Icewind dale II No-reload Thread

[alice_ashpool]

Hi all, with the publication of Fandraxx's video I was inspired to return to Icewind Dale II (IWDII), the Black Sheep of the Infinity Engine games, for its lack of Enhanced Edition, its 3rd Edition rules and its brutally difficult combat. This is flat out the hardest of the Infinity Engine games without a doubt.

I have completed this game once. Years ago. I have played the first chapters multiple times, and the later ones once.

So lets get into it.

Icewind Dale II No reload attempt 1.

Our dramatis personae the reprobates and miscreants of the Band of the Black Hand.

Felicity Flameblood

The mary-sue union of a Chromatic Red Dragon and and Aasimar, Felicity is a fire obsessed sorceress who seeks wealth, power and dominion. She holds the Band of the Black Hand together through her magnetic personality and her ability to find opportunities for plunder. Unfortunately on route to our latest coin the gear of the Black Hand was washed overboard. Can Felicity avoid a knife in the back from the rest of our evil crew?

Race: Aasimar
Class: Sorceress
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Theme: When life gives you snow, choose flame.
Role: Face, Nuker

Feat: Spell Focus: Evocation
Spells: Chromatic Orb, Burning Hands

Thrall

A bewitched half-orc barbarian bound absolutely to Felicity's will. He watches her back and she watches through his eyes.

Race: half-orc
Class: Barbarian
Alignment: True Neutral
Theme: Polearm Smash!
Role: 2nd Row Damage

Feat: Polearm 2

Alicia Blackhand

A Priestess of Bane, drawn recently to the Black Hand by visions of a quest in service of the tyrant god.

Race: Aasimar
Class: Dreadmaster of Bane
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Theme: Even creatures magical and mysterious will bow to my will.
Role: Control

Feat: Spell Focus: Enchantment

Arwen Fivearrows

An elven mercenary in the pay of the Black Hand.

Race: Moon Elf
Class: Fighter
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Theme: Legolas
Role: Ranged

Feats: Bow 2; Iron Will

Lilith

A drow exile and Priestess of Mask. Acts as the enforcer of the Black hand.

Race: Drow
Class: Demarch of Mask
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Theme: A Knife in the Dark
Role: All rounder

Feat: Small Blade 2

Adam

The brother of Lilith. Appears to have a preternatural sense for danger.

Race: Drow
Class: Monk/Diviner
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Theme: Can't touch this.
Role: Tank, Buffer

Feat: Dodge


//////

Prologue: The Band of the Black Hand lands in Targos.

Icewind Dale 2 starts on a ship, with everyone having quarterstaffs. Because we have so many specialty races we are going to be under-leveled. On an Ironman run this is going to mean sub-optimal HP at every level after 2nd. Ouch. Death will happen, and happen frequently in this game.

We clear out the outside of the docks for some basic equipment: leather armors, shields, small blades and a bow.

Our Drow siblings and Thrall clear the buildings.

Spoiler

Once the docks are clear we visit Guthewulfe to stock up on Arrows for Arwen, Bolts for Felicity, a mace for Alicia and some more Studded Leather Armor since AC is in short supply. and plunder a warehouse:

Spoiler

Fleicity does the following quests:
Healing Reig's Arm
Reporting back to Hedron on his mother
Convince Brogan to let us in to the 2nd warehouse

Now comes the "finale" of the prologue to the prologue: the 2nd warehouse tunnels. IWDII's prologue is notoriously easy compared to the rest of the game so this proves little challenge. There are almost no rest restrictions in IWDII so you can spam-rest as much as you want. The design team seemed to realise there was no way to avoid this so scaled up the difficulty to an assumption that you would enter each fight fresh - visions of Wrath of the Righteous difficulty!

We finish Rukwurm hand in the quest and beat Guthewulfe at drinking for another 300XP and his wolf charm, then report our success to Ulbric.

Spoiler

////

There are a number of Free XP opportunities in Targos.

