Dragon Age Origins discussion...

ok, my first "Fuck you Bioware, that's lame" moment.


***SPOILER ALERT!!!!****************8

They've got one of the good ol' "Gotta Fail to proceed" fights. Namely, the one with Ser Catherwhatsherass after saving the queen. I've tried on every difficulty, with every tactic I've ever used a good 30 times, and there's no way to beat her and those archers. Simply too many arrows - any spell I cast gets disrupted, and I've got full combat mastery to avoid that. Hell, I've even spammed fireballs like mad on all the archers - she still goes through my tank in 3 swings, and Wynne can't keep the heals up, even with me alternating in and helping (and chugging mana potions like a frat boy on cheap beer). Seems like the only way around it is to surrender and go through the jail quest. The only way to know you have to take that path is to die in the fight a bunch.

Lame. Let me actually have valid choices, devs - you break the suspension of disbelief if I can't choose to keep fighting my way out of something, and have to surrender suddenly.

Anyone managed to win that fight? I'm considering engaging a cheat code, just to see if they coded in a "win" scenario or not
.

One word to win that fight.......Blizzard.

You can hit pretty much the entire room with it and it disables most of the archers long enough to take down the named, or if you prefer, kill all the archers first. Pause the game and cast it into the room using the overhead view to maximize coverage.

Mass Paralyze would work but the casting time is too long, Blizzard on the other hand casts quicker and you're more likely to get it off.

Best tank for that fight is Shale. Alistair just can't handle her damage from what I've seen. A good way to slow her down is Crushing Prison or any attack that causes a stun effect or knockdown, then rogue attack from the rear. Poisons help too.

Also, try take some stress off of Wynne and make sure each character has a tactic to use a healing potion if they get under 50% or so. You could go as low as 25% but the damage coming in if you don't freeze the archers can whittle you from 50% to dead pretty fast, and from 25% to dead almost instantly on some characters.

Blizzard is a bit overpowered I think, since the casting time is so short and you can freeze tons of enemies in no time, or at the very least knock em off their feet repeatedly. The cooldown on it is plenty long enough though.

I've won that fight once and lost it once (on purpose so I could do the jailbreak part). It's one of the tougher fights in the game, but Blizzard levels out the field pretty well I think.

Granted, it took me a couple tries my first playthrough to get that fight won, and I make no promises it will work for everyone, but Blizzard is a kickass spell to use against archers, and Crushing Prison is great for bosses.

Not sure what I'll do this time when I get to that point. On my third playthrough now and still loving it.
 
One word to win that fight.......Blizzard.

You can hit pretty much the entire room with it and it disables most of the archers long enough to take down the named, or if you prefer, kill all the archers first. Pause the game and cast it into the room using the overhead view to maximize coverage.

Mass Paralyze would work but the casting time is too long, Blizzard on the other hand casts quicker and you're more likely to get it off.

Best tank for that fight is Shale. Alistair just can't handle her damage from what I've seen. A good way to slow her down is Crushing Prison or any attack that causes a stun effect or knockdown, then rogue attack from the rear. Poisons help too.

Also, try take some stress off of Wynne and make sure each character has a tactic to use a healing potion if they get under 50% or so. You could go as low as 25% but the damage coming in if you don't freeze the archers can whittle you from 50% to dead pretty fast, and from 25% to dead almost instantly on some characters.

Blizzard is a bit overpowered I think, since the casting time is so short and you can freeze tons of enemies in no time, or at the very least knock em off their feet repeatedly. The cooldown on it is plenty long enough though.

I've won that fight once and lost it once (on purpose so I could do the jailbreak part). It's one of the tougher fights in the game, but Blizzard levels out the field pretty well I think.

Granted, it took me a couple tries my first playthrough to get that fight won, and I make no promises it will work for everyone, but Blizzard is a kickass spell to use against archers, and Crushing Prison is great for bosses.

Not sure what I'll do this time when I get to that point. On my third playthrough now and still loving it.
yeah, I couldn't ever get blizzard off :( I love that spell, but I just got stunned too much, even with Ser C. FFed.
 
