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Building a Powerful Bishop

Race

Race determines starting attributes, resistances, and special racial abilities. Your choice for race should be based on your party size and personal needs. While all races have their advantages, I am only going to focus on two for the bishop, Faeries and Elves. The primary choice for a Bishop is a Faerie, with their increased mana regeneration and high resistances. They are an excellent choice if your bishop is the only caster in your party. Another good choice is an Elf. They have higher starting Strength and Vitality than a Faerie, as well as a larger carrying capacity. Elves are a good choice for smaller parties. The slightly higher hit points and greater carrying capacity can really help out when theres only three members of your party.

Starting Attributes

The most important attributes for a Bishop are Piety, Intelligence, Speed, Vitality. Maxing Piety and Intelligence first will give you a large mana pool, Speed next for initiative in combat, and finalyl Vitality for hitpoints. You could go Strength in place of Vitality, depending your current needs. Senses really isn't necessary unless you plan on switching to a Sense-needing class post 18.

Building the Bishop

The following section was taken from the Spoiler Board a few months ago. The author is unknown, but it is an easy to follow step-by-step guide to developing your bishop.

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Start a new party with a Bishop. (I started with a Ninja, Samurai, Bard, Ranger, Gadgeteer and Bishop) Pump Int and Pie/Spd, then distribute skill points as follows: +5 Alchemy, +5 Psionic, divide remaining 5 points between Earth and Mental. Pick starting spell Charm (Psionic/Mental) and Itching Skin (Alchemy/Earth). Practise Itching Skin whenever possible, Charm will be used soon.

At level 2, switch Bishop->Mage to get the extra skill points. Pump skill points: +3 Earth, +3 Mental, +3 Wizardry. If for some reason your Wizardry will exceed Alchemy, then put the remaining 3 points elsewhere (note: this is unlikely to happen since you won't have any starting Wizardry spells). For spell picks, choose those in the Earth/Mental realms. If there are no good spell to pick, then save the spell picks for later. At level 3, switch Mage->Bishop and pump: +3 Alchemy, +3 Psionic, divide remaining 3 points between Earth and Mental. Pick spells from Alchemy/Psionic schools or save spell picks. If Insanity can be learnt, pick it!

Basically what we have been doing so far is to increase the Alchemy and Psionic skills of the Bishop. Until now, the Bishop may not contribute much to combat and may have to be heavily protected by the other party members. Be patient, for we are preparing the Bishop to "achieve great things"...

By now, the party should have encountered Burz, the first RPC. Have the Bishop cast Charm on Burz, then rest, and cast Charm again, rest again, ad infinitum. Just Charm->Rest->Charm->Rest->... regardless of whether the Bishop succeeds or fails. After an hour, the Bishop will end up with an insanely amount of Psionic and Mental skill points! My Bishop easily had more than 75 points each! You can max out the Bishop if you wish. Basically with a 90+ Psionic and Mental, the Bishop can learn any level 7 Psionic spells once his/her level allows it! One school of magic done!

The next aim is to get to Arnika asap. The Bishop can now cast a powerful Insanity spell which will help greatly along the way. Just watch those insane Higardi Bandits/Rogues kill themselves. The plants may still give the party problems, in which case use the other fighters to take care of them. On the way to Arnika, when the Bishop levels up, continue pumping +3 Alchemy and +3 Earth. The remaining 3 points can be divided between Wizardry and Divinity. When the Bishop is able to learn the Knock-Knock spell, pick that one. If you wish to save spell picks, you can take a chance and see if you can purchase a Knock-Knock spellbook in Arnika from Brafitt or Anna.

Once the party reaches Arnika, the Bishop should be at least level 5 and has learnt the Knock-Knock spell. Go to the 8-tumbler bank vault door (I assume you know the Arnika Jail backdoor to this one). Here, have the Bishop practice Knock, rest, cast Knock, rest, ad infinitum. After some time, the Bishop will end up with godly skill points for Alchemy and Earth magic!! With patience, you can max the Bishop out in these two areas. Just be careful not to open the door accidentally as the bank guards will turn hostile. One way to avoid opening the door is to restain the Bishop to casting power 6 Knock-Knock.

