Tips for a starting player

[chacolil]

Id like to ask some tips in regards to a few of the topics Ill list. Im a complete beginner in this game and Ive noticed theres very little information or guides about it around the internet:
1- Should I be worried about leaving animal corpses/plants/quests undone in places I leave due to feeling Im not leveled up enough for them? Is there a point of no return so to speak at some point?
2-Should I make a party member that is completely oriented towards gathering plants/animals or can I safely make for example Fayris my gatherer as well as make her a decent ranger?
3-At character creation, Im able to pick a few advantages/disadvantages for my char; will I be able to pick them up at later levels, or can they only be strictly picked at character creation?
4-Lastly, about how much encumbrance and armor ratio should a warrior dps have?
Ill appreciate your opinions and guidance.

[Hindro_]

At some point you might have more party members than space in your party. So if your heros are to specialized, you might miss some ability in your current group.
The Advantages and Disadvantages stay forever.
In DSA it's all about armour and mobility. A warrior should have maximum armor, that will often make him the "last hero standing" .
Often you can leave and try to finish the quest when you leveled up.

[Oneeyed]

1.
- Animal corpses: If you like smithing/bowyering than always use your animal lore skill on animal corpses because it's the way to get leather stripes which are limited and you use it for a lot of things. You can buy a few more but if you wanna craft fire arrows you need every single leather strip you can get.
- Plants: In "The River of Time" they regrow instantely after you leave an area and come back. In the first Drakensang plants are limited and since you cannot go back to certain areas you should gather every single plant you can find.
- Quests: In "The River of Time" most quests can be done later. In the first Drakensang you have to do all the quests in an area or otherwise you'll fail them. Beware not all quests are logged in the journal, especially the mini quests in Nardoreth. And some quests are not always easy to find for a beginner.

2. Advantages/Disadvantages can only be picked during character creation. You can never lose them or pick up a new one.

3. It depends on how able you are of equiping your group. If you are lousy at that and run around with an overall armor of 2 than some of your group members will fall during a fight. But this never happens to me because I make sure all group members have good armor and a balanced encumbrance. I look if a helm which has 2 armor rating has also 0, 0.1, 0.2 or 0.3 encumbrance and use the one with the lowest encumbrance. Because all these 0.2 values on helms, shoes, gloves and so on add up. I like spending time to equip all of my group members and make sure they have the best things I currently can afford.

And btw: there is no dps in this game. The combat is rtwp but the underlying mechanic is a round based mechanic and in a fight normally everyone has 1 attack per combat round and 1 parry (if you use shields you have 2 parries)

Originally posted by chacolil:

Id like to ask some tips in regards to a few of the topics Ill list. Im a complete beginner in this game and Ive noticed theres very little information or guides about it around the internet:
1- Should I be worried about leaving animal corpses/plants/quests undone in places I leave due to feeling Im not leveled up enough for them? Is there a point of no return so to speak at some point?
2-Should I make a party member that is completely oriented towards gathering plants/animals or can I safely make for example Fayris my gatherer as well as make her a decent ranger?
3-At character creation, Im able to pick a few advantages/disadvantages for my char; will I be able to pick them up at later levels, or can they only be strictly picked at character creation?
4-Lastly, about how much encumbrance and armor ratio should a warrior dps have?
Ill appreciate your opinions and guidance.

[chacolil]

thank you both for your input, its really helpful.