Dragon Age

[tmp]

you're supposed to lose that fight, you know

[BitWarrior]

[edit] OK, you know that room after Howe,

Protip:

[Polysorbate80]

[Thrawn]

you're supposed to lose that fight, you know

Oh..oops.  I wiped them out as well.  A little earthquake/blizzard in the main room, back out to the small room the queen was in and burn down the orange character, no problem.

[Segoris]

That is one of my favorite fights in this game. I'm glad you're supposed to lose it but have a chance at winning the fight, and a decent sword as a result. Though by the time I got to that fight, the sword wasn't needed =/.

The jail is a great thing to at least do once though.

[schild]

That is one of my favorite fights in this game. I'm glad you're supposed to lose it but have a chance at winning the fight, and a decent sword as a result. Though by the time I got to that fight, the sword wasn't needed =/.

The jail is a great thing to at least do once though.

You can beat the shit out of her later and get the Summer Sword then.

[caladein]

Fade and Deep Roads are momentum killers.  I just get near them and lose all desire to play.

On the upside though, I'm having quite a bit of fun with my Human Noble Rogue playthrough thanks to Better Archery and The Winter Forge.

[Raguel]

In my second playthrough (both times on normal)  I didn't let Morrigan autolevel and it's like night and day. Before I'd have to reload often if I fought a Rev. Since getting misdirect I don't think I've lost a single person in combat.

Is it just me or is Dog >> Sten? I don't even bother grouping that guy. I'll pour all his points into strength to get him in juggy gear and see if I can keep him upright.

As far as Leilana goes, I like her in my group in terms of RP but I don't think she's doing a lot of damage ranged. I switched to her once and she missed like 4 times straight. 
She's around level 12, and has about 20 str and 30 dex.

Slight observation:
1. Sten needs lots of armor points to stay alive. Juggernaut gear is worth a try, but there are heavier armour out there. Also take schild's suggestion to have him drink Health Pot at 80% HP. 2 STR 1 CON is sufficient BUT IMO Oghren is more solid with two specs. Sten's best spec is probably Berserker/Champ. Hit berserk and let the boosted damage take care of the rest. Considering the equipment slots and talent points, I'd say Sten > Dog by a lot.

2. Leliana. Is a mixed bag. She's your best lockpicker though. I like melee rogues better but she's too deep in ranged spec. Grab Critical Shot maybe so you can shatter frozen mobs from range. And scatter shot for those pesky mages. I still like her more in melee though.

I'll take Sten out for another spin then. I didn't have a lot of pots before when I grouped him. Now that I know where to get tons of elfroot, it shouldn't be so bad now.


Getting back to my ranger: I like her but I'm a bit disappointed that I can't be a jack of all trades character w/o giving up a lot. Before I waste any points: is it worth it to get stealth to tier 3 or 4?

[caladein]

Combat Stealth (Rank 3) is nice because attacks coming from stealth are auto-crits.  Getting R4 depends on if you're not able to get into/stay in stealth long enough to get your free crits off.

[Ingmar]

And of course you need it for the "learned all rogue abilities on the main character" achievement.

[tmp]

Hmm that patch which was supposed to fix issues with profile uploads either didn't work or broke things even further. Before it pressing the "online profile" button in game would occasionally indeed update things, now it seems to do nothing. Wish there was some sort of feedback or log for it, given they bothered with implementation in the first place.

[Ingmar]

All the 'online profile' button does is open the webpage with your profile on it. The actual updating is all behind the scenes stuff (and has never worked well, obviously.)

[Segoris]

That is one of my favorite fights in this game. I'm glad you're supposed to lose it but have a chance at winning the fight, and a decent sword as a result. Though by the time I got to that fight, the sword wasn't needed =/.

The jail is a great thing to at least do once though.

You can beat the shit out of her later and get the Summer Sword then.

Good to know.

[stray]

I'm pretty anal.. That sword goes unused. The only people who can use it are Sten and Oghren. Sten has his "soul" sword, and Oghren (in my mind) wouldn't be caught dead with a sword. Especially one of Orlesian make. 

[stray]

I'm curious what Hard mode actually does. I know it affects AoE's, but how about solo? I just beat Logaine pretty easily.. Didn't use the Blood powers this time. Just a straight up fight, he got me down to 15-20% health, but I won.

