Completed Let's Solo Icewind Dale EE on Insane + Heart of Fury + Ironman!

[Azira]

No preference, just go stomp something.

 

[Urbanolo]

Quality LP, go for the HoW content!

 

[Kayerts]

I knew I could count on one of you bros for the manly option.

 

[Nevill]

I prefer Jotuns. But I would not object to HoW too much.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Didn't remember HoW monsters being that hard, got ass kicked on 2nd playthrough and dropped.
So give them hell, avenge me.

 

[Kayerts]

V. O, THE WILD CHARGE HE MADE!

Spoiler

1. Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell

Spoiler

The people have spoken. The Sufferer will face the trials of the Luremaster.

We talk to the rude halfling in Lonelywood. He seems to be acknowledging the Sufferer's god-king status, as you can see by how he refers to us in the plural. He teleports us to a strange castle in the middle of the Anauroch desert.

An immediate brawl breaks out between some of the local harpies and some of the local wyverns. The Sufferer beholds them sow the seeds of strife:

And reaps the harvest.

Enemies here are completely capable of ruining my shit. The harpies have nasty fear, poison, and disease effects, and the save modifier is large; the cloak of the Seer and its immunity to emotional effects is what's keeping me in the game here.

The halfling man says nothing useful about our predicament. We cleanse the rest of the courtyard:

And meet the Luremaster. Okay, do something in each of the corner towers of this courtyard; seems straightforward:

The harpies respawn every time you leave the area, at least for a while. It's not a bad idea, and acts as a semi-counter to resting too much.

We meet the Harpy Queen in her court in the northeast tower. She's a formidable opponent, but the Black Blade ends her all the same. Next up is a party of evil adventurers in the southeast:

These guys are bad news. One of them tries to cast Dispel Magic to start; the mage actually attempts to cast Breach, making him the most intelligent opponent we've faced. (Breach dispels almost every physical protection buff.) However, most spells are implemented as projectiles, which means you can dodge them by crossing an area boundary.

We run back in, assassinate the high mage, and suddenly the battle is much easier.

This party is absolutely loaded with fantastic loot the Sufferer can't use. Northwest tower is next:

Where we meet a suicidal paladin. Sad! Anyway, we proceed to have a number of largely forgettable encounters in the basements of each of the towers, after each of which the Luremaster appears and gives us a scroll. The scrolls describe four Watchknights of Helm, the Faerunian Heimdall and God of Guardians. Each of them has a part in a mighty battle against a dragon.

We also find a chapel. Putting a holy symbol of helm on the altar there grants access to a crypt beneath it.

2. Undead to the right of him, undead to the left of him, undead in front of him

Spoiler

The crypt is full of undead; because this is Heart of Fury, we actually can't turn a few of them: skeleton warriors, greater Mummies, and revenants. Of these, revenants are by far the most annoying, since they have the troll-like Infinity Engine effect whereby the killing blow on them has to be of damage type acid or flame. Not even Three White Doves' undead disruption effect can kill them.

Still, no one's a credible threat. The revenants have a small chance to stun on hit, which was a lot scarier before Free Action actually worked. Anyway, I plow through these fuckers. The structure of the crypt is winding passages with secret doors that you have to painstakingly search for, and which don't always appear even if you're standing next to them; it's kinda annoying. Still, finding secret passages is fun. Anyway:

We have to locate six keys. Using the keys to unlock all six doors of a central chamber also unlocks a seventh; within is crypt with four tombs, each of which has the signature weapons of one of the watchknights. Placing the correct scroll in each tomb causes the associated Watchknight to rise and thank us; handling all four unlocks the gate to the castle's keep.

Onward!

3. "Forward the grim crusade!" Was there a man dismayed?

Spoiler

The first two levels of this dungeon are probably the hardest in the game for an ironman playthrough. There are Spectral Guards everywhere. They're initially passive but can be triggered by entering certain areas. The Sufferer's going to seize the day and murder them from the start:

Because he doesn't want to be swarmed by every guard in the castle who he's seen once the rest go hostile. Anyway, each of these guys has something like 500HP, -8 AC, and -5 THAC0. The fully-buffed Sufferer has an AC of -23. This is absurdly good, but it means that vast mobs of anything with -4 THAC0 or better will be carving through his stoneskins at a much faster rate than he's accustomed to.

They're undead, but they're not turnable. It is technically possible for a soloist to survive this level without Three White Doves, but having a 20% chance to kill on each hit makes things so much easier.

And then we climb up to the castle library. I have memories of this fight being hard, so I summon some help.

Rakshasha! These guys are bad news. I think? They're shapeshifting demons, but I don't really remember what they do. Cast weird mage spells, I believe.

There are three here. I kill one with the Black Blade. They have a ton of invisible stalkers as help, and they summon more aid on top of that.

I use my dimension door spell to get out. As you can see in this pic, I got nailed with a dispel magic spell! Shit, gotta head out to the courtyard, having shaken them:

Oh. Right. Enhanced Edition. I'm brought down to 8 HP before I can get an invisibility cast off:

Which in turn allows me to get off Heal.

I begin rebuffing. Unfortunately . . . something happens. Even after reviewing the combat log, I'm not sure what; after I cast Spirit Armor, which doesn't normally break invisibility, the enemies start attacking me. I'm trapped, out of Dimension Door spells, the burst damage from Rakshashas is insane, and:

Well, shit.

His suffering has ended.

