SPOILERS below! Didn't fit in the title.

Hey, not sure how exactly to word this. Does anyone else get the feeling that story encounters are extremely unbalanced and unfair? I'm at level 3 right now and none of the story beats are accessible to me. I came across the Phase Spider Matriarch, absolutely annihilated me. I tried going to find the Githyanki patrol, but they're all a level above me and basically instantly destroy my party. I stumbled across Auntie's encounter, and that's definitely a no. When all else failed I made my way to the goblin camp and managed to kill the priestess boss, but only just barely. When I saw how many enemies there were around Razlig's room, I knew I was in for trouble. I don't know if you can avoid that fight with the persuasion check after he finds out you killed the Mind Flayer, but on my two attempts I failed it. To then be immediately swarmed by like 5 archers, a ranger who summons a worg, two gobbos who won't stop firebombing me, and a boss equal to my level who has action surge, almost one-shot my fighter with a normal attack and has a shockwave that pushes everyone into the spider pit where they die of fall damage. Am I missing something here? It's pretty frustrating that I can't progress any part of the story. Are there enough sidequests that I'm missing that could get me to level 4? If not, I think there's an issue with encounter balancing and action economy.

The current challenge level seems good to me.

Many encounters are very hard to me.
I'm not a D&D veteran but I'm absolutely not a noob in D&D and TB RPG but here it's very complicated.
I have to long rest everytime because I have to use every spells and abilities...

Combat is designed for a party of 6, not a party of 4.

So for the fight where they are in the room with the dead illithid, I crawled up the ladder outside the room on the platform, cast grease on the doorway leading into it, and then sneak attack bow shot the weakest one and killed him and remained hidden and got another sneak attack shot off. After that, they came around the corner and the AI hates things like grease, so they just bunched up at the doorway. I cast bless on everyone and then used the illithid power to create an inky cloud, obscuring us all and giving them disadvantage on attacks. I would then cycle my guys out, 1 by 1, to shoot out of hiding and go back into the cloud. When they were grouped id throw ice and poison down (not fire because it burns the grease away,thats only if they walk onto it). When the hobgoblin came out, I cast hold person on him (dropping the bless, both concentration) and murdered him.

I think I got hit 3 times or something. Gotta play with the environment and bottlenecking. If there are a lot of archers, use the illithid reflect power, it works against the bottles they throw too so theyll fire bomb and poison and acid themselves chucking stuff at you.

All fights have been tough but doable, but I am a tactical game player and D&D/DOS veteran and watch the environment closely.

This game would be absolutely brutal to a new player, especially if you wander too far outside of your level range or visit an area too early. Some of the best spells for casters are crowd control and area denial, versus pure damage spells as a tip.

At first I thought the same thing but as I play more and more I find I can take on like 10-12 enemies at a time with my 4 party members with no rests between encounters. took out all the goblins in the entrance area in one gigantic melee no reloads or save scuming either just lots of jumping and using high ground. jumping and ethereal step make a huge difference. the more mobile you are the better. their is a necklace that has ethereal step. The warrior companion is amazing with it and her jump ability. can close the distance on pesky casters and archers pretty easy. there is also a ring in game that add 3 meters more to your movement that makes a big difference too. As I said the learning curve seems really steep but just try things out find what works for you

edit for spelling**

First off: Yes, you can be level 4 by the time you are in the goblin camp. You can also finish the entire Early Access at level 4. A Lot of the xp is in killing things though, Especially all the smaller encounters in the abandoned little town you go through.

For that fight specifically, remember that you can push people too, and you never HAVE to be near the spider pit if you don't want to The spiders will enjoy any which meal they can get.

As for the game being too hard. I could imagine it being too hard for people, especially people that haven't played a whole lot of cRPG's in the past. I think most of what's causing the current difficulty is that DnD's armor system (AC ratings) doesn't really gel well with Larians unavoidable ground-effects. Low level dnd characters survive by virtue of not getting hit a lot. For fighters this means wearing a lot of armor and putting points in constitution, for mages it means staying out of harms way, and blasting away anything that comes close. Unavoidable damage that ignores AC ratings is therefor a bit painful.

