I found that the game difficulty starts to wane when you hit double digits. I don't need to hyperpause micro my guys anymore.
It's harder early on, especially if you hit those random encounters with truly daunting enemy amounts. Lack of AoE spells...
Last edited by roguefrog; 11-08-2009 at 08:30 PM.
So my bunch of heroes clears out the Keep, having defeated major demons and so forth.
And are all promptly eaten by ten gazillion wolves who start off surrounding them.
What is up with the difficulty level?
Wolves are badass. Anyone who's ever played Baldur's Gate can back me up on this one.
Absolutely. Nothing like a mixed pack of dire, dread and vampire wolves spawning in front of your level 3 party :DOriginally Posted by malkav11
... I think I need to replay that one when I'm done with DA:O.
Agreed. I've gotten farther now, and I think that the difficult definitely peaked inside the signal fire tower at Ostergar. I still run into the occasional tough fight, but nothing that crushes my soul to the extent that the random darkspawn groups inside that tower did. Playing on the PC version at Impossible difficulty, for reference.
I also second the recommendation to use as many Mages as you can get for optimum munchkinism. They seem vastly more powerful than Warriors, especially once you start to get a lot of them together in your party- have the targeted Mage run away while using the others to blast enemies. Make sure that each Mage has at least two direct damage spells and, if you ever scrape the talent points together, Fireball. Stacking fireballs on enemy groups is very effective.
Last edited by Juffo-Wup; 11-09-2009 at 12:54 AM.
Tag teaming with mages is just brutal. But yeah, I'm 14-15 and it feels like easy mode with two mages. There's even a random encounter that tries to give you a hint about the power of mages.
Next game, is definitely going to be still on normal, but I'll try myself as a ranger, dog, one mage, and Alistair. The mage will probably be morrigan for the banter, but I'd prefer to use Wynne since I used Morrigan this time around. Oh well.
Ah man, I'd really hate having my group composition dictated by game mechanic necessity rather than what's most fun or interesting. If I can put together any kind of party I like I should be able to make most combinations work with the right tactics. Maybe I should switch to easy mode and see what that's like. Here's hoping I don't have to "kite" mobs with mages all blasting away at range.
I suspect the PC version with the overhead tactical view makes for much better situational awareness and planning as a battle goes on. While I like handling things on the up close and personal level that the console 3/4 view does I don't feel entirely in control. Even doing a good deal of character switching, party positioning and pausing there's just too much going on and it's hard to sort out at times.
I'm not even sure I completely trust the AI Tactics. Sometimes it seems they don't follow orders. Alistair seems to have a real reluctance to use healing potions, for example, and I often find myself having to manually toggle over to him.
My characters range from Level 7-9 at this point. The battles I'm having trouble with include the Boss fight at the Warden's Keep and just about all the bandit/bounty hunter encounters. I just barely beat the elven assassin and his crew. Seems I always end up with one character running around and trying to beat the odds after everyone else gets creamed. My mutt and Morrigan (given I've specialized her into Entropy - seems to suit her personality) seem the most survivable. The dog, likely because he isn't armored, but he's still tough, and NPCs prioritize aggro on what type of armor people wear and Morrigan's several self-healing spells and very light armor help her too.
I think I may switch Morrigan into Creation though because I need at least one basic healing spell just that much.
Last edited by Brian Rucker; 11-09-2009 at 05:13 AM.
Dunno, I thought the expedition for a certain Andestrian holy relic was the hardest parts of my 18 hours thus far.
-Chris
That's the fight that finally made me go into my Tactics menu. (Playing on 360 on normal.) I'm playing a rogue who will, god willing, eventually turn into a duelist, so aside from the occasional manual potion feeding I've let my party do it's own thing while I run around and attack people from behind. (The rogue makes a damn fun fighter, by the way. The Dirty Fighting / Below The Belt combo is a great way to kick off a fight.) I've lost a few fights here and there, but nothing really frustrating.