4. Honour the charge he made!

Spoiler

Anyway, now you know I'm really playing this ironman! See, you may have taken this as a retarded death, but it was actually a credibility-boosting move!

I wish I knew what decloaked him, though. I was definitely untouched for a few rounds of buffs. I suppose it could be a bug, or a random delayed dispel, but either of those seem unlikely; in any case, iron men such as the Sufferer accept the consequences of their actions:

A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fact is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof. For the argument is indeed trivial, but not so the separate wills thereby made manifest. Man's vanity may well approach the infinite in capacity but his knowledge remains imperfect and howevermuch he comes to value his judgments ultimately he must submit them before a higher court. Here there can be no special pleading. Here are considerations of equity and rectitude and moral right rendered void and without warrant and here are the views of the litigants despised. Decisions of life and death, of what shall be and what shall not, beggar all question of right. In elections of these magnitudes are all lesser ones subsumed: moral, spiritual, natural.

Good night, sweet prince. Your ego was so big it had smaller egoes orbiting it, and you argued like a Reddit karma-farmer, but you certainly were something!

Now, it is for we the living to be dedicated to the unfinished work which he so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to that task remaining to us -- that from this honored dead man we take increased devotion to that cause for which he gave the last full measure of devotion -- and we resolve that our dead bro shall not have died in vain.

Options for proceeding are:

1.) Another fighter/mage/cleric (I'll be able to blitz through already completed sections quickly, knowing what I now know)
2.) A fighter/mage/thief (less powerful, and fighting undead will be annoying, but it's doable. Will show off a different sort gameplay!)
3.) Something else (make an argument for it)

 

[Urbanolo]

Now I feel bad for suggesting the trials of luremaster .

 

[Kayerts]

Nah, that would've been my own preference if no one had said anything. I wanted a challenge, and I got one. :D If we go with another F/M/C, he's going to tackle TotL after chapter 4, too.

Plus, I didn't really have a plan for how to write the Sufferer's character development if he DIDN'T get owned at some point.

 

[rogozhin]

Going F/M/T for a change should be interesting.

 

[Abelian]

I vote F/M/C so as to not make it even more annoying to catch up where the Sufferer left off.

 

[Kayerts]

On a further look, it seems the rakshasha come with two dispel magic casts each, one priestly, one magely. Which makes sense, since the two I didn't kill managed to cast it on me three times. My guess is that they might be scripted to cast it in a semi-intelligent fashion? Not sure. Anyway, I want to get started, so I'm rolling for it. 1 for F/M/C, 2 for F/M/T.

 

[Nevill]

Guerilla warfare!

Even after reviewing the combat log, I'm not sure what; after I cast Spirit Armor, which doesn't normally break invisibility, the enemies start attacking me.

Wait, what? Doesn't any spell (or rather, the very act of casting) break invisibility?

 

[Azira]

Ordinary invisibility is supposed to work that way yes. Improved Invisibility lets you cast while staying invisible.

 

[Nevill]

Except it is a 'limited' invisibility that does not let enemies cast spells that target you directly (only AoE), but lets them attack you at a -4 THAC0 penalty (or was it providing a +4 bonus to AC?). At least that's the way it worked in BG2/BG2:EE, which is the engine they use for IWD:EE.

 

[Kayerts]

Guerilla warfare!


Wait, what? Doesn't any spell (or rather, the very act of casting) break invisibility?

Whoops, should've explained this; it's one of those game mechanics I've internalized, despite the fact it makes no sense. So, curiously, the answer is no. The reason for this is that "hostile actions" are what cause decloaks. Generally speaking, single-target buffs don't decloak, nor do some self-centered area buffs. E.g., improved haste (single-target buff) doesn't break it, nor does recitation (AOE buff, centered around caster), but haste (targeted AOE buff) does. All offensive or summoning spells do, too. Otherwise, the distinctions you and Azira articulated are correct!


In other news, bros, it seems that guerilla warfare is a lot more work than the warfare where you get troops to fight for you.

 

[Nevill]

You can sneak your way up to Chapter 2 where you can buy a Monster Summoning scroll.

Other than that, backstab and hide&seek are your friends.

Also, did you know that trap searching and disarming do not break invisibility? There never was an easier way to do Dragon's Eye 3rd level!

 

[Kayerts]

I'm pretty sure that my previous way of doing Dragon's Eye 3rd Level was easier.

 

[Kayerts]

INTERLUDE: STRANGE AEONS

This is a narrative update and can be safely skipped.

SOUNDTRACK

Spoiler

Ours! Ours!

Stabbing winds tore at his face and back and limbs, slicing through to his skin and making it bleed.

Ours! Ours!

The man who would be god stared with furious defiance. He would end like this? Surrounded by a wall of invisible murderers who wielded wind like blades. Behind them, the shapeshifters leered, eyes glittering at the prospect of a fresh soul.

Ours! Ours!

He made a last effort to bash a path out. He failed. Somehow the ground was coming closer, the winds still shooting through armor and flesh with equal ease. The next blow stabbed through his cloak and through his throat. He lay like that, blood spurting out, his face covered with the hair of long-dead virgins.

Something pricked his eyelid, too lightly to be one of his assailants. With his other, he could see it: something small, round, and black, thorns biting into his flesh. He barely felt it amid the pains of death, but as his life seeped out, he seemed to see the strange seed melting, feel something cold and invigorating slam into his eye.

It couldn't stop the cold and draining feeling creeping toward his heart.

