Dragon Age: Origins

Sheriff Fatman · Post by **Sheriff Fatman** » January 13th, 2010, 11:55

The new (as yet unreleased) DLC is

able.

Post by **FatherJack** » January 17th, 2010, 5:26

Yourmum wins!

Yourmum City Elf Rogue Ranger L20

. . . . . . . . . . . . .hello, boys
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ./

1375/1600 Total Pts
70/87 Achievement Pts
79% Done
94% Explored
32:45:51 Hours

Since the patch, I think they might have made the rogue path a little easy. I got the 250 damage achievement for the first time with this character and was one-shotting the regular enemies with normal attacks towards the end with the big DEX damage bonus now in place.

I was 100% archer, with ranger pets and got the whole game without dying achievement as well as the all possible endings this playthrough. Scattershot basically stunned the whole room, while Arrow of Slaying severely depleted any tough baddies.

You also now seem to get a lot more potions and healing kits off the mobs, so my crafting wasn't as crucial - and I only had to set tactics for potion-quaffing for the very last battle.

I used Morrigan, Wynne and Shale pretty much exclusively, without particularly bothering with tactics this time around. Morrigan was set to Destruct, Wynne to Heal (with the thresholds for Self/Party tweaked to 75/50% instead of 50/25%) and Shale was set to Scrapper, with a bit of Archer later on - though this proved to be rather a liabilty with him chucking rocks around and making us all fall over.

I found in general Scrapper is a better default tactic than Defender for survivability of the melee characters, and only used two or three injury kits all game - all on them.

I typically pour all stats into the character's primary attribute - STR for Warrior, DEX for Rogue and MAG for Mage, getting CUN to 16 for the tactic slots, with a few in CON when I felt they looked a bit flaky, but never put a bean in WIL.

Perhaps forewarned is forearmed, but I didn't struggle with any fights I was in this time around save the last one, although I did leave Redcliffe to their fate and never gave Morrigan the book. I did try and fail several combinations for the jailbreak quest, which had never given me trouble before, until busting myself out which was really easy.

For variety I'm really going to have to use different characters next time, which probably means me being a healy mage. Also I will kill Zevran at the first opportunity because I'm sick to death of being bummed by him every single time so far - Wynge even complained about the noise of it to me this time around.

Post by **FatherJack** » January 19th, 2010, 18:56

Oh, for some reason I'm FatherJackY on the bioware social site - what are your names, so I can add you to the friendz list?

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » January 19th, 2010, 19:16

FatherJack wrote:Oh, for some reason I'm FatherJackY on the bioware social site - what are your names, so I can add you to the friendz list?

graybilljr is my name.

Hmmm, no fair... it shows all your people why wont it show all of mine.

Post by **FatherJack** » January 23rd, 2010, 20:53

The Awakening expansion is available for pre-order- but you can't use Bioware points to buy it, only real money.

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » January 24th, 2010, 0:08

I pre-ordered it this morning when I noticed it in the news reader feeds.

Post by **FatherJack** » January 25th, 2010, 22:13

The Dragon Age Toolset is fun, I was quickly able to make the NPC in the tutorial greet me as a massive bummer while doing a Bann Teagan dance and simulating a sex scene.

It even generates the voice and facial expressions for you. Perhaps I will use it for more serious endeavours, but frankly, I doubt it.

Post by **Roman Totale** » January 25th, 2010, 22:52

The only proper use of those sorts of thing is to use them improperly.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 12th, 2010, 7:47

Since Return to Ostagar still doesn't seem to be out, I recreated my triumphant return with a glitch I found:

cfb

Die puny darkspawn!

Post by **Dog Pants** » February 12th, 2010, 8:04

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » February 12th, 2010, 14:58

RTO has been out for 360 and PC for 2 weeks now.

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » February 22nd, 2010, 14:50

Well, rather behind most people, but I'm now approaching the end of my first run through with a very well-meaning and honest elf rogue, and have turned my mind to the next character I want to play. My party has consisted almost exclusively of me, Alastair, Morrigan and Wynne, so I'm keen to mix it up for the next run through. Also, the next time will have all the DLC in it too, which was lacking this time.

So the choices are a nasty, vindictive, money-grabbing noble dwarf warrior, or a good old fashioned evil human mage. As I've already done lots of hack'n'slash, albeit from behind

, I'm tempted to go with the mage option, although I think my party will still need Wynne to keep us alive. I also fancy speccing one of the party-member rogues as an archer as that's also something I all but ignored this time through. Anyway, from what you guys have played what's been the most enjoyable?

