Hello everyone!

I'm at the moathouse ruins and my god this fight is hard. I tried different positions to prevent being flanked but that just prolongs the inevitable. I think I'm having so much difficulty because I'm so used to Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate.

That's obviously just the tip of the iceberg. There's something functionally wrong with what I'm doing.

Also, does the story pick up later in the game? It's been pretty dull so far.

What kind of party are you running? Without knowing specifically what spells you have access to and what style of fighting your front-liners are using, it's hard to give more than vague general advice.

Temple of Elemental Evil is definitely more combat-oriented than story-oriented.

Iirc, zombies have damage resistance vs all but slashing weapons. So make sure you have the right weapons to hand (swords, daggers, etc). Other mobs have other resistances, so all your PC should have a slashing, piercing and bashing weapon always. Also, zombies are easy to fight, since they only have 1 action/round - ie. they can move or fight, but not both. All your PCs get 2 actions per round: 1 attack and 1 move. So have your front-liners take a swing, then move back out of the zombie's ZoC using a 5-foot-step for your second action (hold down the alt key while you contemplate your 5-foot-step, and you will see the circular ZoC around each enemy). All other PCs not starting their round next to a zombie should use a polearm or missile weapon. Then the zombie will be forced to use his action to close into range rather than swing. Repeat till they are all dead.

The slimes are not that tough, but you should try and kill them asap, so you have room to fall back from the zombies.

TIP:
Click on the little icon at the bottom right of the screen that looks like a blue dodecahedron. Keep that window open at all times when you play, since it will tell you what the game is doing in the background. So when you miss, you can click on the blue messages in that window and then see a breakdown of the dieroll + modifiers to understad why. You should see the damage resistance of zombies in that breakdown.

Yeah zombies resist the first 5 points of non-slashing damage.

Hommelet is boring. The game is a little bit slow at first. It gets better.

IWD and BG are fairly casual compared to ToEE. Just about anybody can pick up and play those, but here you need to learn the nuances of a 5 foot step, attacks of opportunity, etc. It might take a some practice if you're not used to this implementation of rules. Watching videos of gameplay might give you clues.

Like many fights involving undead, it's
- trivial if you have a high charisma cleric to turn undead with.
- quite doable if you have several heavy hitters with big ass weapons and cleave and combat reflexes.
- pretty damn hard otherwise.

The game is funny in the way the difficulty goes up and down like there's no tomorrow.
For most parties, it's probably a good idea to hire a helper from the village, Elmo is usually a safe bet.

The game and plot get's more intensive as soon as you enter the second village, or even the bottom level of moathouse.
But it's not big on story at any point, you play it for the combat.