Until the Warden's Keep. Party consisting of Alistair (who sorta sucks but I'm keeping for story purposes, plus I think the character is one of the better written ones), Morrigan as my mage and Shale as my awesome tank of awesomeness. That boss battle, if it's the one I'm thinking of, made mincemeat out of my party. OK, no problem, reload point just outside the room, let's boogie again - same thing. Total party wipe.
Off to the inventory menu. Let's switch Shale's elemental attack to fire, and let's play around with some items. OK, go! And... dead. Hmmmmm, I wonder what this Tactics menu is for? One hour and about ten tries later, I finally killed it. I lost my main rogue and Alistair, but that's a small price to pay for the deep satisfaction of winning that goddamned battle.
And I gotta say, I really enjoyed it. I love how each thing I tried failed but failed in a different way, forcing me to really think and plan my way through the fight. I don't mind a challenge, as long as I feel I have the tools available to win that challenge, and DA:O hits that spot exactly.
I'm honestly not sure that the overhead view on PC helps that much. If you could move the camera around freely, that would be one thing, but in practice you have to orbit your characters - you can get a slightly better sense of relative positioning, but you actually decrease your ability to view things at range. And I find the latter much more important most of the time.
I'm okay with challenge but not okay with repetition. I mean, come on, the beauty of Dragon Age is in its immersive setting, story and characters. If the gameplay hinges on really technical minutiae so cumbersome as to qualify as puzzle-solving (or by forcing players into certain tactics or party compositions) then it's just getting in the way by not being immersive. Which is why I'm considering easy mode.
I give any battle four goes. The first is me playing intuitively the way I think the characters and tactics should work using common sense. The second is me assuming I did something foolish or had some bad luck - I pay more attention. The third is devised around a more detailed review of my tactics and the nature of the threat. The fourth is a further iteration of the third's approach. Then I sit back and seriously evaluate how much of the problem is the player not understanding the game or the game not understanding the player.
I haven't picked up Shale yet. I've had too much fun playing the story and the characters I've already got! Did break down and make a run for him at the end of the day yesterday. Couldn't even get close for all the nasty encounters on the road.
I find that it helps a lot. In fact, I can't imagine having to run all the fights from the zoomed-in mode. Way too hard to give move orders, way too hard to see the big picture when enemies are all around you. And while first person mode gives you a longer view distance, stuff never stays at range. I sometimes use the zoomed-in view to pull, but enemies will be close enough to see in overhead view within the first few seconds of the fight, so I never stay zoomed in. Indoors, I just leave it in overhead view all the time, even when exploring. It's easier to survey rooms from that view, and dammit, the game just looks better from that angle. I do wish that the camera weren't locked to your characters, though. You should be able to pan freely.
On the PC, Dragon Age is brutally - almost cruelly - hard unless you have the right mix of the "proper" classes and skills. That mix is probably 2 mages (1 who concentrates on healing, the other on crowd control/damage), a rogue and a warrior. I didn't have that, so I've had to turn down the difficulty to easy, which is damn surprising given I've been playing RPGs since Wizardry 1.
The problem I have with it is that I didn't have anything close to that mix for quite a long time. I started a melee rogue, which means after the first town (Lothering) I had:
My melee rogue who was geared more towards traps and persuasion than combat.
Alistair - a decent enough tank
My dog - I didn't find him too useful
Morrigan - some nice abilities, but no healing, little crowd control and little AOE damage
Sten - decent single dps, but I didn't have any good armor for him
Leliana - another melee rogue who wasn't a bad archer
The problem is that I had no crowd control, no healing and no AOE against encounters of masses of monsters. For example, I wiped against the bandits in that first town a half dozen times. I only won when I managed to pull about half of them around the tower. It just seems to be very, very wrong to have an encounter that early in that is that difficult when I've scarcely had time to put a party together without being able to gear/skill them up.
