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

[Klorox]

You eat white people?

[Sir Degrader]

Open door with sanctuary, let rest of party wail on enemies with ranged weapons/magic, why not?

[Aerich]

Another massive update here - I've been sick enough to procrastinate on my responsibilities, but not sick enough to spend all that time in bed.

Burial Isle, surface - unless you are lucky enough to have a character with near immunity from physical resistances, be prepared to summon early and often. On the Isle's surface, elementals work well. Use them to shield the melee character wielding the Three White Doves. Fire away with missiles on Barrow Wights. You will have to get up close against Drowned Dead or take them out entirely with spells, because they are nearly immune to missiles. It should go without saying that trapping anything on the Isle in a kill-zone of spells is preferable to melee if you can set it up. Shades is noteworthy because downed trolls can tie up stupid undead indefinitely. Deal with ghost shamen as you would any spellcaster, being mindful of their undead immunities (mind spells, cold, poison). The bear spirits are tough and slow, perfect candidates for a spell trap.

Burial Isle, underneath - be exceptionally careful and patient. The range of sight is marginally greater than the range of a wailing virgin's cries, so it is possible to take them out from range without injury. Of course, there are two complicating factors - first, the escorting undead, which should be dealt with by tough summons and a mind-protected, magic-resistant tank with the Three White Doves. Second, the wailing virgins float forward and back, and aren't too concerned about charging the party. Be careful of wandering characters if you've auto-targeted a WV with a missile weapon. Cast area-effect spells at the range of your vision when you know where they are. On HoF, you will find yourself dealing with anywhere from four to twelve wailing virgins at a time. It goes without saying that you are toast if your party gets close to too many at a time.

Your friends are Song of Kaudies, Silence 15' Radius, and Power Word: Silence. Death Fog, Acid Storm, Chaotic Commands, and any spells enhancing your saves are similarly useful. I also used a lot of Skull Trap, Mordenkainen's Force Missiles and Vitriolic Sphere. If you bottle up a bridge with spells and summons, sometimes the undead will take another path and show up behind you. Be watchful - a character scouting behind (if you can spare it) with a meatshield can be a good idea. A decent tactic is to retreat away from the wailing virgins, hammer down their supporting undead, and return. If you leave a bunch of AoE spells behind, chances are they won't be too healthy when you get back to them. In any case, they are less formidable without their lackeys to occupy your summoners. Do not rely on your bard for healing. Major healing spells will be required. Save at every possible opportunity using multiple slots, unless you like resurrecting. Edit: I didn't use Turn Undead here at all, and maybe I should have. My Paladin, at least, might have been able to turn away some of the ground troops, easing the burden on my summons.

Gloomfrost lvl 1 - aka the dominance of Stalkers and a bard singing War Chant. On the first level, summon Stalkers immediately. They are 90% immune to crushing attacks and 100% immune to fire (and electricity), so they are immune to remorhaz with War Chant's added 10% resistance to crushing damage. Summon elementals behind the party. Now advance, making sure to keep the stalkers out front and the elementals behind. Remorhaz will appear both places - focus the attacks of your party as necessary. I prefer to use single-target damagers over AoE here (exception is fire and electrical), as you really need your meatshields to stay up - one or two remorhaz hits can kill your tanks. Fire and electricity AoE are ideal against anything attacking your stalkers, although I wouldn't recommend Chain Lightning because of the danger to the party. Incendiary Cloud, Produce Fire, Glyph of Warding, and Static Charge will do. Remorhaz are somewhat magic-resistant, so don't get your tanks in a position where you need spells to hit in order to extricate them.

Gloomfrost lvl 2 - put stalkers out front again. This time, use a thief to scout just behind them, as there are traps all over this level. If your thief triggers some Ice Golems, they should go for the stalkers. Bring the bard up right away to make your stalkers 100% resistant. AoE fire spells work well on the Ice Golems, even low level ones like Aganazzar's Scorcher. Again, make sure that all the incoming golems are focused on your stalkers before you engage in melee - a targeted, stunned tank is a dead tank, and the golems don't seem to have trouble hitting a character with -20 AC. Fire and earth elementals are good supplemental tanks. The only real tank I used here was the paladin swinging the Flail of Mae (5% chance to petrify). I had some good luck with it. A Fighter/Druid with static charges going is also useful to have near the combat.

Back in Lonelywood - I got in from the barbarian camp at night, and took shelter from the werewolf in the tavern. Forgetting about Kieran's hunters, I stepped outside unbuffed in the morning. After a couple rounds, my paladin and my first summons were dead, so I cast Mass Invisibility to get my remaining 5 characters away and buffed. The paladin had drawn away the two mercenary warriors before dying, so I just had to deal with the spellcasters and the thief when I re-engaged. Standard disruption spells and Call Lightning got me through, then my fully buffed F/M and F/D took on the remaining two warriors giving my R/C time to resurrect the paladin. I had to withdraw the F/D to Heal, but I managed the fight with only the one loss.

