Luna

I don't remember the poison... and the thieves were no trouble at all... seriously, they did like, 14 damage from the backstab. i was liek, dude, my dude has 100+ hp, do you really think that'll do much? And they give you so much exp... |D the thieves are easier than the drow... to be honest. the annoying part was the petrification traps and spells that seemed to be all over the flippin place... T.T

I don't remember being able to leave during the ice place... :( Darn wish I'd known that earlier. I never backtracked but still... lol. But yeah, you gotta go real far back from like right before the end of game roadblock to the ice place apparently, which is still pretty damn far. Also, it's still technically backtracking from Dorn's Deep 'cause you go from upper Dorn's Deep, to Wyrms Tooth (the ice place) to Lower Dorn's Deep... sooo yeh... I found Lower Dorn's Deep to be the most exceptionally annoying, partly from the excess of flesh to stone spells that an enemy seems to be able to cast, along with traps of flesh to stone. and you don't get stone to flesh spell until right as you get the last of the stuff for the druid in the arboretum. T.T a.k.a right at the end of the game, and for me at least, AFTER I had already gotten past all the petrification crap. D:< But yeah, you get to do LOTSA runnin around. Have fun! On the bright side, in upper Dorn's Deep you get something REALLY REALLY COOL... in my opinion anyway... oh, and the number of 6th level spells you get in there for your mage... o_O eek. There were so many to choose from... and she only had 1 spell open... it made me sad...

I. Feel. Successful. Finally beat Icewind Dale I, by myself, and I managed the final battle on my second try without anyone dying! :D Better than my dad can say, like 3 of his dudes died, one of which was slaughtered beyond resurrection... but yup, I feel successful. My bard almost died... and my thief almost died... but I saved them and just had them shoot arrows from afar after a bit... to be honest, I can't help but wonder who dealt the final blow. Oh well. Off to Dorn's Deep for you eh? You probably won't get another opportunity to go where you want after you reach the end of Dorn's Deep... I didn't realize that I wouldn't be able to go back until it was too late to... so save often if you're gonna have business in the rest of the world, and trust me, if you want to completely help out that druid in the severed hand, you're gonna need to trek ALL THE WAY BACK OUT from just about the VERY END of Dorn's Deep. Have fun!

I love bards but my dad hates them. He says they're kinda good at everything but not great at anything. I agree, but still keep them around because their great lore means i almost never have to identify anything and i give them some identify spells just in case, and automatic excellent pick pocket skills later plus potential for knock means i can fully invest in finding traps and stealth for my thief. (to deal with stuff like those horrible flesh to stone traps later on... why the game has yet to present the opportunity to obtain a stone to flesh spell yet, i have no clue, but I certainly wish it would.) Plus my bard is my only character that uses long range weapons and can wield a composite bow, i.e seth's bow. Plus all the fun instruments you find for them and bard song. :D

Noooooo! Buy Icewind Dale II!!! It's not as good as Icewind Dale I or either Baldur's Gate game, but it's still pretty good!!! Especially the beginning. The beginning rocks. Oh, and I feel successful because I successfully picked up and started playing MY Icewind Dale I again... aaaand... the first battle I was in failed 2 times... (first my thief died with -10/67 hp... and he's an elf so i can't use raise dead on him... then my mage died and she's an elf too! I WAS JUST LIKE WHY IS THIS GAME KILLING OFF ALL MY ELVES?!?!?) but after that I did really well. And I found all this really cool stuff err... hrm... *cough* not gonna spoil that... :D What I would do for some elven healing wine though, that stuff is so great... |D

I thought there was some stuff in there... pretty sure I found something at least... weird. That tower's fun by the way. If you don't have Icewind Dale II... BUY IT. I'd follow that thread. :D

