The Dragon Age is Bloody Hard Thread

[Alistair]

I think Passive or something does include 'avoid AOEs', and one of the differences the difficulty settings make is the damage taken in friendly fire.

I must say I liked the Deep Roads becasue by the time I got there, we just blasted through those beasties. Except for the tough fights. I wouldn't want to tackle the game on Hard.

[Tman]

This is my first RPG and I'm completely overwhelmed. This is too many click-fests, I have no idea what anything does except for my own skills. I'm attacking the tower to light some beacon and they give me a mage and a tower guard and I have no bloody idea what to do.

Sure, get me used to 4 people going into the wild, get used to that tactic and now, throw two new classes at me?? I'm getting slaughtered. Attack enough to draw their attention, then retreat is my only useful tactic.

Here's my problems maybe someone can enlighten me:

I have no idea how to get others to heal other than giving them inventory and then clicking on a heal during the middle of a battle. I've gone quite a bit through this and have no idea how to make more from all the ingredients I have. I don't see a menu for mixing up new potions, etc.

I have poision, acid shit to put on my weapons, but no idea how to utilize these. I tried equipping my blade with some acid in the inventory screen, but doesn't take.

I've got to take tactics completely off. I've lost count on how many times some idiot (allistair) runs off to attack, completely off my screen. The only way to get him back is to forcibly pick him and have him march back, typically almost at death's door.

This is very frustrating for my first RPG experience. I feel completely over my head.

Where is the newbie guide??

[Strollen]

I don't think I am even 1/2 way thru. I agree the AI is pretty lame, I find I constantly have to set the party movement on hold to prevent Alastair from running into a grease fire to take a few swings on a Mob .

I am still enjoying the game but I am pretty sure this will be a one time play through for me.

[Murbella]

default behavior should include avoiding area effects if i remember right.

[Alistair]

This is very frustrating for my first RPG experience. I feel completely over my head.

Where is the newbie guide??

Say first whether you're on the PC or 360... and play on Easy!

[Reldan]

default behavior should include avoiding area effects if i remember right.

Yeah... I don't think you're remembering right. With tactics on my guys run headlong into the middle of Blizzards, Hurl Rocks into each other, and will go engage enemies standing in the middle of fire until they burn themselves to death.

Hard is an exercise in frustration as I find I need to set up good AE attacks to win, which means I have to turn tactics off altogether, pause the game every 2 seconds, and issue each and every simple command to the whole party (go attack that guy, now attack this other guy, now attack this other guy... etc. for literally dozens of enemies in fight after fight). The inability to queue up commands or issue individual "hold position" commands is so f***ing stupid that it amazes me looking back at it that I bothered dealing with this idiotic combat system for as long as I did.

In Easy it doesn't matter because friendly fire basically does nothing, but on Hard if one of my guys gets away and walks into my Blizzard and freezes it could wipe the entire party out.

[forgeforsaken]

I just started playing yesterday. I wasn't finding it too bad until I hit Redcliffe, and the 2nd phase of that battle there, hoo boy. I had to cheese it to win. Also your guys will totally just run into stuff that does damage to them, I've had them try and engage bad guys in the middle of burning oil.

[Athryn]

I have no idea how to get others to heal other than giving them inventory and then clicking on a heal during the middle of a battle. I've gone quite a bit through this and have no idea how to make more from all the ingredients I have. I don't see a menu for mixing up new potions, etc.

Making new healing potions requires the herbalism skill, which you or another party member can learn when you level up. Some classes come with a first rank of it automatically. You can also set it in a tactics slot to use a potion at a certain level of health.

I have poision, acid shit to put on my weapons, but no idea how to utilize these. I tried equipping my blade with some acid in the inventory screen, but doesn't take.

You need to have poison making ability. See above.

I've got to take tactics completely off. I've lost count on how many times some idiot (allistair) runs off to attack, completely off my screen. The only way to get him back is to forcibly pick him and have him march back, typically almost at death's door.

