Ironman: Icewind Dale II

[Tigranes]

Thankfully, Lysara then decided to ignore my spellcasters and wander down to whack my fighters: one crit from Monty and she decided to go all emo and kill herself. After that the Golem is just a matter of time. 2 down.

 

We find some necromancers and some free bodies. We stick them in the bag of holding together with the dead cats, because we can.

 

Caged Fury I remember being a tough fight, but this time we picked up his real name off the Djinni that hangs out around here (I think it was him). What? It's Ironman.

 

We then dabble with the Battle Square long enough to open Oria's doors, but don't bother mastering it... it would have earnt us XP, but actually Monty didn't turn out quite so good at this and it is very very tedious.

 

Yes, yes, you want to take revenge for your sisters' deaths. Heaven forbid you'd actually try and help them not die in the first place, right?

 

Oria goes down as easily as anyone... but SHES GOT A BOMB! SHES GOT A BOMB! Unfortunately, if you look closely, she actually is talking to my summoned snake, and summoned snakes don't have high charisma..

 

And so the staff goes boom. Wals takes a big hit but the only casualties are Oria herself... and the Snake. We hardly knew ya.

 

Finally there is Nickademus. We didn't need his help with Caged Fury, and we dont' mind killing some demons for him later, so we might as well get his help and get some free XP.

 

We free Nathaniel. I don't think we ever found his Ring of the Ram, though...

 

Outside the Ice Temple some reinforcements visit us, but remember the doppleganger in Targos we exposed several updates ago? Well that all comes to help us out as the fake letter explodes in the dopplegangers' faces, revealing their true nature.

 

Awright, next up is the Fell Wood and such. Our party is progressing quite well and getting access to some 5th level spells, which is exciting. Get us to page 5, gentlemen!

[Slowtrain]

Argh, The Ice Palace. Eyes are bleeding.

 

I had a big problem with Call Lightning in the goblin levels. Spell would always end of hitting my own party members often as not. I eventually came to the conclusion that if there still unused strikes left when the last enemy in an area died, the strikes would still continue until they were used up. Only they would target party members instead. Don't know if that's accurate, but that was the way it seemed.

 

So I always had to hustle the party out of an area after using Call Lightning. Made it kind of a pita, tbch.

 

 

Anyway, Tig, you have my immense respect and admiration for managing to get through an entire LP + expansion thread and then well into another. These things are a huge amount of work. Rest assured I am reading. And enjoying.

 

 

I'm secretly hooping you'll do a BG1/2 run, but realistically you'll probably be LP'ed out by the end of this thread. And I don't blame you in the least.

[Monte Carlo]

Tigranes, can you post the character sheet screens please?

[I want teh kotor 3]

Damn Tig, I'd give up WAY before this...

[Tigranes]

I'm still playing the content of next update, so sure, I'll get character screens at the end of that. I guess it's hard to see their progression at the moment... they're around level 10-11, though.

 

Call Lightning shouldn't ever hit party members in IWD2; probably what happened is an enemy mage (some of the Orc Witch Doctors have it) cast it, and then you were getting hit by that. Whoever casts CL, if it's time for another shock but no enemies are near it fizzles out. Currently I've got myself Static Charge as well. Wild Shape seems to be a bit bugged so I can't transform into Shambling Mound yet, but hopefully that works then Wals will be a machine.

[mr insomniac]

Argh, The Ice Palace. Eyes are bleeding.

This. If there had been a "Skip the Temple" mod, like the "Skip the Fade" mod for DA:O, I would played IWD2 several more times. Ah well, onward brave adventurers.

[sorophx]

but the fade was the only thing that kept me playing dao i mean the mages' tower part, where you have to gather shapeshifting forms in order to advance. it was one of the best RPG-moments in a very long time

[mr insomniac]

Yep, it was fun once.

[sorophx]

why would anyone want to play DAO twice is beyond me

[mr insomniac]

After playing through DA:O a couple times, I left it alone for awhile (ME2 and AP beckoned), but I've recently gone back in order to finally play Awakenings. I like it, even though some of it gets tedious on subsequent plays.

[Gorth]

Yep, it was fun once.

Couldn't have said it better

 

That once was fun though.

