Frosstbyte

Thank goodness they're adding a respec feature. I don't know that I'd end up using it an enormous amount, but every once in a while you grab a spell or a talent that looks good that ends up being completely useless.

In my current playthrough, I had to bump the difficulty up to hard, because I was kind of sleeping through everything on normal. Played the game all the way through on normal the first time, though. I didn't catch if you were playing on PC or on console, hal. I really like the turn-based strategy aspect of the game, so pausing the game after everyone takes an action and assigning them a new action is both natural and enjoyable. If you're having problems playing the game in real time, all I can say is that I'm not surprised. I don't think (at least on pc) it's designed to be played that way, especially in some of the more involved fights like the awful one outside the keep with the lieutenant, two emmisaries, drake and waves of baddies. I shudder at the thought of playing that on hard this time through.

Logan, I'm surprised you think so little of archers. My first playthrough with my wife, she went archery on her rogue and picked up Leliana and trained her to be an archer as well. By about level 15, archers can lay down incredible amounts of damage between critical shot and arrow of slaying and that, combined with the scattershot ability, makes them formidable members of your party. An aimed arrow of slaying can drop an ogre outright. They also make the archdemon much easier at the end of the game compared to having a melee-heavy party. They don't have the widespread destructive power of a mage, but I don't think you're going to find them lacking unless you're really trying to min-max.

Edit: I just figured out that by "DLC" you meant "Expansion." The Return to Ostagar DLC is supposed to be out anytime now, but they also just anounced a full-fledged expansion called Dragon Age: Awakening. Seriously? There's an expansion to this game coming out in March? I guess I'm on the blizzard expansion schedule of about two years. I hardly knew you could release an expansion more quickly than that.

LoganSnake

I tried making an archer out of Leliana. She kept dying quicker than anybody even at level 9-ish and I didn't have the patience to unlock her full potential. My experience comes from that. In comparison, Morrigan's magic had more effect both in terms of damage and in terms of affected area. My rogue's quick backstabs and knockouts felled enemies quicker than her arrows did and my dog and Alistair inflicted and absorbed way more melee damage. Maybe you're right, but she was quite useless in my party.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Shauk

Hardest part of the game, hands down, not to mention the groups of archers behind barricades just laughing it up. took me 2 res spells, potion chugging, and purposely stacking my party on top of eachother so they'd die in the same spot if they were gonna die. while i kept my res capable member out of the fray. They all died eventually and i just ran in, popped res + group heal and basically reset the fight with only an emissary, alpha, and some insignificant baddies to deal with. (yeah that was on hard, again, I don't even want to consider nightmare unless they make the difficulty lock in at character creation and add an achievement for it, cuz then i'll do it.)

Gabbyness

You, sir, are a glutton for punishment.

__________________
One, two, three, four, fiiiiiiiifth.

Zeraph

So has anyone (from tfp) defeated the high dragon on hardest difficulty yet? I'm about to attempt it on easy at lvl ~9. Now *that's* a fight. I think the hardest?

Shauk

the high dragon is pretty cheesable. you can taunt kite him back and forth in front of your ranged (bring 2 mages and an archer) and he'll pretty much only hit you when you're turning his fat ass around.

Frosstbyte

I've killed it twice with two fairly different groups. The first time it bugged out and got stuck in a hole somehow, so I just had ranged blow her up. The second time I did it with Leliana as an archer, Morrigan as flex dps/healing, my warden as 2h dps and Alister tanking. I think we were in the late teens as a party when we accomplished it. Was pretty dicey towards the end, but some well placed hexs and a cone of cold dropped the dragon with just Morrigan alive.

It's a pretty fun fight, but it's nowhere near the "hardest." Between the high dragons, I think Flemeth is by far the more difficult of the two. The hardest single mob boss fight for me was the broodmother, because I didn't figure out you could stand on the slime to avoid the tentacles. I "killed" the tentacles every time they spawned, and the adds and her. And I had no heals in my group at that time. It was pretty intense.

Vaultboy

flemeth and the brood were easy. I haven't reached the high dragon yet.

__________________
"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Shauk

flemeth is also cheeseable by dropping like 20 traps where you know she's going to become targetable

broodmother was a pushover if you had a couple mages with maxed out AoE spells, just kept everyone out of melee, stood on a rock and cast inferno/blizzard/lightining whatever over and over till she called in darkspawn nubs, dispatched them, repeat.

tentacles were mostly a non issue if you were on the rocks, or stayed mobile if you weren't they're pretty much incapable of hitting moving targets due to the fact that they don't move, they just burrow and emerge, by that time, you've moved out of range again.

LoganSnake

Brood Mother and Branka were the hardest fights in the game for me. Brood Mother just exhilarating. It took me one try, but the fight lasted a good half an hour. The reason it's so memorable is that I delivered my last blow with Alistair who had about 3HP left and everybody else in my party unconscious.

Branka...goddamn. That fight took me at least 5 tries to finally beat her. One of the reasons is that Oghden was forced into my party and I did not have any extra equipment for him. He completely fucked up the honed dynamic of my group.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Zeraph

BTW shauk, awesome remix, I've watched it several times.

