I played through this game when it came out decades ago, but this is my first playthrough of the Enhanced Edition. I got all the way to the Poquelin fight in the Ascension cavern, beat him, and then hit the wall trying to fight his final form. So I did what any experience RPGer would do, I looked for a way to grind up some levels so I could increase my power.

My only problem is that since I am basically done the game, I can't find any reliable, decently fast, places to grind for experience. I have resorted to cranking the difficulty up to Heart of Fury and rest spamming in the Frost Giant caves. The only problem with that is THE INSANE DIFFICULTY!!

My group is comprised of a (now) level 12 Human Undead Hunter, level 12 Human Barbarian, level 12 Human Cleric of Tempus, level 12 Human Dragon Disciple Sorcerer, level 12 Human Shaman, and a level 15 Human Buccaneer (I went with an all human group to kind of RP that they were native inhabitants of Icewind Dale).

I tried rest spamming in the Great Forge of Lower Dorn's Deep, but all I got was stupid Salamanders, which are only worth 2000 xp each on Core Rules, and would do WAY too much damage with their ambient fire damage on Heart of Fury.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I would like to NOT have to pour days of my life into grinding up these characters.

Thanks!

I have a mage-thief who identified and equipped the Ring of Shadows found in Kresselack's Tomb. But now when I try to heal him, my game auto-pauses for "Target gone" and I get a message in the log "Spell canceled: Cannot target spells on invisible or sanctuaried creatures." He's not currently wearing the ring. He's not hiding in shadows or invisible.

This seems like a bug. I'm 100% sure that on previous play-throughs of this game (definitely on OG version, but I'm like 99.99% sure I've played through on EE), that I've used this ring, and my healers could still target the wearer. Anybody else seen this?

EDIT/UPDATE: So it turns out that the game had a stale status effect on him. He had previously used an invisibility potion to go disable some traps that were within sight of some enemies. After combat with those enemies (wherein he had attacked and broken his invisibility) I had saved, quick-saved, and quit the game. For some reason, on loading the game, the invisible status effect was still on him, even though he didn't have the little icon on his portrait. After going and explicitly attacking another enemy, the status has been removed and my healers can target him. So: annoying, but not game-breaking.

So I've played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 but wonder what's to expect here in Icewind Dale. Can I solo it? Is a barbarian sort of character viable? Gear I should look out for? Any tips and all. I was planning on getting into this after I finish Pillars of Eternity. Edit: Forgot, any good mods to use after a good run?

Edit: Thanks everyone for your inputs; my girlfriend said I'm almost done with Pillars of Eternity 2, apparently. Once over, gonna check out IWD.

Heya all, since I dont want to spoil myself reading gear and other stuffs of the game, can anyone help me optimize a 4 man party? I will provide the classes, and need to know for each one alingment, race, stats and weapon pips. Will also add some questions related to each one.

Paladin Undead Hunter, which weapons and styles?

Cleric, better single class for good turn undead? Or better to multi?

Thief, which multi?

Pure Bard or Skald?

Also asking which important spells for each caster for each level.

Will this party works?

Thank you all in advance!

I've been through IWDEE 4 times total. Once with the OG party on Normal, once with a randomly crafted terrible party on Normal, once with an all Melee Party on Insane, and once with a 4 Monk, Thief, and Felicia party on Insane. Had two other parties on insane that got too powerful and I lost interest in playing with them.

So what I want to do now is try a solo run with a druid on Insane mode. Why? I don't know, maybe because I think the idea of leveling up super quickly will be fun and I like summoning creatures and shapeshifting. However, what the heck do I do about traps and locks? Buff myself up as much as possible and hope for the best? Ignore locked chests since I don't need anything in them as a druid anyways? Genuinely curious if anyone has done this and how they managed that. Otherwise, seems like it will be fun and rather challenging in many places.

What race do you consider "best"? I'd like to say something like higher ECL races, but in my latest run I had a lot of bows and swords, so the plain old Elves of the party had a lot going for them.

Hi hope you all are doing great. Wanted to ask if there is any guide to mod IWD. I wanna add like the Tweaks in BG, Bubb's spell menu, maybe any mod to increase the difficulty on Heart of Fury too. Also in which order should I install the mods, should I go back to version 2.6.6.0? And if I modded succesfully will Steam still count the hours played on the game. Thanks!

Dears,

sometimes in my meaningless life I get stuck on incredibly minor things and until somebody explains them to me as if I was born yesterday, I am not able to fall asleep.

