Dragon Age

[Sjofn]

The alienage was just one long berserker rage for one of my city elf ladies, I basically just killed any human that moved. My city elf dude was a lot more mellow, as the origin isn't neeeearly as bad for the dude elves. My wife-to-be totally hated me at the end because I gave more of a shit about my cousin (who I fuckin' grew up with, bitch that I met ten minutes ago and didn't want to marry in the first place) than her. 

[tmp]

My wife-to-be totally hated me at the end because I gave more of a shit about my cousin (who I fuckin' grew up with, bitch that I met ten minutes ago and didn't want to marry in the first place) than her. 

Yeah, elf ladies have it easier at the end since there's no spouse-to-be left to be jealous over that

[rk47]

[Raguel]

no option for "all the above"? 

[UnSub]

Is that a doctored screenshot? Or do BioWare really pitch for pre-orders in-game?

[Lum]

Almost positive it's doctored, but it's probably a reference to the Warden's Keep DLC NPC, which *does* nag you to buy the DLC if you haven't already.

[Bunk]

Played DA2 at Pax this weekend after standing in line for 90 minutes. Had to sign a NDA against doing any recording inside the booth. I don't think the NDA precludes me from saying the game bluescreened halfway through my play time - was actually good though, let me restart and try a different character to compare them.

Biggest things I noticed - I liked the change of art style (a little less realistic, little more stylistic) and the warrior and rogue felt *very* different when fighting, which was a nice change over DA:O.

[Riggswolfe]

Well, I just finished Witch Hunt. It was good though short. I loaded my warden that had had a love affair with Morrigan. He also had her ring on which played into the DLC.

Notes about my playthrough in the spoiler field:

[Velorath]

Witch Hunt was ok, but there were no new areas in it making it feel a little cheap.  You go back to a few locations from DA:O and one from Awakening.  Also the two new party members don't really have time to get fleshed out.  There's a couple good references to Anders though.

[Riggswolfe]

Witch Hunt was ok, but there were no new areas in it making it feel a little cheap.  You go back to a few locations from DA:O and one from Awakening.  Also the two new party members don't really have time to get fleshed out.  There's a couple good references to Anders though.

True but it was still good imo because I got to resolve the "what the hell happened to Morrigan?" questions.

[Velorath]

Witch Hunt was ok, but there were no new areas in it making it feel a little cheap.  You go back to a few locations from DA:O and one from Awakening.  Also the two new party members don't really have time to get fleshed out.  There's a couple good references to Anders though.

True but it was still good imo because I got to resolve the "what the hell happened to Morrigan?" questions.

I don't know if I'd say it's resolved either though (although I'd have to see all the endings to judge).  Things still seemed pretty vague as to what her overall plan was.

[Morfiend]

Can anyone tell me how your characters from DA:O/A will impact DA2? I had a hard drive crash and lost all my characters.

[Reg]

From what I read it's the big political decisions you made that get carried over. Like whether you put Alistair on the throne and whether you married him off to whatshername.

[Sjofn]

Witch Hunt was ok, but there were no new areas in it making it feel a little cheap.  You go back to a few locations from DA:O and one from Awakening.  Also the two new party members don't really have time to get fleshed out.  There's a couple good references to Anders though.

True but it was still good imo because I got to resolve the "what the hell happened to Morrigan?" questions.

I don't know if I'd say it's resolved either though (although I'd have to see all the endings to judge).  Things still seemed pretty vague as to what her overall plan was.

Eh, it's resolved in the sense of "this story is as done as it can be without us doing another game, especially since the Baby Ending isn't canon for everyone," I think. Given some of the things she said, I think some of it will probably be touched upon in DA2.

The no new areas thing didn't really surprise me, since Leliana's was mostly in freaking Denerim instead of Orlais where it should've been. I would've liked Leliana's DLC a lot better if it wasn't only very, very, VERY slightly connected to the story she told me in the first place! It makes me sad, though, as it means there will definitely be no "Zevran kicks the ass of all the Crows" DLC. And I heart Zevran.

[Lantyssa]

Sure there will.  They secretly base out of Denerim, too.

[Sjofn]

Haha, maybe!

[Riggswolfe]

Witch Hunt was ok, but there were no new areas in it making it feel a little cheap.  You go back to a few locations from DA:O and one from Awakening.  Also the two new party members don't really have time to get fleshed out.  There's a couple good references to Anders though.

True but it was still good imo because I got to resolve the "what the hell happened to Morrigan?" questions.

I don't know if I'd say it's resolved either though (although I'd have to see all the endings to judge).  Things still seemed pretty vague as to what her overall plan was.

Well, I should clarify what I meant. It's not resolved in the sense of "this is her plan with the baby" but it's resolved in the sense of my character's relationship with her has come to an ending I like much better than what happened originally.

[Reg]

[Velorath]

My ending was bugged (seems to happen when people import a save from after the Origins epilogue either into Witch Hunt or into Awakening and then Witch Hunt) .  In essence the bug makes her respond like you didn't do the ritual, even if you did.  Didn't even realize it at first since I'd played a few different characters and didn't remember which decisions I'd made with this one, though I remembered Alistair appearing in Awakening so at first I was scratching my head as to how we were both alive but nobody performed the ritual.  It wasn't until I saw a message board topic on it that I realized the problem.

