume a lot of Energy to perform special attacks, and that is where most of their damage comes from. I found that having 12 Willpower made my Mace user able to use their special attacks much more reliably by the end of the game. Mages can use Willpower to cast more spells per combat, since those DO require a minimum amount of Energy or they won't fire, but Mages are a pain in the butt in general and their reliance on this stat to function isn't helping their case any. Daggers don't use much Energy for their special attacks and actually give you huge Energy boosts as you level the skill, making Willpower completely unnecessary on Dagger users. Throwing and Missile Weapons consume Energy on use, but do not have special attacks, so there is no negative effect to them running out of Energy if it ever happens (so they can ignore Willpower too).

Effective Health is an important concept in games like this. Yes, you have a Health pool with a fixed number like 50, 100, or 200 Health total, but that is not the entire story. Likewise, your possible damage is not always clear cut in Grimrock because of mitigation and weapon attack delay. DPS is short for Damage Per Second and it is an important concept in other games, but slightly less so in Grimrock for reasons we'll get into.

Your Health total is 100, and a monster does an average of 20 damage per hit.

100 Health / 20 Attack Power = 5 attacks until you die. Easy, right?

That isn't the entire story, though. First lets say you have 10 Protection, and assume Protection reduces damage by 1 for each point (I'm not sure that it does, just follow along for now). The math has changed, because now the monster's average damage is reduced by half:

100 Health / (20 Attack Power - 10 Protection) = 10 attacks until you die

You have effectively doubled your Health, the monster needs to do 200 damage worth of attacks to kill you instead of 100. Now lets look at Evasion. To effectively double your base Health of 100 when being attacked for 20 damage, you would need to achieve a 50% dodge rate.

100 Health / 20 Attack Power = 5 attacks * 2 (50% missed) = 10 attacks until you die

Now then, what happens when we assume a player has 100 Health, 10 Protection, and enough Evasion to dodge 50% of incoming attacks from a 20 damage monster?

100 Health / (20 Attack Power - 10 Protection) = 10 * 2 (50% missed) = 20 attacks until you die

Being attacked for 20 damage 20 times to die is the same thing as having 400 (!) effective Health!

An important thing to keep in mind from this series of examples, however, is that both Evasion and Protection ONLY work vs. monster melee attacks. Any source of elemental damage, like Urgaardian fireballs, Wyvern ball lightning, Skeleton Archer frost arrows, Ooze slime, and various traps are ONLY reduced by Resistance values. These are even easier to calculate, though, because Resistances are all percent based. This means if you reach 100 points of Resistance to an element you are totally immune to it. Mages achieve this the moment they hit 50 skill in an element, but you can get pretty close with other classes and the right stats (Vitality and Dexterity, heaps of both). So lets say you have 75% resistance to Poison while equipped with the Serpent Bracer and get attacked by Ooze slime for 20 damage:

100 Health / ((20 Elemental Damage * (1 - 0.75 = 0.25) = 5) = 100 / 5 = 20 attacks until you die

Keep this information in mind when trying to figure out how you want your front line people to survive encounters. Protection directly reduces incoming damage and reduces spikes, while Evasion can mitigate a lot at once, but leaves you vulnerable to bad luck streaks. The Armor Proficiency skills allow you to have a mix of both of these defensive statistics, but without that skill you must choose one or the other to favor because each piece of Heavy Armor worn without training tanks your Evasion by 15 points. It doesn't matter if you can't dodge attacks that way, though, if you are a good dancer as a player and move your party out of melee range while your attacks are on cooldown... Speaking of cooldowns! NEXT SEGMENT!

Lots of people place a lot of emphasis on damager per second in a lot of games. It is an important number in Grimrock, but in my opinion less important than your ability to do a large amount of damage in one hit, even if you attack more slowly as a result. There are a few reasons for this:

1) Armored enemies take very reduced damage from your physical attacks, and unless your weapon has a means of ignoring armor via special attacks or the Mace 50 point skill, the only way to avoid doing 0 damage to tough enemies is through stacking lots of Attack Power.

2) You rarely want to stand toe to toe with a monster and trade hits the moment your cooldowns end. More often, you will be dodging projectiles and traps, or enemy melee attacks between your own. Combat is chaotic and you will not be able to click every weapon the moment their cooldowns end. Even if you could, you may not always be in melee range of your target, etc...

Now, don't take this as a knock against Unarmed, Throwing, Daggers, etc... Those weapons are all completely great. You just need to plan accordingly while using them. Daggers rely on special attacks to get the most out of them, and provide some Energy while leveling up, but you probably still don't want to go under 10 Willpower on a Dagger user in the creation screen because their final special attack consumes a LOT of Energy, and you want to be able to use it as often as possibe.

