I've been playing the series in order, and I just started 6. Not since the original have I felt so overwhelmed. All these guilds to join, equipment to buy, spells to buy, and so little gold. All these buildings, and no good way of keeping track of them all. All these NPCs, and no way to know which ones are worth hiring. All these *skills*, and so few skill points to spend on upgrading them. And there are giant hordes of enemies everywhere I go.

So, I could use some tips which could be useful for someone transitioning from the 2D M&M's to this one.

I've killed a couple of goblins and Baa followers around Castle Ironfist. I've cleared a small portion of Goblinwatch, and met Prince Nikolai, who disappeared overnight. I've shown the letter to Portbello and brought it to Castle Ironfist, and I've got about $4000 left, with little clue on where it will do the most good.

My party is at level 3 right now, and I have not leveled up any skills. Everyone has 10 skill points, and I've also got 2 horseshoes which are worth skill points for some reason. I've bought bows for everyone, which have been pretty helpful. My party looks like this:

Roderick the Knight
Might - 25
Endurance - 17
Luck - 15
Longsword
Precision Bow
Leather Armor
Merchant
Body Building
Perception

Jeanette the Sorcerer
Intellect - 25
Endurance - 16
Luck - 15
Piercing Dagger
Longbow
Blessed Ring of Vigor
Torch Light
Flame Arrow
Merchant
Repair Item
Meditation

Serena the Cleric
Personality - 25
Endurance - 12
Luck - 16
Wicked Mace
Longbow
Cure Weakness
First Aid
Identify Item
Merchant
Meditation

Zoltan the Archer
Might - 9
Intellect - 14
Endurance - 12
Accuracy - 25
Luck - 11
Elven Bow
Club
Wizard Eye
Static Charge
Merchant
Disarm Trap

Yeah, MM6 can be a tough game. At the point you are in the game I would recommend heading back to the starting town and finishing up Goblinwatch and exporing the region there, then go back to Ironfist and poke around there too.

Later on, magic will be very helpful in handling huge swarms of enemies, especially outdoors. A good place to get a relatively early start on magic skills is Mist. When I first played I didn't go to Mist until later and then kicked myself when I realized I'd missed a lot of stuff that would have helped earlier in the game. Try to find a boat to Mist as soon as you can.

As for player skills, you don't actually need everyone to have Merchant, because you can just have one character do all the buying and selling. Repair and Identify Item are extremely useful... probably a good idea to give Repair to a Knight so you don't have to take any points away from magic skills. Disarm Trap is also critical. Make sure that you use that character to open ANYTHING, even doors.

And yes, the towns are huge and it makes it really hard to find important NPCs, like skill trainers. The only advice I can give for that is to look for maps / walkthroughs online that will give the locations of these people. Even when the game told me which town the trainer was in it would take forever to find the right house, so just checking a map can be useful there.

Quests are the best source of experience and money. Do all the character class promotion quests even if you don't have that class in your party. Other "main storyline" quests have huge experience and cash rewards, so don't be afraid to try them out even if you think you might be too low level. But, if it turns out you ARE too low level, just try your luck elsewhere. This advice that works for MM1 also works for MM6: If you're getting your butt kicked, go somewhere else. I should have done that when I played and I would have found Mist earlier and had a much easier time.

I went to Mist, and bought Learning for everyone. It seemed like a good thing to have ASAP. I also dumped those skill points into it, and now everyone has Learning-4.

Broke, I went back to Goblinwatch. I've got the combination for the lock, but the swarm of rats and suckers on the other side of the vault passage are too strong for me. I went back to town hall, got the reward, and now I've got 3400 gold and no clue where to put it. Though I did hear from a peasant in Mist that the banks no longer pay interest, so I guess I won't bother with them. Saving/Loading is enough security for me.

Check Out this - Have fun - I am playing this as well currently nearing lvl 12

Well, I grew up with the 3DO games and am working on the 2D NWC games, so I can't speak to your transfer. I can tell you that as a beginner for these games (i.e., those that NWC produced as a division of the 3DO company), your best bet is to systematically enter every house. I'd lay off the NPC's for the time being--you'll probably die a few times. This is entirely normal. That's really what the banks are for from now on; you don't need to save every bit of progress, but if you die you will lose all of the gold you are carrying. In the 3DO games, gold is much easier to come by than XP. Properly planned suicide runs can be surprisingly helpful: it takes longer to survive than to level up.

Systematically drink from every fountain and every well. Again, you'll probably die a few times. This is entirely normal; dying pays very well in this game.

For magic, I'd join the guild of the self, and the elemental guild as a total newbie just to get the feel for the magic system, but once you've played through you'll find it useless. Still, they are good and cheap and have a broader, if lower-level, selection of spells than your more specialist guilds. You also get access to all of your clerical magic skills, and all of the your elemental magic skills (respectively). Ideal for starting out.

Might and Magic VI is where they are introducing the skill system paradigm that would dominate the later 3DO games. This is the time when if you can learn a skill that means you can master it. The restrictions MMVII added are absent.

Avoid general stores. Seriously, total rip-off.

It seems you already have discovered the benefit of ranged attacks.

As far as skill points, don't blow them all on "miscellaneous" skills, even disarm trap. Weapons, magic, and armor skills are what will be most important in combat, which you won't be able to avoid until you have a good understanding of monster movement. Although learning increases the speed that you acquire experience, and merchant increases the speed at which you acquire money, neither skill will be significant at character level 4. If you wanna try the suicide runs (don't diss death) weapons skills should be your first choice, followed by magic, then armor. For miscellaneous skills start` with disarm trap. (Although if a trap kills you, it is thereafter considered disarmed).

