Dragon Age

[Scandanavian War Machine]

against my better judgment, i went and bought this on my lunch break.

luckily it was secret promotion day and the game was $10 off, so that was good.

[ackblom12]

I kind of went for a Spirit Helaer/Blood Mage build and ended up with a Spirite Healer Arcane Warrior Build and jesus fucking christ, as a sword and shield AW with Rock Armor, Arcane Shield, the 2 AW sustains and Miasma active I seem to be fairly unstoppable.

I have not tested this against Flemeth, the High Dragon or a Revanent mind you, but groups of enemies can't seem to do anything to stop me thus far.

[Alex C]

Arcane warriors are ridiculous. Personally, I went Blood Mage/Arcane Warrior though. It was stupid OP.

[ackblom12]

I f I had been thinking I was goign to take AW from the start, I would have as well, but I was going for a Spirit Healer/Blood Mage build, figured I could test out the AW since the build for AW and BM should be about the same anwyays and opted to keep it because it's just silly powerful.

[pilsner]

The real test of your party's OPness is the fight you are supposed to lose, the first time against Ser Cauthrien.  By the time I got to her, Alistair had over 90 defence, over 40 armor, over 80 physical resistance, and was getting +45% healing.  It still took 2 tries on Hard.  I'm really curious what it is like on Nightmare, has anyone beaten it?

I'm running with both my main character and Wynne as Blood Mage/ Spirit Healer (worst. role playing. ever.) and with both of them having group heal and essentially double mana pools I actually have to walk away from the computer for a few minutes to lose a fight.

[Caleb]

Man!  I have been playing this game a fair amount and I am only 19% done!

This game is HUGE.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

played this for a couple of hours last night. I'm still kind of on the fence about it. I mean, I kept playing it so it's not like it's bad but it's not quite what I was expecting (not that I have any idea in the slightest what that was, anyway). Gonna give it through the weekend and see how it goes. Maybe start a new character (i went with um...Dalish Elf Rogue, I think) and see how that goes.

It reminds me of an MMO...except I don't have anyone to talk to and I have to somehow manage my whole team at once in real time (well, not really Real Time, you can pause and look around and do stuff that way but that doesn't really seem very fun, or effective).

Recommendations for maybe a different starting class/race/origin? I usually like to play stealthy rogue/thief types but so far it seems somewhat ineffective.

[Darke]

Man, frequently pausing and carefully directing your characters is the only effective combat method in this game. Whether or not that's fun is a purely subjective thing, though.

As for classes... they're all good if used properly, but rogues can be difficult, especially if it's your first character. Mage is definitely a good choice, especially given the abundance of warriors in the game.

[pilsner]

Rogues are gimpy as fuck in this game.  For a number of reasons, not least because you can't ability score stack as effectively as warriors and mages.  I believe it is soloable on Nightmare with a rogue though -- but only through abusing stealth.

[Alex C]

It could have been a lot worse though; at least rogues have a decent attack rating in this game, unlike in D&D based games. Personally, I don't really think they're much worse off than a similarly built warrior, for the most part, since you don't really have to invest points in cunning beyond what you start with, and somebody will just about always have their back turned to you in a party setting, at which point the backstabs and enhanced flanking bonus (other classes only get half the attack rating bonus for flanking, rogues get full) does quite a bit to make up for having to pump Dex for dual wield talents rather than just pumping Strength like you can with a 2 hander. It's not as viable in a solo game, granted, but it does make rogues into a very reliable source of damage in a group. Of course, doing it that way basically requires that you ignore the other things that make a rogue special to begin with, so perhaps this is a case of damning with faint praise. At any rate, the classes are all certainly viable enough that you can pick whichever suits your thematic tastes and still beat the game.

[pilsner]

Absolutely.  But I've generally found that the somewhat elevated damage when you can consistently maneuver into a flanking position onto a single target do not make up for the lower survivability, particularly against large groups with many archers.  No question, you can beat the game on hard with 4 rogues should you really want to, but the general consensus that I've read so far on forums, and which my experiences match as well, is that if you are inclined to maximize the lethality of your group there is no reason to roll with a rogue -- particularly an archer rogue.  By game end Sten is hitting for 60+ and critting for 100+ if he's properly outfitted and ability stacked -- I don't know what the dps is but I would be surprised if you could get anything near that with an optimized 2h rogue.  What kind of numbers have you seen?

