Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[octavius]

Not many people like Bards but I lke them for the free identify ability (high Lore), pickpocket (you can get some good stuff picking pockets) and back up spell-casting abilities. Plus some of the songs at higher levels are pretty good.

The song that heals ("War Chant of the Sith", I think it's called") is hugely overpowered and means you no longer need to worry about healing, except for first aid in combat.

Nothing wrong with a single class thief even though it doesn't do much besides, well, being a thief (near useless in fights).

You should learn to backstab. It can be extremely effective and a Fighter/Thief is much better at it (better THAC0) than a single class Thief.

 

[SwiftCrack]

Yes you are right but after backstabbing your thief goes back to bow duty.

 

[Somberlain]

Yes you are right but after backstabbing your thief goes back to bow duty.

No, he goes backstabbing again.

 

[octavius]

Yes you are right but after backstabbing your thief goes back to bow duty.

No, he goes backstabbing again.

Yup. One round of hiding and one round of backstabbing is more effective than two rounds of plonking arrows.
In my IWD games my Fighter/Thief usually has 75% of the kills before the party starts encountering those hordes of Cold Wights.

 

[SwiftCrack]

Fair enough.

 

[Tigranes]

Your party will do fine, but it just seems pretty boring to play that way. Fighters don't have a huge amount to do, and single class clerics and thieves are also objectively less versatile and powerful in most cases than hybrids.

I guess if you like to turn on Party AI and occasionally dip into managing your battles it doesn't matter so much. Personally that sounds terribly boring and I'd rather pause every other second and micromanage, in which case you'd much rather go all out with multiclasses and weird races, etc.

 

[octavius]

For fun add a Druid to your party. They have some unique spells and abilities, and are more fun to play than their Baldur's Gate counterparts.

 

[roshan]

Hey, I'm going to start playing IWD for the first time. I want a simple, straight forward party (no dual classing) that I can mix-max and crush everything in my way. I was thinking:

3 Fighters (sword + shield, axe, bow)
1 Thief
1 Cleric
1 Mage

Does that sound like an OK build? If so, what races do I pick and what stats do I aim for on each character?

The best characters in IWD 1 are multiclass.

A half elf ranger/cleric with favored enemy undead with roflstomp everything. If you don't use a shield, IWD gives you an extra attack per round. And you get to cast all the cleric spells and most of the druid spells too (I think in vanilla they automatically got all druid spells, but in HOW they only get the spells when the ranger level is high enough). You also get bonus spell slots from your ranger class. And you can specialize in weapons, which is the only advantage a pure ranger would have. It's an incredible combination. You have a character that has both excellent stealth AND turn undead. This is the most OP class in the game. No min-maxed party is complete without it.

Next go for fighter/thief. Make sure you specialize in long sword so you can backstab. Pure thief is boring and useless in 2nd edition.

A pure class cleric is meh, you're better off with a fighter/cleric, but a fighter cleric has absolutely no advantages compared to the ranger/cleric, it's basically just a crappy version. So you're better off with a fighter/druid, due to their powerful offensive spells and elemental transformations at higher levels.

So, basically, a min-maxed party should have:

Fighter/Druid
Ranger/Cleric
Fighter/Thief

If you want to have more magic power, or a fighter that can buff himself with strong mage spells, then add a Fighter/Mage too for extra arcane spellcasting ability. And if you have a fighter/mage that can cast all spells, you can safely make your primary mage a specialist to get an extra spell slot per level.

 

[roshan]

Guys, a couple of questions of my own:

1. In TOTL, is the level cap for all classes a universal 30?
2. Does the widescreen mod screw up the game's interface?
3. Any other recommended mods aside from the fixpack?

Also, does anyone know if Auril's Bane is any good? I played it years ago and it did make the game more challenging, but I do remember a lot of fuckery with the ruleset as well. Bards in particular suffered from altered spell selections.....

 

[Tigranes]

2. Not much. I dont see why you wouldnt use it.
3. Not really. IWDs didnt get a great deal of modding.

 

[octavius]

I liked Auril's Bane. It added lots of interesting stuff, but one item or two were rather overpowered.
Unfinished Business may also be worth considered, even though it doesn't add much (it's much smaller than the UB mods for the BG games.
EDIT: But avoid the NPCs Mod at all cost. It's nowhere near the same quality as the BG1 NPC Project mod.

