How did you guys go with the Spoiler: optional demon succubus and the charmed Templar at the Tower right before the Fade? This was one of the tuoghest fights so far for me.
Spoiler: I got smashed almost instantly due to the cut scene fucking with positioning, and the PC being the focus of attention for the first round or so. Took a few reloads until by luck my PC mage survived the opening few seconds and I could continue with Wynn's Revive up. Once we got into the mid-encounter with everyone upright it was a lot easier.
I never bothered pumping strength too high on my rogue, cos one of the tier 3 rogue talents let you use your cunning instead of your strength to get the damage bonus, and the assassin talents give you more damage depending on how high your cunning is.
Thats what i never understood about that talent. Why would i want to pump cunning as a rogue (unless you're a bard). Instead you could keep pumping str and dex and you get the same outcome + you'll have a much larger choice in gear to use.
It's only exploit weakness that takes advantage of cunning as a dueliest/ass rogue. Imo its a bit of an oversight having rogues focus on strength so much
Yeah i noticed that cunning = strength bonus talent and it looked handy and got it, then as i levellled up found myself putting points into strength anyway so i could use better swords and armour, made it seem like a bit of a waste of a talent point.
It's only exploit weakness that takes advantage of cunning as a dueliest/ass rogue.
I didnt notice that, thats its only combat advantage?
Looks like power of blood uses it too (from wardens keep), and i have had a few conversation options that used my cunning.
Seems like always having a strength bonus and being able to use better equipment would be a better option though.
I got some in strength, enough to use that drakescale leather armour, but I don't think I put it much past about 24 or so, I just have a bunch of items that give +strength so I can use other weapons. I got the talent that lets me use full size weapons in each hand, so I have an axe in my offhand which gives me a mad strength bonus which then lets me wield a sweet sword with massive backstab chance and damage bonus in my main hand :)
I think my cunning is like 38 or something, I dunno, I guess part of it was a bit of roleplay, just seemed more like what a rogue should be, but it also increases your chance to be able to lockpick and steal, and I *think* (though I'm not entirely sure), it improves your stealth? Either way, definitely helps lockpicking, even with the 4th level lockpick skill I was still failing to lockpick some stuff till I started pumping up my cunning.
I havent bothered going past level 1 lockpick, doesnt seem like any compelling reason to, especially with so many other skills to choose from. And if you really want to open those chests you can use one of the rogues you recruit.
Even if theres not a lot of great stuff in chests, you get 40 to 50 or so xp every time you open a locked chest or door, its worth it for just that imo. Same for disabling traps.
Yeah survival, i didnt bother using that until i got to about level 14 and didnt see anything else worth getting, so i got it mainly for that one little elf event, then i noticed red dots around corners on the minimap and thought it was a bug for a second... then realised it was survival kicking in and i could just get morrigan casting blizzard around corners to start fights.
its worth it for just that imo.
As a completionist xp/loot whore myself i see where youre coming from, but you need to pick about about 200 chests to pay for even one level of lockpick. And isnt xp communal, like if you had an npc rogue do the lockpick youd get the xp?
Yeah i did the first bunch of those with only one level in lockpick and stealth, and if the next bunch are harder i can chuck the rogue chick in the party.
you still need to increase their lockpicking skills.
Well duh.
you can find some nice weapons/armour and gifts.
"nice" isnt very compelling, the chests ive missed and had occasion to come back to with someone who can pick them have not given me anything of note.
Yeah, but my main is a rogue, and I don't ever take any of the other rogues with me. Not like theres much else to spend points on, survival maybe, but I haven't really gone in for any of the poison making or trap making.
"nice" isnt very compelling, the chests ive missed and had occasion to come back to with someone who can pick them have not given me anything of note.
could have been fixed chests you were opening.
some chests have fixed items, others are random and some are dependent on what level you are.
theres been plenty of gear ive found in chests that ive immediately equipped.
not only have i found some nice gear but one chest i opened had 3 enchantments in it that gave +5 to electricity, ice and fire. i put them on my starfang.
I guess if i had found loot like that when i was checking it out, i would have used it :/
Not like theres much else to spend points on, survival maybe,
Wrong skill tree. Its a choice between deft hands and combat talents. If deft hands was on the other skill set, yeah id definitely get it.
