Onwards to the perhaps first ever written miniature help for Blackguards 2, how to get most-ish out of your party of rag-tag evil-doers and backstabbing worthless scum!

We shall begin with ac·knowl·edg·ing (strange word that, dont you think?) few basic facts about our brave heroes; they all have broad roles to play in life.

Zurbaran is the easiest, since he is the only one aside from Cassia who can cast spells, so going without spells on the fellow would be just a downright silly. You can do it, but you'll miss out on... well, spells.

Naurim, with only just few points spent into armor, axes & maces and power blow is the most flexible and can be further tweaked into anything ones mind dearly desires. While keeping in mind that dualwielding axes & maces (more importantly the magic damage dealing great bone club and bone club) is the most damage per round versus anything that actually matters in melee (creators various constructs). And when I say most, think 40-60 damage a whack. Without poison.

With poison it just gets nuts.

Takate himself has some story constraints, a good choise without spoiling too much would be archery. Few missions turn from stupidly hard to actually doable if Takate is specialized in the pew pew. This comes from few things, mainly its the extra range and the skill "guard" for one niche map, but mostly its just the sheer damage output that bow can do against monsters that take six tiles. With a good bow, all the related talents and one belt item, Takate can oneshot any large monster in the game with arrow storm and triple shoot any non-large except the bosses.

Onwards to more specific help!

Like in the first game, Zurbaran is one of the only mages - this opens for him a land of many mystifying spells of pew pew, and the magic related talents.

Out of the magic talents, the ones truly worthy of being picked is Astral Regeneration, Increased Astral Amount and the eventual Mastery which drops all casting costs by 2.

Range is hardly ever an issue, and you can get a robe set which helps with it enough. Speaking of which, its the first robe set you can buy from the camps merchant, and its tied with the best robe in the game in my humble opinion - well worth the few gold it'll cost.

Out of other talents and skills, body control and willpower are useless due to one very handy spell, but you really should put one rank into warcraft, that +1 speed from it is frikken awesome. Armored casting, armor talents and other "tankmage" stuff hardly matters at all, since Shadow Cloning makes you invulnerable to all the things armor would help against.

Choosing a weapon skill for Zubby boyo is non-issue, since his spells will always be more useful.

And the mages +10% resistance to all is iffy at best, theres nothing wrong with it as a talent but theres just better choises. Like more spells.

Speaking of spells... ALL THE SPELLS!

A semi good order of decent spells follows, and the rank they work the best.

Frenzy! Best. Spell. Ingame. Rank 1 is all you need (makes bosses go herpaderp and big monsters go mulch their friends) and it costs an total of 150 ap! Flipping A! If you're crazy enough you can go for the aoe version of Frenzy, but... you just wont need it.

Maxed out Cold Freeze Spell of Pantschillin', easily the best spell of the lot that can end whole fights solo in 2 turns. Yeah, its that powerful, rank 4 of it does 9 points of damage to -all the enemies currently on field-! Even those annoying archers hiding on the other side of the map are completely at your mercy. Whats even better, the damage isnt resisted by anyone infact it is increased against insectoids. And if all this wasnt enough - it also gives the most handiest of debuffs! Speed, initiative and defense? Oh my!

Shadow Cloning Factory - aka the spell that makes the game one difficulty level easier. You can make a shadow double of yourself to run to the long distance lever and kick it. You can use rank 4 shadow double to turn yourself immortal. And if for some godforsaken reason you've taken melee/ranged skills, I guess the shadow double can also attack. If all these are not enough reasons for you, I just... I dont know what you're expecting out of magic! It wont do better than this, for utility. Everyone who can should be able to shadow clone themselves!

Lightning Speed! Of Speediness! Oh boy oh boy oh boy, isnt this ever the spell to be giddy about - it breaks the action economy! At rank 4, you can give one guy extra action per turn. For four turns. A vital part to the "win the map in 2 rounds" strategy. And rank 3 gives the whole frikken squad all that juicy extra speed to outmanouver enemies and go flip the annoying switches faster! Sweeetness.

Hawkeye Markmanship. Pound for pound the best damage to mana spell, nothing wins it. Since you can slap it on your partys hero archer (if you have one! you should, too) and it lasts a millenia and archers get multishot skills... yep. Unholy god of death and destruction from half the map.