Next important concept: 25% or 50% reduced cooldowns with weapons are actually a 33% and 100% damage per second boost, assuming you could attack perfectly the moment every cooldown ended. Why?

If your attack takes 4 seconds, you can attack 5 times in 20 seconds.

Reduce your cooldown by 25%

Now you can attack every 3 seconds, so in 20 seconds you get 20 / 3 = 6.66 attacks

6.66 / 5 = 1.33, showing you've gained 33% more attacks (therefore damage) over 20 seconds.

This gets even simpler once you have 50% reduced cooldowns. Instead of attacking every 4 seconds, you attack every 2 seconds, which is literally twice as often.

A 50% reduction in attack cooldown is a 100% boost in damage per second.

You can get this bonus on Swords at 50 skill, and Missile or Thrown Weapons at 24 skill (Improved Quick Shot / Throw), or Daggers with Improved Quick Strike from 45 skill in Assassination (worthless without getting 50 Dagger skill first, though). To take maximum advantage of fast weapons like these you can pair a Minotaur with any of these weapons and apply the Head Hunter +15 Attack Power trait to any of them. Just remember what I was saying earlier, you can't ALWAYS attack just because your cooldown is over, so don't think you HAVE to use these skills to succeed. You really don't, and the better you are at dancing the more time you have to win any encounter regardless of your defensive or offensive strength.

When creating a party the first thing you need to decide is what race to make each character. Here is some detailed analysis of your choices:

Humans
Not great or bad at anything, they get 4 skill points to spend at creation, unlike the other races that get 3 (Lizardmen / Insectoids) or 1 (Minotaurs). You get 4 at each level up regardless of race though, so having 1 more total skill point than a Lizardman isn't really a big deal in the long run. Both races will reach 50 in a given skill at the same level (4 points x 13 level ups = 52 points, or 51 as a Lizard), so this really doesn't matter at all. You can make a party of all Humans and they'll all do fine at whatever you want them to without really excelling. I would maybe recommend them for your Mage over Insectoid if you are concerned about Health, and if you go Fire with your Mage then Energy should not be an issue (Fire is among the cheapest spells to cast while still doing very solid damage).

Minotaurs
Minotaur is all about the Head Hunter trait. Over the course of the game it goes from providing +0 to +15 Attack Power once you find all 5 skulls hidden in the dungeon. Minotaurs make AMAZING Thrown Weapon Rogues because this bonus applies to any physical attack, even Crossbows. The best way to make up for Minotaur's weaknesses and take advantage of their Head Hunter trait in the front row is to make one into an Unarmed Fighter due to the massive stat boosts it offers and the way your 15 + 6 (use Fist Fighter instead of Aggression) Attack Power directly applies to your fists. Finally, keep in mind that only the Minotaur carrying the Skulls gets the Head Hunter bonus. HOWEVER. Minotaurs are also the best ranged weapon users in general, because Dexterity and Willpower are not useful stats for Throwing or Missile Weapon Rogues, so when Minotaurs trade those away for more Strength and Vitality it is a good deal even without Head Hunter.

Lizardmen
They are basically Humans with -1 Willpower and +2 Dexterity. Unfortunately, Dexterity is a situational stat that is only really at its best in the front line, so their specialization in it doesn't really help their back row performance at all. They do great as front line Dagger users, though. They do not have access to a special racial trait, unfortunately.

Insectoids
Insectoids have the lowest starting HP and Vitality of all the races, in exchange for a boost to Willpower. This can a be useful if you plan on being an Air Mage since their spells are so expensive, but otherwise a Human Mage will do the job just as well and probably die less often. Their Protection granting Racial trait is underwhelming, but you could try to make a front row guy out of them while using it. It won't really help them out much in the back row, the Healthy trait will do much more for any Insectoid in the long run.

These are what you have to work with prior to adding 10 points to whichever Attributes you want, maximum of +6 in any 1 Attribute. Health per class is Warrior / Rogue / Mage.

You get 2 trait choices per character at creation. Traits are pretty straightforward since at least half of them are not any good at all. Depending on your character's race, weapon specialization, and the row they are in you might want to change them a bit, though. The ones worth considering are the following:

Healthy
Gives another +2 to your Vitality. The earlier you stack Vitality the more good it does. This is your last chance to get even more Vitality before the game even starts. Healthy is always a good choice regardless of class, position, race, weapon choice, etc... This trait is always better than Tough as Vitality does more than just provide Health, and over the course of the game +2 Vitality will provide much more than 15 Health anyway.

Agile / Athletic / Strong Mind
Another +2 to your other Attributes is situationally a good idea. Go read about Attributes above for the details on why you want each one. These traits are pretty interchangable with your 10 points you are allowed to assign. I put Healthy by itself because I believe it is typically more worth stacking Vitality during creation than the other Attributes.

