Advice on playing EE as multiplayer with an utter newbie

kiwidoc

I am getting IWDEE for Christmas from my oh so wonderful husband. He's seen me playing all the BG and IWD games for years, and has mentioned he'd like to play them as well, but he is a bit daunted by the complexity of all the rules. I'd like to spend some of our Christmas day playing as multplayer - I'll help him build a fairly easy to run fighter, and I'll drive a few other characters to round out the party. Christmas is pretty boring when there are just two of you, and I thought this could be something different and fun, and show him how much I appreciate the present.
If I was playing ordinary IWD this would be no problem at all for me. My question is how different is EE from standard IWD, and will I need to spend some time getting used to the enhanced edition before attempting to do this. I don't want to get tied down in hunting through manuals while getting frustrated.

wubble

You shouldn't have any trouble as far as I know. The game is pretty much the same as the original.

Wowo

I did exactly this with my housemate recently.

He says he likes his Berserker best.

I'd suggest just making one character each and then maybe play on normal (or easy). A cleric/thief or LN cleric/illusionist or LN cleric/Mage might be a good teammate.

After that add second runs where you each have two characters and then three characters.

Djimmy

Play with "Story mode" on and the class won't matter that much.

Wowo

Djimmy said:

Play with "Story mode" on and the class won't matter that much.

Don't even mention that this exists.

If the new player plays other games then you should avoid mentioning anything that makes the game easier like rest abuse, reload abuse, export abuse or anything similar as all it will do is reduce immersion and make the game less fun.

elminster

Wowo said:

Djimmy said:

Play with "Story mode" on and the class won't matter that much.

Don't even mention that this exists.

Too late now kiwidoc knows. Kiwidoc if you or your husband are having difficulty in one particular area, and you really can't beat it, Story Mode is now an option.

"Story Mode
The easiest difficulty is for players who prefer to breeze past the fights and just experience
the story. In this mode, party members are invulnerable and will only fail to hit their
targets on a critical miss."

Also if you haven't already check out the manuals. They may give you an idea of what is new or different.

http://www.beamdog.com/files/iwdee/iwdee_manual1.pdf

http://cdn.icewinddale.com/files/IWDEE_Manual_2_-_Mastering_Melee_&_Magic.pdf

kiwidoc

@elminster Truly thou art the wisest of all wizards. Playing in story mode for a short time might act as a good tutorial on how to attack, change weapons etc. and give Mr kiwidoc a chance to find out how close you have to be to use ranged weapons.

Thanks muchly for all the excellent advice guys

OneAngryMushroom

Patience, and a whole lot of it.

jackjack

Interesting thread—I am introducing IWDEE to my fiancé tonight, at her request
Good advice here.

GamingFreak

Story mode is perfectly fine if you're stuck in an area or lost a save and just want to get past an area briefly. At least it gets you to proactively do stuff instead of turning on cheats and doing ctrl + Y. That said I still disagree with it never allowing your party members to die; if they did it like Dragon Age where characters auto-revived after a fight, that would have been fine.

Wowo

I'd avoid turning it on ever. With a bit of strategising you should be able to get through all areas and it makes it rewarding if you've had to struggle a bit. Even knowing that storymode exists reduced my newbies enjoyment of the game.

JuliusBorisov

And they said the Story mode is useless and shouldn't have been ever developed.

Now it turns out the Story mode is the romance mode for a pair to successfully play the game first time : )

kcwise

They should change the soundtrack to Barry White tunes when Story mode is engaged.

kiwidoc

@kcwise Behave!

kcwise

Hey, @bengoshi started it! Well, okay, maybe not exactly started it but... look over there! A goblin! *runs the other way*

Pibaro

bengoshi said:

Now it turns out the Story mode is the romance mode for a pair to successfully play the game first time : )

Yesterday my wife told me I'm sick (she hates every "killing" game), maybe tonight i'll mention her the Story Mode

bob_veng

play as a duo, don't have other characters so it will be faster with less pausing. he'll probably appreciate that as a newbie especially since he would have to sit and wait while you give orders to the characters you control. this way, if you micro a bit as a spellcaster yourself you won't have to pause much at all.

let him play a fighter/thief so he has some freedom in shaping his charater. also, sneaking and trap-finding will be real exciting for someone who doesn't know where the enemies and traps are.

also in multiplayer you can enforce a limited reload policy based on checkpoints - when you enter an area you have to complete it and if you die, start over with the "level". this is kinda lame in singleplayer but i think it's really interesting in multi-.

kiwidoc

@bob_veng That's good advice. I didn't want to overwhelm him with difficult choices to make about levelling up, but playing Skyrim got him used to a lot of the concepts involved. He never finished it because he got lost with all the different quests etc so a nice linear game should be right up his street.

AeonQuasar

@kcwise I dont see any goblins...

kcwise

AeonQuasar said:

@kcwise I dont see any goblins...

You didn't get the memo about the ultraviolet colored goblins? You need the special glasses. I was sure I sent out the memo. Oh well.. if you feel a sharp stabbing sensation there's probably a goblin around.

kiwidoc

@kcwise I think @AeonQuaser is blinded by the garish colours of your candy stick, and the red glow of my drowdeer's nose. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be affecting goblins, so as the song says "You better watch out!"

kcwise

@kiwidoc I think you're on to something there!

Also, I hope you have fun with IWDEE. I played the game with a good friend of mine who was familiar with BG but had never been to the frozen north and it turned out to be one of the best multiplayer experiences I've had.