Play practice mode w/o buying the game.

[Nenad4o]

Hello forums!

This is my first guide-like post ever, and my English language is not perfect, so my sentences sometimes might not make sense, but try to understand them :D
So if you are like me, still collecting money for buying your HoN account and wanting to see what does the newest HoN update looks like, that this is the perfect place too look at.
I'll explain how to update your client and play on practice mode without actually buying the game in few easy steps.


1. First we need to open up the console window by pressing CTRL+F8 while you are at the login screen.
(If you see advertisement on buying the game, just click "Login" where it says "I've already purchased an account")


2. Next thing you want to do is get the newest update. While you are at the console window, write
CheckForUpdates and hit ENTER. The client will check and download the latest updates. If you want to see the download process, just hit CTRL+F8 and the console window will disappear.

3. After the update, you still won't be able to create a game via the "Create Game" dialog, cause it looks for a connection to the main server (I think so), but you are not logged in, so it won't trigger the creation. That's why we'll initiate an offline practice game with a console command.
Next step: Open up the console window again (CTRL+F8) and write this (you can also copy-paste):

BindImpulse game ALT+F8 Cmd "startgame practice GameName map:caldavar allheroes:true devheroes:true"
What this command does, it assigns the creation of game to the combination of keys ALT+F8.



I hope this helped to users who still hasn't bought accounts :)

[GGreenBass]

Cool trick. I may have bought the game, but if I hadn't, I'd sure as hell at least like to do this. An early T-UP from a fan of your contribution :D

[ChibiChen]

Maybe someone should make a Mod for updating without logging in~

[ChaLkDust]

I love you.

[Durandal_]

This seems like something that should be deleted

[RefleKt]

i was thinking it too, why is this even allowed?

[TaggsvampisH]

Why delete this?

They can only play practice game [Turnonironic] YEY PRACTICE GAME IS SO AWESOME[/Turnoffironic] no but srsly they can just use practice mode and see what new heroes that have come and try them out in practice mode nothingmore

[Juke_Box]

this is not an issue until lan play is possible imo.

[MonkeyIsland]

I think this is a good contribution.

I mean you aren't going to play practice mode for long, just enough to see whether you want to buy it and then you can if you like. Can't imagine why S2 would ban this, if anything they would make money from having people be able to try the engine and heroes a little before they bought the game, ($30 USD may not be alot to some ppl but in SE Asia it's a fair amount of cash for a young person to spend).

[Yourself]

Dont delete something like this, i love it, now it's even possible to play pratice when loginservers of HoN is down due to DDOS or w/e, so even users that have bought the game can use this to pratice new heroes in the downtime.