Survival Guide for a HoF-from-scratch party (spoilers)

[Aerich]

Nah, I'm not almost done. I've still got HoW and TotL to do before finishing off IWD. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Characters have about 2.9 mil xp each right now, with three badges obtained. I'm sure I missed out on some easy quest xp in the Frost Giant Caverns - I told the slaves that I cleared the eastern passageway before I tried to tell them I killed Joril; they started to leave and I couldn't reopen dialogue. Grr. Mental note for next time...

Where was I - oh yes, beginning the Frost Giant Caverns.

The best use of the polar bear shapechange is against is against cold-using, light-hitting monsters like winter wolves. Add in a Storm Shell before you change, and a druid is a wolf-killer. The entrance was a breeze, especially when I added some cold-immune undead to the mix.

Little white dragons are no problem, and you'd have to really work at it to draw them all at once. When they attack singly it's dragon steak for breakfast.

Going north in the cave, the trolls can be a problem because they appear around your party and may prevent you from setting up the battle the way you want. Make sure you move your best tank a couple steps forward right away to induce more of the trolls to target it. This area wasn't too bad because I appropriately pre-buffed and 5 out of my 6 characters can tank in a pinch. I inadvertently forgot my bard in the main cave until after the battle started but that may have turned out to be a good thing. A Slow with your mage is a key strategy for this area.

Kontik and the Black Ice Knights weren't too bad. It seems fairly hard to disrupt Kontik, btw - she got off a couple of lightning bolts that fried my bard to near death. The Knights don't attack all in a bunch either - that makes it easier to make sure you have Entangle on the area and have an appropriate number of summons playing interceptor. Set up your entangles then go draw the knights; charging in can be troublesome. Use familiar disruption strategies on Kontik, and use fire on the knights. A Recitation goes well here, and even a Sunscorch can get up to about 50 damage(!) with the knights' vulnerability. Fire elementals, Flamestrike, and Produce Fire are all good supplements to the mage's fire spells.

Masses of yetis - Entangle, fire elementals, haste and fireball, any questions?

Joril - use a paladin with speed boots to talk to Joril. Bluff him out of his badge for xp, then demand that he release the slaves for more xp. This exposes you as a fraud, so run your pally back to the party (who should be casting industriously right about now), dodging the guards. I used: a pack of elementals (summoned and hasted before pally initiated dialogue), Recitation, Prayer, Malison, Slow, Chaos, Stinking Cloud, and all the AoE and single-target damage spells I could muster. Great fight.

The rest of the caves are easy, assuming you don't draw more than an enemy or two at a time. As usual, summons should take the pain.

Lower Dorn's Deep - it took two tries to clear out all the tarnished sentries. I used the strategies I've detailed elsewhere; regular buffs + haste + protection from normal missiles + protection from fire. The two best blunt-weapon-wielding warriors (in my case, paladin and R/C) went right after the sentries with a couple of elementals to help draw the attention of attending salamanders, the fire-immune F/D (protection from fire + Frostbrand) tagged along to cast Static Charge and other goodies to bring down salamanders, while the remaining three alternately missiled and spelled. I got a couple of Chromatic Orbs through on the sentries.

Thieves - not dangerous unless they backstab. If you're appropriately pre-buffed, they aren't scary unless several of them target the same character. Spread out a bit and use some summons, so that a few will expend their backstab on fodder.

Archers in the tower - pre-buff and get up close and personal. I summoned an elemental at the top of the stairs to occupy two archers. Anybody that has mirror image should be using it.

Marketh's Palace - Entangle, Spike Growth, summons, then draw the thieves on the first level with your tank. Keep the tank moving and keep your weaker characters out of sight around the corner until the thieves turn visible. I memorized Detect Invisible here, but didn't use it, thereby making it one of the most useless spells in the game. Use a bard and Marketh's portrait obtained in the shrieker garden to get rid of Flozem peacefully (the brother in the room farthest from the entrance). Fleezum is easy if you can stun him.