* * *

He awoke in a grey place. He was vaguely conscious that he was the only object with any color here, and even the dyes of his robe seemed to be fading as he stood, swallowed up by a greater gloom. Presently a man's form coalesced in the darkness, swathed in grey cloth, only his eyes visible. Inky black tendrils seemed to swim around his arms, like shadows given form. He said nothing, simply stared at the Sufferer. It was not a friendly gaze. Finally, he seemed to find what he was looking for. "Let us be off, then."

Waves of dread swam at the Sufferer at the thought of following this strange man. "No, be off with you," he said, wondering at the unfamiliar lilt in his own voice. "Dead I am, and no traffic with the living may I have." Where did that phrasing come from? She--no, he--shook his head, puzzled.

The man chuckled. "Then the Seer's last gift has closed death's gates to us both. Arise, Sufferer."

He found himself standing. "You know my name. What is yours?" he asked.

The man's eyes glinted. Was he grinning, beneath his cloth? "A name is a cloak of letters thrown upon a man. It offers him not even the warmth a lie would give. It has no meaning."

"Mine has meaning," the Sufferer said quietly.

Again the unseen grin. "Calling what you do meaningful demeans meaning, wretch."

"What do you do, then?"

"The weak suffer. I endure." He gestured into the gloom. "Come. We have a very long way to go."

* * *

This was not like any afterlife he had heard of. His wounds still ached--until he remembered he had magic to regenerate them, and used it--and his body still felt exactly as it did in life; indeed, he carried on him all the clothes and gear he had in life. He found his companion very distasteful to speak to, but he needed to know. "Am I dead?"

"You had a cause. Did you think it weak enough to be stopped by something as small as death?"

"I thought myself too powerful to die. The evidence dictates that I reconsider," the Sufferer replied coolly.

"Ah, your power," the dark man said, with another faceless grin. "The power that the shapechangers took from you with their weak magicks." He turned to regard the Sufferer head on, and his grin was gone. "Power is not so easily stolen. If your power can be snatched away by any lay priest's cantrips, that means you never truly had it. It was another cloak, this one made from lies that you were more than what you were. It was borrowed from forces greater than yourself. It gave you great strength, but it could be stripped from you at their pleasure."

"I did not intend to borrow forever. I sought to align myself with the forces of experience and war, and in so aligning become one."

"Whatever you sought, you dedicated yourself to the cause of conflict and the finality of the consequences conflict brings. It is by those consequences that you will now be judged, and so shall the worthiness of your struggle be weighed. I find it wanting."

"What even are you? Some unusually rude psychopomp?" The Sufferer suddenly swiped at his companion's face, pulling back his cloths. He was not tremendously surprised to see the man's face a mirror of his own, albeit half-covered in the same shadow-stuff that swirled over his arms. "Typical," he muttered. "You are me? Explain yourself."

His companion was amused. "The Gloomfrost Seer. Do you remember her? She was more than what seemed. She was the nearest face of an ancient power, one tangled across dozens of worlds. And one of the cloaks you hid yourself in was hers." He gestured at the virgin-haired wrappings around the Sufferer.

"How does that explain you?"

"The seer, she is a surgeon of concepts, severing them and reattaching them as she pleases. She slices open the world and plants dark seeds in it, then stitches it up. Then she watches them grow. And, it seems, her cloak can do the same." He touched the hem of his own cloak, a shadowy mirror of the Sufferer's. "Her magic sliced off a piece of you. A piece that was weak, a piece that had to beg for power, a piece that died." He bowed mockingly. "I am what remained."

"And those shadows are?"

"Darkness that filled the missing piece's place," he said, still grinning.

"This seems like a rather incompetent way to handle a resurrection contingency to me. At least you didn't have to possess a dead barbarian chief, eh?"

"Dead barbarian chiefs are the worst," the Endurer agreed. The Sufferer raised his knuckles for a brofist, then thought better of it.

"Now," his twin continued, "We have fallen through a hole in time. We are looking for a way through time, a way back to the point when our fate may be changed. Once we find it, we will go through again . . . together." The Endurer gestured ahead. "Shall we go on?"

* * *

The Sufferer blinked. What was he doing here? They'd finally found the rift, the portal; they could clearly see the castle in the desert on the other side. Why was he here, wherever here was? He blinked again, peering through the dim light. He was in a cellar, four giant beetles around him. He made to raise his flail, only to find it gone and a crude stick in his hand. Very well, he could conjure a Black Blade--except, he realized, he couldn't. Indeed, his body and mind felt as weak as a child's; somehow, he had been stripped to a shadow of his former self.

And then a shadow struck him.

The blow smashed at the Sufferer's head, cracking his skull, knocking him to the ground. From the floor, he could see his companion standing above him. "The Seer's magicks were flawed. We live again, but as weaklings," he growled. "We will still go forward together, but we must be as one to survive. I am sorry, self," he said, looking into the Sufferer's clouding eyes. "We must be a united will, an undivided mind. We will face our enemies under the same sky." The shadows in his flesh filled up his eyes, and the Sufferer felt himself being swallowed into them, his spirit beginning to detach from his body again.

The Sufferer said something.

The Endurer leaned forward to hear. "There cannot be two skies," the Sufferer said again. Instead of struggling against his twin's efforts to absorb him, he pressed with them, tumbling into the other's mind and swinging on the other's will. His vision blurred--

The Sufferer started, the pain in his head gone. He was holding a staff high, above the weakling cleric bleeding out on the floor. It was trying to say something. With a mental shrug, he slammed down the butt of his staff and killed his former self.