Anyhow, Warriors don't need any help. I'll say that much. I mean, what more could you possibly want? If you can duel Logaine without pots on Hard mode, then it's already powerful. As for other enemies, the hardest was Broodmother - because there are multiple spread out targets. That's the only warrior weakness. But one one one, or if I get enemies in a cluster, the class is more than enough.

[Raguel]

I'm curious what Hard mode actually does. I know it affects AoE's, but how about solo? I just beat Logaine pretty easily.. Didn't use the Blood powers this time. Just a straight up fight, he got me down to 15-20% health, but I won.

Anyhow, Warriors don't need any help. I'll say that much. I mean, what more could you possibly want? If you can duel Logaine without pots on Hard mode, then it's already powerful. As for other enemies, the hardest was Broodmother - because there are multiple spread out targets. That's the only warrior weakness. But one one one, or if I get enemies in a cluster, the class is more than enough.

I must have done something wrong, because I needed about 5 pots  What level and what gear did you have? I want to try him again. IIRC I was around 18.

[tmp]

All the 'online profile' button does is open the webpage with your profile on it. The actual updating is all behind the scenes stuff (and has never worked well, obviously.)

Actually from my experience it'd seem the 'online profile' button had some relation to my profile updating. That is, after hitting it i'd see my profile reflect most recent stats (at least for the character in question) while otherwise it could sit idle for hours. This would happen often enough to make me doubt it's just a coincidence. I sort of presumed eventually the button could double as manual update trigger since you can disable the automatic updates in the preferences.

In any case it seems to be completely broken now and without any debug info... well.

[tmp]

Anyhow, Warriors don't need any help. I'll say that much. I mean, what more could you possibly want? If you can duel Logaine without pots on Hard mode, then it's already powerful.

It depends on the build really. I had auto-levelled Alistair at l.16 which means he had mostly the shield and templar talents with average gear rather than DLC stuff (mix of massive and heavy silverite armour, duncan's shield and such) and Loghain pretty much destroyed him the couple times i tried. Each hit would chop ~1/3rd of Alistair's health while he could himself barely scratch the enemy in the rare moments he wasn't down on his arse after the War Cry... and that was on normal rather than hard. Not sure if he could keep up even with potions and i had just few of them left anyway.

[gryeyes]

My duel wielding DLC stacked warrior hit the barrier of near invincibility rather quickly. But removing that early boost from DLC and it would be another story entirely.

[Segoris]

I'm curious what Hard mode actually does. I know it affects AoE's, but how about solo? I just beat Logaine pretty easily.. Didn't use the Blood powers this time. Just a straight up fight, he got me down to 15-20% health, but I won.

Anyhow, Warriors don't need any help. I'll say that much. I mean, what more could you possibly want? If you can duel Logaine without pots on Hard mode, then it's already powerful. As for other enemies, the hardest was Broodmother - because there are multiple spread out targets. That's the only warrior weakness. But one one one, or if I get enemies in a cluster, the class is more than enough.

I'm not sure how you're fighting Broodmother, but it sounds like you are trying to roam from group to group of tentacles and maybe even the body of her? If so I'll agree that was a pain in the ass. If not then I disagree, all I did to make the fight easy as a warrior was
If that is what you're doing already, then that is weird. I don't think I used any potions except a few lesser lyriums for the healer, maybe less then 3 health pots needed on the warrior run through

[stray]

Why would I not want to get into melee range? I'm a Warrior. That's how I like playing.  

I fight her on Hard (again, not sure exactly what that does, but I mention it anyways). I believe I brought Morrigan to those fights and cast Blizzard, so that might have been counterproductive. Anyways, yes, the tentacles, the knockbacks, and the little hurlocks surrounding make it a nuisance. I can get past it, but to me, it was a bigger pain in the ass than dragons. I can focus fire on a dragon. I also had Oghren along who was a gimp at the time.

I must have done something wrong, because I needed about 5 pots   What level and what gear did you have? I want to try him again. IIRC I was around 18.

I was around 18 too. I've been running in the Warden Commander's armor for many levels now. I'm dual wielding Starfang (with 3 grandmaster electricity, fire, and cold runes) and Asturian's Might (with two grandmaster darkspawn runes.. not a factor against loghain).

