Tigranes

I have strong doubts whether Diablo 3's story will be anything fantastic or with a strong impact on the world. Rather I think they will strengthen what they did with Diablo 2: the setting, story and characters are nothing mindshattering, complicated or original but they will be delivered with a level of professionalism, visuals and conviction that they will be awesome. Whereas with TESV, if it's anything like TESIV, it will be unoriginal, break the lore, not make any sense, not have positive gameplay consequences and be delivered in the spirit of a giant teenage pimple.

In general I would agree Bio's marketing has been farcical and setting a poor precedent for the industry (and continuing the poor precedent of Oblivion). However, on the particular issue of 'deception'... well, I think it's a relatively small thing to get worked up about. Maybe because I never expected DA to actually be 'low-magic'. I was more inclined to laugh openly at their, as you say, scene-by-scene plagiarism of LOTR in Ostagar. After the first time though, I can ESC-skip it now. re: Endgame, as Volo says it is a darkspawn horde and there SHOULD be a lot of fighting. I think two things really were at issue here: (a) the battle set-piece design was nonexistent, and (b) the lack of variety in the darkspawn really hurts here. They had the potential to really really drive home the whole 'Blight' business here by showing what happens to a city you know the ins and outs of, really show how different the focused archdemon-lead darkspawn is from the deep roads darkspawn, and give the player some challenge. What about 'strike forces' of darkspawn that are a tight team of higher-level hurlocks, genlocks, genlock assassins, emissaries, and an ogre, at least, that have some sort of archdemon-given special ability (something hideous but effective, like a genlock walking bomb)? What about the options to sneak into some vantage point above a large group of darkspawn then use the crumbling environment to turn them into smoosh? And did 95% of the Denerim populace die in the first 5 minutes of the wave? Nobody to rescue, no resistance to go help. The landsmeet parts did a great job showing just how corrupt and nepotistic the Arls are even when they're the 'good guys' (seemingly) against Loghain; it would have been delightful to come across an arl using his own soldiers as meatshields and baits as he tries to get away. With such a long development time I can't help but think some parts of the game could have done what Dragon Age does well very well. But it seems like the darkspawn themselves were very ill-thought out in the lore and the endgame had no 'design' to speak of.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I am genuinely surprised that you are having trouble with that one. The other examples I can understand, but that has virtually nothing with which it could trouble you. Either you're horribly under-levelled or... I don't know. Maybe by chance your party is designed to be eviscerated by it. If your mage has anything out of Paralyse, Cone of Cold, Force Field or Misdirection Hex, use them.

What few commands we know do help test what is broken, though. I'll never know why devs don't just release the debug commands - I guess for the benefit of those who like to 'discover' them. And yeah, the second link I had looked at to get Shale to work to begin with. Thanks for the one on one tech support alan, but I think I'm probably better off restarting the game - I just hope Bio are working hard and gonna get on top of both DLC issues and toolset issues. I will be scathing if Bio pull a Creative Assembly on that one. edit: actually, to do a creative assembly the same bugs will have to come up on DA2, then DA3 which uses a completely different engine will have the same bugs...

Blanket dismissal of wikipedia is pretty much a huge chunk of nonsense. You know, I wonder if there is any mechanism now for, say, Thanksgiving to be described and acted on in such a way that it contributes towards a positive understanding and action regarding the original wrongs - I very much doubt it. I also think that by now the life of thanksgiving as a social thing has almost completely shifted beyond the original kernel as to make it 'harmless'. Sometimes you really need to stop and think hang on, is this seemingly innocent stuff actually doing bad things to us now, but I have yet to see anytihng of the sort for thanksgiving. But then, I've only attended one American thanksgiving where it's more prevalent, and the Korean / East Asian equivalent comes from very different roots, so who knows?

I just assumed 'low magic' was shoved under the carpet, as for about the last year they stopped talking about it and went on about how their Lord of the Rings + Blood = Success algorithm should be called 'dark fantasy'. I mean, it's a bloody fun game I can't stop playing but who's kidding themselves? At least they didn't blatantly lie about the actual gameplay, or I'd have whined uncontrollably while sipping Nerd Cola.

I'll probably end up playing both, but D3 on release day, for full price - TESV, not so much.

