Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter is a 2001 expansion pack to the role-playing video game Icewind Dale, developed by Black Isle Studios and published by Interplay Entertainment. It introduced many changes and additions to the original game, and included a new campaign. A downloadable add-on to this expansion pack, titled Trials of the Luremaster, was released for free. Both the expansion and add-on were included in Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition.
Gameplay
Some notable changes include a much higher experience point cap, new magical items and spells, a special "Heart of Fury" difficulty setting for increased enemy power and higher experience point-gain, and a maximum resolution of 800x600. By that time, the expansion had been in full production for between one and two months. Designer Josh Sawyer said that the impetus for the project was the strong retail performance of Icewind Dale; Interplay greenlit Heart of Winter around two weeks after the launch of the original game. The team began work "immediately", Sawyer wrote, as there was "a limited amount of time to work on the project and we needed to sharply define exactly what we wanted to accomplish."
Producer Darren Monahan said that the team "included a lot of fan feedback, particularly relating to the balances of each of the classes in the original game." Another focus lay on importing code and features created for Baldur's Gate II to the Icewind Dale series. One of the development challenges was the straightforward and linear structure of the original Icewind Dale, which left little room for additional content. The team's solution was to take players to a separate region by using the barbarian Hjollder as a "catalyst character", who could be met either in Icewind Dales hub location of Kuldahar or after completing the game's main story. Team members John Deiley and Steve Bokkes handled the "majority of area and quest work" in Heart of Winter, according to Sawyer.
Heart of Winter went gold on February 12, 2001. It shipped to retailers on February 20. The expansion was released in Europe on March 23, 2001.