hmm.. they sell arrows and bolts.. but not slingstones?
maybe i should get the mage into something else... or is 2 shields the way to go?
They do sell slingstones - each town has it's own individual economy (which when you become mayor you can improve) if you can't find something somewhere just go to another town.
The ideal party setup is: 2 warriors - get them full plate and upgrade it as much as you can. Better blacksmiths will be in different towns so you have to search.
Give them halberds but do not upgrade them until you find indestructible ones. (make sure to check the enchanted portion of the shops)
3 archers - plate mail and long bows. These will end up killing everything for you. Upgrade their bows even if they are not magical
2 priests - plate mail and 2 shields
1 mage - plate mail and a shield
Your mage becomes the mayor, they outperform everything else this way.
When picking spells, if you click the box beside the spell you can have it auto cast. I have my priests 100% online and 100% offline autocast only heals. When you are playing you actually have to manually put your casters into autocast mode each combat, this lets you decide if they should be casting.
When you get to about level 8 and your casters have a defense factor of around 40+ give them spears. You will notice that weapons have a 'back rank' penalty - basically its harder to hit from behind the line (the physical line you'll see in your party pictures on the right). Since defense relies heavily on Agility also, it won't be long before nothing can hit them so you don't really have to worry about having them behind the line.
Once your characters hit about level 10 you can start to create garrisons and station characters there and then recruit lower level chars to level up. When you become mayor, you can garrison 8 chars there that will get xp through the barracks, I always fill my towns up with as many low levels chars as I can and they level themselves.
If you let me know your party name I'll go to a town near the middle of the map and put some platemail for sale cheap. My party is Sprawling so if you put some items up for sale for as expensive as you can, I'll buy it. Steal helms you can sell for 2k i believe, and any indestructible weapon can be sold for about 5k (you can buy them for about 1k in towns)
