Dragon Age

[Xilren's Twin]

On completely unrelated note i started the game today and found it sneakily installed new official DLC bonus -- "the Edge". A dagger, hideously overpowered just like the rest of the DLC items.

Yeah i got that too after downloading the Warden's Keep yesterday.  I thought it might be part of that.  Description written like the Ginsu knife :)

[Brogarn]

On completely unrelated note i started the game today and found it sneakily installed new official DLC bonus -- "the Edge". A dagger, hideously overpowered just like the rest of the DLC items.

Yeah i got that too after downloading the Warden's Keep yesterday.  I thought it might be part of that.  Description written like the Ginsu knife :)

I was wondering where the hell that came from.

EDIT: But I don't have Warden's Keep. The thing just popped into my inventory. Didn't even realize I had it until I went to sell loot.

[Thrawn]

Got around to finishing my first play through last night.  It's not often I finish a RPG like that and feel like they do a good job of wrapping stuff up but Dragon Age certainly accomplished that.  I really liked how they covered what happened to all the major areas/people along the way and how it turned out.

Now if I could just chase down a certain party member that dissapeared after the fight with the Archdemon.

Looking forward to my second play through as a mage with much lower moral standards then my dwarven fighter was.    On a higher difficulty as well, I was a bit let down by how easy the final fight was.

[Rasix]

On completely unrelated note i started the game today and found it sneakily installed new official DLC bonus -- "the Edge". A dagger, hideously overpowered just like the rest of the DLC items.

Yeah i got that too after downloading the Warden's Keep yesterday.  I thought it might be part of that.  Description written like the Ginsu knife :)

I was wondering where the hell that came from.

I believe you get it if you register your game on the Bioware site.

[Sky]

Not looking forward to 2 handers.

Why not? They're pretty decent. Two knockdowns, one crit attack that works great for shatters, one high damage swing and two debuffs that are also dual attacks (one free hit + debuff, basically). I have Wynne set to slap that stamina regen on me when I get to half stam, and I keep up powerful swings and indomitable. A couple grandmaster runes on my sword, plus frozen weapons and chop chop chop. It's slow, but it's nice seeing that big chunk go down while Alistair holds off the crowd in shield wall/threaten mode. Also, you can mostly just work Str and Con, I have a big bucket of HP and do really nice dmg on those chops.

On DLC items: I probably won't be using them in my next play-through. At tmp points out, it's nice to actually get upgrades through the game. Once I put on the Blood Dragon armor, nothing can touch its stats. Ditto for Al in the Warden armor (but at least he looks good in it...).

On Cone of Cold: when I had Morrigan early on, I was also using it with friendly fire when my tanks got into trouble, I was real low on health goops and Morr had just gotten the heal spell. I'd freeze the whole melee huddle and then heal my guys while everyone was frozen :)

Should be unlocking Champion tonight. Tried to run a no-save quickie to unlock Reaver and then play it normally. Didn't foresee

On leveling without taking skills: I did that for a few levels early on. I'm so singly focused on 2h, and the abilities there seemed better than the second warrior tree. I'm maxed for 2h and the first warrior tree, with a single point in templar for the mana drain. I'll probably spend the next couple in templar, because I really, really don't like misdirection hex.

Hmm. This post got a little long. I love this game.

[Lucas]

Nice official wallpaper of the continent of Thedas:

http://dragonage.bioware.com/gallery/wallpapers/ (1600x1200 and 1920x1200 only)

[Mazakiel]

There should have definitely been a Human Commoner origin.

I'd thought there was one, at least at some point in development, and apparently they'd gotten at least part of it in the game.  I was bored and playing with console commands in the human noble origin last night and I must have glitched the intro somehow.  Once I finished the Highever area and started the Ostagar part, Cailan's intro had him asking about my accent.  Apparently, the commoner origin would have had you coming from near Redcliffe, and there would have been darkspawn overrunning your home.  Maybe eventually we'll get more origins and such in a DLC pack.  

[Threash]

The edge was a reward for buying the game before november 30th, thats why you got it Dec 1st.