Aggression / Fist Fighter
Aggression for Daggers, Missiles, and Thrown, and Fist Fighter for Unarmed users provides a solid early game damage boost that will keep these lower damage weapons competitive into the late game. The other Fighter weapon types (Sword, Axe, Mace) tend to have much higher base Attack Power and provide less Dexterity, making Healthy + Agile a more competitive pick for Fighters you want to Evade with. You could pick both of these on an Unarmed character to start the game punching like a heavyweight champ.

Head Hunter
Take this on 1 Minotaur Unarmed Fighter or Throwing Rogue to get a massive Attack Power boost over the course of the game. There are 5 skulls to be found, so +15 total Attack Power total by the end. Pairing this with Fist Fighter will not leave you lacking on defenses on a Minotaur Fighter because the Unarmed skill line provides amazing Evasion boosts and Minotaurs naturally have high Vitality and base Health.

Other Traits
The rest of the traits are not that good compared to the ones I named. You can use them, but they're rarely the best choice.

Skills are actually a lot easier to figure out than they appear on the surface. Pick a weapon (or element on a Mage) and max it out. Every level up. No exceptions. You will typically end the game at level 14 if you don't grind, and that means you will have exactly enough skill points to max out 1 category and add 5-6 points to one more. Why do weapon and elemental skills win? Because they are the only skills that provide a constant bonus to your characters even between the bonus break points. Each point in a weapon skill adds +1 Accuracy with that weapon, and every 2 points adds +1 Attack Power for a total of +50 / +25 by the time you reach level 13. Besides that, the break point bonuses on weapons are great, enabling you to do massive damage with special attacks, gain passive powers like ignoring armor, and boost your Attributes.

Unarmed
This skill line is amazing. The Evasion and Attribute bonuses in this offensive skill are greater than you'll get from most defensive oriented lines! The only thing Unarmed lacks is raw damage per hit, so be sure to pair it with a Minotaur Fighter who is using Head Hunter and the Fist Fighter trait in order to get the most out of it.

Daggers
Surprisingly effective, Dagger Rogues are great in the front line due to their high Dexterity and Energy gains, granting Evasion and allowing for constant use of special attacks. Daggers tend to have Accuracy bonuses, and attack very quickly. Make sure you take Aggression during creation and even in the early game you'll hit plenty hard with these weapons. There isn't much more to say about them, they're just solid all around and can hit VERY hard at 50 points with their barrage of special attacks. You DO NOT need Assassination to use Daggers and I don't recommend putting points in it since those are points delaying you from getting to 50 in Daggers.

Swords
The Sword line is OK as far as the Attribute bonuses it grants (basically a much weaker version of Unarmed), as are Sword weapons themselves. They are the lowest damage out of the 3 regular Fighter weapons and attempt to make up for this by being the fastest attacking, reaching Dagger speed at 50 skill. Unfortunately there are monsters in the game with enough Protection to make your Sword attacks practically bounce off them prior to getting the best Sword in the game. Pair them with the Aggression trait for better results since they do offer Dexterity boosts for breakpoint bonuses.

Axes
While +25 Health and +4 Strength aren't anything to write home about, the final +20 Attack Power boost nearly doubles what you gained from investing 50 points in the skill in the first place (remember, 1 per 2 points the whole way to 50). Because of their final bonus, Axes are capable of the highest damage in a single hit the entire game, but since they do not ignore Armor you may find Maces more consistent. I would still rank these above Swords, however, just because of their raw power. The Ancient Axe is the single most powerful weapon in the entire game, beating the best Mace by 1 Attack Power, but it is not a better weapon than the Icefall Hammer because the hammer can Freeze even the toughest enemies on hit.

Maces
A lot of people will tell you Maces are the worst standard Fighter weapon. They are wrong. The accuracy penalty on many Maces is largely ignorable since you're going to gain +50 from investing in the skill itself, and you are stacking Dexterity on your front line characters anyway, aren't you? The final Mace hits like a truck, consistently, because with 50 skill Maces ignore enemy Protection entirely, and has a chance of Freezing enemies solid. Frozen enemies are basically stunned, and you get 5~ seconds to just bash away at them for free. This is enough time to kill basically anything if you are maximizing your party's damage by using this guide. The only creature I couldn't Freeze was the final boss.

