Well I finished the game without destroying the Globe of Essence.

I exported my toons and went to try and play HOF but it seems incredibly easy. I have it on hardest difficulty but the goblins are still dying with only 20-30 hps of damage being done to them. Is there a switch or something I need to turn on before I re-start or just continue on with way I am going. People were saying that the gobbies at the start have 100 hps at start of HOF but that isn't my experience so far.

Thanks

Kodo

P.S NM I found the answer in the manual. Guess I should have gone there first.

Thanks anyway all and great the board is back up and running.

[ 04-20-2003, 12:54 AM: Message edited by: Kodocha ]

Have you click the HOF mode in your icewind dale 2 game configuration before starting your game?

You are probably too high on exp

Kakero has it right. If you are only seeing 20 - 30 hit points for Gobbos then you are most likely NOT on HoF mode.

What happens in HOF mode? You just play the same game again with higher level characters and tougher monsters? Is it fun? Does the story change any?

It's just like playing diablo 2 in Hell mode ( if you have played that game ). In IWD2 hof mode, your character level is higher ( if you have imported them from normal mode ) and the monsters are tougher. It's fun because the challenge is there and the item is better than normal mode. the story is still the same.

[ 04-28-2003, 03:42 PM: Message edited by: Kakero ]

Yeah, it's exactly the same game except the monsters are much tougher and the items are (for the most part) much better than in the normal modes.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

Does anyone have a recommendation for what level you should be when starting HOF? Should you play through a complete game in normal mode first? Start with a fresh party (sounds like this would be very hard)? Or, perhaps pick up a party that is some part through normal mode?

By the way, no spoilers, please.

[ 04-30-2003, 06:21 PM: Message edited by: Borg ]

the game tells you to have a party at averange lvl 15. You should not be under lvl 10 I think to have a good chance to survive.

Generally, it's best to do your first HOF with the party that finished normal mode. That will give you a pretty good idea of the HOF difficulty. Then, you may want to try starting a new team in HOF mode. It's amazingly hard to do, but it can be done.

By the way, be sure to load up your party with as much as they can carry. Gold does not export over, so you'll want stuff to sell for cash.

<center>Nightowl2</center>

Damn, I just sold my extra items to Riki. I've got 350k in gold that isn't worth a damn.

Go back to your most recent save before you sold the items to Riki and just reload. You may even have an auto-save if you stopped the game just after selling to Riki.

Failing that, you will STILL be able to get some +5 greatswords of the soulless in the final battle (worth 50k gp apiece!) and some other decent items, AND you can always just buy a bunch of high ticket items with that 350K in gold from Riki and then resell when you start HoF.

Or if you want, you can take the auto-save from Tyrannar Brutai Mar and just replay the end game, being careful to pick and choose the items you want to export. There isn't that much to do after you take him out and the end game is NOT that difficult.

Remember than containers do NOT export, so I recommend SELLING every potion that you don't think you will need and converting the cash into +5 missile weapons at Riki's! The missile weapons have no weight and yield good returns when resold. If I remember correctly Riki has a TON of +4 and +5 arrows, bullets and bolts.

TIP #1: If you want to free up MORE inventory room, empty out your missile slots and fill them with +5 missile weapons. That frees up 18 slots (!) if you have a full party of 6 and you can then resell those bolts for cash if you so desire.

TIP #2: Don't forget that you have extra space in those weapon slots! You can actually equip more than one shield (in separate slots of course) and free up additional inventory slots that way well. You can equip shields or a second weapon in ANY open slot except where two handed weapons are being utilized. So put those two-handed weapons in your inventory and make your characters look like they are dual wielding!!!!

BTW, Money isn't THAT hard to come buy in the HOF mode game. I started my HOF game with the end game characters from the normal difficulty game. I did some judicious inventory manipulation before I exported. When I started the HoF, I stashed virtually all of my inventory in the warehouse and stripped the characters down to the bare essentials (weapons, armor, rings, shields, etc.) After clearing up the dock area I went to the general store and started selling and had quickly built up a cash horde of over 400K gp and that includes the purchase of several HOF items (including the Kegsplitter (VERY useful against Golems! - a MUST have), the goblin slayer (another GREAT item for the early stages of the game), and the Heart of Whomever longsword).

I just started the Underdark in HoF (with all those Hook Horrors). I still have over 450K in gold, a sizeable number of high priced gems (diamonds, emeralds, star saphhire, rogue stones etc.) and a stash of magic items that almost fills my bag of holding. I've added the HoF version of Celestial Aura armor among others. I've been selling virtually every weapon that is +3 or poorer (with one or two exceptions) and several +4 weapons as well.

What is disappointing is the low xp that I am getting in HOF mode. When I went through Battle Squares last time on normal difficulty (and that was just before I started chap. 4), I remember getting some decent xp for completing not only all 10 ranks (grand mastery), but also some nice xp for completing ranks 6 thru 10 individually as well as some combat xp. On HoF mode, the ONLY xp I got was completing all 10 ranks and two cheesy 300+ xp awards for two of the monsters. Aside from that, I got ZIP!!!! I had expected that I would get additional xp for the other ranks - so it was a major annoyance. If I had known I was only going to get the measly 7500 xp for completing all 10 ranks, I probably wouldn't have bothered. In fact, I deliberately decided to finish battle squares earlier in HoF (right after I cleaned out all of the ice temple in Chapter 2) than I did previously to get ADDITIONAl xp from some of the combats. Guess that ploy was a failure.

I did get duplicate copies of all 11 magic items - most of which I sold almost immediately except for the short sword, the club and one other item.