Surviving Heart of Fury

[Teeran]

I am not ready for heart of fury mode (not enough levels or equipment) but does anyone have any suggestions for attempting it?

[Sir Moosington]

The traditional IWD tactic of loads of fighters is much less rewarding in HOF. If you just charge in you'll spend a lot of time resting, healing and raising. Everyone has their own way of doing it. Part from the cheesy invisibility/static shock combo, suummon creature spells and animate dead are invaluable - the creatures you summon are just as tough as the ones you fight. This allows you to use missiles and spells without unduly endangering your party.

[Lukivah]

You've already stated you don't have the levels but when you do get them its pretty simple, take cleric, memorize as many symbol of hopelessness's as you can, cast spell, 3/4ths of the monsters on the screen will stop moving, kill away. Until symbol of hopelessness use web. memorize as many webs as you can, cast free action on your fighters, cast 2-3 webs depending on the amount of enemies, if more cast 3, if less cast 2, always two if you ask me because thats twice the chance to hold them. As for symbol of hopelessness resists think on this, Yuxonemei(sp?) has an insane magic resistance, symbol of hopelessness got her on the second cast.

[Micah Foehammer]

Some generic notes and tactics for HoF mode:

Surprisingly, in HOF mode the earliest encounters are the toughest! Those pesky little goblins in Easthaven and the larger group found on the first map after the avalanche are VERY tough. Especially since you have few spells at the beginning. That being said, these are the tactics that worked for me:

In general, try to take on small groups at a time. Don't rush in and expose large groups of enemies as they will cut you to pieces.

Make sure that EVERY party member has at one ranged weapon. Bows, crossbows, slings, darts, throwing daggers, and /or throwing axes. And take LOTS of ammo!!! You are going to use a LOT of ammo in HOF mode, so don't scrimp when you outfit the party! When my group left Easthaven the first time, my bowmen had over 320 arrows each! And they used ALL of them. It isn't as easy to restock these from slain enemies as in normal mode, as they enemies with bows will use a significant portion of their own inventory against you! So don't count on getting a lot of arrows off the corpses. If you ARE lucky enough to get a bunch this way; stockpile them someplace safe so you can recover them later.

Spells: I got tons of use out of Chrome orb, Web, Entangle, Hold person, Slow and Skull Trap, Glyph of warding, Horror, and Confusion. Horror is especially effective. But the most important spells were animate dead and Monster summoning (at least at the beginning)!! Your summoned monsters should lead the way and take the fight to your enemies while the rest of your party chips away with ranged weapons and selected spells. When your first wave of summoned monsters starts thinning down, summon some more! These spells formed the core of my memorized spell lists well into the 4th chapter. Also, don't forget Protection from evil and defensive harmony and make sure that you cast them AFTER you have summoned any monsters you intend to summon. Game play note: Your summoned monsters are VERY tough. The game designers didn't morph them so that when you summon them they get the same extra hitpoint boost as the improved monsters in the game do! These guys are FORMIDIBLE allies! USE THEM! OFTEN!

In combat, don't EVER get surrounded! Try to keep a retreat path open so you can flee to a safe resting area, even if its on a previous map!

As for me, the TOUGHEST fight on HOF mode was the battle with the Yuan-ti summoner on the map before Yuxonomei. WHY? Well, I was playing HOF mplayer with one other guy - that's right, we had TWO characters. And up until that map, we had been using commando tactics - hit and run, rest up, hit them again, rest. But when we got to the summoners level, we got a nasty surprise! It turns out that every time we reentered that level, the high summoner would respawn a new BUNCH of new trolls or lizardman. By the time we had cleared out everything else, there were over 32 spawned lizardmen and who knows how many trolls tucked away in that one little corner of that area! When we got close, they came flooding out at us like a tsunami. The way we got thru this area was to utilize the trapped adventurers! The guys are TOUGH! Not only are they well equipped but they are ALSO enhanced with a TON of hitpoints! Treat them like summoned monsters and let them lead the way! Just don't hit them with any offensive spells or you'll have to fight THEM too!

[Micah Foehammer]

You CAN make it through the game on HOF mode starting with 1st level characters. We did. It wasn't easy, but we succeeded.

The worst part about it was actually the mplayer lag! It was barely manageable! I don't know what the problem is but the mplayer lag became INCREDIBLY bad with HOW installed and only improved slightly when the patch came out. We didn't have a lot of trouble with mplayer lag in IWD.

[Garnet FalconDance]

guys, feels really stupid asking...

What is the Heart of Fury mode? How does one enable it?

[Micah Foehammer]

Heart of Fury mode is a special level of difficulty that goes beyond insane. I don't know all of the specifics but basically ALL of the monsters have their hitpoints TRIPLED PLUS another 80 hitpoints (+/-) to that. In addition, their thaco's, armor classes and special abilities are also augmented. For example, a simple 6 hp goblin now becomes a 98 hp juggernaut, and his thaco is now something like a 10 instead of a 20 or so.

Of course, you get some where between 3 to 6 times the xp points for monsters and probably 3 to 4 times the xp for quests.

You access HoF mode from the special set-up configuration screen. Its a little box just below the difficult toggle bar on that screen. Just click in it and voila!

Its recommended that you start HOF using pre-buffed (9th level or better characters)- but you CAN start off using 1st level characters if you want a REAL challenge and beat the game in HOF mode. Be prepared to save and rest a LOT if you do it that way. You will find that in HOF mode that you will cap out single class characters VERY quickly, so I strongly recommend that the party use multi-class characters as much as possible for extra spell abilities and fighting skills.

My 2 HOF parties looked like this:

Party 1

1/2 elven Ranger/Cleric
1/2 elven Fighter/Druid
Elven Fighter/Mage/Thief
Bard

Party 2

Paladin
Elven Fighter/Mage
Gnome Illusionist/Thief
1/2 elven Ranger/Cleric

HOF is a lot of fun but it is a challenge!