Throwing Weapons
Not a bad choice for your back line, but loses to Missiles for a few reasons. Your best Throwing weapon, Throwing Axes, are hard to find many of until the end of the game, and even with them you only have 15 base Attack Power to work with. Compare this to the Crossbow, which you can find in a secret staircase from Floor 3, and has 20 base Attack Power, and gains another 2 with a basic Quarrel equipped with it. The Throwing skill line offers +5 Strength and +15 Health, though, which is more useful than Dexterity on a back row character than the Dexterity and Energy offered by Missile Weapons. It also brings the Attack Power comparison up to 17.5 vs. 22. The good news? Your off hand is free, making a Throwing user the person to put a Torch on if you don't have a Mage in the group.

Missile Weapons
The main reason Missile Weapons trump Throwing is because of the early Crossbow you can find in the Slime Pit. The Crossbow is the top tier (highest damage) ranged weapon in the entire game. Once you find it, your Missile Weapon user will likely become the hardest hitting member of your party until the others start finding their top tier weapons as well around floor 7. There is a top tier regular Bow as well you can eventually find, but by the time you do it is already floor 11 or so and the game is nearly over. On top of that, it still does less damage than a Crossbow, in exchange for SLIGHTLY faster attack speed. This does not matter at all since both weapons get double shot with Volley, and 50% reduced cooldown times. Use the Crossbow, love the Crossbow. By the end of the game you should have around 24 Crossbow Quarrels to shoot, which is plenty.

Elementals
I'm lumping all 4 elemental choices that Mages get into one category because they are all basically the same. Each starts with a basic attack spell that targets all enemies in the tile in front of you (not as useful as you'd think from the early encounters vs. the groups of 4 Skeletons), then gains the ability to enchant Broadhead Arrows and Quarrels for your Missile Weapon user, then gains a party wide Shield spell that adds +25 Resist to the element you picked, then gains a higher power ranged attack spell. Air magic bucks this trend by also offering Invisibility on top of the other spells, which I guess could be useful in some parties. Getting 5 points in Concentration enables the Light and Darkness spells, which provide their namesake and aren't necessary unless you don't want to carry a Torch. The Darkness spell is basically useless. Earth is probably the worst element since Skeletons are immune to Poison damage and you fight a lot of them in this game. Ice is great all game long because it can Freeze enemies, trivializing some of the bigger threats in the game by stunning them for 5 seconds at a time. Air is good because nothing resists it, and it does good damage. Fire is OK in general and does the most damage per cast typically, but a very common mid to late game monster (Uggardian) is immune to it, so be prepared for that when it comes up. Each element boosts 1 Attribute as well. Earth = Vitality, Ice = Willpower, Air = Dexterity, and Fire = Strength. On a Mage, Strength is only good for extra carrying capacity, and Dexterity is not a great stat in general for them either. For me, the clear winner is Ice.

Classes are pretty straightforward in Grimrock. Fighters go in the front, Mages go in the back, and Rogues go wherever you want.

Fighter
Being the only class allowed to train the Maces, Swords, or Axes skills line means you can put 2 in front and they'll both get access to a good weapon. You will not get enough skill points to get a weapon to 50 and learn to wear Heavy Armor, though, if you end the game at level 14 like I did. If you are making a party that you intend to import into a custom map that allows you to level past 14 easily (like say LoG Master Quest), then you can plan to train them in Heavy Armor Proficiency after starting the custom dungeon. Be warned, if you are going for the Valor set of heavy armor, it is is HEAVY. You will not be able to wear it and still move quickly with only 10 Strength, or even the 12 you get from holding the Shield of Valor (it doesn't even fully cover its own 6.5kg weight). Because of this, if you are planning on some day wearing Heavy Armor you should consider either going Axes and taking the Athletic trait, or being a Minotaur and adding 1 to Strength when you start out (putting them at 16 even). You can go Unarmed on a Fighter and be fine, but I prefer letting a Rogue do it (see next entry).

Rogue
The only class you actually need in the base game. Rogues in the back row can specialize in Missile Weapons and Throwing so that you have solid ranged damage to fall back on and still have a Torch slot available on the Thrower. Rogues in the front row can choose to specialize in Unarmed and Daggers to prevent overlap and get 2 really great skill trees. An all Rogue party is a wonderful thing, but if you then import it into Master Quest you'll have 2 front liners fighting over the same best in slot Light Armors. Make your Unarmed person a Rogue instead of a Fighter, if only because the Pit Fighter Gauntlet weapons do not overlap with any of the Chiten or Lurker armor set items. Like with the Fighter, don't expect to even wear Light armor in your main game play through since Rogues need even more skill points to wear Light armor than Fighters need to wear Heavy, and it still incurs an Evasion penalty. The Lurker set is your friend in base Grimrock, it is just a shame there is only 1.

