Icewind Dale II Soloed

It took some time but I finally completed Icewind Dale II with a single character; a drow sorceress as planned. A dark elf because of the ability score bonuses and spell resistance, and a sorcerer as they are easily the best caster class for solo play with their spontaneous casting feature.

During my playthrough I recalled I had actually attempted to solo the game before, with a (female) drow ranger 1/monk 1/dreadmaster of Bane x. I think I got stuck (or just stopped playing) in the Black Raven Monastery's challenge chambers with that. This time I made it to the end, though.

Icewind Dale II's prologue's goblins are funny as they seem to take full damage from everything, which means magic missile one-shots them. Thus the beginning isn't as difficult for a single weak caster as it could easily be. Solo character pushes very quickly ahead of normal level progression and already in the prologue's final battle, my sorceress had it easy.

The most challenging fights were usually the ones after a long journey (8+ in-game hours), which meant nearly all of the protective spells had dropped, and instead of going offensive right away, I had to get buffs up first. Or get hacked into pieces. And getting swarmed isn't exactly that difficult - simple mirror image won't hold forever when there's 10+ mobs surrounding your only character. In Dragon's Eye (a four level mountain/volcano dungeon), there were also dispelling traps, which mercilessly removed all magic effects on my character. They proved to be a huge annoyance, especially the undisarmable, monster-summoning one on the entrance into the third level.

Mostly, however, my sorceress just blasted through stuff pretty easy. When mobs started to have too much health/immunities to damage types, Mass Dominate and Wail of the Banshee quickly ended the battles. There was nice variation how to approach fights, though, and the game didn't get boring at any point.

Also, unlike in Icewind Dale, the final battle wasn't easy. I had to reload many times until I managed to stay away from Isair's strength draining melee attacks, and to do some damage to the siblings to actually end the fight - I had to wait for Isair's and Madae's bubbles to drop. Chain Lightning, Skull Trap, and Horrid Wilting were then the most effective spells to deal damage to them.

Unfortunately, I totally forgot to take screenshots. Here's couple from the character screen, though, to show at least something.

I guess next I should solo the Baldur's Gate trilogy, but that'll have to wait.