What I did was retreat back behind the doorway after they turn hostile then close the door. Then I cast Blizzard on the area closest to the doorway. The door will open shortly after the spell is cast, so if possible have someone use a skill that can stun enemies the second it opens (I used the Dog's howl); it won't work on the boss lady, but it will stun the lesser cohorts which will give you your opportunity to lure her away.

Run to the room at the very end of the long hallway (it's a bedroom) and the boss will follow you there. Have your tank use Taunt to draw all of the damage and either use Force Field on him or just keep up healing. Her minions WILL eventually find their way to the room, but 2 out of 3 times they stop at the doorway to the room and do the Chuck Liddell roar/victory howl the entire time. All you really have to do then is beat the boss and then do cleanup along the hallway.
 
ok, my first "Fuck you Bioware, that's lame" moment.


***SPOILER ALERT!!!!****************8


























They've got one of the good ol' "Gotta Fail to proceed" fights. Namely, the one with Ser Catherwhatsherass after saving the queen. I've tried on every difficulty, with every tactic I've ever used a good 30 times, and there's no way to beat her and those archers. Simply too many arrows - any spell I cast gets disrupted, and I've got full combat mastery to avoid that. Hell, I've even spammed fireballs like mad on all the archers - she still goes through my tank in 3 swings, and Wynne can't keep the heals up, even with me alternating in and helping (and chugging mana potions like a frat boy on cheap beer). Seems like the only way around it is to surrender and go through the jail quest. The only way to know you have to take that path is to die in the fight a bunch.

Lame. Let me actually have valid choices, devs - you break the suspension of disbelief if I can't choose to keep fighting my way out of something, and have to surrender suddenly.

Anyone managed to win that fight? I'm considering engaging a cheat code, just to see if they coded in a "win" scenario or not.


won this fight on hard my first time through.

the magic words are
blizzard, inferno, tempest and standard D&D tactics.


I need to go back and lose it on purpose to see what happens, as i hear it's another quest.
 
I'm annoyed that your character clicks on dialogue responses but has no audible voice. The developer said that it was a conscious decision so you can hear the voice in your own head. Duh. If that's the case, let's take it to the next level--not buy the game and play everything in our heads.

As of now, this game seems like a snoozefest. I'd rather play Witcher again.
 
I'm annoyed that your character clicks on dialogue responses but has no audible voice. The developer said that it was a conscious decision so you can hear the voice in your own head. Duh. If that's the case, let's take it to the next level--not buy the game and play everything in our heads.

As of now, this game seems like a snoozefest. I'd rather play Witcher again.

Yeah I was curious to this as well. Why did it even let me choose a voice in the character selection?
 
As of now, this game seems like a snoozefest. I'd rather play Witcher again.

Go for it.

No point in playing if you're not enjoying it.

*Goes back to working through Shale's personal quest line in the Thaig* :D
 
Yeah, blizzard and/or temptest and/or inferno storm. First, run out of that room immediately and seal it off with a glyff of repulsion. If you have spell power + blizzard + tempest you'll easily hose everything in there except the seargant lady. After that, you just tagteam her.
 
Yep, they don't show it and it's VERY hard to pull off, but it can be done.

Zev willl sleep with anyone, so will Lelianna, and so will the Duelist in the brothel.

Getting all the approvals set up is the biggest pain because Leliana gets jealous VERY easily.

There should have been an achievement for it for how hard it was. Thankfully I have a save just before I went and did it so I can do it over and over LOL.

Got Zev, Leliana, and Morrian, and will hit the duellist on my next trip back.
I found an amusing bug...I stayed in my Blood Dragon Plate for the nookie scene with Leliana.
 
Just finished it.

AWESOME game, although the ending (I chose to survive) was a bit of a letdown in comparison to some of the elf/dwarf scenes. Awesome game.
 
Just finished it.

AWESOME game, although the ending (I chose to survive) was a bit of a letdown in comparison to some of the elf/dwarf scenes. Awesome game.

Now try doing it some other ways. :D

Several different endings are possible, each one I thought was interesting, but none of them truly "happy" endings per se.
 
Got Zev, Leliana, and Morrian, and will hit the duellist on my next trip back.
I found an amusing bug...I stayed in my Blood Dragon Plate for the nookie scene with Leliana.