Mage
A niche utility class in a game that doesn't really need them. You can make Mages work, but they'll always be higher maintenance than the other classes in terms of both starting with the least Health and requiring a minimum of 3 mouse clicks to attack with a spell every - single - time. Like the others, you should just dump 50 points into one Element in order to maximize your damage, but if you want to give them 1 of the 3 skill books you'll find in the game in order to let them get 5 points in Spellcraft that is a good idea. You won't need to carry torches any more since you'll have access to the Light skill and eventually the Orb of Radiance (infinite light source). There are items that boost your Fire or Earth damage in the dungeon as well. Fire delivers the best damage per Energy spent out of all the trees. Ice allows for Freezing monsters (stunning them for a long time) and has the best stat growth for a Mage (Willpower). Air is the most expensive, has the Invisibility utility spell, and nothing resists it. Earth lets you damage things through gates, but Skeletons are immune to Poison and you fight a lot of them in the early game. Later on not much resists Earth, though, so it gets a chance to do some work. Leveling an Element boosts the damage of the spells in that element, just like weapon skill lines, so stick to 1.

If you read everything leading up to this section you should have a good idea at this point of how to make a good party, but I'll go ahead and outline some suggested set ups for easy reference. I describe the position, race, class, trait choices, and primary skill (where you should dump your Skill Points every level until it reaches 50) in the tables, then talk about each character in a little more detail below that.

The regular default party is not optimized at all, but you can recreate it to be a bit better while planning on importing it into custom maps like Master Quest, at which point they can actually learn the Armor Proficiency skills:


Human Fighter
The least interesting character in this group, they'll hit really damn hard just because Axes always hit really damn hard, and they'll survive well enough if you max out their Vitality during creation. Consider letting your Human Fighter or Minotaur wear any Heavy or Light armor even without the Proficiencies. If you do play this party again in Master Quest you can gain the Heavy Armor Proficiency skill very quickly, and you'll already have enough Strength to take full advantage of it. During creation you should probably aim on having around 14 base Strength if you do plan on wearing Heavy Armor without pressing up against your weight limits constantly, even with the Axe skill providing another 4. The target is roughly 18 total. Get your Willpower to 12 in order to use special attacks with any kind of regularity.

Minotaur Fighter
The Sword 50 point special says it reduces the cooldown by 50%. If you think about that, it means you are actually gaining a 100% dps increase over time, because you can attack twice as often. This makes a great match with Headhunter, since you get to apply your +15 Attack Power twice as often! Again, focus on Vitality if you want to just wear all the Heavy Armor you find during your first trip through the dungeon. No amount of Dexterity will compensate for the Evasion loss you will incur from not having Heavy Armor Proficiency, so you can ignore Dexterity during character creation if you plan on going this route. Again, plan on having 16 Strength during creation if you intend to wear the heaviest armors, because with Swords you'll be pushed to 18 eventually. You can stop at 10 Willpower with this guy since Swords will also provide 10 bonus Energy eventually.

Human Rogue
Your Rogue in the rear will want to grab the Crossbow from the floor 3 secret stairs leading to the Slime Pit asap, and will become a superstar the moment they do. Prior to that make sure they pick up all the Rocks you find on the floor and grab the Sling on floor 2 (it is not well hidden, just hard to see). Put the Sling in one hand and Rocks in the other, then click on the Sling to launch rocks from it instead of throwing them (does much more damage this way). The Sling and Aggression will end up doing plenty of damage until you get the Short Bow at the entrance of Floor 3, and not long after that you will trade it up for the Crossbow. Make sure you always collect all of your ammo after fighting and be very careful not to shoot into open floor pits, or else you'll have to drop down and retrieve your bolts. Your ammo supply will slowly increase over the course of the game, and about half way through you'll start firing 2 shots with each attack, effectively reducing your number of attacks per combat to 1/2 your ammo count, since you can't get your arrows or bolts back until after the creatures you are fighting die. Don't bother changing back over to the Crookhorn Longbow once you find it, it is strictly inferior to the Crossbow.

Human Mage
Outside of Earth's initial spell being really bad, you can do well with any of the elements. Air is the least resisted (I'm not sure anything resists Air magic) and can turn your party Invisible, Fire does the most damage to things that don't resist it, and Ice has a chance to Freeze tough monsters solid, making them easy picking for the rest of your party. You will be fine with any of these choices, really. One of the best reasons to bring a Mage along is because at 5 Spellcraft they can cast the Light spell, and eventually equip the Orb of Radiance. With the Orb you never need to hold a torch again, so I highly recommend holding it in your Mage's offhand while putting the Zhandul Orb or Shaman stick in their other. During creation you could consider dropping 2 points in Spellcraft to start the game with +1 more Willpower, since you want to get to 5 anyway. The only downer from this is that you won't be able to cast your basic spell until level 2 if you do this, unless you are going Fire. Not a huge deal, just something to keep in mind. Throw rocks to get XP until then.

