Trauma - How so mate? The street release *was* broken and now people can sell it? How is that a misleading thread title?

if a game doesnt have multiplayer i dont know why you freaks buy it

Reckon, I lost interest in single player games in 1993 the first time I played Doom on a LAN

man theres a lot of talking what the hell?

Its crazy! Who would ever expect that in an rpg!

Not sure if I like it or not. Game is so fucking hard even on normal to the point where I wonder if its possible to pass sections as certain classes without you being a healer. Even only 2 hours into game or something I come to nearly a brick wall with the stupid lighting fire in the tower part. I shouldn't be forced to play a healer because there is a room with 6 orc archers and a mage blasting away at me, when I only have like 10 health pots. I also shouldn't have to change the game to easy mode either to pass parts as say an archer or rogue

last edited by DM at 19:20:48 05/Nov/09

purchased the deluxe. now hopefully it will download off ga servers.

dm you can change the difficulty at any time

I know you can but my point is why do they seemingly force you to play on the eaisest difficulty because they refuse to give any NPCs you come across healing spells.

Perhaps you need to change the way you're playing, use pause more often, use cover. I know the part you're talking about and I did it without a healer....

konstie br0 i quit wow a long time ago!@

Reckon, I lost interest in single player games in 1993 the first time I played Doom on a LAN

i love trog

woot downloading from gamearena at 1.8MB/s

freys steam filter works so much better than steamwatch :)

last edited by ravn0s at 19:44:52 05/Nov/09

damn only took 1hr 40 mins to download. probably wont get to play it tonight though :(

Its crazy! Who would ever expect that in an rpg!

Possibly, I can't say I've played many rpg games. My introduction to rpg games were Bethseda games which don't seem so long winded, morrowind, oblivion, fallout. Their engine has pretier graphics too.

I havent spent much time though so will still play on to see whats it all about, I'm only up to the part where you get rescued.

But this game seriously has a lot of talking right at the start before any action happens.
One minor gripe so far (only played for a few hours) is that it seems easy to miss quests by hitting a story transition point without realising that the story is going to move on, i spoke to my brother before fully exploring the castle and the game transitioned to the next section without me realising that was going to happen.
Also does the text seem a little small to anyone else? Not unreadable just small.

last edited by Bah at 22:33:14 05/Nov/09

My opinion is, it kicks ass thus far.
I bought this since I actually wanted a story driven game I couldn't stand playing MMO's anymore with no real story where all I was doing was NEXT NEXT NEXT CONTINUE ACCEPT without reading and just grinding to the next, Kill XX mob 1000 times.


I'm not sure why some of you bought this and are saying it has 'too much talking/text'

Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate Series, Knights of the old Republic etc. etc. etc. all these sorts of games had walls upon walls of text/speech if you actually listened/read/followed the story word for word.
RPG's are supposed to be in essence, interactive books/movies.

played it for about 2hrs. im enjoying it. still getting used to the combat. can you toggle in and out of combat or it is just auto?

Game is so fucking hard even on normal to the point where I wonder if its possible to pass sections as certain classes without you being a healer.

I think maybe you're doing it wrong, cos I had no healer for that bit and had no trouble with it at all. Even on the big boss you fight at the top of the tower I only lost one guy (and it was just that shit no-name Tower Guard guy who you know is going to die as soon as you get him in your party). I think I've only completely died once, and that was right back at the start when I went out to get the blood for my joining, mostly cos I was still not really sure wtf I was doing at that point. Since then its felt balanced pretty good difficulty wise, the fights are challenging and satisfying but its not making me tear my hair out in frustration.

I guess, if you want some tips, I pause the action a lot to give commands and assign specific targets to my guys and micromanage stuff a bit, not a lot, cos the tactics stuff is pretty damn cool, but just enough to make sure everyone isn't being retarded. Also make sure you get your rogues in position behind stuff so they get backstab/flanking bonuses to their attacks. And conversely, try to deny the enemy getting flanking bonuses on your guys by positioning them well.

I usually focus at least a couple of guys per target too instead of spreading everyone out to fight their own separate targets. I often have my tank guy up there causing threat and hunkering down behind a shield in a defense stance, then a couple of melee damage dealers smashing on stuff, and my mage either taking out ranged guys who are sitting back annoying me, or just joining in on what the melee is smashing.

