Archdemon fight is fucking gay.

11/23/2009 4:15:39 AM

I'm in the dwarven city looking in the Deep Roads for Branka, the last living Paragon that is presumed dead. She was going deep into the ancient thaigs looking for the anvil which created the Golems that brought relative peace to the Dwarven city for nearly 100 years. I fought this Spider Queen bitch probably 12 times until I beat her on Hard. That was easily the hardest fight in the game for me so far on Hard.

11/23/2009 9:16:38 AM

This is going to sound stupid, but I was a little disappointed at how quickly you are thrown into the main story from your origin.

I was playing through as an elf mage, played about 10 hours and really wasn't happy with the way he was, and how underpowered he was (yeah I know, mages are always powerful later, whatever)

so I rerolled as a dwarf warrior, and within an hour I was already back as a Grey Warden.

I don't know what I expected. I guess I thought there would be more to the origin stories.

Still cool though, I like being a warrior more than being a mage at this point.

11/23/2009 9:52:39 AM

Wow, thats the exact opposite of my experience. First I rolled a human warrior and our whole party would often get trounced on normal. I tried an elf mage/healer and suddenly hard mode is easy.

[Edited on November 23, 2009 at 9:59 AM. Reason : .]

11/23/2009 9:59:39 AM

Which dwarf warrior?

Some of the origins are longer than others, the dwarf commoner is probably the shortest. Dwarf Noble and Mage seem the longest. But I haven't done Dalish Elf yet.

11/23/2009 10:08:15 AM

commoner

11/23/2009 10:45:53 AM

^^ dalish elf is pretty short and uneventful.

11/23/2009 10:56:04 AM

So I'm wondering whether the enemies scale to your level. Like is it possible to wander into an area where the enemies are vastly overpowered and you just have to come back after leveling.

I've had a little more success by swapping out a few of my party members, but I just did a quest in the Denerim warehouse and there was this one room I had to retry like 5 times. Again, demonstrating the unevenness the boss was in the very next room and was a complete pushover.

11/23/2009 11:07:14 AM

Sort of, fights can become easier as you become more powerful and some don't scale at all like Flemeth.

Difficulty really depends on your group makeup.

11/23/2009 12:07:21 PM

The way the game is presented makes it impossible to not scale a little.

You're given 4 choices of where to go next at one point, and each of those places is likely to give you 3 levels or so. If they weren't scaled the last one you visit would be ridiculously easy.

11/23/2009 2:33:45 PM

Well if I were to do it over I'd definitely do the Circle Tower quest first. It seemed really easy and I found permanent stat point bonuses all over the place.

11/23/2009 2:57:09 PM

I think those stat bonusses were only for the Fade.

11/23/2009 3:05:39 PM

I did the Dalish Elf quest last and found it to be ridiculously easy compared to the others. Not sure if this is a result of the scaling or me finally figuring out good combinations and tactics for combat.

11/23/2009 3:36:57 PM

Without healers you are screwed. I have wyenne obviously healing and morrigan with healing as well.

I have used earthquake for great crowd control.



LOOK AT MY PICTURE AND COMMENT ACCORDINGLY!

I cant wait to go to the dwarfs and get berserker. Reaver sounds kewl as well. What experiences have you guys had with specializations and thoughts?

11/23/2009 6:35:42 PM

Woot, finished, probably the fastest I've gone through a game of that length in a long-ass time.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS FUCKING SONG IN THE CREDITS? Jesus christ.

11/24/2009 1:20:17 AM

Contemplating buying the DLC. Is it worth it? How long does it take?

11/24/2009 9:16:23 AM

i want this game

11/24/2009 9:48:13 AM

3 mages + Alistair w/ survival = win. I can simultaneously cast tier-4 AoE spells from three rooms over and kill EVERYONE without opening a door. I'm currently in the dwarf city, about to run through the carta rogue person's underground fortress.

11/24/2009 7:31:07 PM

^^ I'll sell you a legit PC copy for 30.

