Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[Krivol]

Then thief is not a good choice for a main class of any of your heroes? I mean thief4 /mage XX or something like this should be enough... 100 rating is impossible to break even for full thief in normal game, isn't it? (not sure in HoF)

 

[Jigby]

Then thief is not a good choice for a main class of any of your heroes? I mean thief4 /mage XX or something like this should be enough... 100 rating is impossible to break even for full thief in normal game, isn't it? (not sure in HoF)

Rogue is fairly weak, I'd definitely go for multiclass, rogue/wiz is a good choice. There aren't good ways to backstab enemies, sneak attack is weaker than backstab in ADnD and encounters are so dense with enemies, that it's difficult to navigate your rogue into a sneak attack positon.

 

[Spukrian]

I've only finished IWD2 once and I had no rogue. My barbarian invested all her skillpoints in Search and Disable Device, she was able to disarm all traps except one in Dragon's Eye. Can't remember exactly where, but it was right before the level exit.

 

[laclongquan]

There is one or two extremely high, nearly irremovable traps in the game. Otherwise there's enough traps that make a max Disable Device Rogue a worthwhile investment. You could survive the traps (mostly) but the frequency of times you have to deal with the aftermath of such traps are so that you wish you have one.

Backstab also has another nerf that you guys havent mentioned: cant outrun the spells. Sometimes you got a caster that unleash spell fast enough that you get caught, being not out of his sight. Sometimes you get a counter script that allow target to throw spell at you and hit you EVEN when you run out of their sight. Example is the three witch doctors in the Fortress, in the dormitory quarter. The Ice Temple Aurilite storm bro/sister can also hit you with sling fast enough, hard enough that backstabbing them is a dangerous choice.

My method to employ a rogue is that a mix in of 4 Fighter level, allow +1/+2 to bow attacks. A master Bowman, as such. The damage is very respectable, and can causing crits fairly frequent with better arrows. Can discover traps when found, and scout the battlefield well. Since he mainly shoot bow, he can draw enemies without being near, thus can easily get himself out of trouble

 

[Cael]

Then thief is not a good choice for a main class of any of your heroes? I mean thief4 /mage XX or something like this should be enough... 100 rating is impossible to break even for full thief in normal game, isn't it? (not sure in HoF)

It is pretty shit. Anything a rogue can do, a bard can do better. Just get an elf Bard and you can even use bows for free. And if you have a wizard, cross-classing find and disable traps with a wizard is all you need. Sure, you have to eat a couple of traps later (especially in the approach to Dragon's Eye) that a rogue MIGHT have disarmed, but it is better than wasting an entire party slot on a subpar character for the whole adventure.

 

[the_shadow]

All right, I completed the Bridge and Horde Fortress with all clerics. The bridge was actually really simple, you just go north while remaining as far right as possible so that you don't aggro too many enemies while travelling to the ogres.

The Outer Horde Fortress was pretty straight forward too, I went for the strategy of not rushing for the drums, but simply holding my ground and kiting the summoned worg riders. A couple of clerics reached Level 5 around this point and I became a bit lazier since I got access to Summon Undead, which is still a bit overpowered even in the patched version. Most groups of enemies were handled by sending my summons forward with an invisible Deep Gnome to initiate combat, and once most of the enemies were focused on my summons, following up with the rest of my PCs who cast Hold Person and ranged attack.

I finished with 20198 gold. I'm not sure how the poster prior to me ended up with 60+k gold, since I only bought the Left Hand of Darkness and Short Sword of Striking. The early game is pretty sparse on decent equipment.

 

[Cael]

All right, I completed the Bridge and Horde Fortress with all clerics. The bridge was actually really simple, you just go north while remaining as far right as possible so that you don't aggro too many enemies while travelling to the ogres.

The Outer Horde Fortress was pretty straight forward too, I went for the strategy of not rushing for the drums, but simply holding my ground and kiting the summoned worg riders. A couple of clerics reached Level 5 around this point and I became a bit lazier since I got access to Summon Undead, which is still a bit overpowered even in the patched version. Most groups of enemies were handled by sending my summons forward with an invisible Deep Gnome to initiate combat, and once most of the enemies were focused on my summons, following up with the rest of my PCs who cast Hold Person and ranged attack.

I finished with 20198 gold. I'm not sure how the poster prior to me ended up with 60+k gold, since I only bought the Left Hand of Darkness and Short Sword of Striking. The early game is pretty sparse on decent equipment.

If you make your clerics a bit tanky, you could outlast the riders. I've never done it that way, though, since I tend to play with squishy wizards. A group of 6 deep gnomes is quite attractive if you can farm XP that early.