First we complete the double-act Weeping Widow Quest. We take the "good route", even though with 2 evil Priestesses the evil route is pretty signposted. (as an aside maybe I should do an actual thematic evil route here, but it makes the game harder!)
This is followed up by tricking Tabard Mooncalf into letting us take his shield - the advantages of high Charisma. This nets us blessed Level 2

Felicity (Sorceress 2)
Thrall (Barbarian 2)
Alicia (Dreadmaster of Bane 2)
Arwen (Fighter 2; Rapid Shot)
Lilith (Demarch of Mask 2)
Adam (Monk 1, Diviner 1; Expertise)

Additional Quests:
Niles sent back to fight
Doppleganger letter picked up and revealed
Braeg used to revive the man having visions
Phaen revealed and killed.
Priest of Myrkul confronted about Phaen and ghost touched bottle.
Using the Hammer to fix the catapult

After that we run through the various busywork quests:
Fixing the winch
Communicating with the goblin corpse (drow XP bonus)
Persuading the Houndstooth Gang to help in the fight (high Cha XP bonus)

An then the final fight of the Prologue.

This is not as scary as it looks as there are a lot of goblins that will only hit on a 20. The main issue is Caballus as a powerful spellcaster. We chop out way through Vghotan, Ghotrag and Caballus in turn. Bless (+1AB) and Protection from Evil (+2 Deflection AC) are useful on our tanks (although roles are pretty fluid at this point). Burning Hands allows Felicity to fry a few groups of goblins. Arwen throws arrows, Thrall gets in big hits, Adam stays near unhittable with Shield and Minor Mirror Image. Clerics throw Command at high priority targets to get hits in or disable.

Spoiler

And there. Prologue Battle Done

Thrall and Arwen gain Level 3 here. Of course if we were all regular races this would be level 3 for everyone, but we make do.

Thrall (Barbarian 3; Iron Will)
Arwen (Fighter 3; Dash)

Gear Review
Felicity: Phaen's Robes of Rags, Light Crossbow
Thrall: Studded Leather Armor, Halberd, Houndstooth Collar (fear and panic immunity)
Alicia: Studded Leather, Whispering Staff, Tabard's Shield
Arwen: Studded Leather, Longbow
Lilith: Studded Leather, Masterwork Dagger, Tower Shield
Adam: Ring of Mage Armor (1/day), Dagger


Chapter 1: In which the dale runs red with orc blood.

Chapter 1 is something of a shock for new players of the game - Caballus was a bit tricky but here your party is swamped in wave after wave of green foes - mostly orcs. You are always outnumbered and often thrown into unavoidable ambushes with no ability to prepare. This is tough. Prepare to reload often. Or make a party of killers and get through on one life XD. We need every character to reach level 3. Low HP means we are very vulnerable.

Spoiler

We meet Torak, a minor antagonist as we fight through hordes of orcs.

Spoiler

We can of course engage in some cheese:

And rescue Derek Springsong, netting us our first safe rest point in the chapter. Our Aasamars also level up:

Felicity (Sorceress 3; Greater Spell Focus: Evocation; Spell: Shield)
Alicia (Dreadmaster of Bane 3; Greater Spell Focus; Enchantment)

And thats a wrap for now.

////

Kill Counts
Thrall: 38 (25%)
Felicity: 34 (22%)
Arwen 32 (21%)
Alicia: 31 (20%)
Lilith: 11 (7%)
Adam: 2 (1%)

 

[Fandraxx]

This is awesome!! Can't wait to follow along.

 

[alice_ashpool]

The Black Hand - Update 2

We clear the rest of the Dam, rescuing Sabrina, Derek's wife, and meet Torak again. This nets our two drow level 3 at last.

Lilith (Demarch of Mask 3; Weapon Finesse)
Adam (Monk 1, Diviner 2; Weapon Finesse)

Spoiler

I instantly regret taking Weapon Finesse this early on Adam as he has a -3STR malus, but suck it up. We buy some scrolls for Adam from Sabrina: See invisible, blur, mirror image, cat's grace, luck; all useful level 2 buffs we will be able to cast next level.

