Try using a dwarven defender. It isn't hard to get him 100% slashing resistance. Get aggro for everyone. Drop defensive stance. Laugh as the rest of your party steamrolls in.
if you gear up properly (blood armor, shining cloak, shield +4, gloves of kay, wolf talisman, boots of fox, dex bonus, girdle of slash) you can make them miss forever (until crits hue)
You can Turn Undead the six Spectral Guards that are standing there. No worries. But when you try to go through any stair, kitchen or the sealed door, you trigger the apparition of 8 (eight) Guards, for a total of 32 (thirty-two) creeps. I have Cavalier (12) and Cleric (11) that can Turn Undead, but when they are hostile it never, EVER, works for killing. With luck, you can scare one or two away. False Dawn isn't even helpful. Respulse Undead gives you a turn or two for range them. The Fireball/Ice Storm tactic can give you 20/25 damage of advantange, but most of the times this Guards save against the spell.
The only way to beat this is anti-roleplaying it. Trigger one wave, summon six monsters, Haste, Defensive Harmony, Chant-like buff, kill them with a lot of dancing around thanks to the meat-fodder that is one-hitted to death and rest. Repeat.
I keep playing for completism, but i feel that all Icewind Dale is terribly balanced for RPG purposes. Too much enemies, too hard, overwhelming the screen, every single time. You face Wights protected from normal weapons in the very first dungeon you investigate on Chapter 1. On Dragon's Eye you face five waves of 14 Imbued Wights, 4 Blast Skeletons, 1 Skeletal Liutenant. FIVE. ONE AFTER THE OTHER. Prior you face 8 trolls, backed with 5 clerics that cast AoE Hold Person.
I encountered that as well. Very frustrating and not fun at all. I don't remember this being the case when I played IWD back in the day. The monster encounters were no where near as numerous as the are in the enhanced edition. There was a decent balance between RP and H&S.
Enter IWD: EE. It has new spells and items. It has new classes and introduced kits for each class. So, I guess to balance that out, the devs decided to increase the monster count by x%. It many cases they are too numerous and the combat becomes very tedious and very boring and very frustrating. The new wave of game devs these days seem to think that tedium and mass quantities of enemies = a challenge.
Enter Mods. Since it's an old game, original post for this topic alone is 2014 and it's 2020 now, many if not most will use mods. With the frustration I had with the first playthrough (with 3 Paladins, 2 cleric/mages, fighter/thief) from IWD: EE to TotLM, I can see why people feel the need to use mods. If you don't use mods, then you can change the difficulty of the game. I hate doing that.
With IDW: EE comes Story Mode. I was just talking to a friend about the differences between IWD and IWD: EE, story mode being one of them. The fact that it is in the game, just proves that there are way too many instances where your party encounters more monsters than they can handle, even Level 10+ and fully geared. Granted, you could spend hours each day until you figure it out -or- you can save your sanity and pop on story mode. I would try 3 or 4 times to see if I can try different tactics. If I can't, then for 'that' encounter I pop story mode. After I am done, I turn it off, heal/rest the party and truck on till the next point that I have to 'cheat' just to play/progress the game.
Enter IWD: EE. It has new spells and items. It has new classes and introduced kits for each class. So, I guess to balance that out, the devs decided to increase the monster count by x%.
No, the monster placement is the same as it was in the original IWD with HoW installed.
More monsters appear when you play at the Hard or Insane difficulty level... again, as in the original game. Are you playing at one of those difficulty levels?
IWD was always overloaded with monsters and light on roleplaying.
Maybe you just had more patience for that sort of thing, back then...
ineth: Perhaps I had more patience for such things back then, it is an old game after all. Then again, a friend of mine is experiencing the same thing even though he got his IWD: EE from Steam while I got mine from GOG.
I have it on the standard Core Rules. I haven't messed around with the difficulty of the game yet. My first 6man group after a full play through is 3 level 15 paladins, 2 level 13/13 cleric/mages, and 1 12/15 fighter/thief. So if I use those same 6 for another play through, I will up the difficulty a notch.
for these guys im going to say spell prep is key here
they may be hard, but they aren't invincible
i always play IWD on insane with double damage on and i could probably take out 20 at a time
so here are some things that you should have cast on you;
defensive;
- defensive harmony ( this gives a nifty +4 AC bonus, very big )
- mass invisibility ( if you can, if not improved invisibility ) this will give them a -4 penalty to hit on you
- emotion hope
- emotion courage; these 2 spells will give your characters huge to hit/to damage bonuses
- haste or improved haste; the faster you kill them, the slower they kill you sort of deal
they wield long swords of action +4, so based on their proficiencies and str they should deal; 1d8 +9 damage per hit
the thing to remember around these guys is that, EVERY time you fight them, you WILL need to be buffed which is annoying, but with the right defensive spells cast and even summons if you need them ( the elemental spells perhaps ) they can be taken down, especially taking advantage of their 0% magic, acid, electricity and fire resistance,
plus if you are using weapons against them, if you can, try not using slashing weapons since they have more resistance against that than the other weapon types
and being undead, if you have the level 3 hold undead mage spell and blast them with a greater malison first, that basically gives you a 50% chance of locking these guys in place per casting
Comments
When in question dwarf tank it.
if you gear up properly (blood armor, shining cloak, shield +4, gloves of kay, wolf talisman, boots of fox, dex bonus, girdle of slash) you can make them miss forever (until crits hue)
Six years later and the gig is this:
You can Turn Undead the six Spectral Guards that are standing there. No worries. But when you try to go through any stair, kitchen or the sealed door, you trigger the apparition of 8 (eight) Guards, for a total of 32 (thirty-two) creeps. I have Cavalier (12) and Cleric (11) that can Turn Undead, but when they are hostile it never, EVER, works for killing. With luck, you can scare one or two away. False Dawn isn't even helpful. Respulse Undead gives you a turn or two for range them. The Fireball/Ice Storm tactic can give you 20/25 damage of advantange, but most of the times this Guards save against the spell.
