Just curious ...
Bubbles
Member Posts: 589
Hi all,
I am pretty curious as to whether there is anybody out there who managed to complete a no-reload HOF run of IWD+HoW+TotL ?
I am pretty curious as to whether there is anybody out there who managed to complete a no-reload HOF run of IWD+HoW+TotL ?
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The Wailing Virgins were a nightmare until I figured out the trick, so far Remorhaz have been straight forward. We'll see how the final chapter plays out!
Main tricks: damage resistance, especially from Druid Water Elemental Form stacked with items; Dispel the Druid to allow weapons to be equipped.
Two Clerics doing tag-team Greater Shield of Lathander is awesome.
High damage output with F/M/T backstabs from Improved Invisibility.
Stunlocking with all the Stunning weapons.
All healing from Bard Song + Heal spells.
Standard killzones to roast large groups (Web, Entangle, Clouds, Spikes).
Insects and Silence to disable spell-casters.
Stand toe-to-eyestalk with Beholders using GSoL for Magic/Damage Resistance, and Potion of Invulnerability, Prot. from Evil, Emotion: Hope/Courage, Bless and various items for automatically successful saving throws.
At high Cleric/Paladin levels, Turn Undead is a game changer: check out https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/36764/turn-undead-tables; waltz through Spectral Guards and the Burial Isle with impunity.
Early on the main trick is to engage on your terms: @semiticgod has a cool strategy with an abbreviation I can't remember,
but it centered around provoking, retreating, waiting and then attacking.
Pulling a group of enemies with a damage resistant character is always a good idea,
but be careful they don't get surrounded unless you're sure they can withstand the onslaught.
Finally, party composition:
Currently mine is
F(13)->C
F(13)->M
F/C (Gnome)
F/D
F/M/T (Elf)
Bard (Half-Elf)
These guys are epic monsters. You need Fighters, because the key to winning in HoF is having a supremely high damage output: enemies have hundreds of HP, and there are thousands of enemies. Every one of my characters is a spellcaster, mainly focusing on buffs, debuffs, crowd-control/killzone, summoning, and the Bard occasionally tosses a Skull Trap; three Arcane casters also gives plenty of Magic Missiles for spell disruption; all except the Bard have a method of damage resistance, everyone has Stunning weapons. The Dual downtime happened between the end of Severed Hand and early middle of Lower Dorn's, and wasn't too much of a hindrance. There aren't any seriously hard battles during that section of the game, which helps.
Next time round I'm considering MC-Heavy, focusing even more on saving throws:
Paladin (excellent saves)
F/D (essential)
F/M/C (curious about this synergy)
F/I (Gnome)
F/T (Dwarf) (both shorties for saves)
Bard (simply put, don't leave Winter's Cradle without one)
I can't decide if it would be easier or harder in the EE: the AI was fairly improved, but the prestige classes make certain aspects trivial, e.g., Berserker Rage Immunities, Sorcerer access to otherwise limited spells.
I can see lots of preparations before most battles and a hell lot of spell-castings too
Those eye stalks is irritating, anti-magic ray making preps to 0 + occasional fail save turning to stones ...
Personally i hate harpy encounters if that first manual pause was half a second late.
I love animate dead a lot but in TotL these guys get cut down pretty fast ...
How about trying this? Next HoF run, allow 1x GodBow in your party but strictly no re-loads to see if it can be completed successfully ?
Everyone except the Bard has saves well into the negatives, when I need them to. I only suffered a Petrification from the "Surprise! Behind you!" Beholder; replayed it with my Gnome F/C as rearguard and there were no issues.
Bring a Bard just for the Kaudies, it's a lifesaver. The Harpy Queen is horrific, however, just for the constant Dispelling.
The only summons I'm really using now are Fire/Earth Elementals, and Shades/Shadows/MSVII.
Not sure what you mean here...
In fact the biggest issue with no-reload, I've just realised, is the inability to fish for good random items! Maybe you need some tweak pack fix for it?
Ya, that is a pain especially that first nice belt in the cave.
Worst case is to use EEkeeper to add change the items I guess but I will refrain from such actions as I decided to introduce a modded Godbow.
Right now I just started a test using a modded half-strength Godbow (but 100% critical hit).
This is supposed to compensate for the unpredictable random goodies that may not appear.
