[Zelos]

Creating your party

Before you start playing you might want to take some time getting into the game mechanics to save yourself from frustration.
I will tell you want you need to know about the party setup in general. It's up to you how you balance your party since there is an almost infinite amount of possibilities to do so.

There are two possibilities to create a character. You can either create one from the character creation screen after starting/loading the game or you can create one in the Guild. For the sake of saving time you are going to create every character from the character creation screen. I'll explain more in step one.
When creating a character you get assigned a random number of Bonus points ranging from 1 to 50. If you leave the screen and re-enter you will have re-rolled that number. Ideally you should get something around 40 if you have VERY much time to spare but since stat points cap at some point in the game anyway you will want to roll around 20 to save yourself some time. I wouldn't recommend using any character with Bonus points below 15.
As your first character I also recommend using a Porklu because of the high LUC stat (which increases item drops).

Classes
There are 8 classes in this game. You need to fill specific stat and alignment requirements to create them.

These are the requirements:

Spoiler! (click here to reveal)

Fighter 12 STR Mage 12 INT Priest 12 PIE, alignment evil or good Thief 10 AGI 12 LUC, alignment evil or neutral Bishop 13 INT 13 PIE, alignment evil or good Samurai 15 STR 11 INT 10 PIE 14 VIT 10 AGI 9 LUC, alignment neutral or good Lord 15 STR 12 INT 12 PIE 15 VIT 14 AGI 15 LUC, alignment good Ninja all stats 15, alignment evil

I recommend not using Samurai, Lord and Ninja (the "advanced classes") right at the beginning. For a Lord for example you would have to roll at least a 32 and you won't get a very high HP stat if you start out as one of them.
A common theme in Wizardry games is class change.
When you change your class you go back to Level 1, your HP and MP is halfed but you retain all of your stats. That's why you should go with some classes that have a good HP gain early on and change them to other classes later.

Here's a quick rundown of my personal experiences with the classes and if you should use them when starting out:

Spoiler! (click here to reveal)

Fighter The Fighter is basically the standard melee class. Fighters have a high HP gain what makes them an excellent choice for starting out before changing into another class. They get weaker as the game goes on. Mage Mages have powerful spells but very poor HP gain and will drop very quickly when the first AoE (Area of Effect) come in. I would not recommend using one. Priest Basically the "Healer" class of this game. Same problems as Mages. Even worse since the can only wear gear with very low defence. I would not recommend using one either. Thief Can attack from the front or back row and do mediocre damage at the beginning and great damage with the right weapons later on. That being said it is almost required to have a Thief or a Ninja in your party since they can pick locks and disarm traps. They also have very high LUC which increases the overall drop rate. Bishop One of the best choices for caster types in this game. Bishops learn both Mage and Priest spells making them very versatile. Apart from that they can [Appraise] unknown items which is why you should always have at least one of these with you. Samurai Possibly the best Melee class. Learns Mage spells and deals an insane amount of damage with the right weapons (that are also Samurai exclusive). You should class change your Fighters into Bishops and then Samurais after gaining enough HP and all of the Spells. Lord High defence. Learns Priest spells and deals a good amount of damage. You might want to get one of these later on. I didn't really use them so I don't know a lot about it. Ninja Ninjas are basically Thiefs with some extras and some minor weaknesses in other Thief skills. They can try to assassinate enemies killing them in one turn and can also pick locks and disarm traps. It's up to you if you want to use a Thief or a Ninja but you should have at least one of them in your party.

Races
Races don't matter other than for the initial stats. Dwarfs have the highest HP (and HP gain) and Porklus the best AGI and LUC stats. Go for a versatile party but I really recommend not using any Gnomes since they... well, they suck. The have a VERY poor HP gain and die if you just tap them.

Alignment
Alignment basically manages which classes you can have in your party at the same time. Characters with Neutral alignment can be in parties with every other character but characters with Good alignment can not be in the same party as characters with Evil alignment and vice-versa. Looking at the class requirements you might notice that Ninjas can only be Evil for example. That means when first creating one you cannot have him in the same party as a Lord for example.
Throughout the game there will be choices at the start of some battles to [Fight], [Watch] or [Leave]. Select [Fight] to slowly shift towards Evil aligment and [Leave] to slowly shift towards Good aligment.
That being said there is a way to get characters with opposite alignments into one party:

Spoiler! (click here to reveal)

Choose a different main character from the selection screen after loading a savegame, take the character with the "wrong" alignment into your party, go into a dungeon and save. Go into the same dungeon with the main character you want to get the "wrong-aligned" character to and press . You will have the option to search for allies. Do so and you will be able to get every character currently saved in that dungeon into your party without the need to shift alignments. But be warned that, if your main character should die and the party is disbanded, you need to follow this procedure again.

Stats
When assigning Bonus points you should generally just go for the main stats that are required to create that specific class and after that put everything into VIT.
STR increases melee attack power, INT increases spell power, PIE increases healing power, VIT determines HP gain when gaining levels, AGI increases dodge and determines the turn order and LUC is kind of a mysterious stat which does some magical stuff that's not really known. Some say it increases the attack power of elementless spells, some say it adds something to everything but most likely its use is increasing droprates.
When you level up stat points are assigned at random. They may either go up or down (yes that's right, you can lose stat points in this game) at random. But eventually they'll stay close to a specific cap that is determined by the race the character has. Basically that cap is somewhere around "Starting stats +10". That's why you also shouldn't worry too much about rolling a high Bonus point number. Stats will normalize at later levels anyways.

Party setup
Okay, I guess there's not much left to say. Try out your own setups, that's the whole point of the game. But remember the following things:
- You need to have 3 characters in the front row and 3 in the back
- High HP characters in the front row, low HP in the back
- Have at least one Thief or Ninja with you
- Have at least one Bishop with you
- Create every character from the character selection screen

With that said - have fun creating your party.
In case you're wondering how the "row"-system works:

Spoiler! (click here to reveal)

There is a "range" indicator on every weapon: S, M, L, LL. S means short. These weapons can only attack the nearest row. M means medium. These weapons can attack the two nearest rows. L means long. These weapons can attack the three nearest rows. LL means... long long? These weapons can attack everywhere. Basically when a character is standing in the back row you'll want to give him at least a M weapon so he can still attack.

Some other tips:
- The two first quests require collection [Dirty Dagger]s and [Tonic]s. Don't use any of them even after finishing the quest since you'll need to do those quests with every single one of the main characters
- Don't pay money at the inn to heal. Just heal up with your healing spells and use the free MP healing to get the same effect
- If you die you can be resurrected at the temple or with some spells. [Restore Body] is the only spell that doesn't have a penalty, the other spell reduces your VIT. If you're unlucky the resurrection turns your character into [Ash]. If you fail again he will be [Lost] and that really means "Lost forever". You won't be able to bring him back. So save before resurrecting if a character already is in [Ash] status
- The quests Reagent Gathering, Researching the Undead, and The Cursed Weapon are not required for a scenario playthrough
- The 4,99$ DLC doesn't really offer anything new, just some floors to the Trial Dungeon, the other one has a new dungeon though and a quest reward you might want to have for grinding (see The Doombringer)