This party streamlines your play a bit by removing the Mage, making each combat just a little easier on your mouse. You won't miss magic all that much since each character is going to do plenty of damage without needing to hit the entire tile for the majority of fights in the game. If you do need to, use bombs! You can put Head Hunter on whoever you want, really, but only Unarmed gets to use the (very good) Fist Fighter trait, so keep that in mind.


This party is really straightforward. Just dump your Skill Points into your primary weapon skill and blow everything up. This is not really set up to transfer out of the main campaign very well since it won't be able to equip any Fighter or Mage gear that crafty modders have created for you. It is only designed to make your trip through vanilla Grimrock a (relative) walk in the park. You could technically do two Missile Rogues and give one the Crookhorn Bow, but then you won't have anyone with an open hand to carry a torch, and no magic to light the way either. Your front row people should each have a shield in the offhand since there are never requirements to use even the best shields in the game.

Dance, for the love god, dance. The game was not designed with taking monster attacks to your face in mind as a winning strategy. Learn to side step and attack monsters after they miss you with their own attacks. Learn which monsters can charge at you. Learn which monsters can attack you WHILE turning towards you. You need to develop a great deal of spatial awareness and it helps to always have a light source in order to be a successful dancer who doesn't accidentally get themselves trapped in a corner or walk into a pit trap while fighting. Even if you stack Protection and Evasion to the moon you will be crushed into a pink mist by Trolls (and later, Wardens) if you try to just stand and fight them. Monsters with ranged attacks like Wyverns, Uggardians, and Goromorgs need to be dodged as well or your entire party gets hurt.

Make sure everyone in your party gets at least 1 hit on monsters you fight whenever possible. Otherwise they only get 50% of the XP for the kill. This means make sure your Mage keeps casting spells, even vs. easy monsters, or they'll fall behind everyone else in levels.

Not sure where this pit trap or teleporter in front of you leads? Better Quick Save using the F5 key. Do it often to reduce your frustration when learning Grimrock by quite a bit. F9 Quick Loads.

Broadhead Arrows weigh only 0.1kg each, making them excellent to carry around for placing on pressure plates. There are only 2 kinds of pressure plates in the game, the least common kind requires either the player party or monsters to activate. The most common type activates when ANY item is placed on it regardless of how much the item actually weighs.

There is a late game secret that REQUIRES 2 Stones in order to access it, though, if you care about finding all the secrets or getting the Valor chest armor. You can't use other items, they have to be Stones.

There is a late game puzzle the REQUIRES a Skull to proceed, so be sure to have at least 1 Skull in your inventory even if you don't have any Minotaurs in your party, or else you'll have to back track and find one.

There is a puzzle on floor 4 that requires you throw an object into a teleport square that appears 4 seconds after you stand on a pressure plate. If you try throwing the item from the mouse cursor (click on it as if you were going to place it in an inventory or hand slot), it will not have the same momentum as if you attacked with said thrown item. The only way to solve this puzzle is to actually equip a throwing weapon or Stone, and right click to attack with it into the teleporter square.

You can take items, and place items on pressure plates that are behind gates by clicking near the bottom of your screen on the pressure plate itself. This is necessary to solve some puzzles and find some secrets.

Do not be afraid of falling into pits. They are never instant death, and often have secrets of their own inside them with good items. Half the time they also have monsters in them waiting to eat you, so try to rest up to full health before dropping into an unknown pit intentionally. If your party started with high Vitality the falling damage becomes negligible by late game.

Torches are annoying to manage, but you can ease that slightly by swapping your current torch with ones you find on walls every so often. Wall torches never expire and have the same light amount even if you place an almost-burnt-out torch from your hand into the slot. Just click the wall torch, click your hand torch, and click back on the wall. Note that there are secrets that involve wall torches or empty torch holders so look out for them. You can use burnt out torches on pressure plates to solve puzzles if you aren't using Broadhead Arrows for that.

The only potions you ever might need many of are Health Potions. Energy Potions could be handy in a long fight, but it is only very rarely that you'll find yourself in a fight so long you need them, and only Mages lose the ability to attack entirely without Energy. Antidote potions are good, but get less important as the game goes on and your Resistances / Vitality improve. Remember that Vitality reduces the duration of bad status effects, trivializing them once you have 20 or more Vitality. Keep an Antivenom and Antidote potion on hand if you are worried about Poison and Disease, but they're annoyances more than they are deadly if you are following the advice in this guide. You can still heal using a Health Potion even if you are Diseased, it only blocks your natural health regeneration.