I am pretty bad with spells, and especially bad at aiming AOEs (usually getting my party members caught within the areas)
Current party setup: for experimentation sake with that modded Godbow
Undead Hunter
Dwarven Defender
Half-orc F/C (for that str19+con19)
Swashbuckler6 -> cleric
Sorcerer (due to lack of spells)
Bard
At the vale I will also do a bit of grinding as 1 of the tombs there will respawn some mobs each time you re-enter without the need of a certain amount of game time to pass.
P.S. I can't help but noticed that your party setup is to maximize every type of +5 weapons and racially restricted items, cool !!
I've never done a no-reload run of IWD, HoW, and TotL on HoF mode. I started a similar run a while ago, but only on Insane difficulty, and I'm still early in IWD at the moment. Maybe I should try it, but I've actually never played TotL before, and my previous no-reload runs of IWD were (I think) just IWD; no HoW.
What is your usual party setup?
That Godbow took away too much of the fun, I scrapped the idea.
Undead Hunter will be an asset, I'm sure; Paladins rock in IWD, and undead are everywhere.
Dwarven Defender is superbly resilient, but I'd be concerned for his lack of spells; nonetheless with all the resistance items he should top out at 100% physical resistance. However he will hit max level early compared to the others (except Bard). I would consider the F/D instead: same damage resistances potentially earlier (remember there's no Hardiness HLA in this game), combined with extremely powerful/useful spells, especially at the lower-level stages.
Your F/C is the candidate for epic saving throws. With DUHM the Half-Orc's bonuses to STR and CON will become redundant, so in my opinion you'd be better making this one a Dwarf, Halfling or Gnome, for the better saves; remember the shorties saves bonus is tied to CON, so DUHM can almost guarantee saving throws. If you go H or G, then as a bonus you can use that awesome helmet from Conlan.
Low-level duals like the Swash(6)->Cleric feel a little wasted when you get late into the game. This Thief loses out on one of its greatest assets: superb DPS from repeated backstabbing. On top of that the Swashbuckler/Cleric is stuck at 1APR (2 dual-wielding) except when handed a speed weapon (admittedly there are quite a few in the game). But I believe in the EE the devs maintained the changes to the random drops from HoW: a big loss was the Morningstar of Action, an epic end-game Cleric weapon. Unless I'm mistaken, the only +APR weapon left for clerics in the EE is the Flail from Dragon's Eye, another random drop. This underlines my concern for this character: even dual-wielding in theory they will cap out at 2 APR (4 under Haste, but that induces Fatigue), 3 if you find the Flail, 4 if you also find a certain Ring. For that you gain a couple points of thac0 and extra damage. This character, in my opinion, would seriously benefit from having some Fighter levels.
Bard and Sorcerer are both very good, although the Sorc will be a little weak for HoF owing to limited physical damage output: you need to crank up the DPS to deal with enemies' deep HP pools.
In general my advice is to avoid single-classes and early duals: there's just too much XP going around. Your party has some strong points (Pally, DD dam res, Bard songs/spells) but might find it tricky in HoF to achieve high DPS, and many members will also stop progressing earlier than desirable.
These sorts of considerations led me to my first party. In face I didn't base them around the +5 weapons (no enemies require enchantments that high, unlike in BG2), but instead around the stunning, slowing and +APR weapons, exploiting maximally other important equipment (like the anti-fatigue Halfling Helm, damage resistance items, alignment restricted stuff), as well as the desire to have plentiful spell-casters, make best use of the bloated XP progression, have access to overpowered backstabbing, and have an extremely high base APR and hence damage output.
The second party is a refinement of the first: trying to keep all the above bonuses, whilst improving saving throws, and avoiding the dual-class downtime.
I never purposefully did any grinding during my playthrough. (I did kill some respawning enemies a few times in passing.) But you'll likely find that Vale of Shadows XP is dwarfed by what you'll earn later on.
As for your Godbow, I agree it would remove the challenge and fun.
EDIT:
A further point in favour of multi-classing instead of single/early-dual, before I forget: the chance of successfully completing any run of the game is at most inversely proportional to the sum of the boredom throughout.
