Kriber22

A lot of these damage-over-time abilities will get updated descriptions in 1.06, according to the patch notes.

Hmmm... I had that quest and still got stuck in infinite combat. And not just against the Stelgaer, but the ogres in the cave as well.

I experienced this just today, and found a way to get past it. I just ALT-Tab'ed and then the scene kept playing. When it paused again, I ALT-Tab'ed again. Three times and it went back to normal.

If you complete The Bronze Beneath the Lake, isn't Winds of Steel supposed to automatically fail if you have it in your journal? And if you don't have it, won't the Crucible Knights refuse to give it to you if you have completed TBBtL for the Dozens?

Crashing on area transitions sounds like the 32-bit RAM issue. You can try over and over again - eventually it will work - but I suggest trying the advice in this link: http://forums.obsidian.net/blog/7/entry-182-windows-32-bit-crashing-occasionally-or-on-specific-area-transitions/ I did this over a week ago, and it fixed the issue 100% with no negative effects whatsoever. It's like playing a brand new version of the game.

Why fix it? All you need to do is not exploit it.

Why in the world would you not update? The patch doesn't affect your save game availability, you can keep going just like normal. And there's a lot of quality of life changes in 1.05.

I typically run with my main character and one other that I make myself, typically one of the classes that isn't represented by the pre-gen NPCs (barbarian, rogue or monk). The remaining four slots are pre-gens. I swap them out every now and then when it becomes time to advance one of their personal quests.

I just noticed that when you access someone's Grimoire the small round portrait in the upper left corner is blank. You can still switch between characters with the arrows and learn spells and so on, but there's no image there.

As far as I'm concerned, anything approaching a perfect party would include Eder and Pallegina. I don't care if they're not super-optimized, I really like those two characters. The one that I beat the game with in my first playthough consisted of my Fire Godlike Wizard, Eder, Pallegina, Durance and Grieving Mother. The last slot I mostly used for swapping in whichever NPC I felt like bringing, but in the later stages of the game I've used a custom-made rogue in that slot.

Can anyone tell me if damaging spells cause interrupts? For example, a Wizard with high Perception firing off a fireball, would that interrupt targets the same way a ranged or melee attack would?

You don't get to change their stats, race, background etc. All you get to do is start them at level 1 and then pick their abilities and talents as they level up to their current XP.

This place is beginning to look more and more like the BioWare forums...

Are you sure you haven't set the game to automatically switch to fast mode in combat? I know there's an option to switch to slow by default, but I'm not sure if you can set it to do the opposite as well. Might be worth checking.

I can't help but notice that while everyone here has plenty to say on what's good for a character in combat, everyone is neglecting one fairly important point: How your attributes play into conversation options. The by far most commonly used attribute for conversations is Resolve, with Perception a close second. This is always checked on your main character, not your companions, so if you want to experience lots of different dialogue options you should definitely invest in these two attributes.

Ah, OK. I'd seen that entry in the patch notes, but didn't realize it was referring to this.

This is all very useful, thank you all. Just for the record, I'll be playing on either Normal or Hard, with no Iron Man mode or anything. And I'm not terribly fond of min-maxing my characters, so I won't be dropping any stats very low (or necessarily maxing any all the way, either).

I'm thinking about trying a Barbarian for my next run, since there weren't any Barbarian companion NPCs and it's fun to try something new. But I'm not entirely sure on how to build him/her, so I was hoping someone with some experience could give some input. First, I'm not sure if I should go with two-handed weapons or dual-wielding. From reading about the abilities the two-handed option seems best at first glance, with the "splash" damage and all, but the increased attack rate from dual-wielding would also generate some extra damage. Has anyone experimented with this? Second, how important is the INT attribute? There didn't seem to be any AoE markers in-game when I tried building a hireling to test, so it was hard to tell just how much the radius was around each target. And what about the Frenzy ability? +4 STR and CON seems OK, I guess, but I was more impressed with the increased attack rate. Is it worth taking? The concealed damage thing seemed a bit worrying to me. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I did the Champion of Berath yesterday, and discovered a bug that influenced my reputation with Gilded Vale. After (re)killing Raedric I left the roof and went down to the priests' level in the keep (I forget what it's called). Then I went down the stairs to the small chamber adjacent to the throne room. When I entered the throne room I was notified that I had suffered a major reputation loss with Gilded Vale, dropping it from Champion to Defender(?). I reloaded and went down from the priest level to the courtyard, skipping the main level of the keep. No reputation change occurred. Could it possibly be related to the undead Raedric killing Kolsc and me suffering reputation loss for that when I entered the level where Kolsc was when he died? As if I'd killed him during/after Lord of a Barren Land?

In other words, you want the combat from Dragon Age 2 in PoE? That's... that's just... Nope, I don't have the words.

My advice is to exit the game, restart your computer, load the game and try exiting the dungeon. This is a very common problem (most often found on 32-bit operating systems) but it usually works itself out after you try a few times. Always remember to save the game before leaving a map and you won't lose any progress at least.

Oh yes, I loved those sequences. The first time I saw one I was asking myself, "how come more games don't do this instead of those idiotic Quick-Time Events?".

I think it does damage enemies, the damage simply doesn't show up in the combat log. I have seen several times that the health bar over enemies' heads go down when they're struck by Iconic Projection.

Yes, I've been getting this one as well.

I've had this happen in exactly three locations, all within the last two days. I think it might be related to there being other enemies nearby, so the game doesn't consider combat to be officially over until you've killed them too. The first was with the dead giant stelgaer in Northweald during the quest Hunter, Brother. After fighting the stelgaer near the body, I was unable to exit combat mode until I had also killed the pack of stelgaer that were preventing the mercenaries from running away to the north. The second time was also in Northweald, this time in the cave in the northern part of the map. After fighting the first group of Lurkers etc. I remained in combat mode until I had travelled further north and dispatched the second group in the cave. And the third time, just earlier today, was when fighting the chieftan during the Sacrificial Bloodlines quest. After killing him and the other tribespeople I didn't exit combat mode. It turned out that there was a single tribeswoman in another room (off to the left) that I hadn't killed yet and who was hostile. As soon as I'd dispatched her, combat ended.