Good Fight!

Man, just got done with the Heart Gem quest and I have to say that that dungeon is the best one I have been in so far out of all infinity engine games I have played. The best one wasnt the odd little girl fight at the end though. It was the Library. Thought I would never figure out a good strategy. The first time I talked to the main guy at the front my Paladin figured out who he was right away and that made it difficult since everyone immediately attacked me instead of allowing me to get to the prisoners for some backup. But that was probaly one of the best battles Ive been in.
Ive heard many people post about having problems with the odd little girl(not even going to try and spell her real name!!), but that ended up being a very simple fight. I just used my thief to draw her spells and then eventually her out so I could gang up on her one on six. Then just cleared up the rest of the room. Overall very fun.
On a side note, I have never read any of the Icewind Dale books but just realized the name I gave my fighter is Rothgar! Didnt even realize the similarities until recently!

I liked the library fight as well, though I did release the prisoners in time for them to save my hide. With them cutting a swath through the priests, my characters were free to take down the Yuan-Ti. Eventually, I think I PO'd one of my allies with an errant fireball, because they turned on my party and we were forced to take them down. By that point, however, the bulk of the enemy's forces had been dispatched, and we just had to kill off a few straggler trolls and yuan-ti before we had located the Summoner.

Overall a very intense fight! There are some more great ones down the line, though... but I won't spoil those for you.

Hey!

I thought that the allies were supposed to pony up a sword that did some fire damage! I think I read that in a tip somewhere...Anyway, I missed that the first time through, and was really feeling the loss trying to do in the Trolls, relying on my thief's fire dagger to eventually do it's thing once the Trolls were down. The second time through, though, I payed close attention in the library, and thought for sure I saw one of the NPC's using a weapon that had a distinct orange glow! After it was all said and done, the ungrateful bastard just wandered away after some token thanks.

Did I miss something? Was he supposed to give me his weapon?

No, he doesn't just give you his weapon. But if he dies you can get it from his death pile. This is problematic, because foes on this level will always attack your party instead of the adventurers (so the adventurers take little damage) and will not fight at all if you aren't watching. This would seem to mean you have to kill him yourself to get the sword, and some players do so.

However, I had my party hide in the adventurers' room, out of harm's way. And I left my thief hidden in shadows outside. Because I had an invisible observer, the Yuan-Ti and the adventurers fought quite a bit, and the adventurers died fairly quickly. Mostly the adventurers killed the humans, only a couple Yuan-Ti, so I didn't even lose too many experience points. You don't get exp for foes killed by the adventurers. The only problem I had at all was picking up Albin's key from his death pile. I didn't know where he died, so I had to do a pixel search in a big pile of bodies.

The downside to having the adventurers dead is that you can't rest on this level. If they are alive, they will watch while you sleep.

And then when you rest, you wake up and they've boogies off to greener pastures and taken their goodies with them! I knew I should have fragged them when I had the chance.....

Hehe. Yeah, those adventurers did have some good loot, which I was able to find out not because I decided to attack them, but because they turned on me! It was kindof an interesting way to go, because they helped me with the hardest part of the fight, then I got to kill them, take their loot, and use it against whatever was left of the enemies.

I never got to find out that they let me rest, but I would just go back up one level to where the captives were, and I was able to rest there... but of course, not without occasional interruption.

Grinch, just so you don't feel so bad--the name Hrothgar came before the Icewind Dale novels, too. He was one of the main protagonists in the epic Beowulf, which is, in my opinion, the FIRST D&D story (written around 1000 A.D. in old English, I believe--perhaps earlier)--a very popular name for RPGs, I think; if you've seen the movie "The 13th Warrior" with Antonio Banderas, then you've already met Hrothgar, because the author of that story practically stole the entire Beowulf plot and slightly changes the names of the main characters (including, of course, Hrothgar and Beowulf).

I knew there was something familiar about the name Hrothgar. I'd read Beowulf about 6 years ago and the name was just plaguing me.

Anyways, I'm about to head into what i've heard described as one of the most annoying parts of the game with the Trolls and that chick that you can only hit with +2 weapons. Well i have 2 questions ... First of all, the only fire spell i have is a level 4 druid spell "call fire" which i can only use once before resting, and my only weapon is a Bastard Sword +1 with a 25% chance of doing fire damage. With that said, am i just going to have to keep hacking at the "dead" troll bodies until i get within that 25% margin and actually hit them, or is there an easier way of setting their bodies on fire?
And second, if you can only hit this chick with +2 weapons or better .. when are they going to supply me with some of these? No one sells them yet and i haven't found any weapons that do more than +1. Where are they?

Now i know i'm not far enough into the game to appreciate some of the finer battles to come, but i'd say having 2 mummies (hard enough on their own!) come at a party of 4 with only 1 melee fighter and about 25 skeletons (some archers) surrounding them is a pretty good fight. (not to mention the imbued wights waiting to tackle what's left of me)

First off, since you're running a party of four, you have to expect the early part of the game to be a bit hard. You're not far enough in yet to have significantly higher levels in your party to make up for two missing members. It will likewise get hard again as you near the end, where a couple more levels won't matter much -- because you don't get much progress in your characters at those high levels. Level 10 characters are about the point for this. A party of 6 gets to level 10 roughly when they start chapter 6.

If you really got surrounded by 25 skeletons, you're doing it wrong. Do not charge at foes. Wait for them to come to you. If they won't come to you, use ranged weapons.

Some +2 weapons are indeed for sale in Kuldahar. You can buy two axes, a flail (I think), and a spear that are all +2 or better. There's a broadsword +2 (Erevain's Broadsword) on the first level of Dragon's Eye, an axe +2 (Defender) on the second level, and much more good gear on the next two levels. This is all before you enter the fifth and final level. You might not have quite enough +2 weapons for everyone, but you should have a few you can use. Also, you will find some +2 arrows and a few +2 bullets before you have to do the big battle. No +2 bolts, though.

You should have some fire potions (from the lizard priests on the first Dragon's Eye level) that you can use to deal with the trolls you find. Also some Arrows of Fire. And you can buy a couple different kinds of fire potions in Kuldahar. Without a mage, you have to expect difficulties, and trolls are going to be one of them. The bastard sword with 25% fire damage will work, but not terribly well. Trolls can save against the fire damage, and even if they don't the sword will often do too little damage to kill them. You'll have a few trolls getting up again before you can kill them if you rely only on the sword.

You can try to get a stack of three or more almost dead trolls and then use your one fire spell on them. That will work to kill them all at once, but it's quite a nuisance making the stack in the first place.

BTW, acid works just as well as fire.

Is it my imagination or has the Arrow of Piercing gone through a more of a damage increase from BG? I've used that more than any arrows (other than the acid arrows), and they do a lot more damage than the arrow +2. I was dumfounded when I used that arrow of piercing on a snow troll (not the ice ones) and it killed them! Hmm, a bug? Also the Arrow of Piercing is the only arrow to do damage on the final boss. I don't know because the arrow of piercing was rather unimpressive in BG. I've bought all of the Piercing or collected them all and used it with the fast bow...it rocks!

Can anyone figure out the HP of the enemy? Is there such list? I'm replaying IWD to get the strategy going of attacking foes strategically.