Dragon Age: Origins Catch-All

ThatGuy42 wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

Yeah, sounds like you had a little bad luck. Beating the Archdemon isn't that hard.

If you beat him quickly and easily, then my hat is off to you, sir. But, for me, that Archdemon fight was perhaps one of the most difficult boss battles I have ever played. I played on normal difficulty, and it took me more than 50 tries, (yes, I actutally counted how many times I wiped out). The only way I ended up getting through it was by having my wife help copilot me. She would call out warnings for heals, attacks, and targets, and I honestly don't know that I could do it without her. I'm replaying the game again now, and I'm not looking forward to that fight in the least. The most important thing about that Archdemon battle is to have those big AoE spells working for you to control the hordes of reinforcements.

Don't worry. By then second time through you will know the combat a lot better and it should be easier. 50 Times? I would have just switched to casual by then so I applaud your persistence.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Yeah, sounds like you had a little bad luck. Beating the Archdemon isn't that hard.

I was really surprised at how easy the battle was, given how it's regarded. I finished it on my first try in 10-15 minutes, Normal difficulty. I don't know if it helps, but I realized pretty quickly that magic didn't hurt the archdemon at all, so I controlled Morrigan through the entire fight--she just ran from Ballista to Ballista as he flew around and hammered on him as quickly as it would fire. The two fighters in my party fought off darkspawn, and Wynne kept them alive. I jumped away from Morrigan a few times to run someone out of a mob, but that was pretty much it. Morrigan was by herself through the entire battle and was left completely untouched--all the focus was on the melee in the middle of the map.

I think the key is to take out the archdemon as quickly as possible, since there's no end to the darkspawn. It really helps if you didn't lose all the support armies in your fight through the city as well. I don't think I lost any, and they did most of the real work fighting darkspawn in the final battle.

The idea is to kill the Archdemon as quickly as possible and to ignore everything else as much as is possible. My usual party for that fight is Alistair, Wynne and Leliana, with the warden doing whatever it is that she does (ranged dmg works very well). The AD's big aoe attacks do spirit damage, so equip whatever equipment you have that boosts your resistance to it and keep your squishies out of the aoe damage zone and out of the range of the dragon's breath attacks. Also, try to keep a fair degree of distance between ranged party members, so that if one gets hit with an aoe the healing is limited to one character.

As you probably know already the fight goes like this: the AD starts on the left, then jumps to the centre and then jumps around some more until it goes off for a smoke out the back and you can only attack it with ranged attacks and ballistas, before finally coming back to the platform behind you on the right (all directions are relative to the door you enter from). It won't call in reinforcements immediately, and I'd advise you hold off on yours until it does (I've found that the mages work best). The darkspawn that appear can safely be ignored apart from the Alphas and shrieks and even then your melee should stay on the dragon for the whole fight apart from that one period when it just nukes you with aoe spirit damage while snacking on some half-time oranges - during that time your melee should be keeping your ranged attackers free of darkspawn so they can keep damaging the dragon without interference. Chug potions like there's no tomorrow - set the appropriate tactics to make this automatic if you haven't already.

Good luck, I hope that helps.

It would have been a lot easier if I hadn't accidentally killed the mages off (I didn't understand how to use the scroll at the end of that quest).

wordsmythe wrote:

It would have been a lot easier if I hadn't accidentally killed the mages off (I didn't understand how to use the scroll at the end of that quest).

Yeah...I thank my roommate for that little tip. Would have missed it entirely otherwise.

Just started playing this. Dianna Troy is a major biatch. The game is hard for me on normal. Took me a many tries to take down the first ogre you fight. Now I'm kind of stuck defending a town from the undead. Kind of funny i was just playing FF 12 and the fighting is kind of the same.

Some minor technical problems with people in black face or the dev team are racist. Also the game will pause maybe once every 30 minutes but it is to bad. The bad thing is the game crashed to desktop twice forcing me to do stuff over. Oh my table just fell down. Now I need a new table. That is just great. Ok back on track. The game will also switch back to desktop but not crash. Not sure what the deal with that is. Playing the PC non steam version because steam is starting to suck.