My advice is to pay a little more attention to line of sight, if you're struggling with archers, it might be a good idea to pop a smoke-cloud of some sort over your party, and have your ranged characters pop in and out of it's cover. Have your melee characters ready to intercept and push away any annoying enemy frontliners. As always, kill the 'problems' to your tactics first.

Hope that helps!

I have a metric ton of 5e experience and CRPG experience.

Honestly the level of difficulty is in a decent sweet spot right now....if you know the rules, mechanics, and certain abuses (Wizards learning Healing Word, the power of gaining Advantage with GWM).

In 5e, Action Economy is king. That means the side that wins tends to be the side that can take more Actions. You're almost always outnumbered, so the enemy has more Actions by default than you. So how do you make that easier?

Summons. Absolutely everyone should have some sort of summon, even if it's just a Find Familiar spell. Raven Blindness is amazing and broken AF. Spammable zero cost Blindness spell with a huge movement ability? Yup. Much more importantly, every attack against your summon is one less attack against you. My Giant Spider from my Beast Master Ranger has something like 39 health, which is more than anyone in my party even at level 4.

Any spell or ability that causes the enemy to waste their Action is the name of the game. The Giant Spider's Web attack to cause the Enwebbed effect (really just Restrained by the rules of 5e) is a perfect example of this. I am trading the Action of my Giant Spider, for the Action of the enemy. My spider *could* cause like 4 damage....or it can make an enemy waste their turn instead of doing 20+ damage. It also provides instant Advantage to the rest of my party, which is the second tip...

In 5e, party synergy is Queen. One party member granting Advantage on a target to the rest of the party is critical. That means Sneak Attack for the Rogue, much higher hit chance for the GWM Fighter, and an almost guaranteed hit from the Warlock with Agonizing Blast + Hex. The corollary to this is denying your enemy synergy. A target has a bunch of armor + a shield? Don't waste your time with Attack spells/abilities. Start hitting them with Status effects like Frightened and Save spells like Shatter.


All that said, I am glad about the level of difficulty. I want a spiritual successor to BG, not DoS 3 the D&D DLC. This isn't me trying to gatekeep. I slogged through BG 2 not having a clue how any of the rules worked, often having to lower the difficulty. Based on Larian's previous EA work, this is approximately the "Hard" difficulty for the eventual released game. So having a hard time is to be expected.

I'm seeing lot's of good advice in this thread but, OP, you're not alone. I've been making my way through but I've been finding it very daunting and the level of micromanaging required to win kind of drains the fun for me. (I still love the game, just not in love with the current gameplay balance.) I've been finding success with using a lot of crowd control and trying to position larger fights in a choke point or places where I can get the higher ground. To be fair, I'm also running with an awful party composition because I dislike the tank and healer we have with EA.

I am definitely struggling with the combat too. It took me like, two or three tries to fight the goblins outside the goblin camp and two tries to beat the Phase Spider Matriarch. I am not super tactically minded and don't have a lot of 5e experience, so I'm not good at exploiting weaknesses or anything like that. Most of my big combats end by the skin of my teeth after having pulled out every spell and ability I have.

Doom here, ( best gamer ever, super dungeon master, 50 yr old So ive played it ALL) oH did I mention Im the best lover too?

Yea the combat is very daunting, and all the AOE spamming the enemies do, not to mention, as soon as combat starts , its like playing a master chess player.. takes the fun out of it for me. Shit Dark Souls 3 is enough of a pain in the ass, So no your not alone.

Did I mention I was the best lover ever?



- Doom

I find alot of the encounters pretty hard as well. I feel like I have have to open up with the hardest hitting broadside I can muster up, because once the enemies get thier turn, at least one of my guys goes down.

The ground aoe spam is a bit tedious as well. I have also noticed that my team misses...alot. Not sure what I am doing wrong.

But having every fight, a desperate fight to survive drains my fun a little.

