I'm not sure if it's been mentioned before, and I'll search this thread later still being afraid of Spoilers but I have a question.
That endless swarm of undead during the Redcliffe night attack. Is it really endless? Just how long is it? I killed off 7 swarms, had Murlock and his Militia all die and still more came. Is this a bug. Just how much am I suppose to be defending here? Do I need to keep anyone alive?
No, it's not endless, but it seems like it. I had all my party except my mage wiped out, and I ended up leading the horde back to the knights by the mill, fireballing the zombies along the way. That was one of the tenser moments in my game so far.Originally Posted by Equis
I have a question (DLC minor spoilers) - I'm having trouble with the fight on the second floor of Warden's Keep. The one with the demon that gets healed by the respawning zombies. How many waves of respawns are there? I get to the second lot and they then summon more demons and it's too tough for my party to deal with. First fight in the game I've failed to beat by the second go.
My solution to this one was to leave and come back a few levels later. Not sure what level you are but I tried hitting it fairly early in the game and my warriors just didn't have the armor they needed, I didn't have healing aside from potions, and my magical crowd control barely existed.
Come back when that's lined up and it will still be a tough fight but a winnable one.
There seem to a few fights in the game that are set up to be all but unwinnable when you first encounter them. I guess the idea is that it gives you something to look forward to? Coming back later, and buffer, has helped me beat a couple of them.
I think I only remembered two respawns. I wiped my first time out but the second time I just focused exclusively on the healers and only attacked the demon between healer respawns. Went pretty quick and easy.
DLC SPOILERS BELOW:
I believe there are three waves, though it might have been only two. Keep your tank on the big fella, and have your DPS kill the adds. My rogue is able to take them out in about 1 second each (at level 8), so it just requires a few quick laps around the room.
Man, some of these fights in the Deep Roads areas are damn tough! It doesn't help that I'm long out of injury kits so my characters are all penalized at this point. It will be a long trip back out if I have to go looking for that particular item. I could make them myself but I still haven't found a merchant source for mushrooms like I have for the other potion ingredients.
Conveniently, not only is there a merchant somewhere in Deep Roads, but he has an infinite mushroom supply.
Inconveniently, he slipped and fell on a nearby two-handed sword. I had to go back a few saves. :-)
LOL.
Also, if you have Wynn, she can learn a spell, Cleanse, that takes away the injury penalties from everyone but herself. Quite useful during the deep roads.
Sadly, Wynne is not with me. I have Morrigan, Leliana, and Oghren along with my 2H human warrior.
It's weird how some fights are hard but others are not even when you think they will be. It took me several tries to take out the spider queen but when I faced the guys at the end of the bridge in the next area, it was practically a cake-walk. It really feels to me like they did a poor job of balancing encounters.
You can always give morrigan spirit healer. Revive is just such a good spell that i couldn't imagine not having it. On many of the boss fights, if one of your characters die, it can often mean you can't beat her before you party all dies, but revive can change that. The later talents are pretty useless though sadly. The last spell does save some money on injury kits, but that is about it.
I'm not saying that DA:O has the balance right, but I think it is a bit unfair to say that they did a poor job. Each party has certain strengths - some hit harder, some last longer, some focus on melee DPS, others on range/magic DPS - and the same is applicable for mobs.
It's not hard to imagine some combinations work better (or much better) against certain encounters than others. For me, single boss mob encounters tend to be cakewalks whereas I don't deal well with huge close-in swarms well (but maybe no one does) since I have 3 squishies.
Maybe, but it's rather jarring sometimes. I'm playing on normal, and I rolled (as in never suffering much damage) through the Dwarven proving fights using my main character, until I got to the group fight at the end. That proved to be a total pain. And in general, my toughest fights in the game have not been boss fights, but just battles here or there. I'll be rolling along, maybe losing a party member or two in each fight, and then I'll hit one where three or four tries and I'm still stumped.
I'm at one of those right now. Two emmisarys in a dead-end room with a handful of spiders. And I can't figure out what combination to try and get them.
OH HAI I CAN HAS DRAGON AGE
So I didn't want to say anything until I was some ways into the game... but now I'm at Lothering and I'm not seeing that extreme difficulty that people talk about. That's the PC version on Normal, and it feels to me pretty much identical to the normal difficulty level of the old Infinity engine games -- i.e. easier than D&D Hardcore which I sometimes tried but quickly backed away from.
Of course I'm also playing Dragon Age like an Infinity engine game, with the zoomed-out RTS view and hammering the spacebar about every 0.25 seconds to refresh orders. Also, trying to pull individual enemies away from packs as much as possible (switching to 3rd person view and firing a few arrows is great for that). The DA engine is particularly friendly to this approach since you can often retreat out of engagement range and heal up everyone for free before you tackle the remaining mobs.
