Resting in Icewind Dale

Remove all ads!

I'm an avid gamer who has spent a better part of my youth playing the fantasy roles of countless heroes in games spanning the last decade.

In all my experiences in video gaming, I have never come across a good reason why a game should incorporate a random enemy encounter into a period of resting. It is my opinion that random enemy encounters are the bane of one's gaming experience as far as resting is concerned. Have we not fought enough to destroy the minions of evil that we should still be hacked upon by these magical creatures that suddenly appear at the foot of our bedrolls as we sleep? Is our ranger too dumb to sniff a scent downwind or hear the thunderous stomp of 500lb Ice Trolls lumbering towards our restful party?

I find it to be the most irritating experience of my gaming life to reload a quick save ten times in a row to avoid a random fight I cannot win because I just spent my last spell or my last potion of healing. What does everyone else think?

Furthermore...I find it highly improbably that after slaughtering a party of ten massive barbarians that their friends would magically show up as I move large boulders in a burrow they have made. Does this not seem redundant to slaughter mercilessly a band of barbarians over and over that only give a cumulative 1000xp spread between six characters?

And after such wonderfully satisfying *sarcasm* fights...we must continue the fantastical routine of reloading our quick saves ten times to heal the damage we just recieved? Must this be in every Black Isle game?

I was quite pleased with NeverWinter Nights, which followed a "clear the room" theory. Once you slaughter the enemies in an area, all their sister-cousins and brother-fathers do not pop out of the woodwork except for the stray creature left wandering in a stupor after the slaughter, who happens to stumble back into your room while you rest.

I'd love to hear what everyone thinks of this, thanks for reading my novel, if you did ::arcaedus::

[ September 27, 2002, 05:18: Message edited by: Blackthorne TA ]

 

this random monsters are important cause they do not allow you to rest after each monster you kill.

 

and the point of not letting us rest after each kill? doesn't it seem redundant to load a quick-save ten times because you simply don't have enough spells left to heal your party members? what's the point of random monsters again? they don't even give much xp...in a real D&D game they'd be an intricate necessity, but this is a video game we're talking about...again...I don't get your logic...and so I still ask for more viable opinions please

[ September 27, 2002, 03:52: Message edited by: arcaedus ]

 

Actually whenever possible I rest in places where I think I'll get ambushed. I even sent up the party tactically (in realtion to how hurt they are and the landscape) so that we appear to weak, innocent targets. But in reality we are experience mongering adventures who enjoy wiping the smiles off of would-be attackers After a few goes of this, the area is clear and we are free to rest peacefully.

 

if you dont have enough hp and/or magic do deal with a possible random enconter, dont sleep anywhere, look for someplace safe.
It's part of the game

 

Big B wrote: Actually whenever possible I rest in places where I think I'll get ambushed. I even sent up the party tactically (in realtion to how hurt they are and the landscape) so that we appear to weak, innocent targets. But in reality we are experience mongering adventures who enjoy wiping the smiles off of would-be attackers After a few goes of this, the area is clear and we are free to rest peacefully.

hey ...this I never knew, so in reality, if you sleep again and again and keep killing all the random encounter enemies, then you completely clear the level? interesting...but yes I agree...if you were to kill ten groups of random enemies it would grant an ample supply of xp, but ...I find it annoying after killing such enemies as Sherincal ...to have difficulty resting...lol

 

No, no you don't completely clear the level. Lol, we wish. Sorry if I was unclear. I just meant that if you get interupted a few times, they will leave you alone if you either kick their tails, or you have to reload multiple times. It's been in my experience (in all the IE games) that if you keep getting your butt kicked resting in the wild, after a few tries and reloads the game gives you a break.

But if you can beat them and get some extra xp, it's a good thing.

 

yeah, true Big B, that's my major complaint is that it seems kinda ridiculous that a game modeled off of D&D would have enemies that could magically appear on you right away...if I were a DM in a game...there'd be no way I'd just throw stuff like that on a party without giving them a chance to roll a check or something for wilderness lore ya know? everytime I rest in a IE game it seems like a band of ten bloody monsters appears surrounding my mage, and I've always had a big frustration with that....

hey kovsky, no offense, but reply somewhere else, lol...your comments are not useful and I was looking for wise responses like that of Big B, I appreciate his criticism but not your own

[ September 27, 2002, 04:59: Message edited by: arcaedus ]

 

isn't this a public forum?
what you like or not, its not my problem.