They had to make the encounters way harder than they would be in a well-balanced game to account for all of the outrageous cheesing you can do. Ranged characters can stealth between each action, you can chuck infinite oil barrels at the enemy team and blast them to Avernus, spam knockdown by comboing arrows and Ray of Frost, deck your mages out in heavy plate, infinite kiting due to the broken bonus action system, and much much more.

Sounds like you two should be having trouble. The balance is good, besides some silly AOE issues. What's needed is an easy setting, which there will be of course.

As it should be, in my opinion.

The balance is abysmal, easily the worst of any CRPG-style game I've played in the last decade besides DIVOS and DIVOS2 (POE, Tyranny, Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Numenera, Shadowrun, and even Wasteland which is saying something). The game is a cheesefest and desperately needs some tightening. I want to feel like I'm winning fights because I'm being smart about positioning, resource management, and proper tactics not because 'haha explosions go brrrrrrr'

Some of the things i learned from the game is never fight fair.

Use terrain, high ground is awesome. Crowd control spells are great. Concentrate your fire, it is better to do 1 hit point of damage if it kills an enemy, then 12 hp of damage and it doesn't kill an enemy. The fewer "guns" firing back at you the better, and an enemy with 1 hp still hits as hard as an enemy at full hp. using terrain to block line of sight from enemies forcing them to come to you and often enemies are spread out so they will rush towards you together but arrive in a staggered fashion. This means you can concentrate fire on a few enemies with a few attacks in return. Also you ranged party members can move out from cover attack and then move back into cover to get a few attacks in on approaching enemies. If you run into melee centric enemies attack with range than run away, this strings the enemy along getting more attacks in before they close the distance. Remember that shove is a bonus action so pushing people off ledges can give you tactical advantages without costing you your turn.

Grease + firebolt is a great combo that can turn the tide of battle. Do not underestimate it.

I think what you're referring to would mostly be solved by sticking closer to the 5e rules and toning down all the AOE stuff.

Problem is, the game is somewhat balanced for now... but balanced for all the nonsense that is BG3 for now : everyone having access to spell scrolls, bugs making wizards able to learn cleric spells, surfaces everywhere, barrels which don't even weight that much compared to DOS so you can carry them with you for all the fights... Plus the disengage/jump being bonus action to everyone, which makes things even more unbalanced in regards to what the 5e ruleset is.

If they start fixing this mess and move closer to the tabletop version (and I hope they'll do, as this is Early Access for a reason), the combat will become unbalanced and very punishing. In D&D5, you don't send a party of 4 into a 10+ group of enemies. Unless you want a TPK. D&D5, as someone said already, is all about action economy. That's why when you begin to face huge solitary monsters (like Dragons), they have both lair and legendary actions they can use freely, so they can do something more than just one time per whole round of combat.

Take away the scrolls for everyone / surfaces / disengage for everyone on a bonus action, and the spider matriarch fight becomes unbeatable. Problem is, if you don't take away those things, BG3 will stay closer to DOS than D&D5.

This! I've not had any problems with the battles so far. I played from start to druid grove without taking a full rest. This includes the ruins and the harpy fight in the druid grove itself. It's though but not that bad. The ground effects are a pain in the backside though. I know that's what Larian is known for and everything, but losing 2 points of AC for walking through a puddle of acid is seriously crippling! I'm also not sure about the logic behind this pools of fire, I've lost so much health to those!

I'm also wondering how much those effects have helped me though. I play a mage, together with Gale you can basically lock any enemies that try to get close to you down by using ray of frost. Even if it misses and doesn't do any damage the chance is very high the enemy you where shooting at falls over. When that happens it's a ripe sneak attack target. So, yeah, needs a LOT of tuning.

I've played most of the way through both solo and multiplayer and found it extremely easy. Experience with 5e and games of this type make all the encounters in this game trivial to be honest. Haven't had to save and reload a single combat encounter.

Ranger/rogue/wizard/cleric in multiplayer.

Not doing anything cheesy, just playing well.

Spiders was easy because they tend to stand on the 4hp webs you can destroy, they take huge falling damage. Colossus slayer on my ranger really takes a toll on the big spider, and it's not even working properly and rolling it's added damage every hit like it should.

