Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[VentilatorOfDoom]

There is not much point to play IWD2 not with a full party because it has a retarded XP system. Having ECL races doesn't matter because you're lower level than normal and will get more XP whereas having only 3 partymembers means you level up fast and will soon get no XP at all for killing all that stuff.

 

[Surf Solar]

So I am still playing IWD II and I think it really rocks. For me, it is miles above Baldurs Gate I /II, I don't know why. The Ice Temple was the best so far, really good pacing, good encounters (the fight infront of the temple was very hard for me..) , some puzzles and even some sort of "arena" (the battle chamber).

I really like my party so far, it wasn't a bad decision to choose Drow characters (aside from the obligatory debuffs during daytime). Jeasun, my bard ( ) really rocks, found some very good items for him already and he is very versatil, can do a bit of everything and eh does not afraid of everything. My cleric and the barbar are very good too, though I wonder if I should dual class the barbarian later (never done that) - any suggestions? My main character, which is a Ranger is quite "ok" too, but for some reason I can't use his spells/special abilities.. Any suggestion to dual class him too? And lust but not least, my monk is really useless.. I wish I would've created a different one, all she can do is Stun and Power Attack while running around naked..


Only thing which really pisses me off at the moment is this:

Now I know why people said before that there is some certain are which is very rage inducing...

 

[Excommunicator]

I see you have me at the head of the party where I belong

Good decision

2000xp

 

[Excidium]

 

[Surf Solar]

c'mon people, I'd really need some help on this class/dual classing issue. I don't want to screw the party up, as I'm already in the middle of the playthrough (chapter 3)..

 

[Excidium]

No idea mang, never played IWD 2 but multi classing is the key to victory.

 

[GarfunkeL]

Dual-class monk into sorcerer, then you have a pretty effective fighter-mage. You can use the arcane spells to further buff him (Tenser's Transformation especially) and since his BAB should be great, just use all those ranged touch attack spells for great success.

As to the barbarian, I don't really know. You already have a ranger and a bard, so maybe a rogue would work, since both wear light/medium armour.

 

[Surf Solar]

Thanks! How many points should I put into the Sorcerer class then? The monk is level 10 at the moment and has 10 points into the monk class. Also, I've read that many people eventually dual class their Rangers into Clerics, seeing as my Cleric is very powerful this may be a good idea to have some addtional buffing etc going on?

 

[GarfunkeL]

Well, ranger/cleric creates a very powerful melee fighters with divine abilities - as some of the strongest cleric buffs are self-only. Put blade barrier & holy power & dozen other buffs on your ranger and then wade into melee and enjoy the carnage.

Keep putting points into Sorcerer. The low-level arcane spells aren't that useful. Since neither monk or sorcerer wears armour, the classes compliment each other nicely. You could experiment with the 1st level touch spells (Chill Touch & Ghoul Touch) if they improve your monk's melee rating. Then you get Scorching Ray on 2nd level which is nice for straight-up blasting, in addition to web & stinking cloud that are awesome disabling spells. 3rd level gives you lightning bolt, haste and fireball, 4th level gives you stoneskin so now your monk becomes invulnerable (for a while) and red/blue shield which means that enemies damage themselves when trying to hit you - and so on. There are lot of spells that are very useful for a melee character - though since this is your only arcane caster, you might want to keep her mainly in the disabling role (grease, sleep, web, stinking ray, hold person, charm, hold monster, cloud kill, slow, confusion, glitterdust and similar spells).

As to your ranger, is he wearing heavy armour? IIRC, ranger special abilities only work when wearing medium or lighter armour.

 

[Surf Solar]

Thanks bro! I will definitevly consider this - it's not that the game is too hard, I was actually surprised that made it thus far - but I noticed a huge difficulty spike lately and thought this is the game telling me to develop my characters more (dualclassing) so this comes really handy!