Palace, second level - clear out the big room on the south of the level, using the same anti-thief tactics as above. Go to Marketh with a free-actioned thief, and you can get all of his stuff; let him keep the ring, it's useless. Place the remaining crew members into one of the "hollows" in the big room, and spell-trap all approaches - the addition of Kraken Society mages makes this one of the tougher fights in the game, and I've failed to survive in the corridor five times, between this game (one reload) and the last. Tactical placement of self and spells is critical here. Web, Entangle, Spike Growth, Cloudkill, Stinking Cloud, etc should all be used. Run the thief back in to your party before casting SC and CK, and put some undead fodder out in front. With these spells going and your party in a protected position, you should be able to disrupt or dodge most of the nasty spells the mages cast. Fire away with the best missiles you have (acid arrows and bolts of biting/lightning are great here), and use any other spells that might be useful - be warned that the Seven Eyes spell the Kraken mages like may block your spells, so be prepared to double up if the first one gets blocked.

Three badges down, three to go before I switch over to HoW.

[ 01-17-2006, 12:07 PM: Message edited by: Aerich ]

[Aerich]

Okay, I have obtained all six badges. The party stands at about 3.95 million XP apiece - the multiclasses range from lvl 14 to 18, the pally is at lvl 21, and the bard is pushing the limit at lvl 27. The R/C has about 50 K less xp, as she was killed (twice) in melee (the second time from carelessness) and I decided to do a few fights (boneguards at 18 K apiece) before raising her the second time - I had to go to Kuldahar to buy a scroll. Anybody else find it weird that a druid can cast Raise Dead from a scroll?

The deadliest killers are the pally, R/C and F/D, all around 23% in damage caused and kills. The F/M and F/T, although they started strong, are about 15% each. The F/M's totals will go up with all the nice new high-level spells he's found, along with the repeating heavy crossbow from Ilmadia's area. The bard is 0%/0%, with 15 total kills - although one was a Kraken Society Mage worth about 25 K xp - the kill previous to that was a cold wight. The R/C is using the Static Morningstar (the chance to Slow the target is fantastic!), and the F/D has put on the Girdle of Stromnos to buff up his natural 17 Str and is doing huge damage with sling, Valiant, Slayer, or Frostbrand as the situation demands.

Malavon's area - use a potion of clarity on the pally, use low-level summons (in case they get confused), and kill umber hulks first and fast. Note - Chaotic Commands does not protect against umber hulk gazes. Inside the Lab, power up your troops with any remaining clarity potions before triggering dialogue with the simulacrum. I didn't, and lost the R/C halfway through the fight against the Iron Golems because she was confused and wandering. I'm really bad about hoarding potions. The fight here is pretty standard; there's only a couple ways to go about it. I prefer to hammer away at Malavon and/or his clone with three archers and try to dodge the webs and poisonous fogs while fighting his summons with the other three characters and my own summons. This area was actually pretty easy once I got rid of the umber hulks.

Brother Perdiem's area - use standard melee tactics against boneguards; they're nothing special. Summons take the heat while minimum 3 characters take it to them in melee one at a time. Do not allow more than one boneguard to attack a melee character at one time unless you have significant damage resistance. The same tactics work against zombie lords, although I prefer to take them from range because of their disease-causing powers.

As always the big threat is greater mummies. Standard disruption strategies are required. Have fire protection and Chaotic Command on your tanks; with non-tanks, CC is not strictly required as long as they try to stay out of range. I lost my F/D for an extended duration to Hopelessness, but managed just fine. In general, it's important to do the scout-draw-retreat tactics here, as running around wild will trigger far too many strong undead and possibly the Idol as well. 2-4 boneguards are about all you want to fight at once, and I'd prefer to fight greater mummies at a 6:1 or 10:1 ratio. Once all the undead are gone, charge in and take out the Idol in melee. You won't have to worry about PW:Kill if healthy because your HP should be over the limit, but Flamestrike could do some harm if you aren't using PfFire. If you aren't, why aren't you?

