Tigranes

Get over it, people. *snip snip*

Yeah, this playthrough with respec I've given Morrigan Spirit Healer too, and both she and Wynne are sticking with Heal, Group Heal and Revive. Grommy is right on all points on this one, lack of transparency regarding spells and abilities just doesn't make any sense, and I honestly thought that 'completion bar' above each type of ability/magic was showing some kind of general proficiency...

Ostagar backpacks are about 1/15 the price.

I think it's cute how TG comes back and asks about this every month.

Saw about 10 minutes of the first one by chance, and from all I can gather it's irredeemably crap. However, the older I get, the more it seems that very few crap things in the world are crap to everyone, so what do I know?

Gragh, I still can't get into Orzammar. The dialogue option simply isn't there. Also, for dwarf nobles, If it's not a bug it's a disappointment. edit: just used a debug script to teleport to orzammar, let's see how much it breaks. Again, is it just my game being fubared, or is it the case that half the dwarves don't remember who you are and refer you as a 'stranger' and 'outsider'? So much for origins consequences.

You'd have to put some on STR anyway for item requirements. otherwise, yes, you could - I'm not really sure why I didn't. I wonder how it woudl compare. DId you go down that path?

Usually yeah, but I don't have an option to say this. It's going to be a very annoying bug, I'll try again later and hopefully it's ok.

Huh. As a dwarf the guard won't let me back in Orzammar... what am I missing here? The gate guard just says surface dwarfs are goners.

I agree, I liked how I just thought the one particular outcome - the 'other' option in the Brescilian Forest - was not as well accounted for. i.e. the rest of the game sets a standard for reactivity, but this outcome seemed a bit sloppy (you're just dropped in a big fight with the and nobody comments on it, except Morrigan). I do stress that I'm very happy with how it usually works out. It happened in NWNs and KOTORs too, one thing that happened with the whole 3D cinematic turn and is very silly.

Alistair and Wynne are pretty clearly 'good'. Their behaviour and opinions match that of the 'good' party members we've seen in Bio, Obsid and BIS RPGs over the last decade. The likes of Leliana and Sten are more ambiguous, and Alistair is hardly Carth, but it's a fair call to make I think. I'm sure some do, and it's no skin off their back. You notice I was just speaking for myself.

Since I am reasonably assured that they made the gameplay less mindnumbingly repetitive and hand-held like a baby whose brain got stolen by a pack of angry monkeys, I only have one key question: Do the developers still have delusions of writing grandeur and force you to listen to people you assassinated for 10 minutes, and go through the idiot future segments? The game better be very fun to make me suffer such a slow death for my brain cells.

Full VO rarely adds anything for me because video games rarely give me moments good enough to savour. If they were all PS:T, or at least had quirk like Brutal Legend, it would be fine, but i mean, does Dragon Age's dialogue and story ever make you emotional? Stop and think? Get caught in a dilemma? There are some moments where the decisions presented to me makes me stop a little, but that's it. It's all written well enough to be a part of the game, but I'd be terribly bored if I had to sit and listen to it all. I'm trying some different decions in my second playthrough and it's nice to have the options. I was disappointed that the 'goodie good' party members didn't give a crap about it, though.

My dwarf rogue is now level 13 and have done a bit over half of the game. Off the top of my head the base attributes (without item bonuses) are around 30 STR, 35 DEX, 23 CUN, and the rest at original levels. I've taken 3 levels of Conversation, 2 Stealing, 1 Poison and 4 Combat Training. I've also taken 2 assassin skills, the entire Evasion tree, the entire Lockpick tree, Deadly Fighting & Combat Movement, Stealth I, Dual-Wield (DW) swing, Flurry, Momentum, and the two passive DW bonus talents. So obviously I'm beefing up STR/DEX to take advantage of the hotfixed daggers (0.5x str/0.5x dex), and they obviously help me wear hunky stuff and such. He's just designed to turn up momentum, use a couple of skills and run wildly around enemies hitting flanks with poisons on blades. In terms of attack efficiency I'd say he's similar to Shale and Alistair, a little better or worse depending on the type of enemies. He's less durable, of course. I haven't used traps enough in any playthrough to say, I think they will be useful if you go all for it, but I'm a poisons man at the moment. Deathroot Extract is easy to make in bulks and the stun ability sometimes even gets bosses. I'd say its all very viable - you could potentially do a two-weapon build with a lot mroe emphasis on stealth (Stealth IV & 26 cunning beats 95% of enemies in game afaik) and thus use traps pretty well. I've had nearly no party-wipes and the party is pretty effective - Shale/Alistair tanking, Morrigan hexing everyone to death and PC doing hsi circling. Misdirection Hex renders revenants and ogres basically helpless, Force Field/Crushing Prison is fairly useful and I havent had to take a single primal magic yet. I'm probably giong to take the thunder line now, Ice is clearly the best but requires a lot of micro when I want to mainly control the PC. I've yet to use the tanks properly though, they just sort of march up and hack/slash. Now I'm in Denerim with lots of those I might try the force-field-tank-bait thing.

