Hi all, I’ve not been around for a while, but have wanted to give IA 5.0 a go for sometime now. Between all the economic turmoil going on in the USA, buying my first home for my family, and a few other things going on this year, I’ve barely had time to breath, much less play computer games. It appears that some of that’s going to be slowing down a little, and so I took the opportunity to get BG2 ?#8220; IA 5 installed on my new PC last night.

Half the fun of the game is coming up with that “perfect party” and I think I’ve come up with a pretty good one this time. I’m open to comments and suggested improvements.

--Berserker (Minsc) - Long Sword & Shield
--Vagrant (Protagonist) - Flail & Axe?
--Stalker (Valygar) - Katana & Hammer
--DC Fighter7/Cleric (Anomen) - Flail & Shield
--MC Fighter/Mage/Cleric (Jaheira) - Mace & Shield or Staff
--Thief/Mage (Nalia) - Short Sword & Buckler +3 (I will take the liberty of redistributing her skill points to meet my trap finding and disarming needs.

I really feel like I’ve got it all with this party. Allow me to count the ways:

Warriors -- I have 3 pure warriors, and because one is Valygar and the other is a Vagrant protagonist, I will have access to some powerful items and abilities. Rangers are gods in IA, so I might as well go with it! I love Minsc as a Berserker, and my goal will be to eventually procure the Judgment Day sword for him (though I’m not convinced that I’ll be up for that battle again… I did it in IA 4.2, and it was a bitch). Also, Anomen is an extremely solid primary cleric (especially when he becomes Sir Anomen), and he grows into a very solid warrior in his own right. With those 4, I will have a powerful core of melee and tanking ability, of which you literally can’t have too much in IA.

Healers -- I already talked about Anomen as my primary healer. Next up is Jaheira, who I’m making an exception by allowing a pretty far stretch in changing her classes, making her a triple class fighter/mage/cleric. While she won’t be great at any one thing, with a F/M/C, I gain with one party slot my backup mage, my backup healer, and a passable warrior (did I mention that you can’t have too much warrior power in IA? Oh, that’s right, I did. But it’s worth a second mention. ). For roleplaying purposes, I will explain that all of her magic is granted by the power of nature, and because she will have so much of it at her disposal, it will show just how dedicated to nature she really is. I will allow her shape changing ability to remain (which I never use anyway) as a nod to her still being somewhat druidic (admittedly, I’m allowing my D&D 3.x mentality to let me be a little more free with such definitions).

Mages -- Lastly, I will have Nalia, who will fill the completely essential role of primary arcane caster, with sufficient thieving ability to get by. Nalia is an arcane casting queen in IA with that fancy upgraded ring and all of the best mage items going to her. She won’t have a ton of hit points, but she will eventually have one of the better AC scores in the party (based on my last run through with her in 4.2), and of course, her spells give her plenty of great defensive capabilities. I’ve already mentioned that I’ll have Jaheira as a backup mage. In this capacity she will be used mostly as a debuffer of enemies and buffer of party members.

Scouts -- Nalia will be my only true rogue type character, and she’s not great at it, but with her skill points redistributed she will do fine at finding and disarming traps. I won’t bother much, if at all, with hiding and laying traps and such. I’ve toyed with the idea of making her a Swashbuckler, and perhaps adding an additional level or two of that class before dualing her to mage, but I’m leaning against the option currently. Of course, I’ll have Valygar to assist with the more slippery tasks, where I need to get by without being seen. Valygar and Nalia ought to make a good team when it comes to getting through deep, dangerous dungeons.

That’s pretty much the line up. The idea here is to create a party that will have a chance to stay alive, and with 3 pure warriors and a cleric who also does pretty well in the role, I will have a solid wall of tanking ability. Neither Jaheira nor Nalia will be particularly frail either, so all in all, it’s a pretty tough 6 man group. Having all the major roles covered, a backup for each, and a fairly hardy party, ought to put me in a pretty good position going in. Of course, I have no illusions that I still won’t be having my ass handed to me regularly, but oh well, it is Improved Anvil, after all!!

I'm not so experienced in IA, but my advice (if you want it) drop jaheira and take imoen. sorcs are awsome, and with new level progression changes fmc gets hlas very late. You've got 3 pure fighters which is enough + anomen who can also deal a lot of damage with buffs.

