Dragon Age: Origins

You know what’s funny, Sin? I normally play warrior/fighter types, and I had a much easier time playing a mage (Spirit Healer) than a fighter or a thief (rogue…whatever). I never play mages, but a healer-type mage will absolutely blow through everything in the early game. Besides, Alistair is an excellent tank and has some of the best lines. I’m pretty much sticking with MC/Alistair/Leiliana/Morrigan and I’m having zero problems. I just finished getting all possible alliances, though. So who knows? I may have more trouble in the future.

I used Alistair and Shale as tanks, mostly Shale towards the end. I agree that rogues are terrible. I haven’t played much as a rogue in DAO. The dual wielding warrior had excellent DPS and good survivability. He was a blood lawnmower.

My main group consisted of Shale, Alistair, Morrigan and the MC or Shale, Morrigan, the MC and Wynne.

When I played as a mage, I had more success playing defensively and healing, but I was still early in the game. My gf finished the game with an offensive mage and she was fine. She’s more patient than I am, which is probably why.

Rogues are much better after the patch, so that Dexterity works as it should. It’s better to make a combat-oriented rogue than a thief-type rogue though, and I kinda like the ability to pick locks and disarm traps. It doesn’t feel like a rogue without that. :expressionless:

I was most disappointed with the way ranged characters are handled. The only reason I had Leleiana (fuck spelling her name r4789reJKL!@J) was because my character was in a romance with her. She also has some great lines… especially since for a while I was courting both her and Morrigan. cough Morrigan was not pleased…

They all have great lines. I agree that its pretty interesting to see what happens if you play both of them.

One of the reasons I liked my warrior more was that the itemization for mages is pretty shitty and so are the models. The warrior types are much cooler looking. This was my character at the Urn of Sacred Ashes

There’s an Realistic Archery patch that makes archer rogues a lot better. This, incidentally, also bumps up the difficulty of the game by about 1.5 grades (if you’re playing on Normal, it’ll feel like it’s a bit tougher than hard).

Anyway, my final party was MC (Arcane warrior mage), Leilianna (Archer rogue, sans patch), Morrigan (Healer mage), and Alistar (Sword and Shield tank). Tactical slots are a waste of time on PC since you can just micro every character.

What’s hilarious is the way I can rig 10-15% of the battles. Alistar has sensing enemies (forgot what this talent is called) maxed, so whenever enemies are in the next room behind closed doors, I can sense immediately that they’re there, even before I open the door. I get my entire party to hold position, and put my two mages to either side of the door. Leilianna is positioned somewhere off to the side, and Alistar is directly in front of the door. Then, Alistar opens the door, and my two mages simultaneously start casting Blizzard and Inferno. Alistar then shuts the door. By now, the enemies are alerted to my presence and come running. I finish up casting the spells and they’re all knocked down by the initial Blizzard freeze. Then, the next spells that get worked into the room (I don’t need vision at this point since fog of war is eliminated) are Earthquake (to slow them even more) and Death Cloud. Then, Tempest. By the time Tempest is finished casting the enemies in the room are generally at half health, and maybe one will actually reach the door. The moment he opens the door, he gets a Stone Fist or Shield Bash in the face, and Alistar closes the door again, and Blizzard freeze (plus the 3 other AoE spells that are doing periodic damage the whole time) sets in again.

In Arl Howe’s estate I killed like 15 soldiers in one room without even seeing them (except for the door opening) :>

In my final battle with the archdemon my MC had light drakescale armor equipped plus the Summer Sword (dropped from Ser Cauthrien - probably the best sword in the game) and was totally badass.

In theory, Alistair should only be able to see Darkspawn, but yeah, I also took advantage of that in the building fights, like Arl Howe’s Estate and the deserted building in Denerim. I don’t think it would’ve been possible to kill Cauthren at Howe’s Estate without very precise use of AOE spells like that. She was hitting my tanks for 90 damage per hit, it was ridiculous. Thank god for force field. The Summer Sword is pretty badass, but Starfang’s a stronger weapon. I don’t see why anyone would want to go 2h because my 2h warriors could barely take down 1 character while my MC would take out 3-4 in the same time span. The 2h guys are too slow and god forbid they miss. I couldn’t stand it. I really wanted to like Orgrhen and Sten. I really did.

I didn’t even bother with AoE spells when fighting Ser Cauthrien - she went down in about 3 seconds because I laid like 25 Large Claw traps and about a dozen Large Caltrop traps for her all at the entrance. She doesn’t get trapped, but she sure takes damage from them.

And yeah, 2H swordsmen are useless. I don’t know why anyone would bother with them, since they are pretty much worse in every way compared to SS swordsmen.

