Lunatic Dawn

• Your character has a finite lifespan and will make it to about 70 or so at most before dying. Training takes enough time that it's impossible to maximize more than a handful of skills before you die of old age, so it's best to plan ahead on how you want to build your character.

• You can raise your stats through training, but when you first start the game, you get random, hidden caps for each of them, which are between 15 and 70 points higher than what you start with. Though the average is about 40, the higher your starting stats are relative to the others, the higher your cap is likely to be. If a starting stat is around 40-45 it's near guaranteed to have its cap as 100 which is the max possible for any stat. Starting the game with an older character also means your stats and stat caps are likely to be higher, but you'll also have less time to adventure before dying of old age.

• Skill levels can never go higher than their corresponding stats, so if you want to focus in magic, you should make try to build a character with stat caps of 100 in Willpower and either Intellect or Wisdom (Wisdom for Divine/Black magic, and Intellect for everything else) so that you can cast all the spells in your chosen school(s).

• Magic is much more powerful than weapons in this game, as mid-to-late game fights turn into painful drawn-out slugging matches without it. Black Magic and Divine Magic are the most powerful schools for combat. Putting things to sleep with Goddess' Sigh (Divine lv64) and then poisoning them with Poison (Black lv 26) will effortlessly kill even the most powerful monsters.

• The most useful spell school is Physical. Light (lv12) means you don't have to buy oil for your lamps any more. Unlock (lv20) completely removes the need to train thief skills or hire a thief. Enchant Weapon (lv21) lets you damage undead with weapons.

• Elemental magic can only be trained in the Yanfrick region, which is west and very far south of your starting area. It'll take probably at least a month by foot to get there.

• When training a skill, how much you learn in is governed by how high the skill's governing stats are. You can gain a maximum of 4 points per month, which happens when your governing stat is about 50ish. So it's best to focus on training your stats before skills.

• Don't run out of Stamina. Once you do, every action you take starts draining your HP.

• Camping might seem like kind of a useless skill but it governs how much HP, MP, and Stamina you recover per hour. It's really important for a mage especially since MP is scarce.

• The best contracts to start with are delivery contracts; they don't pay much but are very easy.

• Companions will generally get pissed at you when you kick them out of your party and often won't want to rejoin. If you go to a training session though, it automatically disperses the party and this doesn't upset anyone. So if you want to kick someone out of the party but might want to use them later, do it by starting a training session.

• The endings in this game other than dying of old age are easily missed. In the standard inn interface, there are 7 people to talk to, the innkeeper and 6 patrons. Sometimes there's a scrollbar next to the list of guests that hides a 7th patron; this patron will ask you a yes/no question that will give you an ending if you say "yes."

• The most interesting "ending" giver is the "beautiful woman/man" in the tavern who asks you to marry them. If you agree, the game will end and you'll be given an option to abandon your family and go off adventuring again a year later. You can also opt to retire, in which case you will usually have a child who can then become your PC. Your heir gets all of your equipment, half of your gold and starts with a completely random set of stats, stat caps, and skills. You have no control over what type of character they'll be, but they'll also be much more powerful than any character you created yourself could be.