Exile 3: Party Creation

Party Style

Exile 3 gives you a very free-form, open-ended way of both creating and maintaining your party. You get six generic PC slots that you can fill with up to 6 characters. Each character you fully control from start to finish, including all things like race, special advantages and disadvantages, various statistics and then ultimately where they train each level. This can be awkward at first, however, since there are no pre-set "classes". Just as in Fallout 2, a character is what you make of them - and wasting points is easily possible.

Because of the myriad of possible parties, I'm only going to go into two potential styles here. The first will be a more defensive, melee-combat oriented party. The second will be a more offensive, magic-combat oriented party. I personally prefer more offensive capability, as a dead enemy is an enemy that cannot harm you. Both have advantages, both have disadvantages. Play the game a few times first to get a feel for what you want. Remember that our party guides steer you towards something you can finish the entire game with, without ever getting completely obliterated in a single combat. That's why you may wonder why we sacrifice some skills. Given the amount of useless skills in Exile 3 however, it is necessary.

Skills and Traits

For detailed information on PC traits see PC Advantages

For detailed information on PC skills see PC Skills

Defensive Party

To start off with, ALL of yours PCs should be created with the following traits: Toughness, Good Constitution, Highly Alert, Exceptional Strength, Recuperation. No matter what, give that to all your PCs. You can read about each individual stat in Exile 3: PC Advantages.

The defensive party will rely on having a lot of heavy armor, heavy shields and strong defensive and supporting magics to allow melee fighters to crush foes. You'll likely spend more time disabling opponents with magics rather than killing them outright, and will rely on having strong warriors.

Here are a few example defensive parties:

Party 1

PC1: Sword-wielding fighter, high in Edged Weapons - heavy armor, heavy shield

PC2: Polearm-wielding fighter, high in Pole Weapons - heavy armor, no shield

PC3: Mace-wielding fighter, high in Bashing Weapons - heavy armor, heavy shield

PC4: Combo Priest/Mace-wielder, medium in Bashing Weapons, medium in Priest

PC5: Pure Priest, no weapon skill, high in Priest, heavy armor, heavy shield

PC6: Pure Mage, no weapon skill, high in Mage, light armor, light shield

Party 2

PC1: Dual-wielding fighter, high in edged weapons - heavy armor, no shield

PC2: Sword-wielding fighter, high in edged weapons - heavy armor, heavy shield

PC3: Mace-wielding fighter, high in edged weapons - heavy armor, heavy shield

PC4: Bowman, high in Archery - heavy armor, heavy buckler

PC5: Pure Priest, no weapon skill, high in Priest, heavy armor, heavy shield

PC6: Pure Mage, no weapon skill, high in Mage, light armor, light shield

Defensive parties will give you a large capacity to soak up damage, as well as a lot of melee power. This is going to give you a large advantage in many fights. Since I've never actually been able to survive with a defensive party, though, I'll leave it to someone else to give it a try.

The biggest issue I have with defensive parties is that they tend to forgo magery in favor of more priest skills or more warriors. Warriors are critical to have throughout the game, but without a nuke-toting mage at your side you will have a very very hard time dealing with large packs of creatures. Particularly when you being facing more powerful mages, such as the Khazis.

Offensive Party

To start off with, ALL of yours PCs should be created with the following traits: Toughness, Good Constitution, Highly Alert, Exceptional Strength, Recuperation. No matter what, give that to all your PCs. You can read about each individual stat in Exile 3: PC Advantages.

The offensive party is the party I prefer. It trades sword/shield warriors for more aggressive warriors, forgos archery for more magery and concentrates on long-term, high-nuke power. Early on, you'll spend a lot of time coddling your extremely weak mages, but as they mature most combat will be your mages and priests obliterating the opponents with high-power magics, and the warriors mopping up the remains or protecting them.

Here is my preferred offensive parties:

Party 1

PC1: Dual-wielding fighter, high in Edged Weapons, no shield

PC2: Polearm-wielding fighter, high in Polearms, no shield

PC3: Dual-wielding fighter, high in Edged or Crushing weapons, no shield

PC4: Combo Priest/mage, high in Priest spells, light armor, light shield

PC5: Combo Mage/Priest, high in Mage spells, light armor, light shield

PC6: Combo Mage/Priest, high in Mage spells, light armor, light shield

The biggest disadvantage the offensive party has is the lack of a tank with a beefy shield. This can play into your favor later on, when you can get many Runeshields or other high-end magic shields, to give to your mages. Offensive parties face difficulties in the beginning, since I advise pumping STR for your mages rather than INT. That makes your mages highly vulnerable at first and not all that useful. However, the high STR will result in all your characters having gobs of HP before you even reach level 20, with most of them maxing HP towards level 30, without ever having to put a single point in.

By the time you are hitting levels 12 and up, you'll see the benefits of having a lot of offensive power. Towards 25 and above, in a single round you'll be able to not only bless and haste your entire party with major blessing, but also summon powerful creatures like Khazis and Daemons. By the time the third round rolls around you'll likely have already dispatched most of the enemy.

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