Heart of Fury

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Just restarted the game in HoF mode after beating it once. They were not kidding when they said it was hard. All of my 6 characters are well into the 20's level wise, with a good mix and heaps o'firepower. Yet, simple, trivial little goblins still hit me fairly regularly and are very hard to take down. My rogue with a 31 AC normally(35 vs missles) went head to head with a goblin archer. He TOOK 32 hp damage, and did over 45 before the little bugger finally went down. Is anybody else enjoying HoF as much as me???

 

Wait until you get a bit further.

While goblins have a +29 attack bonus, Remorhaz and Sherincal will have a +42 and will deal around 40 damage per hit plus some 15 fire (slashing) damage. No Stoneskin will ever help you...

 

Funny little HoF story. Outside the lost village before the Fell Wood you get attacked by the ferocious dire wolves, well in HoF these things will wipe you out. They were hitting my guys for 20 to 30 points of damage each. There are at least 12 of them and more spawn while you are fighting. My two fighters have over 300 hitpoints and my pali was darn close to 300. I got three of my characters killed the first time against them, so the second time I cast stoneskin. No help there, they still killed my rogue and my cleric. On my fourth reload I decided to cast improved invis on everyone, that finally worked.

HoF is no joke folks, although it does kind of suck to think you cannot win some "simple" fights without resorting to IIing everyone. Don't even get me started on BattleSquares in Hof mode. I barely won my 3 fights to get Oria's key. Even that took 2 tries, the first time through I lost to a Remorhaz-the thing could not see me but it fried me. Tried shooting it with arrows, no good there (my guy had rapid shot with +2 arrows and five attacks per round and still could not take the thing out in under a minute).

 

Okay,

I haven't finished the game yet the first time around, but I am planning to kick butt on HOF pretty easily.

Currently I cast Circle of Invisibility before entering a new area. Any monsters in the immediate area ignore my invisible party. I then find a clear spot (of monsters) or leave and come back to cast Improved Invisibility on my sorcerer. She can then cast Animate Dead 5x or my Demarche of Mask can cast it 1X and then he becomes visible and she cast II on him and then he can cast it 4x more. Since he is a couple levels higher (beause she is leveling slower, being a Drow), he animates more powerful undead.

My sorcerer then cast Improved Haste on the undead and watches them tear into surrounding monsters. The benefit of this is that these undead (currently Greater Elite Boneguards and Greater Drowned Undead) will be equally as powerful in HOF (i.e. they'll benefit from the increased HPs of the mode and I can't wait to watch them tear into everything.)

Of course, by then my cleric will be even higher level (he's 13 or 14 now) and be summoning even more powerful undead. The main reason I'm even finishing the game is just to see how powerful undead he can summon!

BWA HA! HA!

 

You're relying on 2 spells that have been "fixed" in the patch:
Improved Invisibility will no longer make you invulnerable like before. Creature *will* attack you now after your first attack.
Raise Undead has been limited to create max level 10 monsters.

 

You could always export the characters and start again in normal mode... just joking.

HOF really gets your strategies going. Summonned monsters are really the only way to go. Distract with them and pound with fighters. Otherwise use bottlenecks as much as possible.

I feel that IWD2 HOF is harder than IWD HOF.

What do you reckon?

 

Hello!

I have already posted this a week ago on this forum but obviously nobody actually saw it, so I post it again in this topic:

I am in Severed Hand HoF and have beaten Xvim, my party is lvl 27(except for pal aasimar who is lvl 26) now. Here is the tactics I used to beat most areas of the game.

1) DISABLING SPELLS
-------------------
In HoF, it is very important to make good use of disabling spells, to stop enemies from attacking you all the time. Great spells for this are spells Holy word, Symbol of Hopelessness and Tremor.

Holy word is probably by far the best since there is no saving throw (and is rarely resisted at all-mostly by *some* bosses and undead), but it only lasts for one round - enough time to set off a batch of other spells. The only setback is that area of effect is centered on the cleric so you have to send him into the fray..., and also, your party has to be of good alignment, otherwise it will stun your party member(s) as well. Neutral/Evil versions of this spell(Blasphemy) are less useful, since all monsters are either neutral or evil.

Symbol of Hopelessness isn't as good as symbol of stunning(will save and doesn't work against undead...) but has no hit point limitation and also has stun effect among other. It worked great so far.

Tremor (with xtra points into Spell focus: transmutation for DC) also works pretty well, but has long casting time which makes it a bit more difficult to use, I usuall cast it when there're many monsters on the screen and other spells can't reach them.

2) DEATH SPELLS
---------------
Finger of Death, Wail of the Banshee, Flesh to stone, Banishment(for summoned creatures)
I found these spells absolutely VITAL. Monsters often have so many HP that even best damage spells do very little damage.
Cast Malison(-2 saving throws), and after that Wail of the Banshee, and you will have 50%+ monsters less to fight. I easily killed Sherincal and her party with this trick. Of course, extra DC from spell focus and items with bonus to CHA for sorc/INT for wiz are essential for this spell to work well, as is front line of fighters(wail has long casting time...) and cleric with holy word.