"The weak suffer. I endure," he murmured. Stretching, he took stock of a new form, and an old life . . .

 

[Abelian]

"You had a cause. Did you think it weak enough to be stopped by something as small as death?"

 

[Kayerts]

VI. BRINGER OF SHADOWS

Soundtrack

Spoiler

1. A Dark Mirror

Spoiler

The time of the Sufferer is over. The Darkener's time has begun.

The new character is basically a match for the old one, statwise. I forgot to screenshot him, but te main differences are that he's an F/M/T and has 18/00 strength. (Useful, since losing the priest class means we lost the ability to buff ourselves to superhuman levels of strength.) He's even dumber than the original Sufferer (13 wisdom), but wisdom serves well those who use it well. I spec him in longswords and sword and shield, dump all his thief skill points into Hide in the Shadows, and start him off.

Let's discuss F/M/Ts. They're the most powerful solo class in Baldur's Gate 2; if you're playing without an XP cap, that only makes them stronger. They're significantly less awesome in Heart of Fury Icewind Dale, for several reasons:

* Lack of high-level abilities in IWD. Several thief HLAs in BG2 were insane, to make up for the general shittiness of the class. (The game apologetically tries to steer you away from thieves; out of 17 NPCs, there were four thieves, but one had a scripted death, and two come already dualed out into magery.) The Time Stop trap stands out; you could lay seven of them before any difficult fight. Use Any Item was also pretty great for a soloist, given the huge variety of powerful loot in BG2. Adding this power to that of a fighter/mage (probably the strongest double-class in the game) was awesome.

* Traps were far deadlier in BG2, to the extent that the ability to bypass them helped a lot. Maze traps have been the bane of many non-thief ironman solos, and there are multiple other traps that can take off 100+ HP. In IWD, traps are for the most part annoyances.

* Heart of Fury severely limits the utility of the thief's backstab. The concept of backstabbing is to deal a lot of damage to take out a high priority target at the start of a fight. If every enemy is a multihundred hit point megatank, taking him out early isn't feasible.

* Stealth is glitchy in IWD:EE. (I'll return to this.)

Comparatively, F/M/Cs are much stronger for the sort of challenge I'm doing. Plentiful XP in HoF means that spellcasting classes bounded only by experience gain power the fastest. (Druids multiclasses are also quite strong, and a solo sorcerer would probably be capable of great unpleasantness if he survived the prologue.) Clerics also get a few spells absent from BG2. (Greater Shield of Lathander and Entropy Shield are amazingly strong.)

The Sufferer spent most of his career buffed to the titanic levels of 25/25/25 strength/dexterity/constitution through Draw Upon Holy Might, hit for maximum damage due to Righteous Magic, and had large, long-lasting buffs to AC and saving throws due to Entropic Shield. Save-or-else effects were useless against him. His armor class was low enough to go head-to-head with mobs of endgame Heart of Fury monsters and have hope of victory.

The F/M/T gets none of that. He has to be good-aligned to use some borderline-necessary equipment, and that bars him from having a decent AC until he gets Spirit Armor at the end of Chapter 1. Mirror image is his only real damage mitigation spell until Chapter 3; he has to wait until he gets Stoneskin before he can tank.

Instead, he gets:
* The ability to disarm traps. (Largely irrelevant, because traps are weak.)
* The ability to evade some damage spells on a successful save vs. breath. (Unclear value; even with negative saves, it doesn't work on a lot of spells.)
* The ability to set traps. (Not so useful, because high-level enemies are too tanky to be brought down by traps.)
* Stealth and backstab shenanigans.

The first three are mostly novelties, so really, this guy's all about the stealth. You can stealth as long as you pass a skill check and you can't see any monsters. (Note: it's your vision, not theirs, that matters; if you're blinded, you can stealth almost anywhere.) If you attack from stealth at the back of the enemy, and you're wielding a weapon a thief can use,* it counts as a backstab, and you get a level-dependent multiplier on damage, which progresses from 2x to 5x. You also seem to get a large bonus to your to-hit roll, though I'm unclear what this is. Constructs and barbarians are immune to backstabs in IWD, although undead are not.
___
* Note that this is a weapon that is defined in the item files as being usable by a thief, not a weapon that a thief could logically use. So, you can backstab with a summoned weapon.


To sum up: he's a glass cannon who's only a cannon if you engage in hit-and-run tactics; otherwise, he's just glass. If we want to do well with him, we're going to have to adopt one wise man's combat philosophy:

Best way to block punch: no be there.

So, I mentioned that EE's implementation of stealth ruined it. I'm honestly unclear on how much of this was already present in IWD OG, but if memory serves: in base IWD, some enemies were scripted in the following manner:

1. If hidden units walked past them and they'd never seen them, they ignore them.
2. If hidden units walk past them and they'd seen them, they do not aggro, but will follow around the hidden unit as though they were heat-seeking. They are totally capable of surrounding the hidden units this way.
3. If left alone for 24 hours+, position for all aggroed units is reset.

EE added BG2's engine feature whereby enemies could follow opponents across maps. This is what fucks everything up. First, if enemies are not on their home map, they do not reset their position after 24 hours. Second, all aggroed enemies who can follow a stealthed character DO follow. So if you have a large number of enemies aggroed, and you flee, you may think yourself safe only to find, seconds later, that 20+ enemies have teleported in to surround you. It makes hit-and-run strats much harder, it's pretty annoying, and it caused most of my false starts.

