To round this out for others in the same situation:

The games gives you very few magic weapons up to this point (I have 4 right now), but its also very hard at this point in the game to identify magic items unless you know that the temple can do it but the shops cannot even though they seem to offer this service.

Conlan should have no problem identifying magical weapons and armor. Though you really shouldn't rely on shopkeepers for identification services anyway, any wizard worth their robes knows the Identify spell. A one-time small investment in gold to teach your party wizard Identify is all the money you'll ever need to spend on figuring out what magical items do.

Magical items in general are somewhat scarce in DnD-based games, at least compared to loot-driven RPGs, notably the Diablo series or the Divinity: Original Sin games. Finding magic weaponry is special, and shouldn't be taken as a given.

Or just have an un-kitted bard. It’ll be very rare if you can’t id something automatically.

I'm using the default party. I taught identify to both my bard and my mage and it doesn't seem like either can cast it.

make sure they've memorized some copies and rested, then right click on the item you want to identify. They'll either identify it automatically via a lore check (happens pretty often for bards once they get a few levels under their belt, except blades, though high level thieves/wizard classes also get a fair amount of lore on level-up. (thief/mage/sorc get +3 per level, blades get +5, all other bards get +10 (by 5+ Bards can generally auto-identify almost any non-cursed item), everyone else gets +1. There's also a flat bonus for certain amounts of int/wisdom (or a penalty for very low wis/int)) or you can click the Spell tab on that screen to use one of your memorized identify spells. If you happen to have an extra scroll of identify on hand, you'll also get a Scroll option if the character is capable of using the scroll.

(you also need the item in the inventory of the person you want to identify it).

(also if the character can wear armor, make sure they aren't wearing armor that prevents spell casting).

Originally posted by vysionier:

Or just have an un-kitted bard. It’ll be very rare if you can’t id something automatically.

unkitted? heresy
I have a jester that can identify everything so I think kits are good. My jester reached 100 lore so she can even identify alien objects brought in by asteroid fragments and comets.

IWD as a game gets more interesting, if playing slowly and with attention to details, such as consumables and throwables - and also consulting the huge PDF manual.

Something's not working right, then.

Some lesser bosses can drop weapons - or enchanted equipment, depend of your luck. For example, the orc in the abandonned mill has 20% of chance to drop a magical dagger.

Originally posted by Fozzforus:

Something's not working right, then.

Give more details. Identifying items via Identify spell or Lore works fine here.

You need to right-click the unidentified item, which will bring up buttons to identify using either spell or scroll. If the item is in the inventory of a caster who has "identify" prepared, that's how you cast the spell. It sounds like you're trying to cast Identify using the usual spell button, which will show the spell as greyed-out.

The trick I was missing was to have it in the inventory of the person you want to do the identifying.

I feel in BG1 I had so much gold and no reason not to have the store guy do it.

Originally posted by RodentDung:

Originally posted by vysionier:

Or just have an un-kitted bard. It’ll be very rare if you can’t id something automatically.

unkitted? heresy
I have a jester that can identify everything so I think kits are good. My jester reached 100 lore so she can even identify alien objects brought in by asteroid fragments and comets.

Lol, I just love that war chant of sith! Free healing so I can have more melee/ranged people and then make my one cleric into a cleric/multi.

Icewind Dale is VERY stingy on magical weapons and the few it has dropped are ones that I'm not trained to use so terrible hit rates (none of my characters have dagger, for example because daggers all pretty much suck as do quarterstaves, but that's all it think a mage can use (stupid) so I created a fighter/mage, but of course it takes forever to level up at the beginning of the game.

Fortunately, I have a sorceress too, but it takes all her magic missiles to take out the Wight, for example and since the game uses "rest" instead of mana (and the always totally absurd memorize spells; I don't know how some can memorize dozens of spells but can't still remember magic missile after casting it 100 times...

I mean SERIOUSLY, WTF thought up this absolute STUPIDITY? It's not even believable. It's why every non-D&D game uses mana. Wizards all magically lose their memory after casting a spell...right. Even in 1984 when my brother and I played Paper & Pen D&D, we ditched that stupid rule and many others as they were fun killing garbage. The Story/Adventure is what matters most, not SSI style combat turns (turn style itself nothing like reality either).