What, you don't like Claudia Black Shezza?

 

How the hell do you rest? When I had to do the Wilds prior to the Joining, all my fucking guys got injured good, and I couldn't afford the damned kits.

The Joining scene. AWESOME. The atmosphere so far, the Templars basically holding the Mages hostage, the lore, incredibly detailed. With all the hyped and now being owned by fucking EA, I was scared they'd pull a Molyneux, and only deliver 10% of their promises.

Shezza, the interface clearly has too much console in it, but the story alone so far has ruled out any real complaints I've had over controls so far. The exception being the Tactics system. It does blow ass, and I can't get the fucking people to do exactly what I want.

The Rogue guy for instance, See enemy long distance > stealth, Switch to ranged weapon, attack for an easy crit. Noooooo he'll switch to ranged, but then run up and fucking switch back to melee, if he's going to do that, I'd rather he backstab.


Morrigan, just got there, naked patch coming out in 3...2...

New Avay is my mage in DO, I do wonder though, I had heard the Origin's part was supposed to take 10 hours. I'm already a warden several hours in, and I've read and explored everything. No way I'm at 10 hours. Plus I can't see the Human Mage origins being very different from the Elf mage one unless it's in a different circle?

Edit: What the fuck with the blood splatter? Jesus.

 

Yeah, the bloodspatter is a little ridiculous. People tend to wipe their faces... and their weapons... blood can cause rust after all.

As for resting, when you reach Lothering, hit 'n' to get the global map then go up to the upper right corner and click 'camp'. Only way to recover from your injuries without spamming injury kits... which are hard to come by, by the way.

 

Cool, thanks. I'm liking being able to put leather armor on my mage, and have sustainable buff spells, but good god they RUIN your mana supply. Even with just the robes and rock armor, my guy can only fire off enough magic to take down a few guys, and the staff doesn't do much of shit yet. I hate the hiding behind the tanks war mages.


And the Blood Dragon armor kinda gets on my nerves, I don't think I'll ever be able to wear it as a mage with this playthough with the strength requirement. They should of made different armors for the classes since it's a special item. Dragon Robes or something would of been nice, something other then damned full armor.

 

Okay. Still need help with this? Here we go:

Spoiler

You should have the Mage asunder island open to you. You need Mouse/Burning man form to navigate it. One major hint, the mages in this level <3 the Fireball, burning man form is immune to fire. Makes life a shit ton easier if you stay in Marshmallow toasting mode. You'll find the person (cursed dreamer) who gives out the golem mode being molested by Chantry priests AND golems. This took me a loooong time. Golem form is win tho. Wish I could bring it out of fade with me.

 

Had to turn down the difficulty =/ Normal in the tower on the way to light the beacon the fucking soldiers drop like stones, seems like every time we round a corner, there's 3 archers, and 3+ melee enemies, jesus.

Tempted so hard to edit my mage to at least get more mana, several spells and he's limp dicking it, sucks. Trying to play a legit playthough though.

 

Whoa there, just hold on a second.

Claudia Black is in this?

Ya, I'll be right back, gotta go to the mall and buy something...

In all seriousness, I had planned on getting this eventually, but it just gave me even more of a reason to. I'll pick it up after a month or two when the price drops and I need a break from MW2.

 

Thanks, I eventually figured it out by going back and finding that exit/entrance. Also, I found that electric spells=win in the fade for some reason. Massive damage verses fire.

Now I'm going to get the Urn of Ashes, god this game is so addicting.

 

I also so not see the big deal in this game.

I got passed the

Spoiler

demon controlling that Conner kid and managed to get to the next town.

This game is just boring. I understand how the combat is supposed to work, but I don't like it. As of now, combat goes like this. Get wiped by some random group, restart, beat random group easy considering I now know the position and setup. Now if I was going slower I could live about 50% of the times I got wiped, but why the hell is it even a real time RPG then? It feels like it wants to be turned based combat... and if it was... it would be better.

Story was great in the start, but it slowed down when I got to Redcliff and failed to care about the characters.

