Dragon Age:Origins and a question

two things

Spoiler

It's the Grimoire that triggers it. And I think the Archdemon was the easiest. With the help of the dwarves I did it on my first try, without losing anyone.

 

I am? I can't loose it even if I want to. My defense is up to 130ish and she can't hit me. In the rare chance she does I have it healed back up through natural regeneration before she can strike again.

I love the Dwarf Noble origin because:

Spoiler

You can find Gorim in Denerim and make close to 50ish gold profit for each stack of Potent Lyrium Potions you craft instead of the usual 25ish.

Also while doing Paragon of Her Kind quest you can side with Bhelen and pretend to forgive him, just to betray him before the entire assembly causing him to attack you and you get to finally slaughter him for his treachery.

 

I'm back again, looking for some guidance. I'm kind of bummed that I've been leaning heavily toward abandoning my current playthrough mainly because I can't get anywhere anymore without dying 50 times. I must have no idea how to manage my party or resources. I'm a lvl 9 mage. I just finished the Circle Tower mission and am now at Redcliffe trying to get inside the castle and I get absolutely slammed every battle against those shambling dead enemies. I mean absolutely slaughtered too. If there's any more than 3 enemies in a confrontation, all 4 members of my party (all lvl 9) get cut down well within a minute. I constantly have no more than 3 healing poultices where ever I go because I go through them so fast from trying to keep everyone alive in battles. So obviously by the time I hit a unique enemy or boss, there's just no chance at all in the fight. I also rarely have more than 2 or 3 sovereigns to spend at vendors and even then they rarely have more than 2 or 3 healing items to buy. I have 2nd tier Herbalism to make my own Health and Lyrium poultices, but never come across any herbs to make them. Am I just hopelessly lost in this game or is it really supposed to be this dire of a challenge? I wish I had the patience to manage my party tactics better, but I'm so limited with the amount of time I can spend playing, that I'd rather just jump in to the battles and get through the missions instead of sitting idle trying to decide every little action of every party member every second. I try to outfit my party in the best armor and weapons available, but everything's just so damned expensive, and you get very little money from anything over the course of romping.

Spoiler

I'm in the courtyard of Redcliffe castle where you fight literally a small army of shambling dead, dead archers, and another Revenant. I get raped over and over. I don't have cone of cold, which apparently is the answer to everything under the sun. If I go for the Revenant, my party gets swarmed by the shambling dead and picked off by the archers. If I go for the shambling dead, I get Pulled and killed by the Revenant and picked off by the archers. If I go for the archers, I get raped by the Revenant and dead from behind. Damn, the difficulty gradient in this game just dreadful. The enemies either have alot of armor or a lot of hit points, enough that even matched up one-on-one with an enemy, my party members would not likely survive the battle, let alone constantly being outnumbered, and right in the middle of boss fights too. I'm just completely overwhelmed by this.

Ok, overdramatic tirade over. Thanks.

 

I got raped the first time I did that scene, too. On my second playthrough, I came across something that might help.

Spoiler

Go back to Ser Perth, the red-haired knight near the windmill. He will say something about waiting outside the gate. Now, when you go to the courtyard, ignore everything and run to the gate. There will be a lever on the right side (your right). Pull it, and Perth and his buddies will charge in to help. They'll even continue helping once you are inside the castle.

I don't know why you can't fight anything 1v1, though. Check the difficulty rating. I find even Easy (on unpatched mode) is pretty difficult. There is one unavoidable scene where you have to fight a fairly tough boss 1 on 1 later in the game, so if you're having trouble with even that, either try lowering the difficulty level (it can be changed mid game), or apply more rigorous use of the pause button.

You might have some trouble not using tactics with a mage main. Mages will require you to pause during combats unless you have godly real life dexterity and micromanagement skills. Even with a rogue, I occasionally had to pause to get my bearings, especially with all the moving around I had to do to get backstabs.

As a mage, you must have some negative status buff, so pause and use those on the boss while you attack the minions. Horror works well, but even weakness can be of good use. I read somewhere that people like to dual-use Morrigan by draining all of her mana on status debuffs and damage spells before shapeshifting for DPS. I don't know how well it actually works, though, since I had both a rogue and a 2H warrior on my team for most of the game so DPS wasn't my issue so much as health. Since you're a mage, maybe that would work better for you, though?

