Ironman: Icewind Dale

[Tigranes]

Then Walsingham uses his Gnomish Charm to open a few doors.

 

I bloody hate the Myconid family, I never know which ones are the ones that sprout more. First the Hastemeisters circle around killing all the bobbling shriekers...

 

Then Purkake takes lure duty while the party sets up the area magics.

 

Finally, we throw a lot of bright colours at them and hope they die. They do.

 

Flame Strike redeems itself by hitting the enemies and not the allies for the first time in its career.

 

A gnome gets smart with us. Volo wanted to smite him, because insolence is clearly a sign of evil, but numbers explained that parties with higher reputations get better discounts in stores.

 

We finally reach Marketh's domain. Incredibly, numbers' Detect Invisibility only now comes to use - nobody had ever been invisible in the whole bloody game before. Marketh's underlings are pretty tough, and Flozem takes down mkreku, again. Seriously, I give this guy like the best equipment, and he's still on his arse more than a cheap... uh... scantily clad promiscuous ladies of less virtuous profession.

 

In the end numbers fires a skull trap to his face and gets him down. Of course, it was all part of the plan that Monty would make the second save and therefore NOT die...

 

Finally we get to Marketh's nice pad, but Unfinished Business means he runs away with his bloody ring. We're going to have to find a way of catching him before getting to the other lieutenants.

[HoonDing]

Wyrm's tooth is my favourite dungeon in the game.

 

Lower Dorn's deep... not so much. Malavon, the Elf chick with the Fire giants & especially the area with the 10,000 greater mummies are pretty tough here. Looking forward to seeing it.

[Maria Caliban]

Just finished my read through. Excellent work! Keep it up. I've never played the game and you actually make it look interesting.

[Enoch]

Just finished my read through. Excellent work! Keep it up. I've never played the game and you actually make it look interesting.

That's because he glosses over just how much "creep forward 30 feet to find another dozen of whatever monsters run this particular dungeon" there is on every single map.

 

So, yeah, nice work Tigs!

[Llyranor]

What the freaking crap?

[Llyranor]

Here's a screenshot of Tigranes being crushed by an ogre.

[Gorth]

I think Llyranor is insulted that you didn't want to fork out the 200 gold coins to resurrect his 4hp worth of wizard...

[Maria Caliban]

Why does it cost double to rez an elf, anyway? Does the cleric have to make a long distence call?

[Tigranes]

Just finished my read through. Excellent work! Keep it up. I've never played the game and you actually make it look interesting.

That's because he glosses over just how much "creep forward 30 feet to find another dozen of whatever monsters run this particular dungeon" there is on every single map.

 

So, yeah, nice work Tigs!

 

I don't mind that too much, but I do skip some of the more mundane, boring filler fights. It's not so bad now that the Hastemeisters can destroy pretty much any regular mob within seconds, the 3rd edition really took all the fun out of Haste.

 

Why does it cost double to rez an elf, anyway? Does the cleric have to make a long distence call?

 

Because Raise Dead doesn't work on them. I assume some stupid rule about them having spirits not souls.

 

That's alright, I refuse to be bothered by Llyranor's petty insults. For one thing, my mother has a beard, not a goatee.

 

In any case, Numbers is now a valuable member of the party and knows a lot of 7th and 9th level spells... if only he can level up and cast them. Maybe I'll do Heart of Winter just for the xp.

[mkreku]

What the freaking crap?

Stop whining. At least you don't have to wake up every morning to another series of embarrassing deaths.

[Hassat Hunter]

Man, I can hardly remember all this. Damn.

 

Anyways, I vote yes for HoW + TotLM (If you survive that is. My bossfight basically was won on luck. And crashed the first time... . Still luck second time I whooped him and fortunately it took then...). IIRC I found it much easier than the base game, somehow...

[Tigranes]

Well, there is no denying the addictive quality of fighting in tunnels. We push on in Lower Dorn's Deep, only a few key fights between us and the end. It's going to be pretty confusing going back and forth, but i've tried to streamline it.

 

We open by journeying into the forge area, to tackle the elven lieutenant: Marketh can wait. On the way we make Shiitake mushrooms out of the mean salamander who's been bullying the little gnomes. (I still think the best gnome-related line is 'Poor little gnome. My heart bleeds. Yours will, too.')

 

I think in some areas the designers really went all out making some great looking areas, but at the expense of playability - it's impossible to tell between floors and what is walkmesh and what is not sometimes. In any case, these elementals do give us a fair bit of trouble.

 

But nowhere as much as these guys. The elven lieutenant fell very quickly, but this is some heavy artillery coming out to avenge her death.

 

Thankfully, the Hastemeisters have an answer for everything. They run like hell to the nearest chokepoint, not taking a single hit..

 

...and exploit their suspiciously low saving throws against mid-level spells.

 

Now, it's time for Marketh again. We hear from Ginafae about his magic ring...

 

...and commission a fake one from the Underground. Volo protests that forgery is unlawful, and if we can't beat Marketh fair and square we shouldn't beat him at all, but thankfully, majority rules in the Obsidianite party.