Okay, I give up. Shale items are there; you can see Honnleath; in fact, if I cheat to get out of the Fade and go to Honnleath, the cutscene where Shale stomps the bird plays, as if he was in my party. but he's not back at camp, not selectable, not at his dream, etc. The only solution I can see is install the toolset and mod him back in the party, but damn, installing the toolset will probably break the game completely. Guess I need to start again. Wouldn't it be nice if Bio released all the debug commands so we could at least try and fix everything? Or fix the toolset, but I'm sure they're working on that. I think it'll be faster for me to start again... Boxed DVD version, regular, which gave Shale for free. The most likely explanation was that the downloaded DLC was faulty, which is why I redownloaded; maybe clash with mods, so I got rid of all mods and overrides; now I'm stumped. do you know if Dragon Age keeps a cache somewhere? If I can clear that I can try and re-load the Shale Nightmare area...

Retaining Lyrium addiction to make mages powerful but volatile walking bombs would have been nice. You had the whole magic is feared, darkspawn and somesuch going on, why not go the whole nine yards? i.e. Lyrium exposure deteriorates the physical conditions and mutates them to the extent that the body of a mage is unable to support itself in anything other than specially prepared conditions within the Circle, and you are dependent on magic weaved into special accoutrement (think Irenicus, whose strap-fetish attire and mask were merely the physical elements of a general magical upkeep to keep his soulless body together) - and you can change and alter the type of such 'continuous upkeep' magic used, to make yourself even more volatile, play it safe, etc. But no, that would take originality. Pity. The way it is now, though, I don't think mages are overpowered - just tone down arcane warrior, a few select spells like Cone of Cold.

Burn her!

Forced redownload of Shale DLC to make things work... *sigh* I did say this is what happens with modularity.

True, it seems I have, at that. Bioware thought it best to hide their DA mechanics like some dirty underwear with nasty bacteria on them, but my impression from my rogue playthrough was that armour penetration did make a difference in bosses and other heavily armoured enemies - in those cases the warriors would basically soak up damage but not do a whole lot, while the rogue backstabbing would be significantly more effective. Of course, I haven't used a high str rogue to see if the increase in pure attack/dmg is better. Given that Lethality switches half the benefits of STR to CUN, I don't see a great reason to take str higher than 20, though. edit: Doesn't lethality work for bows? What?

Absolutely. I was pleased at how hard DA was at the start, but now I'll be transitioning into mod-land, using respec'd characters that minmax out to combat the evil that is fan-modded difficulty. ...That is, as soon as I get this idiotic thing working. Reinstalling now... maybe I'll just restart the whole thing with the Nightmare Plus mod fully on, and really screw myself. MC, I'm wondering just how far you can go trying to do both melee and ranged - are you going to get the melee-oriented / backstab-oriented talents as well? They are a hefty investment and I wonder how viable that would be. If it was me I'd just go Stealth Archer route, but I guess you are trying the jack of all trades thing. Difficulty? edit: high cunning = better stealth, i.e. need 26 to beat bosses, better stealing, open locks, better persuade i think, sometimes cunning dialogue, some combat benefits. I didn't see it as number one priority for my rogue, though.

Thar be some nice mods there. In addition to Respec mods and Inventory Space 125, I'm going to try: -> Throw bombs at longer range, didn't make sense you could only throw them 3 feet. http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=124 -> Get rid of the circles under the characters, yay! http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=95 edit: also going to give the Hide Helmet mod a try (god they're hideous), and a very selective installation of the Nightmare Plus mod to try and up the difficulty. edit2: wooops, Shale has disappeared in the Circle ( ) It seems that even when you don't install the toolset yourself, using other people's mods can potentially screw up the campaign scripts.. or maybe this is just yet another DLC error (though Shale loads fine in the other game). grah grah. I'll have to reinstall the game tomorrow, or something. Or just wait until Bio fixes the toolset, eh?

Ah, you buy stuff here, you have to play through Steam, right? Damn. Monkeeyyy Islaaaand...

I didn't know about any of them in my first playthrough and struggled with 70 until I could purchase a 7-sovereign backpack. The second playthrough, I only got one of the cheap backpacks. I don't see a problem with figuring things out in one playthrough then applying it in the next. But I gather that your main point is that most of us will begin our playing experience with a 'severe' (or not, for Volo and others) inventory limit, and that limit doesn't serve any positive purpose in the game. To be honest I'm not sure how I feel about it, which might explain, as you say, somewhat hypocritical position I am in of modding the inventory this time round. I really saw it the same way as infinity engine inventory spaces - not that big a deal, never makes you miss out on a lot of stuff, but not great reason to be there, either. I expect I'll play with 120 spaces modded in from now on, just so I can freely make use of various traps and poisons and have fun.

