Baldur's Gate

• Your party will be fairly weak until later in the game so you may want to save before even a seemingly easy battle.

• If a character joins up and tells you that they need to get somewhere, try to head that way as soon as you can. It's easy to get sidetracked and that particular NPC may leave you for good.

• Try not to miss out on the powerful artifact just east of the Friendly Arm entrance and the very useful item hidden in the farm fields in Nashkel.

• Your party should include at least a Cleric, a Wizard, a frontline fighter, and someone with thief skills. Most of these roles can be multiclassed if necessary (a Cleric/Mage is fine, for example.)

• Don't hoard your consumables, use them whenever things get rough.

• The Golden Pantaloons can be carried over to the sequel and doing so while also finding and holding on to that game's set of Pantaloons will eventually net you an interesting reward in the sequel's expansion.

Character Stats

• Attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma. Most attributes are very top-heavy, 17/18 is where they start having real impact while the difference between 10 and 14 is minimal.

• Armor Class: Lower is better, 10 is the worst. Your defence against physical attacks that's based off your Dexterity bonus, armor, shield and any magic protective spells/equipment.

• THAC0: Lower is better, 20 is the worst. Your attack rating, equal to the number you need to roll on a 20-sided die to hit 0 Armor Class.

• Saving Throws: Lower is better. Your non-physical defenses against magic attacks, poison, etc. To succeed at a save, you need to roll equal to or above your Saving Throw value on a 20-sided die.