THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => CLIKC => Topic started by: KvP on 09 Jul 2008, 21:26
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Hooray! (http://dragonage.bioware.com/)
So it's Bioware's new quote "dark fantasy" unquote RPG, under development for about 5 years now. They had some screenies years ago, but chances are the game looks considerably different now. Looks like it's coming out in '09, probably late in the year.
So... Gametrailers will have an official "trailer" on Friday. Maybe we'll learn something. Or maybe this thread will remain useless for another 6 or 7 months. We'll see.
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* The story is dark-much darker than the usual BioWare fare-and influenced by “realistic” modern fantasy like George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones.
Sign me the fuck up, srsly.
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I've been excited for this since it was announced. It's been constantly pushed back because other games take priority, but hopefully it'll be worth the wait. They have described it as the spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate series, which is a damn big claim.
They're building the world from the ground up. A few interesting things that I remember reading-
-It doesn't contain gods, like in the usual fantasy game (or at least, it doesn't contain proof of gods, much like the world we live in now). This means clerics/priests etc. are out.
-It has combat that utilizes the environment. Apparently cover plays a big part.
-The character gets to take part in epic, large scale battles.
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As much as I love Bioware, I find it hard to get excited about this because it's been the 'spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate' for five goddamn years now. People bag on Too Human for being in development forever, but that game basically was completely different each time they scrapped it and moved it to another engine/platform. I have no idea what has been taking Bioware this long considering all the games they've announced and released in the interim. Plus, since it's a PC game, I probably won't play it unless it has system requirements low enough that it can run on my laptop. I really want to see them make another game that can live up to Baldur's Gate, but until we see something concrete, I can't get my hopes up too high.
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It's just like Spluff said, other games have taken priority for the last few years. As excited as I am for this game, I can understand that as a company, Mass Effect and the other projects they've been working on are much more important to get done.
I'm really goddamn eager for some solid info on the game though. It's a CRPG by Bioware and they haven't steered us wrong with that genre yet.
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It is supposed to have a pretty big presence at E3, at least according to EA. I would definitely expect more news in the next couple of days. Speaking of which, someone should probably get around to making an E3 thread.
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I was planning to do so on Monday after the first round of press conferences and so forth. Figured I might as well wait until we saw some news so that there was something to discuss at the beginning, rather than start it and then wait until Monday until having anything to talk about.
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Bump
I'm planning on preordering this, anyone else?
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do you realize that you don't have to say quote-unquote when you have quote marks literally right there
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I'm glad you pointed that out because I obviously gave a shit when I made the post.
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my friend has been going on about this for a couple months now. so either way i don't think i'm going to be able to avoid sitting down with this game for a few hours. i think he's literally going to tie me to a chair and make me play it.
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stop reading my secret thoughts i want this so bad
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The 2009 E3 announcements I heard of this game centred around seducing some of the women in the game.
They call it a "romance option" but we all could just call it "dating sim without the R18" rating". If it doesn't serve a purpose to the game significantly, I would be angry at the game for implementing this for no reason.
That said, everything else I've seen and heard about this game up until this point looks pretty good. Bioware at the very least don't seem to be cutting any corners for this game.
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Literally been waiting for years.
All we had back then were some official posts on Bioware's board, not them fancy trailers you gosh darn kids yell about. D|
Seriously, I've avoided almost every trailer, it's a blind must buy I want to experience as fresh as possible.
They call it a "romance option" but we all could just call it "dating sim without the R18" rating". If it doesn't serve a purpose to the game significantly, I would be angry at the game for implementing this for no reason.
I assume you've never played Baldur's Gate 2. They implemented romanceable NPCs there as well and it rawked (because it had depth due to great writing), but they knew where to make the cut (no Haer'Dalis romance for the ladies) when crunch time came closer.
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If it doesn't serve a purpose to the game significantly, I would be angry at the game for implementing this for no reason.
I strongly disagree. PC-NPC interaction is at the core of what bioware does and not all of it has to affect game play mechanics for it to be worthwhile. If the romance options deeply affect the storyline, that's neat, but if it doesn't that's fine by me as well. I rarely enjoy playing evil PCs, but that doesn't mean that acting like a bastard isn't an option worth offering in a genre that prides itself on providing a small degree of non-linearity.
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It's not fine by me, and I'm not alone on that (http://www.gamecritics.com/alex-raymond/women-arent-vending-machines-how-video-games-perpetuate-the-commodity-model-of-sex).
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I almost never play RPGs and I know next to nothing about Dragon Age, yet somehow this game strangely attracts me. I'm totally buying it, and being able to buy it with ME2 discounted as well as many sweet bonuses only adds to my unexplainable gravitation to it.
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I assume you've never played Baldur's Gate 2. They implemented romanceable NPCs there as well and it rawked (because it had depth due to great writing), but they knew where to make the cut (no Haer'Dalis romance for the ladies) when crunch time came closer.
Are you kidding, I wanted to kill Aerie and Jaheira every time they interrupted my massacre of whatever creature I found at the time, to whine about their lives in the romantic storyline. That said, there was nothing inherently wrong with the romantic plotlines on a moral level, just an annoyance level.
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The article that Johnny kind of linked makes some cogent points about how "romances" tend to work, in that they really don't. Their function is an extension of RPG narrative and quest design, and sex is often the payoff at the end of a long period of making the right dialogue choices time after time. It's something of a minigame in that. Especially in Bioware games since KOTOR there really is the sense of "keep talking to me until the end of the game and then we'll have sex". In The Witcher it's actually a trading card game, not far removed from the sort of thing that you'd imagine a frathouse setting up.
Thus these game romances, like all mass media, play into the idea of sexuality, particularly female sexuality, as an exchange of power, a competition over who can control the commodity of a woman's virtue. By placing sex at the end of the character's story arc they (perhaps inadvertently) play up sex as something that you're rewarded with for making the right choices, something that you earn. The problem with this is that it creates an expectation. I remember when Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines came out, and for all its faults it was actually pretty progressive in having several outwardly sexual female characters, only one of which it's possible to have in-game sex with (mostly because she's bored and does things on a whim) Anyway there was a sizable amount of griping on the part of gamers who felt that these female characters who were dressed provocatively and often teased PCs should have been available as potential conquests. Their contention was that it was pretty obvious that these characters were interested and it was dishonest to not actually make them interested. Attitudes like that are common inside and outside of the context of the game, but they're reinforced by the way that games usually play out. Games obviously aren't solely responsible for these expectations, but they're part of the apparatus that encourages them.
The article was brought to the attention of the Alpha Protocol guys (the article is ostensibly about that game) and their counterpoints tended to be either A. the writer had not played the game and thus couldn't make judgments or B. It's an incomplete criticism to say that male characters have a tendency to dominate female characters in games when male characters have a tendency to dominate anything and everything in a game world, including the laws of physics and other male characters. There's something to those arguments but they don't quite seal it for me.
Anyway, game romances don't seem to serve any clear purpose beyond titillating players. The way games are structured makes naturalistic progression of relationships more or less impossible to portray (actually The Sims, with its elementary school level of understanding of sex, inclusion of mundane life and freeform structure, comes closest) and thus I don't think there's a good reason for them to be in games at all, besides the fact that they appeal to common fantasies (particularly about the type of women who seem unattainable) and move units.
As for BG2, it doesn't have romance, it has extensive rehab therapy with sex at the end. I never tried Anomen's arc with a female character because Anomen's VA and writing were generally pretty annoying.
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Ok I'm totally not responding to that whole romance tangent thingie but this being Biowares first PS3 game I am incredibly excited for it. I've been wanting to play a Bioware game for quite some time.
But I have a very quick and what might be a stupid question. Is this going to have local co-op? Is my girlfriend going to be able to sit with me on the same couch and pick up a controller and play...or no?
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Apparently the console controls for this game don't totally blow, so I may end up playing this after all. It's got Tim Curry and Captain Janeway in it too, so... that's something.
I still have trouble really getting excited about this game in comparison with Mass Effect 2, and frankly from the way Bioware's publicizing the two games it seems like they feel the same way. Still, I'll probably buy it shortly after release, unless reviews are unexpectedly negative.
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And they'll be released a couple of months apart. argh hard choice.
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Are you kidding, I wanted to kill Aerie and Jaheira every time they interrupted my massacre of whatever creature I found at the time, to whine about their lives in the romantic storyline.
The funniest part was how their sappy theme music would cue up pretty much the absolute second you got done disemboweling people, so you're basically having a chat over a bunch of corpses. The therapy followed by sex analogy is pretty damned accurate too, particularly since you have to be kind of dickish to Jaheira if you want to nip the thing in the bud; there's nothing particularly romantic about any of it. Funniest part was that I didn't even know about the romance option when I first got the game; I just picked one of the nicer dialogue options since you know, her husband was recently dissected and that's not cool. Plus, she healed me a lot in the first game.
But like I said, there's people who seem to like this sort of thing, so I'm perfectly willing to tolerate the existence of such things in games provided that they aren't really required to move forward. Basically, I've made my peace with the concept that for many people games are simply a form of (often base and awkward) fantasy. That's not really my bag, personally, but I don't really disapprove of these things any more than I do Call of Duty or GTA. Such things simply make me uninterested, not "angry".
Ikrik: I'm pretty sure they said there was going to be no co-op. It doesn't really fit terribly well into what they do anyway, MMO plans aside.
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As for BG2, it doesn't have romance, it has extensive rehab therapy with sex at the end.
Oh God so true.
As far as I can remember, the ending story for one of the female characters (Aerie?) turned out worse if you slept with her. Which is kinda sad. I'm not quite sure about the view on sex in BG2, though; you could see the whole thing as a minigame where you selected the right options to get laid, but the characters were well fleshed out, and it felt like the designers were trying to make interesting sub-plots.
The problem with romance in an RPG is that the main character (the Bhaalspawn from BG, Shepard from Mass Effect) are completely flat characters by themselves; you as the player are supposed to create the main character through dialogue options. The problem is that this does not create very deep characters, and the romance becomes a bit one-sided, the NPC you are romancing are madly in love, but you as a player don't have that kind of feelings, so neither does your character, and it all comes down to the reward, sex. I'm not sure how this can be fixed, though.
Actually, I'm just waiting for some of the not monogamous people in here to complain that you couldn't romance Aerie and Jaheira at the same time.
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I am eternally angered by that, yes.
Anyway, thoughts on the article posted. Love is hard to show in any medium. Show well, anyway; purple prose and explicitly stating it aside. And especially so in an interactive medium where my character is supposedly in love with the guy or the girl or the Lovecraftian horror (I have not really played any of these games, don't judge me).
Sex? Sex is easy. Easy to show or imply in any medium, at varying levels of explicitness.
The correlation that often exists between sex and love can easily be painted as causation. Or not. Nobody's denying the huge amount of loveless sex that goes on everywhere. But that's beside the point. Any 'romance subplot' in a game will end with sex because it's easy to show, and with a little bit of dialogue you can bump it up into that elusive "love".
I'm not saying I like it, I'm saying it's easy.
Plus The Witcher almost ruined the end of Act 1 with the card thing.
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I'm actually a little lenient when I play games with romance options, so long as the romance seems to have a point. Someone mentioned KotOR a while back, and I tolerated the romance options (well, mainly just the Bastila-Revan option) mainly because at the end the romance actually did something for the plot towards the end.
Although it was the pretty hammy "love redeems all" idea that seems to be in a lot of Star Wars titles (and other franchises but that's for a different thread to discuss), I respected it because it had a distinct purpose of advancing quite a bit of the plot towards the end. As a sidenote, the actual romancing sequences were a little unimmersive because your player character was mostly silent as if he was telepathically sending the selected lines of dialogue to the NPCs.
I'm confident that Bioware will make another great RPG, and I probably shouldn't have said "significantly", but personally I'd like for some of it to have some sort of meaning to the plot. It's great to flesh out characters, but I honestly couldn't give a two shits about Carth's killed family until I learned about his personal vendetta with Malak's right hand man.
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Are you kidding, I wanted to kill Aerie and Jaheira every time they interrupted my massacre of whatever creature I found at the time, to whine about their lives in the romantic storyline. That said, there was nothing inherently wrong with the romantic plotlines on a moral level, just an annoyance level.
Well I didn't say it was implemented perfectly. :>
Regarding KotOR (SPOILER!): It's beyond me how anyone wouldn't have wanted to shred Bastila into tiny little ribbons towards the end. I usually play the good guy, but hook up with her in order to save her? Nooohohoooooo.
Sometime I beared with her codependant catharsis kinda thing and couldn't help but reload to commence with said shredding.
And Carth is Anomen put into overdrive. :S
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I've never had any real particular beef with Anomen, Bastila or Carth. Probably just because I typically ran with HK and Canderous.
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Oh, HK and Canderous were gold.
Pity there can only be one wisecracking emotionally disturbed droid in this universe.
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Actually when you play KOTORII you discover there are several dozen at least.
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Oh, that's right.
But... are the copies as wise and as emotionally disturbed? (From what I heard, the original HK wasn't too happy about the copies.)
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What a coincidence, KotOR just showed up at Steam. Might be worth a shot one day, but Dragon Age comes first. I pre-ordered it at Amazon for the goodies you get with a physical copy, like the armor also for ME2. I looked around on the website, and it looks like the different classes you can play actually have huge variety, not just in appearance and skills, but also in terms of backstory and motivations. Do you start at a different point in the world with each character? Maybe this is a game worth replaying after a full exploration run.
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I think there are six backgrounds and they alter the context of the story slightly, more than Mass Effect but less than, say, Arcanum. If you think of the game as having an A story and a B story, the A story (main plot) remains unchanged but the B story (peripheral quests, minibosses and the like) is affected by what origin you choose. As for class, as far as I'm aware you can only be a spellcaster if you take the mage origin, since Dragon Age is supposed to be a "low fantasy" game (it won't be, really). I'm not sure if other classes are also tied to origins.
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i've avoided reading/watching/listening to any info on this game for a while now because i had no idea what it was and the name "Dragon Age: Origins" sounds like some straight to dvd bullshit. however, now that it's gotten harder to avoid information about it i'm starting to realize that this game looks pretty fucking sweet.
which sucks because i do not need to more games to buy, damnit!
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One month until I get it! :-D
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Also: Ten days until the character creator is released! (http://daforums.bioware.com/viewtopic.html?topic=696540&forum=135)
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20 minutes of gameplay, accompanied by inane chatter! (http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-dragon-age-origins/17-1477/)
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The only funny thing the "humour" guy said was the "did you have to unlock that moustache?" bit. The rest was just annoying. When he was saying that he died a lot when he was playing I immediately figured that it was because he was a moron.
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Oh, it was pretty good footage though!
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The character creator should have hit about 20 minutes ago.
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Wow, looks like the server is overloaded. Must be gaining some pretty heavy popularity, this game.
You can read the forum posts here (http://daforums.bioware.com/viewforum.html?forum=135), look for stickies.
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From what I have read so far I am not sure the character creator is helping.
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Yeah I know a QA tester or two who worked on this game and from what they say the program isn't half as functional as it is in-game. Basically the entire point of the program is the make-your-own-forum-avatar thing at the very end of the process.
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20 minutes of gameplay, accompanied by inane chatter! (http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-dragon-age-origins/17-1477/)
Looks pretty standard as far as Bioware RPGs go. Pretty sure the learning curve will be pretty quick for veterans of these games.
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Shale, the golem CNPC (http://www.gametrailers.com/video/stone-prisoner-dragon-age/57832). Included as free DLC with new copies of the game. Not included with the game proper, to discourage secondhand purchases.
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Oh hey, if you're especially eager for the game there's a Dragon Age flash game out now:
http://www.dragonagejourneys.com/
After a few quests it will ask you to fill out a survey which rewards you an in-game item for DA: Origins.
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I'm thinking about switching my Assassin's Creed 2 preorder to this instead but I can't make up my mind.
ah decisions, decisions
I mean, I'm playing Demon's Souls and Borderlands right now and Modern Warfare 2 comes out next month as well (preordered already) and I put five bucks down on Assassin's Creed 2 just for the fuck of it but I just can't decide what to play now and what to wait and play later.
sway me one way or the other, please. give me something to help me decide.
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I'd switch to Dragon Age - no lame-assed Sci-Fi sub plot there.
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I just read a spoiler for this game that I don't know if I can fully describe without completely giving away what it is. It's definitely... a new frontier for games, at least. I'm not sure whether it's a really brave thing to do or just a bad idea that will backfire horribly.
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What, the tranny hookers?
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No, although between that and the gay sex I'm sure that Fox News is gonna have a great segment about this game.
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Are you talking about the social networking thing they're doing? Or is this a story-specific thing that is a huge risk to be taking in terms of acceptance from the general public?
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omg (http://www.ag.ru/screenshots/dragon_age_origins/313504#show)
lol
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Storm Rider,
Mark the spoiler, and tell us what you're talking about.
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Spoiler tags don't work here.
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Let's see if I can work around this with the good old-fashioned tiny text. It is a story-based spoiler, so do not resize this if you want to go in blind:
The romance subplot can result in pregnancy, and the player can choose to have the baby aborted. Whether it's tied to a specific character's romance, or whether a female PC can get herself pregnant, I don't know.
It's definitely something that's never even been approached in games before. My concern is whether the scene will be totally jarring with the tone of the rest of the story, more than finding the decision to include it objectionable. As much as "gamers" like to complain that video games aren't taken seriously as an artistic medium, whenever somebody takes an actual stab at including some remotely socially relevant subject matter, the audience usually turns on them for putting actually thought-provoking stuff in their escapism.
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Oh I can see Fox news go absolutely batshit CRAZY over this. I think their reaction will be the funniest thing that will happen this year.
