Starting Thieving Skill Recommendations - Icewind Dale

Melicamp

Anyone have any recommendations on starting thieving skills and how to progress for IWD:EE? Back in my BG1 days, I'd dump it all in Find Traps / Pick Locks. Now though, I'm curious if Pick Pockets is worth it (since you can't just re-pick pocket endlessly till you succeed, you do need some skill to get certain targets). Also, is putting skills in Setting Traps worth it?

moody_mage

FYI: You *can* endlessly pickpocket until you succeed in IWD.

Melicamp

Ah that's news to me... Thought it was like BG:EE

Lord_Tansheron

Can definitely confirm that with no points spent in PP whatsoever, I was able to PP all the good items off of the Kuldahar folks (i.e. the rings), after a couple of tries/reloads.

Lewis244

In my current party (halfway through Dorn's Deep atm) I have a Cleric/Thief and a bard. Those are the only two characters that have thieving skills. The bard at level 11 has somewhere around 100 pickpocket ability maybe? So I haven't put any of my CT's points into pickpocket. I mostly put them into open locks and find traps, with a scattered few points being thrown into move silently and hide in shadows. The majority of her thief points were put into the first two though, and it's worked out pretty good for me so far!

macomeau

I seem to recall a few locks that can't be broken by a character with 19 strength, but can be picked by a thief with about 90 in lock picking.

Lord_Tansheron

I gave my thief 100/100 just to be sure, which was easily done by lvl 6 so I could dual off. Haven't found a lock that I couldn't pick, not sure if there's any that actually need 100; I think in BG2 you only need 95 to pop everything, but IWD may be different.

hexxactly

Or make any Wizard type Lawful Neutral and buy the Find Familiar scroll off Orrick and cast it. The ferret has 50% pickpockets plus adds 6 HP.

B4nJ0

Keep in mind that u have:

Cat grace to go up to 20 dex

A sweet belt that gives u 15find/10 disarm

A gem that drops quite early for +1 Dex (up to 21 after Cat grace)

Not taking into account random drops.

For my f/m/t elf using longbow this is a free +25/+20! If u are a dual human its basically the same thing since a swash/fighter will problably melee and ull given gem to your Archer instead

JuliusBorisov

Setting Traps can be worth it if you like such tactics. If you like to use traps in BG, you'll like it in IWD.

For e.g., you can set all your traps in the passage to the final Yxunomei chamber (far from the entrance to that chamber so that ordinary enemies don't activate those traps), then kill all her bodyguards when the battle has started and then lure Yxunomei to those traps. They'll severely damage her.

Nimran

hexxactly said:

Or make any Wizard type Lawful Neutral and buy the Find Familiar scroll off Orrick and cast it. The ferret has 50% pickpockets plus adds 6 HP.

Ferrets FTW!

jimmysdabestcop

I dualed my Swashbuckler over to fighter on level 5 on HOF mode. With the belt you get that can be improved I was 100% for Traps and Locks. And a potion was good enough to pickpocket all the rings I needed.