You get more out of Baldur's Gate if you treat it more like a tactics game than an action game. Using a stealthy (Thief or Ranger) or invisible character to scout an area sinificantly increases your characters' life expactancy, at least in the beginning. Fortunately Imoen is a thief and is able to Hide in Shadows.
Scouting an area means you can pick and choose which enemies to engage and you usually (some hidden encounters are based on dialogue options) avoid being surprised. A hidden or invisible Thief can also backstab and often insta-kill an enemy and thus soften up or eliminate the enemy group.

Read the manuals, read the readme files. The set your autopause options to your likings. Things getting a little rough? the press the paus buton and give new commands.

Some basic tactics that will get you enough into the game to start figureing things out on your own. ( Its hard to figure out a game if it keeps handing your rear end to you )

Fighters, paladins, and rangers. Think in terms of being your tanks. Use these guys to grab the attention of the enemies and absorb the damage. Use druids and clerics to heal your tanks, and have your rogues and mages and bards cast spells and shoot arrows and bolts and slings from a distance.

That is the very basics. The rest comes with experience ( like a level 8 mage being tank in some specific battles do not try untill you know how to do it! ) Idealy you want to play with the core difficulty levels as soon as you are able.

I'd love you to swap brains with me and then see how you go!

Intelligent people are dumb at comprehending other people that aren't intelligent as them because they don't know what it's like to be there.



Sounds like I'd be in too deep water for this game.

Not everyone has lucky genes.

Some people are born with no sight or hearing.


People like me read a book and it takes me 6 reads to get it all in.

Show respect .

Relax, they were trying to give you the tips that you asked for. No need to start whining about your "unlucky genes".

I'm seriously wondering if you're a troll.

Either a troll or someone who should seriously need to seek some help for their inferiority complex. It's not normal to be so insecure.

and i dont understand why people feed the troll thats a number 1 rule even my posts get that much of atention maybe im gonna troll too

I had trouble with that initially, too. Partly because I did the mines too soon. I just bypassed them, came back later, and they were easy as pie.

Well someone will benefit with the replies at least, and the troll will give them a good laugh while they are learning.

Well, the post is correct, If you are new to old school dnd, this game can be next to impossible. Even as a vet pnp player, i found this game very hard back when i first played it. Once you learn all the tricks.. (and im not talking exploits) But just the basic machanics and how it all works.. understanding pausing, and manual directing and microing battles, the game is much easier.

Also slowing the game speed make the game much easier to handle as well.

See what I mean about not understanding?
Ok Jecy.I followed your helpful advice and was playingit wrong.

Wasn't pausing in battle.

I wish shields could be equiped.

I bought a shield at the Inn but couldn't equip it.

Do they have different shields for different classes?

Pretty silly.

Shields are shields.

Not true, shields aren't shields. For instance halfling isn't going to be able to equip a tower shield (or whatever the biggest is, been a while) because a halfling is small and the shield would be as big as it.

Some classes, like Mages can't equip shields because they have no training in them. They've spent all their time in dusty libraries studying books and scrolls and test firing spells.

Anyway, shields can be equipped but it has to be the right type for the character. Memory serves when you are buying things if a character can't use it then it will also be grayed out in the shop (if you are buying as that character).

Is it possible you had a 2 handed weapon at the time?
If you have a staff & a sword, you have to take the staff out of your weapon slot to equip a shield.

Also bigger shields require higher strenght.