Some Icewind Dale love

I bought the 'ultimate collection' of Icewind Dale (1, 2 and HoW) quite a few years ago yet I never really gave it an honest spin, despite knowing BG2 inside out. After trying to trudge my way through the NWN2 OC a second time (I finished MotB with a new character shortly before) but realizing I just wasn't masochistic enough to finish the OC I began to long for the Infinity Engine and remembered Icewind Dale.

I installed IWD 1 with HoW and Trials of the Luremaster and started making a party. After realizing that conjurers no longer have divination as a forbidden school I realized that maybe I should read up on things on Gamefaqs, so that I don't miss any other important things. All well and good except the guide said that:

I would advise against people installing the expansion pack before completing the main game however, as there are some good items that they will be unable to obtain, and the gaming experience is different.

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Does he have a point or should I just play? And why on earth would I lose out on items?

Any tips on how to maximize my enjoyment of IWD 1 (and 2, which will come later)?

I recently replayed IWD with HOW and the Trials free download and had a great time with it. The only thing I added was the Gibberlings 3 tweak pack (version 7).

Their link isn't working for some reason.

Relax and enjoy!

KazikluBey said:

Does he have a point or should I just play? And why on earth would I lose out on items?

Any tips on how to maximize my enjoyment of IWD 1 (and 2, which will come later)?

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Just play the game and enjoy it for what it is...
If you start anxiety attacks for trivial things like not finding the +1000 dagger of wounding (i know it doesn't exist btw) you won't have fun.

I played the game without any walkthrough, wich I seldom do, and completed it very easily.
Same thing with HOW. I ANNIHILATED the end boss because the game gives you all these ultra powerfull weapons near the end of the expansion.

Stop worrying about not finding this or that.
There are plenty of weapons and armors all over the place.

I played this one around 2 years ago and enjoyed it very much.
I hope you do too!

IWD 2 is even better!!! Graphic wise and story also.
Didn't complete it. I was halfway through when a bug destroyed my game.

I also bought the ultimate collection and don't know what the hell I missed...
I had fun. End of story!!!

I don't know what weapons they're talking about--I got a few extra cool weapons in the shops because I bought the Collector's Edition *with bonus content* CD but it was like only one or two--I played the series in order, i.e., I was finished with IWD before the Xpak HoW came out, but I can't imagine lacking any particular weapons because you load them up together. You may get a little different item line up or something. I wouldn't expect it to be a major deal.

Have fun--IWD's one of the best dungeon crawls out there. Having decent charisma and dialogue skills will help you get the most dialogue choices, as well as decent intelligencein some situations. You might check the manual here on which attribute governs which type of saving throw, but several are important to have high: IIRC, Wisdom for saves vs fear( lots of spirits and some are deadly) I think, and will saves need to be high for those nasty Confusion/Dominate /Hold Person spells, which the AI loves to cast. I highly recommend you get some druid and/or bard action going--the bard has a song that casts out fear, very useful, along with ultra high charisma for dialogue purposes, and the druid has very flashy spells, like Creeping Doom (my favorite) and SunRay and can do a little melee and summoning as well as shapechange. Both are fun characters to play. In general, what worked in the other IE games will work here. Enjoy.

The only reason I can see it'd be suggested to not have the expansions installed is that the end sequence varies with the expansion and without. There's a sword that you can get for the end fight if you don't have the expansion installed, but I believe you end up getting it eventually anyways. I may be a bit off there, it's been a long time since I played the game.
In any case, I'd recommend having both expansions installed from the start and play through the whole story in one go, it's very good.
IWD/HOW/TotL is probably the best dungeon crawling D&D game ever done.

Gallifrey said:

I'd recommend having both expansions installed from the start and play through the whole story in one go, it's very good.
IWD/HOW/TotL is probably the best dungeon crawling D&D game ever done.

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Agreed. Listen to him.

KazikluBey said:

Any tips on how to maximize my enjoyment of IWD 1 (and 2, which will come later)?

