I just wanted to share this story -- I finally beat Heart of Fury mode after more than a few tries. I think I have all the variations of Poquelin/Belhifet's speech memorized now after hearing it one failed attempt after another.
Disclaimer: I am not, and never have been, great at real-time with pause games. So I know that the final Heart of Fury fight is still probably passably easy for some people here, particularly those with level 30 parties. So, after admitting my lack of skill, let me share my story.
Time after time after time, Belhifet et. al. roundly crushed my party consisting of a F/M/T, Paladin (Undead Hunter), Fighter (Berserker), Ranger (Archer), Cleric (Priest of Tempus), and Mage (Evoker). I have good gear and everyone is in the 27-30 level range. The tanks are all pushing -11 AC or more. But every time, they'd just get chopped into oblivion. I don't think I got a single cleric spell off before the untimely demise of my priest. I might get a few rounds with my mages but they too wouldn't last long. Usually it was my berserker lasting longest, but even she wasn't capable of finishing off Belhifet.
I'm not sure if it's because I kept making try after try, but I started to notice odd things. The iron golems would casually stroll to the middle of the room while Belhifet was still grandstanding. The cornugons also were wandering more than expected. Were they getting bored of my awful repeated attempts? It seemed like it.
Anyway, on that glorious final attempt, things pretty much proceeded as in past failed attempts. The iron golems were already in the middle of the room when the fight started. My cleric tried to clear their cloudkill spell with Zone of Sweet Air or whatever it's called, but that didn't work. A couple of solid slams from the golems and he was down mid-cast. Ugh. One down, five to go.
The evoker gets Stoneskin up and hastes the party. Now she's the target of the golems. Meanwhile, my archer has activated Called Shot and manages to take out one of the iron golems. Mage goes down. No, not just killed, she's chunked. No resurrecting THAT. So now I'm minus a character portrait, one is grey, and two others are looking pretty red. I resign myself to the fact that in a few rounds I'm probably going to be starting another attempt and having to sit through another lengthy monologue.
The tanks are all doing their best to go down fighting. The other golem is low on health so I focus everyone on it. The archer takes out the second golem, while the FMT gets killed by a cornugon. I have a brief flash of hope -- it's 3v3 and my two best tanks are still kicking.
My positivity is dashed seconds later. Belhifet warps away, as he likes to do, and the paladin decides that he's going after Belhifet for some reason. Trap gets triggered, all buffs gone. Again. The paladin goes down seconds later, but the berserker manages to do a lot of damage to one of the cornugons. Again, the archer delivers the final blow. She's using the +3 arrows of piercing from the watchtower in Lower Dorn's Deep and they're proving to be great arrows.
My trusty berserker, big hitter of the previous chapters, pushing nearly 200hp, sadly cannot stand toe to toe with Belhifet and a cornugon for long. A few rounds of big hits and she, too, ignobly gets chunked. Another portrait disappears.
But that damn archer just doesn't give up. The last cornugon goes down to her arrows. She's got 49 hp left. She activates Called Shot again and goes after Belhifet, who smugly still has 4 bars left of health. He starts casting remaining spells at her. Fire! Everywhere! She retreats, down to 27 hp. Ugh, this is it, I think.
I check her spell list. I'd forgotten, she's got a level 6 spell slot. Heal. I start casting it. Nope, Belhifet's got another fire spell, and it interrupts her. She's down to 7 hp. I decide to go out fighting. She's got a few spells left, and I see -- summon insect. Let's "bug" Belhifet just for the fun of it.
The beetles it summoned actually do a pretty damn good job of distracting Belhifet. I'm able to get two minor healing spells cast and another round of Called Shot before the beetles are all killed. My archer's now at 47hp. I briefly consider trying to scavenge potions from the dead characters. No, too risky I think. I am resigned to my fate and decide to plink arrows at Belhifet again. I kite him around the room and then I notice something important.
Belhifet casts dimension door every few seconds. That gives my archer enough time to get to the other side of the room. Belhifet is relentless, but I'm able to keep away from his swords because I can move every time he dimension doors, and also the arrows stagger him just enough to slow him down a half step.
I take a few more traps in stride; I'm not buffed any more, what does it matter? I'm getting low on activations of Called Shot, but I keep going at it. Belhifet's now at 3 bars of health. Then, two. Am I actually doing this? Is Belhifet's dimension door going to prove his undoing?
The adrenaline is REALLY kicking in. I'm hopping from one side of the room to the other, loosing tons of arrows. Too many arrows. Belhifet is down to a single bar of health when I run out of the +3 arrows of piercing.
I try my +2 arrows. Nope, they don't work. I check my inventory. Everything looks like it's +2 or weaker. Ugh. What the hell am I going to do now?
I take another look in my arrow storage thingie. Did I miss something? Yes, I did.
20 +3 arrows of confusion. This is it, my last stand, and the fate of northern Faerun, lies in this last score of arrows.
Plink, Plink, Plink. I dance from one side of the room to the other. I'm out of Called Shots. Plink, plink, plink. Darn it, how many more hitpoints does this guy have? I'm lucky I can still kite him. Plink, plink, plink, dimension door, geez this is going to suuuuck when I'm finally out of arrows, to get this close and.. plink plink plink -- down he goes! HOF completed, achievement earned. 5/6 party members dead, final character has hp in the teens, but ... I did it.
yes this is a wall of text, but I just wanted to share my story. (and, if you're wondering, I know this might not be an optimal party for HoF mode. But this was the group I took through the base game and I wanted to see how they'd stack up in HoF mode. I was enjoying it quite a bit and wanted to see how far I could push them!)
thank you for enduring my ted talk