I've been playing CRPGs since the 1980s. I go back to Ultima I so I'm anything but a newbie. I've played BG on my disc set (plain vanilla) am playing it again with the expansion from the amazingly amazing Diamonds of D&D sale (I bought the lot) but with this game, as soon as I start out, I create my characters, go through town, buy the gear I can afford, and immediately get zonked by the first enemies I meet.

I really want to like this game. I really want to go through the Icewind Dale series, but I can't even get through the first minor battle. While I love the BG games, and Planescape is sheer awesome, it's really hard to get into this one.

I would gladly take any help I can get. Thanks in advance.

Ranged weapons and formations. Make sure your tanks are in the front taking the hits. Have everyone use a ranged weapon of some kind as well.

What is your party make-up (races. classes, etc.)

For the beginning, spells like Sleep, Grease, and Entangle are invaluable. Have your casters use them. There are a number of quests in Easthaven that you can do right away to gain some XP without having to get into any dangerous battles, so make sure to do them. Should get at least a couple members of your party to gain a level.

Use a stealthed character to scout ahead so that you know what to face.

Learn to use the auto-pause fuunctions, especially "pause if enemy sighted".

Keep vulnerable characters out of enemy archers' range.

This game does have a bit of thing with it expecting that you are a power-gamer and create your group according to it. Fing is that on low-levels most multiclassed are useless gits only suitable to die on first hit, as are any mages especially conjurers who dont get the good evocation spells. The game seems to expect that you make atleast three melee characters with high constitution and strength and a cleric to heal them.

For fights it helps if you use your tank character to pull mobs one by one if necessary, or even do a scouting round and reload from quick-save so you can see what you will be againts. Although since there is no aggro-management you need to keep your weak characters away from melee or archers. As you can see the developers of Black Isle really did expect you to power-game it through instead of using a more rp'ish style like in BG. :(

Why would you reload? You send in your stealthed thief or ranger to scout and then plan your tactics based on what you see. No need to cheat.

Change the difficulty to very easy. This way you'll meet less monsters at some locations, they only do half damage and you get double XP.

The game isn't too hard even at normal difficulty. I suspect you accidentally enabled Heart of Fury mode in the configuration.

BG2 maybe, but not BG1. Powergaming BG1 makes it a cakewalk and takes away the challenge and fun. The important thing to remember is that BG1 is a *low level* campaign limiting levels to between 7 and 9, depending on class. IWD actually expects a certain level of powergaming through min/maxing your characters in creation.

Depends on your skill. My first IWD attempt was with a powergaming party and it took me only a handful reloads. My last playthrough was with 6 of the 8 pregenerated characters which are far from optimized and didn't even require a single reload. There are players complaining about the game being too easy and others about the game being too hard. Reducing the difficulty will make it more accessible in this case.

BG1 features many unfair situations like the crazy encounter in front of the Friendly Arm Inn which caused many players to quit for good.

@ kmonster - Familiarity with the games makes it possible to play with less than optimized character. But when you consider the combat heavy plot of IWD, and the better enemy AI (they learned a few things from BG1), pretty much everyone needs a high con, and a high primary stat for their class. This is especially evident in the latter chapters of the main story as well as the expansions. To a certain point even Kulyok does it with her Icewind Dale NPC's mod.

If you want to do an unspoiled no-reload run (or get by with a handful reloads) at normal difficulty it's obvious that you need a very powerful party.

But if you're skilled, enjoy having difficulties and attempting several battles several times and be forced to develop advanced strategies you'll do fine with a less powerful parties.
For emergencies there's still a limited number of potions available to boost your stats, if you start with maxed stats you don't need them.

I found having three (and a half) tanks is pretty useful. The first few times I've played Icewind dale I tried to have two wizards but when I did Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, cleric, thief, mage it was a lot easier! Hack and slash man, thats what its all about. Also, lowering the difficulty helps ;)

I'm going with 4 people. Paladin, fighter/thief multiclass, cleric, mage. It's...hard, but doable. EVERYBODY can do ranged and pepper people as they run to me. I scout ahead a bit with the fighter/thief and then approach in a way that they come at me one after the other instead of converging on me as a mob (when possible at least). I did a LOT of rerolling stats also. Until I could have 18 in 3 abilities and at least 10 in the others. 18 con on everybody. If str is a main attribute, make sure the 18/XX is at least 70. Ranged people are hard to deal with, but as long as my paladin/cleric are the ones tanking, it tends to work out alright. In hard fights, you may have to pause a lot. Don't rely on the AI if the fight is at all difficult. It's slow to react to everything. Level 1 is terribly unforgiving. That's just how the game is. Any boss encounter I try to take out minions and hit and run the bad guy. Silence is a great spell. So is sleep. Really, any spell that incapacitates the enemy is great.

Also, if you right click the formation box, it gives you a list of other formations to choose from. Maybe one of those will suit you more. Also, talk to everybody. There are a lot of quests that give great xp that involve no fighting at all. You have to talk to people. Since most people don't have names when you highlight them, you don't really know who will be useful by looking at them.

Unless you're overleveled, this game is hard to just run in and murder things. A lot of fights are weighted against you in one way or another, whether it be through brute strength or a better spell selection. If you're really having problems, A team of fighters and clerics could probably brute force their way through most any situation just by being tank gods.

At the risk of seeming repetitive I'll add my two cents
1. Don't give up of all the Infinity I like this one best

2. 2 fighter or clerics for your front line these should have a high dex and splint with the large and medium shield I usually have the fighter type specialize in axes so you get a round or two of ranged and still have a shield.

3. everyone else should have a longer ranged weapon slings at a minimum the thrown weapons you need to get to close to use.

4. Make sure auto pause is set for Enemy spotted, Character Injured and target destroyed. The second one lets you know someone is one hit from dieing the last to keep a character from staring off into space while the battle rages.

5. Keep an eye on the message box it tells you who is targeted. the enemies seem to pick the easiest to hit characters unless they can only see your tanks first staggering when you characters arrive gives a little control over who gets mobbed at the cost of not having everyone engaged right away.

6. There are a bunch of quests in town that you should be able to do to get XP and money much like Candlekeep at the start of BG1.

7. Be aware that if a characters target runs away the character will follow the target pretty much ignoring everything else if you don't stop it.

8. Your archers need to kill all enemy archers and spellcasters before they start helping the front line.

Ummmm, I am not trying to be offensive but you do realize you create all (or up to) 6 members of the party upfront, no NPC's join you as you go along. The group I generally use is a Paladin and cleric on the front line, Fighter/Thief and Druid on the second line and a Bard and Mage in back (Check the manual on dual classing usually this is a fighter who becomes a mage). Also mix the races as different races get different reactions and conversations.

Long winded of me and I just repeated what others said mostly but I hope it helped.

Warren1965

this game, Heart of Winter, is far too difficult at the end, in the dungeons.

I have gave up. Can anybody give me any advice please ?

I installed HofW without inputting the party from IWD as i did it a couple of years later.
Is it easier if you carry on from IWD and input the party to HOW ?