 

So, I'm mucking about with a mage who's gone Spirit Healer with a few Primal spells to back up my awesome healing powers. And I decided to run through Orzammar first this time.

Spoiler

Fucking Brood Mother! Everything leading UP to the bitch! HOLY FUCK! *twitch* I haven't been this creeped out by a game since I did my first Skein run in MotB at three am with headphones on. O_O

 

After one play through as a mage, you'll learn which spells are necessary and which ones aren't. If you just pick a random assortment of spells that sound nifty, you're gonna end up underpowered and SOL cause you can't go back and change them. Personally, I use the fireball and all three cone spells constantly. But then, I've been playing normal diff with no friendly fire damage.

 

Grimm, what difficulty are you playing on? Who is in your team right now and what are their abilities? Especially what are the skills on your PC mage?

 

Because of friendly fire, I don't use Fireball. I rely on Cone of Cold instead, because it freezes the enemy solid.

Also, I've changed my opinion on Force Field. Used to think it sucked. Now? It's useful, albeit situational. It's useful to be able to shut down a boss (cough Ser Cauthrien uncough) while you clean up the minions.

 

About Ser Cauthrien:

Spoiler

Turns out, if she kills your team, you actually end up doing a prison quest. No wonder the odds are so stacked against you. I didn't even notice because I hit 'F9' everytime my last team member dropped below 10% hp.

 

Yep. You're supposed to lose to Ser Cauthrien the first time you meet her.

Unless you're Truly Badass, of course.

 

Japes - Spirit Healer abilities rock. I'm abusing Cone of Cold, Winter's Grasp, Lightning and the Thunder/Fire cones. I'm going to get a few debilitating spells once I get my last Spirit Healer spell, and come Level 14 I'm taking Arcane Warrior for the massive, massive defensive boosts.

 

Sheesh, no blood mage love? I must be the only one who likes to Blood Wound all opposition into the ground.

 

Actually, I'm avoiding Blood Mage for concept purposes.

Spoiler

My character was so upset by Jowan's actions that she vowed to never tolerate even the chance of blood magic... which will lead to some interesting stuff some the time she runs into him again.

My Josh, on the other hand, thinks Blood Mage is the best thing he's ever seen.

EDIT: Spoilered.

 

SPOILER:

Spoiler

You never do.

EDIT: Wait, you mean when you meet him at Redcliffe. Disregard.

 

Spoiler

I did know about letting Perth and the knights in on the fight. Problem is, they don't fair much better. They'll help out for a few minutes till the shamblin dead are killed then just stand in formatin while the Revenant skewers me. They don't even go after the archers. Could this be a bug? I'm playing on a straight-outta-the-box, unpatched version. Does the latest patch(es) fix this and some of the mindless difficulty?

I'm playing on Normal difficulty; have been since I started the game.

Japes, as far as I know, only Easy difficulty removes friendly fire. I'm on Normal, and my fire grenades have been lighting up my party members in addition to the enemies.

My mage is packing in the hotbar: [1]Arcane bolt (main offensive spell), [2]Telekinetic Blast (for minion crowd control), [3]Spell Shield (some defense for mage fights), [4]Force Field (to neutralize bosses and uniques), [5]Weakness (last ditch momentum shifter in fights), [6]Horror (reliable neutralizer for minions and bosses), [7]Winter's Grasp (for additional direct damage and freezing effect), [8]Crushing Prison (primary boss neutralizer/direct damage/possible insta kill on frozen enemies from Winter's Grasp), [0]Telekinetic Weapons (for party-wide combat advantage), [0]Spider form (for Poison and Web), followed by Bear form (for added melee damage and Slam/Rage abilities) - final 3 slots are for lyrium and health poultices.

My mage is lvl 9 with Shapeshifter specialization. Unfortunately, I've found shapeshifting in Dragon Age to be utter crap. I'm actually weaker in my animal forms than as a mage. At least in normal mage form I can cast defensive spells and refill magic and health and rifle off some offensive spells and +/- buffs. What do you get in animal form? A little boost in health and attack power and two measly, mediocre skills per form. All forms are melee based, meaning you're bound to take some unwanted aggro at some point while shifted AND you don't even have access to any healing items, so you're not even going to stay in any form long enough to benefit from it before being forced back to normal mage form in order to heal. Weak.

