Choose Ida, Arda, OR camp in the woods,(maybe survival should atleast have 1 point).
Choose class: archer, wizard, warrior.
Choose potion brewing with Brown.
Choose for attributes 3 strength, 2 vitality, spread the rest.
Choose extra starting supply - health potions are worth 3x67 thaler.
Choose one extra item (rings) - I chose phoenix ring. easy to resurrect pet.
Don't select slower hunger/thirst for my strategy, it makes it harder to get seeds.
Go to the options menu, arrow to the right to gameplay and select 'always show friendly npc names" and adjust anything else to your liking.

First of all, start doing the mainline quest and stay away from enemies/monsters for now.
Whenever you get to a new location, especially character homes, go to the map and mark the location accordingly. Name of persons house/ golems you can't kill yet ect. You should have the mark 10 locations on map achievement unlocked during level 1.
Getting hungry? harvest some pumpkins from the farm by grandpa's house, your house. If there's none there, it wont be long before Ida will plant some.
Eat the pumpkins to get seeds, plant the seeds in the farm. Get manure from osrics pig farm after talking to him, water and fertilize your plants with manure for faster yeilding.
Thirsty? Drink from the well for now and think about buying 3 watersacks, you'll need them for watering your plants later and going on long journeys. watersacks bought at aron. refill at a well.

As soon as you can, get chickens going in their pen at your safeplace. They bring in all the money when you sell hundreds of eggs to whoever buys them and has enough money to buy them.
You need to plant melons, they yeild a high seed count, the seeds from pumpkins and melons are not only for the farm but also to feed your chickens. Eggs to sell for money come over time.
When you get enough melons and pumpkins, use the 2 for hunger and thirst, discontinueing the water sack. You will have plenty of seeds this way for thine chickens money eggs.
The garden will not always look like this, it could be full of your life herbs and mushrooms as you've upgraded farming skills.
Put wisps in the garden, plants will never go bad. Have trapping at 1 and use taming traps to get them.

Talk to everyone and do their quests, it only helps you. Also, a player who I'll keep Anonymous, he was a helper and said that they looted anything and everything in the village in Darkwood as long as you're not seen doing the looting. A great tip!

Kill monsters, there are alot of exp. pts. for quests but on higher levels I think you get more from killing, I checked it out on level 8 or so in Balrum area. About 6000 pts. for quests and the rest of the 22000 was in kills. If you just kill enemies that are on the quest line, you might be shut down by higher powered enemies and end up veering off into the wilderness to gain some xp. And believe you will finish the game at level 9 or 10. Kill everything and you will be level 11 but it's a long haul.

Why Cooking? Check out these battle meals you can make, use corn or carrot as they are low in water/hunger, then use gooseberries for vitality, salt for resistances, and nightmare berries to help in mana or you could use something else to improve the attributes of your choice.
Note the vitality is raised by 3 for 20 turns, this means from about 150-300 on your health bar!
Make sure you eat the meal before engaging the enemy if you can, and use a healing potion to fill your health bar that just grew from the vitality increase.
Here is a meal being made with farming skill 1 and cooking 1.
Of course you can make better meals/potions than me, so experiment with what you have to get what you want. My mistake was to not look into crafting and experiment around with different ingredients.
Don't forget to throw your awesomely made meals and potions into your quick-bar.

Potions for battle need alchemy skill upgrades to:
-Use them to recover health and mana.
-Use them to harm, stun, frighten enemies.
You may hit your pet in some of these events... laugh when that happens.
Check out these potions for later use, lol (Gauntlet).
Notice I've gone a little excess on the wild yellow cress, tone this down for more potions.
Brain Purge resets your quick slot bar removing all cool downs. The King Mushroom (max. one per use) is what gives you the brain purge event.
Enemies hate when I use this potion.
Note: All ingredients are easy to get alot of, except for wild yellow cress for fireball events.
Gooseberries are limited as well in the early darkwood stages.
Potion bottles take money, but don't forget about those chickens and sell your smelted ores.
Also sell all of your unwanted armour and weapons, keep the cool ones that you want to display on your manokens at the safeplace. Sell off anything else you're sure of that you're not going to use.

Really having alot of fun on my second playthrough, check the LP.

Explore, leave no stone unturned and you will find the weapons and armour.

Upgrade strength to about 9 I would say. I do this so I can wear the heavy armours and use high damage swords because melee is inevitable. I finished the game without upgrading vitality.
And depending on what class you are, dexterity, wisdom, intelligence ect. is up to you.

