After a quick meeting, a chance to rest up and gear up, the players are off on a novice quest. This begs yet another question; why are novices called upon for this most challenging of quests, but it does allow players to get more attached to their characters and this quest, like most novice quests, allows players to gain experience rather quickly. The party heads out to discover why the local caravan is past due, and typically again it has been ambushed and the real adventure begins. The party begins an expedition to Kuldahar, a village to the south of the Spine of the World Mountains, where gradually the full story is uncovered. From cold dank dungeons to ancient elven ruins to a living glacier, players will begin a quest that takes them to a number of places in the Icewind region. As the previewable beta only covered the beginning of the game, it offered a sampling of what players will eventually expect and thus far what has been uncovered is quite impressive.
During the course of the adventure, players will run into numerous side adventures and even have the opportunity to take part in seeming red-herring engagements with the usual assortment of undead, orcs, trolls and goblins. In the early part of the game, especially when the party is somewhat weak, it is probably in the group's best interest to avoid direct confrontation with any large groups of hostile creatures.
While the previewable version was also only a single player game, but one which allowed players to control up to six characters, the final version will support up to six players over a LAN or online. This multi-player element of RPG adventures has long been missing and with Icewind it appears as if it has finally been done justice.
Of course players will be able to create their own unique characters, beginning with the basic variety of races from humans, elves, half-elves, halflings, and dwarves. The character creation process is extremely similar to that of Baldur's Gate, and the developers plan to provide numerous pre-generated characters for players who do not wish to create their own. When creating an original character, players can choose from the usual assortment of archetypes including rangers, paladins, thieves, fighters, bards, wizards and mages, and characters have their alignment set as the player sees fit. While it is possible to set characters to chaotic evil, Icewind Dale's villain is probably of the typical hideous evil variety so it might not make the most sense to have evil characters. Additionally, while AD&D allows mixed parties of alignment, logic would dictate that a party of neutral to good characters will probably have the best experiences. Of course it isn't exactly possible to have a truly lawful good thief around, and since they can be quite useful at times, the player will have to mix and match just like with the pen and paper version of roleplaying.
