Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[kryminator]

Goddamn piece of garbage... Anybody knows how to make IWD:EE work in multiplayer?
My friend and I had to use Hamachi to be able to host a session, and now that we joined it just crashes when trying to start it.
Enhanced my ass.

Well, due to lack of better ideas I can suggest trying other virtual LAN software. I remember using Evolve and, iirc, Tunngle and maybe also Wippien to play Grim Dawn and Evolve was the best of these.

 

[Don Peste]

We ditched the "Enhanced Edition". We are playing the old GOG version with no problem. Hamachi is probably adding some lag, but it's playable so far. BTW Tunngle and Evolve both died sometime ago.
Our party consists of: Paladin, Warrior, Thief, Druid, Cleric, Mage. All pure, we'll try multiclassing next time. The thief could use bigger bows, and the cleric needs more HP. We thought he would be able to tank, but he's constantly getting a lot of damage.
We just arrived at the Eldathyn Temple. I think this is going to be our first major/difficult battle.

 

[Jvegi]

I keep treading through IWD2 with my party of:
ranger/rouge
warrior
monk
cleric
wizard

It goes very slowly. I'm at the end of chapter one after at least a month of playing. The characrers are at level 7-8, neither of them is especially bad-ass, except for a wizard perhaps. It's manageable and fair on hard, but the battles don't seem as thematically relevant and tactically unique as in the first one. It's long, difficult and quite repetitive. Still fun, but I'm having trouble imagining going through 5 more chapters.

And the monk is very underwhelming so far. With his deep gnome 3 level exp penalty, his hp is the lowest next to the wizard, and he still only has 1 attack per round. No equipment either.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I wouldn’t consider myself a minmaxxer, generally don’t mind running underpowered parties for thematic reasons, but running with a solo class thief just seems unnecessary; they’re terrible at everything except thief skills and they’re incredibly boring to play.

 

[Jvegi]

Start of Chapter Three.

The Ice Temple was the most boring and frustrating thing ever. No challenge, the puzzles are clunky, the story is meh. The difficulty drop is the most disappointing thing, all the battles before (on hard) were tough and demanded tactical approach. This time it was all point and click.

The monk is still useless in the DPS department. The rouge is meh. the cleric is fine, but I don't see the whole battle-cleric thing. I guess he could be buffed up with high level spells to become as strong as a fighter with more resistances for a few rounds, but it feels like a lot of hassle.
And I feel like there were no skill checks at all.

I hope the next chapters will get better, I'm going to finish this game so I don't want my wasted time to not be enjoyable.

 

[Lagole Gon]

He's going to give up in Chapter Five.

 

[GreyViper]

I also ran into MP issues while playing IWD:EE so we put it on hold until Beamdog fixes the issue.

 

[Chippy]

So I'll just post this and consider the issue closed: https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/32026-stealth-in-iwd2-broken/

I mentioned stealth in IWD2 to the modders over at Gibberling3 and they patched it. They said that the values were upside down or something. So the more you put into move silently, the harder it was to remain in stealth.

I haven't tested the patch, as they're saying it may also be to do with lighting in the maps. So just keeping an eye on it.

So an FYI for all those that backed me up, and one for Lilura. For everyone else: I suppose ignorance is bliss, or maybe you just weren't masters of stealth.

Spoiler

That was -banter- for those of you who are genuine autists

 

[Baron Dupek]

The actual problem could be the dead peasant bodies in the ground. If they detect invisibility, you might just get screwed by them. Yeah, that's in other games too.

What is this, Boiling Point: Road to Hell patchnote?

Could expect worse from studio that was coming closer to it's end.

 

[hell bovine]

So I'll just post this and consider the issue closed: https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/32026-stealth-in-iwd2-broken/

Interesting read, thanks!

 

[Tigranes]

Start of Chapter Three.

The Ice Temple was the most boring and frustrating thing ever. No challenge, the puzzles are clunky, the story is meh. The difficulty drop is the most disappointing thing, all the battles before (on hard) were tough and demanded tactical approach. This time it was all point and click.

The monk is still useless in the DPS department. The rouge is meh. the cleric is fine, but I don't see the whole battle-cleric thing. I guess he could be buffed up with high level spells to become as strong as a fighter with more resistances for a few rounds, but it feels like a lot of hassle.
And I feel like there were no skill checks at all.

I hope the next chapters will get better, I'm going to finish this game so I don't want my wasted time to not be enjoyable.

