Continuing from IWD to HoW (minor rant)

[Hayashi]

I finished IWD over the weekend, defeating you-know-who. I thought the game would transport me to Kuldahar so that I could carry one with HoW, but after the epilogue movie, it just dumped me to the main menu!
So I started an "expansion only" game and used the previous IWD party. But I found that all the scroll cases, gem bags and potion cases were gone from the party's inventory!
So now I've started HoW just before the final portion in Lower Dorn's Deep that triggers the end game of IWD. Somehow it just doesn't seem right, from a role playing perspective, to suddenly put the IWD quest on hold while I trek back to Kuldahar to see what the shaman wants of me.
Any thoughts?

[Debaser]

Considering the fact that I'm still playing Icewind Dale through for the first time (my party is nearing the fight with Yxonumei) my i guess my thought on that is "i'll keep it in mind." sucks from a roleplaying perspective though.

[Micah Foehammer]

I don't know .... Durlag's tower and the Island don't fit seamlessly into the storyline of BG1 for that matter, but they were still fun to play.

All of these games are pretty linear, so its kind of nice having a diversion from the main plot line besides these little Fed-ex quests that are always popping up.

You always have the option to play HOW as a separate game entirely. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[koz-ivan]

yeah, it's screwy and it gets worse with totl i think you have to tackle that one sometime in the first 2/3rds of how or you get end movie - > kuldahar.

[Alaan the Bold]

Yes, I was alittle surprised that I lost all of my potion, gem and scroll cases too when I started HoW. Plus, I noticed all of the "bad guys" were much tougher also. I love my resurrection spell! However, it seems that my paladin gets his butt kicked on a regular basis!

[Ronn_Bman]

The best thing is to save before the final battle at the stairs where you use the badges. Go back to town and then onto the expansions. That way you keep all of your items. You play the expansions, then head back for the final battle.

From the RP aspect, I just thought about it like heading to town to "stock up" and rest before the toughest leg of my journey and getting side tracked, which happens often in these games. [img]smile.gif[/img]

One odd thing I did notice was some of my items couldn't be used together anymore. I finished IWD months ago, but kept my save games. I bought HoW and downloaded TotLM. I installed and patched everything correctly. I thought I'd get used to my characters again and switched a few items around. I found that some rings and other items I was wearing with certain armors couldn't be put back on after removing them. They work fine together as long as I don't take them off. My characters were outfitted just as they were before using the badges to head into the final battle of IWD. These items were not hacked on, either. Anyone else notice this?