After many playthroughs, you will get burnt out on story and skipping dialogue can cause some unforseen glitches, like voice audio not playing, dialogue auto skipping, and loss of dialogue options. I once lost all dialogue options in place with "continue" after doing a history check when speaking with Volo at the Grove about the goblin attack. That's the weirdest one I've seen so far.
Your first playthrough can seem difficult. It's a learning process, after awhile the game will become easier, your strategy will improve over time. It sounds like you're rushing the game a bit. You should be level 4-5 before doing the goblin camp. Otherwise it's gonna be rough.
If you manage to kill the cambion general and mindflayer on the Nautiloid, it'll rack you 150xp, you can do it by picking up all the purple tanks throughout the Nautiloid and place them around the cambion and mindflayer, help beat on the cambion, back away then have shadowheart or yourself throw a fire bolt at the tanks.
You'll then be able to get to level 3 before the first Goblin attack on the Grove if you go there last. You'd then be able to use Shadowheart to summon an enchanted weapon to fight off some goblins. Prepare the spell before hand of course.
If you manage to reassemble the spear of the absolute, you can later use it to kill a beholder in the Underdark. It helps a lot in that fight. You get it early in the game, one piece is on the dwarf where the Edowin siblings are, the other piece is jabbed in the owlbear mother.