I appreciate the feedback. I do love a good sorcerer in my party, there's no doubt about that. But, if I went with a straight sorcerer I'd be losing my backup healer, and that's not something I want. Particularly in the later part of the game, having 2 party members that can cast greater restoration is going to be huge. I would sooner go to a cleric/mage, which is what I originally was thinking I'd do.

However, I think that I'll be glad to have a tougher character, and everytime I think about running a triple class character, someone eventually talks me out of it. I'd love to run a triple classer for the first time. It remains to be seen if I'll get talked out of it this time!

I appreciate the feedback, and hope for more like it.

I really needed a second mage to buff or debuff. One was barely enough because s/he tends to get disabled herself with silence, emotion, stun and such, so that's my main suggestion for you. I think the rest should do fine.

A good IA setup is more or less:
- 3-4 tanking characters (could be warriors or characters that soak up the hits whilst being protected (bards, F/Ms, etc).
- 1 main mage and 1 backup mage
- 1-2 healer types... probably more like 1 + 1 support


I intended a similar party setup as to yours except I ended up with two alternatives.
1. I took Cernd instead of Valygar (support healer). I think that I would take Valygar in IAv6 because he would be a good fighter but also a nice healer support.
2. I took Imoen instead of Minsc (second sorceress).
3. I started with a Vagrant but didn't like the playing style, so I restarted with a Riskbreaker, but he was defensively too weak. Then I didn't have enough time for playing anymore.



I'm going to start a new v5 game so I'll share my party setup. There are several things that I would like to see in the game. Firstly the judgement day battle and secondly I would like to try out an evil sidekick using some of the evil stuff in the game (Grandfather of the Assassins, Improved Human Flesh, Blackrazor). I know v6 likely improves the paladin stronghold but that doesn't matter to me so I'll probably take a paladin as main character.

Planned party:
1. Paladin: Fighter and support healing. quarterstaves, two-handed swords, halberds
2. Evil assassin: Second "fighter". clubs, short swords, long swords, basically anything
3. Mazzy: third fighter. short sword, long sword, mace or flail?... I will probably lower her bow proficiencies
4. Imoen: main mage, mostly debuffing and damage spells, staves, darts
5. Jan (T/M), Edwin (M), Nalia (T->M): support debuffer and area disabling spells, cross/bow
6. Anomen: main healer, backline fighter, warhammer, mace, flail

This is a strong party, definitely. The FMC fits into the party quite well; even without this character the party could manage, so it's a good opportunity to play with a triple-class character. Agree with Kerkes that a sorcerer would be potentially stronger, but it doesn't really matter.


@ lroumen

A F/T multi- or dual-class would be more useful than your assassin as a backup fighter. A single class thief could only really fit this role once they get UAI and reach the THAC0 cap.

That's true. I hadn't thought of that yet.

Thanks for the comments everyone. I'm a good ways into chapter 3 with this party, and they haven't let me down yet.



Actually I do have a backup mage (that was a main reason I was so pleased with this party; I have a backup everything). In this case, it's Jaheira as a fighter/mage/cleric. I'm guessing you saw that I had Jaheira, and didn't notice that I had performed some "surgery" on her. Serves me right for writing such long winded posts. No one in their right mind would actually bother to read the full content!

Doh! I did read the whole thing, but when I replied my browser crashed and when I started it up again I was under the assumption that you wanted the FMC to be yourself but took a vagrant instead. My bad, my bad...

In any case, a FMC should work okay, but keep in mind that the leveling (and thus acquiring of the necessary high level debuffing spells) may be a bit slow. You'll soon get secret word and breach though.

I have never played with an F/M/C but currently I am playing with a C/M. She just levelled up to 14/13 while my sorcerer is on level 17, my blade is 21 and my dual Ranger/Cleric is 8/17. So, the advancement should be very slow and you cannot really use such a character effectively for a very long time. Even later his bluff spells can be easily dispelled.

I finished IA with this: Vagrant, custom : berserker, barbarian, berserker-cler dual, cler/mag multi and Imoen. For even more power, drop ber-cler and take Valy. It will make the game harder in the beginning, but will make final battle (EDE) easier.

I have finished 4 runs of IA thus far:

1.
Vagrant protaganist, Valygar, Jaheira, Anomen, Nalia, Imoen.
Personally, I think this is one of the easiest party combinations for IA newbies.