Also, theres syngergies between a lot of skills, like if you get Morrigan to freeze someone, then you crit the frozen person with a rogue, the frozen dude will shatter and be insta-killed.

Yeah i died a few times at the bottom of that tower, but then i decided to try and hang back rather than rush in and get spammed by the arrow guys, basically forced me to micromanage my guys a bit more and use the hold command so they didnt just all run off in different directions (i guess you can better customise their combat tactics menu too?)
And when i opened doors, rather than rush in id have a look to see if there were archers, and back off around the corner if there were so the enemy would draw closer.

backstab/flanking bonuses

how do you know when you are getting these bonuses, i am playing a rogue and was trying to position him behind enemies (seems to be the thing to do with rogues in rpgs), but had nfi if i was getting crits.

Even on the big boss you fight at the top of the tower

i felt like i cheesed him a bit because Spoiler:
he would occasionally decide to chase one guy and i just controlled him running about while my other guys used ranged attacks, not sure if that was by design... did i draw aggro or something?

and my mage either taking out ranged guys

id send my dog in, as ranged guys get interrupted if someone melees them, at least at low levels anway.. id guess they might skill up and be able to do melee bow attacks later on.

how do you know when you are getting these bonuses

Yeah, its not very clear. I'm playing a rogue as well and I'm using dual weapons, and I found the combat animations change from my character swinging his swords/daggers and slashing with them, to a sort of overhead two-handed stabbing animation. There doesn't seem to be any info text or indicator or anything though that shows you're successfully flanking/backstabbing which is annoying. Also annoying that the damage and status text comes up over your target instead of over your character, so when theres multiple people hitting the same thing its almost impossible to know what damage you're actually doing.

id guess they might skill up and be able to do melee bow attacks later on.

Yeah, I think theres some archer talents that let you fire point blank range, and some others that let you fire without being interrupted, but they don't seem to have them, at least so far.

played a cpl of hours and liked the twist in the quest plots.. i'll play some more tomorrow

this game is awesome so far.

Re: Bah
Spoiler:
I believe this is one of the few ways to kill him, he is way too powerful to just stand and bash and keep healing. The city guard or whatever extra dude you get has the ability to draw attention, Taunt?, cant recall but thats a good way to make him chase. I have a fighter who was pretty strong and had to kill him with this tatic, so imagine rogues etc will find it even harder.


I like the lack of resting required and the auto health recovery if you just stand around for a bit.

My only problem is I don't look around enough or assess the situation, few times I entered a room and bashed the dudes and then realize there were things in the room / near by that would have made that battle a lot easier. But meh, I'm a meat head fighter...

last edited by pixem at 11:45:11 06/Nov/09

Yeah i died a few times at the bottom of that tower, but then i decided to try and hang back rather than rush in and get spammed by the arrow guys

I try and take down the archers ASAP. Loving this game.

Updates to Dragon Age - Origins have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Dragon Age - Origins

Fixed potential corruption of character statistics

Fixed portrait appearance sliders when importing a character from the downloadable Character Creator

Fixed import for preset face settings from the downloadable Character Creator

Made Easy difficulty easier

Slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty

Fixed video issues when running on a very wide screen display, including ATI Eyefinity displays

Its an awesome game, i'm loving it. the combat is a real challenge.

I play on Hard mode, its great that the game is such a challenge, i'd rather have difficulty & have to think, i've re-done some fights many times and worked out better strategies.

I'd prefer to have the game last longer because of difficulty then breeze through it in 20 hours.

I just wish they had an option to slow down the speed during combat, so it wasn't either Full speed or pause, you could slow down the action a bit and assess how things are going on the fly.

The city guard or whatever extra dude you get has the ability to draw attention, Taunt?

Yeah, thats what my city guard guy did, he taunted and got the attention of the boss, but then Spoiler:
the ogre picked him up in its hand and start beating the living shit out of him and squeezed him till he died a horrible death.


Luckily, he took long enough to do that that it gave my other guys enough opportunity to bring him down in the meantime :P

The city guard or whatever extra dude you get has the ability to draw attention, Taunt?

Yeah, thats what my city guard guy did, he taunted and got the attention of the boss, but then Spoiler:the ogre picked him up in its hand and start beating the living shit out of him and squeezed him till he died a horrible death.

Luckily, he took long enough to do that that it gave my other guys enough opportunity to bring him down in the meantime :P

Isn't that how the wimpy king died?

I am now in this dreamworld like place. Is bizarre. But just keeps getting better story and character wise.