So what do we have here? A Bishop with maxed out Alchemy, Psionic, Earth and Mental magic skills! This means the level 5 Bishop can cast the most powerful Insanity and Whipping Rocks at power 7, has plenty of spell points in Alchemy and Psionic schools, can identify any object the party picks, and has high enough Alchemy to mix any potion/powder under the sky!!

Further development of the Bishop will entail increasing the Wizardry/Divinity/Fire/Air/Water skills, which will be considerably weaker than the maxed out Alchemy/Psionic/Earth/Mental. To do so, pump level up skill points into them and also have the Bishop cast spells specific to these schools/realms. Make sure the spells do not overlap into the maxed out skills (e.g. casting Heal Wounds won't help with Divinity since Alchemy also has this spell, though Divine will still increase). A good set of spells (level 3 and below) to cast is:
Enchanted Blade/Magic Missiles (Wizardry/Divine)
Energy Blast/Fireball (Wizardry/Fire)
Frost/Freeze Flesh (Wizardry/Water)
Missile Shield/Shadow Hound (Wizardry/Air)
Bless/Guardian Angel/Magic Screen (Divinity/Divine)
Holy Water/Rest All (Divinity/Water)
Armorplate is also a good spell to cast to raise Divinity even though Earth is maxed out.

To refine this strategy, while the party is resting in between the spell casts, have the Bishop cast non-combat spells like Enchanted Blade/Magic Screen/Missile Shield/Armorplate/Light and whatever other non-combat spells the Bishop has. Casting them every 24 hour interval (after three 8 hour rests cycles) will enable the Bishop's Wizardry/Divinity/Fire/Air skills to increase. When my party left the bank vault, my Bishop has 30-50 points in each of these skills, with the exception of Water as there isn't a good non-combat buff spell in this area (casting Rest All doesn't seem to increase the Water skill for some reason). Now this is really a kick-ass Bishop in the party! Wow!!!

One point to note: after continuous restings, tons of monsters would be waiting for the party. When my party exited the bank vault, it encountered many red dots of Savant Troopers/Guards/Orbs outside. The good news is with this super-duper Bishop, the party had no troubles eliminating all of them. Indeed as the Samurai put it "they had no fear for the enemy was weak".

So who says a Bishop is difficult to develop?!

Closing notes:

- The analytic minds will notice the strategy focused on Alchemy/Psionic schools, then covered Wizardry/Divinity schools. While it is possible to try to max Wizardry/Divinity first (since Charm is also under Divinity/Mental and Knock-Knock is also under Wizardry/Earth), it will be considerably harder to raise Alchemy/Psionic as there aren't as many Alchemy/Psionic specific non-combat spells to cast. It was relatively easy to raise Wizardry/Divinity with spells like Bless, Missile Shield, etc.

- Take care not to let Wizardry/Divinity exceed Alchemy/Psionic until the latter skills are maxed out. This is due to the engine ignoring the lower skill and increasing the higher one when a spell is common across different schools. For instance, once Wizardry exceeds Alchemy, casting Knock-Knock will only increase Wizardry and Earth, leaving Alchemy far behind.

- Using the Pickpocket route with above will supply the Bishop with plenty of good spellbooks. You can save spell picks for more powerful spells later.
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General Tips

*Depending on your experience, you can get by saving almost all of your spell picks up to the level 5 spells. If you follow the above strategy, you can get to Arnika easily with just Charm, Insanity, and Heal Wounds. Once you hit Arnika, you can buy Knock Knock and almost all of the lower level priest spells. After building Alchemy and Earth Magic, pick Whipping Rocks and you are set. You can buy the rest of the useful low level spells, and when you finally gain access to your level 5/6/7 spells you will have plenty of spell picks saved up for them.