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Fuck, I love digital downloading. Tomorrow, I pre-load Dragon Age. Then, on release day, I shall play it immediately like the gigantic nerd that I am.
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For whatever reason I decided to get a physical copy...I don't fucking care because it's going to rock me that much harder after I wait 20 minutes to install.
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I'm getting the 360 version, but it sounds like stores already have their copies so I should be able to get it on Tuesday rather than waiting a day for it to ship. That's been the case for all of the games I've bought on release in the past few months, it seems like publishers have just gotten smarter and shipped further ahead of time to avoid the whole ship date/street date annoyance.
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Alright, looks like it should be shipping from amazon today so I should be playing by Wed or Thursday. Until then, I'm gonna try my damdest to get the last 7 levels for my Hunter in Borderlands.
Also, I need to finish that flash game. I wants my goodies.
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The Flash game is decent fun, considering it's a free flash game, but I cannot create an account for the Bioware network so I can get my rewards from it and the character creator into my game. It keeps telling me on the sign up page that not all fields are filled in correctly, even though they definitely are. Highly irritating, maybe I can get it fixed before I start playing the game tomorrow night.
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So yeah, I'm playing the PC version as an earth / ice mage and so far it's playing more like NWN than BG2, in design, pace and interface. Which is to be expected - Bioware never looked back after changing their design philosophy after BG2. I've been playing it for 5 hours now and it's, well, it's not BG2. Even for how big it was BG2 was fairly brisk in its pace, and Dragon Age really, really takes its time. Sort of fun, but it's not got that love at first playthrough feel that BG2 or even Mass Effect had. But then I'm only about 5% through the game. It could get better.
As for the story and characters, it's definitely got more of a KOTOR vibe than anything else, but that might just be because with full VA it's hard not to do that. I've yet to see any real intra-party interaction or naturalistic character development but I've only procured 4 party members so far (dog's the best character thus far, which is... good?) so that could change. I doubt it will though. The game has already told me that party members will only really open up at "camp", which I suppose just means that character backstory will be doled out in increments between portions of the main quest, as it was with all Bioware games post-NWN. For all the griping people did about Serious Conversations immediately after slaying bands of orcs in BG2, it felt a lot more natural than this. Ever since that time Bioware NPC development has basically been a parallell quest running alongside the main storyline. Which is obviously the easiest way to implement it, but it feels canned to an unnecessary degree. Intra-party interaction has been limited to light banter ala Mass Effect's elevator rides.
My biggest gripe thus far has to do with the camera. Not to use a tired term but Dragon Age for the PC is pretty well console-ified. playing isometrically BG2-style only kind of works, and that's just in combat. The control and camera system are straight out of KOTOR otherwise. I would like it a lot more if you could enable camera rotation by moving the cursor to the edge of the screen. In over-the-shoulder mode moving the cursor does nothing, in isometric mode it scrolls but cannot rotate. To do that you have to use the keyboard. It's been consistently annoying me since I started playing.
As for the story thus far, It's nice that they've made their own setting and all, but I don't find Lord of the Rings very interesting, so I don't find this terribly engaging either. The nice thing about the Baldur's Gate series was that it was in effect a personal sort of narrative - it was about your status as a child of a God and the people who wanted to manipulate or kill you because of it. I don't think the whole Saving The Universe spiel works as well, although I really liked it in KOTOR, which I guess you could call a hybrid of the two approaches.
One thing I'll say for sure - Holy shit is replaying through the beginning of the game going to be a slog. Like I said, I've been through this for 5 hours and I've hardly gotten to the beginning of the game. Make sure you know what you want your build to be before you play. You don't want to waste hours on a character just to figure out you don't like him.
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Oh my fucking god. I had originally pre-ordered this from the EA store rather than on Steam since the latter hadn't announced many details of what their release was going to look like. Well, I did that before finding out the EA store is a buggy piece of shit. I couldn't even check my order history or anything that you should easily be able to do on a modern online store (hell, at one point I couldn't even log onto my account anymore), so I got cold feet and decided to cancel. Besides, by then Steam had released some more details and I liked their pre-order bonus better, plus I could now get a Steam discount. This shouldn't have been a problem because EA's cancellation policy is simple: If it's not in stock, and it hasn't shipped, you can cancel at any time, and this was around the 18th that I made this decision. I got in contact with customer service and by the next morning they said that it'd take 5-6 days to waive the charge from my card. I responded with an email saying that should be fine because they hadn't even actually charged my credit card yet, another one of the many funky things I didn't like about going through their pre-order process. As long as I wasn't going to be charged, I was fine. No further responses. I then went ahead and ordered the Digital Deluxe version from Steam, which of course went smoothly. A few minutes ago, I checked my credit card balance and found out that EA just charged me 72 fucking dollars, sending me 3 dollars over my credit limit and netting me a $40 overdraft fee.
It's going to be really hard not to send them an email containing phrases like "Bitch, I will destroy you."
P.S.
What bothers me most is that I feel like I should have sort of have expected something like this from a publisher that could conceivably survive without an online store. That they're in a privileged position in the industry isn't an evil in and of itself, but the fact remains that a certain amount of financial success in one area can insulate you from the fallout of having serious shortcomings in other areas. I guess I just kinda figured it's 2009 and that an online store should work better than theirs does, but I guess this is what assumptions get you.
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I want to know what y'all have named your dogs.
My enemies are feeling the iron jaws of Poochie.
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Sergeant Scruffles.
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I'm calling mine Scruff McGruff
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I have my copy in my bag right now, gonna try (and probably fail) not to play it when I get home because I need to study for my history midterm.
I think I'll name my dog Princess.
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Pirating the game at first turned out to be a Good Idea because Steam is being a dick right now. I just spent 45 minutes decrypting the game, but it won't start. So I start it up again and it turns out I have to decrypt it again, but starting at 75% instead of 0% (apparently the key server got dropped at some point) Unfortunately for me the last 20% of the decryption process took up a good half of the total decryption time.
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So maybe Steam isn't all that bad after all. They bumped me up to a Deluxe Edition even though I paid for a regular digital release. I'm 100% that was not intentional. Too late to fix their mistake now - I redeemed the code they gave me.
To celebrate I am going to spend the $15 accidentally saved on alcohol. High fives all around!
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So, I found a dead body in the Korcari Wilds during part of my origin story (which I haven't finished yet); it had a note showing the location of a chest left for the dead guy. Instead of giving waypoints on a map or just a general direction to follow, the path was laid out by landmarks (find the tree leaning against a ruin, go under the tree bridge, past the sunken tower on your right, etc.) When I got there, I had to fight off some wolves, but it had a pretty good sword and some heavy armor in it...I just thought that was a really cool twist to what would ordinarily be a fetch quest. I hope there are others like it out there.
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Picked it up yesterday and have discovered my newest timesink. Thank god I don't have any more midterms till the end of the month. Picked it up for PS3 cause I know my laptop couldn't handle this at all.
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It just got dropped off at my doorstep, so after the wife is done with her peggle time, I'm a gonna start off with a Dwarven Warrior, Noble origin I think.
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Morrigan gets pissy at me whenever I try to help people, so it looks like I'm gonna be romancing Leliana this playthrough. Also having to find a trainer for your specialization is not something I expected. I've hit level 7 but can't find the Spirit Healer one, which is a bummer.
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She'll come eventually. You might have already encountered her, even if you couldn't bring her into the party.
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Oh, I think I know who you're talking about, since she's in the Mage origin. Can I only get the specialization through her? I feel like every time I level up without having the training is one level closer to being unable to max out the skill trees for those classes. I'll see if I can find her after I finish up Redcliffe.
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max out the skill trees for those classes.
Ha. For a shapeshifter at least there's only one skill branch, and it's got four slots. The guy at Bioware I know got to level 26 before the end of the game. So you should be okay.
It might just be the case that you haven't taken the right mission yet, or something.
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I'm having such a hard time deciding if I want to play throughall the origin stories before I continue on with any specific character just yet. The Dwarven Noble (as a warrior)origin I've loved to bits and I'm pretty eager to see the others.
It especially mystifies me that being a City elf actually like really intriguing. Typically I never play an elf if I have a choice.
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max out the skill trees for those classes.
Ha. For a shapeshifter at least there's only one skill branch, and it's got four slots. The guy at Bioware I know got to level 26 before the end of the game. So you should be okay.
It might just be the case that you haven't taken the right mission yet, or something.
Oh, so 20's not the level cap? I was worried because each specialization I want has 4 skills each, and I'm already almost at level 10 and haven't unlocked any yet. I did get the party member, but I can't seem to do whatever you need to to get her to teach you the talent. I did with Alistair, which is fully useless since I'm not a warrior.
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Got it off Steam and am liking it. Wish the camera was about 2x farther away than it is for the fights though. Playing on hard and can't imagine how normal must be.
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Easier?
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Morrigan gets pissy at me whenever I try to help people, so it looks like I'm gonna be romancing Leliana this play through.
I don't have any intention of romancing her, but luckily(?), Morrigan is Captain Moodswing, so she's easier to keep happy than you might suspect. She's not Alistair; he's pretty patient but only gives me 2 to 4 points of approval here and there per decent conversation. I've never really upset him, yet the incidental points of approval from handling things the way he would have handled them have been important since he's such a mopey, guarded dude under all the jokes. Morrigan, on the other hand, is easy to irritate and we've had our disagreements in regards to events, but when she likes you, she really likes you; I've managed to get 7 points of approval out of her before without even really trying to humor her in camp conversations. She talks a big game when it comes to being independent of emotional attachments, but I'm kind of getting the impression that she's as sheltered in some ways as her background might suggest; a little approval (okay, that and a necklace) gets you pretty far with her.
Of course, now that I've said that, my next quest will probably be saving a box of kittens from a burning building, which will make her so angry that she'll turn into her spider form so she can kill me and lay eggs in the dessicated corpse.
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Also, I'm thinking of restarting as a rogue so I can stick with the Me-Alistair-Morrigan-Dog team without feeling like I"m missing some skills. I like my warrior, but Alistair-Morrigan conversations are delicious and me and Alistair overlap too much skillset wise.
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Man...this is the first Bioware game I've ever played and jesus...this is freaking sweet. I've noticed a few things:
This is the first RPG where I'm actually roleplaying. I have actually invested time and thought into who my character is, what his motivations are, and what his plans are. I have never, ever, played an RPG like this. This is setting the bar pretty high for RPG's, at least for me.
and
I've played for about 15 hours now and already I've come to regret about 3 decisions. Maybe a couple more. The morality system in games like Infamous have always bothered me, there's black and white and those are your two decisions. With this I'm spending much more time thinking about how my answer is going to affect the person/thing I'm talking to. I let some seductress demon take this knight away because she said she wanted to make him happy....and I'm not sure about whether or not I'm comfortable with the decision I just made.
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Also, I'm thinking of restarting as a rogue so I can stick with the Me-Alistair-Morrigan-Dog team without feeling like I"m missing some skills. I like my warrior, but Alistair-Morrigan conversations are delicious and me and Alistair overlap too much skillset wise.
Word to the wise - at this point the dex-based damage bonus to piercing weapons is bugged beyond function, so unless you wait till patch you're going to have to invest in strength along with all the other stats Rogues are dependent on if you want to be doing anything at all in combat.
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That sucks.
As far as morality goes, I'm just glad they decoupled alignment/morality from your abilities for the most part. For example, it bugs me that in D&D that good and evil are so absolute and that some spells are capable of being considered essentially and irrevocably evil according to the game's cosmology, even though the Priest of Ilmater the Crying God over there just caved in some poor shmuck's skull with a holy symbol. For example, aside from spells that directly counter the undead, necromancy is a dark art and undeath itself is evil, full stop. There's been an exception made here and there, but overall those are just that, exceptions, and rarely last an edition, baelnorn aside. Then again, I'm the sort of guy who heard about Blood Magic and thought "Who cares if it's my blood? Fucking pansies," so maybe my stance here is skewed. If it ain't Star Wars, I don't generally think morality should affect how you do violence, and even then it's an oversimplification of the setting.
Christ, I'm such a huge nerd.
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I was over at the store today, and it sells for 399NOK to PC, but 499 to PS3 and Xbox. Either the store has figured out a good way to fight pirating, or they are absolutely rad, or I don't know, but the flash game was excellent as far flash games go, and it's Bioware, and oh God I'm buying this after my birthday presents all come in.
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Hmm. Think I might just wait and add this to my Christmas list. I'm sure it's a tremendous game, but thankfully I avoided all the hype about it, so I don't have that horrible craving I get for games that I've been following since their announcement. It can wait. :)
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Man, I played this game for 5 fucking hours yesterday. When I told myself I'd be working on that project due next week. Fuck. BUT I KILLED A FUCCIN' DRAGON!
So it's all good.
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Normally, I'm a boy scout in these games, but I rerolled as a mage and now for whatever reason I've suddenly turned into the most cheerfully mercenary SOB to walk the lands. I'm a freakishly resilient Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage and pretty much every scenario starts with Zevran (kind of annoying) and Morrigan (likes me so much now that the conversation options are essentially reduced to "try to get into her robes" or "willfully antagonize," which is kinda funny since I'm not bothering with the romance) egging me on while Ohgren stands around being too drunk to care. Usually the encounter ends with us merrily curb stomping half the people in Ferelden. Sometimes we even kill darkspawn.
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I like this game because it's easier to be evil without feeling terrible than it is in most Bioware games.
Playing a city elf rogue. Barely started.
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I had to buy online a copy of the ps3 version because it doesn't come out retail here until the 20th of November.
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Word to the wise - at this point the dex-based damage bonus to piercing weapons is bugged beyond function, so unless you wait till patch you're going to have to invest in strength along with all the other stats Rogues are dependent on if you want to be doing anything at all in combat.
Actually, a bioware dev put up an unofficial dex hotfix that seems to get the job done. It has made archers pretty scary (shortbows/crossbows now actually have a reason to exist!), but I think the impact of the dexterity bug on dual wielders hasn't been as severe as some people made it out to be. Unless you're completely foregoing strength in favor of dexterity/cunning (something I don't really suggest; wearing decent armor seems a lot more useful than the odd bauble you can find in a treasure chest, although ymmv), longswords will often outperform or at least compete with an equivalent tier dagger provided you can meet the prerequisites of wielding it in the first place. So really, the fix is mostly good for boosting offhand damage and keeping rogues who concentrate on utility over damage competitive, since they can keep at least within striking distance of combat rogues despite not having the strength to wield the latest weaponry. Either way my own rogue is actually built more for damage than utility, and he was a wrecking ball before I even installed the fix. The biggest change is that I actually bother checking dagger damage before grabbing the newest longsword.
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links or it didn't happen
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There you go. (http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/hotfix/dexterity_hotfix_101)
I planned on linking it, I just didn't bother to bookmark any of that stuff when I came across it last night, so it took me a second. And please remember, it's highly experimental and has been tweaked a few times already as it is. Still, this version actually appears to work, unlike the first try they did, so I'm not surprised you hadn't heard of it yet since it was fixed in the wee hours last night. I haven't slept since they did it though, which is the only reason I'm a bit ahead of the curve on this one.
Anyway, I still suspect that the best way of damage dealing as a rogue is still to build a warrior that happens to be able to backstab, since you'll hardly if ever miss that way and can wield high base damage weapons, but the change is still definitely a buff no matter how you slice it. I could definitely see how a Dex/Cunning Lethality based rogue could hit like a truck with all that armor penetration, but when I initially tried it myself accuracy was a bit of an issue.
BTW, the daggers will still be listed as scaling with .85 strength as opposed to a Strength/Dexterity split, but my own jiggering with things indicates that you do definitely get a boost from leveling dex now.
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I was feeling all bummed out because I thought I couldn't play this game!
Never checked the system requirements. But now I did it looks like my computer is actually a bit better than the low end requirements!
I am totally buying this game when it goes down in price.
Missed out on the $10 Best Buy card...I will have to look for for sales next week.
Is this worth paying full price? Is the special box version worth it?
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If you're going to buy a deluxe version, I'd recommend buying the digital one off of Steam. I believe the boxed version only includes one of the DLC xpacs, but the Steam version has both. I'd say it's worth it, Shale is the best tank in the game.
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Yeah, I was going to get Warden's Keep regardless, so the Digital Deluxe was a no brainer. Tycho from PA refers to the Digital Deluxe as the "Complete Game Edition," whereas with the Collector's edition you get.... a cloth map. Woo.
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Whereas with the Collector's edition you get.... a cloth map. Woo.
I f****** LOVE cloth maps. I own many. I have two cloth maps just of Britannia.
...don't judge me.
So anyways I am going to see if there are any deals next week on this. This is looking like my next gaming experience. Maybe I will play a character who is a bit of a jerk this time.
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But see, I already have a map. I look at it by pressing "M."
And because I hate current pagebreak trends:
(http://images.travelpod.com/users/eoinmccarthy/world_tour.1163109960.s4021698.jpg)
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But see, I already have a map. I look at it by pressing "M."
You and I are just two very different people Alex C.
Doesn't anyone else here really really like cloth maps? Is it just me?
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I went out and rented this game last night because I'm too broke to buy it. I played for a while as a City Elf Warrior and I kept trying to play as a rogue and that messed me up way too much. So I restarted today as a Noble Dwarf Rogue and I'm actually planning things out a little better this time.
But so far, I love this game to bits. It's so much better than Oblivion.
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I actually do miss nice manuals and cloth maps and all that crap. I'm just not about to take a map over discounted downloadable content. Although, tbh, I am a tiny bit miffed that we've reached the point already that DLC is a launch day phenomenon. I don't blame bioware for this, mind you, since the robustness of their offerings makes it hard for me to say that I'm not getting my money's worth with a straight face, but overall I find it a somewhat worrisome precedent. Companies that deal in lesser product will find me to be a lot less generous with my gaming dollar.