The only way to beat this is anti-roleplaying it. Trigger one wave, summon six monsters, Haste, Defensive Harmony, Chant-like buff, kill them with a lot of dancing around thanks to the meat-fodder that is one-hitted to death and rest. Repeat.
I keep playing for completism, but i feel that all Icewind Dale is terribly balanced for RPG purposes. Too much enemies, too hard, overwhelming the screen, every single time. You face Wights protected from normal weapons in the very first dungeon you investigate on Chapter 1. On Dragon's Eye you face five waves of 14 Imbued Wights, 4 Blast Skeletons, 1 Skeletal Liutenant. FIVE. ONE AFTER THE OTHER. Prior you face 8 trolls, backed with 5 clerics that cast AoE Hold Person.
I encountered that as well. Very frustrating and not fun at all. I don't remember this being the case when I played IWD back in the day. The monster encounters were no where near as numerous as the are in the enhanced edition. There was a decent balance between RP and H&S.
Enter IWD: EE. It has new spells and items. It has new classes and introduced kits for each class. So, I guess to balance that out, the devs decided to increase the monster count by x%. It many cases they are too numerous and the combat becomes very tedious and very boring and very frustrating. The new wave of game devs these days seem to think that tedium and mass quantities of enemies = a challenge.
Enter Mods. Since it's an old game, original post for this topic alone is 2014 and it's 2020 now, many if not most will use mods. With the frustration I had with the first playthrough (with 3 Paladins, 2 cleric/mages, fighter/thief) from IWD: EE to TotLM, I can see why people feel the need to use mods. If you don't use mods, then you can change the difficulty of the game. I hate doing that.
With IDW: EE comes Story Mode. I was just talking to a friend about the differences between IWD and IWD: EE, story mode being one of them. The fact that it is in the game, just proves that there are way too many instances where your party encounters more monsters than they can handle, even Level 10+ and fully geared. Granted, you could spend hours each day until you figure it out -or- you can save your sanity and pop on story mode. I would try 3 or 4 times to see if I can try different tactics. If I can't, then for 'that' encounter I pop story mode. After I am done, I turn it off, heal/rest the party and truck on till the next point that I have to 'cheat' just to play/progress the game.
No, the monster placement is the same as it was in the original IWD with HoW installed.
More monsters appear when you play at the Hard or Insane difficulty level... again, as in the original game. Are you playing at one of those difficulty levels?
IWD was always overloaded with monsters and light on roleplaying.
Maybe you just had more patience for that sort of thing, back then...
I have it on the standard Core Rules. I haven't messed around with the difficulty of the game yet. My first 6man group after a full play through is 3 level 15 paladins, 2 level 13/13 cleric/mages, and 1 12/15 fighter/thief. So if I use those same 6 for another play through, I will up the difficulty a notch.
they may be hard, but they aren't invincible
i always play IWD on insane with double damage on and i could probably take out 20 at a time
so here are some things that you should have cast on you;
defensive;
- defensive harmony ( this gives a nifty +4 AC bonus, very big )
- mass invisibility ( if you can, if not improved invisibility ) this will give them a -4 penalty to hit on you
- emotion hope
- emotion courage; these 2 spells will give your characters huge to hit/to damage bonuses
- haste or improved haste; the faster you kill them, the slower they kill you sort of deal
and then whatever other spells you see fit
stats of these guys from what i can see;
HP; 140
AC; -7 or -8 ( + platemail/small shield modifiers )
thac0; 1 - slashing
APR; 2.5
STR; 18
DEX;16
CON;18
INT;9
WID;9
CHA;9
level; 5 fighter
race; spectral undead
alignment; neutral
resistances;
cold; 100
magic cold; 100
physical; 25 ( except slashing is 40 )
saves;
death/paralyze/poison; 4
rod/staff/wand; 6
petrify/polymorph; 5
breath weapons; 4
spell; 7
they wield long swords of action +4, so based on their proficiencies and str they should deal; 1d8 +9 damage per hit
the thing to remember around these guys is that, EVERY time you fight them, you WILL need to be buffed which is annoying, but with the right defensive spells cast and even summons if you need them ( the elemental spells perhaps ) they can be taken down, especially taking advantage of their 0% magic, acid, electricity and fire resistance,
plus if you are using weapons against them, if you can, try not using slashing weapons since they have more resistance against that than the other weapon types
and being undead, if you have the level 3 hold undead mage spell and blast them with a greater malison first, that basically gives you a 50% chance of locking these guys in place per casting