Also, have you checked out survival? It is pretty damn useful.
Yeah, but my main is a rogue,
My main is a rogue too.
Also how annoying was that spider queen in the deep roads, totally cheesed that one.
Oh yeah, its stealing thats on the other one. Oh well, I still like my lock picking :P Considering my party is usually Alistair, Sten and Morrigan (although recently has changed to Alistair, Oghren and Morrigan), if I didn't take lockpicking I wouldn't be able to open stuff at all.
I had a bit of trouble, till I got him into some heavy armour and got that talent that reduces the defense penalty he gets from having his two handed weapon damage increase mode active. After that, yeah, he was kicking ass. I got sick of him though, had finished his personal quest, and got sick of him giving me shit for being a pussy. At one point he tried to assume command of the party because he decided I was too weak to be the leader, and I had to fight him to get him back under control.
I've swapped to Oghren now cos I gave him the 2 handed Starfang sword and hes got all sorts of amusing innappropriate drunken banter going on and hes often making sleazy comments about Morrigan.
Alister, Wynn, Morrigan and PC Rogue ftw, twin healers a tank and a dps feind. I find its a rather awesome combo, both have revive so no-one ever really dies...
I have Morri, Sten, myself (two weapon fighter) and alister. I ditched Alister for ages and was using zevran. I wanted him for the lock picking, but he was crap at at and I ditched him for Alister.
I killed the other mage because she got in my way, I didn't know until afterwards that she was a player character. I think I got rid of the bow chick that way too. I'm not sure exactly as I've taken every choice to kill someone or let the place fall apart, haha.
When I re-roll I'm going a mage. I want to double mage it up and not have Morri (cause I'll be playing a goody-nut). I'll get a tank and a dedicated lock-picker. The mages will just use pots and be my main DPS units as well.
All you guys doing the heavy stamina based classes stack, you're going to love it once you play again and use a mana based group.
Tollazor: you're going to have a pretty hard time doing a double mage set up without mori. You'll just end up with wynne as dedicated healer and yourself as the only dps mage and be forced to use shitty melee, or worse, archer.
Ive been playing a goody for the most part and i have morrigan at 100, must be doing something right in that tent.
Wynne can learn damage spells anyway, and if you go straight to the tower and get her early she wont have a bunch of healing spells preassigned (if you dont want them) or you could use a mod that allows respec of characters.
Load times are starting to get to me, its not so bad at the start when you go into an area and stuff about for a while, but when youve gone everywhere and just need to go into a shop for 2 seconds or traverse a few maps to hand a quest in, or head back to camp to change your party, those 1-2 minute load times really start to grate.
Some combat niggles too, put your melee guys in a doorway to block it, the enemy just walks straight through them to your mages in the rear. And the combat tactics, you set all your team to attack one guy, then the tactics kick in and decide they should run towards the other side of the map.. i wish they would just stick to the target you assign until he is dead.
you're going to have a pretty hard time doing a double mage set up without mori. You'll just end up with wynne as dedicated healer and yourself as the only dps mage and be forced to use shitty melee, or worse, archer.
Hey that's my crew, right down to Lie as the shitty archer!
We do pretty well I reckon. I got Wynne midgame so she's heavy on heals but that works OK, I just need to get 3 levels to get CoC. I'm spooging like mad over Arcane Warrior at the moment, wearing massive armor, shield and longsword while casting Cone of Cold, Nightmare and Fireball seems absurd somehow.
The AW thing works really well IMO, with massive armor I'm sitting on 27% fatigue at the moment which is bearable, especially with effectively unlimited potions courtesy of herbalism. When I go AW mode it rockets to 78% which is great as fatigue turns into melee power with it on ... so I burn mana at the opening, then flick on burning blades and AW when OOM and go rip shit up.
If I need to do some backup heals or anything I can be out of AW and plenty mana again in about half a second. If its just a quick heal I can ignore the AW mana drain and just dump a pot for the heal and get back to bashing.
I finished the game today, it was generally pretty enjoyable. The inventory is still really annoying (similar to Mass Effect, but not as bad). Is it possible to make an RPG with an inventory system that doesn't involve having to spend 10 mins sorting out all your crap every so often? One can only hope.
