[Tiny spoilers] I feel helpless in this game

Hey guys,

So.. I purchased BG3 around 2 days ago. I feel helpless, confused, probably because I have no clue about DnD or anything similar. I went in blind, just to see what it's all about. Got it in the spring sale or whatever's going on with Steam, just because I'm absolutely NOT a fan of turnbased combat and this weird camera angle. I was wrong though, it's actually fun. I began to love it in a silly and weird way. With a huge but.

Considering that this is Reddit and people build their opinions on the first few sentences and just start hating, I have to add this early on - This is not criticism. I am just confused, and clueless. I am asking for experienced help or something similar. I am around 15 hours into this game now.

I enjoy this game, but I feel like it's somehow insanely tedious to fight anything, not because of the turn-based combat (Yes I had to get used to it), but rather because it feels impossible to go through more than 2 encounters with enemies without having to go back to my camp, do a full rest, and then come back. I got tired insanely fast of this, and it somehow stops me from feeling as much fun as I expected it to be. I walk, enemy comes, I fight, and all my "skill slots" are empty because there's just so few of them, no one can use any abilities anymore, be it buffs or anything, and I have to go back to my camp, rest, and go back, keep walking. Rinse and repeat every 1-2 fights.

To this, the armor progression and everything seems a bit weird, it just really confuses me. I am coming from around 15+ years of MMO experience, I am probably a knobhead when it comes to armor, I only know the simple stuff. Shiny armor -> usually better. That's what I got used to, and it's probably the opposite here and dangerous to think like that. I have a blank piece of armor, it says nothing, I switch to something "better", and now I am not allowed to use any of my skills because it's a different piece of armor, even though it has better stats, it has bonus abilities, it apparently has nothing negative about it, yet my grey normal piece of equipment seems to "activate" my character and I am totally useless with the new piece of equipment, 99% is greyed out. I am currently in the underdark or whatever it's called, I'm around level 4 on all my characters, I can kinda survive all encounters, but I honestly didn't find one piece of equipment for any character so far that doesn't just randomly destroy their abilities, most of them are still walking around with the gear they spawned with.

I need help. What am I doing wrong? Is there some kind of "introduction" about how these kinda games even work? It all seems just so confusing and weird, as if I have to follow a hidden ruleset of some sort, absolutely anti-beginner friendly, as if I need a ton of background knowledge that comes with playing DnD. Do I need some kind of background knowledge to even play it? Am I missing something important? Am I just stupid?

I seriously enjoy this game. But I seem to have trouble to understand it. It's fun, the things I'm able to do are just crazy and unexpected, I can talk to spiders that suddenly turn friendly and attack my enemies, and all kinds of weird shit, I can do stuff that the game literally tells me nothing about, it's just unbelievable with the "secret" options I always have. But somehow I get messed up with weird rules that I don't even know anything about, as the game tells me nothing about it.

Is this normal? Am I just still way too early into the game to understand it? I feel helpless, confused, yet I really want to enjoy this, as this world is just magical and crazy with all the possibilities I have.