There are a number of viable alternatives for assembling successful parties. But the mix of classes you choose for your characters will have far-reaching consequences, and so if you are a beginner, it is recommended that you have at least one of each of the four basic character classes (knight, rogue, wizard, sorcerer) and at least three spellcasters total. Order the party such that the fighter characters are first and the spell casters last, since only the first three characters will be able to engage in direct physical combat.

Poison. Before you learn the magic to do so, poison can only be cured in the clinic in town. While a character is poisoned, he will gradually lose hit points (the rate at which the poison damages the body is determined by the character's poison resistance, so watch out if a character with low poison resistance gets poisoned), and if you are lost in the labyrinth or far from town, you may not be able to get back in time. For this reason, it is advised that you not stray far from town until your characters have sufficient hit points (or your spellcasters have sufficient healing magic) that you can make it back to town before poison can kill somebody.

Don't get lost. Keep excursions short and head back to town if you are wounded and/or low on spell points. Use healing spells when they're called for.

Getting lost is actually only a problem for a short time at the beginning of the game, when your characters have not learned good navigation spells. Bear with the game until your characters gain a couple levels. Until then, always cast CANDLE, to provide an overhead view in addition to the 3D view.

As soon as you learn the COMPASS spell, the best way to navigate is to do all of the following: (1) Always cast COMPASS and the best light spell you know as soon as you leave town; (2) use the North/East/South/West buttons and ignore the Forward/Turn buttons; (3) use the overhead view and ignore the 3D view.

Navigation becomes surprisingly easier if you follow all those directions.

A note about using COMPASS in conjunction with the overhead view: If you use the Forward/Turn controls, the overhead view will be oriented such that "up" is the direction you are facing. But if you use the North/East/South/West controls, the overhead view will be locked into a north-up orientation. That way you always have a good general sense of where things are, because you're not getting turned around all the time.

Boost agility.

Have all your spellcasters learned all the spells they can? If not, advance until they do. Otherwise, you probably need to retrain your characters for other classes, thereby expanding the number of characters that know magic spells. By changing classes, you can build up characters with powerful combinations of abilities, such as spellcasting knights and rogues, and you can also get characters trained as druids or assassins, which are special advanced classes not available to new characters. Although retraining your characters seems like a giant step back (because your experience level reverts to zero and your stats revert to their original values), it's actually not; after you change classes, you'll still be fighting deep monsters worth lots of experience, so it's not uncommon to jump four or five levels at a time until your characters are built back up again.

If you have a character that knows the RESURRECT spell, just resurrect that one character and have him take care of the others. If you don't have any characters that know that spell, but you do have enough cash to resurrect some of your characters, you might try resurrecting the characters most critical in combat and adventuring with just those, until you've raised the money you need to resurrect the remaining characters. Be very careful if you pursue this plan, however, because the last thing you want when you only have a partial penniless party is for them to get killed again.

If you don't have enough to resurrect anybody, or you don't like the idea of adventuring with a partial party, another idea is to start selling off equipment you have collected, starting with the least necessary and most expensive. If selling off equipment still isn't sufficient, you could be in trouble. The lesson learned too late is to be really careful about taking risks when you're short on cash.

When all else fails, the thing to do is to create new characters (jumping back to Perinn first, if you aren't already there) and adventuring with them long enough to collect the needed cash. If the dead characters are in another town, that means you'll have to advance this new party of characters enough to make it to that other town. By the time you get there, you'll be able to take the best characters and equipment between the two parties and use that as your main party, while still keeping the other characters around as a backup, should a second rescue be required later.