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I have fallen into the same trap I always do with RPGs of this ilk. I have 4 or 5 characters with 6+ hours put into them. I need to make one and stick with it.
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By contrast, I am in the middle of the endgame with my human Arcane Warrior/Spirit Healer and haven't even started another character yet. On the other hand, once I'm done I think I'm just gonna make a character for every other origin and play through them all before deciding which of them to keep going with. I am looking forward to my Human Noble Rogue who I'm basically going to play as a Republican politician dropped into Not-Middle-Earth. Guess who he's gonna be romancing.
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Depends, by Republican do you mean very religious social conservative hawk who is strongly in favor of military service or do you mean more of a ruthless "the weak got there by their own incompetence" Libertarian kind of mindset? I'm guessing you mean the latter and that you'll be sticking with Morrigan, because honestly I couldn't handle the idea of sticking with Leliana for any length of time. Her voice bothers me for some reason, and I'm normally immune to quirky voice acting.
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i'm gonna name my dog Cat
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Why not slide dog?
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I was actually in the middle of posting, "No!!!! I'm gonna name him SLIDE DOG." All caps.
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"I love A Red-Haired Dog" -my character, Dragon Age: Origins, 2009
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Actually, I named my latest dog Wojtek, which means he who enjoys war, in honor of a Polish bear who transported ammunition in WWII.
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So does anybody know how to be a Blood Mage? I ended up Shapeshifter / Healer, but I would've liked to have been a Blood Mage.
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Depends, by Republican do you mean very religious social conservative hawk who is strongly in favor of military service or do you mean more of a ruthless "the weak got their by their own incompetence" Libertarian kind of mindset? I'm guessing you mean the latter and that you'll be sticking with Morrigan, because honestly I couldn't handle the idea of sticking with Leliana for any length of time. Her voice bothers me for some reason, and I'm normally immune to quirky voice acting.
Not so much the religious type as much as the "fuck you, got mine" conservative. Basically, he's going to be the most self-serving asshole possible, without any regard for others beyond their immediate use to him. My romance comment was a snide reference to all of the Republican politicians who have been in gay sex scandals after condemning gay marriage. I'll leave you to connect the dots from there.
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Awesome.
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Sorry to keep posting.
So the downloadable version seems like the best deal but I don't have Internet access at home. Whenever a game needs online activation I just bring my computer into the library.
So I am looking to get a physical copy in-store (hopefully one will be on sale next week).
Are the special downloadable content things really a huge deal? Depending on where I get my copy I might be able to get a few of them I know and I will probably haul my computer into the library to get them. From what I can see they just make the game easier with unique items or add quests and stuff. Are they really that important?
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Actually, I named my latest dog Wojtek, which means he who enjoys war, in honor of a Polish bear who transported ammunition in WWII.
I love that bear!
(http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voytek3.jpg)
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Are the special downloadable content things really a huge deal? Depending on where I get my copy I might be able to get a few of them I know and I will probably haul my computer into the library to get them. From what I can see they just make the game easier with unique items or add quests and stuff. Are they really that important?
You don't really need any of them. But they're nice. There's one that gives you Shale, a party member who hasn't died in the 10+ hours I've run with him. The other one gets you a container, the only one in the game you can put stuff in. If you've got pack rat tendencies the game can be a headache without it.
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What's the container called? Lemme see if I can get it for frees with a physical copy somewhere.
I am also playing the flash game thing to get some free downloads. But they appear to completely suck?
Resistance to elemental stuff? Is that important in this game? Better to do the character creation thing and get a ring I guess.
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They kind of suck, yeah, but at the very least you can sell them for some early coin if you prefer the other items you find.
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All right then. I just have to find a physical copy on sale somewhere, install it and bring it in to get all the downloads I can get for free.
And I have GOT to stop reading this thread for fear of spoilers.
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At least with the 360 version, you get Shale for free provided you buy a new copy. Provided the PC users don't get screwed that way, you should only be missing out on the Warden's Keep DLC by buying the Collector's Edition instead of the Digital Deluxe version. Plus, then you get your cloth map.
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Just checking in to say that my rogue is turning out waaaaaay better than I had dared hope he would. My old mage could team up with Morrigan to apply quick bursts of lethal damage and thus cherry pick or at least crowd control the must-die-now targets quite easily, but I honestly don't miss that capability very much thanks to the fact that my rogue takes enemies from full to dead extremely fast and doesn't really need much stamina to do it either. He spits out backstabs at a freakishly high rate once you factor in dual wielding and Momentum.
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It's pretty easy to spread a rogue too thin, yeah. Like I said, my own rogue is a death machine, but frankly, I'm more than a little surprised by just how much building one expressly for combat and picking out a few key talents ASAP really impacts their early performance; the first ogre battle was much, much easier for me this time around simply because my rogue chewed through the first half of its health bar like a buzzsaw. Leliana and Zevran by contrast felt a bit too much like salvage jobs for my tastes when I tried them on my mage.
As far as Morrigan is concerned, I also would have preferred that she was merely apathetic or unimpressed with your efforts to help people out rather than actively annoyed, which seems kind of petty. Although I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised about that considering how much she enjoys needling people at times. Still, I like the character and some of her tiny moments of self-awareness about the persona she presents hit me as unexpectedly funny, like when she scolds the War Dog for being manipulative.
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I just started playing it.
Here are my annoyances so far:
No rest system!
Only 3 classes and 3 races?
I can't find a setting to make it pause auotomatically every time I enter combat (I'll have to check again)
I can't queue actions/spells (I'm playing a mage)
All of the spells are combat oriented! I was hoping for something along the lines of Icewind Dale where you could teleport yourself short distances and do divination spells.
I hate mana, I prefer the D&D system, but I guess I can let this slide.
It isn't Baldur's Gate II
It isn't Planescape: Torment
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you'd be amazed at the number of ways you can build those 3 classes, especially when you start counting specializations.
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All of the spells are combat oriented! I was hoping for something along the lines of Icewind Dale where you could teleport yourself short distances and do divination spells.
I like how you say this despite the fact that unpatched Icewind Dale had so few divination spells that you could take Divination as your opposed school with virtually no consequences. You know, because the only spell worth having was Identify.
Also, if by D&D you mean the Vancian system, I'll still never understand how anyone could really be in favor of that system. Oh, sure, you felt clever when you knew what worked and what didn't, but in practice this meant that half your portfolio was a sick joke and completing games was as much about guessing what you were going to stumble across next as much as it was about how you applied the spells once battle was joined.
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There are two good divination spells, actually - identify, and true sight. BG2 is a bitch without it.
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Agreed, but if I remember correctly True Sight wasn't even in the first Icewind Dale, and at any rate Clerics could also cast it in Baldur's Gate. In the first Icewind Dale having access to Divination meant you saved a few coin here and there and maybe got a few experience points in a specific quest or two. There was some neat flavor here and there, but for all practical purposes entire schools were virtually without merit.
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Yeah, but if some enterprising video game company took a bunch of divination spells straight out of the D&D manuals, they could really add a lot of flavour to the game. Possibly making it change the outcome of the game, so there would be a way other than dialogue trees to take a different route through a game.
Also, I found another annoyance in Dragon Age. For some reason I can't select a single person out of my party and have ONLY that person move around. One of my favourite plays is to send a lone party member into an ambush or enemy filled area and then have them lure the enemies into a bottleneck; possibly with some traps and glyphs designed to hurt them on their way. Seems I can only do this with lots of trouble in Dragon Age.
Also, on the vancian system of spells: I guess I always thought of it as proper preparation prevents piss poor performance kind of thing. In some of the D&D based novels, like Forgotten Realms, wizards are always described as being vulnerable if they haven't properly prepared before a fight, so one of the mechanics of that class is to make sure you have the right spells memorized. That's why the Sorceror class exists, so the people who just want to pick any of their spells and have a set amount they can use, or mana, can do that.
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Switch to party member.
Command wheel->advanced->hold position.
Proceed.
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Awesome, thank god I can do that, or else I'd be horribly crippled.
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Switch to party member.
Command wheel->advanced->hold position.
Proceed.
...I've finished the game and I never noticed that.
Fuck.
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I love this game. Started last night around nine. Blinked and it was three in the morning.
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This game is awesome but I am dying a whole bunch more than I feel like I should be, and Injury kits are getting expensive. I dunno if I'm just doing the wrong quests or what, but in my party of me(duelist rogue) Alistair, Morrigan, and Dog, the rogue and warrior die on like, every 5th encounter, and boss fights usually wipe me 2 or 3 times before I manage to take them down. I dunno if I'm just not playing the game well in terms of tactics and things, or if I've made a mistake and not put enough points into constitution or what, but this is silly. Anyone else having this problem, or do I just suck at video games.
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That's normal. Melee combatants with low con die consistently, as you're basically supposed to play this game like an MMO - you have a tank who uses the "taunt" and "threaten" abilities to draw enemy focus away from spellcasters, who are the real heavy hitters, and soak up damage. Most people who take on Sten thinking he'd be a perfect tank with his size found out that he's often the fighter to crumble. Which is why Shale is such a powerful character - his con starts in the 30s and his strength is in the 20s. He's not a complete tank but when he's trading blows he lasts longer than anybody else.
It might also be because you're playing as a rogue. There have been a lot of complaints about how useless most rogues are, with or without the dex-modifier hotfix. They're generally pretty fragile and even as archers they pale compared to fighters. I've found that the only way to keep Leilana from dying constantly is to set the difficulty to easy. Bioware is apparently working on this. The best way to play a rogue is as a backstabber, preferably coupled with disabling spells from another party member. Otherwise you've got a tough road to hoe.
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Yeah, Sten is pretty much useless. Too bad, as I was looking for a good evil character to take on.
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You guys are doing it wrong and Sten is a good character due to his damage potential and innate durability as a warrior. I'm going to be blunt: the MMO conceit is a crock and leads only to failure in my Dragon Age experience. I know this in part because I play tons of MMOs and this game, if anything, plays out like an untankable encounter in which everyone is responsible for their own health, not a tank and spank. Just bear with me for a moment and I'll explain my admittedly unorthodox viewpoint.
MMOs work the way they do because of a few unique design decisions that simply don't apply to Dragon Age. MMOs emphasize the Tank and Spank because you're typically worried about one overwhelming foe per tank, each of whom will cheerfully annihilate anyone but a tank within the space of a few swings. The gap between the tank and everyone else in the survivability sweepstakes goes beyond profound, but even he takes immense damage and requires a full time healer to survive. To counter this, healers in MMOs are supercharged health throughput machines that can take a tank from low to full in the span of a few seconds, and can massively overheal anyone else. This means that using heals on anyone but a tank is "wasteful," since healers are restrained by mana costs, not cooldowns. It's a black and white world: healers heal the tank, tank takes the damage; any variation and you start losing people.
Dragon Age isn't like that; hell, strategy wise it's almost like a party based Diablo you can pause. Enemies attack in number and when you die it's usually because your dumb ass was surrounded again. No class can chain cast super powered heals, yet the few healing spells available are remarkably inexpensive, so you're fighting to keep people alive until Heal is available again rather than worrying about your mana pool. Armor is helpful, but not as helpful as hitpoints. And most important of all: All the classes are hybrids and all of them can have decent but not overwhelming survivability. The key to not letting characters with low con die is to boost their con.
A character like Alistair can take more damage and handle flanking enemies better than the other characters. That doesn't make it a good idea to let 4 enemies pound on him at once. Keep it to two or three enemies attacking any one character whenever possible. If it gets to be more than that you need to shift priorities to taking one of the bullies out of the fight ASAP before someone gets cut to ribbons. And don't be afraid to let your mages take a few hits. Trust me, they can take it if you build them right; Morrigan has enough baseline strength to wear decent tier leathers if you're paranoid, and even without them she can often take care of herself by using Vulnerability Hex+Drain life combos. Letting the damage get spread around won't kill you; in fact, it just makes it more manageable. Ending the battle with everyone at half health is better than ending a battle with an injured Alistair and everyone else untouched. If you must use abilities like Threaten, make sure you have at least two warriors using Threaten together so the incoming damage is split into manageable chunks.
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I usually just use warrior based characters as fodder in these games while I hang back and blast them with fireballs. Works out because they just come back to life and get healed.
Yes, I know that's a stupid strategy, but when it works it works, and mages are pretty powerful in DA.
With the drain health or whatever it is (the one that lets my mage absorb dead enemies for health) it's making me move my mage in for close combat more.
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I just find it funny that people basically coddle their mages and then scold the warriors for dying. I'm fine with exposing my mages to a little risk; often times it helps them do their job better. Hell, my Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage is the first guy to go in.
Oh, and if you must use your guys as sacrificial lambs, at least do them the courtesy of hitting them with a Stasis before setting everything on fire.
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Word around the way is that 3 mage 1 tank (preferably Shale, who seems immune to some spell effects) is the most powerful party combo. Sword and board being the best tank configuration (hence Alistair's durability)
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Yeah, 3 mages would be ridiculous, and I think 4 would work even better were it possible. Honestly, I'm really certain I could solo the game as a mage, but frankly, that's nothing new to bioware games. I just don't think warriors and rogues are as crappy as people make them out to be. Generally speaking, the character you micromanage the most will be the most effective. Most people rarely bother doing this with warriors. I can understand that, to an extent, since mages do in fact have the most options and thus tend to give you good bang for your buck, but that's not really any reason to underrate the tools that warriors and rogues have. They have the tools there to be successful and to get through fights without dying. It's demonstrable. Rogues in particular get a bad rap because people can't seem to wrap their minds around the idea that Dex isn't a true DPS stat and that Strength and Constitution aren't optional. If any rogue stat is optional, it's Cunning or Willpower.
As far as the one tank idea goes, I think the key to that isn't really the tank you choose, it's the mages. All the enemies focusing on one target makes a lot more sense when you have 3 other characters that can stagger heals to keep him standing even if everyone dogpiles on him. In a more typical 1 or 2 mage group, it's better to spread the pain around a bit so nobody gets too low before Heal is available again.
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I broke my promise and read this thread again.
What can I do to make sure my Rogue/Assassin isn't going to suck? I mean what are some HUGE mistakes that I shouldn't make?
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Depends if you want your rogue to be a good melee fighter or if you can live with having him be a bit subpar in battle but able to open every lock you see. Unfortunately, many chests require more Cunning than just the points needed for reaching the final level of the lock picking tree, so having real stealth/lockpicking skills does require sacrifice. If you just want him to be able to put up a fight, than you'll want to basically build him like a warrior. Enough dexterity for the talents you want, enough con to survive, and strength for damage/armor. I eventually considered strength to be my rogue's primary stat, same as any warrior.
As for talents, that depends in part on how far you are and what your other characters do. Personally, Momentum is my favorite skill in the dual wield tree and I'm glad I beelined to it, but if you prefer having a mage who can cast Haste I wouldn't blame you for going after another talent first since Haste and Momentum don't appear to stack. That said, Haste is at the tail end of a pretty vanilla tree, so I don't really regret having skipped it until late game.
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I hate to gripe, since I rather do like this game, but why the heck is Combat Tactics a skill?! Limited as it may be, I've grown to love the ability to set up a few simple event triggers on my party members. For example, I like to set it so that Alistair saves and automatically uses his Overpower ability on targets that have been frozen solid; the last hit is an automatic critical if it connects, so the combo deals good damage at worst and results in an auto kill at best; very slick. Sadly, I often go without it, instead using tactic slots to handle more mundane tasks. So really, my complaint is that the the scripting system is ultimately here to improve your quality of life as a gamer; it's merely a tool for combating Dumb Party Member Syndrome during the mop up phase of a battle rather than something that really overhauls your group's capabilities. So why give it an arbitrary limit that's tied to skill points of all things? Options like this should be shouted about from the rooftops, not hobbled until you hit level 12 and can afford rank 4.
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^ This is completely a complaint I have.
The ability to control your AI better should not be a thing you have to sacrifice actual skills for.
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I'll toss my hat in on that complaint.
I definitely don't understand the complaints about warriors. I've had a blast with my 2 Hander warrior thus far and outside of one or two fights, the only ones I've gotten my ass beat in have been ones where I didn't' think things through beforehand.
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I've started (another) playthrough - I seem to get the urge to start a new character right after Redcliffe - and am min-maxing a bit more than I was previously, setting characters their individual targets and stuff, and damn is it making things so much easier.
I haven't played around with the combat tactics that much, but then I am only playing on Normal. I only really think about it when during a combat situation I think "It would have really helped if X had done Y at that point." so I go in and set a tactic for it.
So far my only real issues are, as above, the tactics slots being so limited, and an annoying habit for my ranged characters to forget to switch back to ranged weapons if they get dragged into melee combat. Also a minor gripe is that the Dwarven origin stories seem to be way, way more detailed and interesting than the other races, but that's seriously not like, a legitimate complaint I'm throwing in at this point.
Out of interest, does anybody know if the romances actually have a gender attached? I assumed - as is the way with most RPGs - that same-sex pairings would be limited to certain characters if represented at all, but after experimenting a bit with the Human Noble origin story, I'm not so sure. Of course, it could well be that the options within that section aren't gender specific and everything else is.
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There are three romance options for either gender. There are two bisexual characters (they announce themselves as such fairly early on - it's in Zevran's first conversation) and one straight character for each gender. I don't know if dwarves have a romance option.
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I eventually considered strength to be my rogue's primary stat, same as any warrior.
So wait doesn't this game use Dex for daggers and stuff? There is no "Finesse" skill you can get to make all your damage throws go to Dex?
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There's a skill for rogues that makes cunning the primary skill for damage instead of strength. I just got it an I'm pretty stoked!
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But do you have to go through half of the game being a wimp to get that skill?
I dunno.
