Heart of Fury vs Insane???

Artas1984

After finishing IWD and IWD 2 i have now picked up IWD EE and i've got an immediate question - does the insane difficulty differ from heart of fury difficulty?

If i understand correctly, monsters in insane difficulty do twice more damage, and you get twice more XP, but their hit points remain the same?

While in the hart of fury difficulty monsters also have more HP besides the increased damage?

Insane difficulty and heart of fury difficulty - two different things?

Also, does IWD EE fix the PC performance issues those were present in the original game?

semiticgoddess

1. Heart of Fury, like Insane mode, doubles the damage you take--whether from enemies, traps, or even your own party (like a party-unfriendly Fireball spell).

2. Unlike Insane mode, HoF triples enemy HP and adds 80 HP on top of that. An enemy with 50 HP in IWD will have 330 HP in HoF mode.

3. Heart of Fury doubles XP, like Insane mode, and also adds 2000 XP on top of that.

4. Both HoF and Insane mode add additional monsters to certain places in the game.

Note that Heart of Fury is designed for parties that are already level 11 or higher at the start of the game--it's nearly unplayable if you start at level 1. Heart of Fury parties also tend to be structured differently, as most people prefer to have multi-classes with fighter levels in HoF mode to handle the higher enemy HP levels.

Gotural

To complete what @semiticgod said:

3: HoF doubles XP and it stacks with the Insane difficulty modifier, which means you will get XP*4 + 2000 (which is why you only get XP*2 + 1000 in Nightmare Mode, because the insane difficulty modifier doesn't apply in BG).

5: Enemies on HoF mode are supposed to get an additional APR and as far as I know they actually get it in IWD:EE but I could be wrong.

6: Enemies are also supposed to get a -11 AC bonus and a -5 THAC0 bonus but they don't in the EE (why? Just why??!)

7: They also receive a 12 level increase for some checks (Turn Undead comes to my mind)

8: Finally enemies should get a -5 saves bonus but I'm not even sure this one was true in the vanilla version.

Wowo

semiticgod said:

Note that Heart of Fury is designed for parties that are already level 11 or higher at the start of the game--it's nearly unplayable if you start at level 1. Heart of Fury parties also tend to be structured differently, as most people prefer to have multi-classes with fighter levels in HoF mode to handle the higher enemy HP levels.

HoF is totally doable from level 1 and I'd definitely recommend it that way just be prepared to struggle at the beginning and to require very powerful builds to be successful.

I'm currently soloing from level 1 with a priest of lathander for instance.

semiticgoddess

@Wowo: I actually recently started a level 1 no reload party in HoF--with the additional restriction that I can't use any summons, ever. I'm at the Severed Hand at level 11. And I've done a separate level 1 HoF game in the past, as well.

I know it's doable to start at level 1. But it is nearly unplayable, as I said. Compare it to the recommended level 11 and there's a world of difference.

Jarrakul

I tried starting a HoF game at level one and found the tactics required to succeed to be extremely unfun. Obviously that's subjective, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who doesn't want to flagrantly take advantage of poor AI and lots of resting. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with doing those things, I just don't personally enjoy it.

Artas1984

Ok, i am not interested in HoF mode anyway. Personally i think it is stupid to bash a goblin for for more than a minute, just because he has so many hit points. I don't like mods making no sense - goblins are tiny creatures and to think that you need to hit them so many times to kill just does not make any logic in my gaming world. I will just go with insane mode, sounds fair enough to me.

Wowo

Artas1984 wrote: »

Ok, i am not interested in HoF mode anyway. Personally i think it is stupid to bash a goblin for for more than a minute, just because he has so many hit points. I don't like mods making no sense - goblins are tiny creatures and to think that you need to hit them so many times to kill just does not make any logic in my gaming world. I will just go with insane mode, sounds fair enough to me.

Just make sure that you select the option to disable the bonus xp on insane mode as otherwise insane is actually easier than normal.

Disabling the bonus damage of insane mode is another option if you don't make your characters min maxed cookie cutters.