I'm having a much better time on Hard with my second playthrough, the dwarf rogue. I've done Origins, Lothering, Shale stuff and now at Circle Tower, and I haven't had a single party wipe, just the occasional character drop. The mods letting me choose the companions' abilities is great, it lets me optimise things and also try new stuff. I gave Wynne some healing spells but also Mana Clash, and it's basically taking all the in the tower out of the fight. I also managed to take down a Revenant at level 7 with only half the party dropping dead. I'm getting used to it now, next playthrough should be Nightmare or perhaps Normal/Hard solo. And screw whatever was said about rogues being gimped, with the dexterity hotfix they are grand as pie. Momentum is really a wonderful thing, and once I can get some of the duelist/assassin specialist skills..

No poll without Volourn or Hades is an OBS poll. LOF, Grommy and Shryke probably spice up the poll pretty well. Also, there should clearly be a Scandinavian representative, mkreku or kaftan or someone. But hey, Rostere's list already has most of that.

Exactly - I wouldn't mind at all if this 'gradual optional content' model came with 'gradual system updates', i.e. super-patches. Since someone mentioned Paradox, look at the changes implemented by their upcoming third expansion pack to EU3, Heir to the Throne. Large features in the game, such as the Holy Roman Empire, the Curia, etc., are changed completely, along with interface facelift and coding to make everything work. Will a DLC do something like that? Highly unlikely. I mean, in addition to the things we already talked about, having DLCs that make big changes to the game as a whole will wreak havoc with compatibility. THe problems I and others have just enabling an isolated DLC such as Shale is nothing compared to what might happen if you have a gameplay-changing DLC and its clashing with several other DLCs and it being enabled and disabled and whatnot. That's why patches have to stand up to the task; if not, the whole model is worse off than the old one IMO, since gameplay improvements and system improvements are just as important as new content. The game seems to have a lot of trouble keeping track of the whole Alistair/Anora business.

Well I finally got Shale to work (though it remains to be seen whether it will continue to work) and he is delightful. Nice character to have and I'll take him around for the most of this playthrough. An hour for the new DLC? Well that seems pretty pointless, that's like just buying the Ice Cavern in the Tales of the Sword Coast. How long does Warden's Keep take, is that more subsstantial? I'll probably only end up buying DLCs which are worth the bother. Anyway, the only thing that really worries me about DLCs replacing expansion packs is gameplay improvements and such. Are DLCs now going to introduce gameplay / technical changes, such as to the UI, the AI, etc etc? If so, the required DLCs for fanmade mods are going to get super crazy, isn't it? Or are we rather going to see DLCs simply give new content, and such system changes come in only through patches? In tha case, patches better become a lot more extensive and persistent than in the Xpack-era. I would hate for the new setup to give us lots of content but no system upgrades (for those of you who are wondering what I mean, stuff like new avaialble resolutions in TOB, ruleset changes, etc).

Trying various things, and now it won't even let me log in because it thinks my internet isn't connected; it's trying to download the DLC even though it's enabled and done already; and whoever thought in-game integration was good at BIo forgot that it's actually meant to work. Especially if your official tech support is EA.

Okay, so Shale definitely doesn't work. -> Logged in in-game, put in code, installed Shale. -> Logged out, played game. Shale is in Journal, says Enabled, but doesn't work. -> Logged in, played game. Shale is Enabled but unauthorised, can't load game. Groar. and if the implication is that I need to/should have logged in all the time, screw you Bioware.

Ugh, so that was what was wrong. Sounds like a mess to clear up, however it happened. I never got farther than dabbling in these toolsets, but NWN1 did seem to have a damn well made toolset going.

Yes, because I chose Conversation and Stealing with the spare talents (including the one free you get anyway), and that had a direct impact on how I was able to play the character in the Origins. One could argue that a dwarf noble is likely to have basic knowledge in poisons, but the same is true with, say, conversation or even combat tactics. I see no real reason to restrict the player from building the character the way he wants to within the confines of each class, since DA character system is clearly about letting you create specialists within a class.

Poison-making, combat training, dirty fighting. I didn't take the first one.

Level 20, just. I don't know because I ignore the achievement pop-ups. I did all the sidequests for the factiosn (Chantry, Irregulars, Thieves, Mages, Crows), generally talked to every named character (and some more) at each stage, visited everywhere, and only left a couple of known sidequests undone. I think I remember seeing something to the effect of 60-70% of Dragon Age completed on the character sheet near the end. I usually tend to rush a little on my first playthrough and then take my time to see the sights on the second, so maybe I'll find things I missed this time. And hoepfully this time Shale works, dammit.

No, I'm a quick reader, and rare is the moment when the VO and the script is so good I want to sit and listen. I've always assumed that was the reason I take so less time than other people, ever since NWN1/KOTOR.