It's not just DLC gear though -- it's the Lifegiver ring. +10 Con, +6 health regen in combat, +10 regen while exploring, +3 armor, +20% healing. There is probably even better gear to augment that ring, but I like the Warden set (the Warden set is mostly a stam set, I think.. ).

edit: On another note, I have a new "Oh shit!" Perfect Storm approach to really tough rooms. Leliana, Shale, and Wynne all have great sustained skills, with the downside of making them stunned/immobile.. It makes my warrior an asskicker though. It's like Iverson era 76'ers, where he had a bunch of players playing niche roles and protecting him so he could score by himself. :P

[stray]

Lol, ok... That shit doesn't work with the archdemon though  

[edit] Damn this is the second time Bioware has made me buy an Xbox. Need a Mass Effect fix now. I'm officially burned out on Dragon Age. I got 80 something % trophies/achievements, but I don't think I can play again. It was much longer than their previous games though, and I savored it. Good shit. Only weakness is the visuals (character design).

[eldaec]

Short of disarming them, is there any way to stop these retards changing to melee weapon set every time some darkspawn fucker comes within 50 yards?

As far as I can tell I do not have tactics set to  'Enemy : Nearest Visible > Use ability : Act like a mouthbreathing fucktard. Switch to melee and run a 200 yard dash into enemy archer range, consume all the healer's mana, and then start whining because you died. Again.'.

Set behaviour to "ranged" in the dropdown box in the tactics window.

Ok, now the special squad keep switching from swords to bows/staffs in the middle of a fucking melee. What I want is a 'USE THE GODDAMN WEAPON I TELL YOU TO YOU FUCKWAD' mode.

Game is good, I'm still playing multiple hours every day, but damn the AI sucks, and I badly miss being able to queue more than one action from Kotor.

Another really annoying AI quirk is the way if you give orders a micro second too early before a fight has officially started (especially after a cutscene), the party ignores to you to perform the very important task of all changing places into the worst formation imaginable - in the process allowing enemy melee to cover half the distance to your squishies.

Or the thing where you send one party member over there to deal with a mage or whatever, and your healer decides to follow for no good reason whatsoever. I'd put them on 'hold ground', only if you do that enemies regularly confuse your melee all stars with the terribly cunning 'step an inch to the left' manoeuvre. Hold ground on a per character level might fix this, if it were possible.

[Sky]

Change the setting to pause on combat initiation, so you know when the AI thinks combat has started. It's always a second after you think it has.

[Tebonas]

Your descriptions of the AI make me glad I turned it off and went all manual.

[Raguel]

I take back the bad things I said about Sten. I finally got him in decent gear and he went from scrub to All-Pro. 


I was trying to figure out how I missed such a sweet drop like Lifegiver. 87 gold?? Now I know for sure I'm doin it rong  I guess I have to listen to Cab Calloway and kick the gong around, eh?

[BitWarrior]

Whats the deal with Rogues? From what I can see, they need to invest in Dexterity, Cunning plus Strength so they can hold wear armor and hold some weapons. I believe Lethality only turns Cunning into Strength for the purpose of attacks, but not armor and weapons, right? Just seems like its challenging to really properly stat up a rogue, unless I'm missing something.

[Yoru]

Your descriptions of the AI make me glad I turned it off and went all manual.

I tried this a bit last night by switching to "hold positions", which means that they don't run around like retards and instead attack whatever's nearby (for melee characters).

Huge game-changer for tough fights, although it's a bit of a pain in the ass to manually reposition them every time an enemy dies and they need to take an extra half-step to reach the next one.

[caladein]

Okay, found a way to skip the Fade (or most any annoying part I imagine).  There's a set of debug scripts for each part of the game.

In this case type runscript zz_cir_debug in the console to bring up a dialogue screen with a variety of options.

Once in the dialogue options go to "Set a plot flag" and "FADE PORTAL" and select the one of the COMPLETE options.  That'll bounce you back to "Set a plot flag" set of options so just repeat for the other areas.  There won't be any in-game confirmation that it "worked" from what I can tell, but it is a debug tool after all.

Once that's done choose "Exit debug" and when you use a Fade Pedestal (likely after you fight Duncan) you'll notice the ring of main sections is done allowing you to go to the center area and punch the Sloth Demon in the face.

Notes

I didn't free any of my companions, but they showed up after the Demon died just fine.

You could probably play around with the teleport function to avoid the plot flags or the initial fight against Duncan, but as I was flying blind I decided to play it safe.