 

[Lilura]

This is the most OP class in the game. No min-maxed party is complete without it.

No.

 

[octavius]

Personally I favour a party that is part multi-cultural diversity (a concept that works so much better in theory and fiction than in real life), part fun and part power:
Human Paladin
Dwarf Fighter
Half-Elf Ranger/Cleric
Halfling Fighter/Thief
Gnome Illusionist
Elf Druid

 

[Jezal_k23]

Now that I finished DOS, I wanted to play this (starting with IWD 1). Does anyone have any solution to the game running at super speed? I have the FPS set to 30. Runs extremely fast regardless. The music plays faster, everything. It's ruined. Anyway what do you guys suggest?

EDIT: Never mind, turns out it's only the menu. The music sounds quite stupid but I can deal with this.

EDIT 2: Uninstalling the music mod solved the problem entirely.

 

[roshan]

Reading this thread has made me want to play again.

I'll probably do:

Half Elf Fighter/Druid
Half Elf Ranger/Cleric
Gnome Fighter/Illusionist
Elf Fighter/Thief

I think four is the perfect party size, five starts to get a little crowded, and 6 feels too much like a small army.

 

[haraw]

Reading this thread has made me want to play again.


I think four is the perfect party size, five starts to get a little crowded, and 6 feels too much like a small army.

I suggest you to use full-party. It's more tactical with six party members and you're going to have not exactly easier, but more balanced experience because of the way exp is shared with party members.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

The best characters in IWD 1 are multiclass.

A half elf ranger/cleric with favored enemy undead with roflstomp everything. If you don't use a shield, IWD gives you an extra attack per round. And you get to cast all the cleric spells and most of the druid spells too (I think in vanilla they automatically got all druid spells, but in HOW they only get the spells when the ranger level is high enough). You also get bonus spell slots from your ranger class. And you can specialize in weapons, which is the only advantage a pure ranger would have. It's an incredible combination. You have a character that has both excellent stealth AND turn undead. This is the most OP class in the game. No min-maxed party is complete without it.

Next go for fighter/thief. Make sure you specialize in long sword so you can backstab. Pure thief is boring and useless in 2nd edition.

A pure class cleric is meh, you're better off with a fighter/cleric, but a fighter cleric has absolutely no advantages compared to the ranger/cleric, it's basically just a crappy version. So you're better off with a fighter/druid, due to their powerful offensive spells and elemental transformations at higher levels.

So, basically, a min-maxed party should have:

Fighter/Druid
Ranger/Cleric
Fighter/Thief

If you want to have more magic power, or a fighter that can buff himself with strong mage spells, then add a Fighter/Mage too for extra arcane spellcasting ability. And if you have a fighter/mage that can cast all spells, you can safely make your primary mage a specialist to get an extra spell slot per level.

If we're talking about min-maxing it's probably worth noting that rolling a decent fighter/druid can take something like half a day. Also, I find it pretty strange that you mention fighter/mage as the last, he's clearly superior to all others from my experience, especially so on the highest difficulty.

 

[roshan]

The best characters in IWD 1 are multiclass.

A half elf ranger/cleric with favored enemy undead with roflstomp everything. If you don't use a shield, IWD gives you an extra attack per round. And you get to cast all the cleric spells and most of the druid spells too (I think in vanilla they automatically got all druid spells, but in HOW they only get the spells when the ranger level is high enough). You also get bonus spell slots from your ranger class. And you can specialize in weapons, which is the only advantage a pure ranger would have. It's an incredible combination. You have a character that has both excellent stealth AND turn undead. This is the most OP class in the game. No min-maxed party is complete without it.

Next go for fighter/thief. Make sure you specialize in long sword so you can backstab. Pure thief is boring and useless in 2nd edition.

A pure class cleric is meh, you're better off with a fighter/cleric, but a fighter cleric has absolutely no advantages compared to the ranger/cleric, it's basically just a crappy version. So you're better off with a fighter/druid, due to their powerful offensive spells and elemental transformations at higher levels.

