Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[catfood]

I found gold to be useless. The loot that I found during the game was more than sufficient.

 

[Minttunator]

There's a huge abundance of wealth late-game if you bother to sell most of the loot you find - I think I had something like 400k gold after HoW.

 

[kmonster]

Early in the game you might want to save a little money so you can buy the clasp of Bron's Cloak and the Robe of Enfusing from Orrick before he changes Equipment at the start of Chapter 2, at the start of chapter 4 his inventory changes again so you'll want to have the money to buy stuff before but you can beat the game without buying anything from him.

 

[Johannes]

I remember there being a lot of good stuff for sale in Kuldahar that I had no way of buying yet. I didn't finish the game though, maybe later on you get hoards of gold to get everything you want - but judging by the comments no point to save gold for later.

 

[Exar Kun]

Are there any negatives to resting? It resets your spells and gives you HP, so why not just rest after every fight?

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

why not just rest after every fight?

To LARP a decent playthrough. The other option being to do just that : "rest after every fight", thus ruining your game, so curse ID, Black Isle/Bioware and games in general and then come here to bitch about it. Both are pretty popular ways to play the game.

 

[Exar Kun]

Random monsters do attack you, so I guess thats the main way to dissuade you from doing that. I won't be doing it anyway because LARPing makes it much more enjoyable.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Quick-load makes sure you can rest pretty much everywhere in a minute, but I agree that the LARPers way is the best way to play the game, unless one really loves to bitch. It's not like the game is that difficult anyway.

 

[octavius]

I LARP. Not because it's easy, but because it's hard.

 

[Johannes]

Random monsters do attack you, so I guess thats the main way to dissuade you from doing that. I won't be doing it anyway because LARPing makes it much more enjoyable.

They're only a threat if you've used up all your spells and low on hp - so if you rest after every fight they're just nice extra xp.

 

[DemonKing]

I remember there being a lot of good stuff for sale in Kuldahar that I had no way of buying yet.

One of the things I didn't like about HoW was that it added a metric crapton of extra magic items to the Kuldhar shops because apparently players whined because they couldn't buy a magic version of the weapon of choice for every character in their party. So instead of a cool little supply shop hidden away in the shadows of a giant tree in a remote village with a couple of interesting items tucked away out back you ended up with Elminster's Magic Emporium.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

because apparently players whined because they couldn't buy a magic version of the weapon of choice for every character in their party.

Which is a pretty valid reason to whine but not to give in to the whining.

 

[Roguey]

I remember there being a lot of good stuff for sale in Kuldahar that I had no way of buying yet.

One of the things I didn't like about HoW was that it added a metric crapton of extra magic items to the Kuldhar shops because apparently players whined because they couldn't buy a magic version of the weapon of choice for every character in their party. So instead of a cool little supply shop hidden away in the shadows of a giant tree in a remote village with a couple of interesting items tucked away out back you ended up with Elminster's Magic Emporium.

That was a good thing because the support for weapons in base IWD was shit. Now you have a reliable way of getting something decent for the mid-game.

 

[Surf Solar]

Sounds like IWD1 was the same way: great dialogue not given the central focus it should've had.

GTFO

 

[DemonKing]

That was a good thing because the support for weapons in base IWD was shit. Now you have a reliable way of getting something decent for the mid-game.

Maybe I'm in the minority but I actually liked it when shops didn't cater to everyone and magic items were few and far between. Apart from being more realistic there was actually some C&C involved - do I spend my money on this weapon with decent bonuses that I only have basic proficiency in or do I wait in case I find or have the opportunity to buy something better later that suits my skill set more?

 

[Roguey]

Maybe I'm in the minority but I actually liked it when shops didn't cater to everyone and magic items were few and far between. Apart from being more realistic there was actually some C&C involved - do I spend my money on this weapon with decent bonuses that I only have basic proficiency in or do I wait in case I find or have the opportunity to buy something better later that suits my skill set more?

There is nothing later. For example, in the base campaign, there are no hand-placed magical halberds; whether you get one or not depends entirely on the RNG. If you make a fighter with grand mastery in halberds you've pretty much wasted those points.
http://www.formspring.me/JESawyer/q/295613439517146387

It's the developer's fault if players make bad decisions for which they would have no reasonable expectation of predicting the outcome. A complaint with the original Icewind Dale is that the number of magical short bows is extremely low. Players don't have to invest specifically in short bows, but if they did, it's not reasonable to assume that players will intuit the shortage and plan accordingly.

If the developers clearly tell the player that there aren't any magical short bows in the game, they're off the hook for the player's decisions, but there's still the question of what they're accomplishing by making that choice.

