Oh wow , i am glad you shared this.
Things are still progressing slowly. feels like my adventuring party does almost ten or fifteen minutes of work a day but they are getting well rested and less expensive, even managing to create a small nest egg for potions and such. onward we go :)

Yeah, I don't put in as many hours as I used to. I find myself putting in about 30 minutes to maybe... on a less hectic daily routine... 2 - 3 hours tops.

When I do play, because Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn is so vast and I've already completed the game twice over... I try to play the game many different ways by starting a new playthrough with a class I've never played with before, or really try to role-play the various schools of magic in the spellbook. For example, I keep 1 save slot for the journal and another save slot for my journey, no spare tire save slot for re-loads. Right now, I'm playing a female Sorceress to lead the party so in my journal save slot, one entry in the spellbook actually reads like this:

Chapter 2:
Day 47, Hour 5 (17 Kythorn, 1369)

Inside the Planar Sphere, I can get past the angry Golem guarding the crates filled with goodies by creating an illusion of a Shadow Door.

I may have to alter the 3 dimensional anatomy of my own left eye and supplement the organ with a zero gravity lotion that will levitate it to survey the 'lay of the land'. I shall call this spell Wizard's Eye.

A simple Haste spell can also alter my scout's movement in double time more quickly.

-------

This technique also serves as a strategy guide for future game sessions.
Oh, and for the first time since launch date... I experienced my first crash in Baldur's gate II: Shadows of Amn.
:)

As others have mentioned. The game is not linear - but it is not forgiving either. I think the jerk's name is Tarnesh. He gives a lot of new players a lot of trouble. Other people mentioned Xzar and Montaron. They help a lot because now you have four people fighting. I imagine it must be a very tough fight with only two.

If you want to be cheesy about it, then you can buy a sling and some bullets for Montaron before you go out. Montaron is mean with a sling.

When I started playing, it was with a Paladin with 18 Charisma. If you are rolling a character with no charisma, then you might do well to let Imoen do the talking. A pack of wolves? At the start of the game it is usually just one wolf. Uh. Did you explore the Temple at Beregost by chance? Ankhegs. As Hickory pointed out. Not linear, but not forgiving. Squishy caster. You seem to like Rangers, so that would be a better choice for you. I made some of my comments up here. I assume you want very minimal spoilers and not much cheese.

1. Ranger is a good choice. I have never really been into rangers. Make sure you have 18 Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, or the racial equivalent. Be patient rolling.

2. Composite Long Bows save lives.

3. You do not have to go toe to toe with a wolf. You can kite it. That means one character is the target and just runs while everybody else shoots. Imoen would do a good job at kiting but she cannot be hit. It comes with practice. If you do not want to kite it, then you need somebody to tank it. Khalid will do a good job.

4. Auto-pause saves lives. Learn to set it. Use it. Love it.

5. A lot of this is surviving to Level 2, and then Level 3. It will get better, once you have a team chosen and equipped.

6. Before 5, a lot of this is just surviving long enough to assemble a team. I have a guess at what this team will be, but that might involve spoilers.

7. It is very much open ended, but there are some parts of the map that do not open until you complete certain parts of the storyline.

8. If you are following the storyline, then when you make it to the Friendly Arm Inn and you will have a full party of 6 and you will have enough money to give them decent starting equipment. They will be hinting very strongly that you should go to a specific place and talk to a specific person.

9. If you do not have enough money and equipment, there are three secret spots where you can get a valuable gem, and a couple of magical rings.

How is your adventure going?

This is a really lovely post. It is nice of you to tackle all of the issues i had in the beginning. That one "pack" of wolves i mentioned above was a pack of 2.

Now my group has finally made it to lvl 4 mostly ( Jahira is lagging but i think it's because she is dual classed?) Anyway i did stumble over a couple of nice objects for cash and found a nice cloak in one of the inns- I say found but you know what i really mean.

My party is six at the moment and i dared into the mines today. Because i found Xan or Zan ( spelling is not easy here) I had no room for him but i am guessing he doesn't fit my party by disposition? not sure but i hate to miss out on a good person so perhaps I need to arrange an accident for Kalid? I may not be a full party soon since some roaming amazonians are lurking outside and willing to massacre us.

Anyway thanks to everyone who has replied, it has helped so much and reading around the forums, i noticed many of you on other threads with common sense answers for all willing to follow simple suggestions, and that really helps.

P.S. I kept the belt on my archer- yes, I can perhaps return it later maybe hehe
P.P.S I am even starting to get pretty familiar with instructing my team while pause to have attacks from the mage and stuff.

I've never taken Xan, but if I recall correctly, he's a mage of some sort, maybe dual classed? Anyway, if you take him, you probably shouldn't trade him for one of your tank/front-liners like Khalid. If you still have Xzar, get rid of him and take Xan. If you have Dynaheir, ignore Xan and keep her.

You want to maintain a balanced party, so most of the time if you're making a trade, it should be getting rid of a worse mage for a better mage, a worse fighter for a better fighter, etc -- unless your current balance isn't working well, in which case you'll want to make a trade that fixes the problem.

Without naming names, some people on this forum are very helpful - especially once they understand exactly what your question is. Those people really love this game and they are helpful because they want other people to enjoy the game as much as they do.

Here is another issue I seem to have run into: If I do a lot of save and reload in a wilderness area, I end up with a double-spawn of a creature. Maybe reloading does some sort of spawn check and spawns creatures right on top of the ones that are already there and you are dealing with twice as many creatures as you should be.