 

[Jazz_]

How do you avoid getting mindfucked by the harpies in Trial of the Luremaster? My party doesn't have a cleric btw, I mean it does but I made it a chaotic evil priest of Talos with only offensive/curse spells lolz.

 

[iguana_trader]

priest of Talos

via Imgflip Meme Generator

 

[the_shadow]

Wasn't sure why you posted that gif at first. I actually double checked that 'Talos' was the correct spelling, before I realized that cleric domains didn't exist in the original IWD 1.

 

[Average Manatee]

Switched myself over to slings and jesus, it's stupid OP. My party hit level 12. Fully buffed, this is what all 6 of my characters look like with Rapid Shot:

AB: 23/23/18/14
Damage: 1d4 +7 (str) + 2 (sling) +4 (Holy Power) +2 (Chant and Aid) +2 (Righteous Wrath) = 18-22 damage per hit.

That's all really, it's just stupid how powerful it is.

This is besides the fact that I have a group of full priests w/ 21 wisdom and GCF:Enchantment. Virtually anything susceptible for charm, fear, sleep, or hold effect is just effortless to put down.

Only difficulty is golems that can't really be hurt by my stones, and which are immune to most spells. They basically require melee and cheesing the AI so it gets stuck chasing after one character while the rest pile on damage. Still haven't needed any summons except for the Raven trials.

I finished with 20198 gold. I'm not sure how the poster prior to me ended up with 60+k gold, since I only bought the Left Hand of Darkness and Short Sword of Striking. The early game is pretty sparse on decent equipment.

Did you do all the quests, loot everything, and sell most of the equipment you didn't need? The wife of the mayor gives you worse prices for selling I believe, and you want to sell common items all at once since the price goes down the more the merchants have (e.g. for things like flaming oil).

Also I think playing on higher difficulties means more enemies overall, which translates to slightly more loot.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Also I think playing on higher difficulties means more enemies overall, which translates to slightly more loot.

Well... if you refuse to stick to the rules...

:D

 

[Average Manatee]

By the way, is there some hidden requirement to Spirit of Flame and other similar feats? My 1 int half orcs can't seem to take it even with 10 spellcraft while my 14 int human got it as soon as he could.

 

[Jigby]

By the way, is there some hidden requirement to Spirit of Flame and other similar feats? My 1 int half orcs can't seem to take it even with 10 spellcraft while my 14 int human got it as soon as he could.

As long as you have 10 spellcraft (including Int modifier, so in your case 15 spellcraft), you should be able to take it at lvl 12.

 

[Jigby]

Switched myself over to slings and jesus, it's stupid OP. My party hit level 12. Fully buffed, this is what all 6 of my characters look like with Rapid Shot:

AB: 23/23/18/14
Damage: 1d4 +7 (str) + 2 (sling) +4 (Holy Power) +2 (Chant and Aid) +2 (Righteous Wrath) = 18-22 damage per hit.

That's all really, it's just stupid how powerful it is.

To top it off, you could combine slings with improved invisibility (well not with 6 clerics) to deny enemies' dexterity bonus to AC, in some fights that would translate into +7 AB or even +10 even if they have blindfight (Xvim has something like ~24 Dex, Will-o-Wisps in the Fell Wood ~30 Dex). Could be a template for a party, perhaps 4 clerics 2 sorcs .

 

[Average Manatee]

By the way, is there some hidden requirement to Spirit of Flame and other similar feats? My 1 int half orcs can't seem to take it even with 10 spellcraft while my 14 int human got it as soon as he could.

As long as you have 10 spellcraft (including Int modifier, so in your case 15 spellcraft), you should be able to take it at lvl 12.

Ahh, that makes sense. Does boosting INT temporarily help?

Switched myself over to slings and jesus, it's stupid OP. My party hit level 12. Fully buffed, this is what all 6 of my characters look like with Rapid Shot:

AB: 23/23/18/14
Damage: 1d4 +7 (str) + 2 (sling) +4 (Holy Power) +2 (Chant and Aid) +2 (Righteous Wrath) = 18-22 damage per hit.

That's all really, it's just stupid how powerful it is.

To top it off, you could combine slings with improved invisibility (well not with 6 clerics) to deny enemies' dexterity bonus to AC, in some fights that would translate into +7 AB or even +10 even if they have blindfight (Xvim has something like ~24 Dex, Will-o-Wisps in the Fell Wood ~30 Dex). Could be a template for a party, perhaps 4 clerics 2 sorcs .

Mask has improved invisibility. You'd definitely want some arcane capacity for a more powerful party though.