I think i might just go full on Assassin and have my character be really really good at stabbing and poisoning things and little else.
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My Dwarven lady is definitely gettin it on with Liliana. Maybe Alistair, they're both on my to-do list this play through.
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I eventually considered strength to be my rogue's primary stat, same as any warrior.
So wait doesn't this game use Dex for daggers and stuff? There is no "Finesse" skill you can get to make all your damage throws go to Dex?
I again want to stress that there's a difference between a rogue who wants to be able to stealth and lockpick and all that good stuff and a rogue that wants maximum ass-kicking. Mine is firmly in the latter category; doesn't mean that the former can't contribute in a fight, they just won't contribute quite as much. It's a sacrifice either way; my rogue couldn't pick a decent lock if his life depended on it.
To answer your question, no, there isn't a finesse skill. Daggers use half of your strength (or Cunning with the right talent) and half of your dexterity and then multiplies by .85 to determine your attribute damage bonuses. By contrast, longswords use your full strength/cunning total which is then multiplied by 1. Axes use full strength/cunning and then multiplies by 1.1, making them excellent for burly characters like my high level rogue. In the long run, all the weapons out there have better attribute scaling and better base damage than daggers since you can concentrate on just one attribute for damage and get a higher modifier to boot. Daggers are still actually quite competitive for much of the game since you'll have no choice but to pump dex anyway and because they have some of the best Armor Penetration going. But eventually pumping strength/cunning and wielding two bigger weapons via Dual Wield Mastery will be the fastest way to increase your overall damage potential. The problem is that Cunning just substitutes for Strength while calculating damage; it doesn't boost your attack bonus and it doesn't let you qualify for weapons that that have a minimum strength score to equip in the first place. So while Cunning might theoretically have great scaling with a kick ass dragonbone hand axe, it won't matter if you don't have the strength needed to equip it. You'll also miss more often since like I said, cunning doesn't increase your attack bonus.
Anyway, go ahead and make a Cunning/Dexterity rogue if you want; he'll pitch in good damage on backstabs and open locks and stuff. He'll just miss more often won't be able to stay in an enemies face after they turn around after a few backstabs like my blood dragon plate wearing, axe wielding monstrosity of a "rogue" can. On the upside, he should dodge more as long as you keep stacking Dex. You can beat the game either way, and if you're a completist you'll probably appreciate the lockpicking and maxed Coercion more than I do.
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Man, the uh... the ending to this game is incredibly bittersweet. Spoilers obviously.
This is especially true of the fate of Orzimarr. The game also feels like the ending is a lot more tragic and hopeless if you sacrifice yourself rather than letting Alistair make the final blow. On the other hand, my mage playthrough is going to take Morrigan up on her dark ritual offer so lets see what kind of foreshadowing that gives.
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I've always played a mage because it's more interesting than "hack n' slash", but with DA: O there's less variety of spells, which makes me bored.
Of course I'm happy mages are finally getting their rightful dues.
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Grease and Fireball is also hilariously effective, particularly since it helps to snare and gather enemies as they charge.
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I'm just freaked out by the implication that there's games where mages didn't get their rightful dues. They were dominant in anything D&D based.
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(on the two lower difficulty levels so you can just nuke the whole place)
This is a key phrase.
It's also why I have never played on lower than hard.
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On hard the tank business becomes a little more pronounced, as you draw all the enemies to a certain spot, cast stasis on him, and then throw as many per-second AoE damage effects as you can at him.
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I'm just freaked out by the implication that there's games where mages didn't get their rightful dues. They were dominant in anything D&D based.
Anything D&D based that went through high levels. Anything with low levels and a limit on resting, and mages were practically the most useless class.
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Except when they were using charm/sleep to wipe out whole groups through the magic of save or be good as dead spells. The "Oh noes, we're out of spells" issue was easily fixed by having a higher percentage of mages in the party so nobody's resources were taxed too heavily in any given encounter. And honestly, I've found that no problem can't be fixed by throwing enough scrolls at it. I've soloed BG1 as a Mage before. It's not particularly hard, you just need to have to burn a ton of resources that oddly enough are really only available to mages.
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Being mages always seems stupid to me. Like, they're just fuckin squishy ass damage machines. And the NPC mages are usually the most interesting, so why would I want to overstack the party with them?
I like character interaction and stuff more than I like being good at RPGs.
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Being mages always seems stupid to me. Like, they're just fuckin squishy ass damage machines. And the NPC mages are usually the most interesting, so why would I want to overstack the party with them?
I like character interaction and stuff more than I like being good at RPGs.
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Mages are often squishy damage machines in JRPGs, but in D&D it was never really the case accept at the very lowest levels. Hell, one of the bigger problems with high end AD&D was the fact that Mages became better tanks against the truly tough critters than the warriors. For example, in BG2, golems were such good fighters that you rather had to accept that they could and would connect with the majority of their attacks even against an agile warrior in full plate. So your best bet was to cast Stoneskin and Mirror Image and mage tank them while everyone else hacked the golem to pieces. The golem would still connect with their attacks that way, but they wouldn't be able to chew through your defenses fast enough for it to make a difference. There really was little reason to be anything but a cleric or a mage back then, which is a damned shame, since you'd think warriors would have been worth a damn in an rpg genre commonly referred to as "hack 'n' slash."
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Magic is for pansies.
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So is your mom.
BURN!
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The thing about the combat tactics was that they were touting it as a DEEPER LEVEL OF GAMEPLAY in the promo material and making it sound like it came down to whether you wanted to use it as an option or not. That's what drives me crazy - it's a bait-and-switch.
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But on the other hand -
(http://img109.imageshack.us/img109/2909/stevealbini11l.jpg)
(http://social.bioware.com/da_game_other/portraits/295000/294552/294552.png)
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Okay so I honestly wasn't excited about this game at all and thought I was going to skip it... but I've heard such good things about it and... okay so I've been playing like 10 hours straight its four in the morning oh god I think I have a problem.
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Yeah, I definitely played for at least 15 hours this weekend.
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I played it for roughly 27 hours (with breaks to keep my mortal body functioning) straight when I had the day off on Friday, which was kinda nice because usually when I get that kind of insomnia I can't concentrate on anything at all.
Tonight I think I will give it a break.
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First playthrough was with a 2-hander human warrior and holy god did I ever die a lot
Second playthrough I'm doing a dual-wielding elf warrior (shut up I like warriors) and JESUS SHIT the game is so much easier
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It sounds like my weekend. It's amazing how much gaming you can get in when you're on the couch for 4 days due to being glass eyed and feverish.
Comparing them is kid of pointless, they're 2 games going for entirely different things, but I think DA has officially surpassed BGII in my mental hierarchy of Fantasy RPGs.
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I think I can safely say, even at this stage - I'm not sure how far I'm through, I've explored less than 50% of the world even on my furthest playthrough, I think - that this is the best RPG I've played - again, short praise since I haven't played all that many - it has depth, it's engaging and even the niggling interface failures are something I can work with and adapt to. The fact Bioware have managed to conjure up an entirely fresh fantasy landscape and setting with minimal derision, while keeping it easy to access and follow, is pretty fantastic. Even Mass Effect came from a scenario where the core concept was pretty familiar to anybody coming in from the outside at all - humans are humans, we go into space and surprisingly we are kinds of jerks about the aliens, and vice versa.
I must say though, I'm finding it a lot harder to try and play a jerky asshole character. In ME it was pretty easy to knock through two straight playthroughs as Paragon and Renegade respectively, but in DA there seems to be a lot of times where the choices are only between two evils anyway, lesser or no. This feels more realistic, I guess... games where you can clearly choose saint or sinner through incredibly obvious dialogue choices or actions tend to make your character come off as a pretty heavy archetype of whatever alignment you're going for, or perhaps even stretching it to somewhat overblown levels. Also in that I guess in the real world there isn't always a right and wrong, sometimes you're just playing for damage control, and many of the crunch decisions I've seen in DA have come off as such.
In DA there are 'bad' choices that I can even see a saintly character pursuing, and - while some might not appreciate it - the fact you can't negotiate your way through the game beating on every character to disagree with you is pretty refreshing.
It also makes me even more eager for ME2, to see if they can at least release product with the level of quality and polish on display here.
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I've put in 24 hours since I got it on saturday.
Oh goddamn I hate finishing an intense fight and not saving my progress directly afterwards, only to die when moving across the map by some flashmob of bandits or wolves. Granted that it is my fault for not saving, but still, ARRHHH.
I'm having a real hard time using my DLC too, for some reason whenever I put in the Shale DLC code which I got with the game it says the code is invalid. Same thing with the BDA, only I registered that code on the EA site and it said it was fine, but still nothing on my Downloadable Content menu.
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How are you inputting the code? I had some trouble on the Xbox version until I realised I had to press Y on the DLC menu directly for the code, rather than moving to buy the item and going with 'redeem code'.
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Yeah, it's kind of a dumb system to be honest. Took me a coupe of minutes to realize what I was doing wrong.
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Yeah, it took me a while to realize that the only way to download the content was if you sat there and watched it download from the in-game EA menu, no out of game active downloading for them, oh no.
So I keep getting my ass handed to me as a dwarf warrior specializing in shield and mace. Despite the fact that its supposed to be the setup where you can take any hit thrown at you I feel like I have zero survivability. Also its annoying how high a percentage of available party members, at least as far as I've gotten, are freaking warriors. To say I have them up the wazoo would be an understatement, but right now the guys available to me are 2 mages, Wynne and Morrigan, one rogue in Leliana, and then a golem, war dog, sten, alistair and myself all being warriors. On this playthrough I just decided to have me, Alistair and Shale, and then Morrigan, so a 3 warrior/1 mage setup, and purposefully skipping all that fun rogue stuff for another playthrough.
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I think in the end there are.... 5 warriors if you count Dog, with a pretty wide variety of specialization between them, 2 rogues and 2 wizards not including yourself.
Spoiler:
I think it would be 6 warriors if you count Loghain, is that right?
You should seriously take Alex's post to heart when it comes to survivability. Tanking is very different in this game than it is in a lot of other games. It's practically impossible to do traditional tanking, though the Sword and Shield build is definitely the easiest to do so with.
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i love that when you select your dog to be in your party it plays a happy little Dog's Theme
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My dog brought me soiled pantaloons as a gift. This game is awesome.
Also it's going to ruin my life a little bit.
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I really want to have my dog in the party, but there's no room. Shale is too awesome to leave out, I'm trying to bang Leliana, and I need a mage.
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Yeah if nothing else I'm going to have to play through the game again just so I can have the dog in my party, I'll probably have him on my mage or something.
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Guys I GOT THE GAME! I have been playing this weekend! Best Buy price matched an Amazon deal. I am glad my computer can run this. I get no slowdown at all during the game but sometimes the movies skip a bit. It took a really long time to download all the extra crap from beating the flash game and stuff but it was worth it! I love starting out a new game with a lot of different crap to play around with!
My first game and I choose to be a human rouge. So it looks like I am a noble with a cool doggy. Wow I was expecting something horrible to happen to my character in the first act, I guess I just lucked out.
(http://i516.photobucket.com/albums/u330/Dreamcastguy/2002_the_wild_thornberrys_movie_-1.jpg)
Tim Curry - "Hello..."
Crap.
I have named my dog Shanks. (I guess my character taught him to fetch old soiled pairs of undergarments sometime in the past? This leads to some unsettling questions.)
So I am going for a bit more of a robust rouge this time and I am pretty happy. My guy can kick ass right along with the warriors and I LOVE the poison system. It sucks not getting some of the chests to open but honestly it doesn't seem like I am missing much. I don't have any stealth yet and I am not missing it. Duel wielding with enchantments and poisons is so awesome, you get a rainbow of damage numbers.
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Rogue.
I play one in warcraft so this has become a thing.
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Can't we pretend I misspelled it on purpose as a joke? "Robust Rouge" That funny right?
3 hours of sleep man. Cut me some slack.
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You're right about chests for the most part, but there have been a couple here and there with really awesome surprises. I found a few bitchin' hammers and some rad armor on my 10-hour trek through the Deep Roads that way.
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Yeah but nothing truly special right? I mean you aren't going to find many unique items in high level locked chests are you? So maybe spending points on lockpicking isn't the way to go...
So I have been considering the whole daggers and cunning thing VS Str and Dex for axes and swords. Some people have been claiming that pure dagger characters actually do a lot more damage with backstabs and high rate of attacks with poisons and runes.
I dunno. I have been spending most of my points in Str and Dex and have been working up to get the dual swords thing.
Maybe it's best just to have fun on my first run through and not worry about it.
My character seems to be kicking ass pretty well. Perhaps I made him a bit of Jack of all trades but that's not too bad.
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Lethality rogues may very well beat out strength-dex in raw backstab damage output once you factor in the armor penetration but the runes and poison argument is misleading. Remember, there is nothing stopping you from using daggers with a dex-strength build and thus getting just as much benefit from poisons and runes if such a combination does indeed outpace your current axe/sword options. Taking more Cunning at the expense of Strength is simply just exchanging attack rating and heavier armor /weapons for lockpicking/stealth and superior armor penetration. I kind of prefer the former, personally, since on hard mode at least I've found that misses can be an issue at times when you're fighting an enemy that refuses to be flanked. I suppose you could also grab just enough strength to use your preferred armor type and then concentrate on cunning and dexterity, but I'm skeptical that it is really a good idea, since cunning replaces strength rather than stacking with it when determining damage, so all you'd really be getting out of Strength then would be attack rating, physical resistance and whatever new gear it qualified you for. In the end, I'm sure Cunning and Strength builds both work out fine, but the latter can be more heavily armored, which should count for something.
As for whether lockpicking is worth it or not, it probably all evens out in the wash. On the one hand, most of the chests have a lot of junk in them, but some do not. On the other hand, the fact that you won't have Item X is will be somewhat offset by the fact that you won't have to spend points on cunning and deft hands just to acquire said item. Granted, it's less of a sacrifice for rogues with Lethality, but even then it's still a sacrifice. You won't get extra damage from cunning until you have Lethality, and between that and sinking points into deft hands you'll have less points to spend on grabbing other combat talents.
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I am sick of missing in combat in RPGs like this. I am going to concentrate on making my character as bad ass and armored as possible.
Thanks for all the advice Alex C!
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I don't think I would ever stop playing this game if it weren't for the fact that I become terrible at the combat when I'm tired. I don't know what it is; I can play the most fast-paced first person shooters no problem while my eyes are closing over, but I just can't think at all tactically when I get drowsy. It's probably good for my health though, so I suppose it's a win. Sort of.
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It's unfortunate that on Hard, at about 25% progression more than 9/10 of the fights become trivial using one of the three tactics. To anyone starting new play throughs who doesn't want to spend 40+ facerolling same-ish fights, I strongly recommend Nightmare. Like, really strongly.
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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.
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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.
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Arcane warriors are ridiculous. Personally, I went Blood Mage/Arcane Warrior though. It was stupid OP.
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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.
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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.
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Man! I have been playing this game a fair amount and I am only 19% done!
This game is HUGE.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I really, really need to know where I can get Champion unlocked, anyone find it who could tell me?
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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.
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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
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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.
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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!
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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.
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I'm a petty creature and play on normal. But I still use the same strategies.
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You disgust me. I am sneering at you right now. Nightmare or bust.
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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.
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A metal fan into dwarves locked in an neverending fight against infinite evil ... you are breaking my mind
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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.
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Just wait until you have starmetal. That shit is badass.
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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.
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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.
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Nooooooooooooooooooooo
You are not teh hardcorez. You are not invited to my LAN party.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The ever-hilarious Worldnetdaily finally catches on! (http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=117131)
More like gay warden, amirite? Gonna give em some of my dragonbone greatsword.
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Flemeth is one hard motherfucker.
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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....
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 : /
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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.
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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)
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There are 2 NPC mages, Morrigan and Wynne. You recruit Wynne by undertaking one of the main missions after the rather protracted prologue ends.
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Really by level 14 or so Morigan and Wynne can be identical except Wynne gets a nifty bonus ability and Morigan gets a special robe. Which incidentally is one of only two which give the "two strips of fabric over my boobs" look.
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i can't wait to play this game again.
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Spare Loghain at your own peril (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/12/2/).
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Ah, damn.
I think I'll have to start over; I rolled mage from the beginning, and went with the wrong skill tree, so now I have neither heling capabilities or hurting capabilities on my main; just a bunch of spells that makes the stuff I'm fighting a little less good at fighting. Which is no good at all, really, when my warriors are dying because there's too many things hitting them at once.
I was hoping to find some way to just respec; dump the skills I've taken and put everything in the elemental skill tree or something else that's at least useful. I'm not able to take down stuff when one character sucks, and sadly that is my main which I cannot just dump back at camp.
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I was hoping to find some way to just respec;
If you people would just read Rock Paper Shotgun this wouldn't be a prob.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/11/23/im-a-naughty-boy-respecs-in-dragon-age/
There is a little crow who can change all your stats...
http://social.bioware.com/project/469/
Not that I have not tried this yet personally so copy your character info and save first.
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I found the respec mod just before you posted, and it works great. Thanks!
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I'm still kinda puzzled at how people can screw up a mage.
Here's what you do: Cast Mass Paralyze/Mind Blast.
Profit.
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Also, what the hell is with people talking on forums across the 'net bitching about Morrigan being unoptimized as hell in her spell selection? She's got the Hex+Drain Life combo and the aforementioned Mind Blast and she's like a level away from having Cone of Awesome, erm, Cone of Cold. Her damage output would have been higher if she had gone the Fire or Lightning route, I suppose, but the minor crowd control capability she picks up in the mean time isn't a bad trade, particularly if she's your only caster.
I dunno, I guess I just don't understand how you can make a bad mage short of specializing in the super specific stuff like anti-caster magic in the early game.