Post by **FatherJack** » February 22nd, 2010, 20:10

First playthrough was mage, with all the big AoE spells it made short work of what I found challenging battles in other playthroughs, but the one-on-ones were much harder. I never quite got the tactics how I wanted them, but was still learning the game really.

Second playthrough was naked warrior where I had to have both spellcasters on healing duty, but even if I'd worn armour I'd have still gotten bashed around a fair bit. This was the game I really used tactics the most, getting the healers overlapping and using mana potions to keep going.

Third playthrough I enjoyed most, as a archery rogue. Opening stuff myself was great, as I didn't have to bring a lockpicker everywhere, and archery let me strike from afar and control the battles better. Partly it was knowing what to expect, but I managed to get all the way through without anyone dying and hardly used an injury kit - lots of potions, though. I left the tactics on default for the most part.

The ranger pets are great, so I selected that option for everyone I could, and the arcane warrior for the mages so they could wear armour. I had everyone as archers at one point, which didn't work so well, but I'd certainly recommend archer for the rogue you'll be forced to take everywhere, they seemed to get themselves killed if you let them scrap.

Things I didn't do, which I will in future playthroughs are to use the blood talents for the NPCs, be a healy mage myself (so not reliant on the others) and use shapeshifting a bit more.

Some things are defined more by the items you find, for example there's more than enough heavy armour for all the regular warriors, plus three arcane warriors, but there's nowhere near enough good-quality 1H weapons to make even half the team 2H fighters. There aren't any slotted ranged weapons, but you don't really need them with the top archery skills one-shotting the regular grunts.

Post by **FatherJack** » February 25th, 2010, 20:24

Akiakaiu wrote:RTO has been out for 360 and PC for 2 weeks now.

Umm, still not showing for me. In-game or on the social.bioware.com site. I can click it on http://dragonage.bioware.com/addon/rto but it just invites me to buy even more redundant BW points.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 8th, 2010, 18:59

Finally it's showing in-game for me. And when I click on buy it says "Sorry, your request could not be completed at this time, please try again".

Edit: UPDATE: The root cause behind this issue has been identified and resolved. If you are still having a problem purchasing or downloading DLC, this this: Open up the folder My Documents\\bioware\\Dragon Age\\Settings and delete the offers.xml file.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 8th, 2010, 21:03

Hmm, that was underwhelming. I liked my version better. At 400 points or £3.10 it's less than Warden's Keep in cost, less in terms of length and bonuses, too.

Still, I got the dog I missed the first time and some shiny gold armour, which isn't very good as endgame armour, but would have been great straight after Lothering (the earliest you can do RtO).

Morrigan wrote:And now we have a dog. And Alistair is still the stupidest member of the party.

armour

map

The armour's with my original helm, you get Cailin's helm last, but since I wasn't sure you saw it in the main game I didn't want to spoil it. You also get his (father's) sword and shield, plus Duncan's sword and dagger. None of the items are better than stuff you can get elsewhere, but good for secondary characters to have.

Edit: On closer inspection, a full set of Cailin's armour may be slightly better, depending on your class and the bonuses you want. I think it shades raw armour level. Odd he didn't do better against the Ogre - I punched it in the face wearing his armour as a mage and it died, but then I am awesome.

Post by **Roman Totale** » March 8th, 2010, 22:28

FatherJack wrote:Hmm, that was underwhelming. I liked my version better. At 400 points or £3.10 it's less than Warden's Keep in cost, less in terms of length and bonuses, too.

Blimey, and I was disappointed at how short Warden's Keep was...

Post by **FatherJack** » March 14th, 2010, 23:24

There's three-page interview about the Awakening expansion here: http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/105/1058656p1.html which you may not have seen. It does contain possible spoilers about the end game in case you're still playing and didn't figure out that the good guys win in the end.

Interesting that it will carry over your decisions from the first game, so YourMum should get different reactions from NPCs than Hesababy, but it probably won't be any more game-changing than the "Oh, you're an elf" mechanic of Origins.

Also it seems to have Skeletor in it.

Post by **FatherJack** » March 19th, 2010, 5:08

Awakenings doesn't let you use DLC items, which incidentally you only fucking paid for, electing instead to import your mighty warrior in their underpants.

While this won't be a problem for my naked dwarf, for everyone else there's an unofficial patch here: http://social.bioware.com/project/2310/#details

Hopefully it will work on Yourmum, I really don't want to see her undressed.

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » March 19th, 2010, 17:34

So I guess it's a good thing I completely forgot about this even though I preordered it the 1st day the preorder was available. I still have to do the RTO DLC too, never got around to playing it..... Pangya's too addictive.