I've just started Two Worlds (did the tutorial, explored for a few minutes, did a quest and earned a horse) and would just like some general build tips. Are there any skills that are completely useless (swimming seems to be one), and are there any skills that scale so poorly that they become useless? Any related info is helpful, thanks!

Quick bump. I guess I'll simplify the question: Will I be nerfing myself if I choose one "class" (IE: Melee/Magic/Archery) over the others? Or will I end up without skill points to max everything out, or will I have enough to make a competent hybrid (IE: battlemage) etc?

Thank you very much for the advice! I plan on wandering around the world instead of rushing from quest to quest so it seems like I should have more than enough skill points then. I guess for my this playthrough (my first) I'll go with melee and branch out to magic when possible. Thanks again!

It's worth doing the beginning part of the main quest before wandering too much, as it gets you leveled up a bit quicker so you can handle the monsters you'll run into. Once you've done the first few quests in the main quest line you can just start exploring to your heart's content!

I'll keep that in mind, thanks! I'm already up to level five, the only quests I've done so far is the tutorial, meeting the guy waiting for you at the village and the quest that earns you a horse. I do have one other question that popped up last night, and I expect I already know the answer, but am I sort of screwing myself over big time (experience wise) by leading packs of enemies to each other to have a "helping hand" in the fight? Sometimes I can't seem to help it, like a pack of wolves followed me a long distance to a cave full of bandits, and I've done it once on purpose. Anyway, thanks again! I'll get some quests under my belt before I fully set off to be an adventurer.

I doubt that you will play the game long enough to kill every enemy. Also I think that they maybe respawn after time, but I am not sure.

But if experience is your only concern, so dont worry, you can spawn enemies by yourself later on, I dont tell you how :P (I did find it out, after I was done with the game).

Yeah I'd recommend doing some more... the horse is good, but soon you'll get something that's even more useful for traveling around the world. And then there's only a few more after that before the main quest kind of sets you free to wander around anyway.

Thanks everybody, I think I've got a handle on everything now. I did discover that (some) enemies respawn as ghosts and yeah it does seem like there are more enemies than I can shake a stick at so no worries there. Thanks again!

I didnt mean the ghost. As far as I remember they respawn only once. But there is another way to get more experience (and many statpoints this way) :P...

I'm starting to feel like mages are not at all viable (at least in the early game). I've got 4 Fireball cards stacked along with a booster card that makes them more effective, and I've played around with putting 45 points into Willpower and all my Skill Points into upgrading Fire Magic (upgrading it to the max you can before you reach level 8) which makes Fireball do 120 damage total but it still takes 10+ Fireballs to take down a single boar, gray wolf, reaper, etc.

Meanwhile I only have 15 points in Strength and a mace that I've upgraded once which makes its total damage range between 40 min and 75 max and it seems to more damage per strike than the upgraded Fireballs, despite the max damage of the mace being 45 points less than the set damage of the Fireball.

Am I missing something blindingly obvious or does everything in the world have built in fire/magic protection? I'm not trying to make a pure mage (well, not right now anyway) but I'd like to have some kind ranged attack besides bows.

I never tried a mage but I remember hearing they were hard. They can be powerful at the end, but early on they'll have some trouble.

Check this older thread for some advice on building a mage character:

http://www.gog.com/forum/two_worlds_series/anyone_got_any_tips_for_playing_as_a_mage

Thank you for the link. I think for the moment I'll just focus exclusively on melee and search for gray wolves/regular wolves and enemies of that caliber so I can get some more levels under my belt. Funnily enough the actual easiest enemy for me so far are bears, because they only have that one attack and it's incredibly easy to dodge.

Just a quick update: Melee is definitely more powerful than magic despite what the numbers seem to say, at least on the lower levels. However the more I've dug into the melee system the less I actually want to play a mage anyway, the melee system really is fun and archery is really useful.

I'm 6 hours into the game if my save files are telling the truth, and I'm highly enjoying it! There's so much loot to find and most of it seems unique, you can feel your character getting more powerful as you find better equipment and level up and the fights are fairly tactical (for a hack n' slash RPG). I'm especially loving the main character's inner monologues, he is absolutely hilarious at times. The game has its flaws for sure but it's absolutely chock full of personality and I'm absolutely loving it.

So far my highlights have been finding a graveyard full of the undead in the middle of the night, meeting a couple of Orcs for the first time and having to run away with my proverbial tail between my legs, and the main character trying to play it cool after meeting a soldier who was looking for the accomplice of a certain necromancer.