Ilmadia's area - clear out the elementals and salamanders before you go after Ilmadia and the giants. I decided to start this fight at the top, near the entrance to Perdiem's area. Having fought this fight before from the centre islands on Insane, I knew I might have to retreat. Sometimes you just can't hold the line. At the top, from centre to right, is a landing in front of the entrance, a bridge, and a wide path leading down and around to the little islands in the middle and from there to Ilmadia's hut. I made my first stand from the path. You can start the fight by attacking a giant, but I decided to do it by the book, and dialogue with Ilmadia first. Paladin + speed boots time, with a ring of free action in the back pocket.

I ran the pally down to Ilmadia, had some interesting woman-to-woman dialogue that I hadn't seen before, and ran back. The remaining crew began to cast right after the dialogue ended. Once I had my pally back, I cast full-out on the access point - luckily avoiding a graphics freeze - using all the entangles, spike growths, skull traps, glyphs, and various cloud spells; no Web, though, as I have determined that it is the single common factor in all my screen freezes. I had to wait a bit, then Ilmadia showed up by herself and got toasted. I had the F/D near the front line (of summons, of course) casting static charge as enemies showed up. As the fire giants approached, I hit them with every area-effect spell in the book that didn't involve fire, and the best missiles money can buy.

After downing the first half-dozen or so giants with relative ease, the Priest-Mages of Vhaeraun showed up, and they are nasty with a capital NASTY. I lost summons faster than I could replace them, and seeing it coming, I backed off 5 of my 6 characters across the bridge and renewed my summons, pally playing rearguard. The new summons stopped the fire giants momentarily at the bridge, but one of the priest-mages was hot on the heels of my pally and turned a -30 AC, 200 HP stud (or studdess? ) into a vulnerable punch-drunk wreck with three hits. With the other priest-mage and the giants fast approaching, having destroyed my fresh summons in about two rounds, it was prudent to exit stage left, and I did.

With two priest-mages and at least 6 fire giants remaining, I healed up outside and ran around to the door on the lower left - accessible through the right-side door of the garden and the lower door of Shikata's area. I re-buffed myself (yes, you have a LOT of spell slots by this stage) and entered. Putting the invisible pally out front to scout, I called up my best summons (earth elementals, invisible stalkers, creeping doom) to block the bridge from the direction they'd have to approach. Some of the priest-mages' buffs had worn off by this time, and they were wounded a little, so it was just a matter of focus-firing. I had a scary moment when the improved invisibility came off my pally and she got hit again a couple times, but her attacker bit the dust soon after. As that P/M was the only attacker to make it past the summons, all characters switched to missile weapons to finish off the fight.

I think that for next time, I'll try to cast a dispel on the priest-mages. There seems to be no other feasible way to stop them. I'd love to stop them in the spell trap, but they have huge buffs including magic resistance. It might be worth investing in a couple dispels, but they'd have to be timed and placed just right to avoid taking off all my own buffs and curses. I usually try to avoid casting dispel in fights for that very reason. However, this is a desperate and epic fight on the higher difficulty levels, and desperation tactics may be required.

I'll be going on to HoW next. However, real life intrudes and I doubt I'll be able to muster more than one session a week for the next three months or so.

[Ultra Marine]

I notice from your strategies that you employ mage spells from level 5 and below. Don't you use the stuff from level 6 and above and blast awayyyyy.

What about the standard mirrors+ss+tensor type of tank? Will they work?

[Aerich]

I'm not impressed with the combat capability of the lvl 6 mage spells. Aside from Chain Lightning and Acid Fog, which I used in the fire giant fight, the lvl 6 damagers are single-target, effects-negated-by-save spells (disintegrate, flesh to stone, otiluke's freezing sphere). I cast a couple of freezing spheres to no effect with the bard; fire giants have good saves, and I was unlucky. I much prefer to use my lvl 6 spell slots for Invisible Stalker or Shades. Fire giants have over 300 HP in HoF mode, so the trick is to wear them down or reduce their saves enough to hit with instant-kill spells. They are high risk, high reward. I will use Flesh to Stone when I've had the chance to lower the enemy saves and/or magic resistance.

The standard mage/tank works, but it still needs to be supported. My F/M doesn't have great AC for HoF (about -15, with buffs), so mirror images don't last too long. I won't use Tenser's Transformation unless I'm in a sheltered position, because the mage cannot cast again until the transformation wears off - that means no replacement of mirror image, and no damage spells or inhibitors. I prefer to use my F/M primarily as a bomber/archer - he's usually the third or fourth guy into melee.

