Playthrough - Part I

Chapter I

Starting up

City of Khorinis

Getting to the monastery:

Quests for the Mercenaries (optional):

Inside the Monastery:

Test of Fire:

Chapter II

Jarkendar:

The Passage:

Valley of Mines:

Killing Orcs Near the Orc Ram:

In Chapter I you should barely fight anythig, you hold on with clearing out the map until Chapter III.Remember, be careful with your spendings, try to make money without cheesing/cheating and spend it mainly on mana potions, scrolls and quests if they require to spend some money. I had no problems with money, so I could allow myself spending it on things like Abuyin, paying Wolf for protecting Bengar, ect. But since I don't know how well your playthrough will go, be careful.Since you aren't allowed to use melee weapons, run. Even though you are at level 0, the enemies on the way to Khorinis are very weak, so you should easily be able to run through them. You can get to Lester, and then to Cavalorn that will take care of the bandits for you.Once in the city, you should join Constantino as his apprentice. Everytime you bring him mushrooms, throw Dark Mushrooms on the grounds and only give him Digger Meat, the money from this will be enough. Do all the quests you can, then head to the monastery.You don't have to pay 1000 gold and a sheep in order to enter the monastery. After you talk to Vatras and Lares, you will be sent to Daron, who will give you a task to retrieve an item from the goblin cave. How you get through that cave? Single Small Fire Storm spell, I'll leave the thinking up to you. Once you are done, take the item to the monastery. Congratulations, you're a novice now!If you still want that exp from the quests on the farm, there is a way to beat the mercenaries with magic only. You should use a proper combination of the ice block and the goblin skeleton/regular skeleton on a proper mercenary(this is actually the only time an ice block was useful to me), and then finishing them off with a non-lethal spell, before your minions kill them.Lares can escort you to the farm.Provoke a mercenary, drag him off the farm, where there are no other NPCs to interrupt you, freeze him with an ice block then quickly spawn a Goblin Skeleton, then, when his health is very low, finish him off with a non-lethal spell, so the Goblin doesn't kill him. Your Goblin is not able to drain 90% of his health before he unfreezes and kill him? Summon regular Skeleton instead.It may require a bit of patience(and a lot of money for the scrolls), but if I did it, you can do it too.The quests in the Monastery do not require any fighting, except for a one, optional quest with a wolf that you can kill with simple scrolls.The Magic Golem HAS TO be defeated with the melee... right? Well, again, no. Buy a shrink monster scroll from Zuris, after you use it on the golem, you can easily one shot him with weak damage scroll. Sorry, that holy hammer will have to keep sitting in the monastery, collecting dust.Run through all the animals, and once a novice blocks your way, you just kill them with your spells, since they would instantly die after beating them up anyway.Come back to the monastery, create your first rune and come back to Pyrokar. Congratulations, now you are an actual, proper mage!Deliver your message to Lord Hagen, so you can enter the second chapter.Meanwhile, take your time to find a goblin bone, by either killing a Goblin Skeleton or by buying it from Constantino, then create a rune, that you can learn from master Karras.Actually, scrap that. You don't want to enter the addon world just yet, leave that for Chapter 3.Paladin Sergio can escort you to the passage. After you cross the doors, you can have an opportunity to get the free healing rune. As I said, how you get it is up to you to figure out :)You don't actually have to fight that much. Most of the enemies you will fight are Wolves, Bloodflies, Scavengers and Goblins. Just avoid the Orcs and Dragon Snappers. Once you reach Diego, he can do the rest for you, just remember that he has a finite amount of healing potions, so when he starts dying, just go straight back to passage. Bilgot can help a bit too. Diego will refuse to enter a mine with dead Silvestro's group and the minecrawlers, but you should be able to clear it out on your own.Kill the Snappers for Fajeth, get the Ice Arrow rune, find Marcos, escort Diego and Bilgot to the passage, get back to the castle, report to Garond, get Gorn out of jail, come back to Khorinis.Don't. It's an exploit and a very cheap one. Have some honor and don't use it, and I know some people do. Besides, it kills the fun of destroying the Orcs in later chapters. You are more than capable to beat the game without this exploit.