FWIW I think the Ice Temple is the most gruelling in IWD2, because everything about its combat and and puzzles and interface/navigation is like walking through treacle. There are later areas that are also quite a slog, but arguably you have a smashing party by then to speed things up.

That said, this is IWD, it's all about fighting. Lots and lots of fighting.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Iirc JES has gone on multiple rants about how much he hates the Ice Temple and how to ally out of place it is in the game.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

If you ignore the hundreds "one on one" fights of the battle squares challenge and do the mandatory fights only, the temple is not that bad.

 

[Jigby]

You gotta give the monk some weapons, otherwise they suck with just the fists. I like a monk that dips into 2 fighter levels around the Ice Temple, you pickup the dualwield feats and in chapter 3 he starts wielding the brilliant short sword +5 and bellib's everlasting torch in the offhand. Get the +5 generic AC artifact from Nim in the village and with barkskin you have an attackmove AFK character.

 

[kryminator]

Ok, so I have finished IWD1 along with HoW and TotL some time ago and I am going to start IWD2, but this (as all of You probably knew) is very different from the first part (game mechanics-wise) and I have difficulties in creation of the satisfying party. I want them to be mostly fighters-like (not as DnD fighter just more combat-focused than magic-focused etc.) as I just don't like magic in these games (in my IWD1 playthrough cleric and mage had both 3% of all kills) or maybe I don't like mechanics related to magic (resting). And this time I think I will accept multiclassing mainly due to the fact that I want archer-like ranger and I can't stand that without some fighter levels he won't be able to be master of bow. Anyway, I thought about party like that:
- wild elf fighter 4 / ranger x (fighter levels for bow specialization)
- half-orc or wild elf monk (I just want monk this time and he needs to be a bit tanky and from what You wrote I have doubts about his dmg output, does STR influence it? I rather want him to be pure fist fighting monk than sword fighting one but I want him to be useful fighter not some kind of bait)
- human or half-orc fighter or maybe fighter 4 / barbarian x (main tank and probably main late game killer theoretically, I awnt him to be 2h weapon user, maybe fighter 4 / paladin?)
- halfling ranger 5 / rogue x (I saw such proposition praised on the Internet although I don't understand why not fighter 4 instead ranger levels because he will miss 1 level of weapon spec; I want this rogue be kind of swashbuckler from the IWD1 bow/xbow shooting and sometimes switching to melee but mostly just secondary archer)
- cleric (not thought much about race or deity, probably some dwarf)
- and due to the fact that I will need some charismatic talking character and a maybe also combat spells - sorcerer (no idea about his details)

And I don't like to use classes (or were these races?) which have level penalty.

There are so much variables that it is really hard to plan a team in this game w/o playing it earlier but I think that I would abandon playing/finishing the game if the first try would fail.

Which skills are useful? INT seems to be ability responsible for skill points but IIRC in NWN for example most, or maybe all, of skills were useless (might be wrong though, because my ranger char in this game was even shittier than the game itself).

What does the favored class do? Is it some thing related to exp getting?

I need a lot of advices, guys. What to do to have balanced party and enjoy performances of most of them (in IWD1 I didnt like my mage but sorcerer should be good replacement because if I understand correctly he doesnt have to remember spells, he just know them or doesnt know them so he can spam them more and doesnt need to rest all the time to be useful).

 

[Average Manatee]

I too don't know what a ranger 5 / rogue x gets you. In general rogue is kind of shit for skills in 3rd ed because anyone high-int can do skills, and in a planned party of 6 you can cover a huge number of skills. Wizards are really good at skills. Rogue 1 / Wizard x is a good combination. Otherwise running lots of humans (+1 skill point per level) and some characters with decent intelligence works.

Casters want concentration to avoid being interrupted, and spellcraft eventually unlocks a good perk that gives bonus damage with certain elements. IIRC Use Magic Device/Animal Empathy are fairly useless and wilderness lore is useful in one specific instance to get hints through a maze, otherwise useless. The rest are about as useful as you'd expect those skills to be in a hack and slash dungeon crawler like IWD. Spells can detect traps or pick locks but actually having enough of those around is a pain in the ass.

Races with -1 level penalty tend to be almost unnoticable past the early stages.

