Your party should have at least two melee "tanks" with 18+ strength. The rest of your party needs to be equipped with ranged weapons. During battles, the enemy will mostly focus on killing the strong "tanks" that rush out in front, and the rest will pelt the enemy from a safe distance with arrows, bullets, bolts, and so on.

When fighting parties of humans, target their spell casters first to interrupt their spells. Make sure you have a mage and cast charm person a lot.

Do not make noob mistakes like sending mages and other classes with poor armor class in melee combat.

That's good enough for a start.

Im not sure i agree with the 6 ranged thing.. sure i always have a ranged weapon on all toons, but more just to keep characters from charging into battle vrs doing damage..

Id rather wait the whole 4 seconds to let um move into range and then get 4x the damage vrs using arrows or bolts.

hiding a rogue and moving to backstab is Far better than firing off arrows.. many times can drop a NPC in one shot, your definalty not doing that with arrows, even magic ones

I would recommend checking out Dsimpson's
Baldur's Gate & The Tales of the Sword Coast FAQ/Walkthrough
It has a great section on creating your first character.

I've always found that two tanks doing melee is better than everyone having ranged attacks only. Maybe this is because it's fun to actually use the many melee weapons available to you in the game. ;) There are so many ways to cheese combat, anyways. It's best to learn these on your own. Also, 18+ strength is good because you're going to tear through enemies like wet paper napkins!

Strength can be boosted with potions or the level 2 mage spell.

Thanks! I'm a BG/D&D noob as well and found that section very helpful and easy to understand.

Glad to help!

Thanks for all the help. I had another question though: I've got Minsc in my party and boo is equipped as one of his quick items. It's not appearing on the ingame interface though. I had this problem with my main character where one of his weapons wasn't appearing ingame but I fixed it by removing the weapon from the slot and putting back in. Can't do this with Boo though. Any suggestions?

Boo will only ever appear on the 'inventory' screen, I believe; there's no way to see or use him on the main screen. I love that he's there (go for the eyes, Boo!), but from a gameplay perspective, all he does is take up a quickslot.

Oh really? I could have sworn I used him at some point. Weird.

Well, you can click on Boo, and he makes a "squeak" sound. Maybe it is BG2 only (I know Boo squeaks in TuTu, at any rate), but it is hilarious. I sometimes just click boo over and over and get a "squeaksqueaksqueaksqueaksqueaksqueak" thing going on. Maybe I am just really easily amused, but it makes me chuckle every time.

Ooh, found a link for it!
http://www.minscandboo.com/GAM_48.WAV

In the mod Unfinished Business there is a quest involving Boo and Minsc. The mod only works for BG 2.

Here are a few very important tips:

1) PAUSE IS YOUR FRIEND. You'd be amazed at how much of a difference pause can make.

2) SAVE EARLY, SAVE OFTEN. This is so standard that it should be automatic. Save at the beginning of every area. Save just before leaving every area. Save before talking to anyone. Save after gaining somethng valuable (e.g. an item or ally). Save before turning in a quest. Basically, save at any point you don't feel like having to re-do everything because you screwed it all up. I usually make the first/top save slot a temporary slot called "Battle/Temp" and use it like an extra Quick-Save slot. It saves time from having to scroll through all the saves to undo the fight or conversation I just had.

3) COMB THE MAPS WITH YOUR CURSOR. This isn't actually a requirement, but it will net you a lot of sidequests and hidden goodies you would otherwise miss. Also, it's nice to have the entire map uncovered so that you can find new areas.

4) READY MISSILES. Every character should have some sort of ranged weapon as an alternate. Just in case....

5) SHOP 'TIL YOU DROP. You will eventually learn which items are worth more (e.g. armor), and which items you want to have on your person (e.g. magic rings). Spells for mages are always nice. Purple potions (cure + heal) are fantastic. Save your money to buy magical armor, first, then magical weapons, second. Try to sell every bit of loot you can possible carry because you will end up wanting every last gold piece. You should probably save before using the merchant. (See Tip #2.)


Hope that helps. )


-Khalaq

Thanks for all your help :)