If you dont have Zev and Lel at just the right approval rating, it won't happen. I forget the exact numbers I had on my save for that one, if I can load it up and get them I'll post back what they were in case yours aren't in the right range.

If you've already been to the Pearl and talked to the duelist, it also won't happen because she won't be there any more. Gotta do it the very first time you go there.
 
What I did was retreat back behind the doorway after they turn hostile then close the door. Then I cast Blizzard on the area closest to the doorway. The door will open shortly after the spell is cast, so if possible have someone use a skill that can stun enemies the second it opens (I used the Dog's howl); it won't work on the boss lady, but it will stun the lesser cohorts which will give you your opportunity to lure her away.

Run to the room at the very end of the long hallway (it's a bedroom) and the boss will follow you there. Have your tank use Taunt to draw all of the damage and either use Force Field on him or just keep up healing. Her minions WILL eventually find their way to the room, but 2 out of 3 times they stop at the doorway to the room and do the Chuck Liddell roar/victory howl the entire time. All you really have to do then is beat the boss and then do cleanup along the hallway.

I found it quite workable on easy, just have to run back around the corner when you find yourself staring at all those archers. I'm sure it's possible on medium, I got her below half with a fairly mediocre group mix.
 
In these situations I use sleep;then blizard. Sleep casting time is MUCH faster. Blizard takes forever...


won this fight on hard my first time through.

the magic words are
blizzard, inferno, tempest and standard D&D tactics.


I need to go back and lose it on purpose to see what happens, as i hear it's another quest.
 
Yeah I was curious to this as well. Why did it even let me choose a voice in the character selection?

Its also a resource allocation thing.

In Witcher you only play one guy. In Mass Effect, you are only male or female. In DA, you can potentially play...lets see...6 combos of races/sex, if they use the same voice for the different dwarf and elf subsets. I wouldnt expect the elf to sound like the dwarf, so they will need 6 voice actors right there.

Now you might say, big deal, they already have a lot of voice actors, whats a few more? Problem is the main character does by far the most talking, and has multiple dialogue options for each conversation. And they will have to be good actors since you hear them for the whole damn game. Now you have a six different voices for each dialogue tree in the game, thats a lot of crap. It could be a second DVD filled up with just the audio files for the main character. And lets not even talk about localization in various languages.

And sure theres also the artistic decision to let you 'hear' you own character however you want.
 
And sure theres also the artistic decision to let you 'hear' you own character however you want.

This is exactly it. It was the same in Neverwinter Nights. I don't think it's a good idea to have my character fully voiced, since I have a better idea of my character's voice than anyone at Bioware.
 
I miss the voice, but I understand the difficulty of the voice actors too, especially since DA:O is as long as it is - think of it this way: ME took 15-20 hours for the main storyline. Plowing through just the main story of DA:O took me almost 40.
 
This is exactly it. It was the same in Neverwinter Nights. I don't think it's a good idea to have my character fully voiced, since I have a better idea of my character's voice than anyone at Bioware.

Yeah for any game where you create the character, I prefer no voice.

For a game where you play someone else's character (as in The Witcher), you might as well add the voice too for the complete experience.
 
After playing this game for 2 weeks and getting my wife's take on it (we've been playing independently) I'm convinced the devs want you to you AI exploits moreso than strategy. In nearly every fight I'm left wondering "Am I just too weak to win this?" until I pile my team into a corner and use friendly fire massive spells/potions or draw enemies out 1 at a time using the AI's limited vision.
I understand that you're constantly being bombarded by battles with tons of archers and 5-6 melee fighters while you're stuck with 4 people...but too often battles pretty much force you to use an exploit.
Plus, it seems like there's a pretty wide margin between normal and easy.
I feel that the battles are getting in the way of a good game, which is weird.
I've completed all of the Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale games and NWN 1 and 2, but this game is just weird about how weak you always seem.
 
You make a good point, Domingo. I've had to exploit AI vision on quite a few situations. Less so in my first playthrough as a mage. But in my second playthrough as a rogue, I find that I have to constantly pull AI one at a time. It's unfortunate that we are forced into such tactics that you would employ in an MMO. I played normal on both my playthroughs and I don't think I would want to try hard or nightmare if the jumps in difficulty are equivalent to that from easy to normal.