While I initially liked the combat system, it definitley got a bit tedious by the time I was completing the bit for my fourth and final treaty. Overall the storyline was good, but:
Spoiler: The ending was predictable and could have been a bit better. The leadup to the final battle was also very trivial and tedious.
But all things considered, I enjoyed most of the 31 hours it took me to finish the game. Will definitley be waiting for some DLC/expansions to develop the story a bit more.
Wow, 31 hours, I think I've put about 50 hours into my game so far and haven't even got the fourth treaty signed yet! Prolly all the time I spend stopping to read everything.
Wow, 31 hours, I think I've put about 50 hours into my game so far and haven't even got the fourth treaty signed yet! Prolly all the time I spend stopping to read everything.
Yeah with my 31 hours I didn't really go out of my way to complete side quests unless they were along the way. I watched all the cut scenes and most of the dialogue, but didn't bother reading the millions of codex entries etc.
Alister, Wynn, Morrigan and PC Rogue
This is the group I used as well, it was pretty easy to take down anything. Tank and spank for bosses, and Morrigan could pretty much solo the trash (just stack blizzard and tempest around corners and everything gets stuck and dies).
If I play again, definitley going to go for 2 mage dps since that would be really fast.
Yeah, I got Shale, I just find him boring. Hardly any choices for gear, and only 2 or 3 different abilities you can use at any one time (depending what mode hes in).
"The first post-release downloadable expansion for Dragon Age: Origins has been announced by developer BioWare, with the content due "this holiday season."
Coming to all three platforms--PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360--"Return to Ostagar" is said to let players "exact their revenge and embark on a quest for the mighty arms and armor of the once great King Cailan when they revisit Ostagar, the site of the Grey Wardens' darkest hour, to reclaim the honor and learn the secrets of Ferelden's fallen king."
Wow, 31 hours, I think I've put about 50 hours into my game so far and haven't even got the fourth treaty signed yet! Prolly all the time I spend stopping to read everything.
Yeah I'm on 30 hours and it sounds like I'm around the same spot as yourself. I have dungeon crawlers OCD where I have to explore every nook and cranny just in case I miss something :( And so far the game really hasn't rewarded me for it, but I keep on doing it.
Actually in general the loot has been pretty uninspiring. Maybe I'm missing where all the good stuff is.
I do the same. Search everywhere before moving onto the next spot, trying to find that +10 Vorpal Sword of Pwnage. So far all I've found is a lousy leather cap x10000.
What are people's strategy on slaying dragons? I've killed two so far and am having trouble making my tank much more useful than just running in circles and taking damage. I use two archers and wynne with heal. By the time I've killed him I'm generally all out of HP/Mana potions.
My tank with shield wall and mastery ( no knockdown ) can take almost any hit from the dragon without too much trouble, but has a hard time attacking coz it usually kicks or tail swipes him out of the way, if tank is attacking anything forward of the front legs it just picks him up and eats him.
So I'm left using tank to distract dragon and pepper with arrows for about 3 hours until it finally dies. hugely unsatisfying way of killing a dragon.
When I used alistair to tank dragons in normal mode, i found the dragons only ate him when he was low enough, it seems dragons only do that as a sort of execution move, so if you keep him topped up and maybe get him to use pots at 40% instead of 25% that might be a good place to start.
The 2nd tip would be to go into those fights with a whole fuck tonne of lesser mana pots. On my 2nd playthrough I used shale as my tank on nightmare and it was easy as. Maybe in part because on the 2nd playthrough i had mana pots out the ass (i didnt the first time) and also i think shale is abit imbalanced. As the tanks, you shouldnt rely on them to do dmg, if they have taunt and their passive threat abilities it should be enough to hold agro and thats their job done.
The biggest problem is that your only dps is from archers..which suck, sadly. So no matter what, the fight is going to drag on for awhile. Just come potted up like crazy and it shouldnt be too aids.