Favoured class lets you multiclass without XP penalty. Normally you will receive a -10% XP penalty if you have two classes where neither is your favoured class and the classes are more than 1 level apart. The penalty goes up another -10% for each further class that doesn't satisfy these requirements. So for instance your wild elf fighter 4 / ranger x will have an XP penalty because neither fighter nor ranger is your favoured class. If you instead did a fighter x / ranger x with wild elf, alternating levels each time, you would avoid the XP penalty.

STR does work on monk fists. Monks still kind of suck.

 

[kryminator]

I too don't know what a ranger 5 / rogue x gets you. In general rogue is kind of shit for skills in 3rd ed because anyone high-int can do skills, and in a planned party of 6 you can cover a huge number of skills. Wizards are really good at skills. Rogue 1 / Wizard x is a good combination. Otherwise running lots of humans (+1 skill point per level) and some characters with decent intelligence works.

Casters want concentration to avoid being interrupted, and spellcraft eventually unlocks a good perk that gives bonus damage with certain elements. IIRC Use Magic Device/Animal Empathy are fairly useless and wilderness lore is useful in one specific instance to get hints through a maze, otherwise useless. The rest are about as useful as you'd expect those skills to be in a hack and slash dungeon crawler like IWD. Spells can detect traps or pick locks but actually having enough of those around is a pain in the ass.

Races with -1 level penalty tend to be almost unnoticable past the early stages.

Favoured class lets you multiclass without XP penalty. Normally you will receive a -10% XP penalty if you have two classes where neither is your favoured class and the classes are more than 1 level apart. The penalty goes up another -10% for each further class that doesn't satisfy these requirements. So for instance your wild elf fighter 4 / ranger x will have an XP penalty because neither fighter nor ranger is your favoured class. If you instead did a fighter x / ranger x with wild elf, alternating levels each time, you would avoid the XP penalty.

But it's one time 10% penalty if levels difference is more than 1, not that it's bigger penalty the more levels the difference is? I mean that fighter 4 / ranger 6 will have 10% exp penalty and fighter 4/ranger 20 will also have 10% penalty not more, right? Is there any point except kind of role-playing to have fighter/ranger archer rather than pure fighter one? And would that pure fighter have 10% exp penalty if I would chose wild elf as his race (I assume not but need to ask anyway)?

What about that pure monk char? Does high DEX influence his dmg if he is fist fighting? Probably it does not but I want to be sure (also because it does in DnD 5e IIRC)? And does STR improve his dmg if fighting with fists?

Thanks for response.

 

[Jigby]

I don't think the monk works that well in that party. They work better in caster heavy parties, the whole idea being you buff up his AC and reflex saves and then you aggro all the enemies. Rest of the party switches to ranged weapons and stands back and casters ocasionally throw fireballs/cones of colds which do no damage to the monk thanks to reflex saves and later on maxed out magic resistance. Your party has no druid, meaning no barkskin which is an essential AC buffing spell. Also not that many casters. I'd would swap out the monk for a fighter1/clericX. Fighter because it's a blind playthrough, you have no idea what weapons there are in the game and fighter gets you all the weapon feats. And a 2nd cleric is really nice, especially if you want to limit resting. With double the clerics you will have double the Animate Deads and Animate Dead is a really nice spell from a conservation POV once you start summoning greater boneguards. You can probably finish the whole Ice temple on a single rest with 2 clerics with those animate deads.

I'd also swap out the ranger/rogue guy for either another sorcerer or a wizard or a bard. Bard is a semicaster and with his charisma and diplomacy/bluff skills he can also be the party leader. Wizard can be trained in traps disarming and potion/items identification. The traps in the game are weak, so having no traps disarming is fine but you do need the identification unless you install the g3 anthology pack that identifies all of the items in the game. Sorcerer would just be another blaster.

For the barbarian guy - there's a nice polearm in chapter 5, but it's only for evil chars, so make him evil.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

I need a lot of advices, guys.

I recommend reading the following guide: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/552350-icewind-dale-ii/faqs/21354

There are many spoilers in there, but it will help you get off on the right foot. At least, it did for me.

Or, you could do a blind playthrough, then read the guide. Personally I think IWD2 is good for multiple playthroughs. My first playthrough was a real slog. After that it got better.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Monks can be quite strong mechanically in 3E, but imo they’re really boring to play outside of PnP. Rangers aren’t the totally sub-par crap they were in 2E, but you’re still almost always better off with a Fighter or Druid depending on the role you’re trying to fill. Barbarians are also not bad, although they are fairly micro-heavy for a martial class. If you want pure OP martial cheese, Clerics and Cleric/Fighters are definitely the way to go among the base classes of 3E. They will necessitate a certain level of micro, but most of it being in the way of pre-buffing (as opposed to, say, Wizards or Sorcerers -who are also quite OP when built correctly but very micro-heavy in combat).