2.
Necromancer protaganist, Valygar, Anomen, Keldorn, Haer'Dalis, Cernd

3. (Custom party, multi-player game)
Vagrant, Ranger-cleric, FMC (rather bad choice btw... quite weak), Berserker, Jan, Imoen

4. (Custom party, multi-player game)
FMC protaganist, FMT.
Yes, completed IA with only 2 party members without cheesy tactics or cheats. It IS possible.

However, I am almost 100% certain that soloing IA is impossible without the use of cheesy tactics.

Personally, I would be curious about 2man party. I would be happy to read a longer article about this. What items did you use, what tactics, how did you deafet hard battles like EDE, Orcus, Twisted Rune, Yaga Shura, Oasis etc. If you want to write this, and Sikret thinks it is not right on public forum, I would be happy with a pm.

My first run through IA (V2) was with a 4-man party (T/M, Haer'Dalis, Viconia, Korgan), but since then I've only seen battles becoming more difficult, so I'm not going to try a few-man party for IA v5.

However, if you are planning to go for it, skip the early tough fights as much as possible (Den of 7 veils, Sewers, Guardded Compound). Forego the fights that are definately not necessary for you to continue the storyline (Twisted Rune, Oasis) and go back for them later if you're strong enough and have level 7/8/9 spells. I've gotten a decent way into IAv5 chapter 2 quests with a solo F/M/T, but I got stuck in quite a few challenges where I would have to use cheap tactics (hide/retreat/wait) to progress, so I quit. It is doable to an extent though.

Thanks Iroumen. I don't want to play smaller party than 6. I am just curoius and I would like to read LZJ's experiences.

Yes, I'm very curious about it too.

After reading LZJ's comment about being able to complete IA with a 2-men party, my curiosity was intrigued as well. So, I asked LZJ to send me his WeiDu.log file so that I can check it (if he wanted to) and he was kind enough to send it. Looking at the log file I saw a suspicious mod (actually the only mod he had in addition to the recommended ones) which might have corrupted one of the game's most important resource files in LZJ's game. I have asked LZJ to do some tests for me to see whether this guess will be falsified or confirmed.

If the guess is confirmed and that resource file was proven to be corrupted in LZJ's game, it will mean that IA's scripts have been broken in his game and enemies didn't fight optimally, which can explain the success of the 2-men party.

If the guess is falsified and it is confirmed that that extra mod had not done anything wrong in his game, then LZJ has indeed done a great job.

Of course, LZJ has already proven his high level of tactical skills to me. So, even if one of his games (the one with 2-men party) was corrupted by the extra unrecommended mod, it won't harm LZJ's high reputation as a tactician.



Quite true! IA is not soloable. Even using cheesy methods will not help. Using plain cheat is the only way to play IA with a solo character. I strongly recommend not to waste time attempting to solo IA.

Alas, Sikret's guess was not falsified and my 2-man party's success should be invalidated. However, I would state here my belief that my games before that were valid, as those games were played without that mod installed. What happened was that I obtained a new computer and installed the game anew... except that this time I wanted to see how well the key feature in that mod would fare in IA.

I will be attempting a 2-man party again, after reinstalling everything, including the vanilla game and clearing the override folder. Further, per Sikret's wishes and the rules of this forum, I will not be posting my experiences with this attempt as the discussion here is supposed to be limited to 5 or 6 person parties. This 2-man party is purely for my personal enjoyment. The most I would do at the end of my attempt(s) is merely to state whether I have managed to complete IA with it and no more. Needless to say, I will not use any cheesy methods, including certain other methods which I have mentioned to Sikret.

@shadan & Iroumen: Hi again! I've been away for a long time. Since the both of you are veteran IA players, I'd be happy to update you with PMs if you're interested in my experiences with a 2-man team. I won't guarantee anything on how frequent I'll update you though.

Tha would be great, and I would thank it. I promise, I will read all of your PM, and will answer to all. It is a good short break in my work, when I can read these kind of PMs or posts.

Yes, I would be very interested in your adventures. If you get stuck somewhere, don't hesitate to tell us. Perhaps we have some tips for you. Have you thought about your party composition?

Hi to shadan & Iroumen! I will certainly PM the both of you, and this time I plan to use a lawful good F/M/C and chaotic neutral F/M/T. Both of them have excellent stats which I just managed to roll for, and I will PM you the details of my party composition and their skills, as well as my rationale for choosing these 2 classes.

From now on I guess I think it's best to keep our communications via PM, so as not to clog up this thread. Please await my 1st PM to the both of you.

