My party is at Lower Dorn's Deep. When is the best time to start Heart of Winter? Is it a problem to finish the game first and then play HoW? Thanks for your help.

Full party of 6, or a smaller group?

Starting HoW with imported characters after the endgame is the normal way, HoW was released as expansion which players bought to continue after finishing pure IWD.

Keep a save from just after placing the 6 badges if you want to access HoW from Kuldahar.

There's no perfect time to start HoW, if you start it early the original game might be too easy when you return, if you start it late you might be too strong to be challenged.

Thanks guys, I have a party of six and they are all level 9 or 10. I think I'll finish the game first and then import the characters to HoW. Thanks again.

Wait until you've finished the original campaign (also makes sense) and then you're set. Just spend some time in the starting town to gather some big XP.

Pro tip: the first dungeon in HOF features really fast, really many undead: don't go in unprepared, bring turn undead and heals.

I mixed up Heart of Winter with Heart of Fury...those were good times.

Just note that imported characters lose all the potion, gem and scroll bags.

That's turned out to be quite frustrating to me as I decided to create an evil cleric, simply because I found the idea amusing. I totally forgot that evil guys can't cast any resurrection spells, so I had to use scrolls only. And all those scrolls were nicely stored in a scroll bag thing... You can guess the rest. Now I'm in HoW without any of those 18 or so scrolls and, guess what? There's no scrolls for sale in the expansion, so the only alternative is to pay for a raise dead in the town's temple or simply reloading.

So, take all your important stuff out your bags before battling the final boss in the main game or expect some bit of crying once you get to the expansion.

l finished Icewind Dale first and then imported the characters to HoW but I get the next message then.. "Icewind Dale No disk in Drive Place DVD in drive " while HoW dvd is in drive ..

Any suggestions ?