Heroic mode guide / "Great Balls of Fire" Achievement

Tips for the Heroic mode and the "Great Balls of Fire" achievement. A walkthrough for the harder first half of the game in heroic mode.

Introduction

Since I finished heroic mode and no guide has been written, I thought I might as well create one. First of all I wanna say that it was pretty fun to play through the heroic mode. You have to be more careful with the things you do, but its all pretty well doable. When I read first about things like "balverines 300% more dmg" I suspected it to be harder, but after all my playthrough was pretty much straight forward.

Getting started

Before you actually start your playthrough, you have to do basically two things: First, you gotta beat the game in the easy difficulty ofc. And second (at least if you play with keyboard, dunno hows it going with gamepad...), bind your dodge-roll to a button that is comfortable for you to access. Srsly, you will dodge a lot. Pressing the mouse-wheel was never an option for me, but take whatever you can access best!

The choice: good or evil?

I'd suggest you to do it the way its the most fun to you. If playing evil, you will have more gold (marry Elvira Grey, kill Whisper in the arena, even the evil version of the orchard-quest gives more gold than its counterpart). The good path will offer you the possibility to max out magic shield. My plan was an evil playthrough (since I did a good one on easy mode before), but ended up with a character that was rather neutral most of the time.

The playthrough

Proceed through the story until you can leave Heroe's Guild and get you first quest (wasp menace). This quest isnt hard. Kill the small wasps with your melee weapon and the big wasp with your crossbow/bow. I got hit once by the big wasp and it didnt do too much damage, so you should do well. Go to bowerstone and after you talked to Maze, go through every house and examine all bookshelves and cabinets. Just make sure noone is watching you (look at the detection-eye at the top!). You will get two important things: Gold and potions. Especially at the beginning both gold and potions are really rare and you can use both!

For the exp you're gaining, you should put your strength-exp into vitality and toughness and your normal-exp into the magic shield and mana.

When entering greatwood, you will recognize that the bandits are doing some serious amount of damage. This is the time where you should start using your (hopefully to a good key binded) dodge-roll. Be careful especially with the big bandits, they can kill you in a few hits. Dont use target-lock-on, at least Im getting hit far more when using it. Always try to kill the small ones first, expecially if they are using a crossbow, wich means basically a free kill if you are fast enough and they cant do weapon-switch. If you get low health, try to save your potions and use food like apples instead.

Take wichever orchard-quest you like. It shouldnt be too hard, you can rely a bit on your ai-companions. After you have finished this quest, head to bowerstone, its time for some shopping. Visit the tailor and buy a full set of leather-armor. Then go to the blacksmith and buy a steel-weapon of your choice (i prefer the katana). You should have enough gold by now to afford it. You should also have magic shield now. If vitality and toughness are getting more expensive, you can start to lvl strength as well for more damage or heavier weapons later on.

With the new bought equip your next task (trader-escort) shouldnt be a problem. When you arrive at Oakvale, visit the weapon-trader and buy an obsidian-weapon of your choice (again, i took the katana), you should be able to afford it. If you want the greataxe, dont buy it, but do the quest with the ghost at the chicken-contest, you will get one in the end. If you bought an other obsidian-weapon, you can sell the axe for nice profit.

With the equip you have the whole twinblade-quest is pretty easy. Just dont forget to use your magic shield and your dodge-roll. With the leather-armor and your vitality and toughness the enemies shouldnt hit too hard anymore. The next jump in difficulty isn't coming til Knothole Glade, so enjoy that easy quest!

Proceed through the story until you get to do the knothole glade quest with the balverines. Now this is the point where it gets harder again, since the balverines have been buffed by a good amount. Your magic shield should be lvl 2 minimum now. When you fight the white balverine, make sure to keep that shield up the whole fight. If you damage him down too fast you will quickly face 6+ balverines, wich will easily burst you down. Just spam your mana-potions, you should have enough by now.

Before getting to the arena, you might want to prepare. This is the first and only time where you will farm a bit. Go back to greatwood Entrance and kill the enemies, wich shouldnt be hard at all anymore. Re-enter the area and repeat. Do this until you have around 50 Mana-potions. They are pretty common and it just takes an average of 30-60 minutes. This farm is good for several things: You get a bunch of mana- and healing-potions ofc, but furthermore it gives you meat and cake, and (for evil chars important!), good-influence-points (sry, i dunno what are they called? But Im sure you know what I mean).

Eat all the cake and meat you found until you get access to the demon door in barrow fields for a useful potion. Now lets get Skorms bow! As good character its no problem, as bad character you should be rather neutral since the farm. Put on some armor with a high alignment modifier, such as the Will Users bright outfit you can find behind the demon door at rose cottage.