I'm playing a Dwarven commoner rogue with dual wielding, which means so far I haven't had anyone with good area attacks (except for Dog's stunning howl) but I'm not really missing them either. In fact I'm not sure I'd want to use the favored 2 fighters/rogues + 2 mages combo just yet, since keeping ranged attackers out of melee is difficult enough as it is. The engine does not appear to have any kind of zone of control mechanism -- when I put my rogue and Alistair right next to each other at the top of a narrow stair, the first orc^h^h^hhurlock slipped right through between them!
I'm convinced that Morrigan only runs around half-naked to distract people from her horrible skill selection, though. Oh look, she has like five different debuffs/stuns for single targets... and she can turn into a useless spider. Can I have the circle mage from the tower fight back, please?
Anyway, maybe the game is getting terribly difficult right in the next fight, but I haven't had a single party wipe and very few deaths so far. Thanks to herbalism I'm even accumulating a surplus of health potions!
Chris, my thoughts exactly, even down to the dwarf commoner rogue.
And yeah, tower Mage over Mori's basic skills any day! Does anyone use any of those debuffs? I save mana for lightening and freeze and that's about it (until more skillz). For Wynne it is a out the same setup, damage with healing and sometimes a heroic thingy.
I am not sure I will ever use the other characters at all. I think the party works great as is. I will give shale a go though, for giggles, but Al is main tanking with all the shield stuff I have on the guy, that's for sure. Sten won't get a look in, his dialogue makes him sound like a grumpy bastard and I have one of those in the party already.
I am also not 100% convinced by my rogue skills so far. The stun and debuff I have is nice and the no-crit-stun-then crit is nice too, I guess, but I am not seeing awesomeness in my future just yet. I guess when you spend 80% of your time backstabbing some of the powers seem a touch pointless.
Also, stone fist on a frozen enemy is meant to do boku damage? Does other damage applied before negate the freeze effect? I keep not pulling off this combo (or the freeze + melée varients) and it is bugging me.
Last edited by Calistas; 11-15-2009 at 03:35 AM. Reason: iPhone, gah.
It does get more difficult later. I think I saw the game over screen at Redcliff for the first time, but I've seen it several times since. Indeed, a certain Sloth Daemon gobbled me all up on my first try today.
But I think if you're good at making resistance breaks, stuns and thief-positioning, most fights really won't be much trouble. Apropos, I don't get the rogue hatred. Even the weird pseudo-French accent girl does tonnes of damage.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I like my rogue a lot: I just sometimes think "is there much point in firing off this ability and using stamina when I could wait for my stun to cycle again instead and just rely on all these backstab crits?"
I guess I am the kind of player who usually enjoys mages because the spells have pretty lights and you can see the effect of what you are doing right there in your face.
Last edited by Calistas; 11-15-2009 at 03:39 AM. Reason: IPhone....
Toughest fight for me so far was the one at the end of the Landsmeet. I burned through so many potions with Alistair as my champion it wasn't even funny. I got his opponent down to a pixel of health and Alistair went into whiff mode, missing probably 20 swings in a row while I burned through a huge portion of my stock of health potions.
My problems with difficulty were on the PS3 (supposedly easier) version on Normal. I think alot of it came from the lack of solid control over the party with the interface and, given that, the need for reliable healing and crowd control which I didn't have starting out as an City Elf Rogue.
Admittedly I was a bit stubborn about speccing Morrigan into healing and crowd control (not how I wanted to develop her conceptually) or my main into traps (not where I wanted to go with him either) and ridiculously ornery about not using spoilers/cheats, even when I knew them, to obtain resources needed for health potions and so on.
The combination of my idio(t)syncratic playing style and the awkward party control* in the console version made for a very tough and unforgiving start. I was about ready to break things. I nerd raged about verisimilitude and realism how crappy D&D-style games are at them when that really wasn't the issue at hand.
Once I had a few levels on my characters and a decent party mix I found Normal just about right. I wipe on rare occasion but can usually overcome, or just return later, I often have to think on my feet while some encounters can be fairly routine. Console Normal is just challenging enough I have to figure out how to play the game, and the characters, without getting overly fussy about perfect gear, ideal character builds, and painstaking tactics most of the time.
And I'm even coming to enjoy the Console perspective on combat now it's manageable. You're not playing chess, you're playing rugby. Still requires some tactics though it may not be quite as intellectually challenging, but there's a rewarding immersiveness to the immediacy of a battle.
*For Console DA character movement you have to toggle through each character to control them or you have to trust the AI and targeting can be very odd sometimes. There's no bird's-eye pointy-clicky or drag and direct. Either an NPC is standing in one place, on Hold (with all party members - you can't put just one of them directly on Hold), running around following his AI stance and tactics, or you're controlling him personally and nobody else.
Buying items from a vendor that is designed to carry an unlimited stock of said items is neither a spoiler or cheat.