Goblins was easy because most of them have 12 hp or so, easily one shot by all 3 damage characters, the rogue could practically one shot the 50hp boss with a strong hit.

We even fought the goblins around the windmill and killed most of them before we realised you could kill the leader to end the encounter. Thunder wave is exceptionally strong against large groups who cluster together.

All the bombs and bulbs, throwables in general, really even the odds. They're very strong.

Wait, you're one-shotting the goblins? How? It takes me two hits minimum, sometimes three to take the goblins down and this is when I'm at level 4. Only Lae'zel is capable of one-shotting them. I actually tried burning the webs and that didn't work so I stopped trying. I died to the goblins outside the goblin camp twice and even the third time I had like, two or three charcaters being downed or outright killed over and over. I don't know how you built your characters but one-shotting a 50 hp enemy? None of my characters are anywhere close to that.

I forgot to add an additional point. The triangle of 5e you might say.

Action Economy is King. The side with more Actions tends to win, so figure out how you can get more Actions (Summons) and deny enemy Actions (Disabling abilities/spells)

Party Synergy is Queen. Recognize what works well together. One party member using their Action to make every other party member hit a target *and* disabling that target is ideal.

Advantage Hunting is Princely. Learn all the different ways you can gain Advantage (high ground, attacking from the side or rear, Restraining/Enwebbing a target, certain spells like Faerie Fire, etc). Once you learn that, combat gets a lot easier. Make sure you are always attacking with Advantage, while finding ways to make your enemies attack with Disadvantage.

One more general tip. You can't take an Action if you're unconscious. Using an Action to help an Ally is trading one Action for another character's Action, generally a zero sum gain (Cure Wounds, Help action). However, trading a Bonus Action to get an ally up, well that's just tasty. Fancy way of saying Healing Word is the best spell in the game. Bonus Action ranged heal. A character with 1 hp deals the same damage as a character with 100 hp. Use Healing Word.

Have you try stab enemies with two hand spear? I'm doing this and ofter 1-3 enemies are down before big fight. Just be sure that every one using stealth.

Long bow is 1d8 plus 4 at level 4, plus hunters mark 1d6. Plus 1d8 Colossus slayer if they're hurt. Throwing an aoe throwable at any that are grouped up handles that.

Potion of speed gives you 2 actions per turn. If you're up in the rafters of that place when the fight starts you cannot miss because of the bonus to hit that height advantage currently gives you, so that's two dead goblins per turn, think I got the boss guy down to 30 or so and then the rogue smashed him when he got to the rest of the party on the ground.

That's just my ranger, with no magic items because a +1 bow doesn't seem to exist.

Rogue damage is crazy burst, sneak attack and two offhand hits? Bonus for being behind a target means again you can't miss.

You just need to read these skills, and the stuff Larian has added. All the surfaces, bonuses and throwable stuff makes it trivial.

Did you realise that Ray of frost is pretty much a guaranteed way to knock someone prone, and that means your rogue gets sneak attack and advantage for all 3 attacks? 6 dice rolls gives you such a big chance to crit.

Damn. I do not have the bandwidth to absorb all that stuff, especially not for a first run in a game. To give you a sense of my skill level, Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire is my favourite game, I've played through it twice on story difficulty and It wasn't until my third playthrough that I felt confident enough to play on normal and that's still a genuine challenge for me and I struggle to process and take advantage of all the tools at my disposal. I'm not going to be able to play anywhere close to your level until I've had several playthroughs to absorb and understand everything-I've only started taking advantage of hunters mark for my ranger 19 hours into the game. At this point I don't feel like I can experiment or take extra risks on things I'm not certain of because it feels like one mistake will put me in an inescapably bad position.

I put my strategy for dealing with the priestess and the rest in spoilers because taking her out sets the whole scheme up.

All was done with a less than ideal party of woodelf rogue main, shar cleric, wizard and warlock as I killed Laz in my second playthrough because I could not stand her in the first and I rather take the companions which don't cost me fun while playing.

Yeah one failed roll in a coversation, and at least one of my guys goes down, before I even get my turn.