With that said, there's one combo that gives the F/M/T an unrivaled capacity for death and destruction. I'll be using it heavily once it comes online, which, sadly, won't be for a while.

2. A Blade in the Back

Spoiler

The Darkener performs all the risk-free quests he can in Easthaven. Even the one to return the blade of Aihonen. Wylfdene is a True Bro, and his brief reign is going to be the single most competent era in Icewind Dale barbarian history. Let them have this moment.

The Sufferer's new form is actually more powerful in Easthaven proper than his old one was. The Great Wolf, for example, falls fairly easily:

Basic tactics are to hit and run, dodging into the shadows to stealth whenever you gain a lead on your foe, then whirling around and stabbing him in the back. Solo melee enemies can't counter it unless they're exceptionally fast. Larger groups (4+) can surround you, so the usefulness of this tactic will be short-lived, but it's great for now.

The goblins fall to the same plan.

And the Darkener creeps out the elf at the local tavern. Incidentally, I believe I managed to clear all the enemies of Easthaven on the first day, using this plan.

The wolves around the caravan are similarly helpless . . .

. . . as are the first orcs of the cave. It was around this time that I remembered to screenshot the character, so, here you go:

Character development's pretty straightforward. I've been maxing Hide in the Shadows and Move Silently first; due to penalties from lighting effects, they need to cumulatively have a score of around 240 to guarantee passing the skill check. In terms of weapons skills, I'm having him dual-wielding next, then maces, for reasons that will become evident.

Anyway, the orc cave is very difficult for an F/M/T in IWD:EE. The main reason is the mob near the entrance with 12 orcs. I can--and did--pick off the first two, but all the others have "shouts" to alert the entire group, once they're aggroed. I don't have a great way to deal with this; since they're near the beginning of the area, I don't have a lot of room in which to maneuver into the shadows. Because they follow you around once aggroed, even if you're stealthed, it's easy to get surrounded, especially if you try to maneuver for a backstab. I had three false starts to the F/M/T playthrough before I came up with a cunning plan.

Cunning plan: fuck it. Even though we desperately need XP, it's just too dangerous to try to kill them all. We do require the scroll of protection from petrification that they're guarding, but we can just lure them outside for that. Sometimes, the best attachment to a leviathan isn't via harpoon.

I proceed to clear out the other small groups of orcs in the cave, but I likewise leave off the large group at the end with the ogres. I actually stand a decent chance against them; with the rest of the cave clear, I have plenty of room to sneak around and stab them from the shadows. But it'd take a long time, it carries a significant risk of getting surrounded and killed, and it's ultimately just not worth it. Why?

Because apparently, Hrothgar doesn't require you to kill the orcs. You just need to enter the area between Easthaven and the cave and notice the collapsed caravan. This feels weirdly competent for a questgiver; I imagine the dialogue going like this:

Darkener: Yo, we found the caravan. It got owned outside town; there's a group of like 40 orc raiders holed up in a cave there.
Hrothgar: Shit! What'd you do? Did you try to fight them?
Darkener: Fuck no. I may only have Wisdom 13, but I know that 1 divided by 40 equals the one literally being divided by the forty.
Hrothgar: Whew! For a second there, I was worried you were an idiot. You could've been killed! (chuckles) Anyway, I'll get some guys who weren't level 1 earlier this week to handle it.

Anyway, we leave for Kuldahar. Rocks fall, everybody dies. We stealth our way through the pass, and consult the wise wisdom of the brilliant Archdruid Arundel:

Want to REALLY enhance Icewind Dale? Give me a way to kill this prick before the big bad rolls in and steals my thunder.

We kill the yetis in town with hit and run tactics, though we get dangerously close to death ourselves in the process:

Gross. I'm so over low-level, spell-less F/M/T combat. Let's get to Heart of Winter, and--

Well, shit. It turns out that Heart of Winter has a minimum experience point requirement of 250k. After doing all the quests we can in Kuldahar, we manage to get 120k. We've got a long way to go.

Also, since we are no longer a cleric, we heal extremely slowly on rest--without healing magic, significant injuries can take 10-20 days to heal. This is bad at the beginning of the game because the only place in town we can sleep is the inn, and in EE, you actually get charged for every 8-hour interval in a long stay. (IWD OG was bugged and would only charge you for one night, even if you had "rest until healed" checked.)

So, I need to grind up 140k XP. It took me awhile to find a smart way to do this. I initially tried hitting and running in the Vale of Shadows, but yetis are fast and actually pretty strong--with my current backstab modifier (3x), it takes 7-8 strikes to kill them. Most of the Vale is scripted to run around aimlessly if they're aggroed and no one is in sight, which makes it hard to land a backstab on them. Also, once I hit the tombs, there are skeletons; skeletons are highly resistant to all physical damage except crushing, and the only crushing weapons that you can backstab with are clubs. I'm not really in a clubbing mood, so I head back to Kuldahar Pass:

I was initially worried about going here, since there are enough goblins to easily surround me, but the point at which you arrive is connected to the main map by a narrow ledge, only two sprites wide. The AI uses a greedy algorithm for pathfinding, which keeps it from pulling off a surround. I just need to be able to fight two goblins at the same time and kill at least one before I'm forced to withdraw. And I'm just strong enough to do that!