So, straight to the point: why Elves in Icewind dale get <+> 1 THAC0 bonus while using bows, swords and long swords. If I understand correctly, for THAC0 in this game, the lower, the better. And since Elves are supposed to be the ones who know their way arround bows and swords, I would expect them to get negative THAC0 bonus.

So, could anyone elaborate? :)

I'm about to play some IWD2 multiplayer with a friend.

Gameranger works fine for the connection.

Since EE mod is not suggested for MP, I've applied Special Edition mod which seem to work fine in MP so far. I also suggest the SE mod as an alternative to EE to give it a try.

My question is if anyone have managed to mix components from both mods? Specifically I use SP as base mod and only need a few minor components from EE. Obviously I am not talking about Class and feat changes and such and anything they both change.

playing EE version on Steam on core rules, I like to use custom portraits and as close as I can get for builds of each character (see my good and evil comp screenshots). Good run is GoT themed, evil run is just my favourite evil characters that fit in a balanced party from comics and games, so thinking along those two lines for the neutral run.

Yeah, I dabbled a bit with prompting online to pass time, and this is what I got.

Human Paladin, Dwarf Dwarven Defender, Half-Elf Cleric/Mage, Gnome Illusionist Thief, Elf Archer and a Human Fighter. We'll see how it goes.

I found it at a store for ten bucks, but people online are selling it for mortgage prices.

Salut à tous !

Je recherche 1 ou 2 joueurs pour faire le jeux en coop. Pour faire une partie chill, entraide et partage, pas de speedrun ou de tryhard ^^ J'avais joué un peu au jeu il y a quelques année mais je l'avais pas fini et je m'en rappel plus trop :')

Merci d'avance

Hey there everyone I was just wondering the best spells to take with a sorceror and shaman both of which I have in my party, I also have a bard, cleric/fighter, and paladin which can help fluff out the spells even more. I just got access to level 2 spells, thanks

For IWD1 What would be my best options of proficiency choice for my fighter/thief.
I want good early and mid game choices and a decent late game option.

At the point of no return of the main game and trying to decide if I want to go do HoW now or start from the main menu after finishing. I think my main deciding factor will be what imports over when starting from the main menu. I assume you keep the gear that you have equipped, but what about items in your inventory?

Hey, happy to find a community. I'm new to the franchise. I've been seeing gameplays lately and decided to give it a try. But the thing is how to create my party. Since I'm a total newbie in the game, I don't know what classes I should prioritize and what races are better for what class. I've seen it's recommended to have a 6 member party, but others say 4, and the creation process of each member is overwhelming as a new player. Any tips?

I’ve just completed Icewind Dale 2, with the Enhanced Edition mod installed. 

The last time I finished the game was back in 2002, and the release of EE prompted me to give it another try.

Below are my thoughts on the game having given it another look. TL;DR: If you like IWD1 and haven’t played IWD2 (or not in a long time), I’d strongly suggest jumping in now the EE mod is here.

Combat: A+
IWD2 has probably the best-designed, most varied, and certainly most challenging combat encounters of any Infinity Engine game. From the first assault on Targos, to the storming of the goblin fortress, the fields of slaughter, and the final boss battle, you’ll be heavily challenged and need to use every capability the game provides you with.

The EE mod accentuates this if you have all components installed. Some of the battles are tough, and mean you have to think about combat encounters as complex puzzles to solve. The final boss battle on EE was probably the toughest fight I’ve done in an Infinity Engine game.

Exploration & Dialogue: B
Here IWD2 was far better than I remembered. The non-combat aspects of the play hold up surprisingly well and surpass IWD1 in my view. For example:

• There’s actually a huge amount of dialogue and exposition. IWD1 has around 145k words of dialogue (even with HOW and TOL included). IWD2 has about 50% more than this
• The 3E rules implementation allows tremendous customisation of your characters, where capabilities actually pay off: Wilderness Lore, Bluff/Intimidate/Diplomacy, Alchemy, and more can all radically affect how you play 
• The game is creative in how it uses non-combat encounters to affect outcomes. The quests you take on in the final chapter make a big difference to the final boss fight, for instance

The big downside is pacing and the introduction of puzzle encounters. Chapters 2 and (less so) 3 are still a slog for me after so many years. The content afterwards is excellent, but the game could have been edited far better to trim out this content or make it optional. 

