Difficulty Recommendations

the_sextein

I'm trying to kill some time until SOD so I decided to play IWD in the meantime. I purchased the EE version when it came out to support beamdog but I have not played the EE version yet. I beat the original IWD only once back when I bought it originally some 10 years ago.

My main problem with IWD was the lack of playable NPC's. I have a hard time motivating myself to build a full party of 6 and I find the lack of personality to detract from the game and the story since the characters have nothing to add to what is going on around them. I decided this time I would use IWD NPC v5 modification to help remedy the problem.

Now on to my questions:

I have beaten the BG trilogy using the hardest SCS settings on insane difficulty a few times. Given that I am using the IWD NPC pack and this is my first time playing IWD in 10 years what difficulty should I play on do you think? Would HOF mode be too much for a level 1 party? Should I play on insane but cancel out the XP bonuses? Should I stick to normal mode? Is there any mods available that I should use to increase difficulty or rebalance things so that the AI is more human like? Thanks for your time I would appreciate any feedback.

Wowo

I'd recommend going for a sort of average party without any super powerful class combinations and then stick it on insane difficulty without the xp bonus.

Definitely have a bard, paladin and Druid along for the unique dialogue and quest rewards. 3 other single class characters will round it out nicely.

Even on insane you'll have an easy time if you have maxed out power gaming stats so try to have more realistic ones. My approach is to roll stats but to not use the + and - buttons and generally I discard any 90+ rolls and instead focus on getting decent scores in 2 primary stats.

Finally, avoid reloading at any cost and remain blissfully ignorant of the loot system.

FinneousPJ

Insane without extra XP sounds good.

moody_mage

I dislike HoF. Making each enemy take 50x longer to kill makes the game not fun.

JuliusBorisov

Unfortunately, there's no AI-enhancing mod for IWD (and IWDEE) like the SCS mod for BG.

This way, you have to restrict yourself from using OP characters. I actually recommend to follow rules by @Ygramul - https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/36352/the-way-it-is-meant-to-be-played-tm-an-ocders-guide-to-making-iwdee-a-challenge/p1

I see you're using the IWD NPC mod, so no min-maxing is already dealt with. Still, I suggest the Core rules - the game is fine, if it's your first time in 10 years.

Ygramul

bengoshi said:

This way, you have to restrict yourself from using OP characters. I actually recommend to follow rules by @Ygramul - https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/36352/the-way-it-is-meant-to-be-played-tm-an-ocders-guide-to-making-iwdee-a-challenge/p1

... and consider yourself welcome to post your adventures in the no-reload thread if you wish to follow that path:

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/40393/

the_sextein

Ok so there is no SCS type of mod and I already have all of the NPC's from the NPC pack which is awesome
BTW. I wandered around the first town and I love how they actually interact with what is going on and have conversations with each other. Voice acting is pretty solid for some of them too.

Part of my enjoyment of these types of games is using off the cuff approaches to problems. Sometimes going with a radical approach just to see what happens. I enjoy reloading and trying different tactics and weapons so "no reload" isn't really for me. Being that I have no problem reloading and no AI improvements I am gong to go with insane difficulty and get rid of the XP bonus. Maybe I will try HOF on a second run though when my characters have access to more abilities. The game does suggest level 13 for HOF mode so I guess I will pass on that. Thanks for the advice and input guys. I think I am ready to go now.

the_sextein

I just figured I would stop by to say that this game is much more difficult than BG1 for a level 1 party at the start of the game anyway. The orc encampment inside the caves in the first area has mass battles one of which involves 3 ogres and 12 orcs including a caster and a bunch of arrow shooters. Very difficult for a party that has 1 level 1 spell and the best armor money can buy is splint mail and you only have 1-10 hitpoints per a character.

I found that using the envirnment to your advantage was needed and my berzerker and bard needed to be working togather to make a single character that could form a choke point while using the wall to block the rest of my party from arrows. Even then the NPC mod does not have very strong long range proficiency which makes it even worse. For the first time in a very long time I had one of my characters die and I actually brought them back to a church to be resurected instead of just reloading.

The pass was also hard not because goblins are tough but there is just so many enemies in any given fight and without any magic or decent items you are left with using the environment and potions to get you through. Very fun so far! I have made it to the big tree and much of the game is not how I remembered it because it's been so long since I played it last. Having a good time.

Hiker008

Insane will probably be ok. If it's too easy, Heart of Fury can be done with a Level 1 party... I managed it, but the battles will take FOREVER and involve a lot of running decoy characters around while ranged characters take out the enemies. Insane is always much more fun for me than Heart of Fury mode.

