Dragon Age: Awakening (Here there Be Spoilers)

[schild]

Have at it.

[Raguel]

At this point it's not much of a spoiler, but I figured out why Oghren was tearing it up: warriors and rogues both get an insta-kill (white con) button.  I think for a rogue one must be in a position to backstab and/or the mob has to be at x% health. I have no idea what x is; Sigrun routiinely hits for 400+ with a max of 914. I usually get it in the high 60s, so I'm doin it rong, but  I somehow managed a 915.  . Maybe I should take a peak at Sigrun's  tactics.

Oh and Velaana (sp) is taking over Morrigan's bitch role, and failing miserably. Not that she isn't a bitch; she's at least a 12, but also a boring ass bitch.

[MournelitheCalix]

Sir Pounce alot approves of this thread.  Gotta be the funniest moment in the game so far.

[eldaec]

Not that she isn't a bitch; she's at least a 12, but also a boring ass bitch.

Boring ass bitches are not a valid type of bitch.

She could be an 18, 21, 37, or 85 though.

18) Instigatin bitches
21) Pissy bitches
37) Same wearing clothes each day bitches
85) Uncreative bitches

[tmp]

I think for a rogue one must be in a position to backstab and/or the mob has to be at x% health. I have no idea what x is; Sigrun routiinely hits for 400+ with a max of 914. I usually get it in the high 60s, so I'm doin it rong, but  I somehow managed a 915.  . Maybe I should take a peak at Sigrun's  tactics.

Below 75% for non-elite and 25% for elite mob. I'm not sure about the backstab requirement, i think i slaughtered a few people with this skill while standing face to face.

Oh, and the highest i got with it was 1481 on the Mother's tentacles.

[Ingmar]

The end was a bit weird frankly. I was expecting 2 dungeons and got one (figuring the Architect was going to have his own whole section, guess not), and was not expecting the fork where you just play one half of the war stuff. What I was expecting was more of a gates-of-Denerim style 'play the guys you send to the city', then switch and play the left behind group at the keep, so I split my group in a way that ended up kind of screwing me in the final fight against the Mother.

I also got no closure at all on Velanna's sister but I'm guessing that's because I didn't take her in my final group?

[tmp]

What I was expecting was more of a gates-of-Denerim style 'play the guys you send to the city', then switch and play the left behind group at the keep

Expected something similar or at least option to go back there after the city defense if just to look for survivors, so it was rather disconcerting to just be promptly told the keep fell. Even weirder was then to read in the ending slideshow that the upgrades i'd done actually allowed it to hold out for week or more. I mean, when the city was defended in couple days that'd leave more than enough time to get back and have a swing at it... oh well.

[Raguel]

What I was expecting was more of a gates-of-Denerim style 'play the guys you send to the city', then switch and play the left behind group at the keep

Expected something similar or at least option to go back there after the city defense if just to look for survivors, so it was rather disconcerting to just be promptly told the keep fell. Even weirder was then to read in the ending slideshow that the upgrades i'd done actually allowed it to hold out for week or more. I mean, when the city was defended in couple days that'd leave more than enough time to get back and have a swing at it... oh well.

That ticked me off. I spent all that time and gold (although admittedly gold is not a problem) and it does absolutely nothing. I did both options, and I'm on to  find the Mother, but tbh I don't have any desire atm to finish the game.

[tmp]

(although admittedly gold is not a problem)

Not only that, there's an excellent bug/exploit to mint unlimited money -- do the smuggler quest line to the point where you get request to clean their cave. Do so, speak with the leader to get your 15 gold reward, politely refuse to kill the next suggested target. The smuggler leader says "ah well maybe you'll change your mind" and hangs around. Speak to him again, get another 15 gold for clearing the cave, politely refuse to kill the next suggested target. Rinse, repeat...

[Ingmar]

What I was expecting was more of a gates-of-Denerim style 'play the guys you send to the city', then switch and play the left behind group at the keep

Expected something similar or at least option to go back there after the city defense if just to look for survivors, so it was rather disconcerting to just be promptly told the keep fell. Even weirder was then to read in the ending slideshow that the upgrades i'd done actually allowed it to hold out for week or more. I mean, when the city was defended in couple days that'd leave more than enough time to get back and have a swing at it... oh well.

That ticked me off. I spent all that time and gold (although admittedly gold is not a problem) and it does absolutely nothing. I did both options, and I'm on to  find the Mother, but tbh I don't have any desire atm to finish the game.

It does do something, the epilogue stuff is all different depending on what you did upgrade-wise.

[Raguel]

What I was expecting was more of a gates-of-Denerim style 'play the guys you send to the city', then switch and play the left behind group at the keep

Expected something similar or at least option to go back there after the city defense if just to look for survivors, so it was rather disconcerting to just be promptly told the keep fell. Even weirder was then to read in the ending slideshow that the upgrades i'd done actually allowed it to hold out for week or more. I mean, when the city was defended in couple days that'd leave more than enough time to get back and have a swing at it... oh well.

