Why is Icewind Dale so viciously hard?

D

Duck of Death

Member
I don't get it.

I've beaten all the Infinity engine games so far, excluding expansion packs. The only ones I hadn't beaten were Planescape: Torment (due to a huge bug that wouldn't let me finish the game) and Icewind Dale 2 (haven't played it yet, it IS infinity engine, right?)

But Icewind Dale is kicking my ass in the first 20 minutes. In the very first combat with some goblins, my chaotic evil bitchress/thief got smoked. Now I'm trying to take out a cave of orcs and getting manhandled.

Anyone have any tips or ANYTHING? Also, I don't have a manual with the game, and I have no idea what the "Character Arbitration" stuff does. Am I allowed to create a new character to fill in my dead one? What's the deal with that?

AND WHY THE FUCK IS A STUPID ORC SHAMAN OWNING MY ASS!? :lol
 
Heh. You're not playing solo are you? I believe you can create up to 5 (or was it 3) other team-mates at the start of the game
 
LOL, no, I created a full party. Minus 1 now.

Of course, I also conveniently forgot the great tactic: rush in, kill and loot, flee! Repeat 15 times :lol
 
A few icewind dale pointers

Have at least two tank fighters and one tank ranger/archer then a good party would look like this.

Fighter - Axeor long sword /sheild
Paladin - Two handed sword
Ranger - Longbow
Theif/Fighter - Short Sword (backstab)
Celric or Druid - sling
Mage whatever class – Sling



Try to focus your party on one enemy at a time, level up your thief’s hide in shadows skills as the rest of his skills are not that important in IWD plus you can always use a potion of master thievery.

Press spacebar to pause the game whenever you get onto a battle then give the orders

Stop being weaksauce how can you get owned by goblins?
 
Alright, now I'm starting to own. I've found out how to fill in dead characters, although I don't need to do that anymore. Guess I was just a little rusty. I actually have a party almost exactly as you described above, Mario. I was just being teh suck. :)

It really pissed me off too. After I got killed by that stupid orc shaman, I'm just sorta of sitting here thinking "WTF!? HOw the fuck can I get killed by orcs when I was able to take down a motherfuckin
Black Dragon
with ease in BG2!?!?! :lol

Druid spells work indoors? Mwuahahahaha >=)
 
Duck of Death said:
:lol

Yeah, I'll play online for an hour or so. My current connection is 56k though :(

Gawd, how do we set it up? It's been so long
Click to expand...


Let me find my CD’s and install

What patch do you have?
Is trails of luremaster on the disc??
Probably be a day or so before we can play
 
I just bought the game the other day, no expansion pack and no patches.

I'll have my broadband connection back Monday and Tuesday. I think I have to get Gamespy client again (?).

Anyone else have the game and wants in on the gibs? :D
 
That makes it easy then I will just install the game, the expansion pack is pretty good plus you can download a free massive dungeon for it but you can always go back to it after beating IWD.

Lets try to jag a few more players, if we get two more then we can all have just one character each.
 
Yeah, when I used to play BG online it was always funner with enough people to use 1 character each.

Maybe we should have the title changed and the thread moved to the Online forum?
 
Wait is this Icewind dale 1 or 2 I have both.

The first post I a tad confusing, it must be 2 because of the orc Sharman’s.
 
Icewind Dale 1. I still had Diablo II on my mind when I saw the Orc Mages in the first cave in the prologue. They looked like the Shamans from DII
 
Duck of Death said:
Icewind Dale 1. LOL, I still had Diablo II on my mind when I saw the Orc Mages in the first cave in the prologue. They looked like the Shamans from DII
Click to expand...

Awesome we can play 2 afterwards!!

And don’t bother posting on the online forum I had an Icewind dale 2 thread a few weeks ago it got like 8 views.
 
Icewind Dale is the hack and slash of the Infinity engine games, so fighters are more powerful than usual. It's definitely a bonus to have a brute force mentality. I don't remember where I had my difficulty slider set when I played, but all Infinity engine games are massive save/reload fests for me. :D
 
Druids are hilariously broken in IWD to the benefit of the player. If you have the Heart of Winter expansion, delete all of your characters and make druids. not only do they cast outdoor spells indoors, but they stack haha. And IWD is not about single enemies like baldur's gate, its about mobs of enemies. And druids specialize in Area spells haha. Its fucking stupid but still so fun to cheese through with an all druid party.

Yeah I played through IWD 1 like 7 times, second one was way harder.
 