Playing as a female mage. Mainly playing as I would but with a little extra piousness thrown in. Story is pretty fun. I wish they didn't have those request to download DLC in there. That completely took me out of the game.

Haven't tried any mods but probably give natural bodies a go.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Haven't tried any mods but probably give natural bodies a go.

Uh, just be prepared for a full frontal if you remove character's pants. I would have left that mod on if they left the loincloths on.
Two mods I recommend are Advanced Tactics and DA Redesigned.

I'm with Baron of Hell, here, in that I just picked up the Ultimate Edition of this last week. Loving it so far. Playing as a human Noble Rogue.

I'm afraid to sift through this thread for fear of spoilers, so I'll ask here. How do you allocate attribute points to your party? For the tanks like Alistair or Sten do you just put everything in Strength? And for Mages like Morigan and Wynne put the points into Magic?

There shouldn't be much in the way of spoilers, but it's a hell of a thread to pick through anyway.

I would usually focus on two attribute lines with each character. Mages - Magic and Willpower, Tanks - Consitution, Strength and Willpower in that order, DPS Warrior - Strength, Constitution and Willpower, Rogues - Cunning, Dexterity and Willpower; all with a little seasoning from the other attributes periodically. Also look at skills you want and pick attributes to get to those as quickly as possible.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

There shouldn't be much in the way of spoilers, but it's a hell of a thread to pick through anyway.

I would usually focus on two attribute lines with each character. Mages - Magic and Willpower, Tanks - Consitution, Strength and Willpower in that order, DPS Warrior - Strength, Constitution and Willpower, Rogues - Cunning, Dexterity and Willpower; all with a little seasoning from the other attributes periodically. Also look at skills you want and pick attributes to get to those as quickly as possible.

I feel one of the more glaring flaws in DAO is the stat distribution.

If you allocate your tanks stats in that manner you won't be able to use any shield-based attacks, which are pretty much all you have in terms of push-button damage. So you need to stick 26 points of dexterity in that formula, too.

I think that's covered by the "look at the skills you want" line. Which is something you should definitely do. Maybe even check out the wiki, or ask around here for which skills are highest priority.

For mages, I found the four ice spells most effective, and generally get the 4 healing/mana spells as well. And mind blast is a great personal aoe that can save your mage in a hurry if they get into melee trouble. A lot of the rest is flavor, if you want to do spell combos and such. Fire + grease can be a blast, or I think blizzard + tempest is a hurricane, and there's several more like that.

Stele wrote:

I think that's covered by the "look at the skills you want" line. Which is something you should definitely do. Maybe even check out the wiki, or ask around here for which skills are highest priority.

My point was more that it sucks than MrDevil left it out.

Very glad they straightened it out (mostly) for the sequel.

Yeah, it's not quite as simple as I laid it out, but a bit of reading of tooltips and logic will fill in the gaps.

Playing as a light armour Rogue you will want to build up to at least 20 (?) strength so you can equip the better armour, playing as a dagger wielder Lethality is a key skill, that's the one that substitutes your Cunning for Strength so you won't need more than the level required for armour.

Even a tank needs some dex, as you say Blind_Evil, for some skills, and you may want him to land the occasional blow too.

That and a lot of the Sword & Shield skills require a certain minimum dexterity.

I found momentum to be an amazingly overpower sustained skill for the rogue. I think it at least doubles damage out put and it even works on backstabs.

Cool mods to check out. I'm going to wait until my second play through to do mods. Well maybe I'll do the cosmetic mods now.

If anyone is jumping in late, of the crap ton of mods I run, I recommend these essentials.