[Bandit]

Found these combos if people didn't know about them, I only knew about the freeze+stonefist and the Sleep+Horror

Grease on Fire
Grease + Cone of Fire

Improved Drain
Vulnerability Hex + Drain Life.

Shatter
The enemy needs to be frozen or petrified.

Frozen + Melee Critical Hit = Massive Damage possibly instant kill.
Petrify + Melee Critical Hi
Frozen + Stonefist
Pertrify + Stonefist

Nightmare Sleep + Horror
(Deals large damage and still inflicts the horror effects)

Shockwave
Force Field + Crushing Prison
Blows up the force field, knocking down and stunning everyone around the forcefielded guy.

Entropic Death
Death Hex+Death Cloud
(Deals massive spirit damage to the subject of the hex)

Tempest + Inferno + Blizzard = Perfect Storm
(This requires three things, a massive mana pool, immediate cast one after the other AND not getting delayed on the spell)

[Lakov_Sanite]

I keep hearing shale dlc is free but is that not with steam or with the deluxe edition or something? When I click the little download tab it says I need points or whatever to buy it, which I do not have.

[Reg]

You should have gotten (at least) two codes, one for blood armor and one for Shale. You enter them on the dragon age website using the ID you registered the game under and that should do it.

[taolurker]

Found these combos if people didn't know about them, I only knew about the freeze+stonefist and the Sleep+Horror

There are other combos as well:

Crushing Prison on frozen or petrified = Shatter

Glyph of Paralysis and Repulsion overlapping equals explosion similar to the forcefield/crushing prison one.

Also using spell might plus Blizzard and Tempest creates a "Storm of the Century" which increases lightning damage.


Also there are now a couple of decent mods:
Dragon Age Mutator (which allows a bunch of decent changes like no cooldowns on some things, stealing/looting messages, disable auto level for new companions so you can choose what they start your group with)
Dragon Age Beguiler (a way to access all the cheats without the console)
Misha the Hoarder (a NPC to store items while in camp)

I also believe there is a nude available through that site, with a login, and that site is definitely the one to check for "unofficial" mods.

[Lakov_Sanite]

You should have gotten (at least) two codes, one for blood armor and one for Shale. You enter them on the dragon age website using the ID you registered the game under and that should do it.

D'oh I was wondering what those codes were for, I assumed some sort of multiplayer online thing. When steam gave them it wasn't very specific.

[tmp]

on Leliana:

[Thrawn]

D'oh I was wondering what those codes were for, I assumed some sort of multiplayer online thing. When steam gave them it wasn't very specific.

Heh, you're not alone.  I finished my first play-through and I'm just now grabbing my DLC and armor after reading this thread.

[Lakov_Sanite]

on Leliana:

I don't get it?

[01101010]

on Leliana:

I don't get it?

wait for it... waaaaait for it...

[jakonovski]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV_eGm1qgGs

[Lakov_Sanite]

  I had forgotten about that one.  At first I thought it had something to do with promiscuity and I was gonna say that zhevran will sleep with yout character at just neutral or slightly above. I gave him a couple bottles of wine and suddenly it's elf on elf action.(It's not gay if it's an elf) Though I was just experimenting so I didnt save after, can't have Morrigan thinking I'm cheating on her.

[stray]

I kind of regret not going bisexual/gay with my true Neutral character.  It dawned on me that otherwise, he's a good character to unlock some things, and gain more trophies. Alas, he was pretty rude to Zhevran fancying him. Quite the homophobe.

[Ingmar]

Why give me a voice but not let me use it? It's not like they were trying to save money on the VO work here.

Unpossible, or nearly so.

Consider:

At a minimum, they'd be doing probably 4 or 6 more VOs - one per gender per race, since Fereldan humans have English accents and dwarves and elves have American/Canadian ones. Maybe you could get away with elves and dwarves having the same voices, but that would probably be pretty jarring. More ideally you'd have at least one voice per race gender and origin combination but that would be completely prohibitive.

Each one of these VO sets would be roughly as large as all the other voice in the game combined, if not larger, because not only do they participate in nearly every conversation in the game, you also have to provide alternate lines for all the different conversation options and for special lines based on character origin. It would be a truly ridiculous amount of work. They could get away with it in Mass Effect because there are only 2 VO sets needed and there's very little variance in there based on character choice - a few bits here and there depending on your background but they're very minor.