Of course the real issue is that warriors provide the tanks (and emergency back-up tanks for when taunt mysteriously fails or the archers appear super extra keen on perforating the mages) and mages provide the heals, aoe damage, and aoe cc, so in group fights where rogue aoe abilities are limited and hard to come by, the rogue's roll is questionable from a group optimizing perspective.  But understand that I used to play WoW in a progression guild so my viewpoint is skewed toward min/maxing to a (perhaps) unusual extent.

[ackblom12]

Just judging by what my Zevran was doing by the end of the game, I can almost guarantee that he was doing more damage than my 2 hander warrior.

[Caleb]

Some of the people on various forums seem to think that DW Rogue has better DPS over Warrior.  It's a further debate if you want to make a cunning rogue or a strong one.

I am making a strong rogue since as Alex C pointed out Cunning does not help your chance to hit people if you take Lethality.  That trait will only make your Cunning score count towards damage.  So if you go Cunning you will get all sorts of good scores on skills and backstabs but you will kinda suck at actually hitting stuff head on in combat.

In my gameplay I am getting into too many situations where I have to be in the thick of it swinging an axe at a group of people instead of being all sneaky and shit.  If I am not there my party gets wiped out.

I am concentrating mostly on Str and Dex and putting the occasional point in Cunning.  So yeah my character is weak at Rogue skills but with the poison and Rune systems I want to be able to HIT enemies on a regular basis.  With Momentum I can cause a beautiful rainbow of Damage!  And I can open a fair amount of locked Chests and doors and spring a few traps.

[LTK]

I've been reading this thread sporadically, and it's all just a lot of RPG-gibberish to me. I've always thought that in RPGs with loot and levels that you could optimize your skills to complement each other perfectly and do your best to get the perfect equipment for your character, or you could put your points more or less consistently in whatever looks like a nice skill to have and buy the equipment that looks pretty cool, and still being able to finish the game just like the guy who puts all the work in his build. Is Dragon Age one of those games or will it beat you into submission until you've got your build sorted out like a proper role player?

[Darke]

Depends on the difficulty level, really. On the two lower difficulties, you can definitely get away with building your characters inefficiently. Hard and Nightmare, you're going to get punished pretty severely.

[FIXDIX]

I am concentrating mostly on Str and Dex and putting the occasional point in Cunning.  So yeah my character is weak at Rogue skills but with the poison and Rune systems I want to be able to HIT enemies on a regular basis.  With Momentum I can cause a beautiful rainbow of Damage!  And I can open a fair amount of locked Chests and doors and spring a few traps.

I am basically doing this. I'm putting points on Cunning just to master Lock Pick, past that I'm focusing on Str and Dex since I'm a duelist.

[Boro_Bandito]

Man I am having the hardest time finding trainers for the damn specialties. The only one I've found so far is beserker through the dwarf, and my brother found Arcane warrior, which seemed to unlock it for my account as well... Is that the way it works, you unlock it and it becomes available to all characters on your account?

[Felrender]

Yup.  Kinda like getting the "Kill X bad dudes with Weapon/Power Y" achievements in Mass Effect unlocked said weapon/power for all other play thrus.

[snalin]

Just bought it, and it is performing very nicely along with a newly computer. If I could only get the bastard to understand that there's 6GB of RAM, not 4, I'll be happy.

I'm rolling mage, and I've been focusing on spells that bother the enemies, not the ones that kill them. With my main who can paralyze one enemy, the witch who can freeze one and horror one and stun everything around her, and the dog who can stun everything too, I've got quite a lot of crowd control.

Question: do you go after the stronger member of a group of enemies first, to make him stop punishing you early on, or do you kill all the weak ones that can fall fast, so you'll get less damage faster? I usually paralyze the alphas etc. and slaughter the rest, then move on to him, but I've had some problems with the leader coming back in the middle of the fight and doing MASSIVE damage when I'm already low on health/mana. Any ideas?

