I've only tinkered with ToEE so far, to get a feel for it, before starting a full-fledged game. I have the Co8 patch & I'm running in windowed mode.

One complaint is that while in windowed mode, the screen doesn't scroll as easily as full-screen. I tried using the arrow-keys, but that's much too fast for me. Any suggestions?

Another complaint is that when purchasing my inventory, I can't tell what I'm proficient with until I buy it & try to equip it. Am I missing some easy keyboard action to tell me what my characters should already know when browsing?

On character creation. Well, I said before that the only 2 D&D systems I've played were Basic (20+ years ago) and 4E (for the last couple years), so learning 3.5 is a little familiar but a little different. I like being able to customize my characters with Feats, but as is a complaint of mine about 4E, I just feel like there are too many to choose from. Its hard to guess what will be more useful...for instance, enough enemy troops to warrant double-wide magic spells (especially for something like fireball) or just go for max damage magic spells (also useful for something like a fireball, but only if most enemy troops are closer together). I'm faced with so many potentially helpful Feats to choose from, its just hard to know what will end up getting used & what will not.

Graphically, I find the game very impressive. I was blown away by seeing my first magic missile & seeing blood splatter.

Combat is definitely confusing, but I'm getting there. Because I clicked left instead of right (or vice-versa), my Paladin ended up killing my own Cleric with a Crit for 27 points. All I was trying to do was de-select the option I'd chosen and I happened to have the cursor sitting on my Cleric at the time...pretty funny when I realized what happened, but mainly because I'm still just practicing before starting my "real" game.

The GameFaqs walkthrough is very helpful. There are a few sample parties there who are both useful & sometimes humorous.

Anyway, this forum doesn't seem too populated, so I'm hoping the few who are here stay here while I play.

It's definitely not the easiest game, not easy to get into and difficult as hell.
The makers seem to assume the players are already familiar with 3.5.
Having played my share of NWN and NWN2 helped a lot, but there were enough differences to leave me confused.

The proficiencies can be found from the inbuilt manual, but at least I didn't find a simple way to see them while shopping. Weapon reach is another critical factor, but there I found no way at all to see which weapon has what. (Practice showed voulge to be a real killer).

The Feats are another fine mess. You'd need to plan ahead, because many of the better ones have another feats as requirements. I'd guess whirlwhind attack would have been a good thing, but I never managed to get it (req. dodge, mobility, spring attack..), you pretty much have to place every feat towards the goal.

For spells, I'd suggest going with spell penetration and empowerment or maximization. Anything to help get past the spell resistances and saving throws of the bigger bosses. I killed the final boss mostly with lowly magic missiles, even if half of those were resisted, the remaining ones did damage. Something against fear would have also been great (paladin might have been a good choice after all).

You wrote my reply for me!

One thing ToEE lets you do that very few games do is save in the middle of combat. Use a ton of save slots (5-10) so you can hit the ESC button and save every few minutes during a pitched boss battle. Since in the early levels, it takes one bad roll to go from okay to crapola, it's worth saving in the middle of 40 minute fights.

The game could've been made a little more user-friendly with a simple checkbox for "show only the items I am proficient in." Exactly my thoughts.

As much as I'd like to go with an all original party of my own choosing, it seems that (like 4E...and 3.5 too, apparently) I've got to take into account what will really be more effective. For example, when I first started in 4E, I chose to be a Halfling Rogue without opening a single D&D book. I just wanted to be the skill-monkey of the party who could sneak around and get in & out of places. Come to find out that because I'm a Rogue, that means I'm a Striker, and my primary job is supposed to be inflicting huge damage. So I built myself into a solid damage-dealer. It wasn't what I originally envisioned, but I had to make that adjustment & I'm still enjoying my character anyway. So I suppose I'll just do that with ToEE as well.

The question is, which of the sample parties from GameFaqs shall I mimic first? They all look interesting in their own way.

[EDIT] Well, I decided I might as well go with Munchkin’s Paradise. Seems like a logical choice to get me through the game a little easier, while learning the game mechanics & all. With so much customization available, I expect I'll want to play the game over & over again with different style characters.

I never multi-class the wizardy types, i always like to have them get the better spells as soon as possible. Did you grab Elmo for your party too?

No Elmo yet, but I am still in Hommdel (or however its spelled) so I can. Is he that good?