Console commands thanks to GameFAQs, natch.  (Also has a guide to enabling the developer console if you don't have it enabled.)

[Segoris]

Why would I not want to get into melee range? I'm a Warrior. That's how I like playing.  

I fight her on Hard (again, not sure exactly what that does, but I mention it anyways). I believe I brought Morrigan to those fights and cast Blizzard, so that might have been counterproductive. Anyways, yes, the tentacles, the knockbacks, and the little hurlocks surrounding make it a nuisance. I can get past it, but to me, it was a bigger pain in the ass than dragons. I can focus fire on a dragon. I also had Oghren along who was a gimp at the time.

Sorry if it wasn't clear, but I was saying an alternative way to fight her with melee is to keep them out of melee of BM herself, the tentacles do get meleed. It's not the most challenging way to fight her with melee, but it is one that worked for making her a very easy fight even on hard mode.

Though I agree, compared to dragons BM was a lot more annoying. Dragons were a bit underwhelming after the joy it brought upon noticing dragon using other body parts to fight with besides it's front claws and mouth.

[Threash]

Okay, found a way to skip the Fade (or most any annoying part I imagine).  There's a set of debug scripts for each part of the game.

In this case type runscript zz_cir_debug in the console to bring up a dialogue screen with a variety of options.

Once in the dialogue options go to "Set a plot flag" and "FADE PORTAL" and select the one of the COMPLETE options.  That'll bounce you back to "Set a plot flag" set of options so just repeat for the other areas.  There won't be any in-game confirmation that it "worked" from what I can tell, but it is a debug tool after all.

Once that's done choose "Exit debug" and when you use a Fade Pedestal (likely after you fight Duncan) you'll notice the ring of main sections is done allowing you to go to the center area and punch the Sloth Demon in the face.

Notes

I didn't free any of my companions, but they showed up after the Demon died just fine.

You could probably play around with the teleport function to avoid the plot flags or the initial fight against Duncan, but as I was flying blind I decided to play it safe.

Console commands thanks to GameFAQs, natch.  (Also has a guide to enabling the developer console if you don't have it enabled.)

Thats nice but does it give you all the stat increases from running around?

[stark]

I must have done something wrong, because I needed about 5 pots  What level and what gear did you have? I want to try him again. IIRC I was around 18.

I didn't use Allistair at all on my initial play through and he was very poorly equipped going into that fight.  I got a little too used to Arcane Warrior god mode so I only had a few lesser health potions.  Loghain would drop me in 3 maybe 4 hits (he was hitting for 60-80). I couldn't keep up with the damage even when taking potions as soon as the cooldown was up.

I was losing hope after getting my shit punched in a dozen times, when I tried to cheese it by running around in circles hoping maybe I could regen some health when Loghain suddenly switched to a crossbow!  I pulled out a bow for Allistair and we had a shootout standing maybe 10 feet apart.  Loghain still outdamaged me, but it slowed the damage down to a glacial pace so that I could use potions to keep myself alive.  Cheesiest fight ever.

[caladein]

Thats nice but does it give you all the stat increases from running around?

No, but you could install the Talent Books mod and just give yourself the 21 attribute points if you liked (distribution here).

[sidereal]

Confused as to why so many people are having problems with the tactics.  There are a handful of them that are completely infuriating and need to be disabled immediately, especially the 'Attack target of current character' on the rogues.  If you swap between characters occasionally to micromanage them, your rogue will just run around the battlefield like an idiot changing targets.  But if you set them up simply, they're fine.  Have your healer heal anyone who goes below 60-70%, have your Templar attack the nearest mage, have your mage stun anyone who attacks them in melee, etc.  Then you can rotate through them for special attacks or whatever.   I never had Leliana swap to melee gear unless someone was attacking her in melee, and you can hardly blame her.  If she's an archer, get her being the tank.

[eldaec]

Change the setting to pause on combat initiation, so you know when the AI thinks combat has started. It's always a second after you think it has.

I already did that, the problem is that the bad guys can cover 5-10 yards between battle starting and auto-pause kicking in plus your team effortlessly manage to fuck up their positioning in that period. This is often enough to fuck good aoe/cone positioning.

Your descriptions of the AI make me glad I turned it off and went all manual.

I think this is the only answer, on Nightmare I rarely let the game run for more the 1-2 seconds at a time anyway.

Being able to queue multiple actions would be an enormous help in this.