They are doing it for SWTOR the way you suggest, apparently, though. We'll see how that works out for them... I'm hopeful but not terribly optimistic on that front.

[schild]

They are doing it for SWTOR the way you suggest, apparently, though. We'll see how that works out for them.

No, they aren't.

[Ingmar]

I'm willing to indulge the whole Bioware AUSTIN difference thing for design stuff, but this is just a logistical matter of getting the VO people in, doing recordings, etc. I mean other than the design choice of doing it in the first place obviously.

[stray]

As if I don't already have enough of a problem creating characters. I'd start going insane trying to create character features that matched the voices..

Yes, it's stupid.. But what if I wanted a dude who looked like JJ from Good Times - and all of my voice options are just variations on Leonidas or Prince Valiant? Not gonna work.  

[Lakov_Sanite]

So I just got shale and all I can think of when speaking to it is...Bea Arthur?

[Threash]

(This requires three things, a massive mana pool, immediate cast one after the other AND not getting delayed on the spell)

Uh, or more than one mage.

[01101010]

So I just got shale and all I can think of when speaking to it is...Bea Arthur?

Not surprising with the whole girl power thing going on.

[Slyfeind]

on Leliana:

I get a red X! Does that mean she's menstruating?

On another note, started my second playthrough as a city elf. Going to be rogue mercenary gimme money or I don't care. Totally going to score with Morrigan.

[Venkman]

No matter how you track as a character, really friendly, neutral, and sociopathic, you can always choose really friendly, neutral, and sociopathic.

This is interesting, because playing a religious zealot, I was mostly good, but there were moments I was sociopathic. Maybe the direction to evolve in, is to gauge the player's responses, and open up new dialog choices based on those. I'd probably want to respec my personality at will, though. :)

Yea, it's definitely a tradeoff. The method used here sorta lets the player trend one way and then decide to have an enlightenment on their own. I'm thinking if they contrived it like I had thought earlier, it would be almost impossible to make it feel natural that you slid towards good or slid towards evil. DA:O almost feels more real life, as if it gives equal voice to all your inner angels and demons, since most times I'm repressing natural responses in the favor of forcibly trending a certain way

Found these combos if people didn't know about them, I only knew about the freeze+stonefist and the Sleep+Horror

This is good stuff. I used freeze/stonefist and Fireball/Grease (CoF didn't work for me) with occasionally getting Crits while they're frozen. But the Force Field one seems cool and I definitely will find a way to do Tempest + inferno + Blizzard no matter how many times I save and reload 

[Lakov_Sanite]

I will say forcefield/crushing prison is a beast and do be careful, i exploded alistair doing it near him.

[stray]

Crushing Prison in and of itself is my favorite spell in the game... But I haven't made a pure caster yet to really explore everything.


Speaking of mages, the Warden keep powers are great if you had an Arcane Warrior. Hah.. I decided to destroy the vials though, since my character is good (that, and I want to cockblock AW's overpoweredness a bit). Basically one of the powers allows you to convert health to mana. Since an Arcane Warrior is heavily armored and barely gets hit for shit - and even if you do, your magic rating lets pots and heals heal you tremendously, it's pretty nifty. I'm thinking now that this build is the most powerful there is. Plain Vanilla AW with the Keep ability. It basically enables you to do all of your meleeing as an AW, and having free rein to cast as much as you like.

[edit] Needless to say, "balancing" wasn't a big priority with DLC content. Be it weapons or abilities, they're overpowered.

[Strazos]

Question on DW Rogues: Is there a reason I should not be using a sword and dagger in my off-hand? I want to go with 2 daggers, but the drop in damage is significant.

Also, preferences on Duelist vs Assassin?

[sidereal]

There are lots of daggers with big pluses to backstab damage.  I imagine if you had a couple of those, it would make up for the lack of normal damage. 

And there's a higher level dual wielder skill that lets you go the other way and use two main hand weapons.

[sigil]

Dual mains was awesome with the

[Strazos]

Enchantment?