Been without internet aside from my phone for the last week or so, been playing Elona+ (Custom, actually) and actually getting into it this time. Made a golem warmage and actually stuck it out long enough to get a gold bell pet (OP as fuck, gave him my Shield Tonfa as a ranged weapon, he can kill trash for me before I even see it, and tanks stupid amounts of damage, shame they have like no equipment slots or skills) and join the mage guild for infinite usage of basic stuff like magic arrow and sense object.
Some thoughts:
Magic is really really OP in Elona+. Aside from being quite easy to level up enough to be viable for killing shit, it ignores both DV and PV, so basically nothing is going to beat you in a damage race from full hp/mp unless it severely outclasses you. But best of all, it's a huge source of xp. I probably got like 95% of my xp or more from spells. Spending 3 pp for a training session when all my basic attack spells have gotten to 400% growth rate nets me a quarter million xp. Adds up to a lot of extra hp and mp.
HP is the best stat to have, followed by speed. While speed is definitely great for rapid overland travel and it's obvious uses in combat, due to the way the skill system works, pretty much all your combat skills will scale off your HP. If you've got 40 HP, your evasion will never get anywhere because anything capable of raising your evasion skill past 20 or whatever will just one shot you. If you've got 400 hp, eventually your evasion will kick ass while you're shrugging off those 40 hp attacks. The other issue is that more speed = more having to do shit = paying less attention and dying because you didn't notice you were starving while you attacked 400 times to clear out a room full of bats or whatever.
Golems are the best race for the two reasons above. You might think they make shitty wizards compared to fairies, but immunity to dim saves you vs a billion enemies, and a high hp to mp ratio makes it easier to train magic capacity, which eventually makes hp a better resource for spellcasting than mp anyways, since theres no skill to make mp be spent more efficiently. The low starting stats and potentials don't matter in the long run anyways, since they all go up at the same rate from dreams and herbs, which are the only real sources of stats in the long run.
Museums and shops will pay for themselves eventually, but require a lot of time investment and probably aren't worth doing till you're like level 30+ or something.
Always do dungeons you can easily handle. Dungeons have the second best payouts in the game vs time invested. Gold, plat, medals, spellbooks, and actual decent gear.
Get travel skill ASAP. Will passively level all your shit a considerable amount, and train speed to boot. My golem has gone from 45 to 60 base speed almost entirely from travel and swimming. It's also great for levelling those brand new skills that are too shitty to use effectively and therefore hard to train, like cooking or any of the crafting skills. Once you have travelling, basically all skills are worth getting just because it's more free xp and stat training.
Use speed potions to help catch bells. Much easier to get them to 0 hp on your turn if your speed is boosted. And they're totally worth the effort to obtain.
Dungeon levels seem to scale off of fame or levels or something. I tried doing only level 2-3 dungeons to keep them low and easy to farm but they shot up quite a bit anyways. Once I got strong enough I said fuck it and started doing ones around level ~10 and they haven't really changed at all. Even found a level 1 dungeon recently.
Do the scripted/plot quests. Best return on time invested, lots of easy plat, medals, gold and gear.
Gold is really god damned useful later on. Investing in shops, buying dozens of spellbooks to train literacy, improving equipment at the blacksmith and buying rare equipment off travelling merchants or scrolls off town vendors, all good shit to do. So don't be afraid to invest in things that will make or save you gold, like negotiation, charisma, etc.
Cooking has been mostly a waste of time so far. I'm just now getting past the point where I burn half the food, and the stat gains are really not that good, just skill training keeps all my potentials low anyways.
Haven't bothered with a god yet this time. I recall the benefits are decent, but it's a big time investment too. Probably best to pair with gardening/farming whatever the god wants, which rules out a bunch of them. Kumiromi seems like one of the best ones anyways, since his benefits to farming and stamina growth are irreplacable, unlike most of the other benefits the gods give.
Farms are relatively easy to manage and cheap to start. Would recommend. Gem plants are great for keeping potential up on your pet, which would be way more useful on a pet with more than 1 useful skill like my stupid bell with it's 50 throwing and zilch everything else. Really wish I had got that quickling...
Keeping around sets of gear for literacy and investing has paid off, as those stats are relatively expensive to raise. I also have a set of gear for cooking, which I don't use much because food rots too quickly to make large batches, and I'm not swapping 3 pieces of gear to make like 3 items. A faith set is probably a good idea too, I got one ready for when I start doing the god thing.
Trading is a great source of income early on. I should have started doing it earlier. Wear a full set of glass gear, the travel boots from the yeek quest, and carry some means to reliably escape bandits (tele scrolls should be fine) and you're golden. Later on it's kind of a waste of time since you get a lot of income from arena rankings as well, and trading runs the clock down quickly so you have to do fights more often. But early on, definitely the way to go, make it easy to afford a full set of glass equips with some decent specials like confusion immunity, and then blacksmith it all to at least +3 will keep you tanky for quite a while. It also trains travelling of course, and runs down the clock for sleeping, which is good for not just stats, but treasure dreams and such as well.