Would you mind carbon-copying me those PM's too, LZJ?

It would be great to send all PMs and replies to all of us then (LZJ, Iroumen, Raven, me). In don't know if it is possible to send PMs to multiple recipients.

You just have to add the others to the CC (carbon copy) field. However I don't think there is a 'reply all' option so for each message you write you may have to add the cc recipients manually.

note that my name is lroumen with an L, rather than an I. Everybody gets that one wrong . Understandable though. You wouldn't expect anyone to use their initial+last name as a login for a forum.


On topic: Marceror, how is your party progressing?

Very well, thanks for asking. I am just about done with all of the Shadows of Amn content and Watcher's Keep. I'm currently trying to get past the Judgement Day fight (as noted in a separate post), which I'm determined to do. Once that's done I'll work on finishing the Good, Bad, and Ugly quest, the Orcus encounter (I almost forgot about this one), then I think it will be onto the Tree of Life.

I'm quite happy with my party, and even though watching Jaheira level is like watching grass grow, I don't regret the F/M/C option. She is serving her purpose as a backup mage and healer, and is a pretty decent fighter when I need her to be. A cleric/mage probably would have been a little more practical, but I wanted to try something I never had tried before.

Have you done Twisted Rune, Marceror? How did you handled it? Personally it gave me a much bigged headache than JD sword fight.

Yes, I would think that Jaheira levels really slowly. Maybe a triple character is more something for a 5-man party. I'm happy to hear that she's still doing well as a fighter. That would have been my main concern since she has to be a mage and a cleric as well.

Shadan, yes, I did Twisted Rune shortly before forging Judgement Day. I did one reload on that fight, and nailed it on the second attempt (I probably didn't need to reload, but I had forgotten to protect my guys from level drain, and they got all jacked up as a result).

On the second attempt, I had my guys well buffed and had plenty of summons. I had Nalia do a timestop and imp. alacrity where I pretty much relieved the lich of his buffs and got some damage spells out too. The lich went down pretty quickly with some focused strikes. It wasn't too hard to get the vampire and the warrior/kensai guy from there.

Most of Layenne's timestop was targetted against a summon, and I got lucky on my saves. Once it was over, I pulverized the Beholder, and then finally, gave Layenne her well deserved beating. It was a challenging fight, but I found that the required tactics to get through it were fairly straight forward for me, so I didn't struggle much with it.

The tactics that I used with JD in 4.2 just aren't working for me this time around, though. I'm off to try that battle again....

It's interesting that you killed most of the other enemies first and then the beholder last. I'm coming to the conclusion that this is the better order to do things in (rather than the beholder first) because of how much time the beholder takes to kill.

I agree, very interesting tactic. I usually can not do it, since I usually play with 3 mages and Vax is a mage-killer.

My kill order was same: Shangalar, vampire, warrior, beholder, Layenne.

I generally keep my mages out of the beholder's line of sight. They stay as far to the left of the map as possible, in the foyer. Because the beholder and Layene tend to stay out in the main room, my mages usually manage to stay out of aggro (although this isn't always the case, certainly).

Unless you have some incompatible mods installed or have tampered with things in the game which you shouldn't have had, what you wrote is absolutely impossible. Layene never waste even one single spell on a summoned creature during her timestop. So, it seems that you have the same problem in your game LZJ had in his 2-men party game. That is to say, one of the game's resource files is corrupted in your game which has also broken IA's scripts leading to suboptimal behavior of the enemies.

The only mods I have installed are those that are part of IA's recommended installation. And generally speaking, I'm pretty sure I'm seeing IA's optimized AI, so I don't believe my installation is bugged in any way.

It may not have been that Layenne was technically "targetting" a summon. She may have actually been targetting a party member (I don't really remember at this point). But it seemed like my aerial servant, which was the farthest out of the foyer, was most impacted by the spells. I'm more inclined to think this is an issue of me not articulating well, than it is an issue of a bugged game. I've played IA before, and if anything, it's more challenging in 5.0 than it was in 4.2, so things would appear to be working well. It would seem odd that a single enounter is broken... so I'm more inclined to think my memory of the battle is a little bit skewed, than the conclusion that you're drawing Sikret. Sorry, this is largely why I haven't been posting much about my game... too much on my mind in real life to take the time to give reports that are detailed and accurate enough to meet Sikret's standards.