Having said that, I am still enjoying DAO on my second playthrough. It goes through a lot faster because I skip all the dialogue that I remember from the first game. Currently 9 hours in at level 9/10
 
Well, you are supposed to be fighting overwhelming odds after all, right? ;)

A lot depends on the skills/spells/characters you choose. A rogue is so key for taking out enemy casters quickly before they nuke your party to ashes. A rogue is also good against groups of archers in some instances.

AOE spells pretty much are a requirement to deal with banks of archers in the later parts, and stun spells for bosses. After getting through my first playthrough, I went for every AOE or stun type spell I could see, and it made things much easier on the second playthrough.

By the 3rd playthrough, I changed out my party a lot, and found what I think is my favorite blend (Shale and Dog FTW). I may go for a 4th time and try picking a few different skills/spells for fun.:D

To me, it was worth spending the points to get as many tactics slots as I could, especially for the mage characters. Then just get some good spells and set them to Damager/Ranged and let them go. Also set a slot on everyone to use potions when needed. That was one of the biggest helpers to surviving while I learned.

There are just tons of ways to approach it, which is part of its strength and also a weak point, as there are probably 2 bad ways for every 1 good one, and you don't know it until you're well into things.

Even with it's faults, I absolutely love this game. The banter between characters alone is worth it.
 
Even with it's faults, I absolutely love this game. The banter between characters alone is worth it.

That's something that surprised me. I found myself stopping to listen to the characters chatter behind me. I didn't want to load a new area before they finished speaking. That kind of behavior is definitely unlike me, so I definitely give DAO a thumbs up for managing to do that.
 
That's something that surprised me. I found myself stopping to listen to the characters chatter behind me. I didn't want to load a new area before they finished speaking. That kind of behavior is definitely unlike me, so I definitely give DAO a thumbs up for managing to do that.

Shale has some of the best lines in the whole game I think.

Shale and Leliana talking about making him shoes.....red of course......

Shale and Morrigan talking about how he could crush her, and how she could turn into a bird, fly just out of reach and crap on him

Shale just being Shale in battle..."Death to all pigeons!", which made me laugh every time.

I need to make some odd party's up just so I can hear more of the banter. If you enter and leave the Proving arena in Orzammar, you'll get a banter every time. :D
 
I had to laugh last night as i heard a convo between morrigan and leliana. leliana was talking about Morrigans breast. About showing more of her "features".
 
Shale has some of the best lines in the whole game I think.

Shale and Leliana talking about making him shoes.....red of course......

Shale and Morrigan talking about how he could crush her, and how she could turn into a bird, fly just out of reach and crap on him

Shale just being Shale in battle..."Death to all pigeons!", which made me laugh every time.

I need to make some odd party's up just so I can hear more of the banter. If you enter and leave the Proving arena in Orzammar, you'll get a banter every time. :D

lol reminds me of when you first acquire shale and before leaving the area he kills a chicken and your character looks at him like wtf? and he's like what? and just shrugs in the most hilarious manner.
 
I had to laugh last night as i heard a convo between morrigan and leliana. leliana was talking about Morrigans breast. About showing more of her "features".

Hehe I've heard them both having a real bitch fest over who is the better mate for my character when they both had about +30 approval.
I had to stop and listen every time :)
 
How long is this game? I'm 31% complete, 51% of world explored and have 75 hours logged. 5 hours (maybe 10 is sretching it) of that or so was alt-tabbing. But I'm doing everything I can possibly find to do, all the quest, follower quest, etc. I guess a good amount of time is spent reading and messing around with character gear and stuff.

Secondly, where are the exotic weapons like flails? The weapons are very basic. long/short/2 handed swords, daggers and maces and mauls *yawn fest*.
 
How long is this game? I'm 31% complete, 51% of world explored and have 75 hours logged. 5 hours (maybe 10 is sretching it) of that or so was alt-tabbing. But I'm doing everything I can possibly find to do, all the quest, follower quest, etc. I guess a good amount of time is spent reading and messing around with character gear and stuff.

Secondly, where are the exotic weapons like flails? The weapons are very basic. long/short/2 handed swords, daggers and maces and mauls *yawn fest*.

