Hey!
My girlfriend and I recently picked up the Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition and Baldurs Gate 1 Enhanced Edition in the Sale. We would like to start playing one of these in Co-Op Mode. We have zero experience with D&D games, so we wanted to ask you, which one of both you would recommend to play first. How do these games play in Co-Op mode? Do we play the campaign and each of us control some characters or do we play just on the world-map but without the main quests available? Are they easy to set-up? I searched the forum for Co-Op/Mulltiplayer, but mostly found topics of 2010

Thank you in advance!

Best Regards!!

I suggest Baldur's Gate. The early encounters there can be deadly if you are not used to the genre, but the early encounters in IWD can be absolutely lethal, particularly since you are low on cash at the start of the game. BG lets you learn tactics more gradually.

Re: coop, mechanically it works fairly well in either, though there are more cramped corridors in parts of BG1. When you get to these parts, it often makes sense to have characters "Follow" another character, rather than trying to deal with pathing issues. (When someone ahead of you walks through a door, and the computer says, "Aha! That way is blocked. I'd better go the long way around rather than waiting the one second it will take to clear the door.")

Gameplay-wise, BG can be the more irritating. There are a bazillion people to talk to, and everything you do is interrupted by dialogs the other player has.

The same quests appear in either mode of play. In BG1, you should limit yourself to one character each, and round out your party in the game with NPCs. This gives you access to other subquests you cannot get if you don't have those characters in your party. In IWD, fill up every slot.

Hey, thank you for your answer! Definitly considered your information. I also posted in the Baldurs Gate Forum. We did go with Icewind Dale, because we thought that the more combat intensive style of Icewind Dale would fit the Co-Op Mode more. Because of our total lack of D&D Knowledge, some of the earlier fights were very messy, but after like about one and a half week we are now @the start of the six chapter.

Just if you are interested which party we took:

Barbarian (me)
Skald(Bard Kit) (me)
Clreic (me)

totemic druid (she)
Ranger (she)
Dragon-Breath Mage (she) (dont know the english name for it, we play on german :>')

After the second chapter we were so frustrated because of all the traps and chest we could not loot. We researched a bit and the result was: Our Humans could not Dual/Multi Class into a Thief because our only Human was the Totemic Druid...
Well we decided to kick the Skald(we felt like he had the least impact and i kinda screw up his stats and gave him only 13 intelligence) and created a new LVL1 Thief/Mage Multi Class Character. In the beginning of the third chapter it was funny, because he run arround with 7 HP and for the first few hours his job was to hide as best as possible :D
He catch up very nice on the experience and i put all the Thief Points into Lockpick and Disarm Traps and so far he has done a very good job. So i guess, if anyone of you is a new player and kind of screwed his start party, dont be scared to just delete one character and add a new one to your party. It definitly is worth it! (Dont know, if this is possible in Soloplay).

About the multiplayer-mode in Generel in the Enhanced Edition: If you play in Local Area Network, it kind of works fine, sometimes you have random drops, but it was not frustrating and you can easily drop and just rejoin. Nothing Lost! (Just mid-fight it kind of sucks..). But trying to play over the internet is just ... no. It doesnt work at all. :(