After a rest, we buff up a bit and head to the next map which contains a nasty orc ambush. I can't remember if there is a time-skip or not so we leave the short term stuff to cast mid-combat. Emma Moonblade tasks Felicity to retrieve her stolen moonblade and we learn about the local villages being held hostage.

Spoiler

use of a conveniently placed invisibility potion allows access to the villagers. We are now progressing steadily into Buff-finder territory. Bulls Strength, Aid, Minor Mirror Image, Shield, Bless, Blur all come out in various ways as we assault the orcs guarding the hostages. This is what I mean when I say in IWDII you are very often outnumbered!:

how it started:

how it's going:

We finally catch up with Torak and put him down for good. Command spam is great.

Spoiler

Clearing the entrance to the cave gets us Level 4 with Thrall and Arwen:

Thrall (Barbarian 4; +1STR)
Arwen (Fighter 4; Bow 3; +1DEX)

The important thing here is that bow 3 nets us +2 damage which is big with bows which have pretty paltry damage. This will up Arwen's effectiveness nicely.

Finally we progress to track down and kill Vreck Vileclaw and regain Emma Moonblade's... moonblade. Returning this and taking the good route nets us the Moonblade which, while we cannot use, is worth mad cash.

Spoiler

There are a couple of good items on this map: Clenched Fist is a +1 Mace and Head over Haft is a very interesting returning +1 throwing Axe that does bludgeoning damage rather than slashing. Everyone knows that bludgeoning is the best. The aim for Alicia is for her to use throwing axes as her 2ndary role, as soon as I can take the proficiency feat (I don't want to waste a level on FIghter due to Spell progression).

The next map is a narrow gorge filled with random enemies (IWDII rushed lol). But like all the other's it is a tough gauntlet. We kill Gerant Sharptooth and the Spider queen + all the random mobs in a single rest.

Spoiler

Knowing that we are only a few orcs away from additional level ups, and the difficulty of the next area we return to Toruk's camp and dangerous rest ourselves up a handful of orcs

Felicity (Sorceress 4; CHA+1) spell: Aganazzar's Scorcher
Alicia (Dreadmaster 4; WIS +1)

Have been very pleased with the Mask cleric as she gets Blur, which is caster only 20% chance for enemies to miss, 1min/level. Very nice defensive buff for a cleric.

And that's a wrap for part 2

////

Kill Counts
Thrall: 81 (26%)
Arwen 66 (21%)
Felicity: 65 (21%)
Alicia: 59 (19%)
Lilith: 30 (9%)
Adam: 2 (0%)

 

[alice_ashpool]

The Black Hand - Update 3

We enter the Dam itself, which is guarded by Malarites, worshipers of Malar who appear to have got lost on the way here, along with their Boars - presumably allies of the horde but who knows. They can cast Cure Light Wounds, Beast Claw and Entangle.

Spoiler

The aim is to destroy the pillars holding the Dam up, which is easier said than done due to their high HP and the Malarites.

We fight the Malarite High Priest, where Alicia's Banite CC really comes into its own. Hold spells in 3e/Pathfinder 1st ed are just fantastic, and with that +4 to Enchantment DC we are rolling enemies.

Spoiler

hold person

We also pick up a nice upgrade: Thy-Dunag Blade, a shortsword 1d6+1 +2AB, which is a great upgrade for Lilith from her +1 dagger.

The rest of the Malarites are of little difficulty now we can bait them and Felicity's band destroys the dam for a nice 750XP. Onwards to the finale of this gauntlet.

Spoiler

job done

"Shaengarde Bridge" or "the no-reload run ender"
This is a timed segment. We are required to fight our way through an ambush, a cohort of enemies and a powerful arcane caster in order to prevent the bridge from being destroyed by two ogres. EZ.