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1- Equip Hail ring
2- Equip other armor and items that boost Ice damage
3- Cast Blizzard
4- Win the entire game
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I'm still kinda puzzled at how people can screw up a mage.
Here's what you do: Cast Mass Paralyze/Mind Blast.
Profit.
Mass Paralyze requires you to take both weakness and Miasma, two really, really sucky spells. They suck so much it hurts.
I also took death magic and curse of mortallity, one that's only usefull if you are about to die (which better spells prevents) and one that's only good if you're fighting a healer, which happens rarely.
Two casters with cone of cold and mind blast on the other hand, and some earthquake and blizard in the way while the enemies is attacking... I like it much better than realying on casting weakness at whatever my fighter is targeting.
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Miasma is amazing if you go Arcane Warrior actually
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Two casters with cone of cold and mind blast on the other hand, and some earthquake and blizard in the way while the enemies is attacking... I like it much better than realying on casting weakness at whatever my fighter is targeting.
Well, yes, two casters with access to three different trees casting in tandem does have a funny way of outperforming the Weakness spell.
Look, Paralyze and Mass Paralyze are capable of trivializing encounters. Often in one casting. It's not a bad tree by any means-- those two spells can turn a hit point total into a mere formality rather quickly.
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Anyway, I'd just like to emphasize that some spells fit certain groups better than others. Debilitation the opposition is easy for a single caster, and when you have three melee types running around dispensing damage, it really doesn't matter if the spell stings a little when it hits or not; it'll be followed up by a decapitation shortly. But a two mage party? That's less melee damage flying around; it's rather natural for the casters to end up shouldering a greater load of the damage in such a case, and the relative weakness of a single AoE is quickly covered for when there's two of 'em being cast.
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At the moment I'm playing a Mage. Myself, Morrigan, Alistair and the dog. Between us we've got 3 mass stuns, so I just stunlock while casting 2xWinter's Grasp, Lightning & the Flame cone thing and use Alistair's shield bash & the other stun he has to control individuals who resist. It's working pretty well so far, but I guess we'll see how it fares against tougher opponents.
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Oh, and did anyone else sprinkle ashes on the rocks in the Kocari Wilds to fight that orange miniboss-like creature? and as a follow up qn, did you think the reward for it was pretty lame?
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Yeah that was lame (missed it in my first playthrough) but it's essentially still the prologue of the game, origin quest aside.
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Oh, and did anyone else sprinkle ashes on the rocks in the Kocari Wilds to fight that orange miniboss-like creature? and as a follow up qn, did you think the reward for it was pretty lame?
I thought that was a neat quest but the reward could have been much better. I loved the little story that went with it. I thought that there might be more mini-quests like that but I haven't seen too many of them.
I did have high hopes for the weird book my doggy found but I think that was just an easter egg thing.
Does it matter where you ask the dog to search for stuff? Or does he just find the same random stuff everywhere?
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he can find some stuff you can gift to him, which is completely worthless since he starts out really happy with you and I'm not sure if you can make him hate you if you try.
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I've actually gotten actual items from him. He grabbed a piece of armor one or twice.
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He got me a really nice Staff way early in the game.
So nobody knows if different locations matter?
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The only thing I know about the dog is that some of the cut scenes if you keep talking to him at camp are pretty damn funny.
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I'm pretty certain my favorite was the one with Morrigan. Also, it's amazing how much longer this game takes if you play like a normal human being. Now that I've slowed down for my 3rd full playthrough and playing it like a normal human being, it's taking me multiple days to get through some dungeons!
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Like a normal human being, you mean as opposed to playing 8-10 hours at a time?
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8+ yeah.
It is quite amzaing how many hours a day you can sit glassy eyed on the couch playing video games when you miss multiple days of work due to the flu.
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8+ yeah.
It is quite amzaing how many hours a day you can sit glassy eyed on the couch playing video games when you miss multiple days of work due to the "flu."
...
OK got kinged on nightmare. Think I'm done with this game. Woohoo!
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Flemeth...
She's a bitch
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The trick with her is not to play like a little girl.
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someone on your team best have revive for that fight i think, along with a whole GRIP of potions
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Well the problem is that she will grab people and eat them, and if there is no one in range she will spam fireball. So the easiest way to do it is go with two mages and spam heals on the guy who gets grabbed. This requires you to have a mage as your main character. If you don't, I wouldn't bother attempting the fight with a tank below level 12 on hard or nightmare because otherwise your tank is just going to get snuffed after he gets grabbed. One spell that helps somewhat is the 3rd in the spirit healer line of spells that kicks in when the guy gets low on health. That plus the regular heal, plus regeneration, plus group heal will guarantee getting the tank through a grab, unless you've fucked up your tank somehow.
There are a number of spells that can interrupt her grabs but as far as I know none of them are guaranteed to do so. I think seal: paralyze worked once.
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She's vulnerable to debuffs and hexes too, and if she's hit by a status condition (like say frozen by Cone of Cold) then it interrupts her attack.
I only fought her once and I got torn to shreds cause I was woefully underprepared but I noticed exactly enough to know what to do next time.
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Really? I was trying all kinds of shit on her and it was just sliding off. Also, with cone of cold you've got to watch not getting within range of her massive attack or your mage will get gibbed.
Funny story, my last nightmare playthrough I solod the last boss with my main character (2h warrior with the expensive necklace, belt and axe) because he gibbed both my mages when he landed on them. Pots are seriously overpowered in this game, I will agree, which is why once you get Morrigan's herbalism up to 3 and access to infinite lyrium dust and elfroot vendors, the game becomes really, really easy.
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Cone of Cold is ridiculously useful, so much so that in the latest patch they nerfed it along with a few other spells, increasing recharge time and / or decreasing effect duration. You could effectively "stun lock" groups of enemies with Cone of Cold. It's probably the best spell in the game.
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Hence why I called it Cone of Awesome.
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infinite lyrium dust and elfroot vendors
There is some?
Oh yes I need that.
Also, respecing is very useful and a very good alternative to having to start everything over. Especially if you've been specialising one guy on one thing and then find a new guy with the exact same skills.
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Vendor at the Circle of Mages has infinite cheap lyrium dust. Vendor at the Brecilian Forest Outskirts has infinite elfroot for extremely cheap. Enjoy your mountains and mountains of pots.
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Cone of Cold is ridiculously useful, so much so that in the latest patch they nerfed it along with a few other spells, increasing recharge time and / or decreasing effect duration. You could effectively "stun lock" groups of enemies with Cone of Cold. It's probably the best spell in the game.
If you're smart though you gave someone in your party the Affliction Hex anyways so that yr enemies are super vulnerable to it!
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I have apparently missed a room somewhere in this game and therefore I am missing the Traveler achivement. I might just have to scan a guide next time through to find out what I'm missing.
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I think it's important to point out that this game came out just over a month ago and you have already played through it four. TIMES.
This is why I have to settle for playing a bigger number of games than you to stay ahead in achievement points.
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Morrigan has Cone of Cold. My main Mage has Stone Fist, or whatever it's called. My other two chars have attacks that crit. Wooo shatterings.
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My ps3 just got the Yellow Light of Death while playing Dragon Age. Now my game is stuck in the ps3.
Sad now :cry:
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Massage its prostate.
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Did that, just gave me a coy look and slunk away.
I'll ring the Sony branch here and see what can be done, shit thing is I have to wait until tuesday since they don't take calls during the weekend and I've got work monday.
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Hey guys, I picked up Dragon Age recently and was immediately sucked into the storyline (DA is one of the few games where I'm not annoyed by all the lengthy cut scenes.. the acting is superb). But I am TERRIBLE (not to mention I dislike) having to micromanage party members, though I can see why the game is oriented that way... a lot more room for customization.
So for a person like me, what's the best way to play this game with the least amount of micromanagement? Designating tactics confuses the hell out of me... and I'm afraid I'll screw up my party member's skills/stats. I ideally want to play a Berserker Two-Handed Warrior, and I'm not really inclined on learning all the skills for mages, rogues, etc. though I might replay the game later on as a mage.
Also, what's all this buzz about "hardening" characters? I'm really keen on Alistair (hurr hurr, he's a hunk) and want to pursue the ending where we're married and King/Queen, but I've heard that he needs to be hardened in order to accomplish this.
Damn you life-sucking RPGs!!
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Hurr hurr, innuendo.
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But seriously, if you search for "Dragon Age hardening" you'll find everything you need. Not sure if it's very useful, but I guess if you want the specific story options it opens up it's useful?
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So for a person like me, what's the best way to play this game with the least amount of micromanagement? Designating tactics confuses the hell out of me... and I'm afraid I'll screw up my party member's skills/stats. I ideally want to play a Berserker Two-Handed Warrior, and I'm not really inclined on learning all the skills for mages, rogues, etc. though I might replay the game later on as a mage.
Stats:
I don't recommend using the auto-level which will assign the stats automatically, it doesn't do a very good job. It's actually pretty hard to screw up stats.
Shield Warrior: Dump 2 in dex, 1 in strength until you hit the dex you need for your highest available ability, then 2 in strength, 1 in con. (You may want to put more in strength at the beginning if you are going to put the Dragon armor on your warrior)
2H Warrior: Dump 2 in dex, 1 in strength until you hit the dex you need for your highest available ability, then 3 in strength
Rogue with lockpicking, pickpocketing (e.g. Leliana): Dump 1 in cunning, 2 in dex until you have enough dex for highest available ability, then switch to 2 cunning, 1 dex and make sure you get the ability to use cunning as strength for damage as soon as possible
Roge w/o lockpicking, pickpocketing (e.g. Zevran): 2 in dex, 1 in strength until you hit the dex you need for your highest available ability, then 2 in strength, 1 in dex
Mage: 2 in magic, 1 in willpower
Abilities:
Figure out what each character is going to be and then focus on the skills in that area. For example if you want Alistair to be a tank, focus on getting him all the defensive shield abilities. Getting shield wall asap and keeping it on always will him very tough. Even more important is getting threaten and taunt as soon as possible. If your main character is a 2H warrior, try getting momentum and punisher ASAP, they both do a lot of damage.
For the mage (or mages if you are playing with both), as you have probably gathered from this thread some spells are far, far better than others. Focus on getting:
-- Heal
-- Cone of Cold
-- Fireball
-- Sleep, Mass Paralyze or Blood Wound
on one mage that you always use.
Skills:
The only really important skills are herbalism on Morrigan to level 4, and cunning on your main character to level 4. All the other skills are completely optional. I have found then getting survival to 4 on at least one of your characters is helpful (but definitely not necessary). I didn't run with a rogue in any of my playthroughs so trap detection was useless. As for poisons, they only work in melee, and the good ones are a pain to make so I didn't use them very much.
Tactics:
I found tactics to be more of a pain than anything else and only used them to make sure that certain abilities (e.g. shield wall, threaten, momentum) were always on. That means I was pausing the game every few seconds to reassign my characters. If that doesn't appeal to you I'm sure there are tons of useful tactic scripts online.
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The Mind Blast->Force Field->Telekinetic Weapons->Crushing Cage spell line is also really good. It does favor a bit of micro management if you really want to get the most out of it, but at worst it provides some of the strongest crowd control available in the early game. Casting Force Field and Crushing Cage on the same target also has a rather surprising result; everyone around the target will take a tough to resist knockdown as well as damage.
For the most part, I think the biggest risk with spell selection is the possibility that you might end up picking trees that are all late bloomers. For example, I actually really like the Haste, Mass Paralysis and Stinging Swarm spells quite a bit, but investing exclusively in those spell groups just to get the final spell from each would make the early game into a real pain in the ass. There's absolutely nothing wrong with putting off a high end spell for a level if it means that you're getting a one point wonder like Heal, Glyph of Paralysis or Mind Blast in exchange.
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I find trap detection SUPER useful for a few fights, but I'm waiting til the next playthrough to really pump someone's trap stats.
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Also, what's all this buzz about "hardening" characters? I'm really keen on Alistair (hurr hurr, he's a hunk) and want to pursue the ending where we're married and King/Queen, but I've heard that he needs to be hardened in order to accomplish this.
Mild spoilers follow:
When you get Alistair's approval high enough, he'll talk about having a sister in Denerim and how he'd like to go meet her. If you go to her house in the Market District, she and Alistair will have a conversation where she basically just wants him to give her money. When you get outside, he'll be upset that meeting her was nothing like he thought'd it be. In order to 'harden' him, you have to choose the dialogue to convince him that she was just trying to mooch off his success and that he should stop being a doormat and tell her to fuck off. If you do that, he'll be much more willing to become king at the Landsmeet, and willing to tell the nobles to step off if he tries to marry someone of common blood, namely you. You can do a similar thing with Leliana and her sidequest.
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I find trap detection SUPER useful for a few fights, but I'm waiting til the next playthrough to really pump someone's trap stats.
There are essentially two fights in the game it makes a big difference for (the rogue boss in Ogrimmar, and the room with all the fire traps in the Brecilian temple) and both can be done fairly easy without it (just let the boss come to you). Also, only a rogue can actually disarm the traps, so if you aren't running with a rogue....
The Mind Blast->Force Field->Telekinetic Weapons->Crushing Cage spell line is also really good.
Absolutely -- its practically the only line of spells where all 4 are good. Force field works on a lot of bosses and takes them out while you can kill minions. I've read online that you can also cast it on your tank and the mobs will stay aggrod but this sounded like a cheese tactic so I never tried it. Telekinetic weapons I initially thought was useless, and then I realized that on several boss fights (High dragon, Flemeth, Gaxkang, hard mode Ser Cauthrien) it actually boosts your melee dps a huge amount.
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Yeah, the AI doesn't really do very well with figuring out that the target is immune-- the dumbest part is that you can then also throw down AoE damage into the fur ball without actually hurting the guy you used to pull the enemies, which is as quick a way as any to sidestep the friendly fire spell mechanics on higher difficulties. I don't like such cheap tactics either though, so I don't actively abuse that stuff, but I have been known to say, Force Field a weakened party member as a stop gap measure if they're close to injury and I don't really need them to win the fight anymore. That flexibility alone is pretty valuable, even if you don't go ahead and throw a Blizzard on top of it afterwards.
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I find trap detection SUPER useful for a few fights, but I'm waiting til the next playthrough to really pump someone's trap stats.
There are essentially two fights in the game it makes a big difference for (the rogue boss in Ogrimmar, and the room with all the fire traps in the Brecilian temple) and both can be done fairly easy without it (just let the boss come to you). Also, only a rogue can actually disarm the traps, so if you aren't running with a rogue....
I was thinking more for setting traps too.
Also ARCANE WARRIOR IS BY FAR THE COOLEST FUCKING THING
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Glad to hear that, as it's what I am thinking of doing with my main Mage.
Also, am I the only one who wanted to keep the Fade abilities? They turn you into a one-man wrecking crew, so I guess it's unbalanced, but god-damn that was fun.
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Also, I got so used to the 4 people I used to smash the darkspawn in the tower (Me, Alistair, Morrigan and Wynne) that when I swapped Wynne out for Leiana(?) I found myself just not using her. I am pretty sure I am gonna swap her out for the big rock dude once I finish off the quest to get him, because hey, big fuckin' rock dude.
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Mage: 2 in magic, 1 in willpower
If you are going for Arcane Warrior, you're going to want to have more willpower, to make up for added fatigue. Hell, whenever you're regularly stopping to cast spells because you're out of mana, you need more willpower, because mages who can pump out cone of cold and heal through an entire battle is far supperior to someone who can't.
You can of course pick up potions, but that's for pussies.
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Nah, Arcane Warrior really needs no more than the mid 20's for Willpower. The power of an arcane warrior really comes from their sustainable, and therefore not really playing like a proper mage, which if used properly turns them into an indestructible juggernaut. If you still want to use plenty of magic though pump all the extra into con and go for Blood Mage as your second Specialization.
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Blood mage - not compatible with role play specifications.
The way I've found most fun as arcane warrior is cone of cold, paralyze, weakness and the like before rampaging through their lines.
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My main lineup for this playthrough is actually my mage (a Spirit Healer/Arcane Warrior), Allistair, Leilana and Wynne. Surprisingly this works pretty well.
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Three members of my party died and the only one left was Alistair, who was down to one hit after drinking the last health poultice. It was in this way that I slew the Archdemon.
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SO close to beating this... Can't get past the mini dragon thing just before fighting the Archdemon. I might have to briefly change it to an easier difficulty for this one part. Only had to do that one other time - when fighting the Golems at the end of the Deep Road part in Orzamaar. I'll post again/read the whole thread after I beat the game. (I've been avoiding this thread 'cause of spoilers.)
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Guys, help me decide whether to buy this game now or wait until it comes way down in price.
I've heard Baldur's Gate comparisons, is that accurate? I've heard from people who love it saying it's incredible but also from people who dislike it saying it's middle of the road and bland. What sort of game is it? Is it the sort of game with a challenge, or is it more grinding oriented? Is it the sort of game that's more like an interactive movie, or is it gameplay focused?
(Is it anything like Oblivion? Because I strongly dislike Oblivion.)
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Guys, help me decide whether to buy this game now or wait until it comes way down in price.
I've heard Baldur's Gate comparisons, is that accurate? I've heard from people who love it saying it's incredible but also from people who dislike it saying it's middle of the road and bland. What sort of game is it? Is it the sort of game with a challenge, or is it more grinding oriented? Is it the sort of game that's more like an interactive movie, or is it gameplay focused?
(Is it anything like Oblivion? Because I strongly dislike Oblivion.)
Dude, It already came way down in price (http://www.direct2drive.co.uk/holiday/) in several places (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Electronic-Arts-Dragon-Age-Origins/dp/B002BWONIU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1261683708&sr=8-1). Assuming you read this before the D2D offer has ended, which is four hours, and you reside in Europe, and you're planning on getting it for the PC, which is only sensible. If not, I have no good prices to direct you to at the moment.
