Returning to the game after many years party help

baldrat60

Have only played vanilla Icewind dale on release so not touched the EE version. Im aware there are new classes and features but just looking for a good solid party based on how i enjoy CRPGS.Hopeing someone can offer some advice.

I m probably going to have a paladin cavalier as my main as ive read thisis a good choice.

I want an Archer as whenever i usually play this is my go to that or ranger.

Ill have an elf mage/sorcerer just because i know how this plays.

My issue is around the other three

I know i need a cleric/druid character but also have never tried a shaman. I also want a bard and a thief just not sure were to go with this.Is it worth taking a barbarian from memory i think that may give unique stuff in the expansion?

Im not wanting to power game as such i just want to be able to hold my own on harder difficulties.

Hoping someone can help with my final 3.

Thanks Guys

ineth

> Thief

Almost mandatory, due to the many traps and locks in the game. (Relying on spells like "Find Traps" and "Knock" is much more tedious than using a thief, especially if not using a walkthrough.)

However, a single-class thief is weak in combat, so I recommend multiclassing:

• A Fighter/Thief can become a great backstabber who can take out the most dangerous enemy, such as a mage, in the first round of combat. Also good as a bow or crossbow user.
• A Cleric/Thief or Mage/Thief is good if you don't have space in your party for a single-class character of that other class.

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> Cleric or Druid

Some players play without a healer, and instead backtrack out of the current dungeon after every little battle and heal the party by resting, but I find that tedious.

So yes, it's good to have a healer, and both of those classes (and their respective multiclass options) are good choices. Cleric is more focused on combat buffs for himself and the party, while the Druid is more into summons (animals) and stationary (plant-based) crowd-control spells.

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> Bard

Good and iconic class in IWD. (More interesting than in BG2).
Most effective when you have as many other party members or summons as possible engaging in physical combat, because the Bard boosts them all.
Also nice to be able to identify all items without having to use spells or shops to do it.
And Bards get a little bit of nice bonus content.

Note that there is not a lot of class- or race-specific bonus content - just extra dialog paths or little exp rewards here and there. General hint: When a quest is about songs, use the Bard as the talking party member. When confronting talking undead, use a Paladin or Cleric.

sarevok57

if you need another divine character in there, you could go with fighter/cleric or fighter/druid that makes it so they can cast some healing, and go into combat and hold their own if need be, usually you want at least 2 chars on the front line so a fighter multi class with a divine class fits this extremely well

for bard, i was just go with normal bard, their default songs are much stronger in IWD than they are in the BG series, although the skald can be a solid choice if you want to go kitted

for a thief type i usually go with fighter/theif since you max out on the useful thief abilities pretty fast, plus the fighter part helps give some to hit/ to damage and some APR, plus makes backstabs if you are in to that sort of thing hit a bit harder. Now usually with fighter/ thief i go ranged but since you already have an archer i suppose you could go in melee, although their AC won't be as solid as your main front line, but they could be a character that goes in for a backstab then pulls out and perhaps uses crossbows in the rear? ( there are lots of crossbows in IWD )

Balrog99

You don't really need a thief in IWD IMHO. I usually go with a TN bard and find a rabbit familiar with them. The rabbit can disarm most of the traps (barring some of the tougher ones mostly in Dragon's Eye), especially with Tymora's Melody playing and the Luck spell from the Lucky Scimitar. I find thieves to be mostly underwhelming in IWD due to enemy mobbing rendering backstabs and traps largely useless.

jsaving

I usually go FMT for the thief slot because I like invisibility/stoneskin for that character, but FT works well too, especially if you are going the fully armored route. @sarevok57 is exactly right about fighter/cleric and fighter/druid, both are very strong in this game though I would say IWD's abundance of strong flails and morning stars make cleric the better choice. Bards are excellent too but if you carry bard and FMT then you probably want your main arcane caster to be a sorcerer so you won't have to worry as much about scroll scarcity.

baldrat60

Great thanks. After playing pathfinder and pillars finding this slower than I remember. Are there any mods to speed it up and anything that adds a collectall option.
If anyone has any other mod reccomendations that would be great too.

sarevok57

baldrat60 wrote: »

