Dragon Age: Origins

The Core Video Games Forum
#52

My problem were the grunts from the Redcliffe militia, whom I could not control. If your own party members are charging at Dragon Flemeth, it’s because their tactics are set wrong. I beat that battle by having Alistair keep it busy with the greatsword I got from the tower, my character and Wynne healing him constantly or magic missile’ing the enemy, and Leliana just firing her crossbow. Poor Alistair took a huge beating, but I guess that’s what he gets for being my only melee character. I’ll have to see about checking out the Arcane Warrior specialization for my character.

Hah, I know what you mean, I wanted to punch the stupid bitch myself, but I guess knowing that she owes the brat’s life to a bunch of mages may be good enough. The tower is still a great dungeon, or at least the Sloth Demon’s Fade is. I got more stat upgrades there than I’d get in ten character levels. I just wish I could use the transformations in the real world too, fuck Morrigan’s shapeshifting.

#53

Dragons are super easy to tank using Shale. Turn on the defense mode, use the super taunt to keep its attention on you and equip a fire crystal for armor and an ice crystal for damage. Use regenerative burst as needed. Keep everyone else on range dps with ice arrows or spells.

#54

I just maxed out Herbalism so that I always have like a billion cheap Greater Health Poultices. It saves your mana and lyrium potions (since lyrium dust is harder to come by) for casting Death Hex, Misdirection Hex, Vulnerability Hex, and your arsenal of single-target spells. Alistar only needs healing if he’s being combo’d by the dragon.

#55

The quartermaster in the Circle Tower has an unlimited supply of lyrium dust for sale.

On other news: SON OF A BITCH! I tried to do the Redcliffe defense without letting anyone die just to see if I could. I managed to pull it off by eating through ten or so lyrium potions, but even then the fucking militia had the habit of walking in the way every time I tried to cast Cone of Cold. And the zombies just kept coming. More and more and more and more and Loyd is getting hammered by four corpses at a time and some zombie snuck up on the archers and they all bunched together so Fireball is off and oh shit that militia guy is low on health and there come more corpses and more and more and GAHHHHHGLAGRABLAGRAHBRRRRRLLLLLL!!!11111

#56

Use taunt

#57

I used a mix of taunt, threaten with Shale as a tank and I kept an eye on who was getting attacked by what to do crowd control with Morrigan and my mage character. I used horror, cone of cold (when possible), ice blast and mind blast liberally. Other that that, it was single target spells like lightning and arcane bolt. I can imagine chain lightning would be useful, but expensive, here. Shale had his mass stun skill in defense mode and I had my dog also use his mass stun skill and offtank. I used the blood magic MP regen skill from the DLC to regain mana, but this is easily done using mana pots also.

The main problem for that fight was to address the initial mass of skeletons attacking everyone in a big mess. That’s easily handled by a taunt and a couple stuns and moving Shale a little away from the group. Once they’re delt with, you get a steady stream of skeletons from different directions. If you don’t want another swarm, the trick for me was to dispatch them fast enough so there are never more than a couple in the screen at a time, and to offtank using my dog or using stuns when I didn’t have taunt.

#58

Currently swimming in cash through mass-producing of Potent Lyrium Potions. It does take traveling back and forth bewteen Denerim and the Circle Tower, but it means I’ll never have to worry about money again.

Arcane Warrior is a pretty cool specialization. It’s clearly not meant as a first-measure, but it’s a great resort when you’re low on mana and/or can’t afford to cast big AoE spells, so long as you keep an extra armor on hand to switch for the robes when going in melee. Mixing it up with the fourth Spirit Healer skill is extremely broken too.

DAYUM, the Juggernaut armor set is sweet. Alistair looks awesome in it, especially wielding Yusaris around. Speaking of which, is it just me, or does the hilt of that sword grow to about a meter every time I’m talking? It looks normal when walking, but when the camera focuses on Alistair while chatting, the hilt coming from behind his back looks about as long as his whole torso.

