I recently bought a so-called Dungeons & Dragons Anthology, including Baldur's Gate 1 & 2, Icewind Dale 1 & 2, Planescape Torment and The Temple of Elemental Evil, as I was in the mood for some retro gaming. That took a bit of a hit when I couldn't get Baldur's Gate 1 to start, but since I played through that back in the day anyway I started with the sequel.
However, I find it very frustrating. I've been following a few quests, but inevitably I am faced with a foe I just cannot beat. Magic users in particular are extremely tough. If anybody had any tips or could point me to a good collection of tips online, that'd be great.
Any tips on party creation for Icewind Dale would be appreciated as well.
And what are Planescape Torment and the Temple thing? Never even heard of the latter before.

Love the space bar. Iirc, that pauses the game and let's you queue orders.

Love magic missile. One of the things magic users tend to do is cast mirror image. You then have to hit 3-5 copies of the magic user before the actual person takes damage. One use of MM gets rid of a lot of copies.

Use formations, and try to keep casters/rangers in the back so your fighters can soak up damage/deal it out.

Potions tend to be better health-restore options than spells.

I'll see if I remember any more. You've got a great purchase there, but it is a bit archaic as far as rules/difficulty goes.

Oh, and BG1 needs compatibility mode or something. I think ID1 does too.

Baldur's Gate is very hard, especially since it's possible to do quests out of order and put yourself in positions where you're way out-leveled. That said, it's possible to do almost anything in the game with a fairly low-level party if you fight dirty.

-Pause and save A LOT. Don't be afraid to constantly micromanage what all of your party memebers are doing and just run away if you have to.

-There are fights that you'll have to try several times, even if you're doing the right thing. D&D is fairly random number generator heavy, so occasionally a completely sound strategy will get beaten, even several times, by bad dice.

-Mages are not fighters and should never try to be fighters. This is probably obvious, but I've seen people screw themselves over by arming their sorcerors and trying to do things they shouldn't with them. Stoneskin and Mirror Image can make spellcasters extremely durable, but they'll never have the health or base attack bonus to do things other than spellcast.

-Area of effect spells that do persistent damage are your friend, especially if you combine them with Web or Entangle. Hit and run is the best defense you can have. Opening a door, casting Cloudkill, and shutting the door until everything inside is dead or unconscious is a legitimate tactic. Getting big enemies like the larger golems stuck in doorways is also legitimate.

-Learn to work around your own Entangle and Web spells and use them to control the battlefield, because they work surprisingly consistently, even against many strong enemies. However, be warned that you'll occasionally have to fight enemies in public, especially in Baldur's Gate 2. You can get in big trouble throwing around Webs and Cloudkills in the middle of a public street.

-It doesn't hurt to powergame your character's base stats or even import several custom characters for your party. Not really required, but certainly helpful, especially since all of the rogues the game gives you as NPCs have subpar setups.

-It helps to know where the loot with the best risk/reward ratio is. If you have the Throne Of Bhaal expansion pack, the Watcher's Keep dungeon seems designed to be done gradually over the course of the game, so feel free to pop in, loot the first floor (or at least as much of it as you can manage) and take off with all of the excellent magic loot. The De'Arnise stronghold quest is available early in the game and is fairly difficult, but gives you an invaluable magic weapon that will make parts of the game much easier.

-Don't be afraid to use limited-use magic items. Wands, potions, scrolls etc. are generally replacable, so don't feel like you have to save them.

-Always always always have at least three instances of Dispel Magic and Remove Fear available on your spellcasters, preferably spread across several characters. Getting nailed with confusion, charm, fear, and hold are the easiest ways to die suddenly.

-Many kinds of undead are extremely dangerous because of the status effects they can give you, but also tend to be very fragile. Vampires, ghouls, and ghasts can hold, disease, and level drain your characters, which is extremely debilitating. They all also have very low health, so if one of them hits one of your characters pile on the attacks and Magic Missiles and they should go down before they can finish you off, and they tend to be worth a lot of experience.

