Mainly that playing as a wizard is hard as balls to start out, and playing as a thief is pointless, since the first NPC you get is a thief.


Other than that, the game really is geared towards playing a good character, as far as quest rewards and whatnot.

That the widescreen mod is not a fix; quite the contrary.

?

I've done ~1.5 playthroughs with the widescreen mod installed and haven't run into any bugs or crashes.

Try loading a game saved in a different resolution.

That particular issue fits well in your personal "First try - What do you wish you knew?" list, then? :P

Well yes. I played the game many, many times without mods... none at all. Then, when I got introduced to them, the widescreen mod was one of the first, seeing as how (when I came back to the game) my old rig and monitor were long gone. Little did I realise that the widescreen mod is not needed at all in BG2, or if you use BGT/TuTu, and later still encountered the issue with incompatibility with previously saved games. So my 'first try' was referring to mods, not the game. That's really what this question is about.

That mods must be installed in a specific order, or everything goes horribly wrong. I'd suggest making a backup before installing any mods.

This. Also, learn to use robocopy for making backups:

robocopy "Baldur's Gate" "Baldur's Gate Backup" /E

Will save you tens of minutes of your life.

The first rule of modding BG is to never, ever, ever modify the installed mods halfway through a game because it will break your save.
This isn't a widescreen mod issue, its a BG1 and BG2 issue in general and applies to all mods.

No, this issue is specific to the widescreen mod. What other mod physically alters the dimensions of assets added to the save game, making them incompatible to games played (with the widescreen mod) in a different resolution? None.

Know what THAC0 is (To Hit AC 0 -- lower is better).

Know that AC is better when it's lower.

NPCs have timers and if you dilly-dally in doing their quests, you can permanently lose them.

Look at the manual's charts for attribute point assignment. You can make your character a lot better by realizing that for many stats, there's no difference between a 3 and an 11 (if I remember correctly).

That about does it for me.

That BG is not Planescape: Torment, and you should not give your single-classed Fighter high Wisdom / Intelligence stats at the cost of combat abilities. Also, unlike Torment you won't be getting a new stat point with every level increase, and there aren't many ways to increase your stats permanently, so min-max your PC during character generation.

First try in BG2: Wish I knew I can't have a harem of female followers without mods.

Oh, and for my first attempt (which ended in my giving up on the game shortly after the tutorial), I wish I'd known the dnd 2e rules. http://www.gamefaqs.com/pc/75251-baldurs-gate/faqs/8566]This document[/url[] summarises them quite nicely from the point of view of the games, and I highly recommend reading it, if only to understand what I say next.

If you don't want to risk ending up with a useless character, and are planning to dual class at some point, look around online a bit and find out whether it's a sensible choice or not, and when is a good time to dual. You do have to be planning to dual class to something else from character generation to get the right stats high, so decide before starting the game if you plan to dual or not.

In particular, never dual class from a caster to a non caster, as non casters gain a lot of their benefits only if your early level ups are in their class. The big increases to hit points, for instance, only occur for your first 10 levels in any class, and if you spend 6 of those levels as a mage (who has poor hp) then switch to a fighter, you'll have lost over half of the big increases you could have gained, which is a significant part of the class. Casters, on the other hand, need to keep levelling to really be competitive against stronger enemies, as they unlock more and better spell slots.