Firebolt - what it does it does well. Singletarget and multitarget damage, and while many enemies in the game heavily resist fire, a rank 3-4 firebolt is usually overkill for the annoying tree creatures. Since the only question is proper positioning, I've usually found that both fireball and rank 4 firebolt hit the same amount of enemies. Granted, fireball is easier to aim, but Zubby starts with rank 1 firebolt so I'd suggest to max it out instead.. (And rank 4 firebolt hits 3 beams on a large monster, meaning 80~ damage. Yeeeep.)

Cure wounds! Yes, that boring spell Balm of Life which only gives you back vitality. Only. Turns out, its your only way of cost efficiently finishing missions, since potions take frikken ages to use in a turn based game system and cost an arm and a leg to rely as mainhealing. They're good for pinch, and you get more than enough for free through the story from finishing missions well. Whats more important with Balm is, rank 3 removes wounds in-battle. The only way. And oh boy, do wounds suck. They suck so hard. Oh so very hard. I didnt find much use out of rank 4 of Balm since healing was/is much more whack a mole than "oh I am about to be so hurt soon!" thing. But for whats it worth, rank 4 is the very best at what it does. And only one fellow really needs to be a healer to keep the whole party up.

Lightning find you! Or in other news, its a trap! Lightning find you is on this list just because Zubaran starts with 1 rank in it, which may get some people like me want to max it out of sentimentality. In truth, even the AOE version of it isnt good enough when one Cold Frost Chilly McPantchillin spell gives better benefits AND does more damage. Killing people is better than debuffing them!

Clarum Purum - yes! Poisons are back, and enemies do love to use them on your guys. Many of the poisons do so little damage that its better to heal it than remove the poison itself, but the best part of the spell is the poison immunity. Handy thing, but not essential. In the same category I'd lump the Double Vision, Standfast Catlike and the damage resistances increasing spell all, stuff that'll make your life easier, but you're better off usually spending your mana killing enemies dead. I'd say pick one of the buffing spells and stick with it. And last but not least, Witches Spit and Witches Bile. If you find yourself with few thousand extra ap, and nowhere to spend them consider these two. Witches spit can keep your endurance starved archer/melee up and running without downtime, and Witches Bile on a boss can get you over the ORKO treshhold of killing them before they have time to heal. Not essential, but help make the game easier. Witches Spit might be the second best buffing spell, too - since it helps keep your physical guys doing damage.

Wrath of the Elements and other damage/buff/debuff spells - these are not good enough to be mentioned, they're all too specific or niche to be of wide use, 2 ranks of wrath of elements is good for single/multitarget aoe knockdown but the chances of it working in the endgame is zilch to super none. Stupid fun spell for half the game tho!

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Things You Should Buy Him! (That you wont find as loot)

You get enough Staves with astral regeneration so buying them isnt really necessary, and if you do for some reason want to buy one (Cassia is mage, for example) only get a +2 regen one since others are mostly downgrades even for two mages.

For armor, my Zubby rocked the (Robe) set the whole game since extra range, cheaper spells and astral regen is just a winning combination, it only costed a few gold from the camp merchant too.

A 2 slot belt is enough to wear his best belt items, the +2 astral regeneration and +10 astral amount both costing 6 gold a piece from the shops in the towns. Very worth it. And when you have money to buy the 4 slot belts for all, slap the last one on Zub, he needs it the least. Good belt consumables is the astral regen potion (find em plenty as loot, use one each boss battle) and astral points pots.

The Dwarf Of Our Dreams!

Naurim is my spirit animal, he is a quitter who just cant stop quitting (you). Best parts of Blackguards games is when you get the dwarf cry. It should be an achievement!

Anyhow, since he is pretty much a clean slate (dont get fooled by the 53 points in axe proficiency, just pick a fighting style you'll like more!) you can go any way and be efficient. If you go dualwielding, you'll have few thousand extra ap too since with dualwield the rest of the manouvers are nonissue/just wont do enough damage and you can focus on extra talents/weapon skill instead.

And with the way damage boosts add up, and since theres no penalty to damage for the offhand - two handed weapons quickly lose in damage potential to dualwielding. Against bosses and chimera the double bone club smack usually ends the fight.

Similar to archery, endgame two handed weapons can usually do wounds on hit without crits, but since fights are usually one hit to kill away when melee phase comes the wounding is non-issue. Archery or crossbowery could be a fun way to spend time too, and Naurim has enough AP to cover one melee skill/dualwielding, and then either armor/survivability skills or archery/mastery perks or manouvers/second weapon skill.