I resent Sinistral’s notion that mage equipment looks lame. Several robes I’ve seen look pretty cool, and although they lack the grand, mystical bulkyness I’m used to from Baldur’s Gate robes, they’re blingy enough. The only problem are THE FUCKING HOODS. GODDMANIT, THE HOODS DO LOOK FUCKING LAME. THERE’S NOT A SINGLE FUCKING GOOD-LOOKING HOOD IN THE GAME. DOES THIS UNIVERSE HAVE NO HATS!?

#59

Hats are the worst. The robes do look lame in comparison to the armor. Warden Commander gear. Enough said.

#60

This is why I made my MC an Arcane Warrior - it’s just so I could wear awesome Drakeskin armour to compensate for my refusal to wear a silly hat.

#61

Mmmh, I had replayed Black Isle RPGs so much I had actually forgotten what was like not having the foggiest idea of what to do with your skills. I see now that I built my mage incorrectly for Arcane Warrior as he’s too geared towards large AoE spells instead of close range crowd control, and the final spell in the Spirit healer tree actually drains mana instead of just being a sustainable, making it more of a liability than anything else. I should have put some more points on the Mind Blast tree to get Crushing Prison… bah, that’s what replays are for, my party is still plenty serviceable.

By the way, I find Arrow of Slaying to be a cocktease skill. I had Leliana learn it and she can shave off like 200 points in one hit, which is awesome, but means that any enemy actually capable of surviving that (Say, High Dragons) will immediately go after her and her alone, and as an archer build, she’s not exactly sturdy.

#62

Ahaha, oh wow. Storm of the Century is fucking insane, I can clear out like thirty enemies at once before even seeing them, totally worth learning Spell Might. This game is pretty unbalanced in favor of mages, honestly.

After getting the hang of most skills and classes, and building a good Arcane Warrior which by the way is broken as fuck when used correctly, I’m kind of dissapointed at Shapechanger. It’s fucking retarded, there’s no upside to it whatsoever.

#63

Yep, mages make most things pretty easy. Even without Storm of the Century, having 4 or 5 AoE spells can destroy most rooms without the caster making eye contact with anyone in it.

#64

Maybe it wouldn’t be so blatant if there were no way for mages to defend themselves, but Arcane Warrior is so goddamn awesome in melee that I’m really missing the point of Warriors and Rogues here, my mage with Combat Magic + Fade Shroud + Shimmering Shield is even more durable than Alistair wearing massive armor sets and strikes for about as much damage.

#65

I bought the Ultimate Edition a couple months ago and finished up the platinum trophy yesterday. My first playthrough I used a human rogue, second an elvaan blood mage / arcane warrior. I thought the game started a little slow, but the dialogue was excellent and Alistair was always very amusing. My rogue was a monster, he just sliced through everything without much trouble (on normal difficulty). I used Wynne (healer), Alistair (tank) and Morrigan (mage). Second playthrough my mage was pretty strong but blood magic would get me into trouble when I’d forget to turn it off. I used Alistair, Sten and Leliana with my mage.

Good game with incredibly developed characters and brilliant dialogue, very well written. Going through the origin stories of each race / class to get the trophies tied a lot of things together and was very interesting. As a noble dwarf, for example, you got to see everything that went down with Bhelen and his brothers and the fight over the throne. The city elf story was horrible, however.

Playing on the PS3, there were definitely performance issues (framerate) and my game froze up completely a couple times along the way. Graphics weren’t great but good enough. I’d strongly recommend this to RPG fans, they did a nice job with it. Pic of my mage (with a camera off the TV, hence the blur):

Terra.jpg800×479

#66

The second ones a bit different, but it’s okay.

#67

I never got the hype over this since I never played a Dragon Age game before. I think I’ll pick it up now that it’s $30.

#68

Get the ultimate edition, and you’ll have all the DLC other than exclusive promo crap. It’s pretty awesome.

#69

Incidentally, that’s what I’m playing. So far it’s kill things with mages before things kill your mages.

#70

To be honest, I always love these kind of RPG games. I have tasted many before but Dragon Ages is an exception. I don’t know why I don’t give it a go but I think it’s because I haven’t finished any of the others yet lol! OK, it’s time to come back and conquer them one by one :slight_smile:

#71

this is from nears the end of dragon age origins. The troops are putting all their faith in you, don’t mess it up.