Dragon Age

[Tinzen]

Does anyone know what the "percent of Dragon Age" completed stat is measuring?  After finishing the game with one character and doing another origin, I'm still only at 49%.

The achievements you've completed.

[stray]

Might be the first PS3 game I'd play multiple times to unlock trophies.. Although apparently achievements are somehow cooler than trophies, I take it?

[lac]

For those experiencing multi minute load times on fast pc's, .net framework 4 beta 2 seems to help. If that doesn't work, restarting the game often does the trick

[jakonovski]

Might be the first PS3 game I'd play multiple times to unlock trophies.. Although apparently achievements are somehow cooler than trophies, I take it?

Trophies are for snobby librul commie pinkos, achievements are for the self-sufficient working man.

[NiX]

Redcliffe Castle is tough. Is it the courtyard you're having trouble in?  Look around when you get there for a possible solution to that...

No, I'm not even in the castle yet. This is just for when

[Reg]

Ahh, that's a long grindy fight. All I can suggest is bring lots of potions.

[Segoris]

No, I'm not even in the castle yet. This is just for when

What I did for that part:

[Segoris]

For those experiencing multi minute load times on fast pc's, .net framework 4 beta 2 seems to help. If that doesn't work, restarting the game often does the trick

Thanks, that's good to know. Also for those who save a lot, check your saves file. Mine was up to 500+ mb, and I'm a save whore (was at ~60 saves or so at the end of the first play-through). Maybe it's just me, but I didn't think the save files would be that large.

[Xurtan]

60 saves? Ack. I just had five and cycled through them.

[sidereal]

For those experiencing multi minute load times on fast pc's, .net framework 4 beta 2 seems to help. If that doesn't work, restarting the game often does the trick

Thanks, that's good to know. Also for those who save a lot, check your saves file. Mine was up to 500+ mb, and I'm a save whore (was at ~60 saves or so at the end of the first play-through). Maybe it's just me, but I didn't think the save files would be that large.

The entire universe of the game is persistent.  If you leave something in a chest, you can go back 80 hours later and it'll still be there.  That takes a lot of room.

I use a Battle save that I overwrite after every room.  If I die in a battle because I do something stupid, I go back to that.  I also do a rolling group of about 5 saves: one every area or so.  That means if it turns out I completely fucked up some unalterable decision, I can probably restore back to it.  I can't image why you'd ever want more than that.  At some point, you'd be losing so much going back to save 1 that you might as well just start the game over.  So why keep it?

[Segoris]

Yeah, only with Bioware do I get a little stupid with how many saves I have. However, I know there are some people as bad or worse then I am and thought they might want to know how much storage it was taking.

[Threash]

You could also be losing optimal dmg output by not being a homo.  


[/quote]

Thats twice someone mentions that, does it actually do anything?

[Ingmar]

No, Stray is just being RABBLE RABBLE DON'T MIN/MAX.

[tmp]

No, I'm not even in the castle yet. This is just for when

I just said "Sorry guys but i don't have time for this" and let the problem resolve itself, so to speak

[Lantyssa]

Thats twice someone mentions that, does it actually do anything?

Getting a date can be a little harder, but the damage output is about the same.  Stick with what you enjoy playing.

[stray]

No, Stray is just being RABBLE RABBLE DON'T MIN/MAX.

I used to not care to say that, but really, it is best to just have fun/do what feels right to you.

Besides, there are multiple things to do with Alister if you keep him around. Make him tough against mages specifically since he's a templar... and ironically, make him just tank for Wynne while she heals. Plenty of "RP" there. I just think it sucks to think you need one s+b warrior. It's a cool class to play firsthand on your player character. Your main could be a champion beserker or something (what I might do).

[sidereal]

I'm not sure you really need s+b.

My first char was a lightside s+b human noble.  Wasn't really feeling it after 10 levels or so.  Overpower, snooze, repeat.  I restarted as a Spirit/Entropy mage.  (Yowza.  Crushing Prison is a beast.).  I can run him, Morrigan, a rogue for chests, and a 2-hander without any trouble.  The CC of dual mages makes up for not having a shield.  And I'm considering migrating to 2 mages and 2 2-handers or 3 mages and a 2-H.  Keeping a rogue just for chests doesn't really buy much, since I can just change the party and come back later for the chests after clearing the place out.  You have to come back again to get higher-level chests anyway.  Oghren and Sten together should be able to chop down whatever isn't held or frozen pretty quickly.

[stray]

Alister is just cool to have around though.

[sidereal]

He sounds exactly like Ricky Gervais.  Drives me insane.  I enjoy listening to Claudia Black, though.

[Strazos]

I'm somewhat disturbed by Bioware's recent habit of reincarnating Carth.