Pteran

Wowo wrote: »

Artas1984 wrote: »

Ok, i am not interested in HoF mode anyway. Personally i think it is stupid to bash a goblin for for more than a minute, just because he has so many hit points. I don't like mods making no sense - goblins are tiny creatures and to think that you need to hit them so many times to kill just does not make any logic in my gaming world. I will just go with insane mode, sounds fair enough to me.

Just make sure that you select the option to disable the bonus xp on insane mode as otherwise insane is actually easier than normal.

Disabling the bonus damage of insane mode is another option if you don't make your characters min maxed cookie cutters.

Would disabling the bonus damage just effectively mean larger groups of enemies?

FinneousPJ

@Pteran Yes

Artas1984

And about that - how much more creatures are existing on the insane mode versus normal percent wise?

Pteran

Artas1984 wrote: »

And about that - how much more creatures are existing on the insane mode versus normal percent wise?

Along those same lines, what's the % bump for Hard? And are these extra enemies in every encounter, or just specific areas/fights?

Wowo

Pteran wrote: »

Artas1984 wrote: »

And about that - how much more creatures are existing on the insane mode versus normal percent wise?

Along those same lines, what's the % bump for Hard? And are these extra enemies in every encounter, or just specific areas/fights?

No additional enemies on hard difficulty that I know about.

Insane has extra enemies in specific locations that are designed to create real tactical challenges. I honestly couldn't imagine playing without it (with some combination of HoF, no extra XP and no extra damage depending on the party).

Pteran

Well then I'm set to bump the difficulty from Hard to Insane. I thought Hard added in more enemies too. Shame about the enemies only being in certain battles, but it's understandable. When they're doing double damage, I guess you don't really want double enemies too lol.

Artas1984

Wowo wrote: »

Pteran wrote: »

Artas1984 wrote: »

And about that - how much more creatures are existing on the insane mode versus normal percent wise?

Along those same lines, what's the % bump for Hard? And are these extra enemies in every encounter, or just specific areas/fights?

No additional enemies on hard difficulty that I know about.

Insane has extra enemies in specific locations that are designed to create real tactical challenges. I honestly couldn't imagine playing without it (with some combination of HoF, no extra XP and no extra damage depending on the party).

I absolutely do not agree and think that it is stupid beyond believe. What fun is it just to have enemies and your own party spells dealing extra damage without additional XP??? Extra damage should be rewarded - that's the POINT of harder difficulty modes. I hate games where increased difficulty simply adds additional damage, i always appreciated games, where harder difficulties simply added more monsters (like Hexen 2), increased AI (like Heroes 3) or made specific enemies tougher to destroy (zombies in Resident Evil 2). What i never liked is the lame and cheap damage increase which simply did not seemed logic to me.

semiticgoddess

The extra damage makes the game harder, but the extra XP is what makes the gameplay actually different. Without the XP bonus, there is nothing novel or interesting about higher difficulty modes.

Wowo

semiticgod wrote: »

The extra damage makes the game harder, but the extra XP is what makes the gameplay actually different. Without the XP bonus, there is nothing novel or interesting about higher difficulty modes.

I think the additional enemies make the gameplay different more than the extra damage.

The extra damage is simply a crude attempt at balancing against a party that has been min maxed to the nth degree but it mostly fails.

A non-min maxed party on insane with no extra xp or damage with some specific game breaking classes avoided (ie sorcerer) and minimum or no reloads is definitely the way I feel that the game was intended.

But hey, to each their own.

dok0zhivago

Wowo wrote: »

semiticgod wrote: »

The extra damage makes the game harder, but the extra XP is what makes the gameplay actually different. Without the XP bonus, there is nothing novel or interesting about higher difficulty modes.

I think the additional enemies make the gameplay different more than the extra damage.

The extra damage is simply a crude attempt at balancing against a party that has been min maxed to the nth degree but it mostly fails.

A non-min maxed party on insane with no extra xp or damage with some specific game breaking classes avoided (ie sorcerer) and minimum or no reloads is definitely the way I feel that the game was intended.

But hey, to each their own.

Agree.
I am not a big fan of hof. I have always considered it a bonus difficulty.
I like to play either core or , as I like to call it, core++ (insane but no extra xp & damage). I find the increased number of foes a fun challenge.