How high does enemy AC go? Doesn't seem like I'm missing many shots at all.

 

[Jigby]

By the way, is there some hidden requirement to Spirit of Flame and other similar feats? My 1 int half orcs can't seem to take it even with 10 spellcraft while my 14 int human got it as soon as he could.

As long as you have 10 spellcraft (including Int modifier, so in your case 15 spellcraft), you should be able to take it at lvl 12.

Ahh, that makes sense. Does boosting INT temporarily help?

I think so. Int boosting items definitely work.

Switched myself over to slings and jesus, it's stupid OP. My party hit level 12. Fully buffed, this is what all 6 of my characters look like with Rapid Shot:

AB: 23/23/18/14
Damage: 1d4 +7 (str) + 2 (sling) +4 (Holy Power) +2 (Chant and Aid) +2 (Righteous Wrath) = 18-22 damage per hit.

That's all really, it's just stupid how powerful it is.

To top it off, you could combine slings with improved invisibility (well not with 6 clerics) to deny enemies' dexterity bonus to AC, in some fights that would translate into +7 AB or even +10 even if they have blindfight (Xvim has something like ~24 Dex, Will-o-Wisps in the Fell Wood ~30 Dex). Could be a template for a party, perhaps 4 clerics 2 sorcs .

Mask has improved invisibility. You'd definitely want some arcane capacity for a more powerful party though.

How high does enemy AC go? Doesn't seem like I'm missing many shots at all.

Admittedly, not high enough, I was thinking more in line of getting those 4th and 5th attacks to connect at BAB-15 and also for the sake of playing something different from "obtain Massive Halberd of Hate" -> "attack-move". That's the problem with IWD2, past the ice temple you rarely encounter something genuinely dangerous, it's mostly just a toyplay ride where you try out different stuff.

That said, there are scholarly gentlemen who have tried and completed tactics+ironman, so that's something to try I guess.

 

[aweigh]

Has anyone bothered to play the remake modules of Icewind Dale game done for NWN2? I've never actually seen anyone here talk about this and wanted to ask out of curiosity, since it seems like they actually did the entire fucking thing (which is crazy).

 

[the_shadow]

It actually looks pretty decent, I might have to give it a try one day.

 

[laclongquan]

At freaking Horde stage, how the heck do you get INT boosting item to help? Testing to see if it help, because like hell it will help. The downside of Min INT is that you have to invest skillpoints to overcome the neg modifiers. No shortcut at all.

 

[the_shadow]

I may be wrong, but I was always under the impression that it was base spellcraft (without stat modifiers) that determined whether you were eligible for the elemental feats.

 

[Jigby]

At freaking Horde stage, how the heck do you get INT boosting item to help? Testing to see if it help, because like hell it will help. The downside of Min INT is that you have to invest skillpoints to overcome the neg modifiers. No shortcut at all.

I think he's already at least in chapter 4 or chapter 5 considering he did the Raven monastery challenge.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah, just killed the guardian by having it teleport into a circle of 6 fully buffed clerics who meleed him to death in under 2 rounds. Honestly don't think the spell-boosting feats are any good. Flame strike is pretty much the only spell it helps and it's so slow to cast + not a great AoE so it's somewhat hard to aim well and generally not worth the time. The only instance I've really been using it is when I sleep whole groups (e.g. the hook horror ambushes before underdark) with Greater Command in an area, then have my whole group of 6 clerics unload 6 flame strikes at once. Granted I could probably do that a lot more than I am now, but it's more fun to use physical attacks.

That said I've also found that concentration is surprisingly not that important. My in-combat spells tend to be fast, like greater command (1 cast time), dismissal/banishment (1 cast time), heal (instant), defensive harmony (1 cast time). The longest spells I consistently spam are hold person/charm/halt undead/dominate, around 3 cast time, but I have enough of them on everyone that I just find whoever isn't under attack to use it. Before I'd have said concentration was something you need to always keep maxed, now I'm thinking its more only necessary for nukes

 

[laclongquan]

That's why you send summons in to surround target then flame strike the whole group. You got 6 cleric, you can strike 3-6 hit each time~

As for concentration, that's why a ClericFighter4 can afford to ignore Concentration and just invest in Spellcraft. Standing in melee and casting spells with time 1-2 is what it's all about. For pure caster, Concentration is important because you dont want to get disrupted during important fights, which is where you get interrupted the most.

 

[Cael]

I may be wrong, but I was always under the impression that it was base spellcraft (without stat modifiers) that determined whether you were eligible for the elemental feats.

It is base, or I would have the feats at level 3 with my drow wizard.