Dragon Age

[Draegan]

I'm going for Sword and Board and it's real annoying that Alistair is a Templar as well.  I need diversity.

I got to the point where Morrigan joins your party last night.  Can't wait to get back into the action.

Also, I'm so going to nail Morrigan.

[kildorn]

Made Easy difficulty easier

Meh? Normal has been challenging in a few spots but not wtfroflstomplol crazy, and you can always reload. How easy do they want easy to be?

Probably an alteration to reventants. No matter the difficulty, one of those can completely dismantle your party in about 6 seconds. Entirely beatable, but I think Easy was supposed to be more for the casual "I love the story" gamers than actually being challenging.

They're adjusting normal as well (increasing player party power), which is interesting.

[jakonovski]

I read all these posts about nailing Morrigan and I'm first all "dude that's so immature", then I think about the idea some more and end up with "aww yeah".

My SO has been in China for almost 3 months now.

[Xilren's Twin]

Just tried to upload some screen shots to the profile.  We'll see how long they take to show up.  Listed under "Nerlix".

[Tarami]

Probably an alteration to reventants. No matter the difficulty, one of those can completely dismantle your party in about 6 seconds. Entirely beatable, but I think Easy was supposed to be more for the casual "I love the story" gamers than actually being challenging.

They're adjusting normal as well (increasing player party power), which is interesting.

Easy could be called "realtime", because it's just about challenging enough if you don't do any micro management, IMO. Personally I play it on easy, because I find it more interesting to tinker with the tactic slots than try to control every fidget of the toons.

[Rasix]

BTW, does anyone know if your non used characters gain XP in camp?

I believe they keep your camp characters within 2 levels of your main character.   Doggie and annoying large dude both leveled while in camp for me.

I think the game difficulty is fine when it doesn't turn to the swarm.  It's not really possible early on, from what I've seen, to make your tank and other characters nigh unhittable, so it's pretty easy to get overwhelmed by numbers.  Flanking doesn't help here as a lot of scum seem to be rogues.  Getting your main damage sponge the shield talent that makes them unflankable seems to help things a lot, otherwise it's difficult to keep up with the healing without chugging potions like crazy and having Morrigan cast a heal everytime it's off cooldown.  Morrigan is what makes living possible.  Cone of cold and other CC help a ton.

Of course, having two rogues in the party isn't helping.  I'm not really going to change that until I get another mage or perhaps a cool dwarf.  Just got the third bard song for Frenchie.  Let's see how much this helps.

[Brogarn]

Been going through the origins. They're pretty well done, although the Dwarf commoner (rogue) was a bit depressing and the Dalish (also rogue) was kinda boring so I didn't get very far with either of those. My human mage and human warrior both got to the tower to light the beacon with the latter actually completing it. I had an easier time with the warrior, which surprised me since mages are pretty awesome.

I have no idea which I'll continue on with. I think I want to redo the mage and go with different spells but I hate redoing story lines. I also would like to see the Dwarf noble origin. The one I'm enjoying the most so far, though, is my human warrior. I really liked his story line.

[Cyrrex]

Holy Christ Almighty, it appears that my resolve has crumbled and I now have to go by this game.  Damn all of you!

[eldaec]

Stuck on a business trip with a broken laptop 6750 miles and at least a week or two from a functional gaming machine.

 

People complaining about a fractionally delayed European launch can stfu I hate you all.

[Tebonas]

Hmm, game looks beautiful and all, but despite it being on my Online Profile, I am missing the downloadable content after redeeming the code. Am I missing some trick?

[tmp]

Hmm, game looks beautiful and all, but despite it being on my Online Profile, I am missing the downloadable content after redeeming the code. Am I missing some trick?

Make sure the service "Dragon Age: Origins - Content Updater" is running? Other than that, not sure. Manual says the game uses ports 8000-8001 tcp/udp, maybe these have to be manually opened with some firewalls...

on entirely unrelated note, <3 the Codex.