You've got a ways to go yet I'd say. If you haven't been to Orzammar yet, thats almost an entire game unto itself to do just that part.

The weapons are indeed somewhat boring, though with runes you can make some pretty wickedly effective weapons. Paralysis on a rogue weapon is like pure love. ;)
 
lol reminds me of when you first acquire shale and before leaving the area he kills a chicken and your character looks at him like wtf? and he's like what? and just shrugs in the most hilarious manner.

I've got to get that on video and make an animated GIF at some point. Wickedly funny.
 
Orzammar does seem rather long

I have the dwarves and magi on my side, now i'm working on getting the elves.
 
I'm on my second playthrough and after 10 hours of play, decided to finally use the code for Shale that came with the box. He tanks better at level 12 than my Alistar did at level 14. Talk about making the game easy!
 
No matter what I've done with Alistair he's pretty much either chugging potions constantly or dying. Plus, since his starting strength isn't that great it takes a while before he can handle some of the better sheilds, too. I'm at level 13 or 14 and I'm fed up with him.
With Shale, I ended up getting him after clearing Redcliffe and the Brasilian Forest. By that point I'd already found lots of good crystals for him. He's a much better front-line fighter just because he can take a beating. Ditto with the dog.
My main character is a Rogue and I actually find myself (just wearing high-end light armor) being a better front-line fighter than Alistair.

What's funny for PC owners - check out some YouTube footage of "tough" fights on the consoles. It seems like the consoles are about 100x easier than the PC version.
 
Has anyone found a way to get the Shale quest to work after patching? it has downloaded multiple times, but it's looking for version 1.0 to install. I read that uninstalling/reinstalling screws up the services it needs.

I think i'm close to the end (having got all three groups on my side now) but i'm looking forward to playthrough 2 already.
 
No matter what I've done with Alistair he's pretty much either chugging potions constantly or dying. Plus, since his starting strength isn't that great it takes a while before he can handle some of the better sheilds, too. I'm at level 13 or 14 and I'm fed up with him.
With Shale, I ended up getting him after clearing Redcliffe and the Brasilian Forest. By that point I'd already found lots of good crystals for him. He's a much better front-line fighter just because he can take a beating. Ditto with the dog.
My main character is a Rogue and I actually find myself (just wearing high-end light armor) being a better front-line fighter than Alistair.

What's funny for PC owners - check out some YouTube footage of "tough" fights on the consoles. It seems like the consoles are about 100x easier than the PC version.
I never had a problem with Allistar - good armor (blood dragon plate or warden commander), wynne healing, and a good shield.
 
Has anyone found a way to get the Shale quest to work after patching? it has downloaded multiple times, but it's looking for version 1.0 to install. I read that uninstalling/reinstalling screws up the services it needs.


I installed it last night just fine. However, I never patched my game specifically. Does the game automatically patch online when you install it?

I think i'm close to the end (having got all three groups on my side now) but i'm looking forward to playthrough 2 already.

I felt the same way towards the end of my first playthrough!
 
Shield Wall + Shield Tactics + decent amount of points put into dex = great tank. Shield Mastery and Shield Expertise make it even better. Sounds to me like some of you guys are putting too many points into constitution or strength so Alistair can wear heavier gear, but my philosophy is it's better to dodge attacks outright than to just soak them up with more hp/armor.
 
I installed it last night just fine. However, I never patched my game specifically. Does the game automatically patch online when you install it?

Game does not patch on its own. Current patch fixes the following....

Dragon Age: Origins 1.01b
Patch details:
fixed potential corruption of character statistics
fixed portrait appearance sliders when importing a character from the downloadable Character Creator
fixed import for preset face settings from the downloadable Character Creator
made Easy difficulty easier
slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty
fixed video issues when running on a very wide screen display, including ATI Eyefinity displays
fixed an issue with Dragon Age and Windows Game Explorer
updated Visual C runtime libraries

Get it here http://social.bioware.com/page/da-patches

Sometimes they also put other hotfixes on the PC Tech forum section as well but those can cause other issues as they aren't a normal "patch".

Main PC Tech forum is here (You may need to register to get access if you haven't already)

http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/category/58/index
 
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