Some meta knowledge about skills for you.
1) Every character will end at 14-15 level, so you will get 50-60 skill points at max. There are feats (at character creation) and skillbooks (in secrets mostly) that could increase that amount.
2) For pure fighters it means that you could invest in armor 8/16 (medium/heavy without penalties) and max one weapon, Top weapon skills are worth it. Its possible to make human fighter with heavy armor and max in swords.
3) For thieves with daggers you need skill for attacking from back row and max out daggers.
4) Minotaurs will be great with their racial feat and all skulls collected.

I completed the game with party - Human Fighter, Minotaurs Fighters, Human Rogue with daggers/bow and Mage. And really cant remember any tough moments.

Of course you need to explore dungeon for secrets and better loot.

FWIW, I've completed the game with four Minotaur fist fighters (my favorite way to play). I've never heard of the game being unbeatable with a specific type of party, and I've been active with it since its release. That said, part of the fun of the game (for me) is finding those interesting parties and getting them properly kitted out as I go.

All this isn't meant to be a humble brag; it's just so you can be confident that the game is well beatable.

Armor is mostly worthless, attacking power is much safer, clearing mobs means you are less likely to get trapped as you can't move into occupied grid squares.

Slow and steady is a recipe for getting surrounded and dying.

Minotaur make bad tanks as they get fewer skill points than the other races, it is counter intuative but they are better as backline throwers (Throwing skill alone is self-sufficient) as you suffer no accuracy penalties nor do you need to obtain Reach attack to hit from the backrow while getting all the benefits of going max damage, throwing axes are heavy when you stack them so you want all that high minotaur strength to use them.

Axes are 15 damage and headhunter is +15 damage with 5 skulls so effectivly you are dealing double damage, then doubling damage again at 32 Throwing skill and getting Double Throw

Minotaur with thier high HP they still survive better than most builds lurking in the back row typically do when hit by enemy spells that ignore evasion, armor and hit the full party


The best front line is actually high dexterity lizardmen using the Unarmed skill for the best boosts to Strength and Dexterity, this puts your fire and lightning resistance through the roof

Skill points is way more important than stats, having 19 strength or 20 strength won't make any real difference but only getting 49/50 on a weapon skill means missing out on things like Swords master or Three point technique

it may be the question you are asking but its not really a helpful or meaningfull one

weapons are better than armor as one kills things and the other does not, all armor stacking will do is make your inevitable defeat take longer to happen

its not really a math problem to demonstrate this

I guess the next question is what does focusing on mean to you, because to my understanding it'd be 50 points in armor if armor was to be focused on at the expense of weapons, which would leave weapons not just lacking in actual damage potental on hits but also barely landing a hit which is a big loss when the game has fairly long delays between each attack. Even 20 damage is superior to 0 from a miss

Not really sure what your mage could be carrying to weight them down so much, some equipment is heavy but isn't for mages to be using anyway since they lack the skills in weapons and armor

Fire doesn't do much against fire elementals but mages get the shield spell for their respective element which was a neat feature to show the devs already picked up on that potentail pitfall, the mage themselves gets 100 resistance from spell maxing so don't need the shield themselves

My wizards have always been human, not typically fire but most people go fire for the boosted damage equipment unique to it, plus a unique Tome of fire, even with Uggardian fire immunity getting high damage on 99% of the rest of the enemies not immune to it is a perfectly acceptable tactial descion for a player

Air magic invisibilty I do like but compared to other games i've seen stronger versions of that spell.

One of my best teams was actually 4 rogues so despite not having a mage I ended up with 4 people totally immune to Fire and Shock anyway so I didn't miss not having a mage to help with that protection at all.


Was kind of amusing to see how a lot of traps and dangerous rooms were invalidated by my dual immunity team and not needing to time my steps between attacks, just a leisurely stroll down the corridor.

I don't generally like to skip mages as not all games have magic in them so it just feels right to use them in a fantasy setting beyond any concerns for power gaming and team building.

System wise I consider Grimrock to be fairly flawed compared to Grimrock 2 which to me has a more balanced system encouraging a wider variety of solid builds aside from the common gripes about firearms as a weapon and a skill