EDIT: And ah yes, the Ranger is wearing a light leather armor, so normally it shouldn't block his special abilities, hm. The only ability in there is the "Fast Shot" one, even though I could even select some spells at previous level ups for him..

 

[Duckard]

So I am still playing IWD II and I think it really rocks. For me, it is miles above Baldurs Gate I /II, I don't know why. The Ice Temple was the best so far, really good pacing, good encounters (the fight infront of the temple was very hard for me..) , some puzzles and even some sort of "arena" (the battle chamber).

I really like my party so far, it wasn't a bad decision to choose Drow characters (aside from the obligatory debuffs during daytime). Jeasun, my bard ( ) really rocks, found some very good items for him already and he is very versatil, can do a bit of everything and eh does not afraid of everything. My cleric and the barbar are very good too, though I wonder if I should dual class the barbarian later (never done that) - any suggestions? My main character, which is a Ranger is quite "ok" too, but for some reason I can't use his spells/special abilities.. Any suggestion to dual class him too? And lust but not least, my monk is really useless.. I wish I would've created a different one, all she can do is Stun and Power Attack while running around naked..

You might want to get a few fighter levels for your barbarian to get maximum weapon focus, but it's not really necessary, since you'll get more rage for staying single class. As for ranger, you might want a few fighter levels to get extra damage bonus, or just switch to cleric for the buffs (I think the level 2 spell draw upon holy might increases your strength by a lot). Your monk depends on what kind of monk he is, or else you wont be able to level up the monk class anymore (if you're okay with that, go rogue, cleric, or sorcerer).


And the game penalizes you for dual-classing if there is more than a 1-level gap between classes unless it's that race''s favoured class.

 

[kmonster]

It's impossible to give proper advice if you don't tell the exact character stats and races (and gender for drow).

I'm quite sure following the multiclassing advice given will cripple your characters. If you already multiclassed one of them it's best to reload a previous save game. Post the character stats for detailed explanation.

 

[Surf Solar]

It's impossible to give proper advice if you don't tell the exact character stats and races (and gender for drow).

I'm quite sure following the multiclassing advice given will cripple your characters. If you already multiclassed one of them it's best to reload a previous save game. Post the character stats for detailed explanation.

Ok, time to embarass myself with shitty stats then.

Pretty sure I fucked up some of them, but eh. That's life and I can only learn more through the tips here.

Monk http://www.abload.de/img/monkcpo5.png

Ranger http://www.abload.de/img/rangerars8.png

Barbarian http://www.abload.de/img/barbarianzr6o.png


And no, I haven't multiclassed em yet, just started up the game.

EDIT: Now that I've read the info again, no wonder my Ranger can't do those spells. He has too low wisdom. -.- I mistook it with intelligence.

 

[Black Bart Charley]

Dude, the game is not hard, who gives a shit what class. Pick the ones you like.

Also, the ice temple is the fucking most shittiest location in there.

I remember one thing from IWD2 and thats the final fight where a script of the second boss would not trigger cause he was surrounded and being pummeled by my terror squad. The script only triggered when one of my dudes died and let the boss initiate dialog.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

If you really don't like a character you can dump them and create a new level 1 character mid game. Due to the way that XP scales (a lvl 1 character in your party would probably increase xp per kill at least 100%) they will quickly catch up in levels and the rest of your party will level even faster. Arguably an exploit if done repreatedly as it can get 4 or 5 characters to level really, really quickly.

Monk - Should have some wisdom. Since all point buys are 1/1 its not a horrible idea to pump only Dex instead of Wis, but I think Wis is strictly superior for all purposes in IWD2 since it should do all Dex does + boost monk specific abilities. Should have dumped int. Dark Moon lets you multiclass to sorcerer without losing monk progression, but 5 Cha makes that useless (and it would incur the -20% XP penalty anyways). No real options here, just pump monk levels and your unarmed attack damage will keep going up (1-20 + 1-10 + STR at lvl 26 IIRC, not bad at all). Try to buff her a bit, and remember that robes can be worn without penalty.