-One of the biggest mistakes new players tend to make when playing as a spellcasting character is misusing familiars. The penalty for having a familiar die is fairly crippling and not immediately apparent, so don't use them. They don't help that much and can be a huge liability.

-This tends to be less applicable than it was in the original Baldur's Gate, but give every character a ranged weapon and ammo, even if they suck at using it. Quite often if you have your whole team switch to ranged weapons as soon as you see an enemy on the edge of the screen it'll be dead before they get to you just out of sheer number of attacks coming at them. Even your mages should have slings, even if you don't use them often.

-Don't be afraid to let the story play out where party members are concerned. If you have party members demanding you to do things you can't do, let them get mad and leave. Sometimes it's just not practical or even possible to appease them all.

-If possible, play multiplayer. LAN Baldur's Gate is great, and makes the game substantially easier.

As far as Temple Of Elemental Evil goes, I've never played it but have been told it's fairly glitchy. Not sure how playable it is. It's based on a famous D&D module, but aside from that I don't know anything about it.

Great list Commander. I forgot how much fun Cloudkill is.

Get at least one weapon with a fire or acid buff. Even if its a tiny dagger, you'll need it for Trolls.

Another reason the De'Arnise keep is a good early quest. You get tons of fire arrows and the Flail Of Ages you get toward the end is a fantastic troll-killing weapon that becomes a fantastic everything-killing weapon in the expansion. Through an item duplication glitch my fighter was dual-wielding Flail Of Ages +6-es last time I played through Baldur's Gate with a group of friends.

Thanks for the input, guys.
I was actually stuck at the De'Arnise keep, because I couldn't defeat the troll boss, but the Cloudkill trick took care of him.

Also, make sure to max out Yoshimo's "set trap" ability. His special bounty hunter traps are absolutely AMAZING and can win fights against tough opponents like spellcasters on their own. In particular, notice that his special traps (unlike regular thief traps) can be "thrown" as Yoshimo can place them anywhere within line of sight without actually moving to the location. This means you can stand outside a room with hostile and "throw" the traps through the door for maximum mayhem!

And as for Torment, it's only the best computer RPG ever created, seriously!

And, if you're in a serious pinch, you can always tweak the baldur.ini file. Not entirely sporting, but if you'd like to have a second play-through just to experience the various romance options, doing so with a party of demigods makes the game progress a bit quicker.

And on the topic of romance options, if you're playing as a female main character, do yourself a favour and install one of the romance mods (the Haer'dalis mod in particular is excellent!) first. Because putting up with Anomen WILL drive you crazy!

Pally dual-wielding that flail and the Holy Avenger was my setup for the game.

Oh god I'm going to go install it again, aren't I?

Monteron! I never loved you!

"And the mad wizard falls... saves me the trouble!"

If things get hard, buff up. Potions and scrolls and defensive spells goes a long long way. If you need some cheese...

Set traps, thieves can put up traps and snares. Rest up if you think you need more.
Fireball, open the door but before going in, cast a couple into the room and it takes care of most creatures.
Skull Trap, I love these. Partly because your own party can trigger it. So it's less cheesier than traps and snares of the thief class.


Planescape Torment is probably the first game that used the game engine that made Baldur's Gate a great game. But it does not use the D&D Rules. Story-wise, nothing beats this one. Not even all the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale put together can top this one. The graphics are much dated though.

Temple of Elemental Evil, I personally wasn't able to play this one as it was so bugged when it first came out and I lost interest with it. I believe it was the first game that used the D&D 3.5 Rule set.

Shame on you for exploiting those weapons. But hey, I got Minsc to use Carsomyr. Hahaha.

Hey, get to the epic levels in Throne of Bhaal and you can use Carsomyr the Holy Avenger with your chaotic evil assassin if you want! (sadly you can't backstab with it though)

Oh, it got worse. We rolled off for loot if more than one person wanted it and I kept winning the rolls, so my fighter also had the Ring Of Gaxx and that helmet that makes simulacrums of you. And the simulacrums got copies of all of your loot. That's effectively quad-wielding Flail Of Ages +6.