I'm also going to replace my dog, I think. He's good, but he doesn't have any skills to use, and that leaves him at a disadvantage. I think I'll get a rouge along, to pick locks etc, so far I've been able to just switch the party around when I need lockpick, and then switch back again, but I'm guessing that higher level chests requires higher level rouges.

[ackblom12]

I just realized I've beatent he game twice and I'm only getting around a 70% - 80% completion on the playthroughs and I have never found whee to learn the Reaver specialization.

I needs to know what I'm missing.

[Boro_Bandito]

I really, really need to know where I can get Champion unlocked, anyone find it who could tell me?

[Darke]

Right, apparently I'm not cool enough to use the spoiler tags, so:

Spoilers, guys. Scroll past the whole post if you're of the "figure it out for myself" persuasion.




Both the Reaver and Champion are unlocked as part of the Urn of Ashes (or Andraste's Ashes or Sacred Ashes or whatever the hell it is) quest, where you have to cure the Arl of Redcliffe. For Reaver, when you're in the Ruined Temple and Whathisface (Kogrim or something similar) asks you to pour the dragon's blood into the ashes; do it. Return to him and he'll grant you the specialization as a reward. Just beware as Wynne and Leliana will be very, very upset.

As for the Champion, simply finish the quest and cure the Arl. You'll be offered a reward; accept it, and you'll be given the Champion specialization.

[Spike]

I don't know if anything about this has been posted or not earlier in the thread, but I would recommend that rogues and archers check out the dexterity hot fixes.

   
      Daggers now get the shared damage bonus from Dexterity and Strength as intended, not just Strength alone.

      Ranged Weapon hit rate increased.
            Bow range has been increased by 10m on all ranged weapons (not staff), reducing the penalties for ranged shots in most most combat scenarios.
            All bows and crossbows now grant a +5 inherit Attack bonus. Note that this bonus is shown on the weapon, it does not factor into the characters Attack displayed score on the character sheet.

      Short bow being useless.
            Short bows now get full attribute bonus from Dexterity instead of shared from Strength. This makes them a natural choice for Dexterity focused character builds.
            Base Armor Penetration for Shortbows has been increased by 1.

      Ranged weapon damage has been increased:
            Damage range on all ranged weapons has been increase from 150% to 160%.
            Critical chance bonus on all ranged weapons has been increased by 4%.
            Damage bonus from attributes has been increased from 100% to 100/105% for bows and 110% for crossbows.

http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/hotfix/dexterity_hotfix_101

[Professor Snuggles]

This might end up being the first game ever that I beat and immediately start playing again.

I'm pretty close to the end, I think, marshalling against Loghain at the Landsmeet, and damn I am just so not done playing it.

[ackblom12]

So while in a morbidly curious state I checked the hours logged into each of my saves and I've put in 126 hours into Dragon Age thus far.

Mother of fuck!

[pilsner]

Question: do you go after the stronger member of a group of enemies first, to make him stop punishing you early on, or do you kill all the weak ones that can fall fast, so you'll get less damage faster? I usually paralyze the alphas etc. and slaughter the rest, then move on to him, but I've had some problems with the leader coming back in the middle of the fight and doing MASSIVE damage when I'm already low on health/mana. Any ideas?

I'm also going to replace my dog, I think. He's good, but he doesn't have any skills to use, and that leaves him at a disadvantage. I think I'll get a rouge along, to pick locks etc, so far I've been able to just switch the party around when I need lockpick, and then switch back again, but I'm guessing that higher level chests requires higher level rouges.

The following is for hard and nightmare playthroughs, on easy or normal this level of strategy is completely unnecessary:

Ccing (crowd controlling - a MMORPGism) the strong and killing the weak is usually but not always the way to go.  For instance, if there are 8 melee attackers, one yellow and 7 white, it usually makes sense to stick a forcefield on the yellow and wipe out the whites with aoe spells and attacks after taunting them onto your tank.  This assumes you are playing on hard or nightmare -- on normal or easy, the strats shouldn't matter.  On the other hand, if there are 10 guys, 3 melee, 5 archers and 2 casters, the best strat will be to aggro the mobs with your tank while the rest of your party is held in another room, retreat your tank to that room and immediately cast earthquake and/or grease plus an aoe over time spell like lightning storm into the room with the mobs covering the entrance to the room your party is in.  The melee dudes will get owned as they move through the aoe and keep falling over, and if there is, for instance, a yellow caster, you can focus interrupts on him as soon as he is in the kill zone.  Fist of stone is excellent as a ranged caster interrupt.    More often than not you will find that the archers stay put while the casters and melee wander into the kill zone and get destroyed.  This strat, incidentally, trivializes about 50% of the fights in the game on hard and nightmare.