On entering the bridge we meet a new antagonist: an unamed bugbear, along with many bugbear type enemies. fast kill speed here is essential but Felicity makes a dangerous error when she is targeted and almost pinched. Fortunately she escapes unharmed.

Spoiler

We avoid straying too far west which aggros additional enemies, instead we progress onto the bridge and meet Xuki. There is bonus XP to be gained here by not being distracted by her.

And of course even the most powerful spellcaster can be rendered useless with a well placed Silence spell:

After that it is some rapid mopping up. Blinding the Ogres with Chromatic Orb means they miss due to concealment a lot. And Thrall with Bulls strength will crit for 30+ damage so we ain't worried. 2EZ.



Next we mop up the enemies to the west, more bugbears, orc archers, werebadgers/rats and harpies. You really don't want to aggro this lot until you have saved the bridge. Some well lined up Scorcher beams do big damage to grouped enemies. This spell is deffo A tier in the right hands and D- if you don't like RTwP!

Spoiler

Some other spells of note:
Chromatic Orb: at this level it blinds. Blind is a very powerful debuff on enemies
Command: 1 round lying on the floor. rapid cast. enough said
Fairy Fire: the Drow Lilith and Adam have 3x day casts. -2AC debuff to enemies. No save. Very powerful instant cast debuff. It also highlights that IWDII has a lot of guides written in the 2000s out there with some rather questionable advice since this is a "don't bother" on some!
Bulls Strength: Thrall Smash!
Aid: +8 bonus HP with a long duration is not to be sneered at.
Hold Person: Great disable.

So, we now have level 4 with our two Drow, and Level 5 with Arwen and Thrall. Woo:
Thrall (Barbarian 5)
Arwen (Fighter 5)
Lilith (Demarch of Mask 4; DEX+1)
Adam (Monk 1; Diviner 3; DEX+1

With Adam we take 2x cats grace and a Blur for our level 2 spells.
With Lilith it's more Bulls Strength and Protection from Evil.

Mopping up new items we get:
Footman's Folly - a light shield with the AC bonuses of a tower shield for Lilith
Witherbranch Boots - Entangle Immunity. Not great but they go to thrall as he has a low reflex save. They're much more useful if you are casting entagle.
Bag of Holding

Returning to Targos we cash in our quest for XP and gold and do a little bit of shopping. Notably we buy Sash of the Black Raven for Adam. This is a monk exclusive item which provides +1AB, which isn't all that interesting for someone who does 1-2 damage per hit (lol), but it also provides immunity to confusion and feeblemind, and immunities are A+ tier for a tank. He also has evasion from monk, Wis to AC, Expertise for AB converted to AC, high will and reflex saves, drow spell resistance of 15 currently, and of course all those good mage spells for protection. He is developing nicely.

Part 3 done.

////

Kill Counts
Thrall: 100 (27%)
Arwen 79 (21%)
Felicity: 79 (21%)
Alicia: 69 (18%)
Lilith: 35 (9%)
Adam: 4 (1%)

 

[alice_ashpool]

The Black Hand - Update 4

The Horde Fortress.

Wow. This one is another run ender. Black Isle really pushed IE scripting to the limit in almost every area. Here if you do not kill the shamans fat they will infini-spawn worg riders. On the plus side you can farm XP if you are so cheesily inclined. This is 100% a tough area.

We arrive and meet a scout: Ennelia. Healing her nets us some bonus XP and she gives some info about the area. What she doesn't say is that Black Isle re-skinned some gnomes green and called then half goblins. heh.

Buff-finderDnD 3rd Ed continues with more buffin' then more killin'. half-goblins are ludicrously tough. half-goblin, half elephant.

Spoiler

We carefully avoid being swamped as we work clockwise around to kill Trugnuk, a dangerous orc shaman who can cast call lightning which can ruin anyone's day.

Spoiler

This gets Felicity an Alicia level 5.
Felicity (sorceress 5) Spells: Magic Missile, Protection from Arrows
Alicia (Dreadmaster of Bane 5)

Alicia now has level 3 spells, so Protection from Evil 10' and Animate Dead, so with these we clear the rest of the over-ground. Of note is that Chromatic Orb now stuns making is A+ tier.

