Dragon Age: Origins Catch-All

I forgot how dumb some of the final fights are at the end. I think it's 3 or 4 Hurlock Emissaries, near unlimited cannon fodder, some genlock and hurlock alphas, 2 large drakes, and I think 2-4 shrieks. I can barely take out one of those stupid Emissaries since they have a near constant ability to spam their various paralyzing abilities.

No party should be devoid of Mana Clash for just that reason.

There's Mana Clash it's just the damn jerks are so far apart. You did give me an idea, though.

As much as I enjoy playing a melee class, I almost always switch to my mage(s) for any difficult battles. Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, Winter's Touch, Mind Blast and more all come in handy when having to do crowd control. Having 2 mages with Mana Clash is also very awesome

I found the "dispel" related spells a HUGE boon for avoiding the real nasties (crushing prison and the spell that prevents healing) later in the game and into the expansion. I had to suffer with them for almost all the base game since I specced in a completely different way, but made a beeline for them with other mages.

Speaking of mages, I had the same experience - melee classes were fun, but once I went dual (complimentary) mages the game got significantly easier.

OK, this may be a case of wanting to have my cake, but if I am romantically involved with Morrigan, can I tell her it's over to 'sleep' with Liliana, then go back to Morrigan and patch things up or is it a case of once you've closed that door, it never opens again?

If I have to leave Liliana for a second play through, I will. I tried suggesting a threesome, but Morrigan "does not like to share".

m0nk3yboy wrote:

OK, this may be a case of wanting to have my cake, but if I am romantically involved with Morrigan, can I tell her it's over to 'sleep' with Liliana, then go back to Morrigan and patch things up or is it a case of once you've closed that door, it never opens again?

If I have to leave Liliana for a second play through, I will. I tried suggesting a threesome, but Morrigan "does not like to share".

Spoiler:

IIRC - the only threesome options involve Isabella; though there's a possibility for a foursome with Lelliana, Zevran and Isabella

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Roma...(Origins)

Note that it is possible to end the game having active romances with both Morrigan and Leliana while both are in love with a male warden if you are extremely careful in navigating your plot & dialogue choices.

More at the link on specifics. Something wrong with my links? Possibly because I just started/edited the NCAA topics which had several links in them for Yahoo, and from one topic to the other? Did I hit a link limit for the day?

Stele wrote:

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Roma...(Origins)

Note that it is possible to end the game having active romances with both Morrigan and Leliana while both are in love with a male warden if you are extremely careful in navigating your plot & dialogue choices.

More at the link on specifics.

I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing in the game, and whether it's intended. If not it's kind of emergent gameplay, working around the game rules to two time on your partner, just as you would be cheating on a real person.

Stele wrote:

Something wrong with my links?

I think it's the parenthesis in the URL. This forum is kind of picky about stuff like that.

Any cool mods out there I should be using? I remember there was a mod where the awesome kill animations happened more often but I'd be curious if anyone has found anything good since release.

Edwin wrote:

Any cool mods out there I should be using? I remember there was a mod where the awesome kill animations happened more often but I'd be curious if anyone has found anything good since release.

I had started a playthrough with a mage recently and used a mod which added some skill tree stuff. I still haven't made it far enough in to use it. I just went through the pcgamer list of 18 essential mods and poked around on dragonagenexus.com.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:
Edwin wrote:

Any cool mods out there I should be using? I remember there was a mod where the awesome kill animations happened more often but I'd be curious if anyone has found anything good since release.

I had started a playthrough with a mage recently and used a mod which added some skill tree stuff. I still haven't made it far enough in to use it. I just went through the pcgamer list of 18 essential mods and poked around on dragonagenexus.com.

This is what I did as well. The site's not the easiest to browse, but once you know how to get to where you want to go it's fine. I just filter for most downloaded and see what I like.

Scratched wrote:
Stele wrote:

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Roma...(Origins)

Note that it is possible to end the game having active romances with both Morrigan and Leliana while both are in love with a male warden if you are extremely careful in navigating your plot & dialogue choices.

More at the link on specifics.

I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing in the game, and whether it's intended. If not it's kind of emergent gameplay, working around the game rules to two time on your partner, just as you would be cheating on a real person.

Funny isn't it, the cheating thing... I actually don't want to cheat on Morrigan, but after playing through the DLC for Liliana, I became more intrigued by her.

I noticed from the Wiki that there are two triggers for restarting a relationship with Morrigan.

Spoiler:

The golden mirror and Flemeth's Grimoire

I've just given her F'sG, but heading to Orzammar once I finish up in Dennerim, so that might be an option. Morrigan wants to break up with me at the moment, as she's struggling with love...

There, done. 51.5 hours. I already ran through it on the 360 but I liked my character and his story so much I replayed it on the PC.