I still haven’t beaten this game, I got Borderlands and Modern Warfare 2 shortly after sooo…

But I had two characters. My mage was my first character and I didn’t really design my party well skill wise. He’s pretty badass though, on his own, and is currently at the Landsmeet. My other is a dual wielding dalish elf (which is by far the best of the origin stories) warrior, with a better party. He’s half done gathering for the Landsmeet. With the mage i use the dog, alistair, morrigan and the mc. Morrigan uses mostly cone of cold with shock to fuck people up, along with telekenetic prison. Alistair is a tank, as is the dog. The problem is that I have no healer, and without morrigan my party sucks. The dual wielder has Alistair, the MC, and Shale with Morrigan who will be a Spirit Healin Shapeshifter. With this charcter I intend to be a champion/reaver, with Alistair being a Templar and Shale being a rock.

The mage sucks because I wasn’t good with the tactics slots and stuff or the party building part so I think I can beat the game with the Mage because it’s on easy and they’re all pretty badass, theres just no real cohesion. The dual wielder is way better, but I’ve been too wrapped up in other games to play this. But it’s cool, there’s an expansion coming out, so I won’t be letting this game go any time soon.

I went dual wield berzerker reaver with my MC. You don’t need a healer if you have a lot of healing pots, but it helps.

By the way: did anybody notice you DRINK healing poultices?

POULTICES?

DRINK!?

DRINK POULTICES!?

poul⋅tice /ˈpoʊltɪs/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [pohl-tis] Show IPA noun, verb, -ticed, -tic⋅ing.

–noun 1. a soft, moist mass of cloth, bread, meal, herbs, etc., applied hot as a medicament to the body.

–verb (used with object) 2. to apply a poultice to.

I noticed that too. I also wondered how Shale could drink or apply poultices to herself.

I was more curious as to how a dog can apply poultices to itself. That’s one talented Mabari!

It probably rolls all over them and then arfs at you, waiting for your approval.

Shales a girl?

Shale was a girl, yes.

And Mabari can talk, they’re just smart enough not to say anything.

See, I was gonna do the Orzammar part with my dual wielder next to get the story on Shale. I just wanted to be a Reaver first. Sin, you did a Reaver, what’d you do?

Keep Orzammar for last. You’ll thank me for it.

To get my reaver, I cheated. I saved my game, soiled the ashes of andraste, went to see the guy and got reaver spec. Then I loaded to before I saved my game and did not soil the ashes and still had my reaver spec.

The Berzeker / Reaver mix is simply ridiculous, especially if you have the blood magic dps booster.

Also, another note: when you do Shale’s thing, you’ll find a dagger along the way that interrupts spell casting. Give it to your dual wielding warrior in his offhand (even if he can wield a normal sword) when you get to the killing the generals in the final battle. The spellcasting enemy general is a huge pain in the ass and the interrupt property is fucking gold.

Alternatively:

Crushing Prison/Force Field

OR

Mana Clash

OR

Glyph of Neutralization

OR

Andraste’s Arrows + Rapid Aim

I finally started playing this thing, I’m doing a mage. I’m loving it so far, other than the time it took me to learn how to effectively control everyone, it’s all been smooth sailing. I haven’t really tinkered enough with the presets yet, but since I’m used to controlling retarded parties in Infinity Engine games, it’s by no means an issue.

I have to say though, I don’t mean to sound like an arrogant jackass, but I really don’t get all the hype about the difficulty. It’s true that I’m playing with the updates, which supposedly fix some bugs that made the whole thing harder, AND I’m only at the Ostagar battle yet, but I turned up the difficulty up to Nightmare while wandering the Wilds and have yet to face serious trouble, the few times I had to reload before were because I fucked up due to not yet understanding the controls. Now I’m just going through my standard “Fireball-nuke-then-send-vanguard” approach to fighting and it’s pretty simple.

On the other hand, I’m used to starting as a mage in Black Isle games. Compared to two fucking hit points and a couple charges of magic missile, the guy you get here is a goddamn powerhouse. Seriously, I used to get slaughtered by ten goddamn goblins in the Easthaven entrance in Icewind Dale. I guess I kind of forgot that dying and reloading five or six times per minor skirmish is not quite the standard in difficulty of most games.

I fucking love AoE spells. Again, I’m used to IWD/BG where spells are slow as shit and you only get to see the area of effect until after you’ve fired. Seeing the exact area of impact and having the blast hit and disperse quickly makes using them effectively far easier than in Baldur’s Gate.

I really have no complaints about the graphics, but then again I have only just bough my video card, so I haven’t really looked at how most recent games look.

Hmm knowing how to play the game, I have to agree with SE. I’m kicking a lot of ass with a new mage I made. I’m selecting my skills and stats better now too, which probably helps.