Consider two cases:
1. My Fighter/Druid started life as a crowd-control and disabling specialist, using Entangle and Thorns to inflict devastation and keep party members safe from damage. Later she graduated to summoning extraordinaire, calling on Bombardier Beetles to cripple and Boring Beetles to smash enemies, later on adding Bears and Wolves to the mix, rounding off her summons eventually with awesome Fire and Earth Elementals. Later on with the Insect spells she contributed to neutralising any enemy spellcaster. Alongside all this spellpower, she developed excellent melee and ranged combat, using the Hammer Darts to help stunlock foes. Finally, with obtaining her 15th Druid level, she became immune to Fatigue (from Haste and Righteous Wrath) and gained the incredible Water Elemental form, with insane resistances to physical damage. And she never lost any of her earlier abilities; she's got epic powers for days.
2. My Fighter (13) -> Mage started life as the party's main archer (since he progressed faster than the F/M/T), but decked out in plate and shield he could tank well, easing the pressure on the others. With the Long Sword of Confusion he sowed chaos in enemy ranks, and with his incessant arrows prevented most spellcasters from being effective. When he dualled at the beginning of Dorn's Deep he became weak as a kitten, which induced a change to my playstyle. Building up his powers he started to contribute Mage spells like Chaos, Slow, Haste and Web. Hitting Mage 14 was like Christmas. Suddenly with Stoneskin, Mirror Image and Blur he could tank for days, finding Bhaal's Fire Longsword meant he could contribute to the stunlocking, and all along he was growing like a single-classed Mage, adding crowd control/damage like Acid Storm, Incendiary Cloud and high level summons to the game. Still he remained an excellent archer, disrupting enemy spells. A recent tactic is the following: activate Mage defense spells and collect a retinue of enemies, then hit them repeatedly with Sunfire for awesome damage output. With Kossuth's Blood his Fire damage output increased and he can churn out the spells/defenses even faster.
So my final advice is, keep mixing it up: variety is the spice of life.
Ya, I removed that bow.
I am pretty bad at spells so right now I am forcing myself to learn as much as possible about them, trying to figure out which of them are stack-able.
I am not familiar with backstabbing, I didn't realize backstabbing could utilize the APR benefits (I thought it was 1 stab and the next attack will not be considered a backstab).
You have quite abit of multi-classes and late dual-classes, I wonder how you manage to get away with it the late duals of which by then the party would have been quite deep in the game where all the bigger baddies hang around.
A question, do you then to use the AIs or you tend to manually direct each party members in battle?
I use backstabbing from my F/M/T as an opportunistic type of damage-dealing in a chaotic battle. With my 4 tanks engaged in melee, my F/M/T with Boots of Speed/Fox is able to locate distracted enemies and land powerful attacks for 60-70 damage a blow, more if critting. If the enemy turns to engage the F/M/T, cancelling the backstab possibility, she moves off, and the nearest ally quickly engages the enemy to pull their attention away from the F/M/T. The F/M/T then finds another enemy and re-initiates the process. Overall this significantly improves the party's melee damage output.
Of course she's a bit of a glass cannon. With a F/M dual and a F/M/T multi I had to decide very carefully to whom to give the first Stoneskin scroll. (The second, and only remaining scroll, can't be found until TotL; owing to this I would suggest no more than 2 F/Ms.) In the end I chose the F/M dual, since he would find more value in being a tank, and I preferred to keep the F/M/T as this sort of opportunistic melee-er, and general archer. Her HP didn't get much above 100, so she needed careful management, especially in HoF: 100 HP can be lost in 3 hits from some enemies.
Running two Fighter(13) duals increased the challenge a little, but at the time I dualled them there were less in the way of big baddies. In fact the Cleric dual could still tank extremely effectively with his plentiful HP and access to the same armour as before, and the F/C and F/D by that point were strong enough to take point in the team. The Mage dual was the toughest to handle, and I especially found things like Snow Trolls took an irksome interest in him even when he was hanging way back away from the action. I resorted to my early-game strategy: a lot of kiting.
Still, dual down-time was a hassle, and so next run-through I will stick to purely multiclasses.
I assign all commands myself, and find the automatic scripts for the party members extremely lacking in complexity and adaptability, so I always turn them off.
Thank you. I have to really try hard to remember what spells are useful.
