Dragon Age: Origins Catch-All

LarryC wrote:

Shale's fantastic as a damage dealer - her Slam and Quake power easily trumps Fireball. As a tank? Not so good, even on Stoneheart.

Shale is clearly designed to go either way. It's a matter of stat allocation, what crystals you use and the way you set up the tactics. At the end of the game, Shale clearly had the most hitpoints out of any of my characters, even if its armor rating pales in comparison to what I kitted Alistair with. Best tank out of all the characters? Probably not, but that's because shields are amazing.

LarryC wrote:

Shale's fantastic as a damage dealer - her Slam and Quake power easily trumps Fireball. As a tank? Not so good, even on Stoneheart.

Shale is a great tank, and more flexible than a dedicated tank, because you can Slam, Quake and then switch back to Stoneheart. Having damage that is not physical means that Shale dishes out more damage at the same time as tanking. Armor may not be as good as the best massive armors in the game (Wade's Dragonbone Plate is 34, the highest I got Shale with Brilliant crystals was 28), but I ended my last game with Shale's health 100 higher than Alistair's. Shale's physical resistance was also better, though physical resistance isn't that big a deal for a tank with Shield Wall on + Shield Expertise.

Shale is very powerful, probably overpowered, for whatever role you want filled. Like most of the DLC content, Shale makes the game a lot easier.

Sure, Shale makes the game easier - but NOT as a tank. She's not that good at that role. She's best as a Striker - deal lots of damage everywhere, or deal lots of damage at one location - she's absolutely fantastic for that. For absorbing damage, even Sten was better, given the right kit. Of course, Alistair's really good for that, since that's what he's made to do.

You can forgo a second nuke-mage if you have Shale because Shale does a LOT of damage, either spread out or concentrated. She kills Mages right quick if she can get to them fast. What you can't do is spec her with defense stuff, put her on Stoneheart, and expect her to replace Alistair kitted with the best armor and equipment money can buy. She simply cannot do that.

I'll be glad to be proven wrong, and I can load the Respec Mod for testing if anyone can come up with a Tank Shale build that does well for tanking purposes.

The best way I've found to "tank" with Shale was to send her ahead for quake, then use Force Field to cheese out her horrible Armor rating.

Why are we calling Shale a "she"?

Vrikk wrote:

Why are we calling Shale a "she"?

Because

Spoiler:

she was a female dwarf before she became a golem. If you bring her with you at the end of the Deep Roads Carridin will have a conversation with Shale, filling in her backstory.

Vrikk wrote:

Why are we calling Shale a "she"?

Spoiler:

Because she is.

Is there a point where your romance choice enters your tent? I've got Leliana at max and given her everything. I think the only thing I haven't done is her personal quest. I don't even have it.

It's a shame that she never gets into any romance lines - Shale, I mean.

I think Leliana is the hardest one to start...it's really easy to miss, and there aren't a lot of second chances (if any). I think it may actually be possible to get her approval too high.

Shale's best role, certainly for boss fights, is the buff line of talents. I took her along to whack

Spoiler:

Flemeth

and a fight that had previously been a challenge became a cakewalk. Stone Aura at the highest level is crazy crazy powerful.

Well, all I know is, on my 2nd playthrough, as a Rogue (mostly just a grenade lobbing cutpurse :D), I used Shale as a tank, Dog as DPS, Morrigan for healing, crowd control, buffs & debuffs, and I had no trouble with anything on Hard difficulty (PC version, no mods).

I'm currently playing through on Nightmare with a Dwarf Warrior tank, and I haven't bothered to get Shale, because I had such an easy time of it on Hard.

PC version Patch coming Monday (probably)...

Fernando Melo wrote:

I'm very happy to say that patch 1.02 is all but wrapped up! We hope to get that out to you early next week, possibly Monday, barring any last minute hick-ups.

As always, we'll make that available here on social (as well as other sites) and include the full fix notes. 1.02 addresses a lot of issues including Balancing and general Gameplay (such as the Daggers Dex issue), Plot related issues (such as folks losing their DLC items after Dwarf Noble), as well as bringing to PC some of the fixes found & made during console development after PC was locked.

As mentioned before, as part of the process there were also some issues that were pulled from 1.02 for a variety of reasons and moved to 1.03 so as not to hold up this patch. That work is now underway as well - please keep letting us know on the tech forum of anything else you are encountering.

For consoles, work is underway for the first title update (patch) which we hope amongst other things, to address the 360 achievements bug for those early DLC players on that platform.

Have a great weekend folks.

Yeah! been waiting for this. Hopefully they fix rogues!

OK, this has got to be somewhere in this epic thread. But I need to rant.

Why in the hell is EA trying to prevent me from buying expansion content with this BS Spacebucks scheme? Is money not good enough? This is not even a god damned GFW Live title, so what the hell EA? I would even prefer a wallet system like PSN. 5 dollar minimum? Peachy, I know banking is costly. But Jesus Christ, enough with the Itchy and Scratchy dollars.

Yeah, when I clicked on the link to see what the interface was for buying content, my heart sank. If I can buy it directly from the EA store somehow and have it show up the next time I log in, or if two pieces of content always fall on a round number, I'll be happy. But having 300 points left over on Xbox Live or WiiWare is something I can barely tolerate as it is. When we're talking something where there is extremely limited amount of things that I can actually spend those points on, I'm going to pass on most of the DLC if that's the case.

kuddles wrote:

Yeah, when I clicked on the link to see what the interface was for buying content, my heart sank. If I can buy it directly from the EA store somehow and have it show up the next time I log in, or if two pieces of content always fall on a round number, I'll be happy. But having 300 points left over on Xbox Live or WiiWare is something I can barely tolerate as it is. When we're talking something where there is extremely limited amount of things that I can actually spend those points on, I'm going to pass on most of the DLC if that's the case.

