Den of Seven Vales - Chapter 1 - NEED HELP!!!

I walked into the room and initiated dialogue. I steered the conversation so I would not have to fight...yet. I was then able to position my guys around the room then forced attacked. I used a thief (Yoshimo) and had him hide in the shadows behind the mage and unleashed a x3 backstab which gibbed him from the start. After that, it was only a matter of taking out the mages familiar and my fighters mopped up the rest.

OK, I get my butt kicked every time I venture upstairs at the Den of Seven Vales. The little gnome and his magic throwing buddies destroy me. I'm not talking a close fight here either. I'm talking a good solid butt kicking. Any suggestions on how to win this fight?

I think the key is to take out the magic user first. But he always casts some type of confusion spell on my party which sends my party spinning around, bumping into walls, and attacking each other.

I'd hate to think I've met my match so early on!

If you are on chapter 1 then your party probably isn't very strong yet I would just leave them until you are stronger.
Take my advice freely, It only costs when you ignore it.

Well I shall take your advice and leave them for now.

If you've got any decent sort of mage (that's one with a mem slot in level five) you can take them on. Go on up and cast emotion and chaos in the middle of the group, it should disable them all. The spells aren't too hard to find, try the adventure mart or the scholar above the seven vales.

Same thing happened to me as well. I went there right of the bat after getting out of Irenicus' dungeon. If you don't have access to level 4-5 spells you can try what I did and use stinking cloud. Of course they don't fall for it every time so you should have to reload a few times. Once the mage and preferably another goes down take out the mage asap. Plus you should have wands from Irenius' dungeon with one charge, use them.

Another effective strat that I used, is to summon an air or fire elemental. Then you concentrate your attacks on the mage and his familiar, while the others try in vain to hit the elemental. The elemental wipes the floor with all of them, because they cant hit it. And its fun to watch the snot-nosed dwarf try and hit it.

I got slaughtered too so I fineally gave up. Then I came back in chapter 6 or something and took them out easy as pie.

Well it took me a couple tries, but here is how I killed those pests. At the first dialogue just tell them you don't want trouble. Then I moved mt party members out of sight and had Yoshimo unload his traps, one on the mage and the others near the other baddies. After they were set I moved him out of sight. Now at this point I had both Nalia and Aerie. I stood them at the very front of the room and paused the game. Standing here there should not be anyone that can see you in the radius. I then paused the game and had Nalia cast Web and Aerie cast Fireball, then fast as I could had Nalia open up with cloudkill. Now if you are lucky, most will be stuck from the web, and you can almost count the mage as one of those since he is near the bottom of the room, so he went down fast. Anyone that managed to come gagging out of the room I set my melee types to finish them off fairly easily. Note: If you have more than one cloudkill memmed use them both because they do stack and causes a good deal of damage. Hope this helps for future reference

Well I personally always kill this ones from the start, cause a full plate is worth it. The mage and his familiar can be taken down easily with a fighter and a spell caster. Then go for the thief (he makes awesome backstabbs) and he will leave. The other 2 are hard too but with a few spells and potions of healing are totally killable. The last time I killed them I used my own party with a cavalier, an archer and a swashbuckler dualed to mage (he was only a level 6 mage still). The archer took down the mage with arrows of biting while the mage casted a magic missile on the familiar and the cavalier struck the familiar too. Then first the thief, then the berserker and last the dwarf (be aware, he uses potions to heal himself).

LUCK !!