Banishment is also useful, since it instantly kills summoned creatures - no more summoned apocalyptic boneguards and so on... a must have, for later battles.

3) PROTECTION SPELLS
--------------------
Of course, running around without protections isn't a very good idea. Stoneskin should be up all the time, and in most cases Improved invisibility and Prot. from evil as well --> these spells have long enough duration so recasting isn't needed(unless a spell like stoneskin fails of course .

Imp. invis is especially useful since most monsters will ignore your party(except some mages), so they will be easy prey. There was no other way to beat combat room in Ice temple without this spell, since monsters have so many HP my monk couldn't even kill them in 60 seconds or worse he was dead in 10 seconds

For more important battles or difficult areas I would also cast Emotion Hope, Holy Aura, Executioner's eyes and Aura of Vitality(my lathander cleric has it).

4) DIRECT DAMAGE SPELLS
-----------------------
Well there isn't a whole bunch of spells that actually HURT monsters by much, but I found Meteor Swarm, Fire storm and Horrid Wilting to be useful, mostly as battle opening spells, to weaken monsters somewhat. Most other damage spells are useless even in early stages of the game(FBall, Sunfire, Ice storm, ...), with the notable exception of Melf's Meteors and spells that kill trolls such as Fire Arrow and Acid arrow.

5) WEAPONS
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You will soon find out that normal mode weapons arent even half as good as HoF mode weapons, and some unique armors and items are better than normal counterparts as well.

Kegsplitter of Shaengarne(buy in Targos) is absolutely VITAL weapon for later stages since it kills ALL golems with one hit. As you all remember golems have 50/+3 damage resistance and are tough nuts plus they to about 60 crushing damageU(120 with critical /hit in HoF - even enraged barb with Sskin and 470HP can't take so much beating.

There are some other items like bracers you get from avarine decanter djinn if you let him free(10/+2 damage resist and +5 ac) which you will find useful, as is Monk's 20/+1 damage resistance since most animal monsters(except elementals) and many humanoid opponents have normal attacks.

-- Leonidas

 

Hello!

This is a reply to greywolf:

>Funny little HoF story. Outside the lost village before the Fell Wood you get attacked by the ferocious dire wolves, well in HoF these things will wipe you out. They were hitting my guys for 20 to 30 points of damage each. There are at least 12 of them and more spawn while you are fighting.

You can easily dispatch Dire wolves if you repeatedly use Holy word - they will be stunned for another round each time you cast it. My sorc cast Symbol of hopeleness in the mean time to stun some more wolves. After that, I cast Malison(sorc) on them and then 2 wails of the banshee(sorc and wiz). Most wolves were killed in an instant, the others slaughtered by pumped up fighters(exec eyes and so on...).

>Don't even get me started on BattleSquares in Hof mode. I barely won my 3 fights to get Oria's key. Even that took 2 tries, the first time through I lost to a Remorhaz-the thing could not see me but it fried me. Tried shooting it with arrows, no good there (my guy had rapid shot with +2 arrows and five attacks per round and still could not take the thing out in under a minute).

I had massive problem in Battle square also, as my monk(best char to do it) was practically unable to kill any monster other than shadow in 60 seconds. Also, apoc. boneguards, shadow giants(or whatever) and remorhaz are EXTREMELY difficult in HoF, as each hit easily deals about 80 damage(40 crushing+40 fire or so). I finally did it using Improved invisibility, but even in that case I was barely able to kill them in 60 secs... very frustrating indeed.

-- Leonidas

 

In reply to Quint.

I haven't downloaded the patch and I won't, so my 2 spells will work just fine!

Also, to Leonidas: You've got a long list of spells to cast. My strategy is much simpler. The best thing is my party can sit back and file their nails because Animated Undead are doing all of the work.

Again, I can't wait to see what kind of undead my lvl 30 cleric is going to be able to Animate!!

 

Cendragon, I hate to tell you this, but in HoF your summoned creatures (undead or not) will get killed pretty quickly. My 23rd/24th level characters are summoning some pretty powerful undead and elementals and the monsters are taking them out as quickly as they take my characters down. The best thing about using summons is that you can concentrate your characters attacks on one enemy at a time while they are hacking down the summoned creatures. Without the summoned creature you pretty much play each area under the effects of Improved Invis, and thatgets kind of boring.

Also, if you plan to use ranged attacks. Be prepared to buy or create lots and lots of arrows. I have had fights in the beginning of the game where I have used 80 arrows with one of my characters.

Up until the Fell Wood my guys were ok slugging it out with enemies. Now the enemies are starting to do some serious damage (even to my character with the brazen bands). I have had some luck with spells like Holy Word (very good to have in HoF), but my sorceress pretty much has evocation spells like fireball, dbF, acid storm, horrid wreathing, and the like. This spells are not as effective in HoF since the enemies have so many hitpoints. I am thinking of recreating my soceress with more spells that are more effective in HoF.

Note, orcs in HoF can take 2 dbFireballs (mine do about 80-100 points of damage usually, sometimes more) and still keep coming. They also resisted my symbol of death spells quite well.