<font color = mediumspringgreen>Yeeee HAH!

I finally finished IWD with my first party. (Actually, mostly my second party: Most of the first is still in Severed Hand.) It amazes me: I joined the IronWorks forum for the purpose of getting help with IWD. That was in Feb 2001: 18 months ago!!

Has any other slow-poke taken this long to finish the basic IWD (i.e., not having also traveled into HoW first)? I know of one guy on the forum who claimed to do it over one weekend with almost no sleep and only short breaks to run to the fridge for snacks. What kind of times did the rest of you get?

I have no desire, at the moment, to do BG or IWD II. Now that I've seen the end of the IWD game, I'm picking my party back up from just before entering RBP's chamber. They'll get to fight these battles again, but first, a detour to Lonelywood and beyond...

What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party on!!
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<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00"> Congratulations NobleNick! It usually takes me about a month to three to finish a game of IWD with HOF (about 40 hrs). I guess it could be done in a weekend but I don't think I have the stamina to do the weekend thing.</font>

[ 08-25-2003, 11:35 AM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

Congratulations!

I'm on the three to five month plan. I don't think I could manage the game in a weekend, even if I wanted to. As it is, my eyes bug out after a long, one evening session.

How was your final battle? How did it compare with the fight with Malavon?

I picked up BG from a discount rack about six months ago and haven't installed it. I hear it's great and look forward to playing it, but wanted to take another trip through the Dale first.

Lymond

It took me about a month to complete IWD and I had over 1890 days. I was a bit disappointed with the last fight because I play quite tactically and none of my crew got killed. I didn't even use bull-up potions because I "don't believe" in such stuff. All it took is a few spirit essences and healing potions for my tank and necro. But after I finished it Live Mode (mega hard, no max HP's per level-up, no saves, no cheats, no bugs, no exploits) with a single fighter/necro(he wasn't actually necromancer but I focused on those spells) the feeling was great. It took me two shos because my character got petrified in lower dorn so i had to do it all over again. The Live Mode was about three weeks and 900 days. Now that last battle was hard. Very.

<font color = mediumspringgreen>Pritchke, Lymond,

Thank you. It feels really good to have finally finished.

Bones, Sounds quite impressive. I am afraid an effort like that, if I could even pull it off, might cost me my marriage!

Lymond, Last battle: (spoilers coming)

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First off: I found both the first fight with RBP and the last battle with big B to be harder than fights with Malavon. I had to reload twice for both of the big end-game fights, which is the same thing I had to do with Malavon; but I did it for Malavon because he managed to kill one character. RBP and Big B each slew my entire party (or would have) on at least one occasion per NPC.

For RBP, I found the best route to be direct assault (since RBP seems to be able to endlessly summon nasty guys). Just before the fight, I positioned summoned monsters next to RBP; then cast improved invisibility on my four front-line guys and sent them near to where I knew RBP would dimension door. Then I opened the fight dialogue with my mirrored, blurred and stoneskinned Bard. The idea was to use the Bard as a diversion to pull the baddies away, then beat the undefended RPB to a pulp with my four best melee guys while the mage stayed out of harm's way. The diversion didn't work too well; but the residual protection from the improved invisibility protected my melee guys well enough, and they forced RBP's second (and final) dimension door very quickly.

For the Belhifet, after two unsuccessful attempts, I took him down in a 45 minute fight by:
1.) Using Haste, Recitation, Improved Invisibility, AND Remembering where the dis-spell traps were! (I searched for them in the previous lost attempt; and the locations of these six (6) traps are easy to remember, since they are a symmetrical part of the floor design.
2.) Ganging up 3 to 4 of my best fighters on one iron golem, then the next, then Belhifet.
3.) Using whomever Belhifet attacked to run him around in circles. Ditto for the second iron golem, before we took the first one down.
4.) Watching/Timing very carefully for Big B's spell casting (he was fairly predictable), and running my melee guys out of harm's way just before Infernal Conveyance (IC) (or his other "Flame-Strike-like" fire spell) hit.

This fight was the most challenging and satisfying of the game. It was fun orchestrating my party in a ballet of "attack, buff and avoidance:" attacking the designated target while avoiding all other monsters, buffing the party without getting them all toasted with a flame spell AND avoiding the disspell traps with my buffed characters. I used the whole floor, almost as effortlessly as Big B. ... and never set off a trap!

I started the fight by spreading my party to roughly evenly spaced points on the outer circle (adjusted somewhat to avoid traps along the way), to avoid an expected fire spell (that didn't come); and had the Bard cast stoneskin and mirror image on herself before starting up on the War Chant. As soon as B. started one of his early IC spells, I started a Recitation and danced the other members to within range of the spell just as it finished. Both golems (one at a time) fell amazingly easily to the team effort of 3-4 well equipped bashers under the influence of recitation and war chant. And with one guy at about 90% HP, and everyone else at 100%, it was time for the main event...

Re-using the tactic from when I had cast Recitation (which spell was still active at the end of the fight), my mage Hasted the entire party; and I sent the front-line four after B. My mage cast Improved Invisibility on each of the four melee guys as they danced by (giving them an additional 4 point bonus to AC and 2(?) point bonus to saving throws, even though they were still attacking). Meanwhile, the Bard continued singing the War Chant. And...

Big B. started taking Big-Time damage: to the tune of 50-70 points/round (for those rounds that we were in full melee contact)! By watching closely, I could dance the melee guys away from Big B's IC, and only got scorched once or twice. I never needed to use a healing spell (though I had 3 TOTAL healing spells and other lesser ones available). When Big B. went down, one of my melee guys was at about 40% HP, another was about 60% and the rest were 100%. It felt so good to be chasing his sorry butt around instead of vice versa. After getting so outrageously crushed in the first two fights, this victory was exquisitely delightful.

What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party on!!
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[ 08-25-2003, 05:48 PM: Message edited by: NobleNick ]

<font color = lightgreen>Time flies when you're having fun! [img]graemlins/awesomework.gif[/img] </font>

A bit [img]graemlins/offtopic.gif[/img]

Congratulations! [img]graemlins/thewave.gif[/img]


Try BG series now. I think you will like it. Altough it is a little less combat oriented.

Good job, IWD was my first FR game and had zero clue what I was doing. Lol, in the end I became so frustrated I imported 6 dwarven fighters and took big B down in less than 5 seconds...no seriously... ;)

<font color = mediumspringgreen>Malavon's Rage,

Yes, as fond as I am of "magic power" in IWD, I have to admit that there are times --and the fight with Belhifet is definitely one of those times-- when there is just no good substitute for swinging steel.

The story of Belhifet and the six (angry) dwarves: Slicer, Dicer, Chopper, Crusher, Muncher, and Slash. Heh, heh, too funny. Reminds me of Midget Gems and his all-halfling crew. After you proved to yourself that he wasn't invincible, did you ever get around to taking Big B. down with your own party?

What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party on!!
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