General Adventuring Tips; Starting The Adventure - Black Isle ICEWIND DALE 2 Manual

selfless, altruistic natures. You may notice that any quests that paladins undertake in Targos glean you little in
the way of gold (though you'll still get experience points for completing the quests). If you're a money-
hound, make sure you have someone else in your party broach accepting missions and quests - and be the
one to speak to the quest-giver once the mission is completed.
Monks: Monks suffer the same limitation as paladins - their orders, no matter how evil or self-serving, do
not allow for the accumulation of material wealth. If you'd like to get paid for your missions, it's best if you
do not have the monk be the one "accepting" the reward, or else they will simply refuse it.
The following general advice can help you in your adventuring in Icewind Dale II.
Save Often: You may have heard this so often your ears are numb, but it's a philosophy that pays off.
Whenever possible, save, and even better, try to do save games in a different slot. You'll thank yourself later
that you saved the game right before you were ambushed by that score of fireball-hurling wizards and their
death-monk bodyguards. Nothing hurts more than losing two or three hours worth of playtime and having to
go back to an older save game.
Pick Pockets: If you're not burdened by a guilty conscience, a good Pick Pocket skill will serve you well in
most inhabited places in the game, where you might need to supplement your income without harming any-
one in the process. Just be sure to save your game first in case you are detected. You can often get some
extra arms, potions, and even unique knick-knacks by pick pocketing certain characters in the game, making
the Pick Pocket skill especially useful.
ALT key: The ALT key is the greatest hotkey in the game. Just hold it down, and ALL doors and containers
and ground items in the area are highlighted. You should always keep your left pinky hovering over the ALT
key and stab it occasionally while playing to see if you've missed anything.
Containers: You may not be able to carry all the stuff you find on your adventurers. Whenever possible, try
to stake out a container in the nearby vicinity and dump all the excess loot you can find into it. If you don't
do this, you risk the chance that items lying on the ground will vanish over time.
Note: The following walk-through assumes the game is being played on normal difficulty; if you have it
cranked up to a higher difficulty, then expect significantly more enemies and treasure from your
encounters in Targos.
The adventure begins when your ship, the Wicked Wench, arrives at the Targos docks. You'll immediately
drop to a conversation with the captain, Hedron Kerdos, who will give you a bit of information about Targos
then let you go on your way.
As soon as you step off the boat and make your way down the docks, you'll suddenly come upon two soldiers
(Honest Jon and Reig Redwaters) are hovering over a third soldier, Brohn, who has taken a goblin arrow
through the throat - it turns out that a horde of goblins has somehow surfaced on the docks, taking the town
by surprise. One of the soldiers, Reig, has been wounded in the arm, and after a moment's hesitation, he'll
welcome your help in driving the goblin attackers out of town. He'll pass along what weapons he can spare
(a character with a good Diplomacy skill or a high Intelligence can get more weapons and equipment out of
Reig than other characters), ask you to retrieve a healing draught from Magdar Shenlen the harbor master to
patch up his arm, and then he'll leave you to your goblin butchery.
35