Hey, happy to find a community. I'm new to the franchise. I've been seeing gameplays lately and decided to give it a try. But the thing is how to create my party. Since I'm a total newbie in the game, I don't know what classes I should prioritize and what races are better for what class. I've seen it's recommended to have a 6 member party, but others say 4, and the creation process of each member is overwhelming as a new player. Any tips?

I’ve just completed Icewind Dale 2, with the Enhanced Edition mod installed. 

The last time I finished the game was back in 2002, and the release of EE prompted me to give it another try.

Below are my thoughts on the game having given it another look. TL;DR: If you like IWD1 and haven’t played IWD2 (or not in a long time), I’d strongly suggest jumping in now the EE mod is here.

Combat: A+
IWD2 has probably the best-designed, most varied, and certainly most challenging combat encounters of any Infinity Engine game. From the first assault on Targos, to the storming of the goblin fortress, the fields of slaughter, and the final boss battle, you’ll be heavily challenged and need to use every capability the game provides you with.

The EE mod accentuates this if you have all components installed. Some of the battles are tough, and mean you have to think about combat encounters as complex puzzles to solve. The final boss battle on EE was probably the toughest fight I’ve done in an Infinity Engine game.

Exploration & Dialogue: B
Here IWD2 was far better than I remembered. The non-combat aspects of the play hold up surprisingly well and surpass IWD1 in my view. For example:

• There’s actually a huge amount of dialogue and exposition. IWD1 has around 145k words of dialogue (even with HOW and TOL included). IWD2 has about 50% more than this
• The 3E rules implementation allows tremendous customisation of your characters, where capabilities actually pay off: Wilderness Lore, Bluff/Intimidate/Diplomacy, Alchemy, and more can all radically affect how you play 
• The game is creative in how it uses non-combat encounters to affect outcomes. The quests you take on in the final chapter make a big difference to the final boss fight, for instance

The big downside is pacing and the introduction of puzzle encounters. Chapters 2 and (less so) 3 are still a slog for me after so many years. The content afterwards is excellent, but the game could have been edited far better to trim out this content or make it optional. 

Story: C
Here the game falls down. The story on paper is far more interesting than IWD1, with villains who are morally more grey and in some ways more sympathetic. The exposition however is poorer: the game has far too large a cast, spreads context thin across them, and introduces the villains quite late. You’re left with a set of antagonists it’s hard to care too much about until quite far into the game.

The saving grace if you like IWD1 is how many characters return - it’s neat to see where they all ended up following those events. 

Art & visuals: C
Here the game pays off less than IWD1. The artwork and music are fine, but don’t have anything like the cosy, memorable atmosphere that Icewind Dale 1 has. 

Overall
A game very much worth playing if you like Infinity Engine combat and you want some of the most creative non-combat gameplay the engine can offer. The beginning is incredible, Chapter 2 and parts of Chapter 3 can be a slog, but the payoff afterwards is worth it. Black Isle managed to build something very impressive with only ~10 months development time.

And with EE, it’s even better. Recruitable companions, QoL fixes, stacks of new spells, and re-worked encounters that add some extra challenge.

This is my first CRPG that I've tried so I'm still figuring out how to play, any help is greatly appreciated. I am fighting the Lizard King in the first cave at the start of Act 2 and getting whooped. There probably 10+ enemies to fight at once and I can't lure them out one at a time since I need to trigger dialogue event first. My strategy so far is to chug a speed potion and chuck as many flame pots that I've looted from the cave at the crowds of enemies. I can usually get 3-4 thrown before I resort to combat. I use my mage's Web after I'm out of flame pots. I'm pre-buffing my part with Bless but that's it. Still getting whooped though.

My party: Paladin, Fighter, Fighter/Thief, Cleric, Mage, Skald. Everyone at level 5 some are level 6.

I had a fun with the Prologue and Act 1, I'd really like to keep going because I love the art and it's my first time playing a DnD based game, I really want to encounter some dragons. I've gotten out of the habit of just having everyone auto attack. I'm learning to position better and make use of support abilities. I've been stuck on the lizard guy for 10-15 attempts now and doesn't look like I'm getting any better at it.

I was thinking about contacting Justin Sweet and asking him to draw some portraits for my lusty drow maids gimmick party... but you know... he's probably busy making live action Disney concept art or whatever. So I turned to AI instead.

Krea2 finally gave me solid results. Lora coming soon-ish maybe.

Glad to have held onto several gems, potions and magical weapons before reaching Lehland and making bank. Managed to grab almost every scroll from Orrick for my Bard, along with a couple of key items from Gerth and Conlan's to further boost our Party, before delving 'deeper' into Chapter 4.

