I've started playing Ishar 1 a few hours ago, and I'm finding it a pretty interesting game. I know there is a txt file on the game's folder with a walkthough, but all I want are some minor gameplay tips that will help me in the first stages of the game. Maybe you can guys can help me. In any case, I'll share what I have already found out.

First of all, you must be aware not only of your life energy, but also of your PHY energy. The PHY energy goes down as you walk or fight, and you'll miss many attacks when your PHY is low. To restore PHY, you may eat at a tavern (500 gold). You can also sleep (900 gold), but this won't be as effective for you PHY... sleeping seems good only when you need to restore PSY — basically Magic Energy. Is that it or am I wrong?

Eating and sleeping won't help much when you're low on life energy. The only good way I've found to restore life energy up to now was through the healing magic (I've recruited a priestess). Is there a better way to restore life energy? I've tried using "First Aid", but seems like it never works.

This is my strategy for gaining EXP in the first stages of the game: just south of the first town, there is a red net placed by the orcs. When you touch the net, one or more orcs come to attack you, and then you can kill them. USE KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS TO ATTACK (f2, f4, f6 and f8, a key for each caracter). Attacking with the mouse doesn't seem like a good option.

Basically, I kill the orcs, go through the net again, kill orcs again, and when I'm low on PHY I go back to the tavern, where I eat to restore PHY. If the life energy is low, I heal my characters with magic, and when PSY is low I sleep at the tavern.

Also somewhere nearby the village there's a tower with like 15k gold that I found by accident :)

I've just cleared the first dungeon, the game doesn't look too hard up to now. I mean, at least compared to M&M1, which was hell.

It's not hard to find your way in the open areas. There is no need to map everything, just note down where each major area is, like this:

Osghirod > Rhudgast > Aragarth > etc...

Lotharia > Fimnuirh > etc...

Then explore each area and note down what you find (there is a town and Azalghorn's spirit in Lotaria etc) and soon you'll get a pretty good idea of where everything is, there is no need to waste hours drawing maps. It's easy to find your way.

The dungeons are different. These you should map. The first dungeon is an 18x18 square map, I don't know about the other ones yet. Mapping is easy, just draw a new square every step you take. Thanks, that money was very useful! I've used it to buy equipment. It's a good idea to equip your warriors with maces or swords, and to have all the fighting characters in the front row equipped with helmets and armors.

This is also important: I've placed my priest and my archer in the back row, so they can't be hurt in combat. Of course, the priest can't attack from the back row, but that's not a problem as I'm only interested in her healing magic. Since they are in the back row I haven't equipped them with armors, but be aware that you may get attacked from behind.

The front row has two fighters and a ranger. The two fighters deal much of the damage, I only use the ranger when the fighters are low on Phy.

thanks for the tips, appreciated :)

I've just beaten the game. Here are a few more tips.

Writing runes: it's a pain to have to go through the menu to cast a healing spell during combat. But if you choose to cast a spell, and then choose Write Runes > The spell you want (healing, for instance), you'll create a shortcut to the spell. You may access it on the character box on the lower part of the screen, just click the box to make it show the equipment the character has, and you'll see the little scroll icon. This is WAY useful.

Training: there are many kinds of training: strenght, intelligence, agility... they all boost the said statistic of the character you choose. But sometimes training fails, so I recommend you save the game before spending money on training. It's good to make your fighters go through strenght training (I've finished the game easily with my two fighters ranking 20 points in strenght). Seems like agility also heps them attack in a more efficient way. For spell casters, I go through some training in Intelligente and Wisdom (to improve wisdom, go through magic training).

Useful magic: two spells you should definitely learn are Lightning and Regeneration. Lightning can hurt all enemies, it's just fantastic for groups of monsters. And Regeneration not only restores you characters health, but also keep refueling them for a while. I was having a hard time fighting Krogh in the end, but when I used Regeneration on my fighters the whole fight was a breeze.

Hope my tips can help you guys!

Edit: OOPS. I can't read. orakiorob already said this in his first post. *embarrassed*

New tip!
As orakiorob also said, you go through PHY and PSY and it costs money to replenish them. (That's one reason to avoid combat spells in favor of healing until you have a reliable cash flow.) Fortunately, you'll eventually be able to brew potions, and you can make powerful restoratives for both of those stats (and you can carry pretty large stacks of the ingredients). In combination with healing magic, this will let you manage much longer dungeons without needing to return to town (and they're way more effective than the 10-PHY-per-loaf, max-5-carried bread). However, those ingredients will cost a fair bit, so if you have a big group of casters it's still cheaper to sleep in an inn. [You will probably need them for the final dungeon though . . . and it's just so much more pleasant to not travel halfway (or all the way, if you don't want to pay double) across the map every time you need to get more magic.]

OOPS:
much in the vein of orakiorob, a general gameplay tip:

clicking the "attack" button is very slow if you have multiple fighter types. the F1-F10 keys map to the row of action and attack buttons, so if you want to attack with characters one and two, just bobble the F2 and F4 keys until the bad guys die. I actually went to some trouble to recruit my main fighters into slots next to each other so I can do that with one hand and have my mouse ready to do healing or launch offensive spells.

NOTE: these keys don't work if you're in the middle of an action requiring input, like casting a targeted spell or attacking with a ranged weapon. This makes lightning extra-useful, since it casts in one click and doesn't interrupt the beatdown. :-)

There is a fanmade map, hope it helps:

http://www.starehry.eu/download/rpg/maps/ishar1-map-dj.jpg

(its also pretty impressive btw.)

Thanks to: DJ from the web oldgames.sk