Guys,

I tried Shadows over Riva a while ago (actually bought it at a computer trade-fair in the 90's, anyway..) and got as far as the dwarven mines, when I hit a pretty sturdy wall. There seemed to be no way for my party to beat the orcs in the mines and it got me to thinking that the game isn't really meant to be played with a "fresh" party, and some stuff on the internet seems to uphold the notion that you´re really supposed to play all three RoA titles with one party.

Sooo, what are your thoughts on this?
Did I not grind enough xp?
I was using a walkthrough and the mines were the place to go next, anyway, but as I said, no way of conquering them with my then party.

The game should be playable with a freshly created party especially since you can do much better than the pregenerated one.

Without knowing what you did it's hard to say what you can do better.

By "do much better" do you mean to roll until everyone has all 13´s?

Well, that would make things a little easier.

It's true that importing from Star Trail will make Riva much easier (much, much easier if you got the endless waterskin and the girdle of +5 STR for all of your characters, plus some of the nicer weapons), but the starter group is very much a generalist party, and not terribly well optimized. I'd recommend you play through Star Trail at least until you get through the Dwarven Pit, for the aforementioned items, but if you don't want to, you can get by. Make sure your party is designed to work well together - don't just make six elves (actually, a six elf party - or five and a magician - is kind of awesome) and give them all bows and try to fill everything with arrows.

It's not a very forgiving game. There will be parts that seem impossible at first glance. There will even be ways to set yourself up for guaranteed failure. But if you take a little time to get a good group up and going, and maybe pickpocket the town dry for a week until you can afford good gear, you should be ok with a fresh group in Riva.

That's one possibility. Raising strength for all characters at each level up as high as possible also helps.

You dont have to go to these Pitts btw (optional part, when I first played the game, I totally missed it), but then there are more difficult passages. Unfortunately, in Shadows over Riva are not many places where you can endlessly exp, so I recommend to start playing with default characters or play the first part Blade of Destiny (highly recommended, the graphics is a bit older, but you have the opportunity to "tune up" your party up to third, this, part)).
I also played with calc (excel) document, where i had all skills of each character and on every level up I precisely selected what skills improve.

Thank you for your replies!
I´m working on my party and am already doing better than on my last go. Anyway, I see where the problems are, concerning stats. I have a Warrior, two Elves, a Dwarf, Mage and a Rogue together that can at least handle the orcs and ogres in the dwarven mine. I would just tune my stats a bit and to that end tried the Universal Game Engine module for Riva, but sadly it didn't work; of course it´s possible to hex-edit but have little experience.
In any case the combat works if I get my elves and mage lined up to shower everyone with direct damage spells, blind, and then arrows, my warrior and dwarf don't do damage often, though. I´ve already pickpocketed a couple of days to get potions and armor, got the magic shield off Stipen and some magic boots.
Any advice for other gear? I´ve got splint mail and these 'bracers' for my dwarf and warrior.

They're not meant to. Don't feel bad about it. Their job is to control the field. You want monsters to be facing them, hitting them, because they'll be doing negligible damage since your armor rating should be ridiculous, at least 12 or 13. By level 7 or 8, though, your attack values should get high enough - and your strength should be capped by then at 20 - that you get a few more hits in, and when you hit, it should be pretty solid.

And by the way, rogue is generally considered a sort of second-rate character. As long as you plan out your skills, you can do away with the rogue as long as you keep the dwarf - your locks will be just about as good, and you can pickpocket moderately well, also. That could free you up enough to get another, more combat-focused character in the group. Although, that said, rogues aren't terrible in a fight - just not as good as some others. It's probably the greatest failing of the Realms of Arkania that the series is so very, very heavily focused on combat. But that does make it easy to design a group that can bulldoze over everything, once you have a little more experience.

I had the same party composition, should work quite well.


Try getting your AC as high as possible for all your characters, 14 should be reachable with standard armor for your warrior and dwarf (5 body, 3 head, 2 arms. 2 legs, 2 shield), elves and rogues 9 (3+2+1+1+2).

Unlike in most other games AC is subtracted from all damage you take. A sword does 5-10 damage, so with 10 AC you are practially immune to sword wielders without bonuses.
The same applies the other way around however, so very high strength does make a big difference. If you're using bows buy those which do 9-14 damage per hit.
When attacking gang up on one opponent so he can't parry the later attacks.

The magic armor spell can give additional protection to your casters.
Expensive poisons can help in difficult combats.
Eating those herbs which raise strength before combat is also an option.

Even more effective than direct damage spells are disabling spells, for example a simple casting of Horriphobus can be more effective than several damage spells and attacks combined, you still get the XP for fleeing enemies.

In reverse order (and with thanks):

I do have Horriphobus, Somnigravis, Bannbaladin and the magic armor one, but not the teleport-spell, which I read is supposed to be kind of important!?

Got those compound bows for my elves, so that should be okay,

plus AC 16 on my dwarf and 11 on my warrior, I guess because he doesn't have a shield due to two-handed magic sword. Anyway, they don't get hurt a lot up until now.

The teleport spell is not essential but gives more options. Just raise the teleport spell at each mage level up. If you have -4 you can cast it (and enforce success with a few reloads).