Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition

I beat the original campaign of Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition at the end of 2021 already but only earlier this year finally returned to do the expansion, Heart of Winter, as well. I've always done the expansion just before beating the main game but this time I decided to do it differently and import my characters to the expansion after defeating Belhifet. That wasn't as smooth of a process as I wanted, and while I did get it sorted out, something else came up and the playthrough went on a hiatus.

Importing annoyance

The reason I did things in a different order is because in the original campaign, past the point of no return (which is when traveling to Easthaven), you can receive the Restored Blade of Aihonen. The sword's "+5 weapon within a dragon's flight distance of Lac Dinneshere" condition seems odd until you learn that it's a hint about the expansion. The sword can be upgraded in Heart of Winter whose final boss also has special dialogue about it. This time I wanted to see that myself.

I suppose you could start a new run on Heart of Fury mode with the sword in your imported inventory and thus be able to have it in the expansion accessed from the main game (from Kuldahar). Maybe that's how it's meant to be done even but I wasn't sure about the difficulty mode: in Icewind Dale II, Heart of Fury mode requires a highly optimized party and it also has special loot, which is not a thing in this one one as far as I know: it's just increased enemy damage and hit points.

The issue I had was that I had forgotten you don't simply import your save into a new run in these Infinity Engine games but do it character by character. That means your party's gold is lost, which was annoying because there are some expensive cool weapons to buy right at the start of Heart of Winter. (I ended up setting my party's gold to what I had had using EE Keeper.) Carried containers aren't included in character exports either meaning I had to reload my final save and go through all the bags and scroll cases and move desired items into the general inventory and then export my characters again. It was just undesired busywork.

Expanded character options

I remember briefly trying this Enhanced Edition in like 2017 or earlier to just see how it was. I however don't remember if Beamdog had back then already unified these re-releases in their rule systems. But that is currently very much the case: You have all the same class and kit choices in Icewind Dale EE as you have in Baldur's Gate EE and its sequel. It's nice because even with Heart of Winter, the rules weren't quite there in the original game. For instance, there was no dual-wielding but rangers got an extra attack per turn when using a one-handed weapon without a shield to make up for the lack of their class feature.

Including Baldur's Gate II's higher level protection removal spells was definitely superfluous though -- against whom are you going to use those? Unless Heart of Fury adds something I don't know about, there are simply no casters the spells would be useful against in this game. But I guess they're there if someone makes a mod or something in which they would come in handy. Icewind Dale also has multitude of useless spells of its own I've never even tried because they seem so weak -- for instance, a whole high level spell slot for like 2d10 damage to a single target?

With so many options this time, deciding my party composition took even longer. To balance out the strength of my party, I for the first time set difficulty slider to max for the additional enemies Insane adds. I didn't want the additional incoming damage hassle though and ticked the box to remove it -- and then the box to remove the extra experience to balance that out. The early game definitely has more enemies on Insane (like more than one ogre in the prologue) but I'm almost certain that the rest of the game had the usual enemies and the run was identical to my usual Core rules runs.

The party

Human Undead Hunter (Paladin)

My party's leader was an undead hunter for the +3 bonus to hit and damage against the many undead in the game. Immunity to hold is useful but level drain is not a thing unlike in Baldur's Gate II. Losing Remove Disease ability isn't great either. Cavalier is usually my choice of paladin kit because you get various great bonuses with the negligible tradeoff of not being able to use ranged weapons. Cavalier might be better than undead hunter even in this game.

Because of the expanded rules and because Icewind Dale's holy avenger is a longsword, my paladin was a dual-wielder. As the eventual second weapon, I used the aforementioned Blade of Aihonen.

Halfling Fighter-Thief

Icewind Dale has this one particular helmet available for purchase in Kuldahar already: Helm of the Trusted Defender which grants +3 to AC and immunity to sleep and fatigue. That's a great piece of gear. However, I recall being disappointed on my very first run two decades ago upon discovering that it is only usable by gnomes and halflings -- races I don't like picking because their character sprites are silly. But since then I've made sure to include one halfling or gnome character just for that helmet.

The thief half was for locks and traps but did bring down combat effectiveness quite a bit. Only being able to put two points into weapon skills makes the multiclass merely adequate as a warrior. Because of the multiclass, I chose to play with a party of only 5 characters to not have this one drag behind too much in levels.

Dwarf Priest of Lathander (Cleric)

Every party needs a healer and a priest of Lathander fits thematically together with a paladin. I had max health on level up setting enabled which made surviving combat easier but healing back to full annoying because healing spells still restore a random amount (outside of Heal). I think I ended up resting more than usual thanks to that.

Elf Archer (Ranger)

An elven archer using a longbow is one of the most powerful characters at low levels. You also cannot overestimate the amount of arrows the character spews through over the course of a dungeon: You need to have several hundreds with you when leaving town.

As racial enemy, I picked cadaverous undead. Skeletal undead would be a good choice too since they tend to be resistant to missile damage.

Half-elf Skald (Bard)

As the final party member I had a bard to be able to actually get the Blade of Aihonen. Bards don't add much to a party on their own but at least you can make them sing their songs to buff your other characters. The special (and only) bard song skalds get maxes out at level 20, giving everyone a +4 bonus to hit, damage, and AC, as well as immunity to stun, fear, and confusion. And that is pretty significant.

Bard is also useful for identifying magic items and for few spell buffs like Haste. You really don't need a full arcane caster in Icewind Dale.

General thoughts

This Enhanced Edition is a solid re-release by Beamdog. There are no highly controversial changes and everything is in there, including the Trials of the Luremaster DLC for the expansion. The Trials weren't too difficult this time around but still a bit too condensed challenge to my liking. In general, Heart of Winter -- and I've mentioned this before -- is not that great of an expansion. While the story in the Icewind Dale games doesn't have much drama or personal motivation even normally, Heart of Winter is just too straightforward of a deal; much purer Dungeons & Dragons dungeon crawling than the BG series.

One of the EE features I started to really like in this one is how picking up a piece of equipment in inventory highlights the characters that are able to equip it. That's a nice little addition.

Icewind Dale is a great game but I've definitely played through it way too many times to enjoy it as much as I used to. I think I'm also less into isometric roleplaying games these days though I do still enjoy building characters and good stories. But back in the day, I played games like Icewind Dale in a much more perfectionist way, truly considering my tactics. While I still sneak in to disarm traps beforehand and such, I find myself just rushing in without too much thought.

I started a run in Baldur's Gate II Enhanced Edition a year ago too but that game I've played even more than this one. Even with the enhanced features it is still the same game and I ended up pausing the run. The new Beamdog companions are in the sequel too, still sticking out like sore thumbs.