Go for a balanced party. You have 6 slots and can add a further 2 members to your party once you reach Arnika. These additional 2 can then be switched for an alternative additional member during the course of the game. You meet a range of potential party members as you progress, which means you can try out the different professions and abilities during the course of your first play-through. So for the first party you create, go for balance. e.g.

2 Fighters
1 Ranger
1 Bishop
1 other Spell-caster
1 Bard or Gadgeteer

This is only an example, so it's not set in stone, but you should find this mix gets you through all situations. Do pay attention to how weak the vitality of your spell-casters tends to be and address it early. Also, don't expect your rookies to be able to cast spells, fight or shoot effectively at first - the character development pathway is exactly that and they will grow in strength and ability.

Re. Fighters. They are not a bad deal and very useful up front for close combat. However, make sure you train them to use either bow/crossbow or slingshots/throwing. That way, they become effective at dealing out damage both at a distance and close up. You'll find there are plenty of level increases and they will become very proficient in both departments.

So, think balance, then positioning, then strategically increase the stats of each individual character to ensure your party can effectively deal with ranged and close combat.

Enjoy! :)

The party I keep going back to is this one:
1) Lord (dracon or rawulf)
2) Felpurr Samuri
3) Fairie Ninja
4) Gnome Priest
5) Mook Ranger
6) varies between gad, bard, and psionic.
I've tried many other combinations, but I like this one best.
If I'm importing a party from a prior game there will always be a mook monk in there; but I don't think this works as well in W8 as it did in 6&7, so I reclass.

My parties in similar party based games are usually parties of 3 or 4. 1 fullclass fighter, 1 priest that can fight and heal, 1 bombardier (spellcaster with enchanting), 1 fullclass bombardier spellcaster with all out on spells. I'd build that party here but obviously you have to bring 6 characters so I guess not. I always found 4 to be enough.

Can someone explain the dynamics of combat with comparison? Is it like D and D where you get more attacks the more higher your lvl is?

The dynamics of combat don't rely on the role of the dice as they would do in D&D. At the start of Wiz 8, your party is pretty weak and fighters, archers will miss the enemy in combat quite a bit. The easiest way to accommodate this is to use spell-casters, but they too are novices, so it's best to cast spells low and gradually build up the force of the spell as your Bishop/Mage/Priest etc., develops their skills.

Improving skills is straightforward. If you right click on the profession of your character, you will see a listing of the skills which are used by their class. Increase these each time you level up, but ensure you add in a quota for Speed as this enables you to increase the number of hits per. character round. Also, spell-casters tend to have very low vitality at the start and it's worth increasing this for the first 5 or 6 levels. Otherwise, they can die very fast if the enemy engages them in close combat.

Your characters will also become more proficient at the things they do. So the more fire spells a mage casts, the quicker their ability in that element increases. The same applies to weapons, bows and fists.

Another aspect of combat is how in each area you explore you will meet a range of enemies. So some will be on the same level as you, others stronger, some weaker. It is worth right clicking on an enemy to see how strong they are as you can then factor that in with how you structure the fight and the level of spell-casting you use. Also, they will have resistances to different types of attacks and this is worth checking out. With good tactics you'll mash an enemy much stronger than your party - it's very satisfying :D

Although you can start with a party of 6 (which can increase to 8 along the way) you don't have to fill all 6 places. If you prefer to play the game with a party of 4 that you can choose to increase to 5 or 6 if the game requires it, then you can do so. You can also create your own characters and customise them (to a degree) to suit the gaming style you prefer. I find the character creation great fun - the range of voices to select from is terrific.

I hope I've managed to go some way to answering your question, but do ask if there's anything I've missed.

For a beginner:

Fighter
Lord or Valkyrie
Ranger
Bard
Alchemist
Mage

Two durable tanks, both of which will be useful enough on normal difficulty even if you mess them up stat/ skill wise. Ranger spots hidden items. Two easy-to-build casters. Three characters with healing abilities. Bard helps with resting in unsafe locations.

I wouldn't advise Bishops for a newb. Also critical kills are most useful when the entire party is built around them.

Tactics/ individual rolls:

How will your party deal with;
1. Fighting in a nul area i.e. no spells of any kind are allowed to be cast.
2. Fighting a Golum... magic is allowed but they will resist most types of magic attack.
3. 6 Rapax archers firing at your Priest from the top of a wall.
4. Fighting something that will [insert two of these] at you; sleep, insane, drain stamina, blind, breath fire, death cloud, knock out, fear & paralyse.

A beginner should strive to build their party in such a way as to have options, yes still take the Fighter or Samurai if that class looks interesting to you & even build them up to be blades of death but have an idea of what happens when the party needs to fight at range? Melee only party are a challenge and can win the game... it is very frustrating to play them because charging into combat with a pack of Gazers is solid tactics then the same party charging a heard of Picuses is probably suicide so if you are not frilled by the idea of running away a lot and spending hours laboriously bashing down packs of Rapax don’t forget to bring the other types.

Note that Dragon acid is not considered a spell by the game but music, potions and gadgets are.

Allocate stats:

This system is what makes the game interesting & failing to plan is planning to fail.

IMO you are better off putting points into the prime skills at level up because they allow you to adjust as the game goes on for example let’s say that the Fighter has an axe he found on the beach head and you are considering putting points into axe skill... I would suggest that those points are better spent in close combat because the axe skill will already improve just from using it and the close combat skill will still have an effect (admittedly less then adding to axe itself) but the up side is that when your Fighter finds a powerful [insert one]; mace, sword, lance, dagger, wand and decides to use that instead then the points you have already invested in close combat won’t have been wasted.