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You can install some components from Icewind Dale Tweak Pack. Especially numerous fixes. Cosmetic, rule and content changes are optional. Great mod imho.

http://www.gibberlings3.net/daletweak/index.php

magerette said:

I don't know what weapons they're talking about--I got a few extra cool weapons in the shops because I bought the Collector's Edition *with bonus content* CD

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You mean Collector`s Edition of IWD2. I don`t recall IWD1 getting any extra bonus content.

Thanks for your input. I had forgotten about the G3 tweak packs, I'll install the bugfixes at least.

KazikluBey said:

Does he have a point or should I just play? And why on earth would I lose out on items?

Any tips on how to maximize my enjoyment of IWD 1 (and 2, which will come later)?

Click to expand...

All I know is that IWD1 bards suck without the expansion. If you want to have a bard in your party the expansion is a must.

If you are patient you might want to play at the second highest difficulty level in IWD1 (heart of fury mode or whatever it is called is too tough for my taste), it gives substantial extra XP but there are more monsters and monsters hit twice as hard. It makes the game a lot more tactical. Most monsters arent weapon resistant so you get good mileage out of archers (an elven fighter/thief is a good idea since pure thieves are a waste). I would actually suggest going for the expansion area before finishing the main campaign. My gf and I didnt and found HoW a bit easy towards the end. There are two ways to go about the expansion. Either complete the main game and import the characters, or talk to a barbarian shaman in Kuldahar to interrupt the MQ for the expansion. The downloadable "trials of the luremaster" is started by talking to a halfling in the expansion village of Lonelywood. You can start the luremaster (a straightforward but toughish dungeon crawl) up until the point where the shaman offers to take you across the "sea of burning ice" or whatever the local arctic body of water is called...

Icewind Dale II plays a bit differently due to the 3rd edition rules, and has a lot more skill checks (there are quests that only high int characters can solve, quests that only dwarves/elves can do, etc, but these are mainly side quests and dont add up to more than half a level or so). I suspect Magerette is remembering IWD2 as the first game to the best of my knowledge completely lacks skill checks of that kind.

In all I found IWD2 easier and somewhat unfinished and buggy. For some reason charmed party members only stood around and never attacked me, and there are some areas (goblin caves?) that are very laggy. Due to the ease of the game I'd say any tactic or party composition will do in normal mode. The only useless char we had was a monk who couldnt hit worth a damn. Minor things to keep in mind is that there is a holy avenger longsword for paladins, and that goody goody paladins and monks might refuse rewards, so use some other character with high cha and persuasion (sorcerer) to fetch rewards.

As with all infinity engine games I suggest ease of use mods for both, even if its just for infinite stacking. It's unfun and slow to walk back for arrows and to sell silver rings...

One more thing. At least IWD1 has a seriours lack of some scrolls (I think I only found two fireball scrolls in the whole game) which is understandable but annoying...

Zaleukos said:

All I know is that IWD1 bards suck without the expansion. If you want to have a bard in your party the expansion is a must.

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Absolutely. With the expansion and the expanded range of Bard songs, the class goes from mediocre to great asset. I found the Bard in my party to be incredibly useful.

I would actually suggest going for the expansion area before finishing the main campaign. My gf and I didnt and found HoW a bit easy towards the end. There are two ways to go about the expansion. Either complete the main game and import the characters, or talk to a barbarian shaman in Kuldahar to interrupt the MQ for the expansion. The downloadable "trials of the luremaster" is started by talking to a halfling in the expansion village of Lonelywood. You can start the luremaster (a straightforward but toughish dungeon crawl) up until the point where the shaman offers to take you across the "sea of burning ice" or whatever the local arctic body of water is called...

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Agreed. It's better to play through in one fluid run than doing the import thing after finishing the main game. It does indeed make the final IWD fight a bit easier, particularly in comparison to the challenges of HoW, but for the sake of immersion it makes more sense.
The only tricky part is remembering when to speak with whom where to hit the expansion content before finishing the main quest. It sort of breaks your immersion in the story, but I find that importing a party for an expansion is just silly.

