So thanks to @Branthog and the kindness of the GB community I managed to land a free copy of Legend of Grimrock. I just installed and tried to play it and holy shit I ended up dying within about 10 minutes of fumbling around to a giant mushroom looking creature. So, for anyone who has played this any general tips to set me on the right path? I ended up trying to go with 2 warriors a mage and a rogue but apparently I'm awful at this. I'd appreciate any sort of overview of what the hell I generally need to do to survive.

Marry the first gay pirate you meet. This is what The Temple of Elemental Evil has taught me.

@Demoskinos said:

So thanks to @Branthog and the kindness of the GB community I managed to land a free copy of Legend of Grimrock. I just installed and tried to play it and holy shit I ended up dying within about 10 minutes of fumbling around to a giant mushroom looking creature. So, for anyone who has played this any general tips to set me on the right path? I ended up trying to go with 2 warriors a mage and a rogue but apparently I'm awful at this. I'd appreciate any sort of overview of what the hell I generally need to do to survive.

Go check out the various youtube vids people have posted. They will help you a lot. As far as immediate advice then I would suggest learning how to use you space for your advantage and that means learning the controls and getting use to them.

move around a lot, avoid at all costs to just stand in front of an enemy ... pick 2 melee classes as your front line. You will lose people, no doubt about it, but you can ressurect them at the blue waystones. And DONT STAND STILL ... If you dont move you die.

Don't try to just get up in enemies faces and trade blows. Move around and don't get yourself cornered. That is the build I played with after starting a random party. Works well enough. It might take a bit to get used to managing the four people and the spells and being aware of the space around you but you'll get used to it and better at it.

@2HeadedNinja said:

move around a lot, avoid at all costs to just stand in front of an enemy ... pick 2 melee classes as your front line. You will lose people, no doubt about it, but you can ressurect them at the blue waystones. And DONT STAND STILL ... If you dont move you die.

That could be exactly my first mistake then cause I was just staying stationary.

Well, from my memory: strafe around enemies after every single strike. 2 fighters, 2 mages. Learn to dance in a box and the game is piss easy, especially in the wider areas and against the slower enemies.

Get poison resistance as a starting feat for your fighters, because that shit is annoying. Erm, check every square of a level before leaving in case you missed gear or spells (automap is grid-based). Don't forget to have torches or learn the light spell - which you find pretty early IIRC (spells are scrolls showing you the runes.) Spells are a rune system and require the magic skill of the corresponding element to be of a certain level, but I can't recall off the top of my head when that is for certain spells. Resting will make your characters hungry and if there are monsters that can get to you they WILL interrupt, but resting also completely restores health and mana if you wait. Oh, and there are waypoint crystals that heal you back to 100% as well.

Uhh, can't remember anything specific other than this.

Square dancing is the key to success!

@Demoskinos said:

@2HeadedNinja said:

move around a lot, avoid at all costs to just stand in front of an enemy ... pick 2 melee classes as your front line. You will lose people, no doubt about it, but you can ressurect them at the blue waystones. And DONT STAND STILL ... If you dont move you die.

That could be exactly my first mistake then cause I was just staying stationary.

Also, just min-max the fuck out of everything, because the mid-to-late game enemies are tougher, and the game throws you in more situations of "oh noes, you're trapped in a 4x4 room with like 5 enemies, have fun getting cornered!" The game is a dick, so be a dick right back to it. For your rogue, while daggers are tempting, it also means you have to split all of your skill points between Daggers and Assassination, except the devs are assholes and all of the remotely useful stuff is at the very end of both skills. So just take Missile Weapons instead, and max the fuck out of it and become a Bow/Crossbow badass. Similarly, for your wizard, just pick whatever element you like and max the fuck out of it. Fuck the other skills. If you don't find all of the scrolls for your element, just find a wiki, because the game is a real dick about hiding fairly important things. For your fighters, make sure each specializes in a different weapon, and then for each guy, split their skill points between Armor and whatever weapon they specialize in.

And getting back to an earlier point, maybe decide right now whether you want to try to find every secret yourself (and miss like all of the good armour and half of the good weapons), or do what I did and just use a walkthrough to find everything because you can't be bothered to examine every fucking wall in the game to find the little switches that may reveal new equipment but more often than not just reveal some more fucking roots and herbs.

I may sound angry at this game, but I did like a lot of it. If you want to be super old school and solve every puzzle on your own and find all the hidden switches yourself, you could easily turn it into like a 90-hour game. If you don't want to waste entire days of your life on trial-and-error wall examining and just use a guide instead, it'll be like 20-30 hours of your life.

@Demoskinos said:

@2HeadedNinja said:

move around a lot, avoid at all costs to just stand in front of an enemy ... pick 2 melee classes as your front line. You will lose people, no doubt about it, but you can ressurect them at the blue waystones. And DONT STAND STILL ... If you dont move you die.

That could be exactly my first mistake then cause I was just staying stationary.

I made the same mistake when I started playing for some reason the format made me think that if the enemy launches an attack it'll hit no matter what. Moving around is a huge help also being super aware of the terrain around you so you don't get cornered or surrounded. Having a corner to duck around helps too. Also remembering where a waystone is to heal up. Also rest a lot. Also remember to keep your dudes fed.

So I've started to take a lot of these tips and apply them and I've started a proper run. I'm on the 3rd floor now and I'm starting to really have fun with the game. Its a really charming game in a weird way. Although, I'm kinda stuck at a puzzle now on floor 3 and I'm trying to refrain from using a guide...