 

We do make up for it with some good deeds, providing the gnomes with food. (Specifically, potatoes. Just potatoes. Poor gnome.)

 

A quick pit stop at the Secret Gnome Underground Village, some shopping, and then it's back to Marketh.

 

He is, of course, a bloody coward, and gives up his equipment *and* his badge. (I doubt Monty would have made the INT check for this, but thankfully Numbers provides the brain in the party.)

[Tigranes]

Now we have 4 badges, and just 2 to go. Malavon is probably just about the only proper mage villain in the game, and we loaded up with spells and summons in preparation. He uses his spotlight raving about something.

 

...and the fight is over in exactly half a turn. Seriously? The bloody giants aren't even hostile yet.

 

Aha. Simulacrum. If I were him, I'd have used my 8th level slot on Horrid Wilting instead. Nevertheless, he's literally covered with magical protections, so the real fight is on.

 

We don't really have any breach-type spells (never seem to get 'em in IWDs) and can't do anything to him, so we have to wait it out.

 

Elementals come after us, but Wals makes two Dire Charm saves and it's not so bad.

 

He fails his third, but by then the buffs have run dry and the Real Malavon proves just as fragile as the Fake Slim Shady.

 

Bolstered by this success, we are ready for the Black Temple. I find this area ludicrous, to be honest. Not only do you have about 40 boneguard skeletons and zombies, there are greater mummies with disabling spells, and the Idol which can cast Power Word Kill and Flesh to Stone and all kinds of evil things. But this is Ironman and we are Obsidianites! We can do this!

 

Step One: Hastemeisters make a nice carpet of bone.

 

Step Two: keeping out of mummy LOS they destroy all the boneguards first. We do get caught out by a couple of mummies here, but Purkake's arrows and Numbers' magic missiles manage to disrupt them every single turn, until they drop dead.

 

Step Three: Finally it's the zombies, though we send summons up ahead and try to avoid the idol. You see our newest spell in action here, Chain Lightning. It hits allies in IWD for some reason, but it's still a very useful spell in terms of sheer damage. Mkreku joins the Mummy Disruption Squad and we disrupt every single Hopelessness casting - this is the difference between life and death.

[Tigranes]

Step Four: Finally, the Idol. Most of our spells are gone by this point, though...

 

Step Five: Profit. We rock.

 

After that, I must say Poquelin is a joke: He falls in about 3 seconds and gets us to Easthaven. I'm not complaining, though, the black temple was insane.

 

Always thought IWD cutscenes were as well done as could be given the budget, but pretty boring. I'd have prefered ingame cutscenes.

 

Anyway, we arrive at Easthaven and find things all hairy. It's at this point I realise that you can't actually go to Kuldahar again... but it'd be a shame to skip out on HOW, so I decide to use the console to teleport us to Kuldahar. We can just pretend I did it just before Poquelin, right? Our ironman e-degree should be safe. Besides, I'm kind of scared of the final battle...

 

So we decide to run away: after all, nothing bad can happen while we're away, right? We're the heroes. We stop by the Severed Hand to restore the garden (which gives about 400k XP total, bloody hell), pushing us past the million XP mark...

 

Then accept the trip to NorseLand. Mkreku is quivering with excitement: finally, some good old Central Icewind Dalers!

 

And so we are at Lonelywood, and the Obsidianites live to see another day. But will they survive the Heart of Winter, or was it a mistake not to finish their quest right then and there? Dum dum dum.

[Majek]

IE engine cutscenes ? You're crazy...ish.

[Walsingham]

I can't eblieve you blamed ME for that failed flamestrike. I totally rock!

[HoonDing]

Cool. I never played Heart of Winter.

[Sargallath Abraxium]

...an IWD party an' no original members o' the Coconut Clan??...BLASPHEMOUS, I says...

 

 

...ahhhh, missed this place, I's has...

 

 

...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!...

Edited August 26, 2010 by Sargallath Abraxium

[Hassat Hunter]

You're allowed to go the HoW instead of dying horribly on the boss, ending the Ironman run (although it's kind of a feat to survive this long without a whole team whooped).

TotL too right? Meeting my avatar .

[Tigranes]

I don't have ToTL installed as I forgot about it - I'm worried what impact installing now might have? I do have a couple of mods like Tweaks, we shall see.

 

But then, maybe not - in my current session the party was actually reduced to one out-of-spells mage...

[Hassat Hunter]

It's inside of the patch. How can you NOT install it?

[Tigranes]

It's 70mb and I had no bandwidth when I started, so I didn't patch at all. In any case, I just installed it and it seems to be okay, so yes, I'll do TOTLM as well.

[Maria Caliban]

What is TOTLM?

[Gorth]

What is TOTLM?

Trials of the Luremaster

 

An expansion to the expansion so to speak. Heart of Winter was a good expansion pack, but a lot of people complained about it being rather short, so Black Isle released more content for it free of charge

[Amentep]

...an IWD party an' no original members o' the Coconut Clan??...BLASPHEMOUS, I says...

 

 

...ahhhh, missed this place, I's has...

 

 

...WHO LUVS YA, BABY!!...

 

How far is a dragon's flight from Lac Dinneshire?