From there, I went to see the elves, then Redcliffe, Dragon's Peak, where Shale is and finally Denerim. You don't pick up another mage in any of those towns, so I played the game a damn long time without a properly geared or specialized mage. Of course, it was only after the mage tower where I had a proper healer. By that time, I had gimped out Morrigan to be a semi-healer, but that took away from her effectiveness as a pure mage.
I'd do OK with normal difficulty, then I'd run into a battle like the Redcliffe courtyard, where the undead boss would make short work of my party. (Interestingly enough, I did pretty well against the mass of undead prior to that.) It's damn discouraging watching your tank die in two hits with no healers and no crowd control. Or I'd get accosted on the road by 10 darkspawn and get annihilated. It gets discouraging having to go in and adjust the difficulty back and forth when you play a battle 3, 5 or 10 times to the point you're certain your party isn't capable of winning. That's simply fucked up.
Frankly, even with dual mages, I'm not sure how I'd even attempt to kill Brecca, or try to duel the twins in the arena, kill the captain of the guard in Denerim or so forth. Even on easy they take a damn long time to kill and seem to do tremendous damage. And given the way certain encounters late in the game just pop right on top of you, that has to get frustrating as hell.
As such, I've finally left it on easy and decided to streak through the main story. Easy is generally too easy, but normal is simply too difficult without the perfect mix of classes. I love the game - it's the best RPG in years - but the lack of balance (I'd term this "polish") in the encounters is simply astonishing given they had months to fine tune the PC version. In a game where most every quest gives you multiple solutions, it certainly seems very rigid in the classes that you must have in your party to be effective. I could see it on a higher difficulty level, but not on normal.
Overhead view is not something I use every fight, only in some very specific situations but it's extremely helpful in those. When there is a lot of visual effects going on fireball, acid bombs, that kind of stuff), it's hard to view things properly. When you need to be precise about you cast your AoE stuff. When you cast Revive. When you need to move all/most of your party members in various directions at the same time (enemy's fireball in the begining of the fight is one example :)).
One thing I wish the regular 3rd person camera had is autopositioning towards whatever the character is looking at. If I arrange my chars around the target and then start switching between them, I need to constantly adjust my camera to see the enemy, because it's stuck in the direction used on my previous char.
I don't think the game is forcing you into anythnig. As with any game there is certain combinations of classes/abilities that will be stronger than others but in DA:O, you are not forced to find the only combo that will work. I tried several character combinations myself, I see people playing playing with other combos, it all can work if you know the weakneses and strengths of the character composition you are using.Ah man, I'd really hate having my group composition dictated by game mechanic necessity rather than what's most fun or interesting. If I can put together any kind of party I like I should be able to make most combinations work with the right tactics.
Arguebly, it is probably possible to choose some characters, level them up purposely trying to gimp them and then be not able to finish the game. But it's fairly difficult to do and involves stuff like getting all tier 1/2 skills in every tree or building a strength based rogue in a massive armor.
Gotta have a healer though. Not all the time but I don't see how some of the fights can be won without one.
The problem is with the 'right' party, the game is laughably easy. I didn't intend to min/max my party, but apparently I am.
My Mage-has healing, fireball, cone of cold + stone fist =insta kill.
Alistair - pure tank
Zevran - combat rogue (high single target dps) + lockpicking
Wynne - Probably the best support NPC in game so far.
A note on Wynne. Her healing and buffing is amazing as is her deep mana pool (she also gets a mass mana/stamina regen buff). She also has stone fist, which means I can Cone of Cold 2 enemies and shatter them immediately. I then throw a paralyze on a third and that's 3 enemies out the fight before they have even attacked.
Once the fight starts, she can auto attack and heal the party with both single and mass heal spells. Someone dies, she can rez them.
My biggest problem with difficulty is when you have lots of melee mobs and one or more high level ranged/magic mobs, triggered after a cutscene. The cutscene pulls all your party members into a clump, destroying your carefully positioned deployment, and all too often my character is fried by magic before he can do much. I pretty much have to instantly pause, get my mages casting protection and healing spells, and disperse my melee characters as fast as possible. Then I turn to CC and burning down the high levels.