Guess I will postpone the no-reload part to a later time as failing precious scrolls can be irritating and when doing no re-loads I do not adjust difficult downwards when scribing spells (usually I use a lot of gennus potions to unsure success)
I am also toying with a dual class Kensai-druid rather that a F/D multi-class as Kensai gains extra damage every 3 levels and druids part of the class limits armor choices.
Still purely in the planning stage, but another variant party I'm considering:
Paladin (Human)
F/D (Half-Elf)
F/C (Halfling)
F/M/C (Half-Elf)
F/M/T (Half-Elf)
Bard (Half-Elf)
This team loses a little in the saves but makes up for it with greater firepower. The triple multis are superbly powerful later on, and having extra Cleric Spells early only helps. No dual downtime. Halfling 17 STR is easily overcome with Draw Upon Holy Might (DUHM).
Also the Arcane casters of the party all have possible alternative roles to casting. This means stockpiling rare scrolls is not a problem, and you can pump up INT on 2 or 3 occasions during the game to learn them (if you have access to lots of scrolls of a spell then you shouldn't need to worry about failing scribing). An INT 24 guarantees learning. Also remember the Red Potion gives 25 INT and the Potion of Mind Focusing raises it by +3.
The best way to understand spells in this game deeply is to combine reading up on them (e.g., https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/430803-icewind-dale-heart-of-winter/faqs/16520) with then play-testing them. I tend to read through the guide, picking out a few spells I think sound good, and then try them out in the next battle (or when they become available).
My suggestion, or what worked for me anyway, is to just play minimal reload for learning how the game works deeply. And you never stop learning about it, especially if you read the forums carefully. For example in the General Discussion forum there's a deeply fascinating discussion on initiative rounds for attacking and casting. And most importantly, don't take it too seriously. No, seriously. These games can eat up your life.
What do you do with you bard beside being a walking Hi-Fi?
Bard could cast some wizard spells too you know, I wonder if there is any scrolls left for the bard since your party build tend towards 2x mage.
1. All: Magic Missile and Chromatic Orb
2. All: Mirror Image, Blur (more for the F/Ms); Bard: Web (earlier on I used more Webs, and all three can cast it)
3. All: Slow, Flame Arrow; Bard: Skull Trap (a 30d6 ST deals wicked damage); F/Ms: Haste
4. F/Ms: Stoneskin; Bard: Emotions Hope & Courage, Greater Malison; F/M/T: Improved Invisibility
5 and above. I don't very often use higher level Mage spells. My F/M occasionally uses Globe of Invulnerability when there's a chance of being Dispelled, and also sometimes Chaos to break up enemy formations. All three have Tenser's Transformation, but I usually avoid it since, once active, it prevents casting. I have used Abi Dalzim's from my Bard a couple of times but I have never found it as effective/useful as a Skull Trap. The Bard occasionally pulls out Mordenkainen's Sword (very different from in BG2) to deal ranged damage. All three have high level summons and various types of cloud/area damage spells, which I bring out occasionally.
The essential point is: three Arcane casters is absolutely fine, even more so in HoF mode which makes a lot of spells (Fireball, Cone of Cold, most other damage-based spells) a bit irrelevant. They just have to specialise in their roles, a little.
I was trying out your multiple multi-class party early.
It is pretty tough at the orc cave, have to be real careful with the Ogres.
I am not sure why, but I noticed my bard tend to stop playing music own her own quite often even though i use IWDpregen AI and asked her to play music manually. It is only from the Vale onwards she is more obedient. (bad naughty bard)
Which multi-class party did you choose?
I guess the script was interfering with your orders. Do you find it helps with micro-managing the party? I've always preferred having full control of the party, and I can't really imagine it otherwise!
Paladin (Human)-undead hunter
F/D (Half-Elf)
F/C (Halfling)-i took a dwarf instead
F/M/C (Half-Elf)-i took F/M
F/M/T (Half-Elf)
Bard (Half-Elf)
Testing this party at the moment.
By the time I reached Kuldahar I was high enough level to be sent to Lonelywood, and I could collect heaps of experience from those quests. Fighting? Nah, Sanctuary - I could double this post size just talking about how overpowered Sanctuary is. I could loot the Burial Isle with it and have a +5 weapon for myself and sell the rest and buy juicy wizard scrolls. Went as far as exposing Icasaracht and handled her tribe with Aerial Servants, which not only hit hard and last approximately forever, but also require magical weapons to be hit themselves, and the barbarians don't have any.