Ranger - Yeah, needed wisdom for spells. What items/armour does he have equipped? He should have a lot higher AC than 17, a +5 Dex character should manage that with the starting equipment they had during the prologue. With buffs you should hopefully be hitting 25-30 at that point in the game, which would make him approximately infinitely more survivable in combat. Also, he should be able to use his tracking ability to tell you where to go in that area. Can't multiclass to fighter (which would be better in every way than a ranger who can't cast spells since every other useful benefit is gained at lvl 1) because it would give you -20% xp penalty since neither ranger nor fighter is a favoured class and the classes would be more than 1 lvl apart for a long time.

Barbarian - 14 CHA for the lulz? Should have put that into Wisdom, the -4 to will saves means your barb has a 50/50 chance of losing the saving throw to a lvl 1 mage casting charm. Not that huge of a deal though. Again, the AC looks a bit low for that stage of the game. Can multiclass to fighter since your favoured class is barbarian and won't count against you. That gets you a handful of extra feats and access to weapon specialization at lvl 4, past that you are probably best going back to barbarian since more feats isn't too useful.

For the most part multiclassing isn't the gamebreaker that it was in IWD1/BG2 though. A few builds at lvl 30 get a large benefit from multiclassing, but up to level 15 or 20 pumping your main class is almost always the best solution, especially for casters. Your weakness is probably due to not planning well enough on spells and equipment selections. I'm pretty sure that your high DEX (= high reflex save) characters should be able to trivialize almost everything just by having web cast on them and daring enemies to come and fight. Web can carry you though pretty much the whole game actually if you have multiple casters with it, a ridiculously overpowered spell (lvl 1 characters beating HoF with it...). Also, abuse missile weapons as much as you can, there is almost never a reason to run after things when they can come at you instead.

 

[Surf Solar]

Gah, no wonder then. :D I think I will remake those characters if it is really so easy to keep them levelling up as you said. About the low AC for the ranger, I don't know.. I gave him this leather armor

so he can spam arrows faster with that bow I've found:

And yeah, the 14 CH for the barbarian was indeed for the lulz, I thought I could use one character more with intimidation instead of diplomacy, but so far it was pretty useless...

But seeing how those stats really suck I can understand where Charley is coming from saying the game isn't hard. I didn't have huge problems at any fight yet, given the sucky stats of those characters.

Anyway, thanks again![/img]

 

[Overweight Manatee]

Armor should probably be at least 1 or 2 points stronger (some unique armor you might have found by now would be another point or two stronger). You should hopefully have a few rings by now that offer +1 or +2. The way armor works +5 AC can reduce your chance to be hit from 30% to 5%. Or from 95% to still 95%, but thats only lame HoF mode for the most part.

Make sure your mage is hasting them, thats +4 AC and an extra attack as well. Magic Circle against Evil from your cleric can add another +2 deflection as well (non-stacking with the rings of deflection unfortunately). And -attack debuffs for enemies is effectively as good as +armor for your group. Basically anything on your spell list that buffs the entire party and lasts a decent time is a great spell.

Also, IIRC you should soon be finding a shield ring on an upcoming boss. Thats +7 armor AC for your monk that normally wears no armor at all.

Your stats really aren't that bad. Even the ranger not getting spells isn't that big of a deal, the ranger-specific spells are pretty bad and ranger/cleric duals are 4 ranger levels / rest cleric level builds, not the other way around, being primarily casters.

 

[Grunker]

Use the IWD2 NPC mod. Iz graet gut.

 

[Roguey]

Grunker's trolling, you really don't want to subject yourself to Melirinda-written characters.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=29432 Copy-paste those frogs or just read the reactions.

 

[kmonster]

Replacing the 3 characters with freshly created ones won't make your game harder, the remaining characters will level faster and the new ones will feel totally useless with the big level gap towards the rest of the party.

