So, this will be my first play through of any of the Realms games. Just starting at the beginning of the trilogy and made some characters and played around to familiarize. Seems like soloing is possible from reading around, would small parties of 2 (preferably) or 3 characters be that much more painstaking than a full party? Any recommendations for party build?

In RoA2 there is one Situation where you have to leave 2 party members behind temporarily so you need at least 3 (but you could just create new characters and add them to your party for this so 2 should work too).

I recommend elves since they can both wear armor and cast spells, Ice elves get 5 extra hitpoints and a little extra bonus to magic resistance so they are the best on the long run.

Create characters with 13 in all positive attributes, raise strength to the max at level ups.

Good to know, thanks for the reply. So I guess my question to that would be; with say a two person party, what would be considered must have skills or spells?

I guess the best two person party consists of an ice elf and a green elf since green elves start with slightly different skills (better locks and haggle for example) and can wear chainmail shirt unlike the other elves.
After rolling and changing your attributes you can switch classes until you get the deities which offer the most useful bonuses (Praios +1 CR is best, followed by Tsa +1 CH, 3rd best is Rondra (+1 to sword skill).

At least one character should get swords skill as high as possible, the other can maximize swords and/or axes (orc hook) and/or edged weapons (mace) (or just have both maximize sword and one of the other two for flexibility), spears and pointed weapons do less damage and aren't worth it once you increased the other weapon skills enough. But in the beginning it won't hurt raising the spear skill for the ice elf and using the spear to take advantage of the better starting values. A crossbow is very effective for green elves in the beginning.
Maximize the attack values for the weapon types, you do want to hit, in later games weapon skill is added to offense automatically. Unarmed skill is useful in case your weapons break or you don't have one for other reasons.


I'd maximize locks and haggle skill for the green elf, treat wounds for both.

I'd get the transversalis spell to -4 for the ice elf asap (takes a few levels) so it's castable and raise the combat spells acceleratus and magic armor up to 7 for both so they always succeed.

Most important in the game is high AC, iron helmet, toadskin (chainmail shirt), iron shield and leather armor should grant 9 (10), magic armor can add even more. Always attack the same opponent with both characters, he can't parry more than once per round.

Perfect, that covers it fully. Kind of a daunting system to just jump into, I like to have a game plan usually. 5 stars my friend.

There's a lets play on youtube of a guy soloing the entire trilogy with a magician.

Only adding freshly created characters to his party for those points when the game requires it to progress.

https://www.youtube.com/user/unhold19xx/playlists