You get 4 pieces of machinery if I recall correctly, and yes, I am well aware you are doing better than I did... T.T My people had better hp and probably better armor classes than yours and they STILL get creamed. Lucky me. Well, I rarely actually lose, but it's still annoying having to baby my poor mage running around with her like 40-50 hp compared to everyone elses that reaches up to over 100. T_T Curse my horrible luck in absolutely everything. Or maybe it's just a bad idea relying on my mage so much... >.> seeing as my first solution to every battle is GOGOGOGOGOFIREBALLGOGOGOGOGO. :D Which... generally involves putting my mage and my thief on the front lines... my mage to cast, and my thief to show where the enemies are. Aaaand it goes wrong sometimes which quickly dissolves into plan B: gogogo my fighters! Who promptly get whacked... and that's how my battles go! And it works! Mostly. Also: Am I allowed to give my opinion even if I'm not really part of the game? If so, I vote for Furetchen getting the chainmail. Then another front line fighter, which is good. :) Well, for me anyway lol. Also: If you ever get the 4th level spell Otiluke's Resilient Sphere, it is absurdly useful. It basically makes whoever you cast it on freeze, and they are essentially immune to everything as long as the spell lasts. It works really well both to freeze an enemy you don't want to fight right away, OR if one of your dudes is dying you can cast it on them to save them. It has pretty quick casting time too, so you don't need to worry about that a lot.

My epic fails are all Eirika based. First off, she got hit with a 28% chance of hitting and lost like half her hp, then i saw someone else DODGE an attack that had a 27% chance of hitting. >.> 1% means a lot huh? Also, I had her attack Valter because I wanted to know what he'd say to her, and, OF COURSE, she misses, and he crits and kills with a 15% crit. How come MY units never crit with a 15% chance huh? Or at least, nowhere near as much as they SHOULD. T.T Another fail was Marisa, who outclassed Carlyle in every way by the time I got that far, got crit-killed by him as well, when he had like a 53% chance of HITTING. >.< Aaaand I can't remember any epic wins. T_T

I swear, that ENTIRE FLOOR hated me. It didn't help that my mage ran out of spells. :< She also got attacked. So she was running around being useless and trying not to die, while everyone else was dying and my poor poor healer couldn't heal everyone fast enough and I can't remember HOW I SURVIVED THOSE BATTLES. The bladed skeletons screwed me over every time... T.T Also, can you actually drink the wine? I don't think it's even an option...?

That happened to me too! I also managed to get Micaiah to have a speed stat decent enough to double a couple end game characters. :D And what she couldn't double she destroyed with Thani. Epic Fail: I got Edward killed by the 1-1 boss on Normal mode... he had a low hit chance so I wasn't worried but he hit anyway and edward missed. D:< can't remember exact statistics because I raegquit and haven't picked it up since...

Aha, as far as I know, the only time a bottle of wine comes in handy is in Easthaven when this dude asks you for a bottle of wine. If you give a bottle to him, he gives you like 5 gp and experience, so I always do. I think he also gives you a dagger... a useless one, but a dagger nonetheless... and I don't think you get anything for yelling at him not to be a drunk.

Umm... I'm generally bad-mediocre at games (but I try hard so gimme a break huh?) Some games that I LOVE to play and beat OVER AND OVER AND OVER are any golden sun title (currently working through dark dawn and it's everything i'd hoped for and more, despite some rather morbid parts of it...), metroid: zero mission, pokemon (but those games are absurdly easy if you don't play competitively... which I do, and subsequently fail at except in 5th gen because no one knows 5th gen well enough and I crush them with my team that will probably become mediocre when 5th gen really gets kicking competitively... ehehe... Baldur's Gate I and II, and Icewind Dale I & II... and any FE game I have ever gotten my grubby little paws on. (only 4... :'() also, I suck at First Person Shooters, and in real life I'm the clumsiest person with the worst hand eye coordination out of the majority of the people I know... >.>