Finally, take notice of your reputation. This affects what skills you can master.

Apart from that, the only advice I can give you is do whatever occurs to you and further, whatever is fun.

I recommend giving the miscellaneous skills only one character has to know (perception, disarm, repair, identify, (diplomacy is useless)) all to the knight. The reason is that those skills are already perfect when when you take mastery at 7 (requires only spending 21 skillpoints) while most casting skills require 12 (requires 66 skillpoints) to master and get even better when you raise them higher.
Since knights also don't need meditation they have hundreds of extra less to spend compared to the spellcasters, so on the long run you'll be happy if the knight takes those skills.

More important than raising skills is becoming experts or even masters in those skills for the extra bonuses. So get the important skills to 4 first to be able to raise them when you find an expert.

As for weapon skills bow is the most important, consider raising to 4 next and when you've earned some gold go to Ironfist to become bow and learning experts.

For the melee weapons you have to make a choice, it's not worth raising several weapon types. For the sorcerer I'd master daggers, for the cleric maces, for the archer and knight read the weapon skill descriptions which bonuses you get for mastery and consider how much you'll want to spend, some weapon types are better when you invest many skillpoints and some are better when you don't have that many skillpoints to spend. I'd delay raising the melee weapon skills for them until you've become experts in the other skills, this way you can just use the best weapons available at the moment without feeling bad about it.
Armor skills aren't very important, everyone wearing leather (low recovery time) with only 1 leather skill works.

I try to get a water magic master early for the very useful travel spells and enchanting items which can help in combat or at least yield valuable money for selling them.
Having the knight get high merchant skill early is also very useful considering all the money you'll save. The other characters will also benefit from merchant skill, but you can delay raising it a little until training becomes very expensive (it's like in MM3-5) if you want.

Training also gets more expensive when you get promoted; I usually delay promoting my characters until level 15 or 20. By then you're killing bigger stuff with more money.

With bows, you should be able to kill everything on the Ironfist and New Sorpigal maps. Doing that along with having the two experience NPCs(Instructor and Teacher) should get you a few levels. You can do Bootleg Bay, Mist, and Mire of the Damned with only bows. After completing those maps, you should have around level 15-20.

P.S. - Don't be afraid to try alchemy, since there are some good potions that can be made with few ingredients. In regard to miscellaneous skills, dump them all on the Knight since you want to be able to have your magic characters advance as quickly as possible.

I don't think I'm ready to start thinking about expert skills. I can't even afford all the basic skills I want, not to mention the spells.

I just finished Goblinwatch, with a level 4 party and some special weapons. My knight seems to be more effective with a piercing dagger than a broadsword. Go figure. What do I do with all this junk I've collected? I've got a couple of boring +0 weapons, some extra leather armors, and I also found a valuable looking Warlord Belt which has no obvious purpose, and the armorsmith will only pay a pittance for it. I've also got a bunch of valuable rings that only the general store will buy, and his prices are even worse.

Can you identify the items, like the warlord's belt? If you can't identify an item (i.e. your identify skill is too low) then you should go and get it identified. DO NOT sell it before you've identified it. Chances are it's pretty good and you'll want to use it.

Otherwise, just sell off the extra items you have. Make sure your character with Merchant skill is doing the buying/selling. Also always make sure you have your merchant character buy spells... this will save A LOT of money as spells are really expensive.

As for the dagger versus the broadsword, what are your knight's weapon skills? You should probably pick one weapon type and just advance that for him. I did swords, so he pretty much only ever used swords. The dagger may seem better now but once you have higher sword skill the sword will be more effective.

Yes, I identify everything.

I haven't advanced anyone's weapon skills past level 1 yet. I figured I would wait until I come across some keepers before investing in weapon types.

The dagger did have an "Attack +4" attribute. That seems to indicate it hits more often, going by the description of the attack stat. And I just came across a Pirate Cutlass, which has an "Attack +5" attribute. So now I'm using that instead.

Sell the stuff you don't need to the merchant who pays best. Even if you only get a few GP it's better than having no room in your inventory. It's normal that you only get items of little value from the easy early encounters, harder monsters guard better treasure.
As long as you're able to find a location with monsters you're strong enough to defeat there's no need to worry. Never sell herbs or normal potions, you get far more money if you mix them until you've black ones. Empty bottles are extremely valuable because of this.

Daggers are in fact the best weapons for low to medium skill since they're much faster. For bigger weapons like axes to shine you'll have to get mastery and use a lot of skill points in order to reduce recovery time.
Keeping melee weapon skills low in the beginning is a good idea. You benefit more from spells, bows or merchant skill.
Gaining gold and levels is the most important thing to do early.

Most of your miscellaneous items can be sold at the magic shop, and you'll get better prices there.

I just noticed that my reputation is -200. I'm pretty sure I didn't kill any peasants. I did kill a bunch of mages and Baa followers, but they were all bad. What happened to my reputation? Is it because Prince Nicolai got kidnapped under my watch? I can't think of any other reason.

Other things that lower reputation:
- Selling human bones in Free Haven
- Completing the candelabra quest for the guy in the New Sorpigal Inn
- Completing the Fix the Stables Prices quest