After many years and multiple save loses due to crashing hardrive's I'm going to start my adventure in Icewind Dale once again. This post will be a running Progress of my party's adventure and as such may have little to no interest to others. I remember being almost to the end of this game but never going to Heart of Winter or Trials of the lure master.

I will continue with My party of adventurers with the save that I last created who knows when. It appears I start my adventure in the Vale of Shadows with characters around level 2 so lets see what type of characters I'm working with.

Palianna - Lawful Good - Human - Female - Paladin (2)
STR 18/00, DEX 12, CON 18, INT 10, WIS 14, CHA 17.

Clerance - Chaotic Good - Human - Male - Cleric (3)
STR 14, DEX 15, CON 18, INT 10, WIS 18, CHA 10.

Rango - Chaotic Good - Elf - Female - Ranger (2)
STR 18/40, DEX 19, CON 17, INT 11, WIS 18, CHA 10

Illef - Lawful Evil - Gnome - Male - Illusionist (1) / Thief (2) Multi-Class
STR 10, DEX 18, CON 18, INT 19, WIS 14, CHA 10

Druidia - True Neutral - Half-Elf - Female - Druid (2)
STR 12, DEX 16, CON 17, INT 10, WIS 18, CHA 15

Abjuna - Neutral Evil - Human - Male - Abjurer (2)
STR 10, DEX 18, CON 18, INT 18, WIS 16, CHA 10

Normally I would create a new party after restarting a game but I feel that would set me back again as I have a decent base going already. Not a big fan of the generic naming scheme I went with but it will have to do, Onward!

I think you can change your character's names with the Dale Keeper savegame editor.

(I'm not good with coming up with names myself, so I usually use fantasynamegenerators.com.)

Thanks for the suggestions!

The Vale of Shadows has been cleansed! I had forgotten how much fun spelunking through these dungeons is.

Palianna the Paladin serving up as the main tank reached the level of 5.
Clerance the Cleric spent most of the encounters as off tank with spot heals in critical spots reaching level 5.
Rango the Ranger was bringing the rain hailing arrows and knocking off foes like a champ reached level 5 as well.
Illef the Illusionist/Thief popped some locks and busted some arrows while spotting some key spells to reach level 4 and 5 respectively.
Druidia the druid backed up the party and really started to shine when she got access to both entangled and spike growth for softening up large groups and alicorn lance for making those toughies easier to hit. The druid reached level 6!
Abjuna the abjurer blasting fools has access to level 3 spells but I have not located any reached level 5.

The nice thing is that the illusionist and Abjurer have different schools of magic blocked so there's little conflict in spell scrolls.

Everyone's stocked up and its off to The Temple of the Forgotten God to find the Hearthstone Gem!

I actually never thought of the idea of using 2 mages with different specializations. (Probably because I prefer multi-classed characters.)

Putting this play through on hold to venture into The Temple of Elemental Evil with Co8 new content mod!

Still have not gotten back to this game playing ToEE and Oblivion but considering changing my party lineup when I finally do start it again... That's probably why it takes me so long to restart this game.