So I Finally Finished (Sort Of) Icewind Dale!

Varwulf

In 2002-03 or so I finished Icewind Dale 2 for the first time.
In early 2013 I finished BG1: EE (I never played BG1 with any seriousness before the Enhanced Edition).
And now in Fall 2013 I finished Icewind Dale 1. Sort of.

I killed Belhifet and then finger of death'd him (he came back to life? after I was awarded the xp for killing him), so he died twice. The game never ended. I couldn't leave the tower. No movie played, so I reloaded my quick save...

I tried fighting him again and after again, killing him and getting xp, he starts teleporting around, taking no damage, so I summon some earth and water elementals to minimize his mobility, and the game crashes (it never crashed before this).

So I youtubed the ending video because that was it for my patience.

This is using several mods and all, but this once again solidifies my insistence on BeamDog eventually taking on Icewind Dale 1 and 2. As awesome as mods can be, they always, always seem to be buggy as hell in some way, shape, or form. I never have any luck with mods, they always break in some form and really disrupt my enjoyment factor in the long run. (Several BG2 playthroughs, or attempted playthroughs, always have zones corrupted that I can never enter without a crash to desktop) Where as--you know--my first two playthroughs of BG1: EE have been bug free. Or at least, game breaking bug free.

So yeah, with BG2: EE around the corner I might finally get to finish the "franchise" as I see it. Planescape: Torment will probably come after BG2: EE. Already finished Neverwinter Nights and all of its Expacs several years ago. Haven't got around to Temple of Elemental Evil yet (I do own it though) and same goes for Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone and Dungeons & Dragons: Dragonshard. Neverwinter Nights 2 I own but haven't gotten too into yet but I do eventually want to finish that one up as well.

So yeah, with that said. Please, oh pretty please do Icewind Dale after you get BG3 settled?

sarevok57

yeah, no doubt it is your mods getting in the way of your ending there, do you have heart of winter for your icewind dale game? because it actually adds many MANY more enemies into the original game making it much harder and much more fun, but for some whacky reason it also gives you double XP, weird how that works

Varwulf

sarevok57 said:

yeah, no doubt it is your mods getting in the way of your ending there, do you have heart of winter for your icewind dale game? because it actually adds many MANY more enemies into the original game making it much harder and much more fun, but for some whacky reason it also gives you double XP, weird how that works

I noticed the double XP too, lol! My characters (fighters/druids/1 rogue) were level 26+ by the end of it.

And yeah, I roll the GOG version with a list of mods that were given to me off of the forums (installed in the correct order).

I have a more diverse party setup that I'd like to roll through the game with at some point, might uninstall, reinstall, and install the mods over again. Maybe I screwed something up along the way.

It still doesn't change the fact that I have yet to have a playthrough on any infinity engine game that was modded that didn't break horribly somewhere along the way, preventing me from finishing the game :P

FrozenCells

Grats. I hope I'll finish it too before bg2:ee. Trying to beat all the oldschool games myself also.

Varwulf

@FrozenCells Awesome! Yeah, I have a soft spot for these kind of games, Fallout 1 - 2 as well. I always said if they continued making Fallout and D&D games on the same engines in the same isometric style, I'd keep buying them, even into the 2050s :P

SionIV

Icewind dale is such an underrated game. It might not have had the huge exploration side of Baldur's gate. But the wonderful backgrounds, amazing music and really addictive gameplay still puts it up there with the BG series.

The only flaw i can see with IWD is that it's a dungeon crawl.

And then we got planescape torment, something that even puts BG to shame.

Varwulf

@SionIV Icewind Dale 2 was the first game of this type that I ever played (well, that's a lie, I played BG2 first, didn't get too far, bought Icewind Dale 2 since it was similar, and fell in love with it).

I love being able to create my entire party and not feel like I'm breaking the game's rules or original design by doing so.

Last I counted I've over 500 characters from various storylines and such throughout my head, all uniquely named and what not, so having the ability to easily throw some of these characters into a game and have at it is something that very strongly resonates with me.

And yes, the Icewind Dale setting/music is mind blowing for me

Kitteh_On_A_Cloud

I also played both Icewindale games, but never finished either of them. I guess I just lost interest somewhere along the way. It slowly became 'go to new area, fight monsters, finish quest'.

CoryNewb

I am looking forward to beating bg2 and then hopefully get to play IWD EE some day. I only got to play a a little IWD1 back in the day and would love a real crack at it.