EA: Dragon Age - tut tut

SP is right -- it plays like WoW and just about every other 4-character fantasy computer RPG: tank/rogue/healer/spell-caster is the simplest way to play it. Here are some basic broad-stroke tactics...

Give your caster good Area of Effect (AoE) damage spells, and make sure that both the healer and caster have some crowd-control (CC) spells to make enemies freeze in place, knock them down etc... This buys you time when you're outnumbered. Give the tank lots of armour; a shield helps too. Use the tank to pull the aggression and sneak your rogue in behind the fight once they're engaged.

Use cover if you're outnumbered. Take out enemy casters and healers first, then rogues and tanks. Try and focus attacks on one enemy, don't be afraid to retreat to cover if the counter-attacks are strong. Use choke-points like doorways and corners to freeze foes so they can't all melee you. Don't be afraid to pause the game and give your dudes direct commands -- because the AI is pretty weak. If there are lots of foes, pull a few toward you with a ranged attack. Try ambushing from outside line of sight... Some spells in combination are especially nasty.

You're probably using a bunch of these tactics already. Alas, but classic four-character FRPGs tend to be fairly tactical -- they seldom play like literary Heroic Combat.

Anyway, if you're getting frustrated, I hope that helps.

So, I'm playing return to ostagar and the nudity mod I got really makes it much more effective. Seeing a naked crucified corpse drives home the horror and sadness more brutally than a crucified corpse with a nice pair of undaroos on.

But maybe that's just me.

Also, the game is challenging if you're not paying attention. I personally think its at just the right level of difficulty. Fun and yet not impossibly head achinling ARGHIFINGLY hard.

I have little to add to Ruv's primer on RPG tactics, but I had great success with two tanks (one warrior, one caster-hybrid), an archer-rogue, and a healer. AoE is hilariously overpowered against large groups of enemies, and this has been true since Fireball was first used in D&D. On the harder difficulty settings, don't be afraid to pull mobs piecemeal when necessary, even if it feels lame. CC spells (Paralyze, Force Field, Petrify, etc.) are great for holding off that boss mob until you're done picking off his minions, and there's no DR. Most importantly, watch out for your party members charging in to their deaths, because the Tactics stuff sucks. Micromanage instead.

Zoombie said:

So, I'm playing return to ostagar and the nudity mod I got really makes it much more effective. Seeing a naked crucified corpse drives home the horror and sadness more brutally than a crucified corpse with a nice pair of undaroos on.

But maybe that's just me.

Also, the game is challenging if you're not paying attention. I personally think its at just the right level of difficulty. Fun and yet not impossibly head achinling ARGHIFINGLY hard.

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You have a mod that makes everyone naked?

No, it just makes people with no clothes naked rather than just having a tighty whitey on.

So is it really weird that I found the Anthology of Dwarven Poetry on Dr. Seuss' birthday?

Do you like fried mush and nug?

I do not like them, Mister Klug,
I do not like fried mush and nug.

…

I would not share them with a thug
I would not eat them with a bug
Not for a hug
Not on a rug
From a jug
I would not chug
Come on, come on, now Mister Klug
Are you on some kind of drug?

- from the Paragon Seuss, 2:12 Glory

Robin said:

So is it really weird that I found the Anthology of Dwarven Poetry on Dr. Seuss' birthday?

Do you like fried mush and nug?

I do not like them, Mister Klug,
I do not like fried mush and nug.

…

I would not share them with a thug
I would not eat them with a bug
Not for a hug
Not on a rug
From a jug
I would not chug
Come on, come on, now Mister Klug
Are you on some kind of drug?

- from the Paragon Seuss, 2:12 Glory

Click to expand...

Where did you get this and why is it relevant?

LOG said:

Where did you get this and why is it relevant?

Click to expand...

It's a page in the codex, under books and songs. I guess it's not relevant, it just made me giggle. )

I just heard a bit about this on a podcast--I want it now, thought it didn't sound like my cup of tea before...

Well, it's been several months, and I am still a Dragon Age addict :S Have hardly done anything on my WIP because of it too! Soooo bad ><

Indeed, that IS bad! For shame!

That said, I did lose an entire week to this game myself.

I have to admit that after weeks of being clean, I mainlined some DAO this afternoon. Sigh. It's a tough habit to break free from.

Witch Hunt

%^&*ing hell yes!!!

Looks neat!

The thing I dislike most about the character creator is that there's no view shifting, I've had to go back and remake so many noses because I can't really see how well the face is working until I put my face next to a wall in-game.

And because the mods that alter the creator don't exist for the stand-alone program version, I always end up having to go back and make the decisions all over again...

I like the music that plays during the dungeon part of Leliana's Song.
Although Midna's Lament is better.

Anyone play Witch Hunt yet? I think mine is bugged. At the very end, Morrigan says she is giving me something and then it cuts straight to the credits.