You will find more than enough food to rest as often as you need to, assuming you don't screw around. If you want to go look up solutions to puzzles press Escape to pause the game while you do it instead of letting your food timers run down. There is a room about half way through the game that respawns Snails very frequently, making it a great place to go for food if you actually run out. I never did. There is another room further in that respawns Ice Lizards, and these also drop very filling (and heavy) food. By the end game I actually had to drop lots of food in order to carry around the Valor and Chiten armor sets in my 10 Strength all Lizard party, but I never did end up equipping them due to lack of available Skill points.

Bags are a lot better for carrying stuff around than Boxes. Bags weigh a little more than 1/10 of what a Box does and has 6/10 the storage space. That being said, there honestly isn't that much lying around that you'd want to organize this well since you can't keep the Alchemy kit and a bag opened at the same time. If you're playing the Master Quest mod you actually get rated on the value of items you are carrying, so then it might make sense to try to carry more crap you don't actually need around with you. Food, game hint scrolls, skulls, torches, and treasures are the main things you'll want to store in bags since none of these things stack like Alchemy ingredients do. You seriously don't need more than 1 bag with 6 torches in it though, even without a Mage in your group, just refill it as you go and use the earlier tip about wall swapping to extend the life of the one in your hand without having to mess with your inventory. You also tend to find food so often it makes carrying a bag full of food on each character a moot point as well. I guess this is a long way of saying "don't feel like you need to waste lots of time playing inventory Tetris in Grimrock".

There is an Iron Door on every floor of the game except the floor with the final boss, so make sure you look for clues on how to open them. Some require keys, other require special actions. Iron Doors tend to have high quality loot behind them, so it is usually worth the effort.

Golden Keys are universal and work in any Treasure Room in the game. There are more golden locks in Grimrock than there are keys to open them, so I do recommend you look up a guide to figure out which treasure gates you want to spend your keys on. One I can easily recommend has a Book of Infinite Wisdom behind it (+5 skill points to the character that uses it). Besides that book, the best items in the game are not found in Treasure Rooms anyway, so don't stress about not being able to open all of them. Some have common Alchemy ingredients, some have armor you can find in other places and don't have the skill to wear anyway, etc...

If you'd like to enable the developer console you can do things like spawn Tomes of Infinite Wisdom in a huge pile in front of you as often as you'd like. Of course, you'd only do this in order to ~test things out~ right? Right? Heh, just kidding, do whatever you want with it. The point of any game is to have fun, and if you want to spawn enough Tomes of Infinite Wisdom to have 50 in a weapon skill and also equip whatever armor you damn well want, more power to you. I did not need to do this when I beat the game, but I'm kind of tempted to going forward just because I am annoyed by how restrictive the game is with skill points in general and would like to actually use all the cool armor I find.

Credit to TSotP for the following, who posted this at Gamefaqs

To enable the console, go to My Documents\Almost Human\Legend Of Grimrock. Open the grimrock.CFG. file and look for the line that says "console = false". Change "false" to "true". The next line should read "consolekey = 220". Change the number to "192". Then save the changes. When you start the game, the tilde key will bring up the console. It will be small and at the top of the screen. Type the codes just like you see them here. Note that, if you look up the names of items in the dungeon editor...you can enter their names between the quotation marks...and spawn just about any item in the game. For example: spawn "rock" will spawn a rock, spawn "compass" will spawn a compass, etc. Be sure to press "enter" after typing in the codes. also note, that names are case sensitive. "Tome_Wisdom" will not work, but "tome_wisdom" does.

Creates a Broadhead Arrow in front of you

Replace "arrow" with "tome_wisdom" or whatever you want. The quotes are required.

Special Weapons
power_weapon, fire_blade_empty, fire_blade, lightning_rod_empty, lightning_rod, lightning_blade_empty, lightning_blade, venom_edge_empty, venom_edge
legionary_spear

Daggers
assassin_dagger, fist_dagger, dagger, knife

Axes
ancient_axe, great_axe, battle_axe, hand_axe

Maces
icefall_hammer, ogre_hammer, flail, warhammer, knoffer, cudgel

Swords
dismantler, nex_sword, cutlass, long_sword, machete

Torches
torch_everburning, torch

Lurker Armor Set
lurker_boots, lurker_hood, lurker_vest, lurker_pants

Misc Clothing
circlet_war, conjurers_hat, flarefeather_cap, silk_hose, doublet, leather_pants, loincloth, peasant_cap, peasant_tunic, peasant_breeches, nomad_boots, pointy_shoes, sandals,
nomad_mittens, pit_gauntlets

Valor Armor Set
boots_valor, gauntlets_valor, helmet_valor, greaves_valor, cuirass_valor

Plate Armor Set
plate_boots, plate_gauntlets, full_helmet, plate_greaves, plate_cuirass

Chitin Armor Set
chitin_mask, chitin_boots, chitin_greaves, chitin_mail

Heavy Armors
iron_basinet, legionary_helmet, ring_boots, ring_gauntlets, ring_greaves, ring_mail,