The key to not getting owned by the yellow/orange dude when he gets out of cc is very simply to make sure that the tank has aggro, and that you have at least one mage healing the tank + poultices available.  To guarantee tank aggro, make sure that your tank gets taunt and threaten as soon as possible, and that your melee damage dealers have disengage or feign death.  If your ranged picks up aggro off the tank either cc (mage's seal of repulsion spell is particularly good for melee aggro) or kite to the tank.  And makes sure that the tank always has enough stamina for an emergency taunt.

Boss fights need to be dealt with on a case by case basis, however.  Most of the boss fights are designed to neutralize the retreat + kill zone strategy (Revenants will use group pull to mess you up, however there are counterexamples, for instance this is pretty much the only way to do the first optional Ser Cauthrien fight).  Because cc will often not work on bosses or be limited to a few seconds (force field is one of the few that will generally work, seal: paralyze will sometimes work for limited time, fist of stone and knockback based attacks will sometimes work although not against bosses that are large, e.g. dragons, etc.) the correct strategy is almost always to first make sure that the boss is on the tank, then kill all the little guys one by one, then finish the boss.  An obvious exception is for those fights where the fight ends as soon as the boss is dead and the boss has relatively few hit points (e.g. not the broodmother).  In those situations it often makes sense to just blow up the boss, even if it means losing a few party members in the process.

The dog and Shale both appear excellent when you first get them, but are definitely sub-par as you approach endgame on hard and nightmare.  Simply put, their limited equipment slots make them scale poorly to the higher levels.  For instance, assuming you are comparing Shale or the dog against Alistair for tanking, once Alistair gets Shield Wall and the fourth point talent eliminating knock down plus the 90 gold ring for tanking, he will outclass both by a fair margin.  Don't worry about who you are you using in the group though, because the characters that you are not using will never fall more than one level behind.

If the only thing you are using a rogue for is lock-picking then know that in something like 99% of areas, it is possible to clear without a rogue, than return with a rogue to open all the chests and doors you left unopened.  At no point in the game does progress require a rogue, and with a little strategy, the traps can be more or less bypassed.

[snalin]

I'm a petty creature and play on normal. But I still use the same strategies.

[pilsner]

You disgust me.  I am sneering at you right now.  Nightmare or bust.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

I still cannot make up my mind about this game.

Last night I was utterly furious with it and decided that I would trade it in and get something different but, for whatever reason, I kept playing and then all of a sudden it was 1:30 am and I was totally enthralled and did not want to go to bed.

I think it was the dwarves. I finally made into the dwarf zone for the first time and it's pretty fascinating; much more so than some of the other areas I've been in anyway.

[pilsner]

A metal fan into dwarves locked in an neverending fight against infinite evil ... you are breaking my mind

[Caleb]

I have not made it to the Dwarves yet.

I just finished Warden's keep and I feel a bit pissed about spending money on it.  The ability to have storage in VERY helpful though.

I noticed that I am still using some of the items that I got from doing the flash game.  If you have not bought the game yet play the flash game and get them before.  They are surprisingly useful.

[ackblom12]

Just wait until you have starmetal. That shit is badass.

[pilsner]

The DLC in this game was such horseshit.  The Dragon Breastplate is the single best chest in the game for dps warrior and you start with it as long as you didn't buy your game used.  Starting with end game loot is bad.  I didn't even bother with Warden's Keep on principle, but the Shale sub-mission is absurdly easy and nets you one of the top helms -- also kind of galling.

[Storm Rider]

You disgust me.  I am sneering at you right now.  Nightmare or bust.