Create weapon - I had at 2 for building your own repair statue.
Create Armour - I had at 1. (mistake to me.)
alchemy - upgrade fully.
survival - upgrade 1 (maybe)
lockpicking - upgrade 1 (Be sure to upgrade this right away, locked chests in NW Darkwood.)
mining/smelting - upgrade 1 or 2 (to melt gold for money)
cooking - upgrade fully.
farming - upgrade fully
carpentry - upgrade by finding skillbooks to 1 or 2. (see Loot Section in this guide).
trapping - upgrade 1 at Rhys. Don't forget to learn simple traps recipe from Rhys.
hunting - upgrade 1 if you want to finish the taming quest.(i think)
I say no to create weapon/armour above level 2 because you can't do anything substantial with it until later on in the game when you finally learn to smelt moonstone, plus, I finished the game without using any customized personal weapons or armour.
Note: You do not need both weapon crafting at 2 AND armour crafting at 2 in order to build your own repair statue, you just need one of these upgraded to 2.
There are plenty of locations that I have missed that one might find another skill book or other valuable loot.
When I simply don't know what to do against a boss, try carpeting the battlefield with simple traps before engaging the enemy. (Trap skill 1 needed.)
This guide is just basically what I'm doing for my replay of grandmaster mode. I hope I have helped in some way. Please rate this guide. cheers!

These points of interest are from my first playthrough, and doesn't show all loot locations.
NORTHWEST DARKWOOD
NORTHEAST DARKWOOD
SOUTHEAST DARKWOOD
WINE
The crying skull is found in a chest in the worm cave.
After defeating the queen of the worms, get the Dark Iron Greaves.
SOUTHWEST DARKWOOD
NORTHEAST BALRUM

After putting the middle switch in the down position, under Malvin's castle you will find the CHITIN HELMET.
SOUTHEAST BALRUM
SOUTHWEST BALRUM
NORTHWEST BALRUM
SEARING DESERT
After defeating skeleton warlock.
For more demonsoul equipment, kill the architect and the abomination!

For now it is a work in progress, updating some of the quest info as I playthrough grandmaster.
Open Buck's door, wait, loot Buck's house while he's not there.
Drink Buck's secret brew in Buck's house or near Buck.
Gate to underground after getting the triangle shaped key.
In Northwest Darkwood light the chandeliers.

Finish all of Walker's quests, defeat Walker to get the Dark Iron Breastplate.(Kyler's Village)
Fleta Quest: NE Darkwood location.
When you finally get the potion to cure Fleta, only talk to her from OUTSIDE HER HOUSE. After curing she turns to a mantis, quickly slam the door on her and go back to talk to Barnabas.
Barnabas gives you a second potion to cure her from a mantis. If you do this, you get an extra 500 xp points!
When you do the Fleming quest (right by Fleta's house) be as unselfish as possible and you will be rewarded with way more xp.
NORTHEAST DARKWOOD RUNESTONE QUEST: To get to the runestone, get to this archway...
Then make sure you unequip all of your items, walk up to the archway and left click it, you don't actually walk through it like I thought.
NORTHEAST DARKWOOD SICK TROLL QUEST FOR SPIKE:
Sneak your way to the troll's chest and insert Health potion is best. Then loot the chest as ONE OF THE RUNESTONES is there, run away in total fear or kill the troll once he sees you.

DAYNA QUEST: Enter the cave of the wisps and automatically get 300xp. Northeast Darkwood.
You will be notified that this is a good place for Dayna. Go back to Dayna's house, tell her, get more xp.
CLAY @ CLAY'S HOUSE
Don't go to Clay's house until you have finished clearing the frog cave quest, west of Clay's.
I'm sorry, I don't know what to give to Clay for his dark eyes and bad temper, before killing him, maybe try some different drinks? mana? health? And how do you sneak it to him? The book of swordplay in Clay's house can upgrade you or give you 1 LP.
Before leaving NorthEast Balrum to progress, you better go down and talk to Paton and Lander.
If you don't, some people (including me) have not been able to get into the room where Lander is, and see what is inside that chest there. Paton is nowhere to be seen later in game.

Torric Wolfsbane: You need to find something for him to do, once you have visited the dungeon where you fight yourself in SW Balrum (NW corner), go back to Torric Wolfsbane in SE Balrum NW Corner, and tell him to get the hell to the dungeon to fight himself.

In NorthEast Darkwood, put the 2 middle levers in the down postition.
SE darkwood, read the suspicious book, and wait for the suspicious debuff to wear off. (100 turns)
The CallmeNezo {链接已删除}♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.com puzzle in NorthEast Darkwood.
Location:
After defeating the cave crawler and ghost, you can now thank CallmeNezo {链接已删除}♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.com for figuring out this monster puzzle. Put all of these switches in the down position...
Then go over to these switches and point all towards wall...
Go to CallmeNezo {链接已删除}♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.com's guide and thank him, I know I will!