Although it's close!

And continues to be close!

I have a lot of these screenshots, mostly in case one of them ended up resulting in my death.

We clear out the initial goblins and head to the local mill:

Inside is an orc chieftain who keeps altogether more reasonable numbers of guards with him than the bros back in Easthaven did. We kill him and get a magical shield, which is actually a great find, since we can sell it. (We're horribly poor due to not having the loot from the orc cave.)

I actually manage to clear the pass! And this brings me to just over 250k XP.

On to Heart of Winter, and Fair Compensation in quest XP!

3. Blasphemy among blasphemies

Spoiler

A shadow slips into Lonelywood. A fancy sling slips away from its temple.

We spend some time in town doing the darkest of deeds, mostly related to helping a little girl return home. (We tell her that we need her to protect her dad, so that we can end the barbarian threat.)

We meet our old friend, CompetentNPC. He still doesn't like the Sufferer very much, which I think cements his place as the most perceptive person in the game. Long live Wylfdene the Great!

We return to town and see this, which is pretty cute:

One little bonus of playing an F/M/T is that we now have Hide and Move Silently at 100/140%, and we've still got enough skill points leftover to get Open Locks to 100%. This means we can help ourselves to the two difficult locked chests in town:

Boots of Winter in here; they grant 50% cold resistance. It's not great, but it's a nice bonus.

There's also this robe of the neutral archmagi. We're good-aligned, so we can't wear it, but it sells for 13k. That'll help us buy some more spell scrolls.

We head to the Burial Isle.

And fail our cloaking skill check on the way to the necromancer's tower there, because apparently 240 points in stealth wasn't enough. Shit!

We do manage to duck away and hide relatively soon thereafter, but this is actually pretty bad. The wights we saw were part of a large mob:

And there's no way we can kill those guys. If I'd ducked into the necromancer's tower, I'd have pulled the entire group of 10 inside; since I need to transact with him to proceed, that might have been Bad News.

After deliberating on my predicament a bit, I lead them inside one of the side-entrances to the tunnels beneath the isle:

Where they will be content to stay for a long time. I head to the necromancer's tower, buy a lot of scrolls (the important one for now is invisibility), and then go tomb raiding:

I immediately cast invisibility after decloaking to pick up the tribal insignia; this gets me by.

It's pretty fortunate that I also immediately recast invisibility after talking to Hjollder, because these bitches decided to show up:

Then I head back to Lonelywood and complete the werewolf quest. I screenshotted my level-up screen, because it's really, really dumb. All XP gains involved were made between the time I popped up to talk to Hjollder and the time I solved Emmerich's curse. This interval includes a few unpleasant brushes with death, but exactly 0 damage dealt to enemies.

I then go back to raid the barrows for saleable treasures. This expedition goes pretty well. I sell the relics and buy scrolls with the gold, although this does happen:

Enemies I aggroed in the catacombs follow me out, and they spawn near the entry point on the Burial Isle map. Apparently the Darkener's existence is such a blasphemy that he stirs even the blasphemies that inhabit this place to wrath. What this means is that I probably can't come back to the Burial Isle until I'm prepared to help the undead back into their graves.

4. The Black Wind

Spoiler

I'm not, so instead, I head to the Gloomfrost:

And this is where the F/M/T comes online.

I explained how Mislead works in an earlier update; it's a BG2 spell that conjures an illusory double. While the double lives, you remain under the full effect of Improved Invisibility, even if you attack. (Also, because it's Improved Invisibility, you get +4 to all saving throws for the duration.) I also cast Improved Haste, which doubles your attacks per round.

And this is what it lets you do. Notice the 102 damage, done with the unenchanted longsword I bought at the start of the game.

There are ways for this to fail. Most enemies don't hold still after you start attacking; some will try to run, but most will mob you even if you're stealthed. To maximize damage, summoning something to get them to turn their backs on you is usually needed. And, this being Heart of Fury, anything you summon will go down in a few rounds. It probably goes without saying that if the relatively short-lived Mislead spell runs out while you're surrounded by high-level monsters, you might be boned.

Anyway, I proceed through the Gloomfrost with relative ease. Here's a cute Bard's Tale II reference:

I enter the ice caverns.

Remorhazim are the perfect targets for this tactic, for a few reasons. They give some of the best XP in the game, they move slowly, they have no damage mitigation, and they have massive, stabbable backs:

They can also kill my unarmored ass in 1-2 hits, so it's good to be cautious with them. I back off.

Oh, right, they follow me. This is actually the perfect place to cut them down, so I do. After killing 5 or so (200k XP), I proceed to meet Tiernon and forge myself a +4 sword. I continue on to the seer:

The Sufferer is feeling slightly grateful to the Seer for giving him a second chance at life, so this time, he decides not to make fun of her for hiding in this cave. (Instead of e.g. running out to yell at a dragon and instantly getting one-shotted.)

I head back to Lonelywood, turn in the ice rose for the 1.26m reward, and then go back to the Gloomfrost. The Darkener has some unfinished business here. He won't repeat his predecessor's mistake with the remorhazim:

He's gonna put every last one of those fuckers in the ground.

Where his shadow falls, the beasts die, ripped apart by unseen blades. He flies through the cavern, slaughtering everything in his path.

Until, at the end of the first layer, he meets the Guardians.

