Hello.
Of all the good new features added by HoW to ID (I have copies of both), there is one which I can not stand, and this has resulted in me playing the vanilla Icewind Dale: the changing of the weapon sprites, so that they have that funky Baldur's Gate 2 look. (Okay maybe I'm only referring to the shields). What are your opinions regarding vanilla Icewind Dale vs Icewind Dale with Heart of Winter installed. Also, is there a file somewhere which I can change to have all the extra features minus the shields?

Thank you,
Tuco

Hi Tuco, [img]graemlins/happywave.gif[/img]

From purely a gameplay perspective, HoW is far superior. It adds great features and spells to druids and bards, giving significant power to what were mediocre classes in the vanilla version. I'm also a big fan of the Call to Arms feature, which draws all the nearby enemies if one enemy spots you - in addition to being much more realistic, it makes it a lot easier to trap a whole bunch of enemies. [img]smile.gif[/img] HoW adds lots of equipment, including all manner of magical items, weapons, armour, etc, in addition to the critical inventory management items - potion bags, scroll cases, and gem bags.

As for the changing of the weapon/shield sprites, I honestly didn't notice the difference when I installed HoW - I'd played IWD 2 times through before I got HoW.

I'm not much into fiddling with graphics, etc, so I'm the wrong person to answer your question about removing the change to the shields. I imagine the HoW readme probably mentions the change, which could at least give you a starting point. Azred, Dundee Slaytern, or Grog might know more about it.

Maybe this mod is what you're looking for?

http://www.gibberlings3.net/impbams/index.php

Thank you for finding this modification, ZFR, however I installed HoW, then this mod, and the shields and helmets had changed to the newer version (as well as quite a few animations). I'm still not sure what this mod does, however it didn't fuction as I'd hoped and the shield spritesremain unsatisfying.