Aesthetic - My personal bare essentials
JB3textures - Basically makes DAO look as sharp as if not sometimes even sharper than DA2.
No Helmet Mod - Cause many of them be ugly, and the game doesn't offer the option to not display them. This let's that happen.
Morrigan and Leliana Sacred Ashes Face Mod - Default Morrigan looks like a cheap hooker. This mod makes Morrigan look like the Morrigan from the awesome Sacred Ashes trailer (YouTube, Dragon Age Sacred Ashes). Leliana and Morrigan mods are seperate.
A Malcolm Face Trailer CG Grey Wardens Calling Sacred Ashes - The 'default' human Grey Warden really should have been this. The grey warden from all the CGI trailers. (You will need to download and install the MOD toolkit, but it's VERY simple to install outside of downloading the chunky toolkit file).

Gameplay
Character Respec Mod - As it says, a must have.
Skip the Fade - I promise you you're missing NOTHING by skipping this. Must have for those going for multiple playthroughs.
Improved Atmosphere - Improves not only population and idle NPC behaviors but makes starting gear/armor make much more sense.
Advanced Quickbar - There are many of these, but this is the only one that seems to work without conflicting with anything. It adds 3 additional quickbars you can scroll through.
Dialog Tweaks - Fixes few remaining dialog issues, and improves dialog scripting.

Make CONSOLE commands visible - Must have for cheaters or those wishing to debug should this rare occurence ever happen (the game's more or less completely patched now).
AddItem Script - Adds console command for adding items, like potions, armor, weapons, and etc

Baron Of Hell wrote:

Cool mods to check out. I'm going to wait until my second play through to do mods. Well maybe I'll do the cosmetic mods now.

I highly recommend the cosmetic mods I listed. Something about Morrigan's face reallly bothered me. Is she Asian (no Asian I've ever seen)? Is she deformed? Is she an Alien? You will never know.

No helmet mod is self-explanatory. I have not experienced any issues through any of my playthroughs, but allegedly you need to disable the mod for one specific part of the Awakening.

The textures mod makes the game look much more gorgeous.

ps. The textures mod comes in two divided downloads. For some reason WinRAR seems to have trouble linking the two 7zip files. You will need to get this http://www.7-zip.org/ for you to be able to link and unearth the file.

Also, lock bash, which lets you access chests without a rogue, which gives you a little more flexibility in your party if you're a loot fiend. It's not as good as a rogue, as there's a chance of destroying items in the chest.

Scratched wrote:

Also, lock bash, which lets you access chests without a rogue, which gives you a little more flexibility in your party if you're a loot fiend. It's not as good as a rogue, as there's a chance of destroying items in the chest.

Yea there's also a mod that lets mages unlock chests, by giving them 3-tier unlock spells. 1-2 cover the full spectrum, and the 3rd is the AOE unlock I believe. The radial cursor for it is small, but the actual effective radius for it seems to be huge.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

I went to the Deep Roads expecting a really long, boring experience, yet I loved them. Probably because I was playing the game for the combat, not the scenery, so a lot of combat was a pleasure.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

I went to the Deep Roads expecting a really long, boring experience, yet I loved them. Probably because I was playing the game for the combat, not the scenery, so a lot of combat was a pleasure.

Yeah, this was my experience. I actually hardly remember the deep roads except for the anvil section at the end, so it definitely didnt stand out to me as something particularly bad. I'm surprised at all the hate it's been getting in this thread.

Pikey26 wrote:

Skip the Fade - I promise you you're missing NOTHING by skipping this. Must have for those going for multiple playthroughs.

Calling BS on this. I loved the Fade the first time. I can see skipping it after that, but to skip a whole gameplay sequence due to subjective criticism is ludicrous.

Blind_Evil wrote:
Pikey26 wrote:

Skip the Fade - I promise you you're missing NOTHING by skipping this. Must have for those going for multiple playthroughs.

Calling BS on this. I loved the Fade the first time. I can see skipping it after that, but to skip a whole gameplay sequence due to subjective criticism is ludicrous.

You really didn't feel it was about an hour longer than it needed to be?