Here's the party update going into TotL with all HoW quests completed before the Sea of Moving Ice. All characters have around 6.5 million XP (edit: each).

Paladin, lvl 29. Weapons - Pale Justice, Longsword of Action, Flail of Mae, Throwing Axe. Armor: Bathed-In-Blood, Red Knight's Shield. I bought a second returning throwing axe from Tiernon. Has access to lvl 6 priest spells, although only has a Wis of 13. I'm not complaining. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Ranger/Cleric, lvl 18/22. Weapons: Static Star, Three White Doves, Jamison's Sling. Armor: Vexed Armor, Shield of the Revenant.

Fighter/Druid, lvl 21/21. Weapons: Valiant, Frostbrand, Slayer, Quinn's Fancy Sling. Armor: Mithral Plate, Mystery of the Dead.

Fighter/Mage, lvl 21/18. Weapons: Amaunator's Legacy, Cairn Blade, Fang of Gloomfrost, Repeating Heavy Crossbow. Armor: Robe of the Watcher, Cloak of Protection.

Fighter/Thief, lvl 21/24. Weapons: Celebrant's Blade, Holdfast, Throwing Axe, Bow of Sseth. Armor: Studded Leather of Resistance +4, Shield of the Hand.

Bard, lvl 30. Weapons: Battle Axe: Defender. Armor: none (various protective devices). Maxed out on Burial Isle.

[ 01-22-2006, 10:58 PM: Message edited by: Aerich ]

[Kyrvias]

*whistles* quite the party

[Azred]

Originally posted by Aerich: Paladin, lvl 29. Weapons - Pale Justice, Longsword of Action, Flail of Mae, Throwing Axe. Armor: Bathed-In-Blood, Red Knight's Shield. I bought a second returning throwing axe from Tiernon. Has access to lvl 6 priest spells, although only has a Wis of 13. I'm not complaining. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Paladins can get higher-level priest spells without needing the appropriate wisdom? [img]graemlins/saywhat.gif[/img] I never knew that. How interesting. [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img]

[ZFR]

Originally posted by Azred: quote: Originally posted by Aerich: Paladin, lvl 29. Weapons - Pale Justice, Longsword of Action, Flail of Mae, Throwing Axe. Armor: Bathed-In-Blood, Red Knight's Shield. I bought a second returning throwing axe from Tiernon. Has access to lvl 6 priest spells, although only has a Wis of 13. I'm not complaining. [img]smile.gif[/img]

Paladins can get higher-level priest spells without needing the appropriate wisdom? [img]graemlins/saywhat.gif[/img] I never knew that. How interesting. [img]graemlins/petard.gif[/img] [/QUOTE]Yup that's true. Just like BG2.

[Kyrvias]

What a surprise...

[Ultra Marine]

According to the manual, the quantity of spells for the lvl18 mage would be 2-lvl8 & 1-lvl9. Being mc, access to them would be late in the game.

A dc9 anything mage would reach lvl27. That's 5-lvl8 & 3-lvl9 spells. And earlier access to it (being in Hof).

My question is: Will it make HoF easier with more 8&9 mage spells and early access to them?

[Aerich]

Um, "early" access to lvl 8 and 9 mage spells still requires a character to hit lvl 18 and to get the mage scrolls. Even on HoF, you're looking at Lower Dorn's Deep or HoW. There's a lot of difficult territory to be covered before you can even think about using those high level spells.

The short answer to your question is no.

Of the lvl 9 spells, Power Word:Kill is not a great help - it goes by HP, so you probably can't kill anything that isn't already badly wounded. It's good as a quick finisher if you're in trouble, but that's about it. The other spell is just a decent summons. Ho hum.

Of the lvl 8 spells, Great Shout is hard to use (cone-shaped), Iron Body isn't great (80% chance of spell failure while transformed), Incendiary Cloud is no better than Death Fog, Mind Blank is defensive (and does not protect from hopelessness), Power Word:Blind is okay, and the Monster Summoning is fine but not game-breaking. The key 8th lvl spell is Horrid Wilting, but you have it by the time you need it (TotL and end of HoW) even with a mc mage.

There are a few things that make HoF a little easier, but faster access to lvl 8 and 9 mage spells isn't one of them.

In no particular order, I'd say - bard, druid, immobilizing spells, summons. The hardest part of the game is the beginning, not the mid or end game. All parts of the game are still challenging, and a couple of extra high level spells aren't going to change much.

Also consider that a mc fighter/mage's thaco will keep increasing. A dc at lvl 9 will be stuck at 12 thaco until mage lvl 28. There's quite a few monsters in the game with negative AC, so a dc may hit less often than a high level multiclass.

[ 01-26-2006, 04:18 AM: Message edited by: Aerich ]

[Klorox]

It doesn't really matter. Even if you're able to cast level 9 spells in Lower Dorn's Deep, you'll be hard-pressed to find any spells to cast!