[Evil Elvis]

For those experiencing multi minute load times on fast pc's, .net framework 4 beta 2 seems to help. If that doesn't work, restarting the game often does the trick

Thanks, that's good to know. Also for those who save a lot, check your saves file. Mine was up to 500+ mb, and I'm a save whore (was at ~60 saves or so at the end of the first play-through). Maybe it's just me, but I didn't think the save files would be that large.

1.4 GB :0

[Nightblade]

1.25GB with 425 saves... I had no idea the files were so massive.

[Rasix]

F5/F9.  Haven't you guys ever heard of quicksaves?

[Draegan]

So I hit 15 tonight and finished getting the elves on my side.  Level 15 Templar ability is shit.

I'm beginning to tire of my S+B elf warrior.  It's hard to die unless I forget to heal.  I have all my other toons on autolevel and I stopped caring what they do.  I need to readjust some of their abilities.  I don't bother using much CC though Morrigan just got some cool entropy skills.

I got pissed off I missed to chance to become a Reaver, now I'm a Champ/Temp.  Full shield skills, didn't get overpower yet. 

It's getting tiring.  Next run through I'll play a mage and play around with my team's abilities more.

[stray]

Play a rogue. There's more micromanaging/team shuffling involved. Plus, there's the utility skills to mix things up a bit. Not to mention you'll have decent stats for bow damage, although that's almost the same case for s+b warrior too. With stealth though it's pretty sweet.

[Nightblade]

F5/F9.  Haven't you guys ever heard of quicksaves?

I like having seperate saves incase of something screwing up... It came in handy a total of one time.

[Sheepherder]

The entire universe of the game is persistent.  If you leave something in a chest, you can go back 80 hours later and it'll still be there.  That takes a lot of room.

If it's half as large as a full install of Warcraft III and expansion it's too fucking large.

[tmp]

Ehh. My save files are ~7 mb big per file at the moment and i'm OCD about it so probably saved like 300+ times so far (i do clean up and overwrite old ones frequently, though)  7 mb hardly feels like "too fucking large" given how many corpses with worthless loot i left across the countryside to rot forever.

[Zetor]

Yeah, I only use quicksaves and autosaves myself... so far I only had to reload an autosave once:
Sure, I lost about ~10 mins of playtime, but I save much more than that by not manual saving all the time, I think. So far there seems to be an autosave just before engaging in a boss fight / getting into a plot-critical conversation, does that change later on?

[Gorky]

I've decided to put the game on hold until they release the fix for the 100% CPU usage + slow load times problems. What used to be a bearable 1-2 min delay has now become a mind numbing 4-5 min load for every transition, even minor interior ones. Plus as an added blow, as I've progressed, I am getting more and more stuttering in game.

For reference, I am playing on an AMD dual core processor with 4 GB RAM. I am fairly certain that the game should not be using 100% of both my cores just in the menu screen.

[Zetor]

Are you getting the slow load times all the time or only after X time has passed? I had the same experience and restarting the game made load times fast again.

[Reg]

The game runs at a 100 percent on my PC as well but I don't have the load problem some of you are seeing. One time it did take a minute or two - I almost killed it and restarted thinking it had hung but it came back.  The problem went away after a game restart though luckily.

I seriously considered going arcane warrior but it just didn't interest me. I'd played a melee rogue on my previous game and wanted to be an actual spell casting mage this time through.

I've used both Oghren the Berserker and Shale as tanks in parties without Alistair by the way and they both did just fine. Currently I'm playing with me and Morrigan and Wynne and one tanker and having no trouble at all. I go through the area afterwards with a rogue to open chests and disarm traps.

[Zetor]

Shale is an insanely uber tank (esp. after speccing out the stoneheart line). Holds aggro, barely takes damage... plus I can switch him into rock-thrower mode if I want to cheese groups of enemies with stacked mage AOE. About the only drawback is a lack of stun / knockdown protection.

How does tanking with a damage-dealer warrior (sten, oghren) work? Do you use sword+shield talents (with a weapon swap) or just go with 2h talents? In my experience, when a 2-hander wielding Sten gets focused by archers and melee he's squished fairly quickly, and he's clad in full dead legion plate...

[rk47]

That's when you throw a Forcefield on him imo. Recently discovered how overpowered this spell is. In terms of crowd control or defensive use, this shit's too good. Was dealing with a red name with 2 yellow and 3 white mobs. Forcefield the Red name. AoE Cone of Cold the whites. Shatter em. Grind the first yellow to death. Red recovered from Force Field, cast another Force field, repeat. It also works well when your healer gets hammered by boss mob. You're an invulnerable punching bag for a good 15 seconds at least.

[NiX]

So swapping my main to a 2H and turning on frost weapons (didn't know Morrigan had that) seemed to do it. Maybe it also helped that I recruited half the town to help this time around, but now that I've switched weapons I want to re-spec. I'm tempted to use the mod out there that lets you do that.