RELEASED
Icewind Dale
Icewind Dale sends a custom party into the frozen North, emphasizing tactical dungeon combat and AD&D party building over companion-led storytelling.
Game Overview
Platforms
Icewind Dale begins in Easthaven, where adventurers meet town leader Hrothgar and join his expedition to investigate strange events in Kuldahar. The route crosses frozen passes, settlements, dwarven ruins, caves, and deep dungeons. Set in the Forgotten Realms, it tells its own story rather than adapting R. A. Salvatore's novels. Black Isle Studios built it with BioWare's Infinity Engine and a strong focus on combat.
Read full overview
Players create a party of up to six heroes under the AD&D 2nd Edition rules. Real-time battles can be paused at any moment for movement, spell selection, target changes, and formation control. The party explores compact areas, finds keys and quest items, handles traps and locks, learns spells, manages equipment, and advances through chapters filled with monsters. Dialogue and journals move the story forward, but the battles and the party's design remain the center of the experience.
Make the opening group balanced before worrying about perfect statistics. A durable frontline, a divine caster, an arcane caster, ranged damage, and a thief or scout cover most early problems. Pause before enemies surround the party, keep formation tight in narrow corridors, and rest only when the area is secure. Save before opening containers or entering a new map because several encounters punish an unprepared group.
This record is the original 2000 Windows game, not Heart of Winter, Icewind Dale II, or the 2014 Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition.
Franchise
Community reviews
What readers think of Icewind Dale.
Loading community reviews…