Icewind Dale II

[Tuberski]

Just started the game. seems pretty decent so far.

I went to gamefaqs.com and looked at a power party.

Do other people consider this cheating?

What are your prefered characters?

ACK!

[geeslaka]

I consider doing that cheating if you aren't intimately familiar with the game. If you are doing to see how your idea of a good party compares with what is on gameforqs.com there is nothing wrong with it.

[Dis]

I checked out that power party.

The funny thing is I was planning on doing a similar party.

Though I never considered using 2 clerics before. I prefer to have 2 fighter types. Maybe make one of those a Paladin. Also having 2 sorcerers seems like overkill as well.

But I do recomment having a fighter/thief or wizard/thief. Wizard/thief is better for 3rd edition though as that gets you more skill points with the high intelligence. With the power party you can choose the race that allows you to start with 20 dexterity

If you are talking about lowering wisdom to 3, well yeah that is pretty cheesy. But Icewind Dale 2 can be kind of hard without lowering your non important stats. I don't consider it a true role playing game, so I don't see it is cheating. It is a minor exploit at best.

hey if they didn't want you to lower your wisdom to 3, they would have prevented you from doing so like in Neverwinter Nights. In that game you cannot lower your stats below 8 (although some races like half-orcs can lower their charisma to 6)

[geeslaka]

Neverwinter Nights must have been made by a bunch of elitist snobs. They don't want any uneducatable moron characters wandering around in their game.

[bakalov]

Hm, lowering the wisdom to 3 will have terrible effect on a character's will saving throws - it applies for all character types ....

[Grumbold]

We're having a little poke at JE Sawyer over in the Black Isle forums and his current drive for balance in the SPECIAL system. I find it interesting that in IWD2 he was involved in the character generation. Using point buy you shouldn't be able to cheese your stats down to 3 (or 1 cha for a halforc!) just to min/max your party. The game is hard enough that it tempts many people to do it, too.

[Dis]

yes my Dwarf has a charisma of 1 I think. I can't imagine how ugly and brutish that is.

Yes lowering wisdom does hurt will saving throws. you can take a feat to help out on those a bit. That's why I try to keep my wisdom as high as possible (while getting 18 in str, dext, and const if I can). I skimp on intelligence and charisma.

Also on fighter types (or even clerics for that matter) you can lower intelligence to 3. Fighters don't need many skill points anyways.

Charisma can also be lowered to 3 on most characters.

[Jamski]

Heh, I was just going to start and Icewind Dale 2 thread...

Anyway, I just finished playing throught the game on normal, and now I'm taking the same party through again on "Heart of Fury" mode. HoF is pretty mad, with 200 Hp goblins, each worth about 3,000 Exp. The Ogres have ENORMOUS hit points, more than 1,000 I guess... anyway, my party :

Dwarf Fighter 4/Barbarian 14
Dwarf Cleric of Tempus 18
Human Monk 18
Wild Elf Druid 18
Drow Rogue 1/Wizard 16
Human Scorceror 18

The first 4 are capable of putting up a good fight, the Dwarf Fighter/Barbarian has about 330 Hps now, so he can take a few hits I maxed out Constitution, and added with each 4 levels, so he's got pretty tough. 18 strength, and the rest about 7-10

The Cleric's the same build, but with 18 wisdom, and lower strength.

The Monk is an essential character, because without one, one of the quests is almost impossible (the eight chambers quest)

The Druid is doing a nice melee/buffing/healing/attack spells combination, and with a Dex of 20, her AC ain't bad, which makes up for her low HP.

The Drow wizard/thief is lagging behind a bit, but he has ALL the spells in his book now, and mostly memorises the protection and mind control spells. He's got an intelligence now of 27 !

Finally the scorceror, with maxed Charisma, of course. She's basically a machine gun, loaded with offensive spells in huge numbers (she's casting about 50-60 spells per day or something)

The tactics are simple, but effective. I turn the monk invisible, and scout out the enemy, then bring him back, buff all the characters till I can't see the portraits anymore and then summon the 6 most powerful creatures I can. Then the invisible monk leads the summoned monsters onto the enemy, while the scorceror nukes the whole area. The monk dodges everything, and the summoned monsters don't matter. After that the Fighter, Cleric and Druid charge in and get bashing things. This is the only way to beat parts of the game on HoF mode, and it is a BIT cheesey. What else can you do, when it takes 10 minutes of hacking away with a sword to kill a troll?

BTW, Its not a roleplaying game, its a D&D real-time combat game, with some character skills development. You can basically just kill everyone, and the game goes fight-talk-fight-talk-fight-talk-fight all the way through. The talk is just to say why you're fighting, of course, you'll hardly ever talk your way out of a fight in IWD2. But hey, its GREAT fun when you can chuck 9th level spells around, and summon greater demons

-Jam

[Jamski]

Yes lowering wisdom does hurt will saving throws. you can take a feat to help out on those a bit. That's why I try to keep my wisdom as high as possible (while getting 18 in str, dext, and const if I can). I skimp on intelligence and charisma.

You don't need to get an 18 in Dex for a fighter type - remember in 3rd edition rules a fighter wearing chainmail gets a maximum Dex bonus to the AC of +2, and a fighter in plate gets no Dex bonus at all. I put my fighters in plate, and save the points to give at least a modicum of CHA, WIS and INT. It really sucks when your super-hard fighter is charmed or held in every fight.