So, yeah. I don't have many offensive threats as far as skills and spells go, simply because I didn't want to RP my character that way. But now I'm discovering that the game wasn't really designed with RPing in mind, but rather to just stock up on whatever tips the field of battle in your party's favor as quickly as possible. I don't really like it when games are designed that way, but I guess I don't really have much of a choice. Oh well. I could always just go back to Arcanum if I'm looking for a rich RP experience.

Thanks.

 

Easy mode does not turn off friendly fire. I think it might lessen the debuffs on friendlies for AoE attacks, but I have frozen my buddies many times.

I also am running the unpatched version. It might be a bug, since I found that Perth and company really clean up.

I would question why you decided to go for Shapeshifter specialization when Morrigan already has it. The trick to using it is that you're going to end up being a DPS dealer. You use up all your mana as fast as possible doing straight damage to things, shapeshift, and start doing melee attacks. Having a tank on your team should help you with the aggro. Alternatively, a healer is decent. Since you killed Wynne, try giving healing spells to Morrigan.

The game actually is designed with RPing in mind, but there is a general assumption that you will be spending a quantity of time dungeon-crawling. It is true, there is no way to get through the game using only Charisma (as far as I know, maybe with a high enough cunning score, you can actually pull it off). I found the game to be rich in detail for RPing, though. My first playthrough was a streetsmart City Elf with a bleeding heart view of the world and strong moral scruples, and my current playthrough is a Human Noble obsessed with upholding honour and tradition, but gradually growing more self-interested over time. In both cases, the game's storyline has supported the character perfectly.

I would argue that trying to RP through your abilities is a bit off (it is difficult do so even in Arcanum, after all), but if you feel that makes the experience better for you, I would suggest reworking your party a bit. While your mage has qualms about violence, Morrigan does not. In fact, it is perfectly in line with Morrigan's character to have cone of cold, flame blast, etc. Similarly, if you mainly want to be a defensive mage, you should be putting more damage and tanking ability into your teammates. Save for Leliana, none of the party members seem questionable as soldiers, after all.

 

That's strange, the mouse-over description in the Options of the game say verbatim: At this setting, party members are immune to friendly-fire and will heal quickly.

I'm not very knowledgeable on the game slang. What exactly is DPS? I picked shapeshifter simply because I thought it would be cool to be a shapeshifter. Sometimes I don't take Morrigan with me so it was never even a concern that she had the ability too. I mean, technically, by that level of reasoning, I would be locked into a limited range of character builds, which is very unappealing.

Yeah I didn't word that very well when I criticized the RPing. I meant that it feels like the different situations (i.e. battles) in the game try to goad the player into a specific type of repetative strategy instead of allowing the player the freedom to succeed through creative thinking. I could be wrong though. My opinions may just be biased now due to a little jading from some wasted nights of excessive reloading, reloading, reloading just to try to advance in the plot. I'm starting to understand that the game isn't really what I expected it to be. I'm fine with that, but a little disappointed at the same time because it's becoming that type of game I don't have much interest in playing anymore, save for the experience of a really intriguing storyline and characters.

EDIT: Ok I just reloaded and tried on Easy setting. Ironically, I am getting beating down by the enemies at even more efficient rate than on Normal setting, almost to the point of embarrassment. I should probably just go finish my playthrough of Pirates! at this point.

 

It lies. Which is certainly possible, because the first patch altered the difficulty settings. In my game, my dudes all just freeze when I cast cone of cold on them.

DPS is damage per second. Dragon Age follows the D&D formula of the basic 'Tank, Damage Dealer, Healer, Magic User' party format. You can certainly mix 'n' match the roles, though. I went without a tank throughout the Dailish quest line and half of Orzammar.

Fair enough. It is true that all the choices you can make are determined through dialogue alone. Kind of a flow chart type thing.

 

Friendly fire means damaging your team. You'll notice that on Normal, when you freeze your party with CoC, they don't take damage from it, they just freeze. The enemies however, will take about 50-60 cold damage. Basically, your party is immune to the direct damage effects, but still has to pass a physical resistance check to avoid the secondary effects. Like when you toss a fireball into the middle of the fight, your party will get knocked down but not damaged.