Monte Carlo

^ I will admit to making a special "Escape" save where I tried out every NPC combo to spring me from prison. All of them are amusing, but being rescued by a dog is especially funny. In the end I finished it with Morrigan and Zevran, they were funny too (especially Zev charming the pants off the female guard).

I hope there are tunnels under Denerim. You could have fights down there.

I once drove across Iowa. I have to say there wasn't much to see (Oooooh! A rock!) and my meatloaf cassette (it was a while back) got stuck in the car stereo so I'm Gonna Love Her for Both of Us will forever remind me of Des Moines. Which I think is in Iowa. All I remember was the cold (it was late November), excellent pancakes and friendly people who genuinely couldn't understand my English accent. Cheers MC

^ World Cities do that, they draw people to them. Just view London as a necessary evil, it's easy to ignore. I know I did when I lived outside it. And moving the BBC to Manchester was the worst sort of pork-barrel politiking by Zanu NuLabour, a complete waste of our tax pounds. Did you see the re-location packages? Unbelievable, meanwhile the armed forces want for helicopters, but the BBC sports department is lavishly funded to move to a comfy Labour safe seat. It's like ploughing the earth and salting the fields by this government, who know they're going to be out of office in six months.

^ Ah, I see, so far into the future it can Morph into Mass Effect 6 - Space Blight!

Thanks for your thoughts Josh. Briefly, would that perspective influence the way you guys look at design in the future? For example, I know it's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. but I liked the origin route in FO3 where you made decisions as you grew up in the Vault, i.e. the character generation felt more organic to the gameplay. TES did this too, but not as well. And, hey, the Dragon Age origins would have been fantastic had you designed the character in the tutorial. Cheers MC

And oranges contain citrus, apples don't. Fascinating.

As long as there is lots of fighting, in tunnels, I could care less. Big thumbs up for barbarian (Chasind / Ash Warrior) origin. Fighting in tunnels, savagely, is even better. Think about it, a post-blight Korcari wilds, like a PA fantasy game with tribes struggling to survive. Cool.

Walking Bomb and Virulent Walking Bomb are acquired tastes. As I posted in the other thread they are a hilarious, if somewhat fussy, method of crowd control. Personally I had loads of fun: Waking Nightmare > Virulent Walking Bomb > Archery = gooey, explosive hilarity.

^ No, keep whatever weapons you like in the spare slot. In the combat tabs you'll see actions. The ones on the left give you the situation (i.e. See Enemy) and the ones on the right let you tell the character what to do with that situation (i.e. use scatter-shot, use health poultice etc.) When I made her a melee archer, with the appropriate talent, I configured the tabs that whatever happened she used Ranged Weapons unless health > 20% where I got her to chug a potion and go melee weapons. I also made Sten her bodyguard: look in the options and you'll see character attacked... for Sten I put in weapon sweep when she was hurting - that took out lots of baddies around her / stunned them etc. My advice is take a bit of time looking at the tactics tabs - they are a bit of effort to learn but you can do some astonishingly cool things with them. Cheers MC

^ I was wondering about Oghren, is his dialogue fun? Personally I find Sten the best NPC in the game, but that's just me.

^ Sorry, forgot English was your second language. My point was that of course the stereotype about Amsterdam was stupid. That was my point. The same principle applies to London. @ Walsingham. London is no different from Tokyo or New York. A gazillion people from myriad cultures, most of whom focussed on making a living, in a confined physical space. Niceness is not part of the deal. Not perfect, but completely understandable. Where London is different is that it is a city of villages. As soon as you get out of the Zone One hub (i.e. the London version of Manhattan Island) it becomes rather different.

Now I know better, and realise that the game sort of scales to level, I go: * Shale * Warden's Keep * Mage Tower * Redcliffe Yes, I know my twinky DLC gives me all sorts of Gucci kit and an XP boost. Bite me.

