I think they are great. I hate the fact that extra slots are tied to levels and skillpoints though, that is weak, and a bad design decision IMO.Originally Posted by Alistair
This i agree with. Getting more tactics slots through improving the skill and/or leveling is nice in theory, but the amount you start with and the increases are too small.
I'd strongly suggest everyone downloading a tactics mod.
Does your Morrigan have Force Field? Cast that on the revenant, kill the rest of the undead and then gang up on the revenant.
So I'm about 32 hrs into this thing now. I think around 20 hrs everything started to click for me. Now I'm a pausing, micro managing, hold and position each character, funnel enemies into choke points, cc/aoe nuking fool.
- I would recommend getting at least one mage maxed out in healing if you dont' take Wrynn. Even the first healing spell is really useful. I'm playing as a mage and she now does a bit of everything. I've maxed her healing line, has inferno, earthquake, and mass paralysis for cc. So I can heal, cc, and nuke. This helps to compensate the poor AI.
- I think the tactics and inventory mods make the game a lot more enjoyable without being too much of a cheat. At least with the 25 tactics slots your AI controlled party members can do a much greater variety of stupid things. After the 3rd time Morrigan blizzard our entire team or cone of cold ME I took those out of tactics and just micro manage those.
- I also gave Morrigan the first healing spell and setup the tactics so she helps with healing the party. Get sleep early on. It's a pretty nice cc that you can pretty much spam and cast right in the middle of your party b/c it's a non FF spell.
- Get a tank with some aggro skills. I only see 2 unless I've missed some.
- Go buy the mats and make tons of mana and health pots. I'm sinking about 60% of my gold into pots.
- It seems like when I cast blizzard and inferno right on top of each other at the same time the enemies will actually freeze and burn at the same time?!?!? It's hard to see with all the graphical effects going on.
Last edited by ARogan; 11-30-2009 at 02:31 PM.
I liked those battles where there was just a big KERR-THUMP and the screen would fill with blood and lightning, followed by F-TOOM! FTOOM-FTOOM-FTOOM! 28xp 28xp 28xp 28xp. Then your party would struggle back to its feet and find itself alone again.
I find that fireball, grease, Inferno, seem to create a wonderful visual affect followed quickly by 28xp, 28xp, 40xp, and then eventually 80xp. Morgana generally needs to throw sleep at some point, but who needs heals if they die before they hit you.
I am surprised that Alistair is so nice me. I must hit him with two fireballs for every heal I cast his way. :) Of course he does have 40% fire resistance so that must help a lot.
OK yeah so I bailed on the fucking castle and went off to the mage's tower and now Wynne and I are kicking fucking ass. So she may be a bit doofy, what the fuck do I care, I'm a steamrollering chainsaw of death now. Plus my sick twisted blood mage self loves the irony of stringing her along just enough to use her in my corrupting plans. hoo hoo haaa ha haaaaaa
So does at some point in the game money not become a problem? As right now I'm struggling with a lack of cash. Yes I know about the infinite money bug, and yes I did use it to buy a backpack, because fuck you game 70 slots is not enough for 4 guys. But beyond that I'd rather not take advantage of that bug.
I did the first game. In my 2nd game, I bought a backpack before going to the first wilderness and then bought another cheap one after coming back (the vendor restocks). That gave me 90 slots and I never had problems after that except in the long dungeon grind in the dwarf area.
Also, I don't keep all the minor resistance pots (I keep the major ones), the poison stuff (it doesn't last long enough) and so forth. Finally, I do suggest getting the camp chest mod.
By lvl 14 or 15 I have 100+ gold, so yes, money is less of a problem now :) I was doing all the side quests I could though and bought all the bags and tomes I've encountered.
I'm having the same issue with the backpack. I got the camp chest mod, but am unwilling to create a login and download the toolset to extend my backpack to 999. Fuck, but last time I went to buy a backpack, it was 7 gold coins and I didn't even have a single one (went through a buying spree the time before to stock up on ingredients for crafting - and bought a cap).
The gold bug looks like it's on only on consoles? I'd kill for a few backpacks as even dumping the majority of my inventory in the camp chest, I still had to leave a lot in my last quest to the tower and was constantly juggling inventory.
I find the rather tight economy in Dragon Age refreshing because it's so rare. Hell I just finished Assassins Creed 2 up and by halfway through that game I was swimming in money with nothing to spend it on.
I just started playing over the weekend (PC Version) and I'm already stuck at a combat that is kicking my ass every time (on normal). It's the big room in the first floor of the tower, when you're supposed to light the signal fire during the attack. I'm a melee character, and I've got my dog, Alistair and a mage with me. There are so many enemies in this room I can't seem to get them all before my party is toast.
Is it possible to lure the enemy into the fire-maze of burning rubbish and explode those barrels? I need to put my party on hold though, as they have a terrible habit of running headlong into fights where they're vastly outnumbered. I suppose I should approach this as less real-time and more strategy-based combat, kind of like NWN2?