EDIT: Also, damn, the character's are whiny. Every action I do someone is moaning and bitching about something. Makes me want to smack them around. If I was truly roleplaying in this game I'm not sure I'd be traveling with anyone. Kind of a negative for me. Also seems odd I even have the option to travel with non grey wardens. Why don't they get infected when we fight the darkspawn?

Gabbyness

Zeraph,

People seem to settle out as you progress. At first, I felt the same way, with everyone whining the entire time. If you lavish gifts upon them and do their side quests, soon enough everyone will love you and the whining will lessen.

__________________
One, two, three, four, fiiiiiiiifth.

LoganSnake

Yeah. I didn't get Morrigan or Alistair to be friendly toward me until about 25 hours into the game. Kept losing friendship points on nearly every choice I made with either one or the other. I only got them into the 95+ around 35 hours in. They complain less at that point.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Shauk

yeah apparently 1st impressions aren't the grey warden strong point.

just keep your pimp hand strong.

Vaultboy

Shauk, I went the complete opposite route with Broodmother: Melee ftw. I'm an arcane mage (who uses ALL combat abilitie, plus flaming weapons), and I only cast 3 spells on the broodmother: Weakness, Vulnerability Hex, Death Hex. Then I bring on the beatdown. Leiliana does a fair amount of dmg too, and wynne just buffs/heals and casts the occasional stone fist. Took down Flemeth the same way.



Branka was a non-issue. I killed her solo whilst my team took down the creeps. Melee mage ftw, baby. 98.5% fatigue, wearing Blood Dragon armor and sustained spells), might seem like fail, but an arcane mage doesnt need to cast many spells. He just needs mana. 100% mental resistance, 95% physical resistance, and 75% resistance for everything else, I can tank almost anything, if I have enough mana.

Re Oghden, I chucked his puny weapon, and gave him Yusaris - (He's a waaay better 2-handed fighter than Sten, btw.). I think I gave him a cap too - possibly helm of honnleath, and bought him a belt. Otherwise he was good to go, and I found him quite impressive. I also permanently left him in the other mode (not Berseker), which made him more survivable.

__________________
"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Radio Monk33

84 hours later...I am finished. I have to say the Archdemon wasn't as tough as I thought it would be. As earlier mentioned, the dragon thrall, double emissaries and waves of dark spawn outside the fort was very difficult. Was the only place that I set the difficulty to easy to get through haha.

__________________
"Punk rock had this cool, political personal message. It was a bit more cerebral than just stupid cock rock, you know"
-Kurt Cobain

Shauk

I refused to play as an arcane warrior on my playthrough because everyone was talking about how ridiculous it was. I watched a few youtube videos and was just like "fucking seriously? why not just turn on god mode?"

If I ever feel like a nightmare mode I might make a few, that's the only way I could see it being fair to the npcs

Gabbyness

I wish I had the moral courage to learn how to be a revenant because that seems like a pretty sweet class. It's a testament to the level of immersion that I still go, "Ahhhhh, I can't! It's so mean!"

__________________
One, two, three, four, fiiiiiiiifth.

Vaultboy

whilst i dont think its god mode - a noob would still fail - I do think it is slightly OP, like when they first introduced the Monk warrior class in BG2. With a slight rebalance in the expansion (e.g. soaking up mana faster and less resistance) then the arcane warrior should be fine.

Strangely enough, the most difficult battles for me were revenants: I went to the dalish elves first, so I hadn't learnt Misdirection Hex yet. Can't beat the revenants without it, i reckon. Will prolly go back later and kick their assess.

__________________
"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Nisses

I did the humans first, and came upon the revenant pretty quick... I had a rogue, Sten (2H), Alistair (tank) & morrigan.
So no healing...

considering I use the terrain alot to my advantage (bottlenecks, luring away 1/2 at a time, staying around corners to avoid archers...), it was a nasty surprise to be pulled like that.

So far, it's the only battle I've had to reload twice, and I'm finishing up the dwarves now, then it's off to the landsmeet (I think )

No misdirection hex used here though... Just beat the revenant down hard & fast... And used a LOT of poultices...

__________________
Moderation should be moderately moderated.

Zeraph

Fucking-A, what dumbass developer made that stupid puzzle drawbridge room in the gauntlet? Its not even a fucking puzzle its a fucking trial and error headache. If you're unlucky in who to choose to move (50/50) you have to go through the whole fucking sequence all over again. Also at least 50/50 on choosing the right square if not fucking worse. More like 1 in 3. What. the. fuck. I just spent 30 minutes trying to get past that fucking room and still haven't. Fuck this piece of shit game. I am good at puzzles and can beat most people at chess. This shit is retarded.

I just looked this up in a walkthrough and it looks like its either different for ps3/xbox or they've patched it or something. The squares never stay permanent (it sends my character back to the beginning) for me and are never solid more than 2 at a time. So when I move the wrong character I have to start all over again.