Honestly, I agree about the combat. I'm sure the next 10 posters will tell me how they win every battle in a party of one etc, etc, etc, but I'm not that guy. I actually stopped playing at the goblin ambush where they spam AOEs all over, but most of the enemies are too high to hit with a bow. I guess I didn't want original XCOM...

That said, it may just be that there's something I'm not seeing or an approach I'm not thinking of. Looking forward to good community guides and the like. Yes, original BG was like this - a lot of 'stump the chump' battles that would be unwinnable without metaknowledge (who really keeps 10 spells of Mirror Eyes at the ready for basilisks?)... I think the game is too much of a chore.

They do same hard at first s skill up your tactics.
First, look for any moment to shovel or push an enemy from a height. For the big spider, when she is on a web bridge, what if that web bridge broke? She would take fall damage. Bust up her eggs before hand. Scout and sneak around to understand the environment.
Use consumables. Dip your weapons, poison your blades, etc.
Make sure to buff weaker party members with spells.
The best spells are not that ones that do damage but the ones that control a situation. A well placed grease, sleep, darkness, fog, etc all make a big different.
Look in the area for things to break that can crash down on enemies. Take out guard tower stuctures so enemies fall.
Break line of sight from ranged attackers or blind them with fog.
Tank the beefy melee enemies and use strong DPS on weaker ones.
Get to higher ground and keep enemies from going up.
Placing hazards on the ground will cause enemies to avoid them.
Keep the party close together but not so close they get hit with area of effect things.
Try to get suprise rounds.
Lure enemies into areas that you have the best positioning in.
Try to unchain/split sneakier characters from the group and have them in stealth.
Use bonus actions to fall back and hide.
Find cover.

The first times, I often died.

The next time around I often won easily, as you discover weaknesses, tricks, etc. (like barrels of oil, objects that can fall on the enemies, cheesy shoves down pits, etc.)

But, yes, a few fights are really hard and a few unlucky rolls can force you to restart the fight.

( and I have been playing D&D for over 30 years )

Some fights are just not balanced. Like the goblin fight near windmill and the ones near that villages gate or w/e it was called.

Like 3-4 archers dropping bombs and what not and you take like 15 dmg bc of surface and unavoidable dmg they have from divinity for some reason. It's always the same for the most part, you got enemies on high ground, throwing crap at you, and you're always at a disadvantage. It's just annoying and not fun when most combat starts the same way.

Very good point. I felt something is off but couldn't put my finger on it.

The combat is simply too hard until you hit level 3.

The windmill fight is pretty hardcore : they have elevated ground and pommel you with advantage and also melee.

I have only tried it once after failing the dialogue (therefore bad positions). I got butchered and my crowd-control spells did not last their intended durations.

Next time, I might send only Laezel in dialogue, while the others take position.

So far I'm having an easy time of it all.

Some things to remember on your first play through if your unfamilair with how things are working.

1. Spells, weapons, etc remember what is working. On your second play through if there is one you'll know more about everything and can find easier ways to do things. At times it's easier to go through the slog of a first play through partly then restart as a new character.

2. Never use your heavy spells for simple fights, or minions. Instead focus the big guys, just pummel the hell out of them with your heavy damage abilities, then mop up the minions after that.

3. look for spell synergy have a warlock. Use true strike, then witchbolt on same target, need more drop hex on that target to. Have a wizard grease and fire spell. Fighter give them a couple haste potions, and nearly all your healing potions. Pop haste on first round, dash to a target and unload. Same with action surges.

4. Use height to gain advantage so your missing less with spells, and sneak attack from ranged until your tanks (most armored and healthiest characters generally Fighters) can get into positon. Then begin to run in with rogue, and sneak attack with a double team. or just stay back and sneak attack from ranged.

5. Have an escape for your wizards, misty step is great. Can't hit someone magic missile the hell out of them. It never misses though damage isn't as high as other spells, still your doing damage.

6. Armor up before fights with spells they stay on until you long rest for the most part. Beef up your characters AC with cleric buffs before fights, or their stats.