After that, I returned to Kuldahar and worked the main quest line until nearly the end, then started TotL. I'm in the castle now and rarely along this journey have I had to think much. It's only when monsters have access to Dispel Magic or Breach that I can't use the same old methods, but now that I have Spell Immunity I don't need to stress my brain over that either.
It's my first time playing HoF so certainly there have been some reloads, but not for reasons like "I hope I make that saving throw this time". I'm confident that I could do it no-reload the next time around, should I decide to try.
I don't intend to brag but the thread has been going on for a while and nobody has mentioned this, even though I expect there are hundreds who have done this and know it better than I do (my IWD hype is pretty young). Solo F/M/C snowballs if you can just get it through Easthaven. And if there's a legitimate way to add party members mid-game, you could easily boost them.
Solo HoF has advantage of leveling faster so that summons can be used.
Full party having too many multi-class in my case I find leveling being slower thus HP lower no doubt once out of hat stage full party multiple multi-class will be very useful in HoW and TotL being highly versatile.
I do not have much issue with solo-ing HoF actually as I only need to manage 1 character.
A solo HoF run has very great challenges---and I definitely don't want to belittle them, nor your fun with the game---but in my experience and understanding, those challenges are not in the same league as party-play, when considering no-reload: trying to keep 6 weaker party members alive and kicking instead of just 1 god-type is difficult! Still, there was an excellent LP of a solo no-reload HoF run, in which the F/M/C was first tried (and failed in the TotL) and followed up successfully by a F/M/T; I found it very entertaining and interesting to read. (You can find that run documented here.)
If you do decide to go ahead with the HoF no-reload solo, then do document it in the thread in the General Discussion forum! I'd be very curious to see it played out.
Moreover, let me know how you get on with Beholders. They are one of the few monsters that should really present a challenge to solo players, since they have lots of save-or-else abilities.
@Bubbles, similarly, you should definitely be documenting your run in that thread! It's a good way to maintain self-engagement with the game, and everybody there is very supportive.
The multi-classes will feel a little slow if you're used to single-classes, but it will pay off in the end, don't worry!
Anyway, I didn't bother trying to defeat beholders, I just used Sanctuary and walked past :P their Anti-Magic Ray (that's the BG2 name anyway) is such a trump card against me and SI: Abjuration didn't help against it. Maybe some other SI does but at 30/30/30 I had little reason to experiment. Without getting dispelled, I have so many immunities through cleric spells (Free Action, Death Ward and Impervious Sanctity of Mind) that it ought to be save-or-else-nothing. Wait, is petrification covered there?
Mandatory reminder that Sanctuary is overpowered.
pelting with missiles from the rear lines. They went down pretty quickly.
Sanctuary is pretty much a Get Out Of Jail Free card, yep! Not as powerful in a party, unless you made them all Clerics.
Does magic resistance help against the dispel ray or something?
I think I found the party combination and balance for my no re-load play, meanwhile I am also running a minimal re-load no buck up my spell knowledge.
My no re-load I have set certain rpg rules for it, 1 of which makes it very difficult to do a successful no-reload (this rule is no pre-buff except long duration ones like armor and stoneskin, without first seeing what enemey the party is going to fight, thus there will be a lot of invisibilty usages for scouting) hahaha you can imagine how messy with last minute buffs and summons etc in TotL at the fake Hobbart spot.
Which ring??
The ring is the one that teleports you back to Lonelywood.
I've also started my no-reload, with the Fighter/Illusionist party. Proper updates will arrive when I have time to write them, but for now I've managed to scrape through the Orc cave with liberal use of Grease, Entangle, Curse, Hold Person, Charm, and my new hands-down favourite: Color Spray. I have no idea why I never realised it's so powerful! Bard sucks at scroll scribing (failed Chromatic Orb and Horror), and I predict Goblin Pass to be...interesting.
I understand your self-imposed RP rules, but I still think a little prebuffing can be acceptable, when you can expect to be in a fight around a corner. But at these early stages my main focus is on crowd control, saving throw debuffing, and ranged damage. If my toons get into melee range they usually have a pretty bad time.