We also suffer our first death. RIP Lilith. Fortunately we just need to spend a costly 1400 gold to resurrect.

Spoiler

Revenge is sweet.

Inside the Goblin Warrens, there are a seemingly endless series of rooms with a named enemy and lots of goblins.

Spoiler

We kill them all and then the Wooly Spider Queen.

This gets us Gauntlets of Weapon Skill +1AB. These go to Arwen for now since she is using Rapid Shot (-2AB) and ranged characters get off so many good attacks anyway. Also Barbarian Shield, a large shield with +1CON. Not all that useful but Thrall hangs onto it on his alternate weapon sets.

We trade the Spider Queen + Spider bodies to Pondmuk for XP and the password: Chimera. What an interesting password. We also have enough XP for Thrall and Arwen to level up but decide to squat for a couple of thousand more.

Yquog the Barghest Whelp offers us a nefarious quest which we take, and gives us the password Xvim. We also get a Composite Longbow +1 from an enemy which is a huge upgrade for Arwen (from 3-8 to 6-11 damage per hit, and +2AB to boot)

Death of an Orog Chief gets Lilith and Adam to the next level too so we all level up.
Thrall (Barbarian 6; Dash)
Arwen (Fighter 6; Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes)
Lilith (Demarch of Mask 5)
Adam (Monk 1; Diviner 4)

Thrall is now at 2APR, and Arwen at 3APR with Rapid Shot. We slay.

This area done we move to the next warrens area, with another unavoidable semi-ambush. This one is not so bad. Prioritising Will Saves and Mage-slaying means that we can avoid orcs casting effective Hold Person, which is the bane of many an adevnturer. With here 3APR and high AB Arwen makes an effective Mage Slayer.

Spoiler

We also have new toys to play with: Mirror Image, Dire Charm and Ice Blade. All the better to kill orcs and goblins with.

We do the Yquog quest which gets morning star of warding which is not exactly the reward I wanted but oh well. Also I made a mistake takin to Korontur with a low CHA character so we don't get the good reward. Whoops. I take revenge by killing everything except Yquog. We also pick up Sophia's Flight, a Longbow with +50% range, a good 2nd bow for Arwen.

The map is cleared and this gets Felicity and Alicia next level.
Felicity (Sorceress 6; Subvocal Casting Spell: Fireball)
Alicia (Dreadmaster of Bane 6; Martial Weapon: Axe)

Alicia now transitions away from melee, she is Control + Ranged Support with Haft over Head. Phew. And Felicity can drop fireballs. Hot.

For now we do our buff routine and prepare for one of the worst ambushes in the game:

Horde Fortress Courtyard

Fortunately for Felicity and the Band of the Black Hand, the joke is on the enemy because I took Protection from Arrows on the Felicity so the majority of the enemies are neutered

Spoiler

We give Arwen the Arrows of Bludgeoning we have so she hits for around 15HP per shot 3x per round which kills 3 orcs per round. Fun!

We kill everything with very little effort.

Horde Fortress Inside

The final assault starts with killing two bugbears and an "old orc" who is surprisingly tough if not paralyzed with chromatic orb. Next we overhear a conversation between a half-dragon, Sherincal and Guthma, the Bugbear in charge of the Fortress who we briefly saw at the Shaengarde Bridge.

Buffs are so powerful we smash Guthma to pieces. Hooray.

Spoiler

Finishing that we loot the fortress completely and head back to Targos.

All ain all this nets us a lot of level-ups:
Lilith (Demarch of Mask 6; Dodge)
Adam (Monk 1; Diviner 5; Dash, Lightning Reflexes)
Thrall (Barbarian 7)
Arwen (Fighter 7)

Level 5 Diviner means Level 3 spells so we can use Ghost Armour to push AC up over 35. That's hot. We buy the Ring of the Wise for +1WIS for Alicia and call it a day.