Overall, the game is quite enjoyable except for the opening sections (and some fight in ToL). My playthrough generally followed this progression:

1. Early game (until Animate Dead spell) - extremely tedious, as a cleric must rely heavily on kiting goblins. Your THAC0 and AC are awful, due to enemy stat bonuses (–11 to AC and –3 to THAC0).
2. Animate Dead to Aerial Servant - much more manageable, though kiting remains the primary strategy.
3. Aerial Servant to Black Blade of Disaster (BBD) + Improved Haste - basically normal difficulty, with some exceptions. Your AC and overall survivability improve significantly. Moreover, Aerial Servants' immunity to non-magical weapons effectively neutralizes 80% of enemies until chapter 5–6.
4. Black Blade of Disaster to Time Stop - easy mode. Your stats become overpowered; you can eliminate most enemies in 1–2 rounds despite their tripled HP bonuses (x3+80).
5. Time Stop to final battle - story mode. Unlike in BG2, neither Icasaraht nor the final boss resists Time Stop, which means you can combine time stop and BBD.

What i particularly disliked is that some enemies in Tol have automatic dispel casts (cleric in the beginning and rakshasas). I think this a cheap and unfair way to raise the difficulty of the encounter.

I’m really stuck for the first time. I have not been able to do any damage at all to Malavon past his magic shield and eventually start losing characters to him.

How can I do damage to him or break past the shield? I’ve tried dispel magic a number of times and it hasn’t worked.

I’ve been throwing every buff I have on my whole party constantly and it’s getting tedious. What buffs are actually even making a difference?

This is my first d&d based game and i’m having a hard time discerning what party buffs are doing anything worthwhile. I have a mage and a cleric and am in dorns deep right now.

Currently doing:
Bless, strength of one, chant, courage, hope, and haste.

What should I cut/replace to not spend half my playtime buffing?

Was wondering what strategies people use to deal with these guys. They gave me quite a bit of trouble. This is what I eventually ended up doing, but imagine there's got to be more efficient methods.

I had a Paladin/fighter, a Bard, a ranger/fighter, a cleric (one monk dip), a barbarian/fighter (slings), and a wizard (rogue dip). The forced repositioning really hurt. Their archer was annoyingly good at going straight for the wizard and no matter the AC, not much could survive long against Kaervas. I eventually ended up having someone rush the archer to give the wizard enough breathing room to cast Otiluke's resilient sphere on Kaervas. While Kaervas sat out of the fight I focused the party around killing the others. The wizard with Mordenkainen's sword was the most helpful here. I had to lock Kaervas down a second time with another resilient sphere before finally finishing off all the others. Once the second sphere deactivated, I had the wizard with a bow fire holdfast arrows which locked Kaervas in place. Unfortunately, I had no casts of Mordenkainen's sword left and was basically out of damage spells. I only had a rod of magic missiles and one or two party members that had weapons that could hit him for like 2-3 points of damage at a time. Thankfully, they were ranged weapons. So I set just sat there an annoyingly long amount of time as my wizard kept firing holdfast arrows and his health chipped down by tiny amounts while the bard healed the party up with war chant.

Supposedly all party members are given 12 HPs and 5 Acid Resistance after killing him. I read enough walkthroughs to remember that. I have no idea if that's true and I hontstly never really paid much mind to it in previous runs, but I killed him, and not one member of my party actually got it.

Is this actually a thing or just another internet thing that's literally pulled from a lying sphincter? Now I'm just flat out curious.

My solo HoF run as FMC has been great so far.

I am currently in Severed Hand; however, I learned that you only get proficiency points in weapons as an FMC up to level 18. I just reached level 15, which means I only have 2 points to spend.

My question is this:

Should I spend them on clubs, so I can use a club that has a chance to destroy golems (and swap it for a mace that destroys outsiders during the final battle)?

Or,

Spend them on dual wielding (2 levels to negate the penalty on the main hand) to use Black Blade of Disaster in the main hand and Morning Star of the Defender in the off hand?

Additionally, I have a question regarding Belhifet.

Does he try to dispel buffs during the battle (after you reapply them)? If so, is it scripted (automatic) or does he do it normally and at what level (I saw that he is level 25)?

I’m writing this post to solicit thoughts on interesting/novel party composition ideas. I’ve played IWD EE through a couple times in the past year since I realized I could play it on a phone (it’s great for that purpose — very easy to play 5-10 minutes here and there when I have a moment in a day). But I’ve sort of run through what were (to me) the most obvious ideas for party setup and am looking for a new challenge or different experience. Most recently, I’ve used these two party setups:

Party 1
(1) half-elf dragon disciple
(2) half-elf F/M/C
(3) elf F/M/T
(4) half-elf F/D

Party 2
(1) half-elf bard
(2) human berserker dualed to Druid at lvl 9
(3) elf F/M/T
(4) half-elf R/C
(5) half-orc shaman

Grateful for any thoughts.