Spoiler:

-Alistair sacrifices himself.
-Anora rules alone
-went off to Amaranthine with Leliana
-King Behlen ruled the Dwarves
-Dalish, Redcliffe, Circle Tower, all prospered

The final fight was a lot easier for me. On the 360 it came down to a brutal hour long battle between Alistair and the Archdemon. I had ran out of potions and was one hit away when Alistair landed a critical hit to kill it. After that I had to let him sacrifice himself. On the PC I only lost Wynne and 15 Dalish Archers. I didn't even get a chance to use the other armies. I made much better use of the balistas though. There was one instance where I shot it about 10 times. Once again Alistair got the killing blow and I gave in to his wishes.

On to Awakenings.

That a boy, Vector!

My sleep schedule is alls screwed up so I'll most likely be pulling an all nighter to get myself back on the wagon. Luckily I have Awakenings to keep me company. The goal is to move on to Dragon Age 2 by Friday night or Saturday morning.

*switches difficulty to easy*

oh. hey! this is much better.

I decided to sit down and finish this today since I was pretty close to the end, but it didn't change how I feel about the game, which is not much at all. I don't actively dislike it like I do some games, I just don't think there's much to like, nothing that makes me think "the person who made that is really talented", it was just kind of monotonous.

I know a lot of you like it though, so good for you it's not a game I feel like sh*tting on.

Spoiler:

Also, the story? Ignoring the fact that the pacing got screwed up by the ridiculous number of combat encounters, I don't think there was much to the story. I don't think I could spoil this game for anyone even if I tried, there's nothing there to spoil. Again though, if it grabbed you then good for you! I'm just indifferent to the whole thing.

Yeah, I didn't like the story either. I thought the story was wank. I liked the Origins, some of the characters and the combat. Those I liked enough to make it one of my favourite games of all time.

Yet, now I find I'm trying a replay and finding it a little charmless.

If I was going to sum up my feelings for DA:O as a relationship status on Facebook it would be 'It's complicated.'

Btw, it only took me 34 hour to beat it (according to the save file, bit longer according to Steam). That's a lot shorter than what I had expected, but it felt pretty long anyway hehe.

I am playing the DLC part of Golems of Amgarrak and I am on the last boss but trying to beat him on hard, my normal mage which has mostly elemental spells does pretty good but I can never seem to beat him, i've also respeced him for a healing mage with hexes as per 360 achievement but just can't seem to get kill the harvester, any suggestions? how did you guys do it?

I'm sure I wasn't the only one who thought this the first time. But I couldn't help it! I was really hoping this would happen.
IMAGE(http://i53.tinypic.com/35ktnko.jpg)

Lothar wrote:

I am playing the DLC part of Golems of Amgarrak and I am on the last boss but trying to beat him on hard, my normal mage which has mostly elemental spells does pretty good but I can never seem to beat him, i've also respeced him for a healing mage with hexes as per 360 achievement but just can't seem to get kill the harvester, any suggestions? how did you guys do it?

I honestly just got tremendously lucky. During the second during the second phase when he scuttles around, I eventually got far enough away from him and any skeletons that my other 3 dead party members got up as if we were out of combat. Not having your Awakening party in that made it rough.

The usual boss tactics should help. Restart the DLC if you need to, stock up on potions/gear in Awakening. Socket them with runes, too, and bring respec books for yourself and the two dwarves just in case. Set their self preservation to Self Health < 25% = potion. Actually you might want to do light potion at 75% and a bigger one at 25%, sometimes I got burned on the cooldowns (I can't remember if they share a cooldown, but it's sound either way). That golem would be pretty impressive over the course of a whole game, but only having Group Heal doesn't work terribly well for that fight.

The switch to knock down the skeletons is important, especially the orange/yellow elite skeletons that will make life tough on your non-tank, who will really have his hands full with the Harvester.

52 hours and 48 minutes later and the archdemon has been slain for my first time.

It's not like I need to say anything here but what a fantastic adventure. There were times when it felt like it would never end (*cough*the fade and *cough* the deep roads) but the last few hours building up to the crescendo of cutting that dragon's head off were fantastic!

now i am prepared to start the sequel.

EDIT: oh yeah, i still have awakening to do. ha.

Awakening is relatively short; maybe 12 hours or so.

My story: Loved, loved DA1 back in 08 for a variety of reasons. I picked up DA2, but I was debating whether to go through Awakening before DA2. Any thoughts? I was a bit confused by how Awakenings fits in with the original ending.

If you own Awakening it's worth playing. It's a little buggy and easy, but the story is better than the main game, they manage to make the Darkspawn interesting and it's short so it won't hold you back for long.

Iridium884 wrote:

My story: Loved, loved DA1 back in 08 for a variety of reasons. I picked up DA2, but I was debating whether to go through Awakening before DA2. Any thoughts? I was a bit confused by how Awakenings fits in with the original ending.

Awakening doesn't really have a strong story, although there is a remnant darkspawn threat to tie it all together.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

but the story is better than the main game

Scratched wrote:

Awakening doesn't really have a strong story

Gotta love it.

For my money, the plot is better in Awakening, but the writing and characters are better in DA:O.

Awakening did some very interesting things in terms of gameplay and systems additions. There are also bits in DA2 that you wouldn't fully appreciate without having gone through Awakening. Like MrDeVil said, if you own it, it's worth finishing.