Tips for this fight:
1) Tuck your party against a wall, out of line of sight, and tell them to hold position
2) Use your bow to pull the first couple of darkspawn (archers), then duck back out of line of sight so they run to you. Kill them in the entry area. That should leave three archers and one herald left alive in the big room
3) If you can't disarm traps, you'll need to charge at some point. Lead with Alastair, and have him use Shield Cover to reduce the archery damage
4) The mage can take the archers out of the mix for a while with a fireball
5) Kill the herald first. This is a recurring theme in DA ;)
In general, you do need to approach fights as strategy based, at least until you have some better crowd control abilities and have your companions' tactics set correctly. That tower will give you repeated lessons in the value of planning and pulling, as opposed to charging and dying.
Also, quicksave after every hard fight, and if you're not sure about how hard a room is, right before a room.
Yes, yes, 1000x yes. Pull for dear life. What I do is get the 25-tactics-slots mod and set up everyone except my main mage to attack the character my main mage is attacking. Then I run my warrior out to pull aggro, then retreat my whole party to a choke point behind a door or something, where they have to come to you. MAKE THEM COME TO YOU. Then AoE them as they come. That is the secret of soloing in an MMO, and it's the secret of surviving in Dragon Age.
Did anyone else waste their specialization points trying to make a traveling zoo of death? I gave Ranger to three of my characters then found out that you can only have *one* summoned animal at any time. Total. Did I miss this in the manual? I don't see that limitation listed anywhere...
I'm on PC. At the shop screen, pick a high priced item you have. Left click on it, then right click, hold both buttons down and drag it over to the shop side. Release the right button, you should hear some change noise, then release the left button, and you'll get it again. You've just effectively sold the item twice. Now buy back the item normally. Repeat.
If you just want extra cash on PC, why not break out the console and give yourself extra cash straight up?
Not a waste. The pets are balanced around only having one and in my opinion they are quite strong, especially if you don't have a dedicated tank in your party (my last one just had sten, 2 mages and the rogue). Since you have 3 rogues, your last one will likely be a mage, which means you have no real dedicated tank. In that case having 3 500+ hp bears running around tanking for your party will be a HUGE help, much larger than any other specialization (although of course you will still want a bard for the buffs to those rogues).
While generally you will likely find one you like the best and stay with it mostly, the cooldowns are also not linked on them so if your bear dies really fast, you can summon a spider right away for example. in any event you need to fill the skill line to get master ranger which is worth it.
If unlike me you still feel ranger is underpowered, i did notice a mod to buff the ranger specialization with some cool sounding stuff (summoning revenants or pride demons). http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=82
I think he means he had his own rogue, Zevran, and Leliana all Rangers and then the game told him only one summoned monster per party. Which is something I thought about doing and if that's the limitation then I am very glad I didn't do it.
PS3 version.
I'm on my second replay and sticking to Normal again. It just feels about right. Most fights are fairly straightforward and a few can still be real challenges. Even starting out wasn't nearly so hard now I've a better idea of what I'm doing.
Assuming my attention doesn't wander to something new and shiny I'll plan my 3rd replay around a more optimal concept and team with a tougher difficulty level. Maybe a straight up jump to nightmare.
That one is a toughie, especially since a lot of players seem to go to Redcliff right after Ostagarr. However, I discovered a couple ways to make it easier. The first half is really easy if you find the oil in the general store and tell Ser Perth so he sets up a fire trap. THen, you just have to keep your party out of the blaze. The second part is tougher. The trick is to keep the militia alive and the horde not fighting. For starters, there are a lot of quests to help them out. The most important is getting Owen to make armor, but adding Dwyne to the fight helps "morale." As does getting the Tavern to provide free Ale. I don't know what morale actually does, but I think the fight is easier with better morale. Then, make sure one of your mages has a "heal" spell to throw on any militiaman getting close to death (use potions on your own troops). Finally, stun spells and attacks (like Scattershot which is so awesome early on) are a must when the horde grows.
Revenants are undoubtedly some of the toughest fights in the game. However, most are optional. The mandatory Revenant fight in Redcliff, however, comes with a help option that I think some players miss. There is a switch to open the gate and let Ser Perth and his band in to help with the fight and make it much easier.
ah if that is the case it is something i didn't know. I haven't tried more than one rogue in a party, but it is stupid if 2 rangers can't summon one pet each.
Exactly - I had visions of having a couple bears and a spider tanking for me but that doesn't work. As soon as you try to summon a second pet then the first one dies immediately. Not fun when you can't respec! I had my PC, Zevran, and Leliana all take Ranger in order to unleash animal hell on the darkspawn.
If you are on pc you can fix that of course.
That would have been quite a sight though... likely overpowered as hell, but quite a sight...
Doesn't Bioware have a history with this kind of limitations?
NWN also had severe companion/summoning limits (iirc you could only have one summon at a time)?
That was why IWD2 is my favorite 3E game as far as the combat-fun-factor is concerned - you could literally summon hordes of creatures as long as your party members had the spells memorized.
Anyway, I got Ranger far too late for it to make any difference to me, maybe in an eventual replay.
_____
rezaf
you could summon as many as you want in BG as well.
fairly sure you can summon more than 1 pet in NWN as well.
Nope. One pet, one NPC party member in NWN. The first expansion made it possible to have two NPC party members but a lot of modules didn't even have NPCs that could join your party, much less support two at once.
I remember you can summon a ranger/wizard/sorc class pet + a normal spell summon pet.
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