 

I prefer the way resting is set-up on the IE games, it makes you go and look for a good spot to rest rather then just plopping down in the middle of the battlefield after the fight. I've found that if I use an area that can be easily defended to rest in the game ususally lets me rest at least once. If you're trying to rest on a battlefield covered with bodies, why does it surprise you that someone comes along and pokes you with a sharp stick to see if you're dead or not?

 

very true Capt. Tripps, I am pretty familiar with what you're talking about, usually most of my resting takes place after a major battle, but I don't know how complicated the programmer's really ever made the "conditions" for resting, because I can put my party in a small room in a dungeon, close the door behind me, and still some magical band of creatures shows up in the room with me...but you've got a really good point and I'll try what you suggest, about finding an easily defended area, sounds like good advice to me

p.s. hey kovsky I don't make it a habit to pick on small children, so...for future reference I am not going to respond to your posts unless they are meaningful thanks for ... answering my post though, it was real... helpful

 

Actually that indeed can be pretty annoying, and I even agree on some points arcadeus pointed out. But as a roleplaying powergamer I even more agree with Big B XP is an important part of the game

Having run out of spells can indeed seriously increase the difficulty and challenge of even minor fights, even more as in IWD-2 the enemies gang up so quick. My bane for yesterday night were the hardened ice trolls in the horde fortress area. However, once you get the right tactic fights are becoming easier - atm I use my spellcasters (bard/ evoker/ battleguard of tempus) mainly as missilers since their amount of spells is so limited. With 4 missilers and two meleers most fights are manageable, when things get hairy I concentrate all my firepower on the hardest enemies first - usually the spellcasters. Works like charm though you still take some damage.
However, by the tendency of enemies in IWD-2 to gang up, seeking melee, I felt forced to spend some levels of every support char of mine for a fighting class lige fighter/ ranger or even barbarian to gain hp and a non-spell self-defence ability.

Eventually there is a *reason* behind a dialogue offer like "would you watch over us while we rest until we are fully healed?"

[ September 27, 2002, 10:58: Message edited by: Ragusa ]

 

yeah I have made frequent use of the people who offer places to rest which is more like D&D than the actual random encounters in Icewind, all very good points and I agree with Big B and Ragusa, if I had the time and the means I would also be more of a powergamer and mercilessly slaughter every single random encounter I came across, but being a college student with more on my mind that video games...it's highly frustrating to me, to get ambushed by a band of enemies in the most remote and unlikely situation imagineable, such as a closed room in an entirely vanquished dungeon...etc. and another person somewhere else pointed out an excellent point that...resting is also moderately lame because, say you destroy half a dungeon in one day's game time...then you rest for a full day, do the enemies in the dungeon not realize you've killed half their forces? I don't remember where this post was, but it was VERY intuitive...and brings up a major point...resting should in my opinion still be done like in NeverWinter Nights...and even then, the system can always be improved upon and someday in the not-so-distant future...our RPGs may be so real that we can barely differentiate between AI and human player, hence...actual artificially intelligent NPCs which would make the game so more real , but I'm just off dreaming now....thanks for all the wonderful criticism Big B and Ragusa, we have all got real good points, and maybe if we were the programmers we could all meld together a really great gaming engine

 

From what I remember from my pnp Dnd days you could only rest once per day, so if you used up all your spells during a day and it was still mid day we either waited till the evening and there was always a certain chance (according to where you were sleeping) that monsters would run upon you during your sleep (either wondering monsters or patrols or monsters that wake up during the night to find their food) and according to your skills they would either ambush you or you would have time to wake up your companions. They obviously oculdn't force you to wait till the evening each day to rest in IWD and do the whole camping and having watches thing so the way they handled it I guess is ok

 

true, I would suspect though that most people wouldn't play a pen&pencil D&D game if the DM was unruly and had them ambushed every single time they tried to ever rest...it would pointless ya know? lol but yeah very good point, we do have the liberty to laze around in our sleeping bags all we want in Icewind, but...the whole..ambushed every single time you sleep thing is ...well LOL...I'd say from my experience that only about 20% of the time is ever safe to rest anywhere that has the potential of monsters of any kind...which is...suffice to say...probably not like what I'd expect from a DM...monsters are certainly abundant, but they don't fall out of trees in the fall and blow in on the winds during the summer, lol....anyhoo, very good point about resting, I wonder if in future games, after NeverWinter , if they'll incorporate an even better resting system than used before...hopefully...resting and "attempting" to rest is a very time consuming and mostly aggravating part of the whole game...