 

Well, back to Icewind Dale II, I seem to remember really enjoying the game when you get to the Underdark part (the Ice Palace was like the fade, fun once). I felt genuinely sad when my pet golem couldn't follow me to the surface. I was the one who gave it life dammit

[Tigranes]

Well, thanks to the wonderful crowd, here's another update. I'm a bit amused to see how grindy you guys found IWD2 - it definitely could have done with 20% less filler combat or something, but meh, I always hated the Fell Wood a lot more. IE is well suited to combat but not so much to elaborate puzzles... that said, that's exactly where we're going today.

 

Emerging from the Ice Temple we meet Gromnir's long lost cousin.

 

It's not unexpected that the family reunion rapidly progresses to its final stage, violence.

 

Getting to the small village, we come across Nym, yet another IWD cameo. He's got nothing on Saemon Havarian, though, needs to work on his smooth charm. We pick up some 5th level spells for Chris Avellone - no Breach-style spells though, you never get them in IWDs for some reason.

 

Feargus' quick wit helps Gromnir avoid his extended family.

 

Mkreku's Paladinic Paladinness does come in useful at times. I actually never really figured out how to expose Limha properly - I'm not sure if it's a scripting error or my mistake, though. Voice acting on the little kid is pretty awesome here.

 

And so the great battle begins, by Limha fleeing the tent and leaving her pet ogre to die to buy herself time. Not very sporting, is she? As it is, the trolls are little trouble for us and as usual our arrows/magic missiles disrupt most of her castings.

 

she retreats and summons more powerful monsters, but we've got quite a frightening array of AOE spells now, as well as Feargus' necklace of missiles. They dont' get close.

 

We be heroes.

 

Next we help the villagers with a pissed off undead thing. It's kind of weird, really. Why are they so angry all the time? I mean, they should be more mellow now that they're not really pressed for time.

 

I'll spare you guys the effort of trekking through the fell wood 'maze' (i.e. scrambled exit grids) to find his bloody horn. If only the game adopted the P&P skills of forgery...

[Tigranes]

Mkreku is ruggedly handsome.

 

Aaaand finally, we solve the mystery of a love triangle, wherein A and B kill C and hide the evidence to live happily ever after. Somehow, it involves us taking out ghost lights that are annoyingly immune to damage and keep popping invisible.

 

The incarcerated C is quite thick indeed.

 

After all that, as a reward, we get a visit from the main villains of the game, Madae and Isair. I thought they were potentially the most interesting characters out of the entire IWD series, but unfortunately, given the style of the game, they remain woefully underdeveloped. Doesn't help that everyone else has good voice acting but these are done by, I don't know, a text-to-speech program.

 

As befitting the golden rule of villainy, they choose to waste their instantly-kill-everyone-and-turn-them-into-zombies-spell on some bystanders, not us.

 

Anyway, after that we can finally be done with the Fell Wood. We fight some Treants, and clear the way forward...

 

...to some more areas full of enemies, of course. This is IWD2. I've skipped the spiders and whatnot, but here you fight two dragons - one outside, one inside. Sorry, this one's inside. Mkreku's sorcerer abilities come in very useful as we're able to stoneskin and haste half the party.

 

Of course, I didn't think Chris Avellone would need to. Damn fool managed to get frozen...

 

...then shatter. We're running pretty low on raise scrolls now, and it's a good thing Monty and Grommy made it.

 

Phew. Now we finally approach the Underdark areas, where not everything will be white anymore. That means new monsters, and first up are hook horrors. No problem, they don't have any particular immunities or saves so we throw some AOEs...

[Tigranes]

Of course, they decide to pop out of nowhere behind us. I assume this is what they do in caverns, lore-wise.

 

A well placed confusion spell gets a lot of them, but the problem is it's hard to tell which are confused and which are not in the mess.

 

In the end we didn't do so well. It's a warning of what's to come, really.

 

We start to systematically clear out the caves, trying our best not to get snuck up by HHs.

 

Unfortunately, the lags are getting pretty annoying, every fireball lags us now, but I'll just have to press on.

 

We send Feargus in alone to trigger the ambushes. This was very clever, except there was a second ambush behind us.

 

In the end we have to run to a corner and come out with the big guns again.