7. Debuff the enemies heavy hitters. If it's a melee character using a big 2h weapon hit them with a strength hex, if they have alot of hp hit them with a con hex.

8. look, listen, learn. Look around to see what you see. Narrow choke points, interactables lovingly placed to plummet on enemies heads, plants that entangle, etc. Listen oh not much here. Learn from everything you do. save before battle to test it out if it's your first time, see who's hitting the hardest, who your missing the most etc.

9. Deny, deny, deny! Deny the number advantage of your enemies with sleep spells, or halt spells, throwables that force them to roll a save, like grease bombs etc. Use these and if a couple people end up falling blast the grease with fire!

10. Look at every spell you have on level up, stop and think how you'd use them, how they work together.

11. never use health pots/spells to heal outside of combat. Use the food you find to heal up, short rest, or even long rest. Conserve your big heals, health potions for and only for battle. Don't use healing word unless you can't get to the downed person within 3 turns. Cure wounds heals far more on average. Which brings up this one. Your cleric is your life, protect them. (unless your wizard has Larianed healing spells.) even then wizard won't heal as much as a Life Cleric, and he should be pumping out damage, or denying movement. Also his heals are (in my opinion haven't tried it out and wont) going to be weaker then your clerics. (this part is an assumption and not tried by myself)

12. Last of all..... uggg... cheese them... just straight up fumundah cheese them. If they're close to an edge give them a bonus action shove, to help them down. I mean everyone needs some help even if they don't understand they do. To close to your Wizard give them a shove, and a face full of magic before running away.

Hexes dont work like that (it does not decrease an enemies stat) it only affects creatures ability checks

ie. constitution hex is almost useless becasue almost no abilities use this as a check.
str/dex somewhat helps on melee enemies but they dont use abilities often, they just run and smack you in the face
more helpful against caster enemies that use an ability almost every turn.
or at least in my experience so far.

I'm with you, OP. Iim at the point where I've beat all the gnolls, I've killed everything in the goblin camps. About the only thing's I've not done is I abandoned fighting the Hag, and I'm finding the Githyanki hard as well (I mean, they all get 3+ hits, action surge, and the archer can teleport on top of the bridge.. Really!?)... I've been ma level for a while now, so, I'm going to try my hand again at the Underdark and see how that goes. This time I'm going to call in those 3 giants to help me (cost 500 gold), we'll see how it goes. But so far, a couple of the fights the characters really aren't high enough level for at max level.

I believe I finished EA (before going back and finishing other encounters) at level 3. Yeah, it's hard. My setup is CHARNAME -- Wizard, plus the wizard, rogue, and cleric. Perhaps not the best balance, but it's how I want the story to roll.

#1 know your spells. Makes or breaks being able to either make or take a hit. Mage armor, for instance, allowed me to prevent taking a single hit during a late-game encounter. I also buffed up equipment, but combined with bane/bless could actually hit the friggin things.

#2 location, location, location. Those cliffs made creatures smack my fellows to their deaths. I then used this tactic to throw enemies off the cliff. Great stuff. It also made a difference when I figured out the earth diggers in the underdark. I was not sure how I'd pass the level until I jumped to a new place and avoided it entirely. Which leads me to...

#3 you don't always have to fight. Or at least not everything at once. A big strategy is learning where you can keep your fights behind closed doors. OMG if I had a dollar for every creature I've P'O'd my character wouldn't be doing these quests....

#4 know your action, bonus action, etc. I use potions, scrolls, spells, sneak attack, etc. Everything is planned, so I can't just blaze my way in like on an easier difficulty. My rogue uses melee or ranged depending on proximity, cleric buffs the party, mage 1 uses crowd control, mage 2 uses one target spells. Oh and those %$@! dice have a factor, but, hey, that's D&D. (but really, guys, where's my dice jail???)

And remember it is EA. I think that the encounters are great for a medium to advanced player, but it needs an easier difficulty, a story mode, or something. I agree that it is really tough until you hit level 3, but even then I've had my fair share of spamming the reload button. So for more casual gamers who like the RPG aspect...? It needs to have some options. My mom should not start this game up until there's a scale. Or I'll be fighting her battles XD

Edit: Forgot to mention, I took the underdark route. Holy hells it was not what I expected... Hopefully the alternative isn't so brutal.