I am now in this dreamworld like place. Is bizarre.

The fade? I haven't got to that in the main campaign yet (though it seems you can do bits of it in any order you want, so maybe I'm just doing stuff in a different order), but I started a new character last night, a mage, and you go into the fade as part of his origin story. Pretty cool!

I am now in this dreamworld like place. Is bizarre.

The fade? I haven't got to that in the main campaign yet (though it seems you can do bits of it in any order you want, so maybe I'm just doing stuff in a different order), but I started a new character last night, a mage, and you go into the fade as part of his origin story. Pretty cool!

I agree. How I ended up here no idea but I had to battle another tower to get here. Pretty cool really. You will enjoy that bit when you tackle it.

Spoiler:

the ogre picked him up in its hand and start beating the living shit out of him and squeezed him till he died a horrible death.



I've played a few Bioware CRPG's in my time, from BG1 with its 5 discs, BG2 and NWN etc. I've never experienced that, possibly because its not standard DnD but I thought it was a pretty awesome battle. I flipped out with the range of attacks he threw at me. Possibly my favourite moment so far, still early days!

Very good game, done the tower boss.
Not sure why, but I'm playing on Normal as well.
And I had no trouble tank-and-spanking the big boss guy.

My main is a mage though, so the spam and heals from that may have helped.
The burst DPS from mages is very very high.

I died at the Big Boss a couple of times.

I laughed my arse off when he
Spoiler:

Picked up my mage and beat the shit out of him as above



Then I realized something really cool, that made it a bit easier for me
Spoiler:

If one of your dudes is picked up, use Shield Bash or, I think, another stun and he drops them!

Spoiler:

I also found using the flaming weapons spell made a big difference






That is cool, I really like how the game doesn't explain every puzzle to you like some.


edit: spoiler fail

Started a new assassin specced character (Lv 8 atm) and taking things much slower and actually bothering to use the pause feature more than normal. Also instead of just running off randomly I found the main healer character as soon as I was able to freely travel around and it has made the game so much more fun. Just slayed my first technical dragon and bloody christ was it hard! On normal it wiped the floor with me in a matter of seconds and even on easy I was only just able to kill it. Really kick ass death animation with my guy too.

alright, downloading now on steam. from the reports looks like i won't regret it!

tips ? i'll prob go a mage or assassin.

mage will be the eaiser choice since you get access to healing magic right away. Anything else is obviously taking the harder road until you get your healer NPC character. If you don't know where they are, then it could be anywhere from 4 to 10+ hours till you get them.

Must be missing something because im lvl 9 and havent had a sniff of a healer character to bring into my fold. Have had every other damn class though :(. Sadly the person i would kick out once i do find a healer is the one ive been befriending in hopes if some sexy times. oh well!

Havent met a dragon either. guess its just the different routes you take.

also.. wtf 2:40am :/

last edited by CSIRAC at 03:43:21 07/Nov/09

Hah, I've been trying to befriend that Morrigan chick for sexy times, just cos shes such its such a challenge, shes one crazy hardass bitch. But now Alistair is starting to hate me, which also sucks, cos hes awesome and hes also my main tank :(

I just finished RedCliff and Alistair started hating on me because I Spoiler:
chose to murder the arl's son to get rid of the demon
. I thought as far as my choices went, that was the better choice too!

But yeah, I'm really loving the choices and the moral dilemnas in the game. So many games claim to have these deep moral decisions you have to make, but it inevitably turns into having a few options where one is obviously evil and one is obviously good. Whereas so far in Dragon Age, the major choices you have to make, theres no real clear cut evil and good, even when you choose what you think is a relatively "good" option, bad shit still happens to people, and you still have live with the consequences of what you've done. Good and bad are more concepts that are relative to people's point of view (either NPCs or your party members). Absolutely awesome.

Someone tell me how to do the whole spoiler thing?

Hah, I've been trying to befriend that Morrigan chick for sexy times

If you save all the gifts you find, talk to her often asking her about her past and be nice/joking with her, you can bed her as soon as you get to the camp. Morri is sitting on 99 love for me and keeps having talks to me about being scared of love. Hah. Also, dragon i'm talking about comes from her "personal story" she gives when she loves you

Also anyone able to tell me how the SHIT to unlock blood mage? I know it has to do with the redcliff demon thing but no matter what I try I just cannot do it. Everyone says bargin with the demon in the fade but Either option I pick just leads me to a fight where I have no say in the matter. Do I have to have a mage main to do this as being a rogue makes me send morrigan or wynne in there instead.

