r/icewinddale

Overall, the game is quite enjoyable except for the opening sections (and some fight in ToL). My playthrough generally followed this progression:

1. Early game (until Animate Dead spell) - extremely tedious, as a cleric must rely heavily on kiting goblins. Your THAC0 and AC are awful, due to enemy stat bonuses (–11 to AC and –3 to THAC0).
2. Animate Dead to Aerial Servant - much more manageable, though kiting remains the primary strategy.
3. Aerial Servant to Black Blade of Disaster (BBD) + Improved Haste - basically normal difficulty, with some exceptions. Your AC and overall survivability improve significantly. Moreover, Aerial Servants' immunity to non-magical weapons effectively neutralizes 80% of enemies until chapter 5–6.
4. Black Blade of Disaster to Time Stop - easy mode. Your stats become overpowered; you can eliminate most enemies in 1–2 rounds despite their tripled HP bonuses (x3+80).
5. Time Stop to final battle - story mode. Unlike in BG2, neither Icasaraht nor the final boss resists Time Stop, which means you can combine time stop and BBD.

What i particularly disliked is that some enemies in Tol have automatic dispel casts (cleric in the beginning and rakshasas). I think this a cheap and unfair way to raise the difficulty of the encounter.

I’m really stuck for the first time. I have not been able to do any damage at all to Malavon past his magic shield and eventually start losing characters to him.

How can I do damage to him or break past the shield? I’ve tried dispel magic a number of times and it hasn’t worked.

I’ve been throwing every buff I have on my whole party constantly and it’s getting tedious. What buffs are actually even making a difference?

This is my first d&d based game and i’m having a hard time discerning what party buffs are doing anything worthwhile. I have a mage and a cleric and am in dorns deep right now.

Currently doing:
Bless, strength of one, chant, courage, hope, and haste.

What should I cut/replace to not spend half my playtime buffing?

https://preview.redd.it/vjxvbto148ih1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=2b7c0b4a85d67563773c922a5d620356a99c964f

Supposedly all party members are given 12 HPs and 5 Acid Resistance after killing him. I read enough walkthroughs to remember that. I have no idea if that's true and I hontstly never really paid much mind to it in previous runs, but I killed him, and not one member of my party actually got it.

Is this actually a thing or just another internet thing that's literally pulled from a lying sphincter? Now I'm just flat out curious.

Was wondering what strategies people use to deal with these guys. They gave me quite a bit of trouble. This is what I eventually ended up doing, but imagine there's got to be more efficient methods.

I had a Paladin/fighter, a Bard, a ranger/fighter, a cleric (one monk dip), a barbarian/fighter (slings), and a wizard (rogue dip). The forced repositioning really hurt. Their archer was annoyingly good at going straight for the wizard and no matter the AC, not much could survive long against Kaervas. I eventually ended up having someone rush the archer to give the wizard enough breathing room to cast Otiluke's resilient sphere on Kaervas. While Kaervas sat out of the fight I focused the party around killing the others. The wizard with Mordenkainen's sword was the most helpful here. I had to lock Kaervas down a second time with another resilient sphere before finally finishing off all the others. Once the second sphere deactivated, I had the wizard with a bow fire holdfast arrows which locked Kaervas in place. Unfortunately, I had no casts of Mordenkainen's sword left and was basically out of damage spells. I only had a rod of magic missiles and one or two party members that had weapons that could hit him for like 2-3 points of damage at a time. Thankfully, they were ranged weapons. So I set just sat there an annoyingly long amount of time as my wizard kept firing holdfast arrows and his health chipped down by tiny amounts while the bard healed the party up with war chant.