Ultimate Powergaming Party

[wickerman]

Which is the best UPP guide to use the one made by silverdragon or by ken egervari? And, is the rogue important in the game do get one? If I do need one how many levels do need for it before I multi class to something else?

[Dedigan]

The best UPP party depends on you and what you want and what mods you have. The Silverdragon party is intended for undead Targos mod and one of the druid shapechanger mods. The Egervari UPP party really isn't the ULTIMATE party IMO. The JUPP parties really does kick a lot of ass, and to add more power to them, add sorcerers.

The problem with those parties, however, is that you spend more time preparing to play the game than actually playing the game. Sure, it's nice spending 10 minutes casting spells to make you nearly invulnerable, but it's also nice to just cast blink, blur and mirror image and just taking the hit one time in four, making the perfect party (not ultimate), somewhere in between. The best thing to do is read the guides (all three) and decide what works best for you.

Edit: I forgot to mention rogues. Unless you're looking to pick pockets, two levels of rogue is all you need. Traps aren't really that much of a problem in IWD2.

[kmonster]

If you want to build a party exactly like described I recommend egervari's. You'll surely have far more fun with this straightforward party than with the others, although they are stronger at level 30.

But I agree with Dedigan, gather information and build your personal UPP. None of the guides is perfect and many of the mentioned items are random items you might never find.
Things you should know which aren't written in the guides:

- The hardest part of the game is chapter1 in normal mode while HoF will be quite easy even with a standard party because of the overpowered spells and equipment you'll have. No need to make this easier.
- If you don't abuse the game-mechanics by muling or level-squatting (which I consider cheating) your average party level will be between 16 and 17 at the end of a normal mode game and only about 10 levels higher at the end of a HoF mode game.
If you level-squat on the other hand it's no problem getting a level 30 party before one third of the normal game is over, this will kill the challenge and make your game quite boring.


As for rogue levels: You don't need a single one, chests can easily be bashed or opened with the "knock" spell, traps can be triggered.
But even if you want to handle the thieving skills in a traditional way you don't need rogue levels since they can be taken as cross-class skills.
A (specialist) mage with high int can easily get enough skill points to disarm all traps since the int-modifier is also added to the skill. The same mage (or any other character with decent dex) can also open the locks easily or pickpocket.
But many take 1 rogue level at the start of the mage carreer since they get so many skill points that way and can start with 2 extra points in the thieving skills.

[wickerman]

Does the normal difficulty level give more exp points then easiest difficulty level? And does level squating give you more exp points on normal mode then easy? Also, when is the best time to level squat and when to stop level squating?