I'm working on the Temple of Baa right now with my party at level eight and it is so darn difficult I feel like I must be doing something wrong. Everyone in my party is a level 4 bow master but it still takes twenty or thirty arrows to kill these damn Baa Priests.

My magic seems really weak and lame as well. The average arrow is doing nine or ten points of damage but my spells are only doing between two and eight, and a few of them hit even less than arrows!

Is this game just really difficult right from the start? What kind of spells (if any) should I be using regularly in battles with my level eight party?

Temple of Baa is a difficult dungeon in the beginning, particularly if its your first playthrough. Maybe you can try some of the other dungeons in Ironfist first?

I always felt like bows were primarily useless in MM6, never doing much damage even if I had an Archer with Bow mastery and about 15 skillpoints in. Don't worry about your magic btw, like any game that uses D&D-based rules, spellcasters are pretty damn useless in the beginning, yet they can get insanely powerful in the endgame. Hang in there ;)

As for the Baa priests, I always found it in my best interest to just get up close and personal and wack them over the head with my knight/paladin or even cleric!

Yeah, low-level spells are not very useful. But later on you'll get some insane room-clearing spells (although the best of these only function outdoors). It's worth getting your spellcasters trained up to Expert and Master as soon as you can.

Unfortunately I found many of the dungeons in the game to be rather tedious. Fun to explore, but the enemies were a slog. I usually ended up getting in close and fighting in melee using turn-based mode.

Cool, thanks for the responses.

I'm having better luck with a combination of tactics:
1. Fireball and Lightning Bolt both seem to be pretty reliable to do more damage than an arrow, and seem to hit the target about as often.
2. Real-time melee seems to give the best results overall, although it is quite hectic and I usually wind up just barely escaping.

The dungeons are a little tedious but I'd rather have things be really difficult and time consuming than too easy.

Managed to finish Temple of Baa, and Dragoons was an absolute cake walk in comparison.

I think it is time to hit up the Silver Helm, although I hear that is a real bitch as well =)

Yeah head up to Isles of Mist next, you'll have some fun times there :)

I think bows are fantastic. With mastery, and ranks like 15, you can do tons of damage, maybe faster than with anything else except blasters or the big outdoor area-effect spells. In MM6, you don't even need to be an archer to get this, which is as bad as it is good because for this reason I don't play archer--they don't get any special use of bows, which would sort of be the point.

Beating the Temple of Baa at level 8 was quite an achievement. There are just tons of monsters. Since you finished it, there is no point giving any advice about it, but what you want are indoor area-effect spells, especially Fireball, Inferno, and Ring of Fire. I normally don't go there until much higher level. When I first played through it, Ring of Fire just saved my party when I was surrounded once or twice, and it helps to have plenty of blue potions which give you more spell points. I luckily had this, and I think I was about 8th level, but it was a very long time ago (I bought and played it when it first came out).

To me bows allways felt like wasted skillpoints, but that is because i cba to kite with bows when you can kill things so much faster and easier in melle range if u just build ur charechters right (which also causes some engagements to be easier, the 1s ur forced melle)

Also spells get awesome later, especially the dark magic school, 1 shot killing high-level rooms to look foreward to :)

(Also i will say sparks is to me 1 of the most efficient low level spells out there, its actually does a lot of damage if u rush expert air, which is rather easy)
The great thing is you dont need to stay at range to use it neither, the con is you cant stay long range when using it :9
As previusly mentioned ring of fire is another awesome spell, i cba to use fireball for same reason as with the bow, and because its such a mess to change quikspell for just a few casts (or bring up spellbook) its good damage, but doesnt feel like enough :P