And that is absolutely the perfect scenario.
The feeling of achievement is sky rocketing when things work out in the end.
If the victory is achieved by some devious tactics, it only enhances the joy.

I would always prefer a difficult "almost disaster" for a "Ah well. Another six enemies bit the dust. Let's find some more".

Yeah, I have the same issues on one hand, that the encounters are too hard for the average user, but I can see that they can also be trivial once you found a way to exploit the system, or when you are very knowledgeable of the source material.

The real issue is that BG3 requires you to know an awful lot to succeed, but does not actively give you the knowledge and does not show you examples on how to make the best out of your resources.

For example, while I appreciate the hit-chances being displayed, I have no idea how it is calculated or how I can modify it. Now I can only guess that range and height, might have something to do with it and that it does not help to have multiple enemies around me, when I am trying to shoot my bow. I just came here to find how this is calculated and modified, the game never told me (or might have in two sentences with a tooltip), but it never showed me. It did not tell me that immovable, stunned or knocked over characters modify that (it is logical, but can not be seen as a given). Even the position of myself is important, which is horrible since it applies to me as well. So I am getting hit more, because my back was turned towards the enemy, and the game never told me how to rotate characters after actions/movement. If possible at all.

It is the same with sneaking. When I enter sneak mode, I never know what breaks it, or if my attack is a sneak attack. I assume that it has to do with the red area on the ground, which breaks stealth, but noone told me. Noone told me how to exploit or even apply sneaking in combat, so I just auto-attack with my sneaked rogue and maybe I am getting a sneak attack?

Also, synergy of skills and spells etc.. In the whole tutorial I never knew that when I locked an enemy with my crippling arrow that he will be knocked down with the ice bolt. Blood will also turn to ice. A sleeping enemy is prone to sneak attacks, probably a held person, too. I just today thought that I might be able to light my arrow on the candle that I just lit, I do not know though, nobody told or showed me. I am also not fully aware of how initiative works and how the enemies move and turn or what they are capable of. Is it good to go for the strongest first, or the caster? Or should I remove certain characters from the combat now, to deal with them later? If I want to use synergy, how do I exploit the turn times so that my character 1 who sets the trap comes before character 2 that exploits the trap?

Resource management and consumables: I have not yet rested, but most skills and spells naturally are not available to me now. I do not know what short and long rests will do, or if there are any penalties. I got the typical fear of using my bombs and poisons, because I do not know if I need them later in a harder fight. Nobody told me that in a game where you have one action and one bonus action and can move whenever and how often you want, you will face off against more enemies than you have companions, so reducing the amount of actions, bonuses and movement is key. A melee fighter that can not move also can not act. A ranged unit that lost his action can not attack, just flee. A silenced mage can only resort to low damage melee or ranged. And so forth. If haste gives me one extra action, it can mean that I can exploit my trap myself, so say I can throw an oil bomb, light my arrow and set them all on fire. Or I can fully take out a large opponent by myself. Or cripple two enemies negating their turns.

Environmental assets: So I can use the environment to my advantage? So this crane weight can fall down and take care of two guys? Awesome, however it only highlighted after I moused over it randomly, after the fight. This is generally a problem that not all objects you can interact with are highlighted, just containers.

Group movement: So I know combat is ahead, but my comrades keep following me when I try to setup a good position. I can not block a certain position with my melee fighters, because my mage trails in behind totally not in cover. I can only clunkily remove one, or select sneak individually to move them one by one. This system is cumbersome, unintuitive and hurtful in combat. You can also initiate combat by yourself beforehand and to setup, but this is also just explained as a sidenote and not shown as a tactical tool.