11/24/2009 8:03:51 PM

make sure you talk to the ambassador dudes or whatever they are called in your camp and click on those boxes... I found out about it after I had sold a shit ton of stuff

11/24/2009 10:20:40 PM

I want to play this so fucking badly, but I know I don't have the time needed to really get into it

11/24/2009 10:22:13 PM

^^Why, what do the boxes do?

11/25/2009 12:24:10 AM

apparently you have to drop off things the various groups will need for the big battle at the end..

11/25/2009 12:29:09 AM

I'm enjoying this game, but man there are some MASSIVE bugs all throughout it. None of them have been too awful devastating so far, but there have been quite a few major ones.

I won't spoil the exact details, but today I chose to go back and replay the last ~2 hours of my game because I didn't like one of the choices I accidentally made at the Landsmeet and the latest save I had was right at the start of the Alienage part. I was redoing the Orphanage mission and I got to the middle room and "something" happened. Normal part of the game, but the thing is, the first time through when I hit that room there was nothing in there. Same with the last room as well. First time through I walked into the room and there were all sorts of dead bodies everywhere that I looted for stuff, then I left through the back door and that was it. My companion was gone with no explanation why, I didn't get a mission complete checkmark, nothing. It was just weird. But of course, the 2nd time through, I had the boss battle at the end and got to see the resolution to the mission.

It's just weird. I wonder how many other things I've missed due to just random glitches. Now that I think about it, I do remember being somewhat confused a time or two but I just chalked it up to me probably not paying attention. I wouldn't have ever known about this one either if I hadn't randomly decided to run through those two hours again (ended up taking me less than 30 minutes the 2nd time through, obviously)

11/25/2009 12:58:31 AM

odd, i havent had anything like that happen

11/25/2009 1:46:03 AM

Well, not that you know of.

11/25/2009 2:26:27 AM

I dropped a bunch of Runes off for the mages boxes. I like how rare the enchantable weapons are. Completely opposite of Diablo.

11/25/2009 7:47:01 AM

I've actually been impressed by how FEW bugs there are. I take notice of these kind of things and I can't recall a single one in the PC version. There was one time where a party member got stuck trying to follow me, and one time where a resurrection didn't apply to the dead pc.

11/25/2009 8:16:46 AM

yeah, playin on PS3, the same mission didn't get finished for me.. so i went back, saw the dude die, and it still didn't work.. and right outside the girl looking for her amulet won't give me an option to give it to her even though i have it. there's been a couple times when I'll leave a merchant, be running like halfway across the city and then somehow get warped back to the same merchant, but that's not too bad, just gotta run some more. that might be all, or maybe that's all i can remember because thats where i am in the game..

11/25/2009 9:01:41 PM

jesus this orzammar shit is taking forever

11/25/2009 10:57:08 PM

found a glitch for infinite XP on the PC version...not sure if it works on consoles.

when you get the ashes, just keep going in and out of the door to the mountain top area. get about 1000 xp every time. when i found it, i had just gotten the ashes, still had them in my inventory (hadn't healed arl of redcliff) and hadn't killed the dragon on the mountain yet

so tempted to abuse it, but didn't

11/25/2009 11:30:15 PM

Sooo the Dalish quest with the werewolves and the dungeon makes me want to put a god damn rogue in my group so bad. How many chests and traps can you have. To bad rogues suck.

11/26/2009 10:20:10 AM

^haha, i have leliana in my group and she STILL can't open all of the chests....it makes me so angry when it says "insufficient skill" cuz i wanna know whats in that fucking chest

11/26/2009 12:53:32 PM

using the chick rogue with a good bow and arrows with maintained rapid fire and suppressing fire and throwing in shattering shot, crit shot, etc seems to work just fine for me. she also has a bear companion i call up. i train her on magic casters from my backline and she takes so little damage she's usually the target of the blood sacrifice for my blood mage/arcane warrior toon

in fact, i use my bm/aw to tank, then bring her bow, wynne's heals, and morrigan's cold line and straight roll fools. the high dragon's ain't got shit on that team composition

11/26/2009 7:18:39 PM

yeah, I got tired of not being able to pick lots so I just bust the chest up now instead of trying to pick them

11/26/2009 7:23:06 PM

How do you bust the chest up?