SKELETON GUARDED BLOCK PUZZLE, Southeast Darkwood.
Dismiss your pet, then enter the block zone. Recall your pet, kill the skeleton, and start moving blocks. You need to situate the blocks so the fireball REACHES the plasma barrier.
My blocks situated after solving.
Under Erdal, guy who wants you to mix things together.
SEARING DESERT
Light all the candles to spawn skeleton warlock.
TREASURE MAPS Part 1-8
Don't even bother collecting these.
After going through all the trouble to find all 8 treasure maps. It lead me to "treasure x".
TOO BAD I ALREADY FOUND IT.
I was so disappointed!
Thanks to eduardouchoa for helping me find some of the maps!
WINE

After a while, 2nd playthrough, I WOULD select "slower hunger/thirst" in the beginning of the game as I sold everything I'm not using and had a lot of money to buy anything I needed. In fact, I had 10,000 thaler at the end of level 4.
When several larvae appear out of a dirt pile on you, concentrate on the one that is FACING you to defeat all of them.

Battle: Sometimes an enemy will multiply into several enemies, make sure you concentrate on the ORIGINAL enemy to defeat all of them.
Avoiding all golems in darkwood until I'm powerful enough to kill them easily.

I always send my pet into battle before me, that way I have time to use things like the broach of negligence, or grandpa's lucky trinket. works even better in the quickslot bar.

Don't sell any snake fangs, or ancient linen for quest reasons.


What's up with the Old Shrines?
Depending on the shrine or maybe just random, but the shrines don't give out the same powers for the same amount of thaler every time. I suggest waiting until you get atleast 10,000 thaler, then go up to a shrine (save game of course) and spend away until it is exhausted. Then you can decipher from there. (secret...try again). Upgrades for me have been wisdom/Intelligence and mana even though I'm a warrior. And that was after spending thousands of thaler.
Bless those Blessings: Choosing to get Blessed by the divine beings or by another character such as Father Hein in Kyler's village builds up your health bar, for a price. Note that there are only a maximum of 2 upgrades for each type of blessing.

Blessing #1 and 2 for 1000 thaler adds 20 to your health bar.
Blessing #1 and 2 for 200 thaler adds 15 to health bar.
Blessing #1 and 2 for 100 thaler adds 7.
Blessing #1 and 2 for 50 thaler grant only 3 to the health bar.
Total Blessing Price = $2700 thaler.
Total Health granted = 90. Sheesh, hope you have money to burn!

Removing Debuffs: One time something made me soil my drawers and I had to remove something. But good thing I knew the shortest route to father hein to save me.

Woman in black: Maybe search discussions for this one, still don't know what is going on with her...
Note #19: Clean out all of Darkwood before you talk to the Necromancers, then enter Balrum at a high level 6.

Each description will be very brief, mentioning only the most important or obvious info.
NORTHWEST DARKWOOD:

NORTHEAST DARKWOOD:
The leader of the pack is in this cave, I think you get one LP for defeating.
Here's a shot of him.
SOUTHEAST DARKWOOD:
This cave is wierd and has loot.
Enter the cave but don't get too close to the bloody hanging dieing guy.
Take a close look at the map, there is a secret door in north wall, go through, get loot, go around to chest as well.
When you come back inside approach the bloody hanging dieing guy slowly, for some reason he thanks you and disappears leaving loot behind.
Sir_Baron says SE darkwood in the sw corner to put 10 wood in...
SOUTHWEST DARKWOOD:
Defeat the black widow for 1 LP.

NORTHEAST BALRUM:
Enter the poisonous gas cave and immediately go south (left+down). You will run into a chest, quickly open and loot all (e) then take a good health potion. Run back to the doorway taking another potion en route, then exit cave and enjoy the Mantis Armour, Steel Dagger and other loot.



SEARING DESERT: (there is no map for the deserts)
Go North for atleast one full screen length. Then make a beeline west (going through any enemies) until you see a palm tree or two, this dungeon is guarded by butterflies and beetles ect.
After that, scan the rest of the searing desert in a zig zag motion, being sure to cover the entire map. You will run into the scarab (beetle) cave ect. And you meet buddy for snake island transport.

The far NE corner of the searing desert you will be able to continue on to one more searing desert map that includes more level 9-11 enemies and of course Lug Lug to up your exp. points.
Hope you enjoyed this guide and please rate it! cheers!