Ice Golems are dicks. They're immune to backstabs, and while their DPS is lower than remorhazim's, it's still high enough to take out any summons in 2-3 rounds. Also, I don't have access to Free Action yet, so their ability to stun on hit is deadly. Anyway, I Dimension Door out and run away:

But they follow me outside! Which is fine by me, since the ledge is narrow enough that I can take them out one by one, without risk of getting surrounded. Anyway, I proceed to the lower level to take out the remorhaz queen:

I don't have Greater Shield of Lathander this time, but I do have an invisible Mislead decoy, which makes me equally invulnerable. The queen goes down in a few hits; I claim her amulet and flee.

Not pictured: about 10 more Ice Golem dickheads who followed me out. Hiding my Mislead decoy lets me take them down with near-impunity, but they've got over 400 HP each, which takes a long time to get through without backstabs.

And then this happens. IS THIS THE END?

No. I had the foresight to set a contingency beforehand that casts invisibility on me if I'm ever rendered helpless. After resting and resetting the contingency, it's time for revenge:

Revenge: complete. The Gloomfrost has been cleansed. The next adventurer who finds his way to Tiernon will hear the legend of the Black Wind, a terrible spirit who stalks the caverns. It is a creature who carries in it a darkness so deep that light will not go near it, whose mere touch can cut down the mightiest of heroes before they even know it's there.

That is not enough for the Sufferer. He has cast off first his faith in Ilmater and now his belief in the divinity of his own purpose. In its place, he has found something else: something darker and perhaps weaker, but something that can never be taken away. In this permanence he has found new meaning, and in the indelible impact created by forging legends he finds new purpose. He will gather them to him and become something far stranger than a god. Even the dead will fear his darkness.

Which is really the only explanation for why I decided I needed to clear the surface of the Burial Isle next:

Seriously, this was a dumb idea. The banshees, the shamans, and polar bear spirit all have save-or-else effects. With Mislead's improved invisibility effect on, my saves are all around 0. This means I *might* be safe, but I don't know what the effect modifiers are. Also, due to engine bugginess, occasionally one of them will just disregard my invisibility and cast a spell on me. Plus, I'm constantly getting surrounded.

It does work out for me in the end, though. Note how much of a motherfucker the Polar Bear Spirit is; he looks at my 191-damage backstab-crit and yawns, "Watch where you swing that thing, you might hurt somebody."

Eventually the Darkener feels he has struck sufficient terror into the unbeating hearts here to move on.

He's quite high-level, but the interesting part of his stat sheet is how he's dual-wielding with an AC of 6. The Darkener is fearless.

5. The Battle of the Black Blade

Spoiler

He returns to the barbarian camp and kills the bros waiting for him:

Note a potential problem here. In IWD OG, all barbarians were implemented with the fighter class. Here, they've been upgraded to proper barbarian classes, because those are implemented in Baldur's Gate 2. Barbarians are like fighters, but with some resistances, a Rage ability, and . . . immunity to backstab. Shit. This is concerning, given that we've got an upcoming endurance fight against them, and our main source of damage is gone.

We meet with CompetentNPC, he gets fed up with everyone and leaves, a fight breaks out.

The Battle of the Black Blade begins. Generations later, the tribes still tell tales of the time a demon in the form of a man walked into the camp of their unified peoples, driving out their messianic chieftain before slaughtering the entire Wyrm Tribe. The demon vanished as soon as the battle began, but his terrible black sword left its mark on every loyal warrior that fought that day. It would tear them open from out of nowhere, then move on to another, until the entire tribe's bodies lay broken on the field, marked by its unholy touch.

(In reality, the game's scripts bugged out here. Most of my supposed allies didn't actually attack the enemy, I ran out of buffs early, and the last portion of the battle consisted of me waiting for the two allied barbarians who were actually willing to fight cutting down the 8 or so enemy barbarians who stood around, idly absorbing their blows. I had to buy healing from an NPC a few times. It was pretty dumb.)

Back in Lonelywood, the Luskan assassins show up:

And are brutally shut down. Bystanders in the Whistling Gallows spoke of a terrible sword of shadows appearing behind the band and slashing them open before they could even be afraid. Residents note that the earth where they fell is a little paler, as though some of its colors bled out.

This nets us what might be the best weapon in the game:

And that's about it for Heart of Winter. All we have to do is sell our items and--

Six of the banshees found their way into the necromancer's tower. This is going to be annoying.

It's actually a rough fight until I remember that EE added a scroll of Protection from Magic Energy. All of the banshees' attacks are either magic damage or effect stuff; with Mislead, my saving throws are too low for that to matter.

For annoying him, the Darkener decides to purge the catacombs a bit more. Clearly the undead must be taught to fear him more.

And that's that. We are now a massive badass and have the somewhat more reasonable AC of -7, which means our unbuffed self could probably go hand-to-hand with a single Chapter 1 yeti for five rounds without dying. Maybe even two of them!

 

[Nevill]

Damn, I didn't account for a Mislead spell. Good job breaking the game.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Why I'm not surprised that DLC to addon TotL bring game over?
Anyway - good luck with another character. I always though you need to use some obscure classes and races to play through HoF, like Deep Gnome monk...

 

[laclongquan]

"And that's that. We are now a massive badass and have the somewhat more reasonable AC of -7, which means our unbuffed self could probably go hand-to-hand with a single Chapter 1 yeti for five rounds without dying. Maybe even two of them!"

I wouldnt call that breaking the game

 

[Kayerts]

VI. DEEPER SHADOWS

This will be a shorter update!

