A significant consideration for me is how quickly you can unlock the AOE version of the different attack types. Most of the best AOEs require either advanced magic or advanced melee. Earth is a nice exception to that with Overgrowth only requiring Druid (for the races that qualify) and Earth Shatter being easily unlocked by Ranger for anyone who can't be a Druid (Druid is superior IMO). Most of the other good AOEs require a lot more work to get. So late game they might be nice, but early game you're probably getting either Overgrowth or Earth Shatter unless you plan on only doing the goblin cave and bandit cave for an extended period of time.
Overgrowth and Earth Shatter can reliably take out almost everything in the Goblin cave, the Bandit cave, the Bandit fort, the grove, and the crypt with the few resistant enemies all being easily taken out by either fire or mind attacks. The jungle is the first place that doesn't work because of the centipedes.
Also the bandit fort seems to be the most reliable way to acquire and upgrade high quality slaves. At the beginning of the game almost all of the slaves available in the slave market or the guilds have terrible growth. You can get slaves with great growth from the bandit fort, but it's random so unless you get lucky you'll have to clear it a lot to get a reasonable number of them, but the supply of slaves with excellent in 1 or more stats to use for upgrading is pretty reliable.
Either I wasn't very clear, or you didn't understand what I was trying to say.
You can get slaves from anywhere- and the ones from later dungeons have better odds of being higher quality. You can also get valuable materials that can't be easily gotten any other way.
That being said, You get a lot more "rolls" going after bandits, which is nice but once you have one slave max'd out, there really isn't a reason to run bandits any more.
Pretty much every light attack (for melee) can be unlocked through classes, negating the need for skill points. That being said, earth shatter is my first skillpoint purchase- because early game stuff is mostly weak to earth (Goblins are mostly weak to fire, but their HP is so low it hardly matters)
I do use casters but- simple truth is that, 95 out of 100 fights, my three melee characters will have killed the entire enemy party before the enemy, or my casters even get to move. A spear wielding Valkyrie (with no other classes) gets +15 speed. If you pick up phys boosting classes, your speed rating will only grow. There are no magic classes that buff speed, so unless you are picking up rogue or archer classes on the side (which is pretty inefficient, especially now with classes being limited) then your caster will be left in the dust by mid game.
Plus the bandit fort has wood and stone, the two materials required the most for early upgrading (even if buying them from the market is probably better)
If you bother to kit your slaves and use your skills, you can easily get hundreds+ units of stone per slave per day just from straight mining. There really isn't a reason to grind dungeons for it, travel time and cost alone make it less efficient for low tier materials.