I never did manage to beat IWD2 on super-hard mode- got stuck in a huge ambush section near the forest maze. Goddamn goblin/orc swarms.
 
I never played 2. I was horribly, horribly addicted to the first one. I played through it a number of times. Only used druids on one playthrough, as far as I remember.

As far as replayability goes, this is the best Infinity engine game. Hmm, maybe I should pick up 2. I've had a hankering for an Infinity game.
 
IWD and BG1/2 are actually VERY easy games to finish with fighter heavy parties.

Get 4 fighters and two mages. Once the mages are 5th level you are indestructable. Just arm the fighters with two weapons each, cast Haste on them with the mages and sic them on whatever is up there. They'll own anything, trust me. I finished BG2 with only one mage and the only spells she cast were Haste and Time stop when she was high enough. The rest of the spells did really insignificant damage compared to a dual wielding hastened ranger.
 
tahrikmili said:
IWD and BG1/2 are actually VERY easy games to finish with fighter heavy parties.

Get 4 fighters and two mages. Once the mages are 5th level you are indestructable. Just arm the fighters with two weapons each, cast Haste on them with the mages and sic them on whatever is up there. They'll own anything, trust me. I finished BG2 with only one mage and the only spells she cast were Haste and Time stop when she was high enough. The rest of the spells did really insignificant damage compared to a dual wielding hastened ranger.
Click to expand...

In BG2:TOB a mage is a hell of a lot more powerful then a fighter.

Gorey want to join our party?

You can be a druid!
 
Do The Mario said:
In BG2:TOB a mage is a hell of a lot more powerful then a fighter.

Gorey want to join our party?

You can be a druid!
Click to expand...

That's true, I really struggled in TOB with that party, but I finished it nevertheless. :)
 
I have both IWD1 and IWD2 and only spent about 5 to 10 hours on each. The game just didn't manage to draw me in the way the BG games did.

Anyway, if you thought IWD1 is hard, wait till you get to IWD2......
 
So far (just got done with the Vale of Shadows), Icewind Dale is awesome. I love the focus on combat, and none of the challenges so far has been insurmountable. All they take is a well thought-out strategy. The game is nothing but great, refined hack and slash action, and I love it.

Having said that, the game still has the one big problem of the Infinity Engine: often incredibly stupid AI pathfinding. I'm sitting here trying to organize my group into a formation I think suits the situation, but one of the dipshits walks way around one guy and the enemy spots us. Sometimes it is my fault, but more often than not this flaw leads to much frustration.

Still, nothing beats the satisfaction of standing atop a pile of corpses and loot while awaiting the next wave of baddies.
 
Duck of Death said:
So far (just got done with the Vale of Shadows), Icewind Dale is awesome. I love the focus on combat, and none of the challenges so far has been insurmountable. All they take is a well thought-out strategy. The game is nothing but great, refined hack and slash action, and I love it.

Having said that, the game still has the one big problem of the Infinity Engine: often incredibly stupid AI pathfinding. I'm sitting here trying to organize my group into a formation I think suits the situation, but one of the dipshits walks way around one guy and the enemy spots us. Sometimes it is my fault, but more often than not this flaw leads to much frustration.

Still, nothing beats the satisfaction of standing atop a pile of corpses and loot while awaiting the next wave of baddies.
Click to expand...

I don't know if IWD 1 has it, but some infinity engine games allowed you to increase pathfinding waypoints.
 
Bumped for a question.

Is there a flaw with my game, or is Chapter 5 incredibly short? It's only 1 area, with the Frost Salamaders and the slaves and trolls. I helped free the slaves, and went to the next area, and Chapter 6 begins?

What concerns me more is that in the introduction to Chapter 6 the narrator is talking about how the party braved the perils of the Frost Giant caves, but there weren't any frost giant caves. :lol

Is there something more I'm supposed to do in Chapter 5? Does the game have a bug that was fixed in later patches? Or is Chapter 5 just extremely short?
 
Duck of Death said:
Bumped for a question.

Is there a flaw with my game, or is Chapter 5 incredibly short? It's only 1 area, with the Frost Salamaders and the slaves and trolls. I helped free the slaves, and went to the next area, and Chapter 6 begins?

What concerns me more is that in the introduction to Chapter 6 the narrator is talking about how the party braved the perils of the Frost Giant caves, but there weren't any frost giant caves. :lol

Is there something more I'm supposed to do in Chapter 5? Does the game have a bug that was fixed in later patches? Or is Chapter 5 just extremely short?
Click to expand...