"The songs are filled with wild exaggerations and outright lies, but this hardly differs from the scholarly papers of some of my contemporaries."

[Tebonas]

Thats it, thanks. The service was on manual, and I had to restart it per hand with my Administrator account (while Dragon Age was running). Starting it prior to that had no effect.

A service to load DLC? The mind boggles...

[gryeyes]

Your guys do gain exp while inactive. Level 16 and my battlemage is invincable, having to ratchet up the difficult just to make it ineteresting. He basically solo'd the  on hard.

[AutomaticZen]

Your guys do gain exp while inactive. Level 16 and my battlemage is invincable, having to ratchet up the difficult just to make it ineteresting. He basically solo'd the  on hard.

What spec are you?  Arcane Warrior?

[Montague]

I fucking hate wolves.

[Rasix]

Awesome, ran the patch and the game won't launch anymore.

[AutomaticZen]

Awesome, ran the patch and the game won't launch anymore.

That's what they mean by 'easier'.  Can't die if you can launch in the first place.

[WayAbvPar]

Yeah, I managed to not buy it last night. Until I logged into work to check something right before I went to bed. I caught the Steam icon in my system tray, realized I could start the download and be able to play it today, and it was over. I am completely devoid of willpower.

[Rasix]

Found a patch for the patch.  I had to run this before DA would launch again.

[stray]

What's the difference(s) between the pc and the console versions?  Is there an overriding reason to get one over the other?

Kotaku Link Incoming. PC vs PS3.

I'm on PS3, it plays out fine. I'm sure there are some things to regret, but I wouldn't know em as I pretty much only game on my playstation anyways. Ignorance is bliss?   There are odd ways of doing things in the controls and menus, and even how DLC is handled just seems weird and not well integrated with PS3 store...but you get used to it.

[Xanthippe]

What's the difference(s) between the pc and the console versions?  Is there an overriding reason to get one over the other?

Kotaku Link Incoming. PC vs PS3.

I'm on PS3, it plays out fine. I'm sure there are some things to regret, but I wouldn't know em as I pretty much only game on my playstation anyways. Ignorance is bliss?   There are odd ways of doing things in the controls and menus, and even how DLC is handled just seems weird and not well integrated with PS3 store...but you get used to it.

Thanks for the input. 

I prefer to play on my pc but will play on console if it's better on console.  Keyboard's easier to deal for me than a control pad.

[gryeyes]

What spec are you?  Arcane Warrior?

Yep, but only with the last talent did it become viable to forgo essentially all casting. He is now an unstoppable beast even while wearing half caster gear with a good 10 spells completely wasted. Next level when I get the corpse vamp skill Im going to try to solo the rest of the game on hard. Flat 75% resists, Both physical and magical resistance  capped (not sure what 100 represents). All other stats are a good 10-15% higher than the other pure melee guys (weapon dmg/defense/armor). While he just auto-attacks the bonus he gets from all of his buffs offsets the lack of skills. He has like 9 sustained buffs that strangely do not deactivate with 0 mana. Has a fatigue of 130ish%

And if you get desperate you can pop a mana potion heal yourself+do some form of AoE doom.  Fighting in the middle of an inferno is pretty awesome.

[Nonentity]

Mm, dwarven female hookers.

I'm having a pretty easy time through the game so far as a 2H warrior. I destroy things. I basically set the AI to deal with the chaff while I go take out the big targets. Works pretty well, haven't ran into an encounter I couldn't beat yet.

[March]

What spec are you?  Arcane Warrior?

Yep, but only with the last talent did it become viable to forgo essentially all casting. He is now an unstoppable beast even while wearing half caster gear with a good 10 spells completely wasted. Next level when I get the corpse vamp skill Im going to try to solo the rest of the game on hard. Flat 75% resists, Both physical and magical resistance  capped (not sure what 100 represents). All other stats are a good 10-15% higher than the other pure melee guys (weapon dmg/defense/armor). While he just auto-attacks the bonus he gets from all of his buffs offsets the lack of skills. He has like 9 sustained buffs that strangely do not deactivate with 0 mana. Has a fatigue of 130ish%

And if you get desperate you can pop a mana potion heal yourself+do some form of AoE doom.  Fighting in the middle of an inferno is pretty awesome.