For getting Skorms bow, get first to Skorms Chapel, then port to either knothole glade or witchwood-cullis-gate and head to Avos Temple. Wait until it gets night, then hire the merc in front of Avos Temple and port back to the Chapel. Sacrifice him, then port to oakvale and take the merc near Memorial Garden, port back and sacrifice. At last, port to Twinblades Camp and get the merc there. You should get Skorms Bow now after you sacrifice him. It only works with enough positive alignment though.

If you havent done already, do some sidequests for gold. Go to the trader in Twinblades Camp then and buy a full set of platemail-armor. By this time you should have magic shield on lvl 3.

This should be enough for the arena-quest. Dont forget to grab the mana-potions at the trader right before the fight, he has around 15. With all the potions you farmed, you should be able to keep up your magic shield over the whole fight. Just spam them!

After finishing the arena, do the sidequest with Elvira Grey. No matter how you decide, you will get access to her mansion and find a very good weapon wich you can use till TLC starts. You should have enough silver keys to open the chest.

The rest of the game is pretty much straight foreward. You can max out vitality, toughness and mana (and magic shield if you play as a good char). You can skip most of the enemies then since you dont need any more exp. Spam your mana- and healing-potions if needed. When you get to Snowspire, there is a trader who sells 9 mana-potions and a similar amount of healing-potions, wich are constantly filled up again. If you need more, just sleep some days and get back.

If you have to collect the souls, I'd recommend to take Thunder, Briar Rose and Nostro, these should be the easiest. For the last fight, make sure to have enough potions (i had around 25 mana and 50 healing). Its not hard, just spam those potions as if there were no tomorrow and enjoy your cheevo!

[doNNzEEr.TTv]

I did not get this achievement even after completing it Q.Q

[Nickalot]

While @Theradead has left some awesome helpful comments, I'm going to disagree with 1 thing that's been stated: watch your Renown get to the higher levels, and both "variants" of Platemail become available for sale from almost any Armourer; though I'm not playing Heroic *yet*...

[Exile]

There are so many people saying "after I beat heroic difficulty"......BUT I CANT EVEN FUCKING START HEROIC DIFFICULTY ITS STUCK ON CHICKEN!??!?!?!

[Rennyo]

Thanks for the guide, now I have all achievements :3

[theradead]

-SPOILER- When you fight the Kraken, Multi-Arrow is super useful, same goes for the Scorpion boss in the Arena
-End Spoiler-




Anyway, that's it for now. If you're playing this game and having a hard time with anything, feel free to reach out and I'll help you if I can!

[theradead]

--General Tips--
-Stop and buy Health/Will potions every single time you can, they're meant to be used and they're plentiful enough even in Hard mode.
-Resurrection Phials are common enough and you can buy them periodically. Don't carry more than 3 or 4 at a time, as you can make a lot of money early on by selling them, and if you die more than 3 times in a spot you should just reload and farm some more exp/gear and try again anyway.

[theradead]

--General Tips--
-Do the Side Quests, you'll gain experience and money pretty quickly.
-Kill Whisper, she's a show off during the entire game and literally will never learn.
-Open the Demon Door in the Guild as early as is convenient, some potions or some such are in there and all you have to do is shine your lamp at it.
-Focus as much or more on avoiding damage compared to dealing damage in Hard
-Certain spells are incredibly powerful when combined with other spells, like Multi-Strike and Berserk.
-This game rewards you greatly for the extremes, choose an alignment and stick to it, Max a skill before you move onto the next one (particularly for Will)

[theradead]

--Skill--
If you choose to stick with Bows, here are my tips for that...

1) Ignore crossbows, they're horrendous.
2) Don't forget to augment your bow, and don't be afraid to sell and buy it back if you need to change the augments on it. Look them up online to see what they all do, I like Piercing and Sharpening as they reduce armor and increase damage, solid DPS boost against all enemy types, but Balverines and Undead are weak to Silver for example, and it's absolutely wild how much extra damage you can deal with specific augmentations.
3) Level Speed first as it will also boost your melee skill, general DPS, and allow you to get more hits in between dodges. Accuracy is also important, but it will do you no good at all if you can't draw your bow fast enough to get any hits off.
4) This should go without saying, but get Skorms Bow as early as you possibly can.

[theradead]

Don't get discouraged if this takes you multiple attempts. Worst case scenario consider it time spent farming, best case scenario you've unlocked the highest DPS weapon in the game that you have access to and it doesn't cost you a dime aside from a bunch of Will Potions.

[theradead]

1) Utilize Physical Shield to avoid taking damage and ruining your Combat Multiplier.
2) Utilize Multi-Strike and Berserk to down your enemies as fast as possible.
3) If you walk out with x16 or higher you'll be in really good shape. Just make sure to keep the pep in your step and deal damage to either the Hobbes or the Troll outside as quickly as possible to avoid losing your multiplier and talk to the door quickly. You need a multiplier of 14 or higher to open the door.