Prime stats as opposed to skills are the single easiest way to bugger up your game because unlike skills they DON’T improve on their own so if you want 100 intelligence points on your caster in order to unlock power cast (and you do want to unlock it) then you have to pump that stat every level up... yes there are some quest rewards that give permanent stat increases but they are rare as an honest politician and normally only 2-5 points maximum.

There is nothing hindering you in this game starting a new game with a limited party of less than 6 characters, as you can also see on my previous post. You'll get prompted from the game that it is meant to be played with a full 6 characters party but it will not hinder you to start a limited party setup

As for the 4 characters, if you want the same party as usual here's my suggestion:

1. The Fullclass Fighter: Fighter, full stop
2.. Fighter/healer: A Lord or a Valkyrie can learn from the priest spellbooks starting level 5. Rangers and Ninjas can also heal and cure since they will get access to the alchemist spellbooks, but they will miss out the heal all and ret all spells. A Psionic like the Monk will only be able to learn heal and thus be a bit limited as a healer later on.
3. Bombardier: Normally a Mage, Alchemist or Psionic. However, you could also opt for the Bard or the Gadgeteer since the effects from their Instruments/Gadgets will be exactly what you are looking for. It will howerer take longer to get these compared to the equivalent spells from spellcasters. On the other hand, they can foght back and unlock chests and doors...
4. Fullclass Bombardier: Bishop! bishops are the only class in the game who can learn spells from all 4 spellbooks. It will however take some time until a bishop will become effective, but that goes for every pure spellcaster ingame, albeit to a slightly lesser extend

The bottom line: I suggest having someone who can unlock and disarm chests and doors in your party since they will be encountered absolutely everywhere. you can recruit someone en route to do this (Miles, Saxx or Madras, although every recruitable character exept RS-81 can be class-changed) but they won't go everywhere, so it's a limited option.

I do equip all my Characters with a ranged secondary weapon (exept my Ranger, who hs both Weapon Sets as Ranged, Bow and Crossbow in the beginning, later generally Bow and Modern weapon)

I do not think that concentrating on Melee is overpowered, because a mixed setting (keeping them under fire when they approach to you) will weaken them already before they even reach you, if you got a Ninja or a Ranger they can OHK before they actually reach you and a gadgeteer does so many debuufs when his Omnigun is fully upgraded that ranged fights can even become easier as the ennemies will be easy pickings the time they reach your front line.

Elemental shield and soul shield are not so much necessary until you reach Trynton, save maybe an unlucky encouter with a sorceress on the way. But starting there, you'll almost need them to survive these notoric casters like goddamn Sprites, Sorceresses and so on. In Trynton especially if there is a group of Trynnies in between you and your ennemies, as you will not be able to get into melee range and sometimes even not in a position to hit them from afar.

There's a difference between simply having a ranged weapon equipped (which I agree is enough) and having a ranged "theme" to your party though. Arguably, if you build melee chars for damage (STR and DEX), that's a good combination for ranged weapons also.

Yeah you don't need ES and SS in the very early parts, but you need to build up those stats (SPD and possibly SEN) right from the start.

I personaly go for a mix.Evry character of mine can either hit mele+cast spells hit range+cast spells or hit mele+use objects or hit range+use objects.
...here is what i am running right now===>

Lord-Dragon mele//spells//acid spit <=====> High health focus
Bard-Mook mele//instruments//scrolls(high artifact skill) <=====> High health focus
Gadgeteer-Felpurr ranged//gadgets//trap disarming <=====> High speed focus
Priest-Dwarf mele(extended range)//spells <=====> Half speed focus Half magic
Alchemist-Gnome throwing ranged(for throwing objects like cherry bomb and alike)//spells <=====> High ranged
Mage-Gnome spells//ranged(less than the alchemist) <=====> High speed focus

From my three playthroughs I concluded that melee characters are the strongest. My pure fighters can have 2x3 swings per turn, dealing at 150-200 damage with each swing. With such damage output, enemies fall easily. Casters are only for backup. In the second half of the game, their offensive spells lose their effectiveness. You can only cast so many high-level Nuclear Blasts per combat, and even then they only deal moderate damage.

I don't agree with you because while fighters are excellent as tanks and dealing damage to single targets, most of the times it's just more efficient to finish off the entire enemy group with magic. Check the enemy resistance and use the type of magic that works. Nuclear blast might not always work. Even against enemies with high high points like Rapax, magic does the job better (especially Water, Earth and Mental magic). There are of course situations where more fighters is more convenient, but in most cases I'm happy to have more casters.

Hmm, I did use Blizzard and Tsunami against the Rapax in the Rapax Rift & Castle, but my fighers still came out better. They could reliably kill at least one Rapax per turn each, while my Mage dealt only 20-80 damage to the entire group each turn. The only really useful spell for me was Freeze All, which eliminated the threat of attack while my fighters happily hacked at their paralyzed bodies. That's why I said mages are better as support characters rather than direct damage dealers. Besides, many high-level creatures are either highly resistant or completely immune to spell effects. On the other hand, very few creatures are resistant to pure physical damage – only crabs and slimes come to mind.

If the rapax are lined up for cone spells like Tsunami, and you get an average of 50 damage, imagine then what 4 casters could do, or even 4½ casters. In Rapax castle, the spells I found effective were Ego Whip, Blizzard, Tsunami, cloud spells and Whipping Rocks. Even Noxious Fumes worked. Together they could do 100+ damage to everyone (except warlords) each round. That means it only took a few rounds to kill all the lower level enemies. Freeze all and Freeze flesh freezes maybe 25% of the enemies in my experience.

There may be many creatures later in the game that are highly resistant to magic, but why base your whole party on that fact alone? A magic heavy party can still have a fighter or two, that can deal with those enemies. Then you have the best of two worlds.