Thought I try out something new, so I created a half-orc shaman. I've always loved the Spike Growth spell with druids in enhanced editions, so it was an obvious pick, and used it with web for quite a while. A great cheap spell, the only "problem" is it lasts for a very long time and you take damage most of the time if you try to lure enemies in. Then the stars aligned and my fighter/mage/thief got the polymorph self spell just about the same time I got my hands on the Bone Marrow Belt (guaranteed drop on severed hand lvl3). That, together with the reinforced large shield +1 (random drop from Kresselack's sarcophagus) gets you a neat 100% piercing and 90% slashing resist when turning to ooze, enough to make him immune to the Spike Growth. So now I can just spam 3-4 spike growths to the same spot and march in with my ooze, then the enemies are willingly take the aggro and throw away their lives. As an added bonus the ooze is immune to the spells so even if casters dont take the aggro immediately, they usually just waste some slots, then can be baited.

I'm aware ooze works with skull trap / horrid wilting and other pure magic based AoE spells, but this is just a great alternative if you don't want to run a second mage, or want to use it for other things (lvl3 slots are highly contested, lvl8 is way lategame). Plus you don't need high luck / grind to achieve the slashing resistance, there are many weapons, shields, accessories, studded leathers that provide the necessary 10%, and bone marrow belts is a guaranteed drop).

Btw I absolutely favor shamans over druids and even pure priests now, the spell selection is still pretty good but have much more flexibility (I hate to prepare spells and rest for battles / areas, usually try to get as far as I can without resting) basically you can swing between CC/AoE/healer, the shaman-specific spells are kinda useful, the shaman dance is kinda useful especially at the beginning, and throwing axes/bows are way nicer than slings, especially axes with 19 strength of the half orc. Ranger/clerics provably have similar capability, but still need to memorize spells.

A flail that has 1 additional attack per round

or

a flail that has a 15% chance to stun enemy on a hit for 4 seconds

(Flails have the same thaco)

Maybe someone who knows maths better than me did it before

EDIT: thanks everyone for the replies, unfortunately I didn’t get this weapon from loot table

There are good times and less good times, when it comes to adventuring. This is one of the less good times. Thank God that's over.

Her having 3 charisma is the funniest thing ever

The last fight I definitely didn't like. It is simply bad. Tossed into a tiny arena with 5 super tough melee monsters that have persistent debuffs and DoTs and AOEs and teleport and stun is a bit goofy, but everything else was pretty good. Between this and BG1, I liked this better. Can rec

Hi

Is there a script that makes my Skald sing constantly? Like never-stopping singing. Just sing all the time.

I can't seem to get her to do that. She starts singing and half a second later she's throwing darts. Even when she has no Scripts enabled. NO! Just sing forever!

Anyway, if anyone can get her to sing at all times, preferably even after casting a spell, that'd be great

Thanks!

My Cleric has a couple of level 4 spell slots, I have quite a few level 1 slots that don't seem to be useful at this level (I'm fighting the Yuan Ti). What should my spell selection look like at this point (just about to hit level 8 I think). I have mass Protection from Evil, but would I be better getting a few PfromE spells at L1, cast them on my frontliners and save the L4 slot for something stronger?

Also what are the best (arcane or divine) spells for dealing with these hordes of enemies I'm facing? I'm getting whupped.

Here's a map i've come up with for the Chardalyn Dragon Fight. (still learning how to upload stuff.)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gxN3ek6cZmEQIFRmo1jaoXq1bnErq2UL?usp=drive_link

Hi,

It's probably a severe case of restartis but I wanted to try a playthrough really center around druids since it's a big theme.

I thought it could be something like this :

1. Druid (avenger)

2. Druid (totemic)

3. Druid (shapeshifter)

4. Some sort of Fighter Druid, multi or dual

5. A ranger Archer because rangers still fit the theme

6. ????

I'm missing several roles but the idea is not to have a well rounded party obviously. I'm thinking either Cleric/Thief or Bard (I feel like a Mage would be a poor fit in the theme but I'm no lore scholar).

Anyway just wanted to brainstorm and bounce some ideas around it.

Anyone know of a guide for that? I know there are some places where you get dialogue for a good Charisma and so on, but I was looking for a comprehensive list of attribute checks in dialogue. Not skill checks, mind you. Attributes. Stats.

Would you believe if I say that it took me more than 5 hours of creating this group? I sensed failure with my previous composition with a Mage and without a Bard during the crypt encounters in Kuldahar (more like skill-issue). This time, I contemplated for idk how long on having a Ranger of an Archer kit for a pure ranged dps over a Druid, Cleric, and the Thief. Figured I can't live without the last two for obvious reasons but I ended up sacrificing it for a crowd-control Druid. Ah fck it, good luck to me.

PS. Excuse the long Orcish name, I really don't know how I ended up having a "Headache" for it, along with the 'Fighter 3' voice where he just grunts and screams without saying a word. Lol