I took that Direct2Drive offer like a shark to bait. I probably won't be playing it for some time, though, got lots of other games on my list in addition to this.
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I have not had good experiences with D2D, the main service at least. The service through EA is pretty good. I got my copy through Steam, with all the extra goodies.
I wouldn't go so far as to call Dragon Age Oblivion-esque. It has a pretty stale high fantasy setting, but there is actual writing here.
As for comparisons to Baldur's Gate, there aren't many, really, aside from the way that combat feels. As far as structure goes Dragon Age is mid-period Bioware (think KOTOR / Jade Empire / NWN). There's no real exploration to speak of except from one area in the grind-tastic Deep Roads. Everything is streamlined into the main quest, like KOTOR - you have a lengthy linear prologue, and then you have 5-6 (I can't recall how many, exactly) mission areas, and it's your choice in what order you play them. But again, there are virtually no areas that are non-plot critical. When you first enter Ferelden at first you get the same feeling you got entering the big cities in BG/BG2, where all of a sudden there are 15+ quests being thrown at you in short order, but soon you find out it's not really the same - the only area of the city you can explore before the end of the game is the entrance, and the majority of quests are given to you by 3 bulletin boards (church, mage's collective and mercenaries), so you read some text, go out and fetch / kill, and then come back to the bulletin board for a reward, with no character interaction to get in the way. The party system is also identical to KOTOR, in that you have a relatively small pool to pick from, they all travel with you, and character progression is in lock-step with your progression through the main story.
I played through it once and I probably won't get back into it for a long time - the plot-critical quests are quite lengthy, and since I tend to not have a lot of fun playing evil characters I don't see what I'd get out of it by going through and making different choices. It's worth a playthrough but it's not nearly the game that BG2 was.
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K, thanks. I'll probably play it but only after it comes down in price.
To those questioning how long I'm willing to wait for a good price, I didn't buy Mass Effect until I could get it for $15 used.
Fallout 3's just starting to get almost low enough.
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K, thanks. I'll probably play it but only after it comes down in price.
To those questioning how long I'm willing to wait for a good price, I didn't buy Mass Effect until I could get it for $15 used.
Fallout 3's just starting to get almost low enough.
I have a similar philosophy, except when it comes to multiplayer games I know I'll play often such as MWF2.
Due to the lack of PC features, I waited till it was $30 at Best Buy. I'll pay for what I think it's worth.
Personally, I found Dragon Age to be way too mage oriented. Is it possible to go through the game without a mage in your main party and be successful?
I found it incredible difficult with the way I built my mage, but I wasn't playing on easy.
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No, you really have to have a mage with some healing and buffs in your party or you're going to get slaughtered. It's possible to play without one but highly inadvisable.
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I have rethought my earlier Arcane Warrior desire and am trying to go Spirit Healer so I can avoid bringing Wynne along as well as the close to indispensable Morrigan. I beat Flemeth using Wynne to heal, Alistair to tank, Shale to offtank and generally get in the way and myself for damage and off-heals. For everything else my go-to dungeoning party has been Main char (mage with full fire, shield & heals lines plus a couple others) for heals & damage, Morrigan for crowd control & AEs (blizz, lighting storm), Alistair to tank, Leliana to uh, open boxes. Ok, so now she has stealth she also scouts. Been working pretty well so far. Hopefully the addition of spirit healing spells doesn't hinder things.
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I wish Rogue character AIs would automatically try to backstab - my party doesn't flank anyone ever and I wound up micromanaging Leliana last playthrough.
Also I really don't like Wynne's character very much so having her in my party is a constant pain but it's also shitty to try and make Morrigan do double duty as crowd control and healer cause you neuter her character so I've just been gritting my teeth and taking every opportunity to annoy Wynne in conversation - my no-nonsense ghetto elf has no time for her matronly bullshit.
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May char just went to bed with Leliana and the next time I talk to Wynne (right afterward) she's all "you know, I've been watching you two ..."
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Having Wynne and Zervan in the party makes for some hilarious conversations.
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I think my favorite is Morrigan and Sten, mainly because of how Morrigan's sexual teasing of Sten turns out. Hilarious.
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May char just went to bed with Leliana and the next time I talk to Wynne (right afterward) she's all "you know, I've been watching you two ..."
She does that with every character, I think, and if you sleep with Morrigan you basically get the option to tell Wynne that your dick is huge.
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Which I obviously did.
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Johnny C. The "C" stands for class.
I really should try to finish this game.
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My char wooed Leliana then slept with Morrigan because I was actually just kind of curious if she was teasing or playing some kind of trick or what but then bam, sex. I went back to Leliana to see what was up and she got angry then got over it really quickly. It's not really a very realistic scenario, no?
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My char wooed Leliana then slept with Morrigan because I was actually just kind of curious if she was teasing or playing some kind of trick or what but then bam, sex. I went back to Leliana to see what was up and she got angry then got over it really quickly. It's not really a very realistic scenario, no?
Seems realistic to me. Girls love assholes.
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My char wooed Leliana then slept with Morrigan because I was actually just kind of curious if she was teasing or playing some kind of trick or what but then bam, sex. I went back to Leliana to see what was up and she got angry then got over it really quickly. It's not really a very realistic scenario, no?
The trigger for changes of heart/situation for a lot of characters seem to be "next time you talk with them," or sometimes even sooner - for example, I told Ser Perth in Redcliffe that there was oil in the general store, he said he'd have to go investigate, and then I somehow wound up following a dialogue set without leaving the conversation where he told me the knights had gone to the general store and stocked up on oil. Kind of broke my immersion.
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So, my boyfriend got this for Christmas, and with being out of work and all, I've been playing this basically nonstop. I'm an elf mage, and basically, fuck humans. Fuck them so much. Everyone talks down to me. One dude actually said he didn't know how to greet me since I am an elf!
Basically, I really like this game. A lot.
That all said, being a girl, playing as a girl, I've got no beef with the "romance" option. Me and Allistair seemed to hit it off fairly well, so I guess I'm pursuing that. I've found that this game is pretty pro-woman, it seems that most of the heros from the legends are women(Aveline, Andraste), all the highest priests/priestess' are women.
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Zerevan just killed a dragon by jumping up onto it's head and cutting that bitch.
I love the extra animations when you kill big monsters, like Ogres and Dragons. And the two weapon stab and behead animation that pops in when you kill certain humans, that's also pretty neat.
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Actual xpac coming, maybe (http://kotaku.com/5437942/dragon-age-retail-expansion-coming-in-march). I'd certainly welcome it. The new DLC (out on Tuesday!) is what, an hour or two of gameplay? It's basically micropayments plus. You play the DLC for the King's suit of armor. I already have 2 really great sets of armor (Blood Dragon / Knight Commander) and that's enough for any party.
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Yeah from what I understand it's similar to "free" mmos where you pay for the best gear, except they fool you into thinking it's different by adding a quest to get it.
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Juggernaut gear in the Brecillian Forest is also really great armour.
The gear is certainly neat in the Warden's Keep DLC, but the story was also comparatively interesting. Sadly there wasn't a lot to it. I might sink some cash into the new DLC if it has any promise of fleshing out Alistair's character arc a little more. (Wynne I could give a shit about.)
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I've got 4 or 5 epic armour sets, so I can't really see the point of having any others, and really no point in paying for them. One massive set with fire resistance set bonuses and the two-handled Yusaris (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Yusaris) should make the archdemon dragon thing die, and die fast.
Okay, he's probably much worse than the other Dragon, and that bitch in Denerim when you're freeing that important woman (spoiler freeee), who was seriously hard even when you could get her away from all the other goons, but still, 10+ damage against dragons, 26,50 damage? And extra fire resistance, since I guess the thing is going to use fire breath and fireballs like the other dragon? Hell yeah.
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My blood mage/arcane warrior is the best shit ever, and I can't get enough. It kinda seems like all the warrior specializations suck ass though.
If I don another playthrough on this I don't know what I'm gonna do, since I really wanna put shale in my party but I've also never played a warrior and want to bang Allistair and become queen. Dilemmas! I guess I could just be... King?
Also I just realized that I could kill all the Dalish and have werewolves on my side and why the fuck didn't I do that!
The dalish are fuckin bitches in that last fight anyway.
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Dude, be a rogue.
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I'm with you on the specialisations. I don't really find any of the Warrior specialisations appealing on their own. Champion + some other one that specialises in defence would be good for a tank. As it stands you've got 1 "leadership" spec, 2 +damage specs and 1 specialised damage against mages spec. It's a bit dumb.
On the Mage side of things you've got what, Shapeshifting, specialist healer, warrior mage and "Bad Dude", which is also kind of shit, but at least you have a lot of depth in your spell choices.
The rogues actually have some good choices. Assassin and Duellist are both pretty good if you want to be a combat rogue, and Bard & Ranger are specific utility specs that could be interesting to certain people.
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Dude, Templar is an absolutely crucial specialization. Spellcasters are the first people you want dead, and it makes them get dead much, much faster. It also completely fucks over any of their debuffs, so if you can hold out for long enough for them to use up a bunch of their mana casting spells on you, you can dispel all of them and counter with your own stuff. So good.
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Dude, be a rogue.
I was a rogue my first playthrough, but I guess I could be a different kind.
Shapeshifting sucks, but spirit healer, blood mage, and arcane warrior are all awesome.
All the rogue specs are awesome, but I'm pretty sure I will never be a bard. Having a ranger in your party and sucking blood from their pet to heal your arcane warrior/blood mage is like the coolest shit ever though.
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Yeah, Johnny's right; Templar is easily the best specialization not named Arcane Warrior. If there's anything I've learned from Baldur's Gate II and Keldorn, it's that you can't use dispel magic if you're already totally disabled, so having a guy with decent resistances who can slam the reset button once shit hits the fan is pretty handy. Obviously there's nothing as ridiculous as the Inquisitor+Carsomyr combo in Dragon Age, but Templars are still the next best thing. They get a nice Mental Resistance bonus and have good hitpoints and a beastly Physical Resistance check practically by default because they're still warriors. Great spec.
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I dunno, I haven't really encountered enough mages to worry about them that much, and the ones I have encountered have usually died very very quickly anyway due to me just stunlocking them in various ways while nuking the crap out of them. When I get to a boss-type char I'll normally forcefield them while I deal with some of their lackeys, then crushing prison them after that (and uh, not at the same time, as I found out the hard way.) When I find a mage I'll usually put a ff or crush them right away, as both spells are very quick to cast and usually interrupt whatever it is they are trying to do to me/my party.
Generally though my favourite thing to do is to scout ahead with Leliana, then when I find a room full of bad dudes I cast Blizzard with Morrigan, then start casting Inferno with my main about a second after that so that it hits when they're all knocked down. Whatever starts coming out of the room gets a Fireball and whatever gets close enough to my party to worry about gets a Cone of Cold. Good times.
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I dunno, I haven't really encountered enough mages to worry about them that much, and the ones I have encountered have usually died very very quickly anyway due to me just stunlocking them in various ways while nuking the crap out of them.
I see what you're saying, but the issue I have is that the other specs just provide you with things you already have plenty of. For example, Berserkers get a nice li'l bump in damage dealing, but ultimately you're not going to be able to pull off anything with it that you weren't really capable of doing before; you just get to hit things a bit harder per swing. Templars are unique in the fact that it gives you a different way of handling some situations that the other specializations simply don't offer as opposed to just punching things in the face until they're no longer a problem. That you can get away with not having a templar is beyond a doubt, but as far as warrior specializations go it's definitely the best of a mixed bag.
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Generally though my favourite thing to do is to scout ahead with Leliana, then when I find a room full of bad dudes I cast Blizzard with Morrigan, then start casting Inferno with my main about a second after that so that it hits when they're all knocked down. Whatever starts coming out of the room gets a Fireball and whatever gets close enough to my party to worry about gets a Cone of Cold. Good times.
I found a way to destroy any group of enemies inside a room with a door that made stuff a bit too easy, and it's in those general lines. You open the door with the rouge, then close it again, but you still have a mapping of the area. Then start casting blizzard with one of the mages, and when that's 80% done, the other one throws off earthquake, and you've got a room full of baddies taking damage and being unable to move. Then you just hit the room with inferno and tempest, and whatever makes it out of there is half dead anyway, and never a mage, since their physical resistance is crap. I dread to find out the effect if I throw in spell might and get those AOE spell combos.
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The more things change, the more they stay the same; stupid LOS tricks have been a go-to cheese tactic since BG1. I try to pretend they don't exist, but sometimes you just want to get through the damned zone.
Of course, one of the nice things about Dragon Age is that getting a party member knocked out isn't that big of a deal compared to losing someone in low level AD&D, so generally speaking I'm a lot less tempted to abuse the AI and just flatten everything with a persistent AoE. I like having to think on my feet as much as the next guy, but I'd be a liar if I said that I never pulled out a few cheap tricks when my pool of spells were getting low and I didn't feel like potentially having to hike back to town just to rez Minsc.
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fuck, the shittiest thing happened to me earlier on this game
i was doing the whole defending redcliffe schtick and i fucking cleared everything but it wouldn't go on to the next morning. whenever i talked to anyone they'd be like "YOU CAN BET YOUR SWEET SEXY BACKSIDE THAT THAT WEREN'T THE LAST OF 'UM SONNY BOY" or some shit like i didn't quite kill 'em all but fuck, i looked EVERYWHERE. i walked through every nook and cranny of that zone with utmost thoroughness
EVERYWHERE.
fuck it, fuck this game.
fuck thedas, fuck the darkspawn.
fuck the elves and the humans and the maker and all that shit. my nearest save is like three hours back at least
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DLC delayed! Boo hoo!
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fuck it, fuck this game.
fuck thedas, fuck the darkspawn.
fuck the elves and the humans and the maker and all that shit. my nearest save is like three hours back at least
this beats the alternative. I save every 5 minutes (and at the save speed of this game, it is debilitating) because it is so prone to crashing due to runtime errors that I vomit with rage and quit playing after maybe 20 minutes.
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The more things change, the more they stay the same; stupid LOS tricks have been a go-to cheese tactic since BG1. I try to pretend they don't exist, but sometimes you just want to get through the damned zone.
Of course, one of the nice things about Dragon Age is that getting a party member knocked out isn't that big of a deal compared to losing someone in low level AD&D, so generally speaking I'm a lot less tempted to abuse the AI and just flatten everything with a persistent AoE. I like having to think on my feet as much as the next guy, but I'd be a liar if I said that I never pulled out a few cheap tricks when my pool of spells were getting low and I didn't feel like potentially having to hike back to town just to rez Minsc.
I'm not exploiting LOS, I'm scouting ahead with a stealthed player, then casting a spell that disables some mobs while damaging them. Sometimes I don't even have to scout ahead, as Alistair has Survival skills and can detect mobs. And when I cast the spell(s) It's not like they don't try to get up and run out to attack me if they can resist the knockdown. So how is that a cheese tactic? Even if the door is closed they know I am there, open the door and come out. If it was a real life thing then for some of these encounters I'd also always take Shale so he could chock the door shut with his heavy ass while the people inside freeze/fry to death.
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Then your character could have horrendous nightmares at camp as the bloodcurdling screams of those he/she condemned to an agonising death came back to haunt them.
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Pfff, as if they wouldn't already be screaming while they writhe on the ground, unable to get up. Or when they are trapped in a crushing prison while Alistair is slashing them and Leliana is feathering them with arrows and Morrigan is electrocuting their testicles and I am doing my darnedest to set them on fire.
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I'm not exploiting LOS, I'm scouting ahead with a stealthed player, then casting a spell that disables some mobs while damaging them. Sometimes I don't even have to scout ahead, as Alistair has Survival skills and can detect mobs. And when I cast the spell(s) It's not like they don't try to get up and run out to attack me if they can resist the knockdown.
You must have more luck than I do with the AI; when I do that stuff there's often a lot of wall-humping involved or NPCs changing their mind about which caster they should be attacking halfway through the charge and thus never getting a chance attack anyone. In my experience, doing what you do demonstrably breaks scripts a fair amount of scripts.
I should clarify something though: I've never really been of the opinion that broken tactics are the fault of the player. I usually just avoid them because they make the game easier and I typically don't want to do that because I'm freakishly good at video games and if anything wish 90% of them were harder. Too many games can be defined by a pretty narrow set of best practices. But from a philosophical standpoint, I figure that stuff is the designer's fault.
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If it was a real life thing then for some of these encounters I'd also always take Shale so he could chock the door shut with his heavy ass while the people inside freeze/fry to death.
Shale's a chick, guys. Which reminds me, make sure you have Shale in your party in the boss fight at the end of the dwarf part or you miss important back story, an entire map, and some good loots.
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Dude, don't spoil that, it's pretty funny when you first find out.
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It also makes a couple of conversation you have with Shale previously make a little more sense.
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Xpac is official (http://pc.ign.com/articles/105/1058169p1.html). Rundown -
- Due on March 16th. Requires DA:O. Cost $40 or thereabouts.
- "Set after the events of Dragon Age: Origins in the land of Amaranthine, players will take on the role of a Grey Warden trying to rebuild the order of legendary warriors. Along with this monumental task, players will have to discover new secrets of the Darkspawn menace as well as face off against deadly new threats such as the Inferno Golem, Spectral Dragon and a mysterious foe that calls itself the "Architect." Fortunately, Awakening raises the level cap of the game, and provides new abilities, spells, specializations and items for players to acquire."
- You can import your DA:O dude. Alternatively you can create an Orlesian Grey Warden.
- 5 new party members.
- No word on length, but for that price it'd better be substantial.