Great thanks. After playing pathfinder and pillars finding this slower than I remember. Are there any mods to speed it up and anything that adds a collectall option.
If anyone has any other mod reccomendations that would be great too.

in your icewind dale folder in your documents there is a LUA file ( that can be opened with notepad ) you can set the frame rate higher, by default it is set to 30, so find the line that says;
SetPrivateProfileString('Program Options','Maximum Frame Rate','30')

and set it to 60, this will double the game speed, but it will also double the speed in which durations run out as well ( just noticed that the LUA file calls itself "baldur" how ironic )

then for loot collection, while there may not be the option that pathfinder kingmaker has, one button that you will notice is that there is a red rhombus to the bottom left of your GUI and that is the "quick loot" botton, and what that does is if your character is within "x" amount of feet of any item you can quickly see which items are near them, and if you want to collect all the items, just press on the items themselves and they will find their way to your inventory

Thorium

You can also enable cheat console in the same Baldur.lua file sarevok57 mentioned by putting in line:

SetPrivateProfileString('Program Options','Debug Mode','1')

This way you can use Ctrl + J teleporting (in addition to other cheats). It definitely saves some time, but it might be good to use it sparingly in dungeons. It can also be used to help with pathfinding issues.

baldrat60

Great thank you feels better now. Closer to how I remember lol.
Final question are there any mods you use yourself?

Thorium

For me, the only must-have mod is Tweaks Anthology and its 'Remove Blur Effect from Equipped Items' component since constantly blurred characters are just uncomfortable to watch. I have also used other components for flavor reasons (like removing racial restrictions for classes).

In addition to that, I have tried most of the NPC mods (from Kulyok, Lava, AionZ). They make the replays much more interesting, but personally I found the game interesting enough without them on the first runs. But if you want, you could use NPCs right away. It is usually recommended to have either all of Kulyok's characters (five) in your party or some mix of Lava's and AionZ's characters (if using Lava's/AionZ's characters Cross-mod banter pack is highly recommended).

baldrat60

I really appreciate all your replies and hope this helps someone else in the future as well.


I have one last question. Are there any final tweaks you would reccomend as i still feel im lacking or missing something.

This is my party again im happy with the first part not the last


Paladin -Cavalier (Really like this character)
Mage-elf (Feel i need a mage)
Archer -Half elf (Really like this one too)
Skald - Though not sure how to equip i do like the build
Half-Orc Fighter im not sure whether to dual class this to a druid or a Cleric (Ive removed
restrictions)

Its my last character i cant decide on the most. I know i need a thief but not sure if i should make this a thief cleric and the fighter a druid or a swashbuckler . Really unsure .

Any final tips much appreciated.

Thorium

Paladin -Cavalier (Really like this character)
Mage-elf (Feel i need a mage)
Archer -Half elf (Really like this one too)
Skald - Though not sure how to equip i do like the build
Half-Orc Fighter im not sure whether to dual class this to a druid or a Cleric (Ive removed
restrictions)

Its my last character i cant decide on the most. I know i need a thief but not sure if i should make this a thief cleric and the fighter a druid or a swashbuckler . Really unsure .

I think your party is quite versatile and powerful. If you did not already start playing, you could consider making your mage a specialist to get 1 bonus spell for each spell level (and +15% to scribe scrolls with that school), if you do not mind giving up the opposed schools and get -15% to scribe scrolls outside the specialist school. Giving up opposed schools is not that bad since you have a bard. I think the best specialist mages are Invoker (human only), Transmuter (human/half-elf), Illusionist (human/gnome) and maybe Necromancer (human only).

Your fifth character is fine either way, as a Fighter dualled to Druid or dualled to Cleric. A Druid levels up much faster than Cleric from level 5 to level 13 which makes dual-classing convenient. Druids have also quite many useful spells in Icewind Dale.

About you sixth character, I would not choose any single-class thief (not even swashbuckler) since they are just weak in this game. So, I would advise to have some kind of dual- or multi-class thief. Cleric/Thief is a useful support character with thieving abilities and priest spells, but they perform also poorly in combat (which might be perfectly ok since you have other characters that are strong in combat). If you want to use backstabbing, I would advise you to consider Fighter/Thief multi- or dual-class as discussed also earlier in this thread.