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Old 01-12-2009, 01:55 PM   #91
ZFR
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Join Date: February 14, 2002
Location: Ireland
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Default Re: Calling to all who...

Finished TotL and moved to Sea of Moving Ice.

From my run on hard, I remember ToTL to be extremely difficult and annoying. I expected to be all the more so on HoF and was instead pleasantly surprised. It wasn't all that difficult, and in fact enjoyable.

With one exception: the Jackalware area on level 5. You start surrounded, stone nuisanses keep casting magic missiles, and are themselves immune to all but blunt and magic damage, to top it off jackalwares keep goin after mage. Managed in the end to do it by casting mass invisibility + summons (creeping doom and shambling mounds) + moving to lower right corner and making my stand there. This battle was annoying.

Other slightly difficult battles:
_Harpy queen (difficult because you start surrounded + nasty dispel cast at you at the beginning).
_Spectral guards on ground floor (becomes easier if you get into a more defensive position.
_Rakshasas (easier to win if you set spells at the stairway and use it as the choke point. problem is the guy who does the dialogue has problem returning as he gets immediately surrounded. Not wanting to force attack the rakshasa, I used summons to distract the stalkers and shadows while my guy returns)

Battles which were surprisingly easy:
_Guys with djinni in south east tower. Cast insect swarm at spellcasters. djinni + fighter went down easily.
_Beholders. My saving throws must've been good. Simply pounding them with everything I got did the trick. Only had to reload once or twice when was turned to stone.
_Final battle with luremaster. Distract with summons, retreat to south west corner, then follow normal battle strategies.
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Old 01-15-2009, 02:45 PM   #92
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Finished Heart of Winter.

Icasaracht was easy. Distracted her with creeping doom and had everyone hit her with ranged from a distance. Mage/druids were casting high level AoE spells (acid storm, horrid wilting, chain lightning, firestorm...) a bless, prayer and recitation was also cast for good measure.
Just when creeping doom disappeared she made literally two steps and died. Not too difficult. Only thing is her ice attack could do severe damage for those not protected from cold.

Only the final areas left in original IWD now...
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Old 01-17-2009, 01:38 PM   #93
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It's finally over.

3 years after I started this, the game has finally reached a successful conclusion. Definately the longest running DnD CRPG I played. I didn't plan for it to take that long, and it didn't take so much time because of its difficulty. I just had to take a few long breaks.

Whew. What a feeling.

Just a comment on the last few fights.
Brother Poquelin: Too easy. Single click to attack him and it was over in few rounds. I didn't even cast any buffs, just one bless for good measure. He falls fast.

Pomab: This was difficult on core, but I managed to find the real Pomab and this was over pretty fast too.

Final battle with B.
This was difficult. Especially with the dispel at the beginning (did you know dispel dispels static charge too?). What I decided to do was to allow everyone except my C/R to die. So he drank an oil of speed and started moving away. While every one was distracted with the rest of the party and a few summons I managed to make, my C/R drank all the potions and their mothers. Then cast any buffs he had. with the oil of speed he would simply move from one end of the room to the other when the enemies closed on him. So it was run away then drink/cast for quite some time.
When he was powerful enough it was simply a case of beating the crap out of B. He went down pretty fast.

................................................

My party at the end:

Cleric(28)/Ranger(23)
Most Powerful Vanquished: Pomab
XP:28%, Kills:26%

Fighter(26)/Cleric(28)
MPV:Icasaracht Soul Gem
XP:22%, Kills:22%

Fighter(26)/Druid(27) (multi)
MPV: Polar Bear Spirit
XP:13%, Kills: 12%

Fighter(15)/Druid(30) (dual)
MPV: Icasaracht
XP:18%, Kills:19%

Bard(30)
MPV:Malavon
XP:2%,Kills:1%

Fighter(20)/Mage(18)/Thief(24)
MPV:Yuxomonei
XP:15%,Kills:16%

So comparing the multi and dual fighter/druid, the dual had more kills, (in spite of the fact that the multi had the better of the two slings, which was the weapon they mainly used). I think this was mainly due to the fact that with 5* in missile weapons the dual had more ApR. Spellcastingwise, the dual had more 7 level spells towards the end of the game, which is what really mattered.

My views on HoF overall: definately an experience. I really encourage anyone who hasn't done it to try it out.
It really forces you to try out different tactics than what you're used to. Some battles which were difficult on the normal run, are easy, and vice versa.
Since it only increases the physical attributes of your enemies, and not their spellcasting abilities, you might find spellcasters relatively easier at the beginning of the game. This is because while you are more powerful due to the extra XP you got, they are more or less the same as their regular-game version (their spellcasting is same, more HP though). For example the mage at Joril's place was pretty easy.
This doesn't hold true though as the game progresses.

Oh and by the way I never used:
_Otiluke's resilient sphere exploit.
_Invisibility + static charge exploit.
_Reload till you find the random item that you like - I always took whatever random item appeared.

And Special Thanks to:
_All the good people who helped me with party creation and what not at the beginning of this thread.
_Aerich's Survival Guide for a HoF-from-scratch party. An excellent reference which I've used a lot.

So that's it basically. I know these forums are dead, and I highly doubt anyone's reading this thread anymore, but if you do, please feel free to post a "congrats" or something similar. It's the first time I've posted my game progress on these boards, and any feedback is really appreciated .
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Old 03-20-2009, 07:34 AM   #94
Cascade
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Default Re: Calling to all who...

Have a congrats from me! My HoF's just made it into the new areas. I've played IWD vanilla plenty of times but never the expansions, so I'm thinking of stepping the difficulty down since I've never HoW/TotL'd in HoF before.
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Old 03-20-2009, 05:38 PM   #95
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Smiley Re: Calling to all who...

Thanks, Cascade!
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Old 03-27-2009, 12:02 AM   #96
Aerich
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Default Re: Calling to all who...

Congrats on finishing! I'm glad you found my earlier thread helpful/inspiring. That's what it was for.

A couple of quick notes: iirc, the Otiluke's Resilient Sphere exploit only works in vanilla IWD, not with HoW installed. The only way I could see it (sort of) working now is if ORS is cast on a character who is filling a doorway.

I don't know if it's the same for you, but I always felt that the F/D multi was more valuable than shown by the raw XP/Kills data. It provides so much spell support to weaken enemies (movement inhibitors, area damagers, summons) that it enables the other characters to mop up easily. I would be very interested to see data of "HP of damage caused to enemies" or some similar stat.

From the previous page (yes I know, kind of late):
There is no real significance to the warm room from a quest standpoint except to explain why the slaves haven't been wiped out, and possibly to allow the player to retreat to someplace safe in the Aquarium. iirc, you can rest there.

7th level clerical spells serve more of a "useful/support" role than a "must have". I always like to have a Resurrection or two available in HoF, and Impervious Sanctity of Mind is a pretty nice spell for certain areas (iirc it works against Umber Hulks, Greater Mummies, Wailing Virgins, harpies, etc). I've never found Symbol of Pain to be very useful (why use it if you can paralyze the same enemy with Symbol of Hopelessness?), but Symbol of Hopelessness can be devastating. You just need to set it up properly, by casting saving-throw modifying spells first. With just Curse, Prayer, and Recitation, you can give your enemies a -4 to save, and you can get it to -6 with Greater Malison. It's nice for mass situations, or when you're running out of options.
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