Icewind Dale The Icewind Dale Series Thread

[Jazz_]

Oh I see. It's kind of a shame that intelligence, wisdom and charisma are pretty much...dump stats. I mean wisdom is important if you are a druid/cleric because you get more spells but other than that it's useless, and I guess intelligence is important for wizards/bards and that's it, the sorcerer for instance has no primary stat, doesn't matter if you raise wisdom or int, it doesn't affect his spell casting abilities one way or the other, so basicly you can just pump con/dexterity like it's a fighter/ranger, kinda silly. Charisma seems completely useless as I read it only affects merchant's prices and the morale of your party based on the charisma of your party leader, but I read that it's pretty much impossible to fail a morale check in IWD, so again pretty much THE dump stat.

 

[Seaking4]

Yeah druids level up slower, but they are pretty good in iwd so it evens out. Their summons can be great help, since they get them early. lol wtf am I even talking about

Haste is indeed the best spell in iwd since you always have to fight big hordes of enemies. Fatigue is pretty brutal though, especially since there are certain areas that prohibit rest. I think fatigue in IWD is worse than in BG, your accuracy is reduced a lot and if you use haste again eithout resting, you can't hit shit.

This is about the original game though, Idk about EE.

Fatigue in Baldur's Gate didn't do anything I believe. They said it did but it was bugged. I believe that IWD corrected.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Its stupid in as far as the original game didn't have Sorcerers and when they put Sorcerers in at whichever new version it was, they never changed that aspect, yes.

 

[ghostdog]

Yeah druids level up slower, but they are pretty good in iwd so it evens out. Their summons can be great help, since they get them early. lol wtf am I even talking about

Haste is indeed the best spell in iwd since you always have to fight big hordes of enemies. Fatigue is pretty brutal though, especially since there are certain areas that prohibit rest. I think fatigue in IWD is worse than in BG, your accuracy is reduced a lot and if you use haste again eithout resting, you can't hit shit.

This is about the original game though, Idk about EE.

Fatigue in Baldur's Gate didn't do anything I believe. They said it did but it was bugged. I believe that IWD corrected.

So since IWD EE uses the BG2 engine, does this mean that fatigue does nothing? If that's the case then it makes the game much easier.

 

[Lacrymas]

Fatigue may have been fixed in the EE.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

IIRC, in vanilla IWD you can get fatigued just from adventuring for a long time without a rest.

 

[Roguey]

Fatigue in Baldur's Gate didn't do anything I believe. They said it did but it was bugged. I believe that IWD corrected.

I noticed the fatigue subtraction when I played but I used an unofficial patch so.

 

[octavius]

Oh I see. It's kind of a shame that intelligence, wisdom and charisma are pretty much...dump stats. I mean wisdom is important if you are a druid/cleric because you get more spells but other than that it's useless, and I guess intelligence is important for wizards/bards and that's it, the sorcerer for instance has no primary stat, doesn't matter if you raise wisdom or int, it doesn't affect his spell casting abilities one way or the other, so basicly you can just pump con/dexterity like it's a fighter/ranger, kinda silly. Charisma seems completely useless as I read it only affects merchant's prices and the morale of your party based on the charisma of your party leader, but I read that it's pretty much impossible to fail a morale check in IWD, so again pretty much THE dump stat.

In the Gold Box games Clerics and Mages needed 18 Wisdom and 18 Intelligence respectively in order to be able to eventually cast lvl 9 spells.
Also, each class had it's prime requisite(s): STR for Fighters, WIS for Clerics, STR, INT and WIS for Rangers and so on. If characters had 16 or more in those prime requisites thay got a bonus of 5 or 10% each time they gained XP.
It's been a long time since I played the IE games, so I don't recall how they deal with this.

 

[Lacrymas]

Neverwinter Nights also have these requirements for getting spell levels. The requirements in BG are mostly used for multi/dual-classing, but I seem to remember something about needing wis or int, depending on your class, to cast spells. I know you need 9+ int to use wands and scrolls.

 

[laclongquan]

thay got a bonus of 5 or 10% each time they gained XP.

If I remember correctly that only in use during PST game, not even BG or IWD.

I could be wrong of course, but that's the reason why INT and WIS build in PST is so popular.

 

[oldmanpaco]

I could be wrong of course, but that's the reason why INT and WIS build in PST is so popular.

That or the fact that 90% of ability checks used INT or Wisdom.

 

[hell bovine]

Oh I see. It's kind of a shame that intelligence, wisdom and charisma are pretty much...dump stats. I mean wisdom is important if you are a druid/cleric because you get more spells but other than that it's useless, and I guess intelligence is important for wizards/bards and that's it, the sorcerer for instance has no primary stat, doesn't matter if you raise wisdom or int, it doesn't affect his spell casting abilities one way or the other, so basicly you can just pump con/dexterity like it's a fighter/ranger, kinda silly. Charisma seems completely useless as I read it only affects merchant's prices and the morale of your party based on the charisma of your party leader, but I read that it's pretty much impossible to fail a morale check in IWD, so again pretty much THE dump stat.