*edit - oh, and from what I hear "The Architect" (the antagoinst) is from the novelization of DA. He's an intelligent, sentient Darkspawn (oh hello Legion) who wants to end the Blight for some reason, by forcing people to become Grey Wardens, or something.
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here there be trailers (http://www.joystiq.com/2010/01/05/dragon-age-awakening-trailer-just-as-he-foretold/).
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Looks/sounds pretty good. Pity it's out in March, I'll probably be less jazzed about it by then.
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Scratch the part about starting as an Orlesian Warden. Don't think that's happening.
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Holy crap this game is addicting. I'll have to weekend before I play anymore of this though, dang.
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i thought there was no level cap in the main game
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It's technically 26, but you won't reach it unless you abuse the infinite XP glitch anyway so it doesn't really matter.
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The game was definitely designed for ending at level 20~.
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If it was a real life thing then for some of these encounters I'd also always take Shale so he could chock the door shut with his heavy ass while the people inside freeze/fry to death.
*cough*Shale is a girl. (http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Shale)*cough*
(Heads up, that page may have some spoilers.)
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Yeah, I don't actually talk to Shale, I just get her to hit things for me.
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We were just trying to give context to the Shale romance option.
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Whenever I try to talk to Shale, the game randomly teleports me to somewhere outside the map area, in the "blacks beyond", and gives me the dialogue from when you first find here, with "(leave it alone") and ("activate golem"). If I select activate, it starts the quest up, but I still have her.
Still, I've gone back to Allistair now that he has all the cool skills and some epic equipment so he actually doesn't die all the time. That was a problem around level 8-14. Of course, my main mage had the best armour, so that might just be a part of it, but I wasn't going to let my arcane warrior walk around in fucking robes.
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High-def texture pack, if anybody's running the PC version (http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=15).
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The website is down. :[
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Not presently!
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I still need to beat this game. There are just too many intersting things coming out though!
Also, I'm still not sure if I love it or hate it. I have a save right before the Landsmeet but I still haven't even done it yet and I'm having a hard time bring myself to care.
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I had a really hard time getting into this game, and it wasn't for lack of trying.
Ends up, it was simply a matter of running the right character for me to really enjoy it. I tried several different characters, and found it to be boring and lousy with entirely too many cut scenes. Finally I gave a noble dawarven rogue who dual weilds and does sick dps a chance and I'm happy as can be. I'm not micro-managing grease/fireball friendly fire all the time and I don't have to put up with that obnoxious chantry wench with the bad accent in order to open a lock or two. For some reason, this has been the character that engrosses me and makes the game fun., which is odd because rogues usually bore me to death.
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I think Orzammar was actually my favorite part. Yeah, the political stuff was a bit long but everything else (long, boring trenches included) were perfect.
For me, anyway.
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Yeah, I actually thought it was pretty awesome that there's a huge aboveground map, and then another pretty large underground map. I also really like the idea that there is a lot of lost history down there, stuff like that gives me fantasy boners. The fact that a couple of those places had not been visited by anyone for several hundred years is also pretty cool.
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On the other hand, it's all one big fuckin' grind.
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I was continually impressed with the scale of the game (see: the Mage's Circle, Denerim map) and the Deep Roads were no exception, BUT the grinding onslaught was disappointing.
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the grinding onslaught was disappointing.
Funny, that's exactly what your mother said last night.
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...good??
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDeawqKzEVM&feature=player_embedded
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Sometimes I wonder how much a game that revolves completely around beating women would sell. I think if you gave it the right veneer it would sell quite a lot.
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Not as well as a game about beating men.
...
Yes, I just described 30% of the games on the market.
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It's way higher than 30% if you're comfortable with ascribing butch looking aliens and robots genders.
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games about beating off do really well in certain markets
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also kotaku says ostagar is out? i'm not taking wynne with me though because fuck it i'm done with her and her character forever
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yeah it's out. Bioware's community manager said it was "unexpected", whatever that means. It was supposed to be due next month.
I'll maybe pirate it, when I feel like doing so. If I decide to play it.
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Just a point. I started a new game after installing the DLC. I can't get my 1.0 dlc to work anymore. Gonna find a solution hopefully, if anyone has a problem similar just PM. I'll let you know if I figure anything out.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDeawqKzEVM&feature=player_embedded
Sometimes I wonder how much a game that revolves completely around beating women would sell. I think if you gave it the right veneer it would sell quite a lot.
I dunno man, I was laughing a lot at the ridiculousness of the running one.
Also: SUBMIT YOURSELF TO THE TAINT.
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I would like to note that by linking that video I do not endorse slapping women. I personally thought the army of Duncans was the best.
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yeah it's out. Bioware's community manager said it was "unexpected", whatever that means. It was supposed to be due next month.
I'll maybe pirate it, when I feel like doing so. If I decide to play it.
Well, it's down again. Hope nobody got it, apparently it completely borks the specialization system.
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Big head mode seems more like quagmire mode.
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I can't figure out how to bone Leliana. I can't get her to give me her personal quest for some damn reason, and I need to do that before I bone her. Approval is damn near 100 - maybe 96 or 97. (I'm playing on the 360, not the PC.) In a walkthrough, it says I gotta tell her how the minstrals were spies to begin the conversations for the personal quest, but my options are only "let's talk about us" and "tell me those long boring stories again". WTF?
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I think that's a bug. Did you two smooch?
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I think she's just more into chicks.
She boned the shit out of my female character but wouldn't touch either of the male ones I made. Could be coincidence....or maybe that's just what those tricky gays want you to think.
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Also!
(http://filesmelt.com/dl/morrigan.gif)
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I can't figure out how to bone Leliana. I can't get her to give me her personal quest for some damn reason, and I need to do that before I bone her. Approval is damn near 100 - maybe 96 or 97. (I'm playing on the 360, not the PC.) In a walkthrough, it says I gotta tell her how the minstrals were spies to begin the conversations for the personal quest, but my options are only "let's talk about us" and "tell me those long boring stories again". WTF?
Jesus that fucking giff killed my browser about 7 times.
Anyway. Mber. The problem you have stumbled upon to is that your approval with Leliana has risen too quickly. What you will need to do to solve your problem (and hopefully you have the PC version) is to console command her approval down to about 30. From here on forward make sure you explored the dialog trees.
As you mentioned it begins with the accusation that bards from her country are spies. Input console commands to raise her approval by about 10, then check the dialog tree.*Spoilers* After that you will have to slay her pursuer. Get the Nug from Orza. And Find a flower called Andraste's Grace. *End Spoilers* Then proceed on fucking her brains out.
Also, I found a solution to the DLC and patch 1.02 and 1.02b not playing nicely together.
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I just kissed her, upon realizing that Morrigan can't be romanced after you kick the living shit out of her bitch mother. But it feels kind of dumb to have her around as my main's "girl", since I never use her (Zevran has gotten good enough at opening stuff, and wtf am I supposed to do with a fucking archer? Backstab to TEH MAX), so it's kinda like she's the camp ho. The fanatical religious camp ho but still.
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What? My char slept with Morrigan after that, after kissing Leliana and just before going to bed with Leliana. There was some drama, but then BAM.
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Women!
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I slept with Leliana with ease. But she got really annoying, so now I'm moving on to Zevran(Also, I have both him and Leliana as archers, and it is fucking awesome. Fuck backstab). Once he gets boring, I guess I will attempt something with Alistair again, but it's doubtful.
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Man... I haven't had so much as sweet makeouts with a single character yet.
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Just so we are all clear, a four way is possible with a male PC, Leliana, Zevran, and the duelist in the bar, but the action takes place off screen. Sorry.
The après-orgy comments are pretty funny though.
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Yeah, I finally got Leliana's personal quest, but only after I got it on with Alistar, (I'm playing a girl mage this play-through), thus dropping her affection by like 30 points. I have a save in camp right before I dumped her and macked Alistar, but I don't know if I want to go through the trouble of dropping her affection 30 points - I don't know how to drop her affection 30 points without breaking up with her or going through the rest of the game being an ass to her. I went to the trouble of kissing UP to her all game long, thinking that it'd allow me to bang her. All I have left is Orzammar (even though Orzammar takes like eleventy billion hours to complete) before the Landsmeet.
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I have yet to actually finish this game. I keep getting bored and starting over.
( Fuck backstab)
:'[
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Honestly, I'd feel the same way too if I didn't just keep it to one rogue in my party at a time.
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I go Rogue/Alistair/Sten/Wynne usually.
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Yeah, backstab is pretty impressive once you have enough crit/backstab multiplying items. The Veshialle, Rose's Thorn and the Warden Commander Armor can make for a lot of damage, but I still don't see much need for more than one guy who backstabs.
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Bwahahaha... I just banged Morrigan. First time I've cultivated a love interest in the game. Given that I am playing a really hideous, sunk eyed dwarf this go around, the cut scene looked looked like some kind of disturbing carnival fetish porn.
Witch Gone Wild. That's the best part of all.
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daggers got a pretty good buff in one of the patches, too(+dmg for dex points and str points)... so rogues are actually decently viable now. never really thought they were worth dick on 1.0 tbh(and i hadn't did any of the patches 'til now)
my dual weild warrior actually gets more of a damage multiplier with daggers than he does with swords right now at lv12.
a 6.0 damage dagger hits for quite a bit more than a 9.5~ sword
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Rogues worked fine before the patches, they were just counterintuitive, since you had to build them around strength, which is still perfectly viable (and is in fact my preferred method). In fact, for a strength based rogue, the patch is actually a nerf to daggers, since a A 50/50 split between strength and dexterity won't actually outperform the old pure strength modifier at the high end. This fact is obscured early in the game by the necessity of investing in dexterity to acquire dual wield talents, so it's a modest low to midlevel buff that does nothing to prevent daggers from eventually under performing big weapons and a high strength total.
Honestly, I don't think rogues are quite as good as warriors if you're not going to baby sit them and a babysat rogue still isn't as good as an equally micromanaged mages. But they were never, ever so broken that the patch could change things as much as people imply it does. The way the math worked out was that you simply lost a point or two of damage here and there per swing in the early game compared to weapons like maces, and that is such a small difference that it was easily more than made up for with poisons, since more swings equals more applications and daggers are the fastest weapons around. That's actually part of the reason the game went live with the dexterity bug-- it was never a game breaker, particularly once poison was factored in, so nobody in house really noticed anything awry with the difficulty, particularly since you're expected to eventually adopt swords anyway.
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So I think my next go 'round I'm going to work on having an 'evil' party. Just basically tell everyone to eff themselves, ask all the "what's in it for me" questions, and kill babies at every opportunity. My thought is I'll do a mage that focuses on healing since annoying-ass Wynne will be out of the question, using Zevran for Rogue type things, probably keeping Morrigan around for crowd control, but who to tank? I've only been using Allister and I know I'll annoy the piss out of him so.... Sten? Shale? Ohgren? Who is going to make the better tank that I won't chase off by being a douche bag to everyone?
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Probably Shale, since she thinks she's superior to damn near everybody. Just make sure there are no birds in your party.
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Sten is a likely choice too, since he doesn't give a shit about anything but killing. I mean, I still don't know anything about his backstory but he was found meditating in a farm house surrounded by six mutilated corpses.
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It's the classic story: Boy loses sword to darkspawn, boy meets family, boy butchers family in a murderous rage, boy shows no remorse, boy gets sword back and uses it to kill 10^23 darkspawn in underground tunnels. Classic.
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Sten is a likely choice too, since he doesn't give a shit about anything but killing. I mean, I still don't know anything about his backstory but he was found meditating in a farm house surrounded by six mutilated corpses.
I mentioned cookies to him and got 44 approval. Sten is secretly the cookie monster.
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Sten is definitely not a partner for an evil playthrough. He has a pretty strong moral compass and isn't afraid to speak up about it. I don't know if it'd ever reach a point where he'd up and leave as a result of the main character being a dick, but his approval rating drops like a rock if you step out of line at all.
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I'm guessing that Ohgren is your best bet. He seems mean enough.
I've only ever tanked with Allistair and Shale, and I've not cared much for any of the others, so I can't really help you. Dog, perhaps, but he's kinda sucky at later levels, so I wouldn't go for that one.
Has anyone here experimented with the passive buff mode for Shale? I've used him as tank mostly and partially basher if Allistair is there with him, but the throwing mode and passive mode seems interesting. If a party with Shale in maxed buff mode has the same damage output and survivability as a party with an extra mage or rouge, it'll help keep micro-management down.
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IT'S SPELLED ROGUE
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Once upon a time, I would have found caps excessive in such a situation, but that was before I played a rogue in WoW for several years. These days, I'm up front lighting torches and passing out pitchforks.
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Your mother is spelled rouge.
HAH!
(grumblenotfirstlanguagegrumble)
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Also,
SHALE IS A GIRL GOD FUCKING DAMNIT.
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You don't find that out until you do some of their quest line, which people who don't really give a fuck about Shale probs don't do.
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I mentioned cookies to him and got 44 approval. Sten is secretly the cookie monster.
Sten has some hilarious dialogue involving cookies. In one scene he talks about stealing cookies from a little kid because the kid was fat.
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So, I beat it as elf mage, and now playing through as a city elf rogue.
The origin story is fucked up. Its kinda depressing.
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aw man that's one of the only origin stories I haven't played yet, but really wanted to.
must....resist...urge....to....start new game.....urrrgghhhh......
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You don't even need to start a new game. All of the origins are worth running thru.
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Killing the high dragon is worth doing.
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Hell yeah. I just did that the other day. All was going ok, but then Alistair died due to me getting mixed up as to who got chomped on. Then my offtank died pretty quickly after that, but somehow I managed to nuke the crap out of it with my mage & Morrigan just before it got to raspberry jam us.
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Wait. Which high dragon are we talking about here? Because I know there is at least two. Or are we talking about the archdemon?
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Yeah, I didn't even know about the High Dragon my first play through. This time I'm using a walkthrough 'cause I want to get through the game fast and it was all like "bang the gong and kill the High Dragon" and I'm like "wtf is the High Drag... *bong* OH SHIT DUDE!" and got the dragon scale and had that dude make me some dragon scale armour. Alistair's rockin' pretty hard now.
And holy hell but an Arcane Warrior is all kinds of awesome. She sucks at attacking, but I got my tiny-ass elf mage to wear the juggernaut armor. She looks badass, especially with that unique Arcane Warrior sword. Gotta get her a better shield, though - all she has is a heavy metal kite shield right now. She's all like *slice* *MISS* *dice* *hack* *slash* BOOM FIREBALL, MIND BLAST, CONE OF COLD, *slice*
And man, I'm in Orzamaar right now (did Mage Tower, then Redcliffe, then Breccilian Forest, now Orzamaar) and I'm in the deep roads (Ortan Thaig, etc.) WITHOUT Oghren. I didn't know you could do that. I was dreading having to replace Alistair with him, 'cause he's a 2H'er and Alistair's a 1h+Shield tank, and he's got awesome armour and accessories and I didn't want to have to go through the trouble of switching everything between the two characters, but I guess I don't have to. Pretty awesome. (I've not gotten to Broodmother yet, nor the Anvil, so I don't know if I'm going to have to replace him, but I'll get to that when I get to that.)
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Wait. Which high dragon are we talking about here? Because I know there is at least two. Or are we talking about the archdemon?
The one near the Urn of Ashes
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And man, I'm in Orzamaar right now (did Mage Tower, then Redcliffe, then Breccilian Forest, now Orzamaar) and I'm in the deep roads (Ortan Thaig, etc.) WITHOUT Oghren. I didn't know you could do that. I was dreading having to replace Alistair with him, 'cause he's a 2H'er and Alistair's a 1h+Shield tank, and he's got awesome armour and accessories and I didn't want to have to go through the trouble of switching everything between the two characters, but I guess I don't have to. Pretty awesome. (I've not gotten to Broodmother yet, nor the Anvil, so I don't know if I'm going to have to replace him, but I'll get to that when I get to that.)
I didn't know that either!
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You don't need Oghren until the final part. Don't forget to use Shale for that part as well or you miss a fairly lucrative dungeon.
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If you just talk to Shale afterwards, you can get her quest as well. If you side with Branka, Shale will leave. Since I wanted dwarves and golems to fight with me, I sided with Branka, and then just talked to Shale afterwards, and got her quest.
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I can't get Shale. I don't have Xbox Live.
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I finished the game last night. To be honest, after the High Dragon I expected the final fight to be harder. It was mostly just annoying getting through the city and up the tower to the main event, then once there it was a bit of a yawn. The ending was a little bit "AND THEN EVERYONE LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER! OH, EXCEPT THAT ONE GUY - HE DIED" and I was kind of hoping for something with a little more substance after the overall darkness of the game up until that point.
Then after I was done I went back in and made a female dorf named Jason, gave her horrible makeup & a countenance the result of which makes her look like a short ugly dude with fake tits in a dress. I am gonna romance everyone with it. It's gonna be so awesome.
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When was the last time you got wowed by a final boss fight, anyhow? Honestly.
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I was gonna say Demon's Souls but, ironically enough, I'm pretty sure I got owned by every boss except the last boss, who's ass I actually kicked quite easily.
remember Legend of Dragoon?
The final boss for that game was fucking cruel. He had a bajillion hit points and when you finally got rid of them all he would just transform into another form. I'm not sure how many forms there were, but I'm pretty sure there were at least three or four. I think I spent an hour and a half or so on that boss, only to have my mom shut off my Playstation because I had been on for too long and she wanted to watch the news or something.
I never tried it again.
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I never beat Link's Adventure for the NES. Got past Shadow Link, but could never beat that final guy. I think that's the last time I was wow'd by a final boss.
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I always found my elf mage to be incredibly OP.
I think my favorite Shale moment is when we're leaving town and the camera pans after you see the chicken, you hear the stomp and the squak, party looks and shale and she just does this really casual "meh" shrug. I couldn't stop laughing.