Really, the game was amazing at the start but then became a standard RPG with a weird combat system.

 

Weird? Never played Baldursgate I take it. Most people used to games like world of warcraft probably wont like it.

EVERYONE should check out the games from Black Isle Studios, best games ever.

Middy, I drink about 5 mana potions each fight when fighting about 10 enemies. I make my own potions when I can, money is pretty easy to get after a while, it's just annoying to find NPCs who sell enough potions. :\

 

Shitty Giz =/ Does Herbalism ever wind up being worth it? I haven't bothered putting anything into it yet, as I've never even SEEN a flask yet, but I have tons of components.


I has secks now plz?

Spoiler

If the Grey Wardens can detect the darkspawn, why the hell didnt they realize they were coming under the city and up the tower after the Joining/before the main battle???

 

You need to buy flasks / distiller agents from merchants in any village/city, or at your campsite.

I've beaten everything but the Mage Tower now.

If you're disappointed from the Redcliffe encounter, I can understand. The castle and the town defense are pretty boring missions (though I did find them difficult), when you get to Orzammar... god there's like 4-5 dungeons right after another. Broodmother boss takes forever to beat, and then you realize you've got another boss right after her, gah.

The Dalish forest is a little long too, but it was okay for my first dungeon area. The snow mountains are the shortest dungeon, and fairly easy, though I did do it at level 14.

Here's what I suggest...

Lothering --> Dalish --> Redcliffe --> <Side Quests on Map> --> Snow mountains of whatever --> Orzammar

Dunno how Mage Tower will fit in, probably easier than Orzammar.. that place was the longest. And it's where the golems are too... but I couldn't find Shale, oh well, maybe on my next playthrough.

Spoiler

Some tips, since I'm level 16... I can sort of rate what specialties are worth investing in:

Traps: From what I can tell, useless, however, I've only invested a single point in them.
Poison: Get 1 point on everyone who uses melee weapons and level up Zevran so he can churn out poisons for everyone to use... poisons are the best for overcoming tough challenges.
Naturalist: Okay talent, useful for a single quest so far... but the passive defense bonus is good.
Herbalist: Pretty good, except you need to whore for materials and buy recipes to make anything good... but healing supplies are in such scarcity, it's necessary to level this up. I recommand Morrigan.
Tactician: Pretty good if you're too lazy to control your players, but not all that useful.

Spells / Abilities

Warrior: Go for the passive shield abilities, if you're going to be a tank, but don't invest completely in shield mastery, it's a waste. Once you get the good passives, stop. Alistair doesn't have enough Stamina to really spam skills or maintain stances, so I find them useless.

If you're going to DPS as a warrior, go for 2h, obviously. Try to aim for the passive benefits, but you're free to spend all your skill points here if you want to. They're all fairly useful.

Don't go archery.

The 'warrior' talents are also okay too.

Berserker talents are kind of lame and do not mesh well with anything.
Templar talents are good.

Rogue: This is where I have the most experience.

Rogues... don't bother with stealth. Put all your points into lockpicking when you can and get your cunning to about 22~ allows you to open all chests, which is something you'll need, pretty badly. There aren't any 'rogue' talents worth getting after that - well, that's not totally true, the passive +crit and +dodge talents are good, but they are near the end, so are pretty investment heavy.

Dual wielding is required to deal any damage as a rogue. Archery completely sucks. Sure, there are useful ocassios for it, so equip a bow on a rogue, but the fact 50% of the time you're in closed quarters, and the other 40% of the time there's some obstruction between you and your target (thus forcing you to coddle your archer) and the fact the AI for the archer sucks (an enemy engages an archer... he pulls out his melee weapon – great, just what he needs to do) means you shouldn't invest anything in it.

I would recommend the top and bottom trees of the dual wield tech for investment, especially if your rogue has low willpower like mine. Get the skill that gives you free crits for immobilized opponents too.. that's a godsend.

Duelist is so-so.
Assassin is good.
Bard is so-so. I don't get the last song, the first 3 are okay, but the 4th one seems useless... unless you've got a whole party of bards.