Ideally the fight turns into a rather boring tank and spank and thats a good thing.
spoiler about how many dragons are in the game to kill:
Spoiler: There are only 2 of those "big" dragons to fight (not including the archdemon) which kind of suck
nah he'd eat me at 3/4 full ... and I would sometimes survive it with a couple of heal spells during the eating. Maybe I'm just trying it too early, I think I'm still only like level 11/12.
so the dragons are just Spoiler: the ashes dragon, and morrigan mum? ?
Hmm then I dont know what makes the dragon eat you then. He didnt once eat me on nigthmare (shale tank) and I dont think he ate me (alistair) on the normal kill either, though he did on the attemtps before the kill.
Level shouldnt be a problem. Killed them at lvl 12. Then again it could be very different with different class make ups.
Just finished it, the niggles with combat were really starting to grate towards the end, when you are defending the gate, 4 guys standing and blocking the area and the hurlocks just waltzed right past and around the barricades forcing my guys to follow them, which just let more in, pretty god damn annoying, you should get a free hit or something if an enemy just attempts to walk past you without engaging (i think thats how it worked in previous d&d rule games).. what made it worse was the glitchy way you seem to engage an enemy, select your guy and select attack, meanwhile theres a short delay while he locks on then moves into the exact position to hit... meanwhile the enemy is now out of range forcing you to chase after him like a chump. At least the enemy at this point were pretty much cannon fodder except for the odd mage.
Also the "tactics" thingy started to grate, select your character, give him a target, select someone else.. first guy decides to ignore your order and engage someone who is in the middle of your storm of the century... yeah 40 cunning my arse you god damn moron. You end up putting your team on hold which means they wont move two feet to engage an enemy forcing more micro.
But i guess there are some bugs which work in your favour too balancing it a little, casting your area spells at a door affects the guys on the other side, so survival 4 + blizzard + repel ward pretty much meant near the end of the game any encounter except an ambush was trivial, a few times they would end with me just opening the door to a room full of corpses.
70 hours or so in the end, a fair bit of that seemed to be load screens near the end, minute long loads just to walk into a shop was pretty ridiculous. (My shit computer can be partly to blame for that though)
Good game all up despite the niggles i laughed near the end when Spoiler: Enchantment?, my endings seemed a bit meh Spoiler: morrigan went off and had my god-baby but still thought of me, dwarves built a golemn and it went crazy, the queen was like her father etc.. i was going to get her to marry alistair, but then as i saw the blood spatter all over her face when alistair killed her father i realised that probably wasnt going to happen nothing too earth shattering there, did any one go full on evil and get some out there endings?
Its pretty hard to use the games aoe spells if your party has even more than 1 melee besides the tank. Think your mage has to go entropy if you were serious in trying to make that work.
Totally agree on the whole moving and attacking thing. It just doesnt work. pretty retarded you cant move and attack at the same time as melee. Since the trash gets 1 shot in the end i gave up controlling my duelist rogue and just took over my archer and shot shit.
and with the loading times, from reading forums it seems to be memory leak problem and the longer your DA sessions are the worse the loading times get. Alt tabbing heaps will make it worse faster.
Well i was not exactly going to restart the game every 30 minutes to fix it :/
With the aoe spells i used them pretty cheesily, cast them with the whole party on hold with bows, then if anyone gets through give them swords and take the party off hold, is there a tactic "dont be a dumb fuck and walk into my area DoT spells"? I did notice that with shale if i selected the ranged skill then left him to his own devices he liked to throw rocks at the single weak arse enemy in the middle of my group...
I know if you change their behaviour to "default" or some of the even more passive ones, they will move out of aoe when they're in it, dont know if they would be smart enuogh to not walk into it though. And from experience, it doestn work that well.
Something that annoyed me at the end:
Spoiler: I had been using Myself, Alistair, Wynne and Morrigan the whole game. Pretty much ignored everyone else (ie they had starting gear, hadn't allocated points they had got from levels etc). It was pretty frustrating how you had to use the other guys to fight of the things at the gate near the end. After neglecting them for the whole game, I had to spend a while leveling them up and figuring out what all their skills do.
About the DLC, its $5USD. Given that's less than it would cost to buy The Stone Keeper or Warden's Keep presently, exactly how big can we expect this DLC to be... hopefully its longer than 1-2 hours - though the pricing indicates otherwise.