Make sure you set Alistair as "Defender" and "Default" in the tactics screen. If he's set as scrapper or aggressive, he will run off. You can also put people at "Hold Position" rather than "Move Freely" and people will stay put more easily.

If you're having a lot of problems with dying a lot, drop the difficulty down to easy, as someone else said!

I just started playing yesterday. I wasn't finding it too bad until I hit Redcliffe, and the 2nd phase of that battle there, hoo boy. I had to cheese it to win. Also your guys will totally just run into stuff that does damage to them, I've had them try and engage bad guys in the middle of burning oil.

I also recommend for new people to go to the circle tower first. You can pick up Wynne there as a party member, and she is extremely useful for someone starting out.

[peterb]

Fundamentally, the tactics system is broken because there is no tactic slot for:

"Any - Don't be a complete fucking retard all of the time, I mean Jesus fucking Christ."

[Reldan]

You can also put people at "Hold Position" rather than "Move Freely" and people will stay put more easily.

Is there a way to do this for each member individually? When I toggle it my entire party either holds or doesn't hold, which doesn't help me much.

I also find that melee fighters, if put on Hold Position, will randomly stop attacking guys standing right next to them and are perfectly happy to just stand there picking their asses unless you constantly keep telling them to attack.

Additionally, I love that ranged attackers, when realizing that they are blocked and are just shooting walls/trees/the ground, will happily continue to keep shooting the environment.

Everyone, in general, acts so retarded that it's practically at the level of a WoW PUG (but with less inane chatter).

[malkav11]

In Easy it doesn't matter because friendly fire basically does nothing, but on Hard if one of my guys gets away and walks into my Blizzard and freezes it could wipe the entire party out.

Easy turns off friendly fire entirely, so it doesn't "basically" do nothing, it literally does nothing.

[mkozlows]

Easy turns off friendly fire entirely, so it doesn't "basically" do nothing, it literally does nothing.

No, the effects still happen. A blizzard will freeze your people, a fireball will knock them down. It's only the actual damage that doesn't happen.

(Pro tip: If you're playing on easy, for the love of god, give Morrigan inferno instead of blizzard, because it's useful for her to cast one of those big persistent area spells, but since she'll usually cast it on top of your party, you do not want her auto-casting blizzard.)

[Tman]

So I finally figured out you need three things to craft potions:

1) You need the skill
2) You need the recipes (buy at a merchant)
3) Click on the leaf in your action bar. (That is what I was missing all along, I couldn't figure out what menu to use to actually craft a potion)

Now I've crafted a few, how can I tell how long something will last? Eg, should I wait for some epic battle to coat acid / poison on my weapons?

[Athryn]

Poisons only last a couple of minutes -- look at the buff bar for the character. :)

[Two Sheds]

Man, fuck you, giant spider queen.
________
Gt90

[Murbella]

You can buy the materials used in making most of the poisons for pretty cheap and in unlimited supplies from a few vendors. I tended to use them on any decently challenging fight on my dual wield warrior who had the skill. They are a nice bonus and pretty cheap.

[Chris Nahr]

In Easy it doesn't matter because friendly fire basically does nothing, but on Hard if one of my guys gets away and walks into my Blizzard and freezes it could wipe the entire party out.

Forgive me for asking the obvious, but why haven't you tried Normal first instead of Easy? Friendly fire is reduced by half on Normal.

Of course if you just no longer want to bother with combat tactics at all you should stay on Easy... it just seems weird to drop all the way down if you started out on Hard.

[Chris Nahr]

Sure, get me used to 4 people going into the wild, get used to that tactic and now, throw two new classes at me?? I'm getting slaughtered. Attack enough to draw their attention, then retreat is my only useful tactic.

This is actually a useful tactic for most of the game, so you're doing this right. :)

I have no idea how to get others to heal other than giving them inventory and then clicking on a heal during the middle of a battle. I've gone quite a bit through this and have no idea how to make more from all the ingredients I have. I don't see a menu for mixing up new potions, etc.

First off: did you read the manual? Especially the two-page annotated screenshot in the center, that should give you an idea how the interface works.