That ticked me off. I spent all that time and gold (although admittedly gold is not a problem) and it does absolutely nothing. I did both options, and I'm on to  find the Mother, but tbh I don't have any desire atm to finish the game.

It does do something, the epilogue stuff is all different depending on what you did upgrade-wise.

Yah after Amarathine (sp) I assumed that the keep was destroyed, but I found out a few hrs ago that wasn't the case, so I just completed my Amarathine ending. 

I don't think I'm going to port over my other characters, at least not yet.

[Tebonas]

Not only that, there's an excellent bug/exploit to mint unlimited money -- do the smuggler quest line to the point where you get request to clean their cave. Do so, speak with the leader to get your 15 gold reward, politely refuse to kill the next suggested target. The smuggler leader says "ah well maybe you'll change your mind" and hangs around. Speak to him again, get another 15 gold for clearing the cave, politely refuse to kill the next suggested target. Rinse, repeat...

Also, Menancing Runes bring about 1 gold more than their components cost. You can make as much money as you like without using bugs.

The end was a huge letdown. I thought I would play the second group in the keep. Those fuckers were behind inpenetrable walls (or so my fellow dwarf claimed) and had the cream of the crop of equipment. Each of my companions could have wiped the floor with those enemies singlehandedly. So I really want to know what happened. Fucking plot enforced failure. Thats Fallout 3 all over again.

[rk47]

Heard a lot of nightmare bugs. They did fix the memory leak, but I am wary of getting the Expansion for PC version since people in Bioware forum complained of serious issues of playing both Origins and Awakening after they installed the expansion.

Anyone can spoil me on these so I can decide whether to get the expansion now to reduce the long loading time?

[Velorath]

I played all the way through Awakening without any bugs that I can recall, but I haven't played through any of Origins since then to see if the expansion has broken anything.

[Ollie]

You'll get a cautious thumbs up from me. While Awakening didn't fix any of the problems I had with Origins, it didn't make them worse either. I still get the occasional rare crash and the processor load is still 99% on my two-core system, so nothing has changed there. Overall the game runs more or less as it did before.

The increasing loading time bug seems to be a nasty by-product of specific hardware, OS and software combinations, if Bioware tech support forums are to be believed. Awakening might fix it for some, but not for others. You most likely just have to take the plunge and see what happens.

[rk47]

You'll get a cautious thumbs up from me. While Awakening didn't fix any of the problems I had with Origins, it didn't make them worse either. I still get the occasional rare crash and the processor load is still 99% on my two-core system, so nothing has changed there. Overall the game runs more or less as it did before.

The increasing loading time bug seems to be a nasty by-product of specific hardware, OS and software combinations, if Bioware tech support forums are to be believed. Awakening might fix it for some, but not for others. You most likely just have to take the plunge and see what happens.

Hm. I'll take the 1.3 patch plunge first from Bioware then.
One thing I liked about the memory leak it actually helps me pace myself. Usually when the loading time gets too long I told myself "Whoa, means I been playing for an hour, time to chill out!" I let the game close itself to desktop, step out of the room and freshen up before resuming.

Also - Disappearing Inventory scares the shit out of me. I have the bad habit of just quick-saving only playstyle. This might screw me up if it occurs.

Btw, did they fix the Shapeshifter at all? I was thinking of during a triple Shapeshifter run at some point with Myself, Morrigan, Whynne and Leliana as Ranger :) FOUR BEARS !

[Rendakor]

Does this expansion add anything to the old game (skills, spells, etc) or is it all only usable in the expansion campaign? I'm going to pick this up eventually, but I'm wondering if I should buy it now, or wait until I'm done with the original story.

[Nightblade]

Does this expansion add anything to the old game (skills, spells, etc) or is it all only usable in the expansion campaign? I'm going to pick this up eventually, but I'm wondering if I should buy it now, or wait until I'm done with the original story.

The expansion adds nothing to the original campaign, it's a stand alone campaign that takes place after the events of the first game, except now you have reskinned characters that strongly resemble the original cast.

Wut, that's not Morrigan, It's Velanna.

[Ingmar]

Eh, Velanna and Morrigan are nothing alike personality-wise.

There's a mod floating around that will put the Awakening skills and at least some of the loot back into Origins, btw - it works with the stuff like stamina potions in the random kill drops for example I haven't seen one of the new runes or recipes drop, though. It doesn't change the minimum level to learn for the new skills though, so you'll still be waiting til 20 to pick them up.

[rk47]

Is there a 300 - loot bag size yet? I feel stupid having to run back and forth a few times in yet another Deep Roads run.
And memory leak problem isn't solved yet. I still get the long loading time after 1-2 hours of playing.