Also, for those who are curious about the original poster's mention of a mod, here is the link...

http://www.pocketplane.net/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=174&Itemid=122

BelgarathMTH

@the_sextein , There's only one ogre in that cave in the normal game up to core rules. The difficulty slider attempts to artificially increase game difficulty by multiplying monster groups when you set it above core rules. It winds up actually decreasing difficulty over time because of all the extra xp from those extra kills. There's a mod that tries to address that, but I'm not sure how it works unless it reduces all xp gained from kills by about 60 percent, since you'll be fighting roughly three times the normal monster numbers.

ineth

@BelgarathMTH No, the massive extra XP on higher difficulties comes from the fact that the game engine literally multiplies all XP rewards (kill XP and quest XP alike) by 1.5 on Hard and 2 on Insane.

But the Enhanced Edition has an option in the settings to disable that multiplier.

On top of that there are also additional monsters on Hard and Insane (and yes, the ogres in the first cave are an example of this) but they are placed sparingly I think and shouldn't make too much of an XP difference overall.

the_sextein

Yeah I am playing on insane without the XP bonus and it has been a good challenge so far. Much more difficult than BG1. I am almost ready to leave the vale of shadows at this point and I am still being pushed to the brink all the time. I usually start to have multiple characters who are almost dead around the time my inventory is totally full from killing stuff so I just head back to the tree and sell my gear/sleep. I have noticed a few fights that practically require the use of potions or certain character types to get you through without taking major damage. I am always trying not to use my health potions because money is really tight. I am level 4-5 now and I can see things getting better in the near future with the support of level 3 magic spells. I can see the game kind of easing down in difficulty once I reach the middle of it. Of course I have never played the TOTL or HOW so those may throw a bit of tough fights at me. Being that they are optional content I would assume they will push you ahead of the difficulty curve in the base game. After HOW I would assume the game will be much more chill. (of course, it's IWD plenty of chill to go around.)

the_sextein

It would be nice if beamdog could figure out a way to simply cut the amount of XP gained by a percentage and then increase the number of enemies per battle by the same percentage. That way you get more enemies and double damage enemies but you end up with the same XP per area as a character on normal difficulty.

If they had a slider that would allow you to add more enemies from say 10% to 50% and depending on what you pick it would give you a 10% to 50% cut in XP so that everything balances out. It would give you harder fights with more mass melee and character progression would not change. It would be for the challenge only. D&D purists need not apply sort of thing.

brunardo

Yeah skip HOF and the IWD NPC pack is awesome and also used the portrait pack for every NPC you talk to along the way...added some much needed role-playing in the game. Insane with the rules above will make it a nice challenge

BillyYank

the_sextein said:

It would be nice if beamdog could figure out a way to simply cut the amount of XP gained by a percentage and then increase the number of enemies per battle by the same percentage. That way you get more enemies and double damage enemies but you end up with the same XP per area as a character on normal difficulty.

If they had a slider that would allow you to add more enemies from say 10% to 50% and depending on what you pick it would give you a 10% to 50% cut in XP so that everything balances out. It would give you harder fights with more mass melee and character progression would not change. It would be for the challenge only. D&D purists need not apply sort of thing.

My rogues are just reaching 5th level on the first floor of Kressalck's tomb, so you're at the same level in your insane run as I am in my core rules run.

Wowo

The extra xp from additional enemies is not really significant. The game breaking part of insane used to be the doubling of quest xp rather than the extra enemies.

In general it's quite easy to break the game by proceeding to HoW as fast as possible so I recommend not going there until you finish the main campaign.

Finally, some classes are ridiculously powerful if applied correctly and there are quite a number of techniques to trivialise many fights for the astute strategist. Having learned many of these I tend to avoid certain classes in non-HoF runs.

the_sextein

So far I have nothing to complain about. The game is challenging and my characters seem to be progressing at a similar pace to characters at core difficulty so all is good. I will probably play the game again with this party after I beat it once and then I will use HOF mode.

Thanks for the suggestion about HOW. I am not sure what I am going to do at this point. I have not played HOW before but I think it would be cool to kind of integrate it into the main game instead of taking it on at the end. I don't want to push game balance too far out though. I figured since it was optional that it would upset game balance but it's nice to have some confirmation from the community.

Hudzy

I find that works both ways though. You can get totally rolled over if you go to HoW too soon.

Wowo

Hudzy said:

I find that works both ways though. You can get totally rolled over if you go to HoW too soon.

No such thing as "too soon" from a power gaming perspective.