-Jam

[Dis]

yeah I don't think I have 18's. I'd have to check- I haven't played my ICWD2 party in a few weeks...or months. one of these days I'll finish.

My dexterity is around 14 or 15 I think.

[bakalov]

I found a little overpowered flaw:

You can start a character as a paladin of Mystra, and then switch it to a specialist mage for all of the other levels. This way not only your character gets the paladin's proficiences and the specialist mage's bonus spells, but is also allowed to learn spells from all of the schools

[bakalov]

If you plan wearing heavy armors with a character, then 13 dexterity is enough. You are getting the bonusses from 12 only, but certain feats require 13 ....

[Verto]

Is this game similar to Diablo? Or no?

[Jamski]

Its more similar to the Baldurs Gate games, but more linear, and combat orientated.

Anyway, another "uber-power" trick in my new game (I keep starting new games instead of finishing them)

The EXP you get from enemies is adjusted by the average lavel of your party, and shared equally between the members. A low level party gets more EXP from a goblin, while a high-level party might get none, or very little. Similarly, a smaller party levels up quicker, as the EXP is divided between fewer characters... but then the group runs out of hard enough monsters to fight at about the tenth level... so my solution, which has been FUN :

Starting characters :
Drow Scorceror
Drow Cleric of Talos

The Cleric takes 4 levels of fighter, and stops. The scorceror levels up to level 10 and stops. I play on untill the river caves, without any further leveling up, and then add a new character :

Drow Rogue

He doesn't level up at all, but the scorceror now takes his levels, and is level 19. Which kicks arse. He kills everything on his own, all the way through to Kuldahar, where the rest of the party finally level up too, to give :

Drow Scorceror 21
Drow Fighter 4 / Cleric 17
Drow Rogue 1 / Wizard 9

The game now has no challenge from this point on. Usually you reach this point with level 12-14 characters. With my level 9 spells I'm wiping everything out

So, that's how to get massive power in this game. Sit on your levels untill you HAVE to level up, and take an "apprentice" level one Character half-way through.

-Jam

[bakalov]

I wonder how the quest experience is divided - is it as in Baldur's gate 2 (i.e. every character gets a fixed amount) or it is a fixed amount that is subsequently divided amongst the characters. If it is as in baldur's gate then your strategy may miss some of the quest experience. And there can be another type of challenge. Try to finish the game as fast as you can ... This limits the usefulness of the spell casters because they need time to rest and regain their spells. Of course you do need spells at certain points but ...

[Jamski]

The quest EXP is divided between the characters, I just did a test to find out. Quest EXP is not affected by average party level. Don't know about doing the game as fast as possible, but in a party with no healers, I was often resting for 76 days at a time to get bck to health

-Jam

[bakalov]

Great :-) 76 days should be enough to finish the whole game .... In the game I am currently playing the time is 1 day 18 hours and I am just before the dam on episode 1 - haven't rested till now ... The first time I usually let my party rest is before entering the fortress caves later :-) For now I am using the healers along the road and saving my healing potions for later when there will not be healers nearby. I am trying to develop tactics for winning battles with a minimum amount of damage taken.

[Jamski]

If you want to take minimum damage, then may I suggest you take "fleetfooted" as a talent for the whole party, and arm up with heavy crossbows. I think the tactics are then pretty obvious:

Look at the text box, as you see, all the monsters have a target, that they will follow around. Send the targeted party members running in a circle around the party, using way points, and leave the rest in the middle of the circle fireing thier X-bows. Almost too easy, but rather cheap and boring.

-Jam

[bakalov]

I am using this but it does not always help ... This tactic is supposed to work in open place, not in caverns and if the enemies are slow and relatively small amount. Great to take out a single tough but slow opponent ....

[Jamski]

Ah, in caverns you need another cheese trick - send in the summoned creatures first, and stand behind with X-bows. The wolfs-head talisman is good untill you get some better summoning spells (with the best being Animate Dead, of course) S
Since X-bows only fire once per round, you can try running in a straight line back up the corridor for 5 seconds, turn and shoot, run for five seconds etc. Eventually you'll come back to the cave entrance, so either then stand and fight, or run through the enemy ranks (often you can time this between their attacks - goblins and orks only attack once per round) Take advantage of the fact that the game's not really in real-time, but in rounds, and you can often hit, and skip away unharmed, even in hand-to-hand combat if you use faster weapons such as short swords and spears. Don't try this with two-handers, as they usually strike at the END of the round.

The text box is your friend - look to see who the monsters have selected as their target, they'll only go after this one character untill either they, or the character is dead. The trick is to get them all to follow one person, so send someone ahead to "catch" their attacks. Either a faster character (monk or barbarian) or a Cleric who can cast Sanctuary (yes, the monsters will still try to attack him) Invisibility is your friend too, but if you're not resting, spells are not really the way to go.

-Jam

[Dis]

good advice

far too often the targetted character is my mage

I hate that

[Jamski]

Two words Dissident :

Improved Invisibility

Or :

Multiclass the mage with a theif and hide - the targeting will "de-lock"

-Jam