Will I be able to gain exorbitant gold through alchemy with just a ranger, or do I need an alchemist proper for that?
I think the most profitable one is the pandemonium powder, which require easily found dusts and something like 50 in alchemy.
AFAIK Wiz enhanced (best and only worthy mod) severely reduces selling price of those powders, so no risk of breaking the economy, even if you lack self control
And how much of a nuisance is it to use the spell or manual searching to find shit, instead of the ranger autosearch?
You can easily find shit by searching manually - it usually is in obvious places, so you don't even have the search constantly turned on. Also, the shit you find via searching is usually worthless.
And what are the pros and cons of the various ranged weapon types, I could give the ranger a modern weapon and then ignore raising strength for example, or would that just suck compared to bows/xbows?
Modern weapons suck in this game, stick to bows/xbows - there is ammo with +% instakill chance, which stacks with your weapon and ranger instakill procs/
Thinking about
Mook Fighter
Dracon Rogue
Human Bard
Fairy Bishop (wiz/psi)
Hobbit Gadgeteer
Ranger of some kind, or alchemist
As you see there's no divinity caster there... I can pick the recruitable Valkyrie soon, or add priestly spells for the bishop, or both. But how much would I miss those spells if I just mostly skipped them? Learning the ones which have books available to the bishop, dont take away anything ofc, but then, would I want to cast them over the spells of schools the bishop's more trained in?
Pretty powergame'y party, you will mow through everything - even more if you build your bard as a melee and give him bloodlust. There's whole set of Bard-only armor which provides shitload of bonuses and resistances, not to mention some obscene stuff like ring of the road with +20 STR. And you can equip two of those.
Even without Valk NPC, you won't have any problem with missing divinity spellbook, as most of Gadgeteer stuff can cast most crucial div spells - armorplate, heal all, ressurection, guardian angel and superman.
Last slot is up to you, both are fine - I personally dislike rangers, since they do not crit often enough and every time I take one, he just ends up being average ranged dmg dealer.
Alchemist has quite a few spells that are usefull through all the game, like lvl 2 blinding flash. I especially like noxious fumes, which while deals average dmg, it often triggers nausea or even unconciousness. Cloud spells are nice too, especially if you anticipate longer fight. Anyway, your party is more than ok, and you can easily roll with those on expert.
Or should I just play Grimoire instead
I had couple of attempts at Grimoire, and as awesome as it is, there is something that makes me drop my playthrough at some point. I think it's mostly due to:
1. OPdness of lethal blow skill - you can get it on half of your party after like dozen hours into game, it rises on it's own pretty quickly, so after short time, you are insta-gibbing shit left and right.
2. Some of the puzzles are to cryptic - but this is just me being old or not putting enough dedication into game, like making notes and shit.
No hybrids = no weaklings in the beginning
