I have no fucking clue what I'm doing in this game so I'm going to start again. I need some starting tips pls.
What build should I go for? In my first game I tried a Druid Avenger because turning into a salamander sounded funny. But I'm not even sure how I should be using the character because any damaging spells are only onces a day so they're basically useless. Also I have no idea what level I get to shapeshift or what weapon I should have chosen.
Anyway, how the hell do you play this game and what character build should I roll?
EDIT: Thank you for the well-thought-out and in-depth answers. I appreciate it!
This is for BG1 only and not for BG2:
If you're getting owned by mages, you can cheese the game by purposely entering in a door right when the mage casts their spell. The spell will completely whiff. You can keep on cheesing until they run out of spells, which is when you can just bash their face in.
Lightning bolt is OP. Lightning bolt also bounces, so if you can bait the enemy into a corner and shoot the lighting bolt at an angle where it would bounce between the two sides of the corner, the enemy would get hit by the same lightning bolt 7+ times.
I don't know if the enhanced edition changed anything, but in the OG BG1 that came with 6 CDs, it was very easy to bait the enemy into futilely chasing someone with boots of speed while the rest of your party lights up the enemy with arrows.
There's these two OP wands, one that shoots fireballs and one that summons monsters. The shooting fireball one is self-explanatory. The summoning monsters one allows you to cheese by summoning a shitton of cannon fodder while you light up the enemy with arrows.
Some of the random encounters, especially the ones where you get ambushed by those fucking thieves with ice arrows, are complete bullshit. Just reload.