Darklands

• Kill bandits and muggers till you can get some decent weapons before setting out.

• Give someone in your party a decent heal skill or you'll be healing by 2 points a day or less.

• Hit C when you're on the overworld to camp and do stuff.

• Hold shift while dragging items between party members lets you move a whole stack at once.

• I think you can only learn particular saints in each city. I also don't think there is any waiting period (except for once a day), but rather the access to the church is dependent on your charisma and Latin skills. It is also helped by donating to the church.

• You can't transfer recipes.

• Read the first half of the clue book; it's more like a more in-depth manual and goes into really deep detail on all the systems of the game like character creation, combat mechanics, what amenities are available in what towns, etc. The second half covers quests which you can skip if you don't want to get spoiled.

• When creating characters, prioritize Strength and Endurance as that's what keeps you alive. You don't want below 30 in either. Other stats you don't want below 20 or so. You'll want one character with 30+ Charisma as the "face" of your party, another with 35+ Intelligence to be an alchemist, and maybe a character with 25-30 Perception. Agility is great to have but it's kind of a dump stat.

• It's best to spend skill points during character creation on skills that are harder to train in-game. There are some exceptions (e.g. Healing/Artifice) but as a rule of thumb, the further down a skill is on the skill list, the harder it is to train.

• Skill-wise you want one religious character, one healer, one artificer, one "face" (high Charisma/speech skils) and one alchemist. They should all be able to fight, though stat-wise you might have to dump your End/Str a little bit for your Alchemist since they need lots of Int (and ideally, Chr)

• You want only one character with Healing, as only the character with the highest skill level counts.

• The sweet spot for character age is 30-35 to start adventuring. You take some very minor stat penalties for starting at 35 but not overwhelming. You do not take stat penalties for aging once you're out adventuring.

• This is a game where you need to keep notes. There's no quest log so every time you take a quest, take note of who gave you the quest where and what you need to do.

• Similarly, what saints/alchemy recipes/ingredients are available in which towns is randomized each game; take notes as to where they are. It's no fun searching the entire world for one of the two towns that sells Manganes when you need to mix some Sunburst potions.

• As mentioned, the best thing to do early in the game is to run around the back alleys at night and beat up thugs. You'll build weapon skills very quickly this way. Try to run/avoid guards since you're violating the curfew.

• Another good thing to do early in the game is sit around and do odd jobs for money. Raising cash is very difficult at the start of the game and you have plenty of time.

• Stick to your starting town for a while until you have better skills, weapons and armor. You might not be ready to leave for several months but that's OK.

• Once you're sufficiently tough that bandits are no problem, you might want to think about taking on Raubritter quests from merchant houses. When a Raubritter is terrorizing an area you can usually get the quest to kill him from multiple people in multiple towns nearby. To maximize your profit, don't kill him until you've gotten several people willing to pay you for it.

• The #1 way to make money is mixing and selling potions, but you'll need to get fairly established before you can start trying that.

• There is an overarching main quest but it's not immediately obvious how to start it. Keep an ear out for rumors about witches' covens and gatherings of Satanists. Don't attempt the quest until you're really ready though. Same thing applies if you hear about any dragons.