Short answer - yes, a mage/tank works, but it is vulnerable. Unless it has very high AC, it won't last more than 3-5 rounds against more than one enemy at a time. As I only have one "true" mage in the party, he's more valuable casting spells in the serious fights.

[Azred]

Aerich is right--you'd be surprised how effective the lower-level spells can be. I use Chromatic Orb as often as I can because at higher levels you can stun or kill things outright. If I still have it, I saved a screen shot where my Chromatic Orb managed to sneak through Yxunomei's magic resistance and then she failed her save--instant death! [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img]

[Klorox]

I think I may give this a try too some time. Question: Have you found this game fun or tedious?
Question 2: If you could do it again, would you go with the same party? Or would you consider different characters, or even adding NPCs a little later (for instance, adding that Bard who levels up so quickly after the Prologue is done or something)?

I ask, because an idea I have involves having a character start the game as a Fighter and dual-class to Thief at either level 9 or 13 (13 being the optimal level). This character would advance faster with less members in the party, and would probably eventually become the best tank possible (even better with "Sneak Attack" instead of "Backstab").

[Aerich]

It's been fun. I suppose some of the fights in the beginning were slightly tedious, but I was trying so hard to keep characters alive that it didn't seem boring. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Re: the party composition, I quite like the balance of this party. Bard aside, every character is deadly from long range and better than adequate in melee. I never worried about my access to thieving skills or spells.

If I do another HoF party from scratch, I would change it for variety's sake, not because the current party could be improved much.

Dualclassing or adding characters later on is tricky. The bard gets significant quest xp in Easthaven, which is invaluable to a starter party. The Luck song is fantastic, doubling your chance to critical hit; a bard will sing this song from the orc caves through the Vale. I could be tempted to dump the bard eventually for another spellcaster, perhaps while in the Vale.

I'm not sold on dualclassing into thieves. For me, a thief's goal is to disarm every trap and pick every lock - I'm not sure that a fighter 13 dualclassed to thief will be good enough as a thief to take care of the DE traps, even on HoF. As for being the "best tank", I'd have to give the title to a warrior with spellcasting capabilities - paladin, fighter/cleric, or fighter/mage. I just don't think a F/T can overcome the lack of caster-only defensive spells to play the role.

Sorry to be so negative. [img]smile.gif[/img] I'd try out the idea in a non-HoF game first, although that would leave you scrambling for a thief in the early-to-mid game. It's not a terrible idea; the character does good damage, has the evasion skill, and could be given damage resistance items - until such items are found, this character will be handicapped by lack of defensive enhancement spells.

Azred, I think your screenshot of instant-killing the snake queen must be prior to HoW - post-HoW, the best Chromatic Orb effect is 13-round paralysis. Granted, that's pretty close to instant death. I have about 60% of my 1st lvl slots dedicated to Chromatic Orb.

[Azred]

No, it isn't. I corrected the spell as listed in the game; the effect stun if save and death if no save is already in the spell...just "turned off" for lack of a better phrase. [img]graemlins/beigesmilewinkgrin.gif[/img]

I thought that for my new game I would take only 5 characters through HoF and look for the less-sought-after weapons. How many folks actually use halbards? My only problem with that is that I know for HoF I need maximum damage resistance and only 2 halbards give resistance; of course, they also make using the great shield + 3 impossible. [img]graemlins/5bloodymurder.gif[/img] If only I could ever find the longbow + 4: hammer so I could combine it with the Ring of Reckless and get 5 ranged attacks per round without using haste....

[Aerich]

That explains it, you tinkerer you.

Do you know where the random drop is for the Hammer longbow? Pre-HoW it was at Ilmadia's camp, but I read somewhere that it was moved.

You can still get the repeating heavy crossbow there, which is a pretty decent substitute. Base 3 attacks/round, +5 to dmg and att. [img]graemlins/1drool.gif[/img]

[Ultra Marine]

How do you carry so much ammo?