A pure-melee berserker is neigh-impossible. If you want to melee, and forego ranged damage spells, there's still ways to get by though.
What you need, is Malediction. It lowers enemy resists.
Malediction is awesome.
Repeat, Malediction is awesome.
Add some Dark Gift, Fire Halo, and Cloak of Winter and you will deal a whole lot of different damage types at once, which will really help as a lot of monsters have immunities to one or a few damage types.
And then there's items. Do not underestimate equipment. I once found an axe that did a whopping 144-380 damage per hit.
The game advises to have about 7-8 spells max. I would like to disagree. I'd say, have 8-10 spells which you level up. Apart from that, you can take as many spell upgrades, and spell incantations of any spell you like, as long as you do not increase their spell level (too much). Only spell level influences drop rate. The number of incantations, the regeneration rate or the incantation capacity do not influence drop rates at all. (Higher spell levels increase the chance an upgrade for that spell will be randomly generated on a dungeon level)
That said, some must haves for any character:
- Healing Water. Cures most status effects. Status cure works at level 1. HP cure sucks, unless spell is really high level. I tend not to level it, but take all regen and incantation storage that I can find.
- Remedy, level 7 or higher. Cures disease. Some diseases are *really* nasty. Do not let it regenerate unless it's base level is 7+. A level 1 Remedy will cast as a level 7 when empowered.
- either Evaporate wall, Fireball, Teleport, Great Hail, or Summon Elemental Servant: Earth, to be able to destroy walls. No need to level those. There's also a talent that enables the destruction of walls with the Raise Wall spell.
- Call Familiar. Everyone wants a Familiar. Try not to get regeneration in this one, but do level it. Note that you can feed your familiar powerups. Also note, that spell levels in a spell that your Familiar has learned do not affect drop rates. Hint: set it's behaviour to defensive, unless the RNG gives you a really tough Familiar.
- Malediction. Just get it, and level it.
- Dispel Magic. Life-saver.
And then, some highly recommended spells:
- Some kind of summon. Meat. Shield.
- Mind Decay. One of the best single target homing projectile spells there is. Can only be negated by Dispel Magic.
- Vaporize. One of the best single target direct damage spells (that can be cast through walls).
- Bless. Because you need those resistances.
- Wind Walking. Because flying is cool. A lot of spells can't hit you, and lava/water/poisoned water won't hurt you when you fly. You could ofcourse also just start the game with one of the flying races. In that case skip this spell.
- Arcane Sanctum. Prevents a lot of status effects, including confusion. Works at spell level 1. Or, you could start a character that worships Tydei, the Godess of Anagrams, and get confusion immunity that way.
Some final hints:
- Shift+H enables the ingame wiki. After that, press P to unblock the spoilers.
- Shift+F7 is your friend. It casts any selected beneficial spell on all your allies in range, or any selected malignant spell on all enemies in range. Spell cooldown can get extremely long though, if a lot of incantations are cast at once.
- Use F5 in your spell screen to set a spell to be autocast on yourself when you enter a level (you can select more than one)
- Use F6,7,8 when in your spell screen to turn off persistancy casting for specific spells
- there are some really nice talents. You can also wish for them.