[Tebonas]

I let her go, and I never found that "thing I would find interesting". Am I bugged or am I missing something?

[Sjofn]

As far as I can tell that's an intentional cliffhanger. Since I did it with my Dalish elf dude (who was annoyed that NOW he finally had a non-harpy Dalish lady in his party, I hope they went to get drinks later ... Morrigan who, baby?), I like to think she left a translation of the book. 

[Nebu]

Necro since I'm always a year behind in playing games...

Is there a way to patch PC games purchased by Steam?  I really want to add the respec patch to this game so I can unfuck my rogue's spec but I can't seem to figure out how to do it.  I found the respec download on BioWare's page but can't quite figure out how to add it to my game.

Any advice appreciated. 

[Ingmar]

You should be able to mod it just like any other install, yes - you just need to find the actual program directory in your Steam folder and use that as the target (or run the import tool thinger in there for mods that use that .dazip format) - is is something like (install drive):\program files\steam\steamapps\common\dragonageorigins.

[Nebu]

You should be able to mod it just like any other install, yes - you just need to find the actual program directory in your Steam folder and use that as the target (or run the import tool thinger in there for mods that use that .dazip format) - is is something like (install drive):\program files\steam\steamapps\common\dragonageorigins.

Exactly the info I needed.  Thank you!

[Sand]

I never finished the first play through. Depending on how your past interacts with Dragon Age 2 (which does look good) I might try to go back and finish.

[Sky]

I never finished mine, either. I've tried a couple times to get into my second playthrough as a mage, since it works great with 3d vision. Game just lacks a certain something, seems very generic. One thing the AD&D license buys you is some cool, visceral monsters. Nothing like an umber hulk to shake things up a bit.

[Nebu]

Playing DA as a mage seems to really trivialize the game.  I'm not a stellar gamer, but once I understood the mechanics playing the game as a mage just seemed too easy. 

I finished the game as a rogue archer and found it a bit more challenging.  Sadly, the lack of stamina potions until you get to Awakenings really kills playing melee/archer for me.  You hit your two or three action buttons and auto-attack for the rest of the fight while micro-managing your group's mage. 

[Paelos]

Most trivial group ever was you as a mage, Morrigan, Wynn, and Shale as the tank. Laughably easy.

[Nebu]

Most trivial group ever was you as a mage, Morrigan, Wynn, and Shale as the tank. Laughably easy.

I can see that.  After you finish the mage's tower you have a near unlimited supply of mana potions. 

[Tebonas]

Thats why I only ever used Wynne as a cleric mage, and only had her on healing/buffing duty.

The game is somewhat harder with a pure melee party (Sword and Board main is the lowest DPS class too, I think). Not hard, but not ridiculously easy anymore.

[Ingmar]

Most trivial group ever was you as a mage, Morrigan, Wynn, and Shale as the tank. Laughably easy.

There are a couple fights in the mage tower (irony) that are rough with 3 mages if you do them at a high enough level that the templars have that giant area stun smite thing.

[Sky]

Well, I did play through all but the very end with a melee-heavy party (I had Wynne as cleric healing mage). I was a paladin or whatever the fuck and had Alistair as my off-tank and the french chick for support with her bow. The four member limit kinda sucked, because I wanted Alistair and Dog both in the party from an rp standpoint.

My entire intention with the mage playthrough was to put together a massively OP party and just be a dick to non-elves. An elven fire mage who just wants to make the humans BURN.

[Sjofn]

The four member limit kinda sucked, because I wanted Alistair and Dog both in the party from an rp standpoint.

I downloaded this mod for my human noble playthroughs from a RP standpoint.  Works pretty well, I think.

I never did finish this game as a mage. For some reason, I just fucking hate mages. Most fun I had playing combat-wise was my no-mages-at-all nightmare runthrough. Deep Roads was hardest and I had to make a metric fuckton of potions to get through that, but for the most part it wasn't too bad. I think my party was usually me (dw warrior) Alistair (tank) Zevran (ear candy) and then whoever I felt like (usually Shale). It's been a while, and the 9 playthroughs ( ) start to blur together.

[Selby]

I played all the intro zones and had a great time, then it came time to actually play the game and the micro-management aspect just annoyed me to death.  My characters were so dumb they ignored what I told them to do and either ran off attacking multiple targets or just stood there taking damage.  On Medium difficulty it was an exercise in gaming rage to have to re-load fights 3-4 times to finish them without having half the party dead.  And on Easy difficulty it just felt too bleh and boring (1-2 shots kills everything, monsters just sit there).  One guy in my WoW guild gave me all this info on how he set up his party and characters and all the custom AI he had set up and how he was having a great time on the hardest difficulty.  I asked him how long it took him to do all that and he told me it took a few hours to get everything set up right and I just didn't have the patience for that level of character management.

Which sucks, because I REALLY wanted to like this game a lot.

[Sjofn]

I just used the default AI tactics on everything except the mages, personally. The mages I would set up some (before I decided I had more fun playing with no mages at all!), but nothing super complex as they were always on healbitch & CC duty with me usually.

I've heard people say the AI tactics are completely stupid but I didn't have much problem with it, certainly not to the degree you describe. They never ignored what I said to do, certainly.

Of course, as I'm typing this, I realise that starting with my second playthrough, I had a mod that unlocked all the tactic slots right away for me. Without that, the tactics your little followers can hold in their tiny walnut brains is way more limited.