Nice optimal party discussion, I must say that psionic is indeed very useful ATM. Insanity usually disables about half of the brigands that keep pestering me and unlike sleep I don't have to worry about waking them up with AOE spells. The Samurai finally deicided to start being useful when getting to the city, but his magic is a bit meh right now, not very surprising since I completely disregarded his intelligence in early game. Are there more choices if I decided to keep using two-weapons but not necessarily weapoo-swords? Daggers seem to be a good choice since there obviously should be good daggers later in game for classes unable to use better weapons.
Daggers might not be worth it.
Good ones, with %kill bonus are class restricted, and the remaining ones are at best slightly superior to enchanted wakizashi (while requiring separate skill).
If you want to dual wield, staves might be better option - Winterwand in particular is guaranteed in game, offhand capable, has neat initiative bonus and 15% paralyze.
Staves will also enable you to use certain awesome 2h staff as backup weapon if none of your primaries is cursed. Do note that your main weapon might be certain cursed sword you may obrtain soon and that wielding offhand weapon does affect the performance and amount of attacks of your primary one, so unless you've mastered TWF, "I have two weapons so I swing twice as much" doesn't hold. Trading off extra attacks with powerful main weapon for some piddling secondary ones at reduced to hit for both is not necessarily a good option when wielding a powerful primary weapon.
Bwuh? Shows up as yesterday.
Guess it wasn't my post at all.
I don't think I've ever entered Arnika at lvl 4.
Hell, I'm not sure I ever exited monastery below lvl 5.
Well, try it. Much fun to be expected. I usually levelup right before Arnika, because with lvl8 something party road from monastery is rather difficult. Probably the toughest part of the game.
But how? Unless you make a beeline for exit, but that's just leaving behind all the useful stuff you can find in Monastery.
I think I might have had those fleshy things in Arnika once when I first entered, they were tough as nails, but with decent tactics, some FFFUUUU- and support from the locals they fell down (locals and Savant's creations, that is).
Unfortunately for them, from my playthroughs it seems that a staff monk is better at both dmg and crit kills.
A bit of a question - why is it always a staff
monk specifically?
Neither monk, nor any other class get bonus to staff&wand, so is there any reason why take a monk preferentially instead of samurai with Zatoichi Bo or pretty much any combat class with Staff of Doom?
Is there anything (other than flavour) that makes staff monks superior to staff anything else?