For any inventory item, hold right-click to bring up the radial menu, then pick one of the options. The hand icon uses the item on the character shown to the left. "Using" includes healing and weapon coating effects. Make sure to check the eye icon for interesting items -- it sometimes offers more information than the mouse-over info box.

Or you can drag consumable inventory items to the quick bar at the bottom of the screen. You must do this for every character separately. But first maximize the quick bar: click on its right end and drag it across the screen, you'll need the extra slots.

You can also place skills and talents in the quick bar; actually they appear automatically as you acquire them. Click on the quick bar icon for Herbalism to make potions. Note that herbalism, poison making, and trap making all go to the same interface screen, so for a character with more than one of those skills you need to only keep one in the quick bar.

To remove an icon from the quick bar, drag it to outside the quick bar and just let go of the mouse button. You can rearrange icons as well by dragging them around -- watch for the glowing rectangle as an indicator when you can drop it.

I've got to take tactics completely off.

Me too. I hear you can play with tactics if you customize them but that sounds more work than just micro-managing party members directly.

[forgeforsaken]

I wish there was something in between Move Freely and Hold Position. I'd like something like stay within move freely but don't go more than 15ft away from the hero.

[Alistair]

One of the behaviours does something like that doesn't it?

I also failed to see the crafting options for an embarassingly long time. Not least because I'd removed the icon from the quickbar because skill icons obviously didn't belong there...

[Oghier]

I wish there was something in between Move Freely and Hold Position. I'd like something like stay within move freely but don't go more than 15ft away from the hero.

I believe "Defensive" behavior does this.

[Brian Rucker]

Me too. I hear you can play with tactics if you customize them but that sounds more work than just micro-managing party members directly.

Learning how to use tactics, and I'm sure I could optimize a great deal more than I do, is absolutely key to functioning with the console version on any difficulty over Easy. There's none of the micromanaging folks get to indulge in with the PC version. You have to set your party up to work together as much as possible. That also means knowing what does work well as an automatic tactic and what doesn't and how to coordinate them with stances.

Often times I'll, for example, set up a mage as a healer or single-target damage dealer so if I'm focused more on a fighting character at least there will be healing or damage dealing going on in the background. But when I actually switch over I might play her more as an AoE damager or controller in practice. Spell combos can also be useful and, sometimes, you can set up tactics in a particular order or with conditions to take advantage of them.

While I suspect the PC version has more of a deep tactical game to it I do enjoy the console's approach now I'm used to it. Instead of being the invisible controller on high I'm actually down in the trenches (and while this is an option in the PC version it's only that). Even with pausing to issue orders the lack of precise control over multiple party members at once gives an exciting real-time, chaos of melee, feel to it all.

[gurugeorge]

I've gotten into tactics more, and as I've gotten more experienced with the game, am trying to lay off the pause bar as much as possible, and play it more like I'm in a PUG in an MMO. Customising tactics is a mini-game in itself (especially with the 21 slot tactics unlock mod), and the joy of seeing your teammates do random cool things, combined with wry amusement at the cock ups and chaos, is bags of fun in itself.

The other secret advantage of playing this way, is that it somehow makes your companions seem a bit more alive. The more you pause and take control of your various characters, the more distance you put between yourself and the game, in a way. Or rather, to be more precise, after many hours of controlling all your party members, you become a bit schizophrenic, and lose the sense of being your main character.

IOW, it's a fantastic thing that you can control and level each character in your party individually, as if it were your own - but there are two downsides to this, one is that they seem less like independent living entities, the other is that there's less incentive to try out another class, because you pretty much have played and levelled up every class by the time you're about half-way through the game.

[forgeforsaken]

I believe "Defensive" behavior does this.

Sort of, but they don't seem to engage bad guys unless ordered and seem to lose attack info also when in this mode.

[Eightball]

Sort of, but they don't seem to engage bad guys unless ordered and seem to lose attack info also when in this mode.

That's where you write the tactics scripts. That is, attack nearest visible; they'll go after nearby enemies, but on defender, they won't chase them across the map if the enemies flee.

