Not IT, and while I would like to think I'm smart, the evidence seems to be to the contrary. Just had some experience with problems with games, linux, dosbox, and various combinations of the above, and once I have some glimmer of what seems to be the problem, it's usually so unique that google is pretty good about spitting out the solution with first few results.
And Battlespire always was a bit of an odd duck to me. A RPG with some of the things that are good and useful in RPGs cut out to make something much more focused on combat and exploration. My personal suspicion is that either they wanted to make a game quick, or that some game came a bit earlier that was pretty successful, and the executives tried to repurpose the daggerfall engine to copy it. I'd say Diablo, but that doesn't feel right.
It's been a long time, but I seem to recall that once you started getting more potions, better equipment, etc that the game really got a fair bit easier. Definitely could have used a tutorial or some way of getting some better starter gear rather than hoping that you can kill the first monsters and get good enough gear/potions before getting killed.