 

[Hassar]

Start of Chapter Three.

The Ice Temple was the most boring and frustrating thing ever. No challenge, the puzzles are clunky, the story is meh. The difficulty drop is the most disappointing thing, all the battles before (on hard) were tough and demanded tactical approach. This time it was all point and click.

The monk is still useless in the DPS department. The rouge is meh. the cleric is fine, but I don't see the whole battle-cleric thing. I guess he could be buffed up with high level spells to become as strong as a fighter with more resistances for a few rounds, but it feels like a lot of hassle.
And I feel like there were no skill checks at all.

I hope the next chapters will get better, I'm going to finish this game so I don't want my wasted time to not be enjoyable.

FWIW I think the Ice Temple is the most gruelling in IWD2, because everything about its combat and and puzzles and interface/navigation is like walking through treacle. There are later areas that are also quite a slog, but arguably you have a smashing party by then to speed things up.

That said, this is IWD, it's all about fighting. Lots and lots of fighting.

The constant fighting became a problem for my party of six specialist mages. Only supreme autism kept me going forward with the attempt.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

The constant fighting became a problem for my party of six specialist mages. Only supreme autism kept me going forward with the attempt.

Things can be really difficult, especially early on. Synergizing spellbooks is essential. Agannazar's Scorcher, for example. Have your party in a line, then have them each cast it at a distant opponent in a series. You can then march each one of them in a row across the screen, raking everything the ray touches. 2d6x6, potentially twice, really adds up. This is one way in which the EE is better, since you have access to BG2's far superior spellbook.

 

[Don Peste]

I too finished IWD Complete*. It took us a little bit more than a month. HoW and Trials of the Luremaster were rather lackluster. But overall it was lots of fun.
Today we started IWD2. Our new party consists of: Human Sorcerer (might take 1 Paladin level), Human Druid, Strongheart Halfling Rogue (might take 1 or 4 Fighter levels), Shield Dwarf Cleric (Tempus), Half-Orc Barb (maybe 1-4 Fighter lvls), and Human Wizard (Necro).

I've read a little bit about character creation (i.e. I wasted a dozen hours reading 2003 posts from Sorcerers and Ironworks), and I know it's not a 100% optimal party, but we feel pretty good about it. And it's just going to be for Normal mode.

*IWD Main Campaign Sybex Guide by Chris Avellone & Jason Suinn: https://archive.org/details/Forgotten_Realms_Icewind_Dale_Sybex_Inc/. I've got the one for the expansion on pdf too.

 

[Hassar]

The constant fighting became a problem for my party of six specialist mages. Only supreme autism kept me going forward with the attempt.

Things can be really difficult, especially early on. Synergizing spellbooks is essential. Agannazar's Scorcher, for example. Have your party in a line, then have them each cast it at a distant opponent in a series. You can then march each one of them in a row across the screen, raking everything the ray touches. 2d6x6, potentially twice, really adds up. This is one way in which the EE is better, since you have access to BG2's far superior spellbook.

Nice idea. I’ll give it a try.

 

[laclongquan]

So I'll just post this and consider the issue closed: https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/32026-stealth-in-iwd2-broken/

I mentioned stealth in IWD2 to the modders over at Gibberling3 and they patched it. They said that the values were upside down or something. So the more you put into move silently, the harder it was to remain in stealth.

I haven't tested the patch, as they're saying it may also be to do with lighting in the maps. So just keeping an eye on it.

So an FYI for all those that backed me up, and one for Lilura. For everyone else: I suppose ignorance is bliss, or maybe you just weren't masters of stealth.

Spoiler

That was -banter- for those of you who are genuine autists

Interesting, especially the part about the codes and analyzing it. In particular about Move Silently skill the lower the better, so it's better to leave this alone and just invest in Hide.

For IWD2 stealth, I mostly use stealth from safety, then scout around. If attack I use bow (Deep Gnome Rogue Fighter is a master of bow) and I never use backstab. The latter is a part of conscious choice from me since I dont like scout being far away activating aggro deep inside enemy's line.