Icewind Dale - any pointers?

Apparently my party is lucky they can breathe without hurting themselves, as I am continuing to get trounced every time I cross the bridge by the goblin horde, and it's only the beginning of the game! Is there a trick to winning this fight? Is my party too puny to survive this cold land - two fighters, two mages, ranger and cleric. And if I ever survive, will I be sorry I don't have a rogue? <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/pacify.gif" />

As far as I can remember everyone with ranged weapons got me through where I assume you are fairly easily. You're going to see what happened to the caravan?

I got some way into Icewind Dale without a rogue before I paused to do BG2.

That part was very hard for me, as well. Ironic, eh? Hardest part in the game in the first 5 minutes. Easiest thing to handle them is to lure away a few from the rest.

If you don't have a rogue, you will definitely want some way to find and disarm traps and to open locked chests.

As for your goblins: ranged weapons, lure one or two away from the pack, and run when you get into trouble. Just about covers the whole game

cheers,
jasper

Thanks Peter, Drizzt and jasper for responding. Maybe that's good news then, Drizzt, if I can win this battle. I really don't have the hang yet of working with this large of a party ("Hey, what are you doing over there? Why are you standing with your back to the bad guy!) Peter, I can see where ranged weapons are good here, but it seems I am on top of the goblins before I can use them.

Jasper, can someone else learn those skills in the course of the game? Or would it be much easier to just go back and make up another party?

Ah well, back I go to try my luck with the hit and run!

I'm not real sure what your non-rogue options are, since I am quite partial to their hide in shadows and backstab ability. I think your ranger can hide in shadows, which can help with scouting ahead. I know that mages can learn the Knock spell which unlocks things. Either mages or clerics can have a trap-related spell, but I don't know if it identifies AND disarms or not.

Do you have the Heart of Winter expansion installed? If not, its relatively easy to lure only a few enemies to you one at a time. Put your party somewhere out of range, then slowly move one party member up into visual range of the closest enemy, attack with ranged weapons, then walk your party member back to the party. The enemy will (usually) follow, and then your whole party can attack.

As I recall, this fight is one where you can use the terrain to your advantage. I put some of my party along the cliff top to the right of the bridge and shot down at the goblins in the gully and then approached the ones on the bridge.

If you are having trouble manipulating the 6 member party, set your options to include some automatic pauses. That way you won't get caught by surprise. I'd suggest enabling pause on Enemy Sighted at the very least.

cheers,
jasper

Thanks Jasper, I'm sorry it took me so long to get back to this thread. I did redo my party, since I hadn't done very much yet, to include the rogue. No sense for me to make things more difficult for myself. Many of my party problems are because of me laughing so hard when all of the group troup around together trying to get through the same space...Thanks for the tips, I hadn't set any automatic pauses, didn't even know that I could.

Hope things are going better with the redone party Nickie. I hadn't considered you weren't playing in turn-based mode! I pause on pretty much everything.

Icewind Dale I think there are options you can set to get max hit point gain on levelling up? Something like that - I set such options as it makes for a friendlier game.

Good advice, Peter. I know that its more authentic to just take the chance of the die roll when leveling up, but it makes it much nicer to just set that at Max Hit Points.

You are right, Nickie, that it is comical to see those party members trotting over to cluster round whatever target--that's why they call it melee combat I had one party in Icewind Dale with a dwarf fighter. There was something about the animation of her busily bustling along to dive into a fight that made me laugh all through the game.

I depend on pause and auto-pause to make sense of what's going on in fights. Once I got the auto-pauses set for the right events, the fights become much less frantic.

Let us know how its going.

cheers,
jasper