I wanted to take a moment to show how I personally would do this character, as a sort of template for "best practices":
In 40 days I gain level 6 with only 2 fights, one of which was by clumsiness, and along the way I equip a half dozen or more companions, gain a starting force, get horses, get a large diversity of food, get good helmets, good boots, and have renown sufficient to become anyone's vassal.
I suppose it needed at most 90 minutes of my time.
In short, Paladin, Cleric, and Bard use mainly Charisma. Cleric mainly gets to choose a deity, which gives a unique summoned weapon, and changes how some spells perform (better or worse depending on the deity and alignment). Bard, pretty much anyone can duplicate by getting an instrument and pumping up charisma so to boost "entertainment" skill, which is charisma limited. Paladin, like Barbarian and to an extent Necromancer, is unique in that it can't be taken as a second class. Necromancer COULD be a second class, by becoming a lich, but let's stay focused:
I chose Male (mainly to marry a kingdom lady later and add her to my party), Elf race,
Steppe Nomad to have riding, athletics, and several wilderness related Rigale skills;
Street Urchin to pump up athletics and agility and have more Rigale streetwise skills;
Paladin, and loss of a loved one to pump up charisma one more.
I choose to NOT take the horse and instead prefer to walk, giving me in coin what a charger would have cost.
I plan to buy the cheapest horse I can, here or the next town and maybe some normal bread.
I chose to invest some of my weapons points in throwing because I might summon a weapon later, but it could have gone into archery
or 1 hand weapon instead. I chose Entertainment at 5 because this allows a reasonably high success chance at medium difficulty; highest difficulty would fail far too often. I'll alternate playing attempts between lowest and medium difficulty.
I choose go find an inn in order to get the opening bandit quest started
... which allows the image shown for #4 to display...
choosing the last option sends me on my way.
In town I pick up two companions
and head off to the elf villages. The first one has a good price on grapes (50 or less) so I buy two in order to show a neat trick.
Grapes normally go bad, a process that takes about 5 days. We can (usually) instead choose to turn those into raisins, which don't spoil.
While we're here we'll hire any elf women we find (they cast spells, the men fight but spell casters are probably worth more early on).
There are some expertly trained (tier 3) soldiers as well, but they're not my priority until I've found a lute or lyre at a village, so I can get a job entertaining in towns.
after finishing in town and looking around to make sure I don't see anyone that might attack me, I go to camp menu, "actions",
preserve some of my raw food, and it looks to tell me what foods I have in inventory that qualify. I select grapes and hopefully get raisins.
If I fail, one of the two grapes is lost and the other is still in inventory, so I could try again after buying one more set of grapes.
As you can see both the value and the servings count went way up, while weight dropped considerably.
You probably already knew that if your party carries less weight, you move faster --
as you would if there were more horses in inventory (up to 6). We'll get horses in a while.
First we need a job...
In 40 days I gain level 6 with only 2 fights, one of which was by clumsiness, and along the way I equip a half dozen or more companions, gain a starting force, get horses, get a large diversity of food, get good helmets, good boots, and have renown sufficient to become anyone's vassal.
I suppose it needed at most 90 minutes of my time.
In short, Paladin, Cleric, and Bard use mainly Charisma. Cleric mainly gets to choose a deity, which gives a unique summoned weapon, and changes how some spells perform (better or worse depending on the deity and alignment). Bard, pretty much anyone can duplicate by getting an instrument and pumping up charisma so to boost "entertainment" skill, which is charisma limited. Paladin, like Barbarian and to an extent Necromancer, is unique in that it can't be taken as a second class. Necromancer COULD be a second class, by becoming a lich, but let's stay focused:
Steppe Nomad to have riding, athletics, and several wilderness related Rigale skills;
Street Urchin to pump up athletics and agility and have more Rigale streetwise skills;
Paladin, and loss of a loved one to pump up charisma one more.
I choose to NOT take the horse and instead prefer to walk, giving me in coin what a charger would have cost.
I plan to buy the cheapest horse I can, here or the next town and maybe some normal bread.
I chose to invest some of my weapons points in throwing because I might summon a weapon later, but it could have gone into archery
or 1 hand weapon instead. I chose Entertainment at 5 because this allows a reasonably high success chance at medium difficulty; highest difficulty would fail far too often. I'll alternate playing attempts between lowest and medium difficulty.
... which allows the image shown for #4 to display...
In town I pick up two companions
and head off to the elf villages. The first one has a good price on grapes (50 or less) so I buy two in order to show a neat trick.
Grapes normally go bad, a process that takes about 5 days. We can (usually) instead choose to turn those into raisins, which don't spoil.
While we're here we'll hire any elf women we find (they cast spells, the men fight but spell casters are probably worth more early on).
There are some expertly trained (tier 3) soldiers as well, but they're not my priority until I've found a lute or lyre at a village, so I can get a job entertaining in towns.
preserve some of my raw food, and it looks to tell me what foods I have in inventory that qualify. I select grapes and hopefully get raisins.
If I fail, one of the two grapes is lost and the other is still in inventory, so I could try again after buying one more set of grapes.
You probably already knew that if your party carries less weight, you move faster --
as you would if there were more horses in inventory (up to 6). We'll get horses in a while.
First we need a job...
