Drakensang

• Though the classes themselves are decently balanced, their availability as recruits are not. There are many competent fighters and 2 very good rogue types to be had, and both rogues + 2 of the fighters are gotten real early in the game. Clerics are harder to come by but still good when you find them. Meanwhile, for offensive spellcasters, you get table scraps. So, to fill the deficiencies left by the recruitable cast, you probably want to be a nuker, summoner, or some combo of the two. Elementalist would probably be my top pick, since it has a decent amount of kapow and its starting summon is the most badass of the lot, but generally, if it wears robes and its description talks about fire, necromancy, ancient spellcraft, or any of that shit, it's a solid pick.

• It really seems like everyone who plays Drakensang firmly believes that you will simply fail to win the game if you do not have a properly balanced party of "some sort of excellent mage, two heavy hitters, and a fancy rogue lad." However, my standard strategy in every game, "have everyone hit things with the biggest weapons available," is working just fine even in this supposedly melee-unfriendly game

• There are three "golden" combat tips, all stemming from the underlying game mechanic that you cannot parry more than once with each hand: 1. Always focus fire if you can. You all attack the same enemy. He can't block you all. 2. Prevent the enemy doing the same to you. Try and get the enemies to divide their attentions so that no more than 2 are attacking one person. 3. Shields are very effective since they give you an extra parry.

Skills

It's a party based game, and unlike a Bioware game the main character does not have any significant advantages over the party, nor do some skills only work if the main character has them. For this reason, DO NOT spread your skill points too thinly. It pays to specialize. For most skills, there is no point having more than one character raise them. Some skills work just fine with, say, 6 points invested, and some require 15+ points. The best thing to do is to pick different skills for each character and only raise them if you seem to be failing a lot.

Each skill is governed by 2-3 attributes. If you have low values for those attributes then you will probably always suck at the skill, or be no better than average. If you have medium or high attributes then you can get good at the skill without investing too many points. Note that any attributes that start low will max out at a low value too, so if you want a character to be a super effective fighter, for example, then do not pick someone who starts with a low strength/agility. A character with middling attributes (mostly around 10-12) can be a decent all-rounder.

Fighter characters can get pretty effective fairly early on. They have lots of spare Xp to spend on attributes and skills, but notice that they can have low values for attributes that govern skills, making it fairly hard for them to master some skills (like someone with Dex 9 trying to pick locks). Magic using character can actually be pretty decent fighters in the mid-late game, if you forgo raising too many spells. They rarely have spare Xp to spend on skills.

A simple tip would be to load up your rogue character on side skills.

Beware of overloading skills and spells - wasting Xp on raising them when the extra points do not provide any benefit. Many spells have a level cap, so there is no point raising them too high too early. Read the spell descriptions carefully. Even your basic combat skills like Attack and Parry can be raised too high. Once they hit 19 you will not benefit too much from going higher; however, the extra points above 19 can help if you get debuffed in combat - which is acutally quite common.

No enemy can take more than 5 "wounds". This is very important against bosses, who tend to have high health. They go down ridiculously easily if your team has skills and weapons that cause wounds.