Not only did I play through the game on Normal, but I am playing the console version.

And there's nothing you can do about it.

[pilsner]

Nooooooooooooooooooooo

You are not teh hardcorez.  You are not invited to my LAN party.

[Caleb]

Not only did I play through the game on Normal, but I am playing the console version.

Is it true that you have no Tab function that highlights everything you can interact with?  Is it true you can't zoom out to an overhead view of everything?

Man.  I am glad I haven't gotten a current gen console yet.

[ackblom12]

There is an option that highlights everything you can interact with actually, without having to press a button to activate it, and seriously I've felt no need to zoom out.

Keep in mind you can zoom out, just nowhere near the extent that you can in the PC version.

[Scandanavian War Machine]

if you open the radial menu, anything that can be interacted with shows up. or at least it's name does. and not always in the right place.

but at least you know it's somewhere.

[KvP]

The ever-hilarious Worldnetdaily finally catches on!

More like gay warden, amirite? Gonna give em some of my dragonbone greatsword.

[snalin]

Flemeth is one hard motherfucker.

[pilsner]

She's actually harder than Gaxkang and the High Dragon if you rely on Morrigan.  My nightmare takedown used up about 5 of the second largest lyrium potions because I did it with 3 melee.  On the other hand Yusaris makes the dragon fights a lot easier....

[Storm Rider]

Gaxkang fucking murdered me every time I tried, so I eventually gave up. All of the dragons were cake by comparison. I don't know what the reward was, but it probably wasn't worth it.

[pilsner]

The Keening Sword, which is comparable to the starmetal sword and arguably the best long sword in the game, and a chance at the best shield in the game, the Fade Wall.  I'm surprised you had a problem with him -- what group were you running with?

[Scandanavian War Machine]

beat the High Dragon last night.

I'm pretty sure I was underleveled for him and my party isn't exactly a picture of optimization, but I managed to finish him off with only Alistair and myself (dwarf rogue, ranger, duelist) left alive.
When the battle was over, I realized that Morrigan has the Revive spell and I didn't even know. Would've been helpful. 


ooh speaking of revivals, how do you get someone to revive a teammate using tactics? There doesn't appear to be any way of notating a dead (or "unconscious," whatever) ally for tactics purposes.

[Storm Rider]

The Keening Sword, which is comparable to the starmetal sword and arguably the best long sword in the game, and a chance at the best shield in the game, the Fade Wall.  I'm surprised you had a problem with him -- what group were you running with?

My party was Alistair, Leliana, and Wynne, for the most part. I occasionally swapped in Morrigan for Wynne. I think it was mostly that I was just really poorly specced the first time through, and also that Crushing Prison doesn't work on the really high elites like him, which is a huge bummer. I think I'll make another mage again eventually and do it right the second time. That'll come after my Rogue and Warrior playthroughs, though.

[pilsner]

I don't know, I've found Leliana borderline useless for anything aside from opening boxes -- particularly big boss fights.  On Nightmare I've one shotted most of the game with a tank, dps warrior, and 2 mages.

[Storm Rider]

Yeah, that's the thing, I keep her around for the rogue utility but it's really not smart for most combat situations. If I replaced her with one of the other warriors and had picked skills a little better for my main character, I probably would have made the game much easier on myself.

[pilsner]

Between my hard and nightmare playthroughs the game actually got a lot easier because I changed a few things, got sleep and fireball instead of useless spells, used a 2w warrior instead of a 2h warrior, didn't bother using a rogue but went back to open chests after, got taunt and threaten as early as possible on Alistair, and most of all did the circle before Redcliffe.  Now the game seems too easy : /

[snalin]

There's a lot of story choices I'd like to check out on another play through. Redclife without circle help, blood magic, etc. The best parts of the game this far has been when playing with demons in the fade.

[est]

I am playing as a Dorf Noble Warrior and I just got to the bit after the first big fight, where Morrigan joins you, but after playing the tower fight section with the Tower Mage in the party I am thinking about starting over with a combat-oriented Mage, because got dang it seems like fun.  How long would it be until I had another Mage in the party on a perm basis?  (Morrigan doesn't count, as she seems more like a Druid)