There's too much to read so I didn't read it all and thereby don't know if this has already been mentioned BUT: Baldur's Gate I Possibly my favorite rpg for the computer. Great story, and everything that, in my opinion, makes those kinds of games great. Problems for most people: It's 10 years old, so most people in my age group haven't heard of it (it came out when I was 5), the graphics by todays standards are HORRIBLE, (but not too shabby for then in my opinion), it's got a D&D label (ooooh it's so "uncool" ...), and if you don't know how to do things, it's really confusing (but for lots of these things, you gotta invest time into it and figure things out. It's difficult at the start especailly if you choose a class like mage, but later, when you actually have allies OTHER than just Imoen who joins at the start, it becomes much easier. I hear lots of complaints about high beginning difficulties, but I've found that in lots of the really good games, you have to stick with it, and I feel like the decline of RPGs is to cater to the staggeringly huge number of people that feel the need for a game that doesn't require that much effort, and in order to do that, the game designers and developers take out a lot of the things that they would put in that makes games great. Maybe the games simply appear to be declining because the people that love the games where you need to put forth effort are still around, while the games that we want become more and more difficult to find because of the majority who don't want a challenge, then perhaps complain because of a lack thereof.

You can always try slow poison first. Neutralize poison is a fail-safe, sure, but if I recall, slow poison is practically instantaneous, and it works for most poisons too. It doesn't always work though so antidotes are better, but when it does work, it saves however many antidotes you need on each poisoning that you cured with slow poison. I've found it works fairly often too, so it's not like you're taking a huge risk using it either...<<Wrote this before I read the stuff about the hold spell Well, since it was presumably injected, rather than ingested, it would effect them because their blood is moving constantly around their body spreading and harming the rest of the body. Assuming that hold spell stops absolutely everything including pulse and stuff, it makes sense that the venom would then fail to do anything. Slow poison still works in that case though! :) Also, I wasn't trying to discourage you from the game, I was encouraging you to be thorough, and you'll thank me later. :P Make sure you pick up absolutely EVERYTHING. I missed something I needed, and the game took MUCH longer than it should have in there. Oh, and take all useless looking items, because if it's not equippable and isn't a bottle of wine, it probably has importance. Ahahaha but elven healing wine is useful too, so pick that up if you find it.

eek. Gone for like 4 days and so manyposts to read... I didn't read all of them and my brain is STILL fried. Methinks I inadvertently opened up a touchy subject?

That place was annoying if only because of something you gotta do later that takes forever if you missed something, and because the fights have huge differences. They're easy one moment then annoyingly difficult the next, though it seems you've already noticed THAT part and your weaker units will be doing lotsa running. oh and be sure your mage never runs out of spells because they make life MUCH easier... until you hit your own party with your fireball of course... and I'm not sure about the chainmail... I don't recall getting any but some treasures apparently change each time you play so might be different for you...also, my dad liked Baldur's Gate better too but he beat both icewind dales and baldur's gate 1 but hasnt managed shadows of amn yet. He couldn't beat the last boss and his computer died so he's playing through again but we haven't played in a bit... I'm currently in the literal last room of baldur's gate 1 but haven't worked up the courage to try it out again yet. Do I have to beat ALL the enemies or JUST Sarevok??? I'd feel much better if it were the latter... on icewind dale I'm a bit further than this but not much... I need to pick up those games again... aand finally: rubble down rubble up stairs up in that order if i recall correctly ;P

Advantages of watching my dad play when I was 9: I now am unsurprised by most developments in both icewind dales and baldurs gates. granted, I forget some stuff but it helps a ton because I can plan what to do next much more easily. :D

Um last I checked Seth is a prepromote so a 20/10 seth is impossible... and back then he wasn't level 5 I'm talking about my current playthrough where he is level 5... sorry if that post was misleading the seth that destroyed the defend chapter in rausten was probably like level 16

I love and hate that fight. I had to do it like 4 times. My final strategy was run like hell, then when they got to me Yxonomei had no more spells and I just fireballed them until every enemy except like Yxonomei and a priest were dead. Then fighters with lots of cleric support... Surprisingly, no one died :D

Gotta say I don't think I've EVER met someone other than my dad who has heard of this game... love this game... shame I only see this now... >_< you're also incidentally at my favorite part of the game. Aaaah good times... I'm totally going to follow this thread now, even though I'm not a part of it...