There are a few (but only a few) dialogue checks involving stats/classes in IWD. I think a female bard leader with high intelligence and charisma would get the most out of dialogue.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

With the add on there are actually quite a lot of them, at least compared to most crpgs. Although it's worth remembering that the checks are mostly spread between bard and paladin. Oh, and some of the checks actually give quite a shitload of exp.

The old IE manuals did a lot of lying about what stats do, like wis increasing saves or int being necessary for spells, most of it wasn't true and yeah, it's pretty lame. Also, EE didn't really do anything to fix it, the only noticeable change is that they somehow screwed (possibly unknowingly) the spell learning chance, so even with 19int you fail all the time.

 

[Jazz_]

So I've finished this. Weird how all the other boss battles were easy peasy, especially compared to Yxunomei, that one was set up masterfully, the others not so much. However, I lost 2 of my party members (barbarian and sorcerer) in the final battle with Poquelin (more due to laziness and hubris than anything else), and I've decided to let them requiescant in pace and replaced them with a cleric and a fighter for my imported party in Heart of Winter. By the way, playing HOW with a lvl 11-12 party must be overkill right? I believe it's meant to be played with a party a few levels lower than that, I think I will just up the difficulty to give myself enough of a challenge.

 

[octavius]

HOW is pretty unbalanced. The Burial Isle is brutal, while there is a long stretch later where you fight mostly trolls which is much easier.

 

[Dorateen]

in the final battle with Poquelin

If your last fight was with Poquelin, are you sure you finished?

 

[Tigranes]

Yeaaaaaaah. You should double check what's going on back where you began the journey.

HOW/TL can be weird in terms of difficulty. The Burial Isle's tendency for paralysis, invisibility, etc. can wreak havoc with certain parties, while TL can really be a test of just how sturdy your party is. The latter certainly requires your party to step up a level, so you should be glad of that if you've been rolling over late game IWD.

Similarly, the actual IWD final boss isn't difficult at all, but it can also be a test of how you've been building your parties - i.e. how trash mob geared you are.

Fuck it, even talking about IWD for 5 minutes makes me play it again, for like the 16th time. Maybe I'll roll four dwarves with no arcane magic, or something.

 

[Jazz_]

If your last fight was with Poquelin, are you sure you finished?

I mean his demonic form, whatever the name was. The boss battle I thought was going to be tough was Malavon, because there are those yeti things who confuse your party, instead I nailed it at the first try, the problem is that as soon as you enter mobs attack you and sometimes the boss battle gets triggered even before you talk with Malavon, so the guy started targeting gnomes before targeting my party, when he finally targeted me I had killed all his trash mobs and he was alone up against 5, easy as cake. Even Markath was toughter, he goes down super fast but a crapload of backstabbing thieves spawn shortly after, along with a mage, and 2 other mini bosses. I had to try a few times to get it right.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Belhifet is the final boss, he's a different character to Poquelin. He doesn't come with trash mobs, he comes with 2 Iron Golems, lol.

Spoiler

Which is why people are prob a bit confused by what you're saying.

Just out of curiosity, because it's one of my fave encounters:

Spoiler

How many reloads did you take for the archer tower?

 

[Jazz_]

Yeah, I was talking about Malavon, not Belhifet, Malavon does have trash mobs.
Anyway as I understood it, Poquelin was Belhifet in human form, then he reveals his true form at the end as Belhifet, the big red demon with meat cleavers. Different characters, same entity.

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

Interesting, I always understood it that Poquelin was just a servant.

 

[Jazz_]

Just out of curiosity, because it's one of my fave encounters:

Spoiler

How many reloads did you take for the archer tower?

2-3 I think, once you realize you can cast a stinking cloud at the top of the stairs and it doesn't affect the lower floor it becomes kinda easy.
A fight that seemed hard (just for the sheer number of enemies) was that in the ice museum with the frost salamanders, but I avoided it so I dunno if it's actually that hard.

 

[Tigranes]

Belhifet is basically only tough if you had previously relied on ranged weaponry and disabling spells to take care of trash mobs or spellcaster enemies (i.e. Malavon) - and now you're stuck in a small room with three hard-hitting massive juggernauts. For most players used to D&D rules or IWD that have built sturdy party members and proper support networks of potions/spells/etc, it's not too big a deal to set up a survival equilibrium.

Malavon and all the other pre-endboss fights I thought were cakewalks at that point, yes.

The Luremaster still continues to trouble my party depending on is level and difficulty, especially to smaller (4 or less) parties.

 

[pippin]

The key is carrying Conlan's hammer, which has a huge bonus vs golems.

 

[oldmanpaco]

This thread is making me want to give the EE edition of IWD a try.