So in the case of the wolves, you were dealing with two wolves when you should have been dealing with one. Level 4 means you have survived and you are getting the hang of it. You are correct about Jaheira. She is lagging by one level because she has dual class. Your party of six is:
You - Ranger, Human or Elven I have not decided.
Imoen
Jaheira
Khalid
Minsc
Dynaheir

:) I do not think this is a spoiler at all, but you do not have to go out that way. Your mission is accomplished and you can go back out the way you came in.

Whether to include Xan or not is your call. Your party is pretty good the way it is, in my opinion. You can assign their roles well. Khalid is a good tank. Good call. Auto-pause is your friend.

Ah, you did post who all is in your party -- sorry, I couldn't find it. Some more details about Xan vs. Dynaheir, which is the choice you're most likely going to be making:

-Xan has better STR and DEX, which means he can deal more damage with weapons, both melee and ranged.
-However, he has very, very low CON, which means he'll have very low hp and go down very quickly. I can't imagine you would ever want to put him in a melee, even though he comes with a cool magic blade of some kind. Dynaheir, conversely, has some of the highest CON you can find for a mage. You wouldn't want to use her for melee either, but her hp will still save her life in many cases.
-More to the point, they are both single-class specialist mages. Xan is an enchanter, meaning that he specializes in spells like charm and hold, and Dynaheir is an invoker, which means she specializes in magic that deals damage. These happen to be opposing schools, meaning that Dynaheir, as an invoker, can't cast charm spells, and Xan, as an enchanter, can't cast damaging spells like fireball and magic missile. In my opinion, this makes Dynaheir a much better mage for BG1 than Xan.

So it's a choice between dealing more damage with missile weapons (Xan) vs. dealing more damage with spells (Dynaheir). Since we're talking about mages, and since the damage from the spells is significantly greater than the damage you'll get from one more person with a ranged weapon, Dynaheir is the obvious choice, in my opinion. However, if you're never planning to take a second mage (I would dual-class Imoen to mage, as most people seem to), then you might want Xan so that you can cast some of the really devastating spells that Dynaheir doesn't have access to.

*I got the info on Xan from Dan Simpson's walkthrough/faq, which is sort of the gold standard for Baldur's Gate answers. I've played using Dynaheir myself.

Dynaheir being an Invoker cannot cast Conjuration spells, either, if I am not mistaken. I thought Invokers had two opposing schools.

Ah, yes, that appears to be true according to the BG1 manual. I played using the BGT mod, and she was able to cast monster summoning spells -- so maybe the BG2 engine was changed to allow it? Or maybe it's just one of those things the manual got wrong?

MINSC!!!!! and BOO!

That is what I consider the most balanced party and is really the party I think they made ideal for the first playthrough for people. I feel like this group allows you to choose whatever class you want to play and it can fit in with the rest of them smoothly. Games like this I always play a mage because I like to choose what spells I can use more fully, and I find it cool to "see" the varying spell-effects. 2 mages in the group is also super-powerful compared to 2 rangers or thiefs or whatever else.

Once you clear a good portion of the wilderness areas, rescue dynaheir, and finish the mines, you're well on your way into the game opening up and really getting into it.

Someone else mentioned loading saves and spawns duplicating being an issue. One of the mods allows you to remove respawns/turn down the timer for them and this fixes that issue, though I forget the details on it.

It is starting to feel like i have a bit of a grasp now, where i was clueless before. Sadly, i was born before computers and am two years older than the SuperBowl, so my confidence in modding is slight to minimal at best. If a mod says put in the override folder i am good but beyond that i just can't manage.

It is the first logical Good-aligned party if you are following the story-line tightly. Any other combination would involve you going around the map to make your pickups. This is very difficult for you to do because I do not believe you have the strategy guide - and I do not think you downloaded and read a walk-through.

It is also the Good-aligned party you get with a minimum number of dumps. Hmm.... A long time ago, I was having a discussion about this party. I will try to find it......

Here...

http://www.gog.com/forum/baldurs_gate_series/totsc_run_how_do_i_make_the_most_of_the_canon_party_spoiler_heavy/page1

I did describe the thread as spoiler heavy. I do not think there is anything too bad in there. My intent at the time was to free people to talk about anything they wanted without worrying about spoilers. I already knew the story.

This has probably been posted already (haven't had a chance to read the whole thread yet) but when dealing with multiple opponents that are all higher level than you or your party the best strategy is to use ranged on every party member and keep everyone spread out in a circle formation at intervals. When one party member gains the aggression of the enemy, use him to lure the enemy around a bit while your other party members deal damage. Eventually the enemy will switch aggression to one of the other party members that is dealing damage. At that point just identify who has the aggression and use him/her to lure the enemy about again. It can be a little more challenging when you have 4-5+ enemies to deal with at lower levels, but if you stay in the easier zones before moving on to the harder ones you shouldn't run into many large mobs, and if you do those mobs should be rather low on hit points.

I also had issues with my party dying early on (and still do as I tend to make lots of mistakes). It always was a bit funny starting as a hearty stalwart Dwarf and being forced to resort to a sling and a rock to get by when I had a perfectly good shield and hammer at my side. Its just one of those staples of classic role playing games that you will need to get used to. One thing I will say is that suffering at the beginning of the game makes gaining levels and strength all the more rewarding when you finally can utilize the abilities and strengths of your chosen race and class.

Oh, and don't forget to use the save function. It can save you hours of lost game play due to an unexpected encounter.

^^That sounds like a lot of fun when you are level 1 or 2 and trying to kite Ogre Berserkers and you use up so much space that you crash into another one.

Scouting helps. Have the Thief (Imoen) go stealth and search out an area large enough for this kind of strategy and find some enemies.