I've currently got a set of armour from Mikhail at Warden's Keep that looks like the Shadow Legion armour from BG2... ain't optimal for my level but looks to cool to get rid of. I will go the Drakeskin route for my rogue after Sacred Ashes, for my next fighter / 2H / archer build will probably go with the ancient elven armour.

^ Both of those are available at either the DA social site or DA Nexus.

^ My rogue game rocks but I can't find any really awesome light armour. Wasn't looking for it during my warrior playthrough, just gave the Drakeskin stuff to Zev. Anybody know where I can get me some?

My next experiment is going to be archer / melee warrior - even split between 2W fighting and archery talents (because of the Dexterity synergy between the two, I really wanted 2H weapon / archer but it was stretching it a bit). Probably go Elf, possibly death-wish ghetto avenger.

That'll be me selling that armour next time I boot the game up. I have another aesthetics versus power problem though, in that I have the juggernaut armour which is OK. But that helmet, y'know with the blue feathery plume? Yech. Had to sell it.

^ Sure, that is meta-gaming. First time I did it, like every other schmuck I had about ten minor health potions and a half dozen lyrium. My sword & shield fighter was pretty good, I had the walking panzer shield ability and my vanilla Morrigan had the cone of cold type spell. I also had a not every well armoured Sten (splintmail straight outta the cage) and Imoen Chick with a bow and a dagger. Bejaysus it was tough, I think I did three or four re-loads. As I posted before the initial battle was OK, but after that I had to beat it by kiting the zombies up the hill in groups to engage with the knights at the top. Did I mention I killed the dwarf in a fit of pique who in subsequent battles is very useful? Anyhow, I was last man standing. I'm also the half-wit who not long after took on the revenant in the courtyard without figuring out how to let the knights in. Again, one last man standing at about 3hp. Now I can do it on hard and hardly take any damage! Cheers MC

Why don't you go back and read my post again?

^ Yeah, I haven't got that one yet although my rogue has just met some dude who keeps offering me thief missions in Denerim... ha ha ha. That might push me over the edge into the 75% territory.

Arcane Warrior spoiler

^ Yeah, if you're talking across the classes - Melee Panzer - Warrior / Reaver / Beserker with all the shield talents Slice & Dice - Warrior DW with high DEX and medium armour Stealth Commando - Rogue with impossibly high DEX and CUNNING, Tier 4 stealth, throw in some DW skills and the assassin / duellist sub-classes I've not tried 2H warrior yet, nor pure rogue / archer (unless you count Imoen chick, who is like something out of Day of the Jackal with all the archery talents).

:: shrugs :: no shortage of great mage options - plenty of the guys here have crushed the game on Hard with various builds. The consensus is that the Blood Mage / Arcane Warrior is the Kensai / Mage twink build of DA. You unlock those in-game. Personally, when I re-specced Morrigan for the first time I took all the fire spells up to Tier 4 - that inferno one is stupid powerful and bags of fun. The spells are also symbiotic - you can freeze people then shatter them (i.e. stonefist) for example. Pump MAGIC and some WILLPOWER, choose one elemental route (the ice one is also pretty essential) and one other route. Force field is extremely useful, and the sleep / waking nightmare is great for mobs. As for sub-classes - shapechanger sucks. Healer is great if you want to, er, heal (NPCs job IMO) but Arcane Warrior does a straight swap out of MAGIC for STR so you can cut about as a mage wearing Dragon Bone armour and carrying swords. Admit it, that's exactly where you want to be! Cheers MC

^ I just haven't had the spare points to go archery but every character in my party has a missile weapon, I've got the twinky auto-Xbow that does 10.8 base damage from WK. Even this is pretty useful, enemy mages go down pretty quickly as Sten, my Rogue and Alistair pepper him with arrows and Morrigan lays down AoE spells. So I can imagine how potent a dedicated archer would be, I'm tentatively involved in making a DA mod with some other people and I think I'll design an archer warrior NPC for it.