Well, in the end, I just restarted, same team except I dropped a Fighter for a Bishop.

Its interesting to note that this playthrough so far has been MUCH easier, not because I got better, but I have significantly less encounters in the Monastery than my previous attempts, the usual enemies are there, like grigor and the King crab, but I have had alot less random encounters than before. So I'm done in the Monastery at Lv 5 and heading towards Arnika, at least this time I know where stuff is, so I can breeze through.

Can anyone explain how Divine Trap works please, I use my Bishop to access the trap, Use the Spell, it does its little animation and then I am left with the trap surrounded with a Blue Outline and eg. two trap squares inside. I dont seem to be able to interact in any way at this stage.

When I try the lock with my Bard, I do the examine on the same lock, it shows three trap squares highlighted in green that I can interact with and actually disarm the trap.

I tried the manual and it wasnt much help regarding this, maybe I'm missing something obvious *shrugs*, but any advice would be great, cheers :)

IIRC the Divine Trap is for boosting your locks and traps skill. ;)

Well, I tried casting it on my Bard, but it wouldnt let me, so as it's a divine spell, I thought it was for my Bishop to be able to open locks, I can only get the spell to activate if its my Bishop thats opening the lock, when he attempts the lock, a spell book appears in the sidebar (like the force lock option), when you click the book, you can cast divine trap on the lock, but it doesnt seem to do anything other than highlight the whole trap.

Spell description just says " Boosts party's Locks & Traps skill". which isnt a whole lot of help.

I'm probably just missing something stupidly obvious, i'm kinda brain fatigued after reading loads ot character/race/skills information, maybe I'll look at it better tomorrow, when my head is more clear.

Thanks for the reply :)

EDIT : Ah, I think what you do is cast it, then change to the bard to unlock it, I tried this and it worked, but I never looked at the % of Locks Skill on the bard beforehand, to see if that increased.

EDIT : Yes it makes a difference of 6%

Well, I have to say that having a bishop in my party and actually knowing what to do to build effective characters/skills, it has really opened the game up, Magic Screen and Armourplate make everything sooooo much easier.

I had major problems with Mages and Ttree Sprites with my last team, but now they are a complete pushover.

Made it as far as Martens Bluff after picking up RFS 81 and havent even come near to dying yet.

Thanks for all the help and advice, I can see why you guys love this game ( I was hating on it bigtime before coming here), cheers :)