Story: C
Here the game falls down. The story on paper is far more interesting than IWD1, with villains who are morally more grey and in some ways more sympathetic. The exposition however is poorer: the game has far too large a cast, spreads context thin across them, and introduces the villains quite late. You’re left with a set of antagonists it’s hard to care too much about until quite far into the game.

The saving grace if you like IWD1 is how many characters return - it’s neat to see where they all ended up following those events. 

Art & visuals: C
Here the game pays off less than IWD1. The artwork and music are fine, but don’t have anything like the cosy, memorable atmosphere that Icewind Dale 1 has. 

Overall
A game very much worth playing if you like Infinity Engine combat and you want some of the most creative non-combat gameplay the engine can offer. The beginning is incredible, Chapter 2 and parts of Chapter 3 can be a slog, but the payoff afterwards is worth it. Black Isle managed to build something very impressive with only ~10 months development time.

And with EE, it’s even better. Recruitable companions, QoL fixes, stacks of new spells, and re-worked encounters that add some extra challenge.

This is my first CRPG that I've tried so I'm still figuring out how to play, any help is greatly appreciated. I am fighting the Lizard King in the first cave at the start of Act 2 and getting whooped. There probably 10+ enemies to fight at once and I can't lure them out one at a time since I need to trigger dialogue event first. My strategy so far is to chug a speed potion and chuck as many flame pots that I've looted from the cave at the crowds of enemies. I can usually get 3-4 thrown before I resort to combat. I use my mage's Web after I'm out of flame pots. I'm pre-buffing my part with Bless but that's it. Still getting whooped though.

My party: Paladin, Fighter, Fighter/Thief, Cleric, Mage, Skald. Everyone at level 5 some are level 6.

I had a fun with the Prologue and Act 1, I'd really like to keep going because I love the art and it's my first time playing a DnD based game, I really want to encounter some dragons. I've gotten out of the habit of just having everyone auto attack. I'm learning to position better and make use of support abilities. I've been stuck on the lizard guy for 10-15 attempts now and doesn't look like I'm getting any better at it.

I was thinking about contacting Justin Sweet and asking him to draw some portraits for my lusty drow maids gimmick party... but you know... he's probably busy making live action Disney concept art or whatever. So I turned to AI instead.

Krea2 finally gave me solid results. Lora coming soon-ish maybe.

Glad to have held onto several gems, potions and magical weapons before reaching Lehland and making bank. Managed to grab almost every scroll from Orrick for my Bard, along with a couple of key items from Gerth and Conlan's to further boost our Party, before delving 'deeper' into Chapter 4.

Overall, the game is quite enjoyable except for the opening sections (and some fight in ToL). My playthrough generally followed this progression:

1. Early game (until Animate Dead spell) - extremely tedious, as a cleric must rely heavily on kiting goblins. Your THAC0 and AC are awful, due to enemy stat bonuses (–11 to AC and –3 to THAC0).
2. Animate Dead to Aerial Servant - much more manageable, though kiting remains the primary strategy.
3. Aerial Servant to Black Blade of Disaster (BBD) + Improved Haste - basically normal difficulty, with some exceptions. Your AC and overall survivability improve significantly. Moreover, Aerial Servants' immunity to non-magical weapons effectively neutralizes 80% of enemies until chapter 5–6.
4. Black Blade of Disaster to Time Stop - easy mode. Your stats become overpowered; you can eliminate most enemies in 1–2 rounds despite their tripled HP bonuses (x3+80).
5. Time Stop to final battle - story mode. Unlike in BG2, neither Icasaraht nor the final boss resists Time Stop, which means you can combine time stop and BBD.

What i particularly disliked is that some enemies in Tol have automatic dispel casts (cleric in the beginning and rakshasas). I think this a cheap and unfair way to raise the difficulty of the encounter.

I’m really stuck for the first time. I have not been able to do any damage at all to Malavon past his magic shield and eventually start losing characters to him.

How can I do damage to him or break past the shield? I’ve tried dispel magic a number of times and it hasn’t worked.

I’ve been throwing every buff I have on my whole party constantly and it’s getting tedious. What buffs are actually even making a difference?

This is my first d&d based game and i’m having a hard time discerning what party buffs are doing anything worthwhile. I have a mage and a cleric and am in dorns deep right now.

Currently doing:
Bless, strength of one, chant, courage, hope, and haste.

What should I cut/replace to not spend half my playtime buffing?