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/57754-josh-sawyer-at-gdc-europe-2011/page-2#entry1139703

The inverse happened in IWD2: needing to provide magical versions of every weapon at every level of power due to 2nd Ed. AD&Ds/3Es excessively narrow weapon specialization rules. The result: people complaining that there are tons of magical weapons in every dungeon and every store. Here's an even better idea: don't force specialization to narrow a player's choices to literally 1/30th of all of the available weapon types. That way the designers won't have to create three+ magical versions of every weapon and players can specialize with greater confidence that they'll find appropriate equipment.

 

[DemonKing]

There is nothing later. For example, in the base campaign, there are no hand-placed magical halberds; whether you get one or not depends entirely on the RNG. If you make a fighter with grand mastery in halberds you've pretty much wasted those points.

Except you are getting incredible bonuses to hit and damage and attacking quicker? Doesn't sound like a waste to me. Maybe you have to keep a secondary magical weapon in another slot in case you run up against something that is unaffected by your main weapon, but other than that you're doing ok.

In any case, anyone who's playing IWD should know that the majority of fantasy hero archetypes are usually carting around a sword or maybe (if you're Conan) a battle axe. Taking grandmastery in a highly specialised and unusual weapon and then complaining the world isn't littered with magical versions of it would be like buying an HD DVD player and then complaining that there are nothing but Blu-Rays down at the shop.

The inverse happened in IWD2: needing to provide magical versions of every weapon at every level of power due to 2nd Ed. AD&Ds/3Es excessively narrow weapon specialization rules. The result: people complaining that there are tons of magical weapons in every dungeon and every store. Here's an even better idea: don't force specialization to narrow a player's choices to literally 1/30th of all of the available weapon types. That way the designers won't have to create three+ magical versions of every weapon and players can specialize with greater confidence that they'll find appropriate equipment.

Agreed - it wouldn't have been a problem if the base ruleset was more flexible in this regard.

 

[Roguey]

Except you are getting incredible bonuses to hit and damage and attacking quicker? Doesn't sound like a waste to me. Maybe you have to keep a secondary magical weapon in another slot in case you run up against something that is unaffected by your main weapon, but other than that you're doing ok.

Having to complete the entire game with the crappy regular weapon you bought at the beginning while nearly everyone else gets decent upgrades is lousy.

In any case, anyone who's playing IWD should know that the majority of fantasy hero archetypes are usually carting around a sword or maybe (if you're Conan) a battle axe. Taking grandmastery in a highly specialised and unusual weapon and then complaining the world isn't littered with magical versions of it would be like buying an HD DVD player and then complaining that there are nothing but Blu-Rays down at the shop.

See what Josh said in the first formspring link. I don't believe anyone's asking for dozens of variants of every weapon. With HoW there are three handplaced halberds: a +3 you can buy in Kuldahar, an optional +4/fire and cold resistant/storm shell/cone of cold in Gloomfrost you can have the dwarf craft at the expense of other weapons, and +3/symbol of pain in the very last area of HoW. So one you can buy as soon as you can afford it, one you can craft if you want it, one you can reliably find in the world near the end. That's reasonable.

 

[Infinitron]

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/57754-josh-sawyer-at-gdc-europe-2011/page-2#entry1139703

Holy crap. thesisko tore Nathaniel Chapman a new asshole in that thread. Very prophetic.

 

[marooned]

Obsidian forums are depressing and facepalming in general.

 

[thesisko]

Holy crap. thesisko tore Nathaniel Chapman a new asshole in that thread. Very prophetic.

The guy refuses to admit he was wrong http://www.formspring.me/pedrothedagger/q/371060666154382824

 

[Scruffy]

hey guise, i need advice

i'm replaying IWD2, the GOG version.

basically, i am unable to remove hardware acceleration.

i have a geforce gtx 650 and windows 7
when i try to remove hardware acceleration, the "troubleshooting" button is greyed out
i looked around on the internet and it says that supposedly you can deactivate hardware acceleration directly from the nvidia control panel, but i seem incapable of doing it... any advice?

 

[Infinitron]

hey guise, i need advice

i'm replaying IWD2, the GOG version.

basically, i am unable to remove hardware acceleration.

i have a geforce gtx 650 and windows 7
when i try to remove hardware acceleration, the "troubleshooting" button is greyed out
i looked around on the internet and it says that supposedly you can deactivate hardware acceleration directly from the nvidia control panel, but i seem incapable of doing it... any advice?

Try using this instead: http://bitpatch.com/ie_ddrawfix.html

 

[Scruffy]

SEEMS to work for now, i guess i'll know the next time someone casts entangle. thanks!

it works! thanks! here's a brofist!

 

[Revenant]

IWD2 does not support hardware acceleration (despite the nVidia logo being shown during startup), why would anyone want to switch it off?