Not the first time, no. And the second, third and fourth times all took about an hour because I knew exactly where to get all the stat-ups and how to progress, etc.

I understand some of the negativity toward the Deep Roads, particularly if you're being a completionist, but the Fade was an eye-opening experience for me.

I have no problem with that mod's existence, but I think to recommend it to a first time player is sheer lunacy. Some very important lore-building regarding the nature of magic in DA:O happens there.

Yeah geeze, the Fade is essential for any first timer. It's a pretty crucial part of the game. Depending on which companions you have with them it could add some interesting experiences.

I saw most of those mods Pikey26 mentioned in an article I came across after a Google search for something DA related. The article and mod pages that you were re-directed to in order to download the mod both had disclaimers that first-timers really should play the game modless and then use the mods on the subsequent playthroughs. I'm taking that advice for now...except for the party-camp storage chest. That is needed.

mwdowns wrote:

I saw most of those mods Pikey26 mentioned in an article I came across after a Google search for something DA related. The article and mod pages that you were re-directed to in order to download the mod both had disclaimers that first-timers really should play the game modless and then use the mods on the subsequent playthroughs. I'm taking that advice for now...except for the party-camp storage chest. That is needed. :)

The visual mods I would still highly recommend, with or without having played the game first. Especially the texture mod, all it does is make everything look better without touching the fundamental design whatsoever. Think of it as a high-resolution pack.

Vector wrote:

Yeah geeze, the Fade is essential for any first timer. It's a pretty crucial part of the game. Depending on which companions you have with them it could add some interesting experiences.

Skip the Fade doesn't skip the companion interactions, it just cuts out the terrible puzzle that last the hour even if you're efficient and know exactly what you're doing. All the mod does is it basically puts your straight into the Duncan interaction and then cut forward to the companion interactions.

In hindsight you're probably right. It's probably better for a first timer to be put through the puzzle just to see it... but if I was tbh, he aint missing much.

Pikey26 wrote:
mwdowns wrote:

I saw most of those mods Pikey26 mentioned in an article I came across after a Google search for something DA related. The article and mod pages that you were re-directed to in order to download the mod both had disclaimers that first-timers really should play the game modless and then use the mods on the subsequent playthroughs. I'm taking that advice for now...except for the party-camp storage chest. That is needed. :)

The visual mods I would still highly recommend, with or without having played the game first. Especially the texture mod, all it does is make everything look better without touching the fundamental design whatsoever. Think of it as a high-resolution pack.

Dragon Age Redesigned is critical - sexy Morrigan is much sexier

Pikey26 wrote:
Vector wrote:

Yeah geeze, the Fade is essential for any first timer. It's a pretty crucial part of the game. Depending on which companions you have with them it could add some interesting experiences.

Skip the Fade doesn't skip the companion interactions, it just cuts out the terrible puzzle that last the hour even if you're efficient and know exactly what you're doing. All the mod does is it basically puts your straight into the Duncan interaction and then cut forward to the companion interactions.

In hindsight you're probably right. It's probably better for a first timer to be put through the puzzle just to see it... but if I was tbh, he aint missing much.

Do you still get the buffs?

wordsmythe wrote:
Pikey26 wrote:
Vector wrote:

Yeah geeze, the Fade is essential for any first timer. It's a pretty crucial part of the game. Depending on which companions you have with them it could add some interesting experiences.

Skip the Fade doesn't skip the companion interactions, it just cuts out the terrible puzzle that last the hour even if you're efficient and know exactly what you're doing. All the mod does is it basically puts your straight into the Duncan interaction and then cut forward to the companion interactions.

In hindsight you're probably right. It's probably better for a first timer to be put through the puzzle just to see it... but if I was tbh, he aint missing much.

Do you still get the buffs?

You get all the expected level-ups and attribute points, if that's what you meant. I'm guilty of using this mod on my first playthrough, but a part of that was I'd already watched my roommates play through The Fade twice before I got around to my turn and I just couldn't bare to do it again.