I made the mistake of giving Morrigan Cone of Cold. She loves to freeze everyone in the party as well as the monsters, so I tweaked her tactics not to use it unless I tell her to. Then again, that fits her personality.
It must be based on party composition, because I've found the game pretty easy so far (PC normal). My mage PC is a vortex of destruction. Most enemies start the battle on their ass, at 2/3 health and on fire. I have fire up to fireball, healing up to regeneration, mage armour and the mental-blast through force prison line. The only problem is relative lack of single-target direct-damage spells, but the regular staff attack is not bad.
In the encounter with the assassin, I started off fireballing the central group while Morrigan slept the three archers to one side and Sten and Allistair moved forward to engage. I threw a flame blast across the line of enemies as they engaged my warriors and then a prison on the main assassin. Morrigan finished the enemy mage, but not before she got off a chain lighting (that really hurt). Fireballs and more direct attacks finished off the archers.
Blackadar, I just disagree with you, well at least up to and including Lothering (at which point our parties went in different directions and our playthroughs cannot be compared anymore).
I also played as a melee rogue, I also foolishly took 1 level of traps (don't get me wrong, traps are very effective when you have time to set them up, the problem is that most challenging fights are the surprise ones and traps don't help much there, plus foced to choose between poison and traps, I choose poison), I am also trained in "persuasion" (which btw at earlier levels doesn't take away from your combat effectiveness, since it's not a class skill) and I obviously had the same people available to me in Lothering.
And I had zero problems in Lothering. I went through half of it with Alistair/Morrigan/Doggy, then switched Doggy out for Sten. Zero problems with bandits, swarm of refugees, spiders, bears, darkspawn, whatever. Maybe I lost a char somewhere once, can't really remember but definitely didn't have a single wipe.
I have no idea what went wrong with your game at Lothering. It's a fairly early point in the game, Morrigan and Sten didn't even had a chance to level up yet. No idea and yet the fact is I had zero challenge there (on Normal).
Besides the need to have a healer (and I only wish Wynne wasn't the only viable healer character in the game ), there is no class or a combination of classes that you absolutely must have. I play with Alistair as my sword and board tank, Desslock recommends having a 2h tank. I played through a good chunk of the game (inlcuding a very challenging fight with a dragon) with 3 melee fighters and 1 healer, others prefer to play with 2 mages. IMO it's like in any other game, as long as you have a good healer and a good tank, everyone else doesn't matter much as long as they have some decent dps.
I pretty much play battles exclusively in the overhead view. My style of play just demands that level of situational awareness and it also helps for coordinating the various AoE spells that are friendly fire enabled.
If I'm exploring outdoors then I'll play in the close in view until combat actually initiates and the enemies close. Indoors I actually play almost exclusively overhead in and out of combat (really feels like BG2 that way). Before entering any room I'll position the main party to the edges so they won't have line of sight to any baddies in a room then I'll use my stealthed rogue to proceed forward and scout enemies out and lure them into chokepoints.
Not having overhead view would effect my play style dramatically.
It bugs me that there's no tactics option for frozen enemies.
I also tried Tom's suggestion of making my guys use a poultice if their health is below 50%, but I think that's too high. They end up using too many of them unnecessarily.
The hardest part about mages is deciding which of the many awesome spells you want to learn.
Same here. I can't imagine being stuck in the close view for battles; I'm not sure I'd like the game nearly as much if I had to play it that way. Too hard to move and position people, too hard to place AoE spells, too hard to keep track of what's going on when enemies are all around you. And overhead view is actually better for exploring, at least indoors. You don't have the same view distance, but that only really matters outdoors, and you get a much better view of your immediate surroundings from the overhead view. Plus, it makes the game look a whole lot better.