It's both if you wouldn't know about it if you hadn't read it in a forum. Not that that's a bad thing. It's just not how an old fashioned gamer like me prefers to go about things.
Brian, I've read your previous posts and can only conclude that the console controls must be pretty horrible for combat. Personally I couldn't imagine playing the game without pausing constantly in battle since you really need to monitor everyone's status, fire off abilities as they become available, or change positions as needed. I hear the game is supposed to be easier on consoles to compensate but apparently not enough, eh?
(I did apply the 1.01 patch which also makes the player's party a bit stronger on the PC, though.)
The difficult stuff comes after the origin portion of the game, for the most part, so you're about to get into it. There are a few tough fights in the origin part (some of the skirmishes in the tower, and the last two fights in the swamp can be tough if you rolled a warrior and have no ranged attacks). But most of that stuff is a lot easier than the fights you run into later.
At worst it is a spoiler if you had to read about it in the forums, but since unlimited elfroot are sold from a vendor in the open, in a town you're sent to by the main quest, it is about as much a spoiler as saying "You fight darkspawn." It is almost impossible to miss this vendor as he himself even gives you a quest!
Also, many of the people in this thread just found it like i did i assume, by checking the vendor when passing through the area for the quest related stuff.
Anyway, i completed the game on nightmare with my player mage (blood spirit healer/frost/earth/paralyze/creation), morigann (same as player except sleep instead of paralyze and no blood), zhev (assassin/ranger), Sten (champion). Soon i will start up my new physical focused party with a human noble warrior who dual wields (berserker/reaver). Likely using wynne, leilanna and allister (templar/champion). I will likely be keeping leilanna as an archer and hoping the dex hot fix will make it decent. Probably making her a dualist, although ranger seems like it would work really well with the "stun song that doesn't let you do anything else while sustaining it." Since it is a physical focused party, i am hoping the stacking buffs from champion, bard song and telekinetic weapons will be enough to keep me going on nightmare with one healer, less cc and the extremely sub optimal archer rogue.
Ranger truly was a really good specialization. The summons are extremely strong and were a good distraction many a time.
I can also understand why people are having problems with only one healer now. There were times when morigann was just INSTANTLY killed. Facing large groups of archers (very common later game) or the wrong side of a dragon, mages (and even other classes) can just melt on nightmare. My player mage fared a bit better, but he had 25 con vs morigann's 15 because he was a blood mage. He would still instantly die against massed archers if i didn't use line of sight sometimes even. I do regret not taking the anti arrows buff sometimes, even with arcane armor and rock armor.
Last edited by Murbella; 11-15-2009 at 08:55 AM.
I'd say it's more uneven, and that may depend on your starting character's class and build, than overly hard straight through. My observation is that the beginning can be quite frustrating, after the Origin prelude at least, but it does get better once you get sufficient healing and crowd control.
I do play paused quite a bit but you don't really have a great grasp of what everyone in your party is doing, at any given moment, or when a spell's recharge cycle is over on another character and things like that. Over time you learn the quirks of the AI stances and how to use the AI tactics slots more effectively but it's still no substitute for that bird's eye tactical view and tighter control the PC version sounds like it has.
But like I said it's actually growing on me. I can see deeper tactical gameplay, and a bit of extra value there, in the PC version but I don't know that I'd want to give up the "being there" immersiveness at this point now I'm better versed in it.
Worth pointing out that you don't miss this 'being there' immersiveness on the PC version either. The way I played it I was continually scrolling between the WoW/Console view and the BG2/Isometric view. Both views have their strengths in this game on the PC(the graphics for example look great in the isometric view but only good in the over the shoulder view).
See that's my point. I had no intention of making a beeline to the Dalelands at that point in my game so going out of my way because of knowledge I shouldn't have had breaks immersion and it is spoilerish. But like I said, my mentality is an old school one. You don't look over the DM's screen.
I usually only visit sites or forums for tips and strategy in less linear, more strategic, games where the information there helps me understand the fluid mechanics of a game rather than permanent, fixed, elements.
That might work very well. I don't know that I'll buy both versions to check it out though. For now I tell myself that I play flight sims in cockpit view so I should probably enjoy playing a battle from a character's point of view.
It helps me sleep at night.
Don't judge the game by the difficulty of the origin chapters.
Certain class/skill combos are going to make various fights easier but I think there are plenty of challenges in the content I've seen thus far. Up the difficulty so friendly fire is more of an issue for starters if you're finding the game too easy.
Sloth demon is NOT a cakewalk on Hard or Nightmare.
There is a specific fight in the Brecilian Forest that spanked me more than once before I found a strategy to overcome it.
I've got loads more of the game to finish but there appears to be plenty of challenge so far. My one gripe is that the Circle of Mages questline was excessively long even if it's pretty well-done.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote