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Wow! Was that hard. It took about 5 tries to do it without anyone dying.

How did you handle it?

This was my party Paladin, F/T MC, R/C MC, F/D MC, C/M MC, Bard.

WARNING Spoilers below....

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So for me what made this hard was Belhifet casting dispel on the party removing all prebuffs, and the fact that all 5 enemies (2 iron golems, 2 cornagons, and Belhifet) were magic resistant. This meant I had to cast short cast time buffs ASAP and made offensive magic much less useful.

So my strategy was to take out the golems , then the cornagons, then Belhifet. Mainly because the minions were causing so much damage to my party members.

Buffs I could get off quickly before melee ensued were: haste (barely in time), prot from evil, defensive harmony.

The druid conjured elementals as distractors.

All enemies required magical weapons to defeat (+3 or better, I believe).

Holy might took to long to cast for the Paladin and R/C, so i never used them. Damage happened too fast (they were always disrupted), and the damage was too great.

The Bard sang Song of the Sith. But was also used as a distractor for Belhifet mid-battle. Casting spells on him caused him to retarget her, so she could then start singing again while he chased her in a circle around the fray.

The Paladin, F/T, and R/C engaged one golem at a time. Each would run away if badly damaged, with either the Druid or R/C healing them, and then returning.

Once the melee began, additional buffs were cast by the C/M: recitation, courage, hope, prot evil circle. And symbols of hopelessness and pain (which almost never worked). I did get lucky once with a chromatic orb holding a cornugon.

Once a few elementals were conjured, the F/D joined the fray.

A major annoyance were the traps in the floor: they dispelled buffs that needed to be recast, and disrupted healing spells.

So I'm curious, how did other people handle this? It seemed very hard for me.

Wow, congrats on your achievement!

What levels were your characters at when you beat the game? Did you do HoW and TotL? Do you plan to?

Thanks! Good luck to you, as well!

Here are the levels I ended up with right before the final battle:

Paladin (23)
Fighter / Thief MC (17/20)
Cleric / Ranger MC (18/15)
Fighter / Druid MC (17/18)
Cleric / Mage MC (18/16)
Bard (30)

I struggled with whether to try to play everything in one go, or to export IWD characters to play HoW and TotL. Although it seems a lot more seamless, and easier to play all in one go, I decided on the latter, since people said the final IWD part would be too easy, if you did HoW and TotL in HoF mode first. Also, HoW as I see it, seemed to be designed more as a follow-on to IWD, and is not so well integrated into the IWD story, so it seems more right to play it afterwards.

Plus, I guess I prefer a harder challenge. Been playing these kinds of games for enough years that to do otherwise, would be boring, for me, at least...

But it is a pain since you lose all your stuff in bags and cases when you export. So I went through all that stuff before the battle that returns you to Easthaven, and sold what I least wanted and couldn't carry. You don't get to take all the gold with you, either. So I bought all the super expensive magic goodies (even if not very useful, just as an investment to barter later), magic arrows, and magic bullets in Kuldahar, the Seldarine Hand, and Lower Dorn's Deep. Then sold more stuff to make room. Tedious, to say the least...

Thrasher91604 wrote:
But it is a pain since you lose all your stuff in bags and cases when you export. So I went through all that stuff before the battle that returns you to Easthaven, and sold what I least wanted and couldn't carry. You don't get to take all the gold with you, either. So I bought all the super expensive magic goodies (even if not very useful, just as an investment to barter later), magic arrows, and magic bullets in Kuldahar, the Seldarine Hand, and Lower Dorn's Deep. Then sold more stuff to make room. Tedious, to say the least...

Interesting. Do you lose your crap if you do not import and just go with Hrothgar?

You just lose the stuff in potion and scroll cases, and gem bags, and bags of holding. Everything else stays (inventory, equiped, quickuse slots, ammo slots, weapon slots, etc...)

But yeah, if you enter HoW through the door in Khuldahar, supposedly, it's seamless, and you don't export, and lose stuff in containers (nor the gold you had). Not sure how you get returned to the IWD game afterwards, though...

mass invisibility
disarm traps
resilient sphere

ultramarine wrote:mass invisibility
disarm traps
resilient sphere

Magic Missile
Stealth
Grease

Summon stalker. Great resistance to slashing and fire. If you can get Belhifet to focus on them, you're in good shape to take out the minions first.

Yes, I should have tried summoning stalkers. Don't have much time for long casting time spells in that battle, though.

I just discoverd how useful stalkers are in HoW - against the Seer's ice golems.

Too bad stalkers aren't immune to web and entangle like elementals ...

Yes, that spell is troublesome to cast. I usually cast it right away, while using a mage to summon some smaller, faster-to-summon monsters and my tank moves out into the middle to draw attacks. Then once the stalkers arrive, the tank runs around in circles and doesn't attack, until the enemies focus on the stalkers.

If you have a bard (regeneration + resistance bonus), it makes stalkers even better.

If you have a shapeshifting druid with 100% slashing resistance (some items + water or earth elemental shapechange), that helps too. You just need to down a fire resistance potion.

I haven't experimented with all the shapeshifting forms yet, as I don't have the patience to find out via trial and error the forms' weaknesses and strengths. The battles are SO long in HoF mode anyway....

Are all the shapeshifting forms described in detail somewhere?

Also, how about the attributes of all the possible summons? Strengths and weaknesses would be OK, too.

Thanks!

I haven't seen any handy-dandy list anywhere, and I'm too lazy to make one.

Just take off all your equipment, shapeshift into each form, and note down the stats and resistances for each form.

That's a start. Still need stats, abilities, and attacks, though.

For example, here's a strange thing. Summoned fire elemental attacks are treated as magical weapons, apparently, for being able to hit crypt things.

However a stalker, a higher level duidic summon, attack cannot damage crypt things

But, stalkers can hit guardian ice golems.

Can I open IEexplorer (or similar) to read the monster/summon/shapechange descriptions?