In case anyone's curious, my experiment about dashing off to save Imoen pretty much as soon as the ransom money was collected (day 12) worked fine. Brynnlaw/Spellhold/Sahaugin City are clearly designed to be easy even if your combat readiness is low, and even the Underdark wasn't too bad.

The only fights that gave my low-level and underequipped party real trouble were 1) the beholder lair (wound up skipping most of that section), 2) the illithid lair (would probably have been impossible, except for having stolen about 18 potions of genius from the duergar and drow merchants), 3) the death knights (tough but definitely beatable, didn't even need to reload), and 4) those @$%!#!! githyanki who ambush you in the Promenade when you get back (that one took a couple tries to get right). Other than that, no problem at all. Killing Adalon or Drizzt would probably have been impossible at this level, but they're hardly necessary victories.

Doing the Athkatla quests is sure weird after the Underdark ordeal, though. Many of them are waaaaaaay too easy. And others are just funny, like that annoying Hidden in Jan's subquest who tries to scare your pants off by revealing himself as an illithid and threatening to kill you. We just laughed at him and killed him before he could get off the screen. (-:

Interesting. I would have thought it to be very hard, but you sound like it wasn't so bad. Weird doing all the stuff in chapter 6 huh? I can imagine. Did you state in another post what your party was? Could you tell me or give me a link, I'm just curious who you took.

My main character is a kensai-thief dual (he's modelled on a character of mine from a pirate campaign who refuses to wear armor, and it fit). His companions are Minsc and Valygar up front, Aerie, Imoen, and Nalia in back. Not the best-balanced party I ever had, but I wanted to try the Aerie romance and had never taken Nalia or Minsc all the way through before, so I thought I'd give 'em a shot.

Doing Imoen's quest ASAP has had two interesting effects for me so far:

1) Imoen is a much more formidable party member this way, she's only one level behind Nalia in magery (and a much better thief).

2) The game juices up the Athkatla combats for me! I don't know if it's sensing my higher level or my chapter-sixness, but there have been really tough extra opponents on a lot of these quests, including bone golems, a pack of four beholders, and an extra lich hanging around in that zombie town. (You wonder why he let the zombie be the ruler...)

And, it's a little weird wandering around looking for everyone and their brother's lost cat while my soul is missing, of course. But honestly, I've always thought it was kind of weird doing it while Imoen was in Spellhold being tortured.

That bone golem didn't happen to appear in the Tanner's basement in the bridge district did it ;) And those beholders spawned in the temple sewers? I've noticed those before.

Anyway, good choice of NPC's >>>>my exact choice for my first game was those...

Nalia and Minsc both really annoy me, which is why I've never played a full game through with them till now. (-: And I find it a little boring having Nalia and Imoen in the party together, since Nalia can't do anything Imoen can't. But they're a very cohesive team, more so than other groups I've played, and they kick appropriate amounts of butt.