i have seen threads about how wands are too powerful and how the dungeon in the firewine bridge is really hard, but i took my level 9
bg2 fighter dualed to mage chracter (i have the xp cap remover) through the whole of bg1 without my main chracter dying ONCE! and i did all of the subquests i could find, maybe i should try playing with a start from scrap bg1 character for the challenge...

and in bg2 wands dont do crap because the bad guys save vs wands 99.999% of the time.

That's probably why BG2 is the sequel and not the other way around. Also, the level cap is there for a reason, to prevent super characters from running through the game with zero challenges.

What diffculty level do you have it on?

as hard a possible, why?

BGII is really advanced. Sometimes, 2 of the same wands have different charges, you can tell how many charges they have, when attacking enemies, you can view their status for hp like injured, badly injured. Cooler spell graphics, cooler spell chants, etc.