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread, but I only just finished playing for the first time, and this seems the best place.

It took me 99 hours of game play, doing every single quest, talking to every single character, reading every single item description (the reading is a compulsion). I played a female City Elf rogue, and loved it. She was an excellent dual-wielding tank, holding her own throughout. The Dirty Fighting stun ability is incredibly useful, and the Lethality skill, where Cunning is used instead of Strength to calculate damage, makes a big difference.

I chose not to make Alistair king, as he never wanted it, and he insisted on sacrificing himself instead of me at the end. I'm absolutely gutted! I've been kind of grieving all day, it's ridiculous, but a sign of great immersive writing and story telling, I think. Plus my sad personality.

The only problem I had with the game was some bugginess in the dialogue. Once we arrived in Redcliffe Castle for the final battle, the bodyguards referred to "the king", and in Alistair's dialogue at the end, he referred to himself as the king. That was a big disappointment, as it spoiled the big emotional impact of the ending quite a lot, for me. I was also disappointed that Alistair only got a one-line mention from Anora in the epilogue, and none of the other party characters seemed to care about his death, or even that the PC had just lost the love of her life in a terrible way. It felt quite off, and was the only part of the writing that felt rushed.

I've found a mod that seems to fix the dialogue bug, and will install it, once I can compose myself and go back to it. I might try going back to the save game just before Morrigan makes her offer, and taking her up on it just to get the happiest ending. Or leave Alistair at the Denerim gates, and take the final blow myself as I'd intended. Although that would cause Alistair pain, which is also painful to contemplate. *smacks self* Sad, I know!

There is a lot of hilarious dialogue in the game. I loved Wade and Herren when the dragon and drake scale armour is being made. Favourite party character interactions include Zevran and Alistair's bet over whether Zevran could make Morrigan admit she should be worshipped for her beauty, which was a brilliant surprise, and Zevran's advice to a very embarrassed Alistair on improving his "exertions" with the PC ("Are we really talking about this? Did I hit my head?") There were a lot of amusing things in the codex entries and item descriptions, too. I love how much detail there was in the game.

Favourite game ever.

Sophia said:

I chose not to make Alistair king, as he never wanted it, and he insisted on sacrificing himself instead of me at the end. I'm absolutely gutted! I've been kind of grieving all day, it's ridiculous, but a sign of great immersive writing and story telling, I think. Plus my sad personality.

Favourite game ever.

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Alistar completes me. I *love* him in a desperately fangirl whaddaya mean he's a cartoon way. Although I was really put out that he wouldn't well . . . put out and that he wouldn't make me Queen because I was an elf. So I slept with Zevran instead. Hmmm, do you remember the line from the Princess Bride? . . . "You know, you're taking this a little too seriously. Maybe we should stop." ::raises hand::

Anyway . . . . Dragon Age 2 coming next month. I CANT WAIT! Have you seen the trailor? ::wiping drool:: IIRC the main character's name is Hawke. ::dances with glee:: I'm pretty much spending the month of March inside the computer.

Reading the codex entries will definitely eat up time...

There's a mod that will let anyone (and anything) marry Alistair.

I think the time I laughed the hardest was the time I played through and forced Loghain to sleep with Morrigan--the idea is just so ridiculous...

LOG said:

Reading the codex entries will definitely eat up time...

There's a mod that will let anyone (and anything) marry Alistair.

I think the time I laughed the hardest was the time I played through and forced Loghain to sleep with Morrigan--the idea is just so ridiculous...

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I was so pissed when I found out Alistair wouldn't marry me, because I'm an elf...

Heck, you gals don't know the meaning of frustration. The man was obviously in love with me--whenever I clicked on him to give him a command, his response was "My love?"--but I could never quite get him to close the deal. We were the last Grey Wardens, fer Kristsake! Ours remained a strictly (and literally) Platonic love.

Ooh, Alistair's responses to selecting his character once the approval reached 'Love' were... *shiver*. That voice acting!

I haven't looked into the various mods in detail yet, but I'm hoping that if they had originally intended Alistair to also be a love interest for a male player character, as it seems they might well have, then all that content has been unlocked or otherwise made available now.

Since my post, I've played through the ending where I left Alistair at the Denerim gates, fighting through the city feeling very sad, and having my character sacrifice herself. Still heartbreaking, reading the party epilogues! Sten's especially got to me, but seeing that Alistair "felt the loss of his love keenly", quits the Grey Wardens, the only family he'd ever felt he had, and disappears, was just as bad as watching him sacrifice himself.

I tried out accepting Morrigan's offer, but it, too, was difficult. Not so much for what it entailed, but for the almost shouting conversation your character has with Alistair to convince him to do it. As everything between them had been jokes and sweetness until then, it felt really wrong, so I ended up not playing on with that option. I'll try it again once I've installed a bug-fixing mod, however - I want to experience the happier ending at least once.