combat

I'm new to AD&D computer games and am wondering how you go about doing the combat in icewind dale.

Beware of rushing at a foe to take him on in melee. The game is designed so that rushing one foe will reveal several others, and then you'll have to fight them all at once. Instead, let foes come to you if they will, and use only ranged weapons or long-range magic if they won't.

That's the basic idea. There are several ways to expand on it. Many players use a scout. Ideally, a scout will find one foe at a time for you to fight. If it's the sort of foe that will follow you, the scout could lead it back to the rest of the party. Or if the foe won't follow, the scout could start the ranged weapon attack while the rest of the party moves into position. Many players even use a thief hidden in shadows (essentially invisible) as a scout, so the scout can just wait there invisibly while the rest of the party moves up. You need a thief with high stealth skill to make this work.

When you get to higher levels, there are other things you can do with an invisible scout, like find a group of foes and "spot" for a mage throwing fireball or some similar area effect spell.

Don't overlook the various magical enhancements a magic-user can give your party. They can help a lot. Also, when you get a couple levels, you can animate undead or summon various creatures to form a sort of shield between you and your foes. Summoned creatures don't do much damage, but the dumber opponents will attack them instead of your party, giving you time to kill them with ranged weapons. I use magic only on special occasions -- because I don't like resting every two minutes -- but how much you use it is really just a matter of playing style.

I don't use the AI. I turn it off (lower right corner). When I want to attack, I pause (spacebar), select the whole party (the = key), and click on one foe. That is, I generally attack one foe at a time, regardless of how many are attacking me. I have autopause set for when the target dies. That way I know exactly when to select a new target. Most of my party uses ranged weapons most of the time. Usually I have at most one character using a melee weapon.

[Saberlayne]

Sibley,

When you mentioned using a thief as a scout to "spot" for a mage throwing a fireball, what did you mean exactly? That sounds very interesting and I would like to try that style of combat.

Thanks...

What he means, is that you have your thief hide in shadows, and sneak into a room where there are lots of monsters. Since the monsters are now within the thief's line of sight, they can also be selected as targets by any of your other characters as well. So what you do, is either cast Protection from Fire on your thief, or make sure he's out of the fireball radius (but still able to see at least to the center of the monster pack), then select your mage, cast the fireball, and target a monster or spot on the floor that's in the middle of alot of other creatures. The mage will only come close enough to cast, and will then unleash the spell upon the poor creatures, decimating many of them before they have a chance to react.

A cheesy alternative is just to position your mage so that a monster is right on the edge of his line of sight, and then cast the fireball there. Since none of the other monsters are within his view, they won't even react to being fireballed to death.

[Saberlayne]

Thank you Wretched for the description of using a thief for "spotting", that sounds like a good strategy...

Or one strategy is to go out in threes. You have two range fighters and a melee fighter on both teams. What you would do is have them split off and get your ranged fighters attack one by one and have your melee fighters finish off those who have been hit by the arrows. You sweep on the opposite side with your other team doing the same thing. I was surprised when I first did that because I was getting frustrated in Vale of Shadows before you get to Kessalach (sp?) with the swarm of imbued wrights and mummies and skeletons. Changed strategies time after time. It works quite well.

Hope this helps.