Heh, sounds pretty fun... I've been waiting for a fighter/mage for a while... though, based on the mechanics you describe, I wouldn't ever patch the game if I were you.

[Montague]

Toolset editor is now available.

http://social.bioware.com/toolset.php

[Khaldun]

The early fights as a human rogue definitely require some tactics, which is all to the good. Archer and caster AI is pretty decent, too: the darkspawn casters will do their best to make you chase them back into an archer killzone. The ogre took a bit of planning as well.

[Bunk]

I fucking hate wolves.

Ran into the pack of about 20 outside the first village. Thought I was doing fine, until Allister got overwhelmed and turned into dogchow. Whittled them down til there were about five left and just me standing. Proceded to go through every healing salve in my kit... had about 5 hps, and there were still two wolves left.

At that point, I had the bright idea to get help from the village. Ran all the way back to the Chantry - and the knights stood there yacking with each other as rabid wolves ran between thier legs.

Ended up running all the way back out to the field where I encountered the pack, and looting a healing kit off of one of the dead wolf corpses. Healed up with that, turned around and finished them off.

That healing kit I used... the only loot possesed by the entire pack.


I think my current favorite thing in the game is looking over the long list of injuries Allister is suffering from after a long battle, and wondering how he's still walking.

Also, Morrigan's seeming invulnerability to blood splatter:

[schild]

For Morrigan to get bloody, you need to give her a weapon that can make blood come out of the victim. It seems to be trigger on hit, and since she's using magic, she's largely clean. This may not apply to player character mages - also, it may just be a bug.

[Slyfeind]

I think I might set things to Normal tonight. Easy is boring. You can set difficulty at will, can't you? Also, can you change your appearance after you start? I hate my nose.

I'm totally going to romance Joan of Arc girl, because I know most people are going after Morrigan. Normally I hate video game romances, but I think I can stomach it here if only to see what happens!

[kildorn]

For Morrigan to get bloody, you need to give her a weapon that can make blood come out of the victim. It seems to be trigger on hit, and since she's using magic, she's largely clean. This may not apply to player character mages - also, it may just be a bug.

It's based off landing melee hits/crits, it seems (or killing with them?)

Archers who never draw blades in melee are also pristine. A side effect of the archery line is apparently lowered dry cleaning bills.

[Tmon]

I think I might set things to Normal tonight. Easy is boring. You can set difficulty at will, can't you? Also, can you change your appearance after you start? I hate my nose.

Don't think you can edit your character's appearance but you can change difficulty at will.

[Reg]

Not that it does me much good. Morrigan's mom just ate me twice in a row. Once on easy and then again on Normal. 

[sidereal]

Hm.  I'm doing character research, and from what I've gleaned from the Interwebs, Archer is not something you are.  Archery is just something that fighters and rogues do when enemies aren't very close, and the idea of specializing in Archery doesn't seem to be particularly well supported.  Or so I read from the hordes of people who tried to roll Night Elf Rangers and are getting pwnt.

Does this jibe with your experiences?  If so, I'm probably going mage for ranged combat plus other nastiness (maybe shapeshifting)

[Draegan]

I've only heard that but it seems obvious since none of the specializations support archery.

[Nonentity]

Here's what happens with my character that I am trying to make be a pure archer.

She shoots a bunch of people at range. Someone runs into melee and slaps her. After finishing off whatever shot she is on, she switches out to her melee weapons.

I put a script in place to make her always swap to range weapon. But this happens every time, so every time a character gets into close range and hits her, she pulls out her melee weapons, then pulls out her bow again. It's super annoying, since I took the Melee Archer talent. You'd think they wouldn't do that after you have that talent.