 

Pretty knackered after that battle and needing a rest, we finally find the key to this fortress and come in. Usually, you get to rest and restock, before discovering some evul things they do and slaughtering them all (same as the Yuan-Ti in IWD1, if you remember). Of course, I forgot Mkreku is a paladin. Yeah, why rest when you can smite?

 

Well, we'll have to make do. We make a stand at the chokepoint, summon monsters, Dire Charm a Duergar....

 

And after a level up, Wals finally can access his Shambling Mound transformation. Thanks to that, and the short LOS of the enemies, we clear the fortress wave by wave.

[Tigranes]

I know we're pushing forward very fast here, but pretty much all I'm skipping is a few filler battles. After another area or two, we get to the Beastlord Harshom, whose reason for being here is so idiotic that I choose to believe he was just invented to make sure we get some XP before the Monastery.

 

Our AOE-Opener kills off most of the spellcasters.

 

The warbears were stronger than I thought, though, and in the end half the party was running around madly trying to avoid their claws while spells whittled away their health. To finish, we cast a skull trap at Harshom, but they have a really small trigger radius in IWD2 and it wouldn't blow, so we cast Animate Dead on top of it to make it go. Yes, that's right, Obsidianites Mach II are pioneers of suicide bombing.

 

Aaaand we end with some character shots. Monty is now 8 Fighter / 3 Rogue, with a healthy BAB (~17), and is predictably responsible for 311 kills.

 

We've mostly invested in stuff like Cleave and whatever makes his tunnel fighting even more efficient.

 

Gromnir, as a single class man, is 11 Monk and has a decent 186 kills. His BAB isn't as good and I'm worried he'll end up too lightweight near the end, but as I never play with Monks I'm not sure what will happen.

 

Mkreku, 1 Pal / 10 Sorc, doing not too shabby at 125. He's actually the most versatile member in the party, and actually a lot more useful than the old Mkreku, who was probably badly designed on my part. The main buffer.

 

Wals is just behind at 116, though I plan to use his transformations more now, and Call Lightning/Static Charge rocks. He's 1 Barb / 10 Druid.

 

Feargus, 1 Ranger / 10 Rogue, again close at 113 kills. He has some nice daggers/short swords + Ambidexterity/Two-Weapon Fighting, and is actually a pretty consistent hitter in melee; I wish he had a poison weapon, though. We've also picked up some nice magical arrows that we're saving for big battles.

 

Finally, Chris Avellone, 11 Wizard, and beating Wals & Fearg at 120 kills. Surely all the fireballs. He's on the cusp of (or already has?) 6th level spells, though we don't have any learnt at this stage. We plan to toy with our enemies by disintegrating everything at every opportunity soon enough.

 

Right, there we go. That was pretty gruelling, but hey, the Underdark is coming soon, and there's some interesting stuff there.

[sorophx]

great as always! but this is where I stop, I'm exactly at the same point in the game and don't want any spoilers but since Monte got me hooked on Company Of Heroes, I'm not sure when I can continue with IWD.

[Walsingham]

Shambling mound, eh? I didn't realise you'd seen me dance...

[Monte Carlo]

great as always! but this is where I stop, I'm exactly at the same point in the game and don't want any spoilers but since Monte got me hooked on Company Of Heroes, I'm not sure when I can continue with IWD.

 

Mwuahahahhaaaaa!!!

 

Tanks are where it's at and it's free.

 

I am pleased to see my tunnel-fighting exploits are consistently awesome. I suspect that I will die repeatedly in the final stages of the game, though. Tigs, what armour is he wearing?

[Tigranes]

....1/4 Boring Bettle Full Plate

[Atreides]

I want to start a casting party with a sorc, wiz, druid and cleric. With a pet rogue-fighter to scout and handle traps.

[Tigranes]

We better get to p6 after this, or I will inflict arthritis on you all with the scrolling.

 

We now approach the Black Raven Monastery, full of angry monks. Chris Avellone proves that someone actually can fall for the idiotic bridge trap.... but he is so badass he climbs back up from a bottomless chasm.

 

Surprisingly, the Wyrm doesn't attack even when we nick his egg from right under him. Not the happiest family, then.

