Unconventional Party

Marty_

I decided to do a IWD1EE run with an unconventional party:

Human Sun Soul Monk
Half-Orc Shaman
Elf Totemic Druid
Elf Archer
Dwarf Bounty Hunter
Half-Elf Dragon Disciple

I'm hoping this party will get me out of my comfort zone a bit.

Wish me luck.

jmerry

Rarer classes, but you've got the key points covered. Short on early-game tanking, though; you don't have anyone that can wear conventional heavy armor. Which means summons are about your only option to keep the enemy from charging your ranged attackers or distract them from your melee skirmishers. I foresee the shaman spending a lot of time dancing.

Yigor

jmerry wrote: »

I foresee the shaman spending a lot of time dancing.

Right. But there is also a Totemic Druid with Spirit Animals! It's more reliable. 😎

Also, the Bounty Hunter can prepare up to 7 special traps per area! 🪤

N.B. I'm currently soloing a Bounty Hunter on HoF, wanting to get a dual-classed Bounty Hunter/Fighter of level 29/30:

https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/87754/developing-a-dual-classed-bounty-hunter29-fighter30

jmerry

Yigor wrote: »

Right. But there is also a Totemic Druid with Spirit Animals! It's more reliable. 😎

Also, the Bounty Hunter can prepare up to 7 special traps per area! 🪤

If you want to rest before every fight. Possibly repeatedly. I prefer parties with more endurance.

Marty_

jmerry wrote: »

If you want to rest before every fight. Possibly repeatedly. I prefer parties with more endurance.

Yes, my shaman is doing a ton of dancing and the totemic summon just comes in for the bigger/harder fights. My bounty hunter has been concentrating on disabling traps and opening locks so far and has not done a ton of trapping yet but I plan on putting more into trap building on the next level up. I'm nearly done with the vale of shadows and it's going pretty well so far.

My first IWD run was a very conventional party with a bard, sorcerer, and 4X fighter/something multi-classes. I wanted this one to be a lot different and so far it's definitely different and pretty fun. Like a whole different game.

DinoDin

I do think single class play is the most fun for IWD. An interesting party, as noted lacks a solid frontline option for the early levels. But that's perhaps refreshing as that's such a typical strategy most veterans fall into. Shaman and Druid will able to late game tank with ironskins, so you have that.

Shaman likely to work well later on with a wide variety of AoE spells, which imo dominate the combat in IWD. I mean they're big in the BG's too, but even more so in this game.

Yigor

Marty_ wrote: »

jmerry wrote: »

If you want to rest before every fight. Possibly repeatedly. I prefer parties with more endurance.

Yes, my shaman is doing a ton of dancing and the totemic summon just comes in for the bigger/harder fights. My bounty hunter has been concentrating on disabling traps and opening locks so far and has not done a ton of trapping yet but I plan on putting more into trap building on the next level up.

Putting 7 special traps 🪤 will take some time and require some patience, but it might be handful as a preparation to tough fights. ⚔️

Marty_

Yigor wrote: »

Right. But there is also a Totemic Druid with Spirit Animals! It's more reliable. 😎

Actually I'm find that exactly the opposite is true. The shaman reliably summons new spirits during long fights to replace the ones that get killed but every time I try to use the totemic summon during combat it does not work at all. It works fine when I'm not in combat. But when I'm in combat the little window that lets me choose what spirit animal to summon never comes up and nothing is summoned at all and I lose the summon ability until I rest again. The log shows the summon was cast but nothing is actually summoned. Very annoying.

Yigor

Marty_ wrote: »

It works fine when I'm not in combat. But when I'm in combat the little window that lets me choose what spirit animal to summon never comes up and nothing is summoned at all and I lose the summon ability until I rest again. The log shows the summon was cast but nothing is actually summoned. Very annoying.

Yeah, there is a little bug here. 🐛 When you summon a Spirit Animal, you should wait a bit (something like half-second) and effectively choose 1 of 4 animals and fix the place of summoning. If you switch to other actions, it won't work. 😼

At least, it functions like that on my Nintendo Switch. 😎

Marty_

Yigor wrote: »

Yeah, there is a little bug here. 🐛 When you summon a Spirit Animal, you should wait a bit (something like half-second) and effectively choose 1 of 4 animals and fix the place of summoning. If you switch to other actions, it won't work. 😼

At least, it functions like that on my Nintendo Switch. 😎

I've tried waiting and not paying attention to the rest of the party or pausing. I've waited WAY longer than .5 seconds. I've waited until half of my party is dead and still the choice of what to summon never appears. The log indicates the summon was cast very early in the fight but nothing was ever summoned and no choice of what to summon ever appeared. This is what happens every time I try a totemic summon while in combat on my Windows PC. But if I summon outside of combat it always works properly, though even there the summoning graphic is very long for a summon that is supposed to be "instant".

Sadly, the combination of this buggy summoning behavior and IWD's fondness of walking you into very difficult fights when you step through into another zone, makes the totemic druid's main feature pretty well useless. Hate to be defeated by a stupid bug but that's about where I'm at.

Yigor

Marty_ wrote: »

Sadly, the combination of this buggy summoning behavior and IWD's fondness of walking you into very difficult fights when you step through into another zone, makes the totemic druid's main feature pretty well useless. Hate to be defeated by a stupid bug but that's about where I'm at.

Yeah, damn, it seems to be really buggy on your device. 😼

Marty_

Okay, since the totemic druid's main feature is useless due to the summoning bug mentioned above, I re-built my unconventional party. This new party is not quite as unconventional, but still features many classes that are not played all that often.

Human Sun Soul Monk
Half-Orc Barbarian
Half-Orc Priest of Helm
Half-Orc Shaman
Dwarf Bounty Hunter
Half-Elf Dragon Disciple


This new party is way less buggy and is working out pretty well so far. I just completed the Severed Hand dungeon and am ready to head to Dorn's Deep. As with the buggy party, the Shaman is providing most of the front-line troops via dancing and for big/difficult fights I supplement the Shaman summons with the priest's animate dead summons.

The main differences between this party and the very conventional party I used for my first run through is this party requires more hand-holding during battles and without a bard I actually have to cast identify a lot. By hand-holding I mean I have to pause the fights more often to give orders because my melee types can't just go toe-to-toe using the party AI. They have to be more strategic and pick their fights judiciously. I like that it is forcing me to use different strategies this time round. That's exactly what I was hoping for.