11/26/2009 7:50:43 PM

Are you fucking kidding me? You can break chests open like in NW2? Goddammit.

11/26/2009 8:28:50 PM

i've fought this fucking broodmother like 10 times...i get her down to maybe 10% health and then all the sudden my people drop like fuckin flies

this is infuriating....i'm OK until those fucking Shrieks come up when shes about to die.....and they just wipe my shit clean

[Edited on November 26, 2009 at 9:02 PM. Reason : ugh]

11/26/2009 8:34:20 PM

How the hell do you break open a chest?!?!?!?!?

11/26/2009 9:11:51 PM

haha, sorry, just messing with everyone... I dont think you can bust them open, would be nice though

11/27/2009 1:32:25 AM

^ROFL

11/27/2009 1:49:44 AM

yeah, i started playing a second one, didn't realize how much it would suck not being able to open chests. I was an elf rogue the first go round, so I've been able to do pretty much everything myself and persuade almost anything I needed. Did it a second as a human mage and through about 2 hours it really pisses me off because I know I'm missing some decent shit.

11/27/2009 2:49:15 AM

^5 Put everyone on ranged and stand them in the middle of the flat rocks in the back. The tentacles won't be able to reach them. Make sure your tank is on the rock slab closest to the boss, and he should have most of the aggro. Survive the waves of darkspawn and win.

11/27/2009 9:55:56 AM

For the PC version there is mod that adds an unlock spell,

http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=157

There are a handful of other useful mods as well,

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=18656010&postcount=10026

11/27/2009 10:53:00 AM

it took me 3 hours to beat the Branka quest in the anvil of the void part last night(broodmother, spirits and then Branka herself).........painful, so f'ing painful

11/27/2009 1:23:24 PM

I haven't found anything decent in any locked chest, yet I still have a rogue in the party and I intend on leveling the lock pick skill to max. I'm sure I'll just find a couple non magical rings and lesser lyrium potions in those locked chests that require level 4 lock pick.

As far as bugs go. I've noticed that my matching armor bonus will go away from time to time. I have to unequip and reequip the armor to get the bonus back. Also I've noticed that some of my party members had damage penalties for no reason. No deaths or even heavy damage taken, the damage penalties just randomly appear.

[Edited on November 28, 2009 at 4:44 PM. Reason : -]

11/28/2009 4:30:29 PM

^agreed when I go all the way back through a dungeon with a rogue and I get a fucking basic bow out of a locked chest it, and STILL have half of them to hard to open, it really pisses me off.

11/28/2009 6:03:37 PM

You can change characters in the middle of most dungeons. Hit the party button.

11/28/2009 7:26:24 PM

You can usually only change your party in non combat areas.

11/29/2009 1:20:45 PM

Quote :

"I haven't found anything decent in any locked chest"

A-fucking-men to that. I got the rogue early on and maxed her out in lockpicking as quick as possible so there were hardly any chests I left unlocked. You never get SHIT from any of them. Shit to make potions, maybe some jewels, or a set of boots you can sell at a market for 23 silver. There's a couple of places near the end of the game (when you've already got enough money to where you don't actually NEED anything) that you get 6-7 gold worth of stuff, but I was really disappointed in the almost total lack of any actual good loot to be found in chests. Or shit, anywhere for that matter. It pisses me off to no end to take out a bad guy, see him drop a sword, and shield, be wearing armor, and then when you search his body you only get a weakass potion and 13 silver. That's one (of many) thing that Oblivion did that was 1000 times better than DAO. Also not being able to have a place to dump your shit that you don't want to carry or sell really sucks. Would it have killed them to put a storage chest in your camp that you could leave items in?

I did enjoy this game, so I don't want to sound too harsh on it, but aside from having the party combat system and the overall challenge that comes with it, (and that's not even a positive thing for some people) I can't think of one single thing that makes this game better than Oblivion.

11/29/2009 3:48:29 PM