Icewind Dale II plays a bit differently due to the 3rd edition rules, and has a lot more skill checks (there are quests that only high int characters can solve, quests that only dwarves/elves can do, etc, but these are mainly side quests and dont add up to more than half a level or so). I suspect Magerette is remembering IWD2 as the first game to the best of my knowledge completely lacks skill checks of that kind.

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IWD2 is more involved in terms of game mechanics, but I found it seriously lacked the grand scope of IWD. IWD2 tells it's story more clearly, but IWD has a far, far better story but you have to really pay attention to things to get the most out of it. Since IWD is a dungeon crawl and light on the NPCs, the story isn't really spelled out for you in dialogue exposition, but rather you do have to discover it rather like a real dungeon-delver explorer might have to do. I've read so many times that IWD didn't have a story, but it really does, and it's a good one. IWD2 by comparison is more RPG-ish but the story isn't great. The gameplay is a lot better though, given the dramatic engine overhaul and 3rd Edition rules.

I had not seen those G3 IWD mods before.... And it's been a long time since I played the games.... Hmmm..

Thanks for helping me out with the memory loss problems, Zaluekos and Dark Savant It's been however many years since the game came out that I've played( 6 or 7?) so it's quite possible I'm lumping things together with IWD2 which I've played(though not completed) more recently.
I was mainly thinking of the wailing virgins(HoW)for the fear saves(hopelessness) and most of my other advice probably comes from HoW or more recently played D&D games. I also should probably have mentioned that having a priest or a paladin is very helpful since many of the enemies will be undead in one flavor or another. I know I remember depending heavily on my cleric for turning undead in The Severed Hand and also for protection spells against Confusion and the like when facing spellcasters.

I went with paladin, fighter dualed to druid, fighter/thief multiclass, fighter dualed to cleric, fighter dualed to mage and a bard. I'm at Kuldahar, and I must say I'm loving it.

I've missed the auto-pause, the fixed camera, the ease with which one can select enemies in combat, the ease with which one can select and tell one's characters what to do... In combat in vanilla NWN2 and even in 1.10/MotB it usually felt like I spent more time fighting the game than the enemy.

That's a good party for the game. You've probably noticed by now the amount of carnage you can cause with your Druid, Mage and Bard working together.

I don't so much miss the fixed camera of the IE games, but you're right on all the other counts. For controlling an entire party, the Infinity Engine really is excellent, but it's not great for ease of micro-management. The IWD2 version was much improved in that regard.

What I miss most of all from those games are the gorgeous settings. The pre-rendered backgrounds invoke more atmosphere and sense of place than anything I've seen yet.

Paladins level pretty quickly and eventually become very powerful in Icewind Dale. In fact, a well decked-out paladin can go solo through the game in Heart of Fury mode (that would mean importing one into a new game).

There's a lot that's undocumented about IWD, and some of what is documented isn't quite right. That's one of the things that makes it fun to play online. Experience counts.

I really started missing the feeling and atmosphere and all the places and characters in Icewind Dale / Heart of Winter / Trials. My hands started groping the Icewind Dale "3 in 1 boxset" I have on my shelf. IWD2 was a fun game too but nothing compared to the first one. And I did not know about that unofficial fix pack thingie...

Damn you for starting this thread! Damn you!

Btw I found something great from the net:
http://www.gamebanshee.com/icewinddale/wallpaper.php#null

All the original official Icewind Dale 1 wallpapers created by black isle in various resolutions! Guess what my desktop looks like?

Those wallpapers bring back memories!

/glances over at the IWD discs on the shelf

I wish there was a completed mod to play IWD/HOW/TotL on the IWD2 engine.

Yes indeed, Zakhary. I had the tree one up for years and when I changed machines lost it. Thanks for letting me add it back into my wallpaper collection.
I often think about replaying IWD/HoW--and now that I realize how much I've actually forgotten it sounds even better. I'm having a lot of trouble getting into Mask of the Betrayer(camera--ugh)--maybe a little replay of this game would help.

Perhaps we should play IWD1 online?
Just for an hour or two on weekends or something....
Could be fun. If we could gather say... 3 or 4 players total.

I really need to reinstall ... never got much into the expansion or very far into #2 ...

On a second thought, might not be a good idea due to different timezones.