Speaking of armor/survivability skills, I played two thirds without them and regretted the last third with them. There is no need to tank in the traditional sense anymore, since most/all maps have disposable hencemen you can send wave after wave of men at the enemy instead and with your hero dwarf focus on killyness. His base hp is large enough to survive a scuffle easily enough, and light armors have the best damage increasing clothes (Sly Foxes Garments). Shield, in itself is not bad but using one means you gotta use Hammer Blow for damage, and thats 2/3rd of dualwield damage for double the endurance cost. A bad trade!

The only "must have" I'd go for with Naurim is endurance regeneration, maxing it should be semi-top priority when you find out him running out of endurance regularly. Or just give your mage Witches Spit and ignore endurance regen - either works.

Maxing out Body Control, Willpower and Warfare should be a thing (Perception too if archery) just so he can stay upright/unwounded and gets the all important free action weapon switch. Getting 40% more gold per fight isnt bad, either.

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Things You Should Buy Him! (That you wont find as loot)

First purchase should be a leather cap - you get the rest of the leather set quickly and its the cheapest and quickest way to get a set bonus going. Or alternatively gambeson gloves, either works. And this should be your armor all the way until you pick and choose for him an endgame armor - good sets which you need to only buy a few pieces of depend on your preferred role for the dwarfy, but buying boots and storm cap gets you the light plate set (second best armor) or just unlock all of Thaleas shop upgrades and buy the last heavy armor in her inventory (can wear either heavy chain helmet or pot helmet with it) - all in all the physical classes are the ones you gotta spend money on, to get them decent armor/weapons and trinkets. Oh, and dont forget trinkets, you only find 4 naturally through the game the rest you gotta buy, should really buy all trinkets since they're all useful. And a 4 slot belt, thats gotta be bought too.

However, if you're going for damage just get the Sly Fox Garments set, for it you'll only need to buy the silent paws gloves and the set lasts you the whole game. Saves some ap on not needing to get armor skills.

For archery, the best bow arguably is Snipers Bow and thats store-only. Longest range and wounds on hit.

If you're going for axes/hammers proficiency, just remember that Fire damage dealing weapons are a trap. Many enemies -heavily- resist them.

Ah yes, the enigmatic forest man!

Well, theres no enigma there. The guy is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy with a demigod complex. You know, like all good heroes!

There are two ways to go with Takate, if you're going for the bad ending then any specialization is good and you can even make him a heavy armor daggereer, but if you're going for the -good- ending holy ♥♥♥♥ is archery useful! And that means all the archery skills, guard and the archery mastery - and sort of damage and/or critical increasing trinkets or armor.

Most of the same things that I said about Naurim can be applied to Takate, he is just saddled with Feint and some extra armor proficiency - almost a clean slate!

All in all its hard to much up Takate, the guy ends up a rockstar if you go archery, and if you go melee he can kill -atleast- one enemy per turn. Unholy hybrid of both would be my preference, with Warcraft 4 to quickswitch weapons depending on need.

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Things You Should Buy Him! (That you wont find as loot)

Arrows. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of arrows. All the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ arrows!

Oh yes, the girl who gets the most AP!

She can, literally, go any way.

But the best way? Now now - thats tricksy.

There are things for her that are no brainers - like rank 4 shadow cloning and rank 1 frenzy - good things to have in -any- case since they just give so much utility.

And then theres the 2 turn strategy, which involves both Zubby and Cassia casting 2 Cold Shocks back to back both, clearing the whole map. For that you need 60 base astral energy on both and Cold Shock at rank 4 on both. Its the "I-win-button", and most likely the reason why enemy reinforcements come staggeredly. But if you just wait out all the reinforcements to have came out and -then- pop em, you can do it in one turn by hasting both Zubby and Cassia and then doing 4 Cold Shocks in one round. Boom.

Drop the mic. Drop the bass. Hammer the hammertime.

Things You Should Buy Her! (That you wont find as loot)

Trinkets! Weapons! Her basic armor is actually rather decent, and has the vitality regen too. I'd switch out of it only if I'd make her fulltime mage, and then I'd use the Elementalist/Yellow Kings robes, since you dont need to buy the pieces and they give astral regen!

Do damage, use mercenaries and friends as disposable meatshield. Dont worry theres no permadeath, knocked out guys come back to the next fight squeaky clean!

And mercenaries are super disposable.

And last but most important, how to get the good end since its a bit tricky!

Use the last boss on Marwan via kiting - the boss is berserk so either berserk Marwan to it or make sure they meet otherwise!