There are frost giant caves in the south west of that area if I recall, you go there to get one of the badges or maybe on a quest from the leader of salamanders.

I am playing IWD 2 on and off at the moment, I have fished it before but it’s even harder then the first game.

You should get the expansion pack for IWD, it increases the resolution adds a great new Area plus you can download a new dungeon.
 
Does the game require a decent graphics card (for effects)? It says DX8 in the requirements, but i only have a Radeon 7000 (Radeon VE), i believe it's DX7 only. Or is that only the installed DX version they're talking about.
 
mumu said:
Does the game require a decent graphics card (for effects)? It says DX8 in the requirements, but i only have a Radeon 7000 (Radeon VE), i believe it's DX7 only. Or is that only the installed DX version they're talking about.
Click to expand...

:lol

Man the graphics will look fine, takes nothing to run the infinity engine games well!
 
I need to run 1600x1200 because of my TFT. My CPU will handle fine, i was just worried that there might be some effects that are not done in software. Also what about that hack n slashing? Can you not pause the game anymore via space or what? I only played the original BG.
 
Do The Mario said:
There are frost giant caves in the south west of that area if I recall, you go there to get one of the badges or maybe on a quest from the leader of salamanders.

I am playing IWD 2 on and off at the moment, I have fished it before but it’s even harder then the first game.

You should get the expansion pack for IWD, it increases the resolution adds a great new Area plus you can download a new dungeon.
Click to expand...

I still can't find these damn caves. I've killed the leader of the salamanders, and the only area I haven't been to is blocked by a ruined bridge.

I didn't do something that made the game impossible to beat, did I? :lol
 
Duck of Death said:
I still can't find these damn caves. I've killed the leader of the salamanders, and the only area I haven't been to is blocked by a ruined bridge.

I didn't do something that made the game impossible to beat, did I? :lol
Click to expand...


Yeah you need wood 2 repair the bridge IIRC

I need to run 1600x1200 because of my TFT. My CPU will handle fine, i was just worried that there might be some effects that are not done in software. Also what about that hack n slashing? Can you not pause the game anymore via space or what? I only played the original BG.
Click to expand...


Yep spacebar still makes the game pause.
 
Duck of Death said:
Yeah but you said I'd need the badge in there. :\

I'M LOST AND CONFUSED
Click to expand...

Just go see if he is there!!

If he isn't look in the bookcase, tables etc..

I think it’s a book on building bridges you want!

Wood is what you need in IWD2
 
In all honesty, stop playing IWD and do yourself a favor.. By the time you finish it you'll feel like it had the significance of BG2's first chapter, which is really a shame.. The game had its fun moments (especially the tower parts..) but even the expansion's end boss was something like a chapter boss in BG2. IWD had absolutely stunning art direction and musics, some shining moments, but was a waste of time overall. :/ Unfortunately, no beter CRPG really came out since BG2 so I can't tell you what to play instead either. Hmm, that's a shame..

EDIT: Well, actually, there was Arcanum which was rather underrated. And I'm stuck again.. SOMEONE MAKE ACTUALLY GOOD RPGS ALREADY!
 
GODDAMN YOU BLACK ISLE!!!!!!!

Seriously, I HATE game killing bugs. I'm all patched up to version 1.05, and I just kicked the shit out of the final dude, but then once we teleported to Easthaven and watched the movie, the game won't let me play! The three toolbars are "shaded" like during a dialogue sequence, but they won't go back to normal and I can't play anymore.

DAMNIT! WTF. Anyone else have this problem? I'm downloading 1.06, but if that doesn't work I don't know what I'm going to do. :(

EDIT: OK, the 1.06 patch worked and I was able to finish the game.

Overall thoughts:

+Great, focused design. The combat is well-balanced, strategic, and exciting. Dungeon crawling at its best.
+Pretty decent story. I liked how Edard changed his mind about Jorid's sacrifice at the end. Neat twist at the end.
+Awesome art and music.
+Lengthy single-player campaign, and the party design is more suited for multiplayer games.

-A bit repititous and not enough variety, and the whole "collect 6 keys/gems/badges in this case" is a gameplay model that MUST end.
-In addition to the lack of variety, the game was almost too focused on combat. The thief's skills are woefully untouched, and the game doesn't have enough situations you can solve without combat.
-The infinity engine is great, but the framerate was really choppy at times (when lots of spell effects going on) and the pathfinding was irritating.

Although the game has its flaws, it is still a very fun and challenging experience. I can't wait to try out the sequel.
 
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