 

We come across some yetis on a bridge, but that's unlikely to stop us. A nicely aimed lance of disruption gets mots of them.

 

And so we arrive. Somehow Chris Avellone keeps levelling up just a bit in front of what the designers might have intended, so we have to wait to get new spells. From now on he will abuse Disintegrate at every opportunity, because it's what cool badass people do.

 

We expose the Legion of the Chimera trying to manipulate the monk master, but her fluttery lady-heart is taken by his treachery and decides to throw away everything she has for a life on the run. Yep, that's right, feminism hasn't come to Faerun yet.

 

And after that it's the 8 challenges, for which we will pick Grommy. They're pretty inane - here we have to push all the right levers. We lost all our equipment so had a look in this 'secret' compartment, but... yeah, what the hell is this? An initiation rite for monks and they give you three tons of weapons.

 

You get hit by various lightning bolts if you aren't careful, but Gromnir is as flexible as a ballet dancer and avoids them all.

 

The clockwork monks were more of a challenge, seemingly with much improved BAB, but we get through it.

 

Sand Monk? What is this, Naruto?

 

This is usually the trickiest one. You have to make the first monk pass out on the pedestal to open the door...

[Tigranes]

Then ensure both monks are passed out on the two pedestals and then hit the lever.

 

I skipped a few, but finally, random flame strikes all around the room as you fight. Again Grommy's Evasion comes in useful here.

 

And so we progress to the next area on our way to the Underdark. After taking care of other critters we wonder if we can take the loot from the chest, then take down 4 Iron Golems. Pretty high MR, very high crushing damage and good damage reduction. We prepare with some Bone Golem summons and a couple of well placed skull traps...

 

We can see the skull traps were highly effective. i.e. the killed my snake.

 

This is bad. They seem immune to half of my spells and weapons and they are chewing up the summons like nothing.

 

We kept fleeing and fleeing across the map while doing minimal damage with our best ammo. We did get one down to Badly Wounded, but it was quite clear we didn't really have the right stuff. Shamefully, the Obsidianites turn tail and flee into the next area, leaving the Iron Golems victorious.

 

Thankfully, they don't follow, and we are finally at the Underdark.

 

This area lagged massively, I was playing at 5fps or something - must be all the funky mushroom lights. We take on some drow assassins hiding in an alcove here, but underestimated them, and Grommy goes down. That's a first for him, I think?

 

WE BE TRADERS

 

We escape the lag as fast as we can in search of the Viviscamera, a drider-making machine we have been charged to destroy. In small numbers, the driders aren't so bad, so we go around getting them when they're alone and cornered...

[Tigranes]

But, uh, they have a lot better shout system than most other enemies, for some reason, and our exit is blocked. Feargus dies.. but hey, our first successful Disintegrate!

 

This is very bad. With Malison the driders were susceptible to my web, cloudkill et al, but we were badly positioned and there were too many of them, and you can see Gromnir dire charmed to boot. (There ended up being ab out a dozen driders or more). Our party goes down, down, down...

 

I mean, look at that, 34 slashing damage from one hit. Bloody hell. I actually thought that would be the end of it, but in IWD2 charmed allies still count as living, apparently. There are 2 drider alive in the screen, one almost dead and another badly wounded. We wait for the charm to wear off..

 

Gromnir is da man.

 

It turned out that that battle took care of pretty much all remaining driders in our way. After wasting a lot of money on resurrections and about 10 minutes re-equipping everyone, we're ready to conclude our business. We open with a very nice backstab...

 

...and the Thayan wizard is quickly down, but her special driders come to play.

 

Mkreku nearly dies, but well prepared as we are, this is not too much trouble.

 

There's an awesome bit here where you can use her laboratory not only for the viviscamera poison, but to activate one of the golems and have him fight for you in the Underdark. For some reason, though, even with good alchemy skill Chris Avellone didn't get the option. Ah well...

 

The Viviscamera. I believe the medical term for these is 'fugly'.

 

That's it - the party's been humiliated with actually running away from battle and nearly being wiped out, so I'm gonna have to be more careful from now on. There's still a way to go till the end...

[Oner]

This was Grom's finest hour it seems.

[Gorth]

Insert quote from Churchill's speech here