[gurugeorge]

Btw, for anyone who doesn't already know, one thing that makes Tactics mightily easier to use, that I didn't discover till I actually read the Codex entry (doh) - you can drag and drop the order of the commands in the left pane by grabbing the NUMBER.

[Tim James]

IOW, it's a fantastic thing that you can control and level each character in your party individually, as if it were your own - but there are two downsides to this, one is that they seem less like independent living entities, the other is that there's less incentive to try out another class, because you pretty much have played and levelled up every class by the time you're about half-way through the game.

Upside - moar fun. I'd also like to replay as a mage to try out more spells and combos. Also other party combinations, because I think they will play differently even if you know about each class individually.

[RepoMan]

Glllarghglgharglargh, I am now deep in Bloody Hard Land.





SPOILER



YEAH YEAH




SQUEAL LIKE A PIG, LITTLE SPOILER




So Redcliffe without Wynne or serious healing spells = EPIC FAIL. I've got Alastair, Morganna, Leilana, and my wannabe-blood mage, and I had to set it to easy to get past the frickin' undead battle at the beginning. Even after that, the revenant ate damn near all my remaining health potions (though I did manage to kill it on normal). Running low on injury kits too.

I am not done with the castle yet, either -- though I heard the revenant was the toughest part. At this point I'm almost hoping I can just ditch this quest and go to the mage's tower and get Wynne, then come back and deal with the interior of the castle. (I'll give it a shot without doing that first, though.)

However, I must say that in the "total cheese" department, Virulent Walking Bomb on easy is incredibly entertaining. What I really don't understand is how you are supposed to use it on hard, where double point-blank bombees can wipe your party instantly -- even on normal there's no way to blast a mob with it at range, since they are on you long before you can kill the bombee. Probably I need much more direct damage than I have, though my particular mage character is RPGtastically attracted to the entropy tree... Must Get Waking Nightmare... even though it's probably nerfed against uber-bosses... hmm, I'd better start figuring out how to get both Fireball and Waking Nightmare.

And in other Who The Fuck Cares news, I went to Ostragar (sp?) earlier than I wanted to -- one click and you're running down the wrong path and whammo you're suddenly there. Oh well, I am pretty sure I missed something (per warnings in other threads), but c'est la vie. It's not like there's not plenty of other shit to do in this game....

[Brian Rucker]

I've just discovered the necromancy(?) line. Walking Bomb and Virulent Walking Bomb are handy for one thing and one thing only, if you've got friendly fire on, and that's wiping out lots of ranged grunts at one time. I'm playing at normal and some situations that would have sore tested me before became fairly easy where archers/mages are all set up at range and you have to get through traps and melee types, or maneuver through some terrain, to reach them.

I could almost imagine Morrigan giggling to herself when those guys would blow up and blow up good. Poof.

Why anyone would want that over, say, fireball or something I'm not sure. It's a different damage type which might matter in some cases. It's certainly a bit of a pain as you have to kill the infected one to set off the effect. I suspect the one advantage could be improved range? Haven't messed with the fire element much yet so I don't know.

It's pretty damn effective on minions. Even somewhat handy on bosses and elites when it takes. While it doesn't do a crazy amount there is a nature DOT effect that lasts a while.

[Stridergg]

However, I must say that in the "total cheese" department, Virulent Walking Bomb on easy is incredibly entertaining. What I really don't understand is how you are supposed to use it on hard, where double point-blank bombees can wipe your party instantly -- even on normal there's no way to blast a mob with it at range, since they are on you long before you can kill the bombee.

Try it with Earthquake or Waking Nightmare. :) Oh and switch your melee's to bows/crossbows to keep them from running in as well as for additional ranged damage.

There is a lot of options to experiment with depending on which spells you have. For example, Sleep - Bomb - Petrify - Rockfist or Cone of Cold - Bomb - Rockfist or Earthquake - Blizzard - Bomb or Mass Paralysis - Bomb, etc. Lots of options.