Party Building

The game will try and push the Warrior Mage Priest setup on you.

They are already made characters sitting in the roster at Ruida's I have no need of puns

the npcs will talk up the setup

There is nothing inherently wrong with this setup

But it is not the end of the world if you branch out

as of writing this plurk, my party is a Thief, a Monster Wrangler, and a Merchant

The Wrangler has a wide variety of moves that cover a range of actions, including healing and debuffing, and some heavy damage options

As mentioned in the previous plurk, he learns more moves as you acquire more monsters, and his presence lets you sidestep any sort of setup necessary to approaching those monsters you would otherwise entangle yourself in

The Thief has a number of skills useful inside and outside of battle. They learn Nose for Treasure, which adds a tracker in the menu for any sort of pick ups that are around in a given zone, letting you know if you're missing things. This tracker stays up if, say, you use it in a town, then enter a building, but what's in the building is tracked-

separate of what's outside

some area changes will cause the tracker to drop, and you'll have to recast to put it back up. I have not worked out why this happens yet, but Nose for Treasure is a free spell, so it isn't that harsh, merely annoying

They also learn Snoop, which is counted as a spell for some reason. When cast, it will mark pick ups with sparkles, taking the guesswork out of your searching once the obvious spots have been picked clean

This has several caveats

First, compared to nose for treasure, the range on Snoop is much smaller, limited to what you can seen on your screen and a bit beyond. There is likely a more accurate, numerical measurement of this range, but I do not have access to this information

Second, if you take too long to get to the sparkles, they will vanish. Given the above, and the fact that the sparkle will also be marked on the minimap, this isn't that big a deal, unless you're in a maze of some kind

Third, this is not a free spell

It costs 2 mp to cast it successfully. If there are no pick ups in the spells range, it won't go off, and will tell you as such

but the successful casts will eat into your thief's MP, which they don't get much of.

keep track of these things, as their combat abilities are fairly potent.

The Merchant is a bit of an odd duck

The thief can 'steal' an item drop after a battle, effectively boosting odds of acquisition, the merchant will instead find additional gold.

The equipment they can use is also very non-standard, sharing very little crossover with the Hero or Warrior, so stranger pieces you might find that other classes can't use might find a home with them

In the original game, the merchant would learn an appraisal skill that would let you know if an item is cursed. As the item descriptions have that indication baked in, this has been dropped.

They only have 6 skills to their name, of which I have only acquired 5 of them

2 are used outside of battle. Dig, which is free and digs where you're standing for treasure, which I've never gotten any use out of. Service Call, which randomly summons a Merchant, Innkeeper or Priest.

Service Call is risky, as you're effectively rolling the dice in casting it at 15 MP a pop. You have no control over which will come to you. The Merchant's inventory, when I got him last, mirrored the one from the last town I visited for story purposes, I can't say if that was due to where I was or something else.

Trying to fish for innkeeper, especially at that cost at early levels, may be more trouble than it's worth.

That said, the combat options available aren't exactly costly.

Muster Strength is a nod to Tension from the modern games, a one-and-done boost for the next attack applied to self.

Stone's throw is an multi-target attack on the enemy, hitting all at once. Very useful due to early level you learn it, it's damage is consistent against high-defense monsters, but its output drops off very quickly as you progress

Helichopter is a more powerful, group-targeting attack learned later down the line, though I personally wish it came sooner

The sixth, which I assume to be the capstone skill, has not been acquired as of lv. 29, but from what I hear it uses your funds to power it.

Dharma, or Alltrades Abbey, lets you class change once a character hits level 20, dropping them to level 1 in the new class but keeping everything they learned up to that point.

I'm playing this on Switch, but apparently there is an achievement for having a party with the entire range of abilities and spells available between them

if such things matter to you, then keep in mind the following

Anything that was not learned will remain unlearned, but you can check how many abilities and spells you don't know from the menu, even if it doesn't say when you will acquire them

The passive abilities, such as the extra gold of the merchant, do not carry over. That also means the monster wrangler's easy wrangling. If you plan on collecting all the monsters and have one in your party already, they may well stay that way the whole way through

Finally, spoilers for a 35 year old game

Not sure if it's really necessary, honestly, this is just a bit that hasn't actually changed from the original

however, I already warned ya'll in top level, so here we go

You'll need to make a merchant at some point for story progression anyway. Whether that's by class changing one of your party or rolling a fresh one and throwing them under the bus, it doesn't matter

but don't class change them out of merchant if you haven't done the thing yet.

alright, that's all I got. see you when I learn more