You do spoilers by putting <spoiler> tags around the text you want to be spoilered out.

Like <spoiler>This is a spoiler</spoiler>

The only thing that loves me is my dog, unfortunately I can't have sex with the dog.

I've been liking it a bit more with more action and the choices you get to make. Can someone make a spoiler of where the healer is though? I guess I could google it. A mistake I made was to auto-level ... didnt realise what I was doing at the beginning and I accidentaly spec'd myself as a templar :/

DM to unlock blood mage (i think):

Spoiler:
that guy you befriend at the magi academy place, Jowan, is a blood mage. if you take a certain story path (you run into him again in radcliffe castle) then he'll teach it to you i think.


i didn't get blood mage though, i've gone spiritual healer for teh spams

also i got a mage character pretty early in, straight after Spoiler:
the big battle thing where logairn (or whatever his name is) betrays the grey wardens and they all die. when my dude woke up it was the witch of the wilds and her daughter with massive cans who healed me. and the witch sends her daughter along to help me. she is a mage and can also teach you how to be a shapeshifter.


last edited by taggs at 07:42:35 07/Nov/09

For the healer
Spoiler:
Wynne, the healer, is found in the mage tower as soon as your able to travel after doing the short stop in lothering. To get there go to the dock near the tower and talk to the guard. He requires a bit of coercing on your part though. Intimidating worked for me though. She is behind the main entrance door which seals after you go in so if you plan on getting her, be ready to clear the entire mage tower and an extremely long, and drawn out fade battle. Oh and if you dont accept her right away (which morrigan hates btw) there is a chance you are forced into a fight with her. Watch for that. Just tell Morri where to stick it and accept wynne in


2 thing though

1.) Love the effect they put on the demons when they talk. Multiple voices at once but all distorted.

2.) What the fuck is with the female combat walking animations? It looks like they are shitting as they walk. No on noticed how ungodly this looks? Male looks fine I suppose but he suffers from the same problem really.

last edited by DM at 13:30:23 07/Nov/09

Turns out once you get your "rep" high enough with people they gain buffs due to your leadership. Got it with the bow chick. Sadly shes still gonna be the first to go :(

hmmm, good rep everywhere eh?

i mite give this a go:

also, i prefer single player games, coz i dont have the time to invest in multiplayer games (for long term stuff, i got time to jump on a tf2 server and rocket some nubs)

I know that morrigan gives you magic boost buff and a certain extra character (which i wont name for spoiler reasons) gives you a dex buff. I cant remember what anyone else gives though.

Also it's real fun kissing morrigan in public because she always hangs shit on alistar for watching or making some comment

I don't think the characters give the buffs to your character, they just get the buffs themselves (at least thats how I read it). When you look at the tooltips of the skills they get when you earn rep with them it says something like "This character gets a bonus to dexterity due to your inspiring leadership".

Also, it seems morrigan doesn't go in for the girl on girl action, I can't get her to get interested in me :( Oh well, I got the french bard chick interested, she seems like shes up for a bit.

What happens if your character is a dwarf? Can you do some interracial kinky dwarf-on-human sexy time? Cos I think that might be pushing the boundaries of what I'm willing to watch.

I guess so. I'm not planning on playing a dwarf anytime soon so I can't tell you. Also I only know of 3 people you can actually bed but ill try for the bard chick too now I guess and see how that turns out

I'll definitley check this out. Judging by the amount of nerdage in this thread, I better wait till exams are over first.

Morrigan is so hot! But a bad attitude. I really can't see myself wanting to have sex with her. Of course sex starved as I am...

Anyone else notice how brutal walking bomb is for mages? It hits your own people but good god is it the slaughter of melee mobs. 1 explosion will either kill or seriously wound anything near it and after that the battle is easy. Even on bosses it's a small DoT which adds up over time.

I'm starting an arcane shapshifter mage me thinks. Not too sure on the shapeshifter part so I may go spirit healer for res yet

Generally speaking your party cant take a pack of mobs that of a yellow name tag can they? I should stop trying to be cool and taking everything on :/ ran into a 4 pack of dragonkin with yellow coloured names. got spanked for 30 mins trying stubbornly to kill them.

just got morrigan in my party. time to sex her up.