Mercenary Selection
Make sure your intended merc lay out fits your play style. By level 50(Atlantica powerleveling) you will have a full group, you plus 8 merc's. You are pretty much stuck with using normal merc's until you get higher in level. (Viking at 20, Monk 30, Beast Trainer 44, etc etc). Some things to consider when planning your group. Shamans Heal.
All Mercs get their first upgrade at level 20 their Heal goes from being single target to Line Heal. Meaning It will heal all the people on that line (Right and Left not Up and Down). Monks are in a sense your Support Buffer. They can't heal, but they can remove nasty things like Stun, Poison, DoT's. They also get a nice spell called Protection. That automatically goes off at the start of your turn each round as long as he is alive and has mana. It heals your Hero and buffs his defense. Also it doesn't matter which row your Monk and Hero are in. It will hit him regardless. The merc's you get later on are more defined and suited to specific task (Lady Knight, Princess, Prophet, Oracle, etc).
Skill Raising(Atlantica gold)
As tempting as it may be to try to teach your Hero and Merc's every skill available to them. (Some skills are Hero only) It's not a really good idea for two reasons. 1) Mana. In the cast of the Monks protection spell. That is auto cast at the start of your turn. The higher in level it is the more mana it eats. Meaning you'll be sitting alot or chugging alot of MP potions. 2) Deluded Characters. You get 1 skill point per level.
Teaching and raising skills causes them all to be rather weak. As you are spreading points between skills instead of focusing it into one. So where as my Swordsman lvl 40 Flame Sword is doing 480 dmg. Your Swordsman lvl 28 Flame Sword is doing 200 dmg. Because you dumped the rest of your points into DarkSeed and Guard Dispel. Stay Focused, and plan ahead. The books to remove skills points are EXPENSIVE, and they only remove one point at time.
Getting Around
Make sure you stop in every town you run across. You only need to enter a town/area/dungeon floor once to get it's map info. If you get an NPC telling you to kill mobs on the first floor of a dungeon. Before you go running back to him when its done. Take the time to hit the other area's of that dungeon. That way when he does send you back instead of running you can just teleport to the start of that floor of the dungeon. This is very important for towns as well. As you'll be covering alot of ground as you level later on.
