Great, that clears things up. Cheers!
Time to start rolling a decent party then!

I've just completed Chapter 2 on my permadeath run and here's some feedback: Let's say it's a mixed bag.

My party at the start was:

Human Paladin
Human Ranger 3 -> Cleric
Human Fighter 6 -> Druid
Halfling Fighter/Thief
Gnome Fighter/Illusionist
Half-Elf Bard

I rolled pretty good stats for all of them and the Prologue and Chapter 1 were both very easy. The only somewhat close to death situation I had was in one of the Vale of Shadow dungeons when my already bruised Thief triggered a trap while stealthing ahead and went down to a couple of hp. I have since become more careful and hadn't had any other problems with traps. In fact, the whole super careful inching ahead approach made Chapter 1 so trivial that it was somewhat detrimental to the actual gameplay. Combat is usually best when you fight larger groups and you have to make use of buffs, spells, positioning and so on but my permadeath caution almost inevitably means exploiting the AI by pulling single monsters to my group waiting to simply shoot them. Still fun due to the higher stakes, but the constant tension combined with rinse and repeat fights is pretty exhausting.

So by the time I played the first floor of Dragon's Eye I started to become a little bit bored and cocky. The Trolls had high AC and went down easy, Lizard melee guys were weak and the Shamans only used Dispel on my unbuffed party. Alas, when I decided to just rush that weak Lizard King those Shamans suddenly pulled "Hold Person" and "Silence" out of their Lizard bums. Trying to protect my helplessly held Cleric, my stupid Paladin got caught in the Web my own Mage had cast before becoming silent and useless. Well, the Paladin made a sacrifice befitting his character class I guess and at least the other 5 survived. It did sting though when I picked up his belongings and realized that he had worn that Frostmaiden Mantle with 3 charges of "Free Action"...Oh well, my Bard has 18 Charisma so the Paladin was kinda superflous anyway and I replaced him with a pure Gnome Fighter who, by the end of Chapter 2, is really not missing the 35000XP gap he has to the rest of the party.

The other 4 floors all went well and the encounter design was significanty improved over Chapter 1. Plenty of encounters where engaging one monster triggers all in that room and the difficulty was almost perfect. Also, on those floors the extra threat of permadeath started to add something to the game and made me much more willing to spend ressources like potions and wands that I usually just collect and never use. No character ever came really close to death, but I had a couple of situations where I had the game paused for quite some time to figure out how to minimize the risk to my party instead of just going the trial and error and reload route.

And then came Yxunomei. I had wonderfully scouted ahead and disarmed all traps in that room. Pulled his goons and priests towards my party and each other with a bunch of summoned beetles before the fight even began. Opened with 2 overlaying Webs that caught them all and when Yxunomei came forward and started casting I had my Bard and Mage interrupt with Magic Missiles. Well, according to the log Yxonomei seems to be immune to Magic Missile and was thus able to cast. And cast she did. Cloudkill. And my Mage went from full health to 0. The log simply said: "Death". Not even a saving throw was displayed. According to the manual my Level 6 Fighter/Illusionist had a -4 save vs. poison that she apparently failed. Meh. Gotta say, that one felt very cheap. Without meta knowledge I don't think I could've known about the magic immunity + Level 5 insta kill spell. The other death was totally fine and my own fault, but this one seems to point to a design that assumes the player will make use of reloads. A reasonable assumption of course but not good design for permadeath.

I'm not sure now how I will proceed with this. The mage itself wasn't all that great and if I go Fighter -> Mage with a very early switch the XP should not be a problem. Spell availability is another matter though. Do you find many copies of the same spell or are some of the spells like "Haste" gone for good now?
What about that Yxonomei encounter: Was it as cheap as it feels to me or was it more stupid than I realize to even have my Mage within range of any possible spell? I mean, I never expected a 1 hit death spell to be even possible at that stage but maybe that was foolish.
Do you think it's generally possible to have your whole party survive on the first try just by being cautious or do you think the encounters, boss fights in particular, are clearly designed with reloads and/or meta knowledge in mind?

Alright, I have now finished my permadeath run including Heart of Winter and Luremaster. Not much interest apparently so I'll keep it short.

All in all I had 4 deaths:

1. The Paladin at the Lizard King in Dragon's Eye. Entirely my fault. Replaced by a pure Fighter who was soon stronger than the Paladin could've ever been.
2. The Fighter / Illusionist to Yxunomei's Cloudkill. Very cheap as described. Replaced by Fighter 2 -> Mage to get him up to speed asap. Also probably a better choice than the original multiclass and spell selection never became a problem.
3. The Fighter 6 -> Druid on HOW's Burial Isle to a no save death spell by the Wailing Virgin boss. That one felt even cheaper than the Yxunomei death. Since it was already late in the game and the Druid was not essential I didn't replace him and never really missed anything.
4. The Bard in one of the gem caves in the Caverns of the Luremaster dungeon to some Harpy fire spell. That one was very much my own fault for underestimating the number of enemies there. Again no replacement since it was at the very end of the game and the 4 remaining members of the party were easily strong enough to do the rest alone.

So it certainly works to play the game hardcore even without meta knowledge but I don't think I would really recommend it. The boss fights in particular aren't that well designed anyway and permadeath can easily make them frustrating. It also doesn't help that 90% of encounters are rather trivial but you still have to move slowly to mitigate the risk of running unprepared into the 10% of challenging fights. In more shortform roguelikes that's great, but over the massive length of IWD it becomes boring after a while. That said, it's still a really good game and I'm already thinking about trying out Heart of Fury mode soon.

Sorry for not replying to your previous post. I was actually quite interested, but needed to get at some other things before replying and one thing led to another. Turns out I forgot all about replying. Anyway, thanks for the updates. Interesting sounding run and I'm actually inspired to try something like that myself at some point (currently doing a run with no Human characters just for yucks and grins).

I don't mind scouting around in the game. It gives my thief a real purpose and I like trying different things after determining exactly where the enemies are situated.

Re the boss fights - yes, some have some rather questionable tactics that the designers use. I don't care for that 'mechanic', as it feels way too cheap. Then again, we players often use some cheap tactics, so I guess it balances out. Overall though I love the game (hell, I keep playing it over and over, so that says something for it, I guess).

While that works in some areas, it certainly doesn't everywhere in the game. You can get yourself waxed pretty quickly if you try that in some places without preparing yourself for an onslaught beforehand (think the spiders in the second level of Dragon's Eye or the central portion of the Orc cave at the beginning of the game). There are several areas where you can get into a lot of trouble if you just assume you can draw out one enemy at a time.

That's what you use summoning spells for. ;)

I think for the nth run permadeath should work beautifully so you should very much try it out. Pretty much all my criticism regarding ultra slow pace and the handful of cheap boss spells disappears with some meta knowledge, yet you still gain the extra bit of tension that comes with added risk.

Regarding the cheap spells: I don't even mind the mechanics themselves, it's really just a problem with the build up to the boss encounters. According to a guide I read after my Druid died, the Wailing Virgin boss only casts the death spell if the fight goes on for too long. It would've been pretty simple to give the player some in world hint about that. NPC dialogue, a scroll or book, a riddle somewhere. An attentive player would then know he works against the clock and the same spell could even add to the encounter.


The weird thing is how inconsistent the "call for help scripts" are implemented in the game. Apparently they were added with the HOW expansion but only J.E. Sawyer used them in the parts he designed while the other guys did not in theirs. Such a little addition but with such a big impact.