BurntToast

It's not that hard of a puzzle really. What I did is take one character and tested all of the squares... wrote down which ones light up which and then proceded through it on my second try.

__________________
The taint. Conveniently located between the snack bar and the dumpster.

Zeraph

Apparently I should have wrote it down but I didn't expect to face something I'd need to do homework for in a game. ><

LoganSnake

I got frustrated with it 10 minutes into trial and error and just looked up a YouTube walkthrough for it. It was a stupid part of an otherwise excellent area in the game.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Derwood

I got it on the first try

__________________
"You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

Frosstbyte

I thought it was a fun puzzle and a nice reprieve from either crazy heavy dialogue or hack and slash. Doing 5 minutes of scribbling on a napkin made it really easy. I'm surprised in so much trial and error you guys didn't notice the pattern, but I guess different things pop for different people.

After all the ball-licking of arcane warriors, I guess I'll have to try one out on my evil mage runthrough.

Vaultboy

Puzzles like that are part of Bioware and (defunct Blackisle) D&D. Icewind Dale and BG2 had a few nice ones too. I always liked this aspect of these games, since especially in IWD the hack-and-slashing could become a tad repetitive.

__________________
"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

Derwood

Might be a stupid question, but you commanded your party to "hold position" before starting the puzzle, right? That keeps them from leaving their spots when you move them about to do the puzzle

__________________
"You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

Zeraph

Der- yes of course, I'm not a moron.

Vault- except this isn't a good puzzle. I hesitate to even call it a puzzle. Its as much a puzzle as counting the hairs off my cats back. I don't care to do it. I'm *into* puzzles. I can do medium sudoku puzzles without writing notes, and hard with. I answered all the riddles right my first go just before that room.

It doesn't even really have to do with difficulty. I ended up memorizing all the permutations up to the third block of the bridge before I gave up in annoyance. Writing shit down from a video game is just unacceptable to me.

Derwood

I just don't remember it being that hard. Maybe I got lucky or something

__________________
"You can't shoot a country until it becomes a democracy." - Willravel

Radio Monk33

I didn't find the arcane mage terribly powerful. Dammit, I'm feeling the temptation for another play through with different characters. Would love to drop Wynn who I kept for healing only..

__________________
"Punk rock had this cool, political personal message. It was a bit more cerebral than just stupid cock rock, you know"
-Kurt Cobain

Shauk

man I hate to sound like I'm calling you out but I think you're harping way too hard on the puzzle thing. Yeah it was a bit difficult to figure out the correct order but it wasn't so hard that it warrants several posts on it. I don't feel the puzzle really had that much to offer to the gameplay experience, but I understand the lore purpose of having it there. Honestly if it were just me I would have found some corpses from the previous areas to just drag in there and throw down on the switches.

Vaultboy

Zeraph, maybe you were just not worthy of following in Andraste's footsteps?

Derwood, I agree on the Arcane warrior not being OP. He is amazing at tanking and dealing melee dmg tho. I frequently got more hits and parrys than Zevran and Sten (both of whom I think are Utterly Useless).

The toughest battle with the Arcane Warrior was undoubtedly the High Dragon. Melee simply didn't work. To win I ended up controlling Leiliana for most of the battle and just healing/lyriuming my main char and healing Alistair.

__________________
"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

spindles

I've just finished the castle of Redcliffe and did it first as well. I'm a fighter (dual weapon) and had morrigan, alistair and leilana. I had to load 3 or 4 times to do it. I had added one heal spell to morrigan's arsenal just before we got here. Basically, I left Alistair downstairs to chug potions and keep the Revenant busy while my other three went up the stairs - most of the foot soldiers followed me up the stairs and my three characters up there took out the whole lot and Alistair managed to stay alive by running around a lot...

Then the four characters took down the Revenant

__________________
who hid my keyboard's PANIC button?

LoganSnake

I don't know. Revenants didn't pose that much of a problem for me. Mostly because I level locked the areas where they are and then fought them when I was 10 levels higher than the last time I was in the area. They went down with melee damage quite easily.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Vaultboy

Well, that kinda invalidates your opinion, no?

__________________
"Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Pity any man that gets used to that taste."

LoganSnake

Not at all. My opinion is that they were easy when I fought them. The opinion stands.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Frosstbyte

The opinion stands. It just happens to be useless. It's like saying "first grade math tests sure were easy when I came back and did them after getting my phd in math." I can't say I understand why you would level lock zones though. If I don't have to think about each action, I'm not really having a lot of fun playing. There's enough one shot and die trash mobs in the game to sate my bloodlust. I prefer the challenging encounters to stay, well, challenging.

LoganSnake

I didn't check the graves until 10 or so levels after the first visit and I never met a Revenant prior to that.

There's no right way to play a game like Dragon Age.

__________________
Maturity is knowing you were an idiot in the past. Wisdom is knowing that you'll be an idiot in the future. Common sense is knowing that you should try not to be an idiot now. - J. Jacques

Evil Milkman

DA: Origins started off good but is only getting better. I'm tempted to read this whole thread but will just play the game as a substitute.