Icewind Dale Mod Recommendations

[Morty]

This holiday season, I was taken by a nostalgia for Icewind Dale, of all things. The first one - I harbor no warm feelings at all towards the second. I never did get too far in it, but maybe this time will be different? I'm about to start lazing about at home on a holiday, so now is a good time. That said, I would like to spruce it up with mods, so I'd like to ask for recommendations. I figure graphics and UI upgrades are a no-brainer. I'm using old DVDs I still have at home instead of the Enhanced Edition.

[Winthur]

This holiday season, I was taken by a nostalgia for Icewind Dale, of all things. The first one - I harbor no warm feelings at all towards the second. I never did get too far in it, but maybe this time will be different? I'm about to start lazing about at home on a holiday, so now is a good time. That said, I would like to spruce it up with mods, so I'd like to ask for recommendations. I figure graphics and UI upgrades are a no-brainer. I'm using old DVDs I still have at home instead of the Enhanced Edition.

If you have the same Polish Saga Icewind Dale DVD Edition as I do, then it has Gibberlings 3 mods on the DVD, although you might want to look into the newer versions of them if possible (although IWD didn't receive that much modding attention).

Anyhow, here's a cool list from CamDawg (https://www.gibberlings3.net/forums/topic/24870-iwd-mod-install-order-thread/) along with an install order. Feel free to refer to the install order for general guidelines on how to make mods work as well.
The bare minimum for "prettifying" the Dale seems to be One Pixel Productions and the Widescreen Mod. Unfinished Business is currently on fairly recent (year 2018) v8 build and knowing the big names at G3 they made it work on both vanilla game and EE. Auril's Bane is a mod in the vein of Dark Side of the Sword Coast or similar big mods from early days of WeiDU modding, so a bit more quantity-over-quality and somewhat too ambitious at times, so YMMV on that.

[Morty]

I do indeed have those mods here. But I'll try looking for newer versions. I'm also a bit leery of content mods for such games. They're hit or miss and I never did finish the vanilla game to start with. So I'll focus on the graphics and quality of life stuff.

[Spore]

In my humble opinion, IWD 2 picks off after you've left the vale. It is rather bland and rng-heavy before (as is all 3e low level combat). You'll arrive at a monastery a few hours in, so do yourself a favor and power through until that point.

[Morty]

I played it until around level 13 and stopped there, so it's clearly not the case of quitting too soon. 3.0 D&D just ceases to function around that point, and transitioning into real-time and the Infinity Engine made it worse.

[Spore]

I mean I stopped around there too. But apparently it is just the last dungeon then. Regardless I could not cope with what I recall was basically an RNG puzzle.

[Cazero]

I stopped at the last boss. The difficulty spike is just ridiculous.
Twin demons with PC classes. They hit harder, faster and more accurately than your top brawlers, are pretty much immune to disabling, you get dispelled on your way in while all their buffs come up instantly, the whole place has lethal traps that you can't disarm beforehand, they have a lot of bodyguards that are too dangerous to ignore, and as if all that wasn't enough they're both near-epic spellcasters.

I also got back to the first game for christmas. We just finished it in multiplayer with my brothers. It was a lot funnier than I expected (I kinda gave up on the engine after trying Pillars of Eternity 2) in spite of the very odd connexion issues (random item erasure, inventory duplication, non-responsive enemies...).

[Morty]

If there's one thing really I miss form later games (like Dragon Age and Pillars), it's targeting aids for AoE spells. Aiming fireballs and such is a pain without them.

[LibraryOgre]

The last fight in IWD2 CAN be very easy, if you have 1 piece of equipment: Scroll of Protection from Magic. Use it on the female cambion.