Hi there

I'm kind of an old fan of CRPGs, started with Baldur's Gate and played a bunch of them. I decided to try ToEE, I bought it aeons ago but heard it was a buggy hot mess, so avoided it until now that Temple+ and Co8 make it a pretty good game

I made a party, a balanced one I thought, but died outside the Moathouse. Made another one, same experience. I've played D&D3.5 at the table for a decade, I know how to build a character and a functioning party, but no matter what I do those fracking frogs just annihilate me

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong, maybe I'm just very unlucky with dice rolls (not a big news, since I've probably rolled twice above 15 with d20s in 23 years of TTRPGs), but I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask the pros for some help

Is there a guide about how to start the game the right way?

Thank you in advance for your help and time

I guess the first question is when are you hitting the Moathouse?

You can pretty much gain a level just running all the fetch quests in Hommlet and close to another level with the Co8 Welkwood Bog area which will certainly help survivability at the Moathouse.

I tend to run partys with both a Wizard and Druid in them so I can maximize the advantage of spells like Entangle and Web to keep the nasty things far away and use ranged weapons. My tank will usually finish the job once I get a Ring of Freedom.

However some times you need to just restart the combat so that your Wizard or Druid gets an opportunity to cast a spell. I find that bad initiative rolls can really start a combat on a total losing streak. If you think the Moathouse frogs are nasty wait until you meet up with the Behemoth King Frog at Imeryds Run.

Game Banshee has a walkthrough that can help.

https://www.gamebanshee.com/templeofelementalevil/walkthrough.php

The game gets easier if you take your time rolling for very good starting stats instead of balanced stats.