[Register]

Awakening does come with some improvements - unlimited respec manuals at 6g a pop; A personal stash/bank at your base, as well as a host of new spells and abilities - none of which applies to Origins.

Balance wise its still a mess - mana clash one shots caster elites, archery auto shooting with the new ability accuracy hits harder than caster nukes, archery auto shooting is better than activated shots because there is no shot delay - in the time to shoot one arrow of slaying vs elites or bosses auto shoot will out damage it, without any cooldown timer or stamina used. Only exception being scattered shot for its nice AE damage. In the end, my archers skipped a whole bunch of archery skills including master archer, because they are completely useless.

Also, I feel that there are too many overwhelm using critters in awakening. I switched from conventional tank to 3 x rogue archers and they can out tank the tank because dex stacking makes enemies miss most of the time, and for the overwhelm mobs theres  2 x immunity abilites (ghost + strength of stone) and a 3rd via force field from the mage as a backup.

[Pezzle]

If you want a larger backpack download the toolset and mod it.

[Khaldun]

I like the look of the armor you get in the swamp. Very different than anything else in the game.

The characters are pretty meh especially Mr. I'm-Not-Alistair-Exactly. I sort of like Howe Junior though.

[stray]

This game isn't...... bad. Just incomplete-ish. Especially with the character interactions. And I don't even like the characters much to begin with.

Probably only halfway through, but I hated the forest map (wending woods or something). Makes me appreciate the ultra-linear design of FF13 actually..

[edit] I'm playing on PS3 and having minor performance issues. Tends to hiccup before fights. I don't remember Origins ever dragging like that.

[stray]

Not a bad ending to an otherwise mediocre experience. I wonder if they'll be revisiting the Architect in the future. He was pretty cool. I spared him, but there wasn't much followup after killing the Mother.

Sigrun, Howe and Justice turned out to be my favorite characters, I guess. Although I didn't play Nathaniel much after I got Sigrun (I specced her a heavy armored blade rogue, and respecced Howe back to archer...).

Also, I like the more crowded pacing of the bigger battles in these games. They should really shoot for more of that, and less of the puzzles and confusing, shitty maps.

[Zane0]

For all the problems with this expansion (barebones plotting and simply laughable difficulty) I much prefer Awakening to the OC. It's tight; encounters are relatively varied; there are no interminable piece of shit areas like most of Orzammar, the fade sequence, most of Denerim, that jerk you around and waste your time (for more than 20 hours); and the character lineup is remarkably good and free of stereotypes (if somewhat perfunctory) after you kick Oghren to the curb.

We're still not in Baldur's Gate II territory after all these years, but I had a good enough time to forget that for a moment or two.

[tmp]

and the character lineup is remarkably good and free of stereotypes (if somewhat perfunctory) after you kick Oghren to the curb.

Oghren is far from stereotypes (even BioWare's own) also, if just in the sense he isn't a raging alcoholic "because all dwarves are" but rather as direct result of the shit he's been through, as a person. His fart jokes are more of a coping/deflecting mechanism and there's pretty tragic and simply human character underneath that.

[stray]

Heh yeah the fact that he's a deadbeat dad is pretty tragic.

Now that I think about it, he's the only member in Awakenings who doesn't have a purpose or reason to redeem himself by joining the Grey Wardens. They're all searching for something, while he's running away.

[schild]

I don't connect with virtual or literary characters, so I really can't join this conversation. I just came in to say, wow, you all are examining the psychological properties of a virtual dwarf. Creepy.

[tmp]

I just came in to say, wow, you all are examining the psychological properties of a virtual dwarf. Creepy.

It can get worse. There's thread on official BioWare forum about "romantic appeal of Zevran" which has ~400 pages and it's still going.

Of course, then there's Tali threads which grow at rate of something like 10 pages a day, if it's a slow day.

[stray]

I'm hardly the guy to give a shit about dwarves to begin with! Blame the guys above me.  

Really though, he's a deadbeat dad. That part is obvious, and in the story. Not much analysis there.

[tmp]

Btw, nothing wrong with picking apart minds of virtual dwarves. Just ask Toady One.

[rk47]

WTF Spirit Warrior + Templar with Greatswords = 

100% Spell Resistance & Ignore Armor Attack + Attack Speed = FFFFFUUUUUU~~~~

I want a mod so I can use this in the Origins campaign. PWEEEEZE!

[stray]

I messed with about every Warrior combo, but I found just playing a 2hander (used to be duel wield) was hardcore easy...even without relying on other skills.

[rk47]

Yeah, Indomitable is Overpowered. If you can't be stunned / knocked down, there's really no danger of missing on a potion drink, except if you're grabbed / overwhelmed. Crushing Prison? What's that? Templars get 100% Spell Resist