Keep your monk pure class, she'll get even more monk benefits like spell resistance and quivering palm at higher level. Wisdom is an important monk stat since it modifies the difficulty to resist stunning fist and quivering palm and unarmored AC, but it's too late to raise it now.
You can give her a greataxe for doing more damage if stunning fist isn't important to you.
Multiclassing to sorcerer doesn't make sense with the low cha, with 13 int you could multiclass to a specialist wizard school which is allowed to cast both abjuration and illusion spells, being able to cast shield and mirror image will be the only benefit you get. But you'll get a multiclassing XP penalty, less BAB and far less unarmed damage and loose the high level monk abilities.
Cleric is the only class you can multiclass with without penalty, but you don't have the wisdom to cast cleric spells.
So keep this character pure, you can increase the damage output by using a greataxe and having the party priest cast bull's or champion's strength, armor class can be improved by having your party mage cast spells like mage or spirit armor.

You can multiclass your barbarian with fighter(weapon specialization) or sorcerer/bard(mirror image), but you won't get additional damage reduction and greater rage then. I'd keep her pure.

The reason why your ranger can't cast spells is the low wisdom, it's the casting stat for clerics/druids/paladins/rangers. Int is useless for rangers but useful for wizards. You could multiclass to specialist wizard without XP penalty, change to enchanter for a spellsword with shield and mirror image if you don't mind hitpoints, BAB and favored enemies.
The armor your ranger is wearing doesn't increase his movement, it only grants immunity to one spell which probably no enemy will cast at him in the remaining game.


Be aware that your drow will be about level 16 and the half-orc about level 17-18 at the end of the game, so there'll be at most 6 levels you can take in a new class. Low level spells from a caster 10 levels lower than he's supposed to be won't help much, mirror image is the only powerful self-buff you'll get.

 

[octavius]

Grunker's trolling, you really don't want to subject yourself to Melirinda-written characters.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=29432 Copy-paste those frogs or just read the reactions.

How does the IW2 NPC mod compare to the IWD1 NPC mod and the BG1 NPC Project?
Personally I thought BG1 NPC Project was great, but the difference is of course that it just expands on the existing characters. The IWD1 NPC mod I thought was weak. I quit it when one of the characters used the expression "word".

 

[Grunker]

Grunker's trolling, you really don't want to subject yourself to Melirinda-written characters.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=29432 Copy-paste those frogs or just read the reactions.

How does the IW2 NPC mod compare to the IWD1 NPC mod and the BG1 NPC Project?
Personally I thought BG1 NPC Project was great, but the difference is of course that it just expands on the existing characters. The IWD1 NPC mod I thought was weak. I quit it when one of the characters used the expression "word".

Besides the romances (which are more Biowarian than Bioware) they are of the same quality as the BG1NPC-project. That is to say good (for a mod) with very few crinch-worthy texts.

The Codex rightly holds as hatred for Domi/Merilinde, but her work on the BG1NPC Project and IWD2 NPC-Project is very good. There are plenty of parts to ridicule if you try (like in the LP linked above which is quite fun), but it's mostly alright.

IWD1NPC-project is made by Kulyok. It is not quite as good.

 

[Shannow]

Yeah, monks are shit in IWD2 and yours especially. You fucked the ranger, too. Low level wizards suck. Don't know what stupid suggestions people are giving you. The game will get tougher, too. And only somebody who doesn't mind a reload or two every other fight would call it easy. Your barbarian is fine.
I'd start everything over whily informing myself about the classes/races first (eg: without shitty drow)

Always glad to help

 

[Lesifoere]

I wonder how many people loaded up IWD2, saw that you could make drow characters and shat themselves in excitement ("OMG I CAN PLAY DROOOW"), then came to the realization that drow characters have fierce XP penalties and that their all-drow Salvatore clone party will have a shit of a time.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Actually drow is a good character with all those spell resistance and bonuses.