1. Starting location:
- Is there any i should pick, or one that i should avoid for some important reason.
- If there is one approved by the hivemind starting loaction - which one ?
The Shrine is default start. Eerie Wastes gives most content for your buck (Temple of Hathor Sogg later in the game). Prison is the "hard" start letting you loot the Armory very early if you survive it (also, a high-level chest you'll probably fail to open early on, and a key to a gate you can bypass anyway). Sanctuary is the "easy" start with some lategame gear and a few character boosts (also a keycard to a lategame level which you can find elsewhere anyway). Wilderness is worthless, the key it gives can be received elsewhere too - avoid.
- Can i go without a Thief ? In wizardry 7 it was a major pain in the ass at the very beginning but after that - the better choice because thief was a really crap class. How is it in Grimoire ?
Not needed.
- Same but Cleric. Similar, very helpful early on but not an optimal choice later. Can I start without one without major problems ?
Yeah, sage gets most healing spells. You'll have to endure through some tight spots without cure disease and cure paralysis early on, but clerics need time to get these either.
- Class switching. I read that directly after release it was mostly useless because a bug prevented your chars from using skills that the 2nd class would bring. Is it still the case or moving to say a pirate from a simpler class now makes sense ?
After release it was useless because you could only change classes after level 10, which is endgame, and needed millions of xp to reach level 2 in new class. Now it's level 3.
A few suggestions:
1) you can only visit a class once, and each class can only be changed to 3 specific ones. map your way across classes accordingly. For instance, if you change a sage to a wizard, you'll never get out of the "wizard circle" through cleric, bard and into warrior group.
2) the most efficient is to change class at about level 6. 7 is a tad too late unless endgame, where you routinely slaughter encounters worth a few thousands xp.
3) the xp scale only resets after you gain second level in the new class (might be fixed in later patches). don't change class immediately after levelup, change it after you are close to the next one, or you'll have to do the same busywork but at level 1.
4) unless you are a casual who only changes classes once, CONSERVE BONUS POINTS. unlike invested stat improvements, these are retained between class changes and should be reserved for bottlenecks like when you are already level 7 but still need 30 more INT to make a leap from berserker to assassin.
- Party consisting of:
Saurian Berserker - Dwarf Berserker - Wolfin Ranger - Dracon Metalsmith - Durendil Bard - Aerob Sage - Vampyr Necro - Feyfolk Wizar
Not needing any deep analysis, just, are all needs my party might have covered by this setup ?
Vampyrs suck (gotcha!), they operate at half-stats half the time while bringing nothing of worth to the table. And the way item use works, you'll need to manage the SPD of the entire party very carefully, which vampyres break.
Durendil got good stats but terrible limitations on usable equipment, the only reason to have one in the first half of the game is if you need a templar out of the box.
Metalsmith aren't very useful, they got shit wizard-level hitpoints for a melee dude, and crafting is not implemented anyway. Unless you want to endure without a sage - and you don't - no reason to take one.
Saurians are dumb as rock and you'll have terrible time multiclassing them unless you conserve bonus points like mad (this includes not spending the starting bonus unless necessary) while always rolling sixes.
Double the first 3 characters, keep aeorb sage and add feyfolk bard, it's an ultimate rapetrain.
- I read trhat NPCs were awfully overpowered after release - is it still the case, do they still feel like cheating or not ?
Not so much overpowered as everyone having pretty much the same stats and skills regardless of race and class, vastly superior to PCs created according to rules.
- 2nd difficulty (veteran ?) seems to mean "normal" so i'll go with that, or should is the game too easy/hard with it ? Can it be freely changed later ?
Can be changed at will. Go for hard/onslaught when you need xp, switch to easy/none when you need to backtrack across half the game.
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