Q on installing Heart of Winter & TotL

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While at Thanksgiving, one of my realtives saw that I ahd Icewind Dale II on my laptop that I brought with to use as a sort of gameboy while spending the night. He said he owned the series but hadn't played in years. When I mentioned that I never got to play Heart of Winter and subsequently TotL, he offered to let me have the CD. He's promised to send it to me when he gets home.

I've patched my copy of IWD1 and installed what tweaks will work from the G3 tweaks pack, but when I get the HoW CD, will I have to reapply the patches and mods? What about saved games? Do I toss them, or can I use them?

Also, should I install Trials of the Luremaster at the same time I install HoW, or should I play through HoW first?

 

Personally, I would install:
IWD1
HoW
TotL
Patch (don't believe there are any official ones past TotL, but don't quote me )
Mods

You will have to reinstall mods and tweaks after installing each expansion, hence why I'd get the installing out of the way.

However, if you wish to experience each game as a separate entity, then there is no harm in playing one at a time and installing as you bid.

The expansions, overall, are rather self contained compared to the likes of TotSC for BG1 or ToB for SoA.

Saved games SHOULD survive the transition of installations. Though a clean, new game with the final setup is advised to avoid conflicts and garbled texts. However playing 'backwards' (loading a game after reinstalling to plain IWD1 game) will not work half as well!

 

The installation of HoW does also improve the enemy AI in some areas of the original game.
Don't install an XPCap remover.

 

You don't have to patch beyond TotL and you can quote me.

To be on the safe side I'd follow the order 8people indicated (minus the patch).

 

First, my game is already installed and patched with the latest official patch available for the standard game w/o Heart of Winter. Also, I used the ease-of-use mod for the things that it worked on. Some things require HoW which I didn't have. Turns out I never did download the G3-tweaks successor to ease-of-use.

Are you saying I should reinstall everything from scratch?

Also, is there any reason NOT to install Trials of the Luremaster at the same time I install HoW such as gameplay changes or otherwise?

 

Yup, install from scratch... or be prepared to be reinstalling a lot of modded features.

HoW also patches plain IWD so no need to install all games THEN all patches at least.

Absolutely no reason to not instal TotL at the same time as far as I'm aware. You get a couple of extra portraits

 

Absolutely install TOLM just after installing HOW. For one thing, you have to play TOLM before completing HOW. After a certain point in HOW (late in the game), you reach a point of no return and would be unable to do TOLM. Also, I strongly suggest playing TOLM, depending one's PoV, it may be the better than HOW itself. (I certainly thought so.)