////

Kill Counts:
Arwen 174 (28%)
Thrall: 162 (26%)
Felicity: 115 (18%)
Alicia: 97 (15%)
Lilith: 55 (9%)
Adam: 8 (1%)

Death Counts:
Lilith: 1

 

[alice_ashpool]

Some of you might be wondering - why am I talking about Ghost Armor on a Diviner when the opposite school to Divination in Conjuration and Ghost Armor is a Conjuration spell? Well, you see, if you take a level of Monk it breaks the opposite spell schools coding so you can learn and cast whatever you want. I will eat the cheese.

 

[m7600]

It's all good. I'd say that giving Thrall a 1 in Charisma is cheesier, lol. I don't have anything against min-maxing per se, but it can be a double edge sword in some games. For example, a cheesy way to kill Thrall would be to drain his Charisma, all it takes is just one point of ability damage to that score and he's gone. I don't recall if there are Charisma-draining enemies in IW2 though, I think there aren't any. Of course, you can also use this to your advantage: animals typically have a low Intelligence score, so the cheesiest way to take them out is to use some spell that drains a few Intelligence points. Since they usually have 1 or 2 points in that, it doesn't take much to lower it to 0.

Anyways, really cool updates!

 

[alice_ashpool]

The Black Hand - Update 5

We are chapter 2!

Glacier Foothills

We take Oswald's Airship and in true Icewind Dale 2 fashion a storm wrecks us and we crash on some sort of glacier. We need to repair the Ship and need various ingredients to do so.

First, Owald can use Beetle Shells to craft us some Full Plate Armor. Thrall, Alicia and Arwen all get a set of green Full Plate which is a nice AC boost at this stage. He can also make yeti pelts into boots, hats etc but they only provide 1/- Cold resistance for 700GP, not great. I make 1 set of boots.

Enemies here are not so tough, we kill some giants, some yetis and so on nabbing some extra XP. We visit Bedoewan. He sells a number of very overpriced items and is also a werewolf. We buy Malison, a level 4 AoE -2 to saves debuff.

Once finished we reveal him to be a werewolf. He's dangerous but not so dangerous he cant be stunned with a level 1 Chromatic Orb. Some Scorchers overcome his damage resistance and he dies easily.

Fighting the Aurilite Druids gets Hagnen's Folly, a +3/+3 Heavy crossbow for Felicity. Some other less than intersting loot and Belladonna, the last ingredient to repair the air-ship. This nets a hefty packet of XP and some more levels ups so we decide to stop squatting XP.

Felicity (Sorcerer 7; Spells: Protection from Petrification; Mirror Image; Haste)
Thrall (Barbarian 8; +1STR)
Arwen (Fighter 8; +1DEX; Improved Critical)
Alicia (Dreadmaster of Bane 7)

Alicia gets level 4 spells - there are some nice combat buffs: Recitation and Holy Power. Haste on Felicity is also A+ (it is single target only but still a nice buff at this level.)

The Glacier.

Another unavoidable ambush. I couldn't remember what happened here but better safe than sorry! We lay a brutal smackdown on some barbarian warriors. A combination of Hold Person and Hasted Thrall makes short work.

Remorhaz are Held with Chromatic Orb. Crystal Golems are smashed with blunt weapons. Once we have the Auril Symbol we can open the doors which aggros Vassillus and the rest of the doom guard. Fortunatly they are easy to deal with.

The Queen Remorhaz is ok, but the aurilites hit us with a Sol's Searing Orb for 45 damage. Ouch!

After that we are ambushed by Lord Rengar, a fight I completely forgot about and our first major mistake. He drops a fireball followed by an ice storm which kills Adam and brings a few others close. Death number 2. Tactical retreat then we kill him then use our Resurrection scroll to bring Adam back. I quit because I am tilted and Owlcat Rogue Trader is released in early alpha.

////

Death Counts:
Lilith: 1
Adam: 1