Mage:

All mages should invest 1 skill point in heal, regardless of spec. The rest of creation is garbage, imo though –*you could get regeneration if you want to spend more points, but... you can get through half of the game with a single healer and the basic heal spell.

Ice is very, very good, though the last talent for it is very situational... but you can combine it with the lightning aoe spell, making for heavy damage.

Lightning is also very good.

Fire is... also very good. Though, I would pick lightning and fire or lightning and ice – not ice and fire, they don't seem to mesh as well.

Transformation is a horrible spec – as you should quickly realize from using Morrigan. Your Mage cannot cast spells while transformed and contributes little to the battle. I cannot fathom why anyone would want to use this spec, especially when transformation takes several seconds of channeling time, so it's not like a mage can tank if he's under attack – he'll die before he can transform.
Spirit Healer is the best spec in the game –*all 4 talents are worth it, truly. If you need a healer, spirit healer will provide it.
Blood mage is so-so.

 

About Shale

Spoiler

You don't get Shale in the tower, he's in an entirely separate place from the main storyline areas, if you have the DLC or package from Xbox Marketplace depending on what system your on then you get a quest notification about a merchant in a place called Sepulcher Pass which is an entirely new area with nothing but a merchant who you get the control rod from and directions to Honnleath Village which is where Shale is currently trapped.

 

Ahh! Thanks. I haven't gotten that notification, guess I'll have to reinstall my DLC or something. Maybe they glitched out. I was searching all around the underground ruins of Orz, expecting to find him somewhere.

 

Ah yeah he isn't down there but he is retardedly useful down there when you play through, I'm on my mage currently and he has saved my butt multiple times now.

 

Added info on healing:

Spoiler

Note:Very mild spoiler, doesn't reveal the story, just tells the name of a character.

You get access to whyne when you do the mages quest, which is a fucking GODSEND. She has the whole healing tree, and a giant mana pool. I basically use her as my healing whore and can make my normal mage the damage whore. Do not invest any points in heal after the first skill, it's a waste once you get whyne.

 

I went into transformation as a mage. By god I regret that now. In all fairness at the levels I was playing at it was pretty decent, but now it's just terribad.

EDIT: I'm on 360, and have had a glitch 3-4 times where Alastair's "Shield bash" ability just spazzes and procs every 0.1 seconds, doing GIGA damage to enemies in seconds, and stunlocking them as he just jerks and flails around. It happened when I was about to die, every time. Seems to be something to do with the terrain.
Best bit? When it happened when I accidentally triggered a fight with a

Spoiler

High Dragon

- I reloaded though. Felt cheap.

 

So, I just bought the game and spent the last 5 hours(in which I was supposed to be studying) Trying to choose which way I should start the game. First I picked a city elf rogue, but the "we are shunned but its okay" mentality they had drove me away before I did anything with it. Then, I picked up the other elfish kind as a rogue, and it looked badass enough until the other char starts bitching about stealing(Which is why I usually pick rogue).

Thus I decided to start off once again as a elfish magi and the "please don't kill me" mentality they had when faced with a templar also pissed me off.

So, I became a warden with the mage and met Morrigan, which totaly convinced to give up a mage just to have her in the party in my place.

So, any thoughts on my 4th try to start over?

 

My favorite group is 3 mages + 1 piece of bait(poor alistair). Its pretty amazing how quickly you can power thru the game. Anyhoot, repeating the same beginning stages are boring. You really want some of the more advanced skills/spells. Don't keep on restarting.

If you feel that the rogue class is a bit weak, heres a link to the latest unofficial patch: http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/hotfix/dexterity_hotfix_101

Dagger Damage : Not just str, but dex as well.
Ranged Weapon: Hit rate improved, +5 attack bonus. Doesn't get shown in the character sheet, gotta wait for official patch for the change there.
Shortbows: damge is Dex based, not str any more.
All range have had their crit rate increased too.

Only problem is that ENEMY archers get this boost too. Makes them a lot higher on my kill list. Supposedly on some encounters will make difficulty go up a notch.