Leather Armors
leather_gloves, leather_boots, leather_cap, leather_greaves, leather_brigandine, hide_vest

Shields
shield_valor, shield_elements, heavy_shield, round_shield, legionary_shield

Cloaks
diviner_cloak, scaled_cloak, tattered_cloak, huntsman_cloak,

Bracers
brace_fortitude, bracelet_tirin, hardstone_bracelet, serpent_bracer

Necklaces
gear_necklace, spirit_mirror_pendant, fire_torc, bone_amulet, frostbite_necklace

Spell Channeling Devices
zhandul_orb, shaman_staff, magic_orb, whitewood_wand

Throwing Weapons
throwing_axe, shuriken, throwing_knife, rock

Bombs
poison_bomb, frost_bomb, shock_bomb, fire_bomb

Quarrels and Arrows
shock_quarrel, poison_quarrel, cold_quarrel, fire_quarrel, quarrel, shock_arrow, poison_arrow, cold_arrow, fire_arrow, arrow

Missile Weapons
longbow, crossbow, short_bow, sling

Keys
prison_key, gear_key, ornate_key, round_key, gold_key, brass_key, iron_key

Tomes
tome_fire, tome_wisdom, tome_health

Scrolls
scroll_invisibility, scroll_shock_shield, scroll_poison_shield, scroll_frost_shield, scroll_fire_shield, scroll_enchant_fire_arrow, scroll_lightning_bolt, scroll_poison_cloud, scroll_poison_bolt, scroll_ice_shards, scroll_frostbolt, scroll_fireball, scroll_shock, scroll_fireburst, scroll_darkness, scroll_light, note, scroll

Toorum, Gems, and Skull
remains_of_toorum, compass, red_gem, green_gem, blue_gem, skull

Food
blueberry_pie, mole_jerky, ice_lizard_steak, baked_maggot, boiled_beetle, rat_shank, rotten_pitroot_bread, pitroot_bread, herder_cap, snail_slice

Ingredients
milkreed, blooddrop_blossom, slime_bell, cave_nettle, tar_bead, grim_cap,

Potions
potion_speed, potion_rage, potion_cure_disease, potion_cure_poison, potion_poison, potion_energy, potion_healing, water_flask, flask, mortar

Containers
wooden_box, sack

Machine Parts
machine_junk6, machine_junk5, machine_junk4, machine_junk3, machine_junk2, machine_junk1, machine_part_west, machine_part_south, machine_part_east, machine_part_north

Treasures
ancient_apparatus, golden_orb, golden_crown, golden_dragon, golden_goromorg, golden_figure, golden_chalice

To spawn multiple items just press 'up' then 'return/enter' and it will repeat the code you last typed.

Use these commands to respec your party if you feel like you made a bad decision at some point. Be warned, though, the game will not reset your current stats if you change your class, even though it will say you are level 1 again. You will retain your old Health and Energy, and old passive gains from skill points like Attribute bonuses (get +1 Strength from 4 points in Axes, change class, you retain the +1 Strength even though you no longer have access to the Axes line). I do not recommend changing your class unless you are just fooling around since your character will essentially be broken (in a good way) compared to any normal character. Their level becomes 1 in their new class, and their XP to level gets reset accordingly (only 800 to level up), and if you swap between classes (like from Fighter to Mage to Fighter again) all skills are reset as well, allowing you to double dip on things like the Strength attribute bonus mentioned above. Fun stuff.
Fully heals the party.

When using getChampion(x) commands the game needs you to specify a champion from 1 to 4. The numbers represent the left front, right front, left rear, and right rear characters in that order. So, for example, to level up the champion in the left rear position you would type:
The game will give that character enough XP to reach their next level up.

You can make more drastic changes to your characters as well:
Gives the Thunderstruck trait. You can also add other Traits from character creation like "aggressive".

Removes a trait and modifies the character's stats in real time.

Used to either add or remove unspent skill points. You can make x a negative value to remove the levelup message from maxed champions.

Is used prior to:
in order to edit stats like "vitality", "dexterity", "willpower", "protection", "evasion", "resist_fire" (and poison, cold, shock), "health", "energy", etc.. You have to run the setStatMax command first, or the setStat command won't do anything in all cases I've tested.

Changes your class and gives access to that classes skill set. You can of course also use "Mage" and "Rogue". Tip from a reader! You can also use "Ranger" in this command to put a secret class in your party :D

Changes your race, but you don't need to do this to add race specific Traits like Head Hunter to existing characters. Just treat them like any other Trait. After character creation your Race choice seems to be completely irrelevent. Changing it later does not modify your stats, either.