So, basically, a min-maxed party should have:

Fighter/Druid
Ranger/Cleric
Fighter/Thief

If you want to have more magic power, or a fighter that can buff himself with strong mage spells, then add a Fighter/Mage too for extra arcane spellcasting ability. And if you have a fighter/mage that can cast all spells, you can safely make your primary mage a specialist to get an extra spell slot per level.

If we're talking about min-maxing it's probably worth noting that rolling a decent fighter/druid can take something like half a day. Also, I find it pretty strange that you mention fighter/mage as the last, he's clearly superior to all others from my experience, especially so on the highest difficulty.

Yeah, it takes much longer to roll stat intensive classes, but on the flip side, you are much more likely to get a character with godlike stats due to some of the minimums in place. One of my previous Ranger/Clerics in IWD once had 18/18/18/18/18/13.

Fighter/Mages are awesome, certainly a very powerful class, but it's one multiclass where there are actually tradeoffs to the fighter abilities. Arcane spellcasting, specially the point where you get haste and fireball, is basically a game changer in DND. So it does not make as much sense to forgo a pure mage in favor of a multiclass, as opposed to Druids/Clerics/Thieves, where the multiclass is hands down the better option.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

High total is easy, but if you're aiming for that sweet 18/00 (min maxing) then glhf.

Perhaps it's just my experience on the highest difficulty speaking, but on that setting pure class fighters and mages are largely obsolete, while fighter/mages are completely awesome (the only class that can actually meele and not die almost instantly), definitely better than divine caster fighters (that are nonetheless still pretty good).

 

[dukeofwhales]

If you really want that 18/00 then just roll a character with an acceptable total and 18/xx and edit it in Dalekeeper. It's functionally no different, except you get to actually play the game for the 3 hours you saved.

 

[Minttunator]

If you really want that 18/00 then just roll a character with an acceptable total and 18/xx and edit it in Dalekeeper. It's functionally no different, except you get to actually play the game for the 3 hours you saved.

Using Dalekeeper is cheating, but rolling for 8+ hours is not!
Either way - it's not actually such a huge pain in the ass because you can just use Gauntlets of Ogre Power.

 

[Somberlain]

High total is easy, but if you're aiming for that sweet 18/00 (min maxing) then glhf.

Perhaps it's just my experience on the highest difficulty speaking, but on that setting pure class fighters and mages are largely obsolete, while fighter/mages are completely awesome (the only class that can actually meele and not die almost instantly), definitely better than divine caster fighters (that are nonetheless still pretty good).

By the way, is there a mod or something that removes the increased exp for higher difficulty levels? I didn't really like it, since it almost made harder difficulties easier than normal, which is obviously silly.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

If you really want that 18/00 then just roll a character with an acceptable total and 18/xx and edit it in Dalekeeper.

No.

Either way - it's not actually such a huge pain in the ass because you can just use Gauntlets of Ogre Power.

Afair these gauntlets are only availible in the Heart of Winter (and not at the start of it either) so it's not really a viable solution for a huge part of the game. There is a +1 str ring that one can get as a random drop in the Severed Hand, but it's evil characters only, so no country for old druids.

By the way, is there a mod or something that removes the increased exp for higher difficulty levels? I didn't really like it, since it almost made harder difficulties easier than normal, which is obviously silly.

Never heard about such a thing, but seriously? The highest difficulty is pretty brutal and you need to be powergaming as fuck from the start, those ogres from the very first cave will one-shot you and there's four of them instead of one. Places like the burial island from HoW are like multiheaded undead dicks hitting ass and legs even for overleveled characters.

 

[Somberlain]

Never heard about such a thing, but seriously? The highest difficulty is pretty brutal and you need to be powergaming as fuck from the start, those ogres from the very first cave will one-shot you and there's four of them instead of one. Places like the burial island from HoW are like multiheaded undead dicks hitting ass and legs even for overleveled characters.

Early levels and few places were indeed harder, but overall I thought the game felt around as difficult as on normal, and sometimes even easier.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Early levels and few places were indeed harder, but overall I thought the game felt around as difficult as on normal, and sometimes even easier.

Don't know about the highest of the normal levels, but that is indeed the case for the Heart Of Fury level . I'd say though that a quarter to half of the game is quite difficult, then you pretty much steamroll everything except the final battle which is some serious shit.

But at the beginning you have to powergame like crazy. Which is crazy fun.

Speaking about a level 1 party, of course.