Huh, nightmare is too easy. Maybe my party is just a well-oiled killing machine, or I've gotten used to working the game, but on nightmare I've gone through Origins, Lothering, Shale, Redcliffe, and have zero party wipes, and a handful of character drops. I took on the Redcliffe night battle at level 8 and breezed through it saving most of the militia, the castle revenant copped it in 20 seconds and only the ambush got me worried, because I switched off and their mage paralysed my mage and killed half the party. If I didn't know any better I'd say nightmare is bugged and is easier than Hard, but if that was really the case I'm sure someone would have said, already. Kind of disappointed, maybe I'll scout around for a slight difficulty mod that just raises the bar a bit. At level 9,party is: mage PC (Blizzard line, Crushing Prison line, Mass Paralysis line, Healing spell); basically the crowd control / heal guy. Shale (Stoneheart line, going on Rock Mastery); the big tank to attract enemies and sit still, sometimes with force field. Sten (2H: Critical Strike line, going on Warrior tree and mighty blow); secondary man to shatter frozen folks, do some damage, etc. Leliana (Critical shot, general rogue abilities, aiming for Scattershot); surprisingly the best damage-dealer. With a crossbow and Rapid shot, poisons and grenades she's already doing 30-40 damage per hit and basically killing everything off while Shale takes the hit. Traps, too. I think it's working out very well, wonder if I can make Sten any more effective or find him a good role. At the mage tower now, we'll see how it goes here.

I didn't have a problem with the inventory, especialy since you can buy the cheap packs and get 90 after Ostagar. I forgot to get those in the current game so just used a mod for 120 spaces, but its my third playthrough and I just want to make use of the traps and poisons and other crafting items. Contrary to alanschu, I really like crafting in DA, more so than the convoluted systems in, say, the NWN2 series (there's a reason they kept changing it). You have an integrated menu where you can immediately see what you need to make what; making stuff is instantaneous without stupid animations (e.g. Risen); ingredients mostly make sense so you don't need to keep looking to see what makes what; it's not particularly overpowered, though maybe ingredients could be costlier.

I like the Deep Roads.

Now that I've actually completed a playthrough as a rogue, I can definitely say they are not gimped. The impression seems to have come from the fact that before the dexterity hotfix, Leliana was definitely not as useful in combat as other characters, and you do need more nous to get the best out of the rogue compared to, say, the warrior. Once the hotfix is integrated into the real patch I think the 'gimp rogue' doesn't stand up. I've decided to go Mage PC, Shale, Leliana and Random Warrior - still wondering whether Sten 2H will actually be able to stay alive. Nightmare isn't actually that bad now I know the ins and outs of the game, I've done Origins, Lothering, Shale and now am at Redcliffe - no party wipes, only two or three player deaths. This time I'm going to try hitting Denerim very early (just after Redcliffe village defence) to get those 'around-the-world' quests and get the money flowing early. I'm also looking at using traps extensively.

For me, Warriors need full combat training, tactics, some poison; one needs full herbalism, one needs full poison, main PC needs full coercion. Stealing is not a priority.

IMO the mage tower is worth going for early, just to get the attribute bonuses to the player character fast... Question: Screwed me over last time with the elfroot.

Good tip Grommy, now I'm going to search high and low for that crossbow. Methinks pickpocketing is worth it in the Origins and Lothering, but not after that. I think putting 1 on the main character is all that's needed.

Alright, I just finished the Origins on Nightmare (mage) and am about to get Leliana at Lothering. Fun times - I haven't had a single party wipe, only lost party members to the big bad Ogre in the tower, mainly because I forgot to Taunt before force-fielding Alistair and then he decided to do some meditation while the ogre went after everybody else. We'll see if it gets more challenging now, it should... but I"m also getting notably better at working the system. Should be a fun fun playthrough. Monty, I plan on using Leliana exactly like you say - super-archer with poisons, grenades, the lot, and stealing/lockpicking at every opportunity. I experimented with a few archery talents on those temporary party members in the Origins, and the middle tree (Slaying Shot, etc) definitely seems useful. The what the how now, though? The point isn't viability or whether this restricts anyone 'too much'. The point is that it's a restriction that is completely unnecessary. If something has NO good points and only mildly bad points, and is irritating to boot, why have it at all? I pickpocketed over 100 people last playthrough with Rogue, and mainly you get junk - frostrock, frozen lightning, fire crystal, lifestone, lesser / normal poultices and potions, some silver, some gems. It's really good in the Origins though, even with my mage I started with 1 talent in Steal and I had 5+ sovereigns at Ostagar, even without lockpicking. I also failed about 50 times, and Duncan told me off for being such a brazen thief. I don't think you ever get anything 'awesome' except for Volly's example, but you never get anyone swinging their axe at you either, so it's a watered down version of BG pickpocketing.

Yes, they are stupid. Get a respec mod, first one I got.