As for rogues, believe it or not, I play my rogue purely as an archer. I barely ever touch my daggers at all. I've just always preferred ranged combat over in close.
I did the final boss first play through on normal and I swear to god that thing was annoying to me. Took a few tries to get it. Purple fire hurts @_@
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When was the last time you got wowed by a final boss fight, anyhow? Honestly.
The vaginaboss in Borderlands took me ages to kill. If it didn't have such a pissweak "just respawn and keep fighting" gameplay ethos I would have been Fucked. Also, the original boss of Titan Quest (Typhon?) was pretty hard.
It's just that it wasn't really even a challenge. None of my dudes were ever in danger of dying. I deployed the Redcliff guys because they said they were good against armoured targets, but then hardly any of those guys died either. Then after a while I sort of said "ok fuck this" and used my dudes to shoot ballistae at the dragon until it was almost dead. I honestly had more trouble with the last bit of the city leading up to the tower, where you are corralled in the area with all the archers and the two or three darkspawn mages. I had to call in the elves to help me out with that.
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Woop, just starting to play this game now. Gotta finish this before I can justify buying any new games. I'm going to do it old-school: a nice, simple human warrior, just as I did in my first ever fantasy RPG. Wait, a forty-five page manual?! Okay, maybe not so simple as I thought...
Having to install all those add-ons and bonuses is a bit annoying, though. You have to wait for the files to download, you have to wait for the game to install, then you have to claim your bonuses and wait until the game picks up on them, and finally you have to wait until it downloads all of them. Before you have even clicked the 'New game' button. Rrrrgh.
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BULL. SHIT.
I spent ALL game buttering up Alistair so that I can rule with him after I killed Loghain at the Landsmeet. Broke it off with Leliana (never did sleep with her), broke it off with Zevran. Got him to fall in love with me, yadda yadda yadda.
So after I killed Loghain I was all like (persuade) Alistair and I will rule together! Mwa hah hah! And he's all like "no way, chica, you're not of noble blood, they won't accept you." And I'm all like "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU".
Total bullshit. So if you want to rule with Alistair, make sure you're a human noble, not an elf. Total horsecrap. So disappointed right now.
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Yeah, I found that out after becoming super buddies with Alister. I was a little heartbroken. But me and Zevran are gonna make elf babies so whatevs.
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Since my last post I've gone through the intro missions and went from Lothering (Lotharing? (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&geocode=&q=Lotharingen,+France&sll=49,6&sspn=11.51077,21.181641&ie=UTF8&hl=en&hq=&hnear=Lorraine,+France&z=8)) to Redcliffe and did all the quests there. Some things of note: Combat is complicated as hell. The tactics for abilities are somewhat stupid because for every time you want to use a slot to activate it, you need another slot to deactivate it. That fills them up fast enough. I'd prefer to use one for both activate and deactivate.
The absence of a karma system is a welcome change so far. Contrary to many other choice-based RPGs, being the asshole makes things easier for you. The tavern in Redcliffe, for example. I threatened to kill the owner, he made me the boss, I subsequently gain one sovereign (is that what they call gold pieces nowadays?) and the whole of the shop's inventory, then I turned over ownership to the barmaid, who pays me three sovereigns for it, and I walk out a richer man. Hooray! On the other hand, it makes doing good deeds for the sake of them less rewarding, in the literal sense. I was left with nothing after completing the Last Will and Testament quest.
Can anyone tell me if there is a higher reward involved for not killing Connor and defeating the demon in the Fade? I killed Connor now, and I was wondering if it's worth going back and visit to the Circle Tower to save him.
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i guess you'll find out at the landsmeet!
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just smoked some cheeb and beat Dragon Age listening to an awesome live version of sleep dopesmoker (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VhYufp53aY)
pretty sure there is no better song to kill an undead, demonic dragon motherfucker to.
spoilers ensue:
didn't get to be King because i fucked up and forgot to make hook-ups with Anora before the landsmeet. womp womp
oh well, least i get to have the ending of being some lone wandering hero guy
the genlock conjurer was harder than the arch demon, for me.
like est said, pretty much a simple final-boss-- none of my guys even nearly died iirc. that said, flemmeth was a BITCH to kill. maybe after killing flemmeth and the urn of sacred ashes dragon i was already used to dragon bosses. idk?
it would have been cooler if they dropped the darkspawn mobs that spawn half-way through the fight and instead made the arch-demon itself pack more of a punch.
might pick up me2 and play through that before awakening hits shelves.
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See for me Flemmeth was really easy and the arch demon was fucking hard.
I'm having a hard time keeping aggro with my arcane warrior. Any tips?
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Don't aggro with a guy with no aggro skills. That's my go at it - taunt and threathen is the shit against big bosses.
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Yeah, you don't want your arcane warrior to be doing aggro unless you really like using injury kits.
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Bioware hinted at GDC that Dragon Age 2 would be dropping in Feb of 2011. Sounds about right.
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So it's basically the Max Payne model. Take 5 years to develop the first game, then churn out the sequel in a year.
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A lot of games are like that, mainly because of engine building. A real, proper, functioning engine from scratch requires at least a year and a half of focused effort, usually 2 or 3.
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Yeah, I know. I was just being snide.
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Two years, Byran you dick.
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Also - and I just want to be clear - are you dissing Bioware for making sequels more quickly?
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Dragon Age came out in November of 2009. If Dragon Age 2 comes out in February of 2011, that makes it 15 months since the release of the first game.
And no, that's not a diss of their current development cycle, it's more of me mocking how it took them 6 years to finally get the first game finished. Although I do think that Mass Effect 2 makes it a lot harder for me to go back to Dragon Age in retrospect.
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ME2 is just a superior game all around to basically any other action RPG ever.
I can't play ME1, FO3, or Dragon Age anymore just because they're not ME2.
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Yeah, I'm with ya on that one, Ozy.
I mean, I could go back and play F3 because it's just different enough to not quite be comparable, but I traded in Dragon Age (without even ever beating the damn thing!) because I knew I wouldn't be able to go back to it.
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Alrighty, so I should play those first before I play ME2 so I don't ruin them for myself?
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Depends. ME2 and Dragon Age are very different games. ME2 is a a third-person action RPG. Dragon Age is a traditional party-based tactical RPG. I like ME2 more than DA not because I think it's a better RPG in some sort of technical sense, but because I found the setting and plot of Dragon Age to be pretty boring, and I strongly disliked the party influence system, which has been compared by a lot of people to a dating sim. In terms of sheer stimulation ME2 is more involved. But your actual preference may result from whether you like sci-fi or fantasy more (I like the former), whether you like to control your entire party or just your main character, whether you like third-person shooter combat or more tactical combat, whether you like full VA for the player character, etc.
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That's what put me off of DA in comparison to ME most significantly: it felt really really weird to have my character not say anything anymore. I know that the potential player characters in DA are much more diverse than ME, but I think that having the main character be fully voiced adds a huge amount to those games.
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and I strongly disliked the party influence system, which has been compared by a lot of people to a dating sim.
I just started playing Dragon Age yesterday, and have quickly become frustrated with the withering looks I get from Morrigan every time I rescue a cat from a tree and what not. You'd think this is something she'd get used to, but no, whenever I try and do something nice for someone else she takes it as some kind of personal insult.
I like the idea of the mechanic more than I like its actual execution.
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I don't really mind an influence system, in fact I think it's something that more RPGs ought to implement. It's just that the "gifting" mechanic is specifically designed to, if gamed just right, essentially cancel out whatever mistakes you might actually have to feel the consequences of w/r/t influence. The only characters who weren't at +85 influence with me at the end of the game were the characters I didn't even bother with - the old woman, the stoic giant, and the fey elf.
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and I strongly disliked the party influence system, which has been compared by a lot of people to a dating sim.
I just started playing Dragon Age yesterday, and have quickly become frustrated with the withering looks I get from Morrigan every time I rescue a cat from a tree and what not. You'd think this is something she'd get used to, but no, whenever I try and do something nice for someone else she takes it as some kind of personal insult.
I like the idea of the mechanic more than I like its actual execution.
Don't worry, she'll soften up eventually. You get a lot of crap from her in Lothering but for the rest she won't nag on you as much. Besides, it doesn't matter much what they think of your actions, because that'll be nullified by what you can gain in gifts and camp dialogue. Just tell them what they like to hear. I've been playing like the pope would and I romanced Morrigan nonetheless.
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playing like the pope would
Does this mean killing every mage you come over? Since that's what the pope would do, if he hadn't just burned the DVD in the first place.
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Also is this game supposed to be incredibly hard, because I am dying at least one for every single goddamn fight.
For some of the bigger encounters I just end up lowering the difficulty to easy, and the difference between that and normal is just so big it's ridiculous.
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Not getting killed all the time takes a hefty amount of strategy and requires you to greatly consider the makeup of your party and the way you distribute attributes and skills.
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Well that explains it then, because my "strategy" usually consists of stabbin' stuff in the back as my main dude and switching to my party only for the purpose of healing.
Guess I'd better get acquainted with combat tactic slots and whatnot.
But damned if that quest to get the urn of Andraste's ashes didn't include one of the hardest dungeons I've ever had to get through in a video game.
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Oh it wasn't that hard.
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If you think that's hard then you're fucked when you get back outside.
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Hey, there's a patch out for Dragon Age. It's supposed to fix the long load times. The load times ARRRGGGGHHHH
Well that explains it then, because my "strategy" usually consists of stabbin' stuff in the back as my main dude and switching to my party only for the purpose of healing.
Guess I'd better get acquainted with combat tactic slots and whatnot.
But damned if that quest to get the urn of Andraste's ashes didn't include one of the hardest dungeons I've ever had to get through in a video game.
You've got Wynne, right? It's easier to just set healing and buffing to auto in the tactics. Heal, Group Heal, Regenerate, Rejuvenate, Heroic Offense, there are enough slots to fill up with all those abilities so you don't have to issue any orders. Myself, I chose only the Spirit Healer and the two top rows of Creation spells for healing and the rest for offensive and mana spells.
A question: Did any of you actively craft and use balms, poisons and traps in combat? I never saw any use in them, and I only used Morrigan's herbalism for health and mana potions. Frostrocks and deathroots and glamour charms were just crap clogging up my inventory, and the only instances where I used poison coating was with Zevran, just because I had to do something with all of them. It made things die slightly quicker but it was never the deciding factor.
Also: I thought it was pretty funny that the Denerim guards were fooled by my guard disguise, but remained completely oblivious to my glowing blue and lightning arcing starmetal sword and Redcliffe shield.
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As a melee rogue, poisons can make a lot of difference.
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You've got Wynne, right?
Uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh...
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uuuuh?
Are you doing Andraste's ashes before you've finished the alliance quests? Unless the "Uuuuuhhhh" is about "why should I care about an old bitch", you should go to the tower of magi first. A healer npc is neeeeeded for this game, so if you have her, use her, or respec Morrigan if you only want one mage around.
You also need to know how to tank, how to crowd control, and how to prioritize whom to target. After that, things get fairly easy.
And if you're having troubles with the dungeon before the ashes, you won't have a chance in hell against the boss.
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You also need to know how to tank, how to crowd control, and how to prioritize whom to target. After that, things get fairly easy.
I have no idea what you just said, but in spite of that I was able to hold my own in combat fairly well. You learn as you go.
Anyway, I just finished the game as a male human noble warrior with shield skills and templar/champion specializations. Man, did that make an awesome looking character: Warden Commander Armor set, Helm of Honnleath, Starfang and Duncan's Shield. I have to say, when you've spent half the game fighting undead, werewolves and demons, the darkspawn can be crushed like bugs. The archdemon gave me a bit of trouble, it killed Wynne, Morrigan and Zevran but I was able to finish him off on my own because I spammed crafting health potions earlier. The rest of the darkspawn that it summoned would have given me more trouble if the archdemon didn't keep killing them himself, so I could easily take out the remaining 1/6 of its health with regular attacks and Holy Smite.
Well, that was fun. Maybe I'll replay it in a year or two, I'd like to do a Dwarf commoner rogue or an elf mage.
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You also need to know how to tank, how to crowd control, and how to prioritize whom to target. After that, things get fairly easy.
I have no idea what you just said, but in spite of that I was able to hold my own in combat fairly well.
It means to ignore that silly cunt with the shield until everyone with pajamas, 2 handers or dual wielding is already dead.
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So I've been familiarizing myself with the elements of combat that aren't using special attacks 'til the stamina well runs dry and pressing A repeatedly. It's created a noticeable increase in my ability to not die.
Also, I have Wynn now. She is pretty much the coolest thing ever.
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She gets better.
Then better again.
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I gave her Mana Clash, holy damn.
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i actually don't use Wynne at all, i gave Morrigan the spirit healer spec for mass healing and she serves me better. Plus Wynne is an unbearably boring character to have in yr party
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Well, only if you never hear her talking to Zevran. Or Oghren.
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Zevran and Wynne is the best combo ever. She's quite funny with Allistair as well, although it gets a bit bizarre when they two minutes after slaughtering their way through thirty bandits start talking about if she can iron his shirts. I guess you get kinda used to killing after a couple of hundreds, but that used to it?
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I'm about 30 minutes into Awakening and already bored. Does it get substantially better?
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Okay, so I just bought DA:O (Windows) through Steam. When I tried installing it on my Windows partition of my MacBook Pro 15" I was told that the launcher had "failed to detect a supported video card."
I know that my graphics card (NVIDA GeForce 9400m) is totally compatible - has something happened during the partition, have I not installed a driver or something?
What can I do to fix this?
Any help would be much appreciated.
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you're gonna need some goat's blood and at least 2 black candles with wicks made of virgin hair
the Necronomicon is optional, but couldn't hurt*
*nah, it's totally going to hurt.
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Okay, so I just bought DA:O (Windows) through Steam. When I tried installing it on my Windows partition of my MacBook Pro 15" I was told that the launcher had "failed to detect a supported video card."
I know that my graphics card (NVIDA GeForce 9400m) is totally compatible - has something happened during the partition, have I not installed a driver or something?
What can I do to fix this?
Any help would be much appreciated.
First things first, go online and get the latest drivers. Go into the device manager and see what display adapters are listed there. Go to "screen resolution" and see what's listed. Beyond that I have no idea.
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I found out which hardware pieces need a drivers. (http://driveragent.com/b/driveragent_results?hwid=a4127a33567e818a637617fbb4e7f768&PHPSESSID=dfvn7791plmjpsr40aiqv9m606)
Now, I gotta go find them.
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Noooooo never let a website scan your computer. Nevar.
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Relax, I didn't.
Anyways, so I stopped to think a moment and realised that I could just insert the OSX installation disk. Unsurprisingly, it worked.
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Free shield for Dragon Age PC.
http://www.alienwarearena.com/event/dragon-age-giveaway/
The only drawback is you have to sign up for an Alienware email account thing. (Everyone should have a junkmail email account by now anyways)
Man I have gotten a TON of free stuff for Dragon age. Has there been anything else that came out with the free expansion?
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Sorry, this promotion is not open to your region.
Well, it's not like I was going to use it any time soon. You do get a ludicrous amount of freebies in this game, plenty of which you didn't know about. A ring with +1 to all attributes, simply for creating a character before the game came out? Thanks, I guess.
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Plus, if you played things even medium-smart you should have a shit ton of stuff from Origins anyway.
I mean, in my inventory i have the dragon and drake skin armours, the juggernaut and tons of absurd weaponry.
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You can apparently spend 3 real dollars to buy a Protective Cone for your video game doggie. It will make him hate you.
http://dragonage.bioware.com/addon/
You can also give Morrigan an Alistair doll which she can make into a Voodoo doll. Which makes her happy and Alistair injured.
Of course. This IS April fools day.
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Trailer for new DLC, "The Darkspawn Chronicles" (http://au.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/dragonage/video/6261284/dragon-age-origins-darkspawn-chronicles-dlc-trailer), in which you play as Darkspawn in a "what if?" scenario where your OC Warden dies in the Joining.
Short interview with the lead designer (http://au.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/dragonage/news.html?sid=6261320&om_act=convert&om_clk=newsfeatures&tag=newsfeatures;title;1&mode=previews).
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I feel like I'd be more stoked if it was less, "Play in an ALTERNATE WACKY WORLD" and more in a, "Play a short parallel story to one of the main events of the game." As it is, I don't really see how that DLC enriches the universe very much.
How was Awakening, by the way?
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I hadn't played it but I heard good things about the back half of it.
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I've been wanting to play Awakening (got it 50% off from that PAXEAST code) but the PS3 version of Dragon Age got bugged to hell by the 3.30 firmware update. =/
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sorry if I didnt feel like readin 10 pages worth of comments but is dragon age: origins worth $30 US? what game is it like in gameplay and narrative?
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Yes, if you're playing it on PC. Narrative is big and bombastic taking you all over the game world, most of the stuff in game makes sense within context and the criticisms you may have heard about the sequel don't actually hold here. Basically it's just a graphically prettier update of Baldur's Gate.
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it's also worth it on xbox, don't front. dunno about ps3. sequel isn't worth it though.
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Truth
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I would actually waffle about the console versions, since the game's actually a bit different, especially in volume and difficulty of fights. If you can get it on PC, do so.
(Also it's not really like BG much at all, it's more of a graphically prettier fantasy update of KOTOR)
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I often suspect that people have forgotten just how much BG1 emphasized exploration.
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I would actually waffle about the console versions, since the game's actually a bit different, especially in volume and difficulty of fights. If you can get it on PC, do so.
(Also it's not really like BG much at all, it's more of a graphically prettier fantasy update of KOTOR)
pc's the superior version no question about it, i'm just saying that it's not like if you can't get it on pc you shouldn't bother with it at all.