That's fine. I've been playing RPGs since Wizardry 1 and to me DA is the hardest RPG game in recent (last 10 years) memory. I'd say that DA on normal is the equivalent of an infinity engine game on hard. And it makes Fallout 3, the Gothic series, Oblivion, Morrowind, the Witcher, Sacred, Divine Divinity and the rest of them look like child's play.
Then again, that's not going to stop me from restarting a new character as soon as I'm finished with this one. :)
As I mentioned on the previous page, I use either Paralyzed or Immobilized (don't remember which) state in Wynne's tactic and she casts her Rockfist on frozen enemies automatically.
In addition, don't forget that frozen/petrified enemies can be shattered by crits as well, which makes rogue's Riposte and Cripple even more useful.
Does that apply to backstabs as well?
The people saying the game is easy are playing on nightmare i assume?
Note that I'm not saying that the game is *too* easy (and I expect it to get much harder). I just haven't run into any really brutal battles so far. Some battles that people have mentioned having trouble with on normal seemed fairly straightforward (probably due to party composition/power choice).
As far as I know, backstabs are treated differently from crits and cannot shatter frozen/petrified targets.
The biggest problem for me with the 360 version is not being able to give movement orders while paused. Only being able to position guys one at a time, in real time, is a HUGE disadvantage and more significant, IMO, than the lack of an overhead view.
OK coming from games like Jade empire and mass effect but never having played a gold box or baldur's game I think I'm just not getting combat. I'm about 10 hrs into the game on normal. Playing on PC.
- party: 1 tank, 2 mages, 1 rogue. About lvl 7 or 8.
- I play a mage maxed out on fire and healing right now.
- the rogue I want to be ranged so I stick her on archer tactic, give her a crossbow, secondary weapon set a set of daggers. When I cast my fire aoe stuff she likes to switch to daggers and run right into the fire. I had to resort to removing her daggers to keep her using the crossbow and stay out of my damn aoe!!!
- When I pause why can't I queue up more than one action? I want to basically say everybody hold position, tank move into mob then cast your threat skill, and well hold aggro like you guys are all saying to play it like an mmo. Just a basic tank and spank. Instead it seems I have to give a move command, wait until he is in position, pause again, and then cast the threat skill. This is like playing an mmo with the most retarded pug group ever!
- The overhead view doesn't let you zoom far back enough or scroll the view far enough. I end up using 3rd person just so I can see further into the distance. The camera and what character it tracks and how you mouse can also control the camera as you bump the edges of the screen just confuses the heck out of me during battle so I end up not using it a whole lot.
- Setting up formations and telling guys to hold. Yeah umm when I do that it seems their attack range is rather limited. Enemies run right past my dudes with them just giving them odd looks instead of attacking. They usually stay glued to the ground while all the melee enemies just bum rush my mage. I can't figure out how to create a proper battle line so I can nuke more effectively.
So basically I just say screw it all to hell. I nuke the hell out of everybody including any party members that happen to be in the area. I back the hell up. I cast that team rejuvenate or whatever. Spam heals on the tank. Let the rogue die b/c she always dies and is just my can opener anyways. Maybe a fireball for the stragglers or the enemies smart enough to run out of my initial fire storm (usually catching myself in the blast, more healing). I usually survive but at least one or 2 of my party members die. Repeat.
Is that it or am I playing this game entirely wrong?
It's kind of working for me so far but I feel like I'm doing something horribly wrong. The first boss fight in the tower I finished on my 2nd try just healing the entire time. The one in warden's keep took like 6 tries. I had to be a bit more reserved with the aoe and again just healed like mad and popping potions.
You need to adjust the behaviors in the Tactics menu. This is actually different than the tactics themselves. The Default behavior is to not attack an enemy unless he attacks you. When you select Hold you disable everything in the specific Tactics list but the characters are still governed by the behavior preset. So you can direct a character to move and attack but otherwise they will not follow an enemy on their own.
Behaviors work in conjuction with Tactics. The game prioritiy to Tactics conditions but if none of them are met then it falls back on the behavior you preset.
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