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Female Halfling Elf, Female Mage, Gnome Female Mage, Half Elf Wizard, Male Elf Fighter

Male Elven Fighter, Male EMT, Female Cleric, and Female Sorceress

Fans of the original Baldur’s Gate will easily be able to pick up the game and start adventuring. For those who just started playing, the beginning town of Easthaven is great for learning the ropes, and solving little quests people send you on for a measly sum of gold, items, and experience. Once you do decide to start adventuring, your party is asked to investigate the area outside of Easthaven with Hrothgar, one of the inhabitants of Easthaven, along with his small group of followers. But, just as you set off Hrothgar and his men meet an untimely death and the road back to Easthaven is blocked thanks to an avalanche, and so your adventure begins.

While Baldur’s Gate was more or less a story driven adventure with one main plot line and lots of side quests, Icewind Dale is more a hack and slash adventure. Although you do have to follow the main quest of trying to figure out what is going on in the Spine of the World mountains, you will find yourself doing a ton of fighting along the way. This is not bad, of course, since it is a nice break from story intensive RPGs.

Creating characters is not a difficult process. You choose his or her gender - there is no difference between males and females aside from voice and portrait. Race - race impacts the classes you can choose from, your abilities, and some statistics.

Class - your profession whether it be: a fighter type, a mage type, a rogue type, or a pries type.

Stats – your strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma.

Proficiencies – weapon types your character is skilled in ranging from bows to swords to quarterstaves.

Spells - if the character is a spell caster you can choose what first level spells you start with.