SOUNDTRACK

Spoiler

1. Today two yetis; tomorrow, the world!

Spoiler

So, Mislead + Haste is a pretty broken combo. Lining up backstabs frequently requires annoying micromanagement, but even without it, the Darkener attacks 7 times per round for 15-25 damage per hit. HoF enemies are well-disposed to tank that, but without a means of hurting the misled PC, even that is pretty harmless.

I have plenty of screenshots from the Vale of Shadows, but the fact is that nothing there was that interesting. Killing huge numbers of melee mooks is an inherently dull task, and we've already been over the plot. We whip through Chapter 1. Chapter 2, too; I thought the Yxunomei fight might be rough, but I managed to dodge her initial Dispel Magic, and before the Darkener's backstabs, she fell like everyone else.

As a greater demon, she should be able to see through invisibility, but apparently this wasn't implemented. Yxunomei is weirdly underpowered in this game, actually; she's a 25/25 mage/cleric, but her only spell is Animate Dead. She can only be hit by +3 weapons, which is significant for the expected pre-HoW full party (because there probably aren't enough +3 weapons for six characters; hence, more of your resources are tied up). But she's decidedly lacking in interesting abilities.

Moving on: chapter 3 was very straightforward, too. Last time, I turned almost every enemy there was without them having a chance to harm me; improved haste + mislead isn't actually more sporting, it just takes more time. I did have one rough encounter in Chapter 4:

My Mislead double expired just after I cast Black Blade, so my poor unbuffed self had to tank for a round. As you can see, that nearly killed him. The rest of the level proceeded without incident.

I always thought this was a weird encounter, given that each of the dudes in red is supposed to be a neo-orog general. Their management structure looks kinda topheavy.

Anyway, we glide through to the end of chapter 4. Let's move on to new territory!

2. To separate shadows from darkness

Spoiler

This was the point where the Sufferer tried Trials of the Luremaster in the last iteration. We can do that here, too, but first, I want something.

Chapter 6 is triggered by moving into Lower Dorn's Deep. You do this by walking to the opposite side of the map on which you start Chapter 5. It takes 30 seconds. Lower Dorn's is the endgame of IWD. I have some specific goals here, so I'm just going to sneak my way to the places I need to go--

Oh. Constructs who can see through stealth. Okay, I'll slip off to the side and drop a mislead decoy to occupy them, then I'll--

Lower Dorn's Deep is crawling with invisible thieves. These fuckers appear and ruin my plans.

I get drawn into a pitched battle here.

It proves unfortunate for some. I dart into a nearby building to try to hide, where I meet a gnome:

Who tells him about the rival prophet of suffering. While that is no longer how he thinks of himself, the Darkener is very curious to discuss matters of faith with this gentleman.

Anyway, we cross the cavern to reach the central palace of Dorn's Deep, where we encounter domestic violence!

It's a curious counterpoint to vanilla violence, which is more what we're about. Anyway, the Forgotten Realms is generally too dumb to do much of interest with speculative fiction, but claims that "that's not who he really is" are much more plausible in a world where mind control magic is plentiful. Ever since we came to Kuldahar Pass, our enemies have been complaining that they're forced to fight us against their will. So we'll humor the lady.

We meet two bros and try to brofist them, but reconsider and broblade them instead.

We meet Marketh, who surrenders voluntarily after telling us that RBP intends to forge an empire. Marketh's departure causes the real boss fight of Marketh's Domain to begin; four Kraken Society Mages spawn, backed by a large number of invisible thieves.

I manage to kill them in a fairly straightforward fashion--dispel magic on the mages, then mislead/backstab them to death--but I make sure that at no point am I visible in the presence of the mages. The reason why is that in an earlier, fan-made version of the IWD->BG2 engine conversion (on which IWD:EE is based), Kraken Mages cast the Death Spell. Except, at some point in the conversion, the Death Spell became uber. (It instakilled everything; saving throws didn't matter. Only Spell Immunity: Necromancy was protection against it.) This appears to have been fixed in EE, but I'm really not eager to test this hypothesis.

That's it for Marketh's palace. We sneak over to the mighty sorcerer Malavon's lair:

Where we behold cruelty against these brave little gnomes. We buff for a difficult mage battle, and approach the sorcerer himself:

EE adds a book you can find in Marketh's palace which lets you take control of Malavon's iron golems. We don't do this for ourselves; we do it for the gnomes, who they'd otherwise kill. Without his muscle, Malavon drops almost instantly:

And we promptly find out that was a simulacrum:

One dispel magic cast and a few backstabs take care of the real one:

Who gives us 202k XP on his death, the highest XP bounty in the game so far.

The reason we came here when we did is that Malavon has the biggest cache of high-level mage scrolls in the game. Most of them just make our 7th-9th level slots a little more useful, but one deserves special mention: Chain Contingency. This lets us trigger some spell effects automatically; I set it to cast stoneskin, mirror image, and improved invisibility on me if I drop below 50% health.

3. Next steps

Spoiler

All right, decision time again: what's next?

1.) Joril's cave. Jotuns.
2.) Maiden Ilmadia's lair. Eldjotuns.
3.) The Aquarium. Slavery.
4.) Perdiem's temple. Blasphemy.
5.) TotL + HOW. Revenge.

My preference would be for 5, but it's up to you guys!

 

[Abelian]

5. Make the Luremaster rue the day he lured suffering in his abode.