It seemed to me that the points you could buy were suspiciously in the same denomination as the available DLC, so I purchased a "pack" of points that matched the price of the Warden's Keep perfectly. I have my DLC and no residual points. This was right after launch, I have not been back to the store since, so things may be different.

Isn't it currently the case that you can buy the exact amount of points required for the DLC and have none leftover? How about we wait to condemn them until they do something stupid.

I mean, yeah, points are stupid, but if you don't have to pay extra, what's the difference?

Hey, if it turns out to be one of those cool ways to do points, like GamersGate does, where you can always buy the exact right amount of points to buy a thing but buying points in bulk lends to some sort of discount, I'm all for it. I'm just not liking the fact that it's there because usually that doesn't end up being the case in the long term.

Click the link, you buy in blocks.

And the really odd thing is that on the add on front page, they list prices in dollars.

I hadn't visited this thread since November the 14th.* When I clicked on it I had 1406 new posts. I just read them all. What an epic thread.

* - Note: Don't ignore a catch-all thread for a major release like this with the premise of "Oh I'll get back to that soon".

BadKen:

I'd be interested in how you specced her. I never could get her up to the point where I found her tanking acceptably good - she always dies so fast, even on Stoneheart.

I've just picked up Shale after the Mages Circle and I'm doing the Brecilian Forest. My current party is Me (rogue), Shale, Morrigan, Wynne. I keep Shale on Stoneheart and backstab with my rogue. Shale does take damage, but Wynne keeps her alive and whatever enemy is wailing away at her melts fast thanks to my rogue.

I'm speccing Morrigan up to do some healing, then I will replace Wynne in a few levels.

One party that I had a lot of fun with was Me, Leliana, Morrigan and Wynne. I position the rogues on opposite sides of an enemy, then one of them is always backstabbing. The enemy often keeps switching target between the rogues too, so it's awesome to watch

Me: *backstab*
Enemy: Oh, danger behind me *turns around*
Leliana: Ha! *backstab*
Enemy: Oh, danger behind me *turns around*
Me: Ha! *backstab*
Enemy: *dies*

*edit*
Oh, and does the dagger dex fix in the new patch mean that it will be worth going dual daggers rather than sword/dagger?

Yon Rabbit wrote:

I think Leliana is the hardest one to start...it's really easy to miss, and there aren't a lot of second chances (if any). I think it may actually be possible to get her approval too high.

I had this problem:

Spoiler:

Basically if you haven't done her sidequest yet and you've run out of dialog options, you need to break up with her (but don't boot her out of the party, obviously). She'll get over it. Then chat her up until you're talking about bards and someone named Marjorlie... or whatever. This should open the sidequest eventually. After sidequest stuff's wrapped up, you need to ask whether Leliana was hittin' that, and say something about how you're jealous. Then it's a short road to boinkville.

Also, I'm pretty sure I heard a dwarf town crier say "Epic Fail" last night.

Amazing.

Clemenstation wrote:

Also, I'm pretty sure I heard a dwarf town crier say "Epic Fail" last night.

Amazing.

I definitely heard it:

Spoiler:

It's the capper to his shouting about Bhelen's attempted attack on the Senate.

I'm about 20 hours in and suddenly feel like I could play another 50 non-stop, if such a thing were possible. Both KOTORs did the same thing to me... fits and starts, and then complete obsession.

Thanks for all the advice on the two formats.

I think I'll play both. 360 over the holidays and the PC version when the price drops on Steam.

Man, what did they make this game with to be so addicting? I'm partway into my 2nd playthrough and the story is more interesting the 2nd time around because you a) get to do different stuff, b) see more foreshadowing and c) realize how the pieces fit even more so.

Spoiler:

The first play-through, it was interesting at times learning about the politics as an elf from the alienage. This time, as a human noble, I actually got betrayed by Howe (as a dwarf noble, you actually find out the truth about how Bhelen got rid of his 2 brothers), and it just amazes me how well put together the whole thing is.

Game of the year for me? Definitely, as far as RPG's go. Maybe as all games go.

I've been switching up between a couple of different characters and I just ran across something I found to be extremely irritating regarding unlocking the blood mage specilization.

Spoiler:

Because my main in that run was a rogue I had to send Morrigan in to the Fade. She, apparently, didn't have the option of dealing with the demon to be taught blood magic. She would only attack it. I guess the only way I get that option is if I play a mage myself and go into the Fade. So now I'm starting another run with a mage. Mainly to unlock blood mage but also to try out the shapeshifter mod.

trueheart78 wrote:

Man, what did they make this game with to be so addicting? I'm partway into my 2nd playthrough and the story is more interesting the 2nd time around because you a) get to do different stuff, b) see more foreshadowing and c) realize how the pieces fit even more so.

Spoiler:

The first play-through, it was interesting at times learning about the politics as an elf from the alienage. This time, as a human noble, I actually got betrayed by Howe (as a dwarf noble, you actually find out the truth about how Bhelen got rid of his 2 brothers), and it just amazes me how well put together the whole thing is.

Game of the year for me? Definitely, as far as RPG's go. Maybe as all games go.

I agree. My second play-through is better because I can skip past all the set-piece story exposition and stay with the strengths of the game: the character interactions. Plus, now that I don't have to worry about the plot so much, I can really do some interesting things and go off my normal beaten track.

I think this is one of those all-time great RPGs, alongside the Baldur's Gate series and Morrowind.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Orzammar are the slogs to me,

Orzammar!!

NOT the first place you want to go to, like me. Their whole "gateway" challenge thing failed here, as I got past them on my second try (AOEs are OP). According to the "secret" dev manual, Orzammar is the highest level area (10) where most are 6. This could explain why my time through there was sooo harsh.