A perfect example of everything is a fight in the ruins that starts as soon as you unlock a door. So my main is a rogue, he opens the gate. My melee fighters are behind him and behind them is my mage. The enemies are mostly ranged. My rogue starts, unsneaked so I figure, best get a shot off and let them come to me. It only occured to me tonight before sleep that I could have lighted the candles left and right of the door, lighted my arrow and hit the oil barrel in the middle of the room, the stuff just never lighted up and I was never told. Next in line are three ranged dudes of them, they approach get in range to hit my mage and let loose, that is three arrows hit and the mage goes down. So reload and try to get my group into position, but I can not really, because of the movement system. So I do the best I can, start the fight in sneak, and manage to kill one guy right away. My plan is to cast a fog so I can move up my melee fighters, however initiative makes it so that I should have done that last turn, so my fighters can move up this turn, so it is delayed. Meanwhile one enemy just throws an oil barrel into the doorway and all bets are off again and the plan fails, as anyone moving through fire or acid will take a lot of damage. So I sit there until the fire is out and otherwise can only pop out and shoot arrows. Once it is out, I move, but the ash is hindering my movement, never knew that, so my fighters take a beating while not approaching as far as possible. My mage misses his fire bolt and the sleeping enemy is out of my shortbow range. The fight was not particularly hard, but it was long and not particularly fun, because my options were limited and I limited myself, because the endless possibilities were not known to me.

So all in all the combat is pretty unintuitive, cumbersome, unpredictable, hard and unbalanced because the possibilities are obscured and nothing is known to the player, since it is not taught or shown.

A really good combat-oriented DM will keep your party on the edge of death most of the time. It's what makes things exciting.

What BG3 really needs is a better set of tooltips to ease players new to 5e or players coming off of DOS2 into the system. Really emphasize Advantage vs Disadvantage, how the action economy works, guiding them into abusing the environment and the effective ways to combo with the party. Basically, use everything, unchain your party frequently, scout effectively, know how reactions work (how to intentionally trigger them, how to deflect them, how to prevent them), and use the right Action vs Bonus Action at the right time.

My observations from the forums and steam is that players familiar with tabletop are doing quite well, players from DOS2 have the right ideas but aren't familiar with the spells and systems enough to put them to use effectively, but players from BG1 & BG2 are really struggling because they're still used to the 2nd Edition rules and balance.

I have had a lot of battles that went well, and i have had many encounters that I had to try a few times, or just avoided because I knew I would be toast and I didn't want to spend 20 minutes dying. However I made ti to the goblin camp and I think I am way underleveled because I have been talking my way out of a lot of fights so my gear is kind of eh and I lack experience etc. I have tried the hobgoblin in particular about seven different times and it isn't pretty. I agree with you, the enemies seem overpowered. At the very least, they miss a lot less than i do and seem to be able to move a lot farther than I can in one turn. The amount my party is missing is really just crippling. I'm not sure how you can miss Cleave, for example, when you are standing literally right next to the enemy. I share your frustration, OP, and I agree What I would like to see is being allowed two actions instead of one.

You make a number of good points here. The first is that I would steer clear from combat-oriented DMs. I come to TTRPGs and indeed cRPGs for roleplay, not combat and in cRPGs in particular the combat tends to be the aspect I'd be most willing to part with (not that it can't be good or enjoyable, I love turn based combat in Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire).

Also you're articulating a point that I haven't been able to properly articulate myself; the game needs to teach its players how it expects to be played. If it's going to expect players to make such high level use of everything at their disposal then it needs to be better at communicating that. Putting players in situations early on where creative, out of the box decisions are obvious and straight forward charging into combat would be suicidal. As well as teaching players all the systems you mentioned. Because I'm playing like I would play a standard cRPG on normal mode, where you can get through most combats by brute force with deeper system mastery needed for bigger challenges and boss fights.

Responding to the group movement issue (which is tedious and hampers my fun) :
- Enter turn-based mode (before combat) : this is the most precise way of getting ready / in position.
- Other method : drag portraits out of the "chain", so they each do not auto-follow. When portraits (bottom left) are side by side, they follow. When there is a space between them, they do separate paths. This is NOT at all obvious and I would never have known had I not learnt it in DOS1.

Your point about no information or no way of learning the basics is quite true. I presume they will work on that during the year. Larian's early version is developing the core systems, so the helpful tips are not really there yet.