Monte Carlo

More Rogue Update In the original Baldur's Gate I played, IIRC, a ranger or a paladin for nostalgic reasons. Then I picked up Coran the wise-cracking fighter / thief and discovered that with his archery skills (BG1 was sick as far as archery was concerned), backstab and stealth he was pretty un-stoppable. I would leave the entire party at the mouth of the dungeon and have lots of fun clearing it with Coran. Then I realised that it wasn't right, having that much fun with a freaking NPC. So I re-started, made a fighter-thief and never looked back. So I had high hopes for Dragon Age - I wanted to re-create that experience. When I first made a rogue all I could do, because there was no real frame of reference for what the rules meant, was die as a not-very-good light fighter. DEX and CUNNING? Hugh? Now that I've worked it out I can tell you I was wrong (but a casual gamer without the trial and error I've put in might not get the same result, which is a shame). You can make the ultimate commando character with this game, the level clearing Death God that Coran was in BG1. I've just cleared out the Brescilian ruins, virtually single-handed with a level 13 rogue. I need backup for bosses and revenants but mobs? No problem. The key is Tier 4 stealth, carefully selected combat skills, bombs and (most importantly) HIGH CUNNING. I don't have trap-making as a skill but my high (40) Cunning allows me to de-trap almost anything. I can backstab, attract aggro, dual weapon sweep (with passive DW skills my vanilla attack is still in the high twenties - yes I have lethality), throw a bomb then stealth out again. The game even allows me to use objects as cover whilst I reorganise, those pesky skeleton archers only wing me. Like I said before, this isn't everyone's cup of tea but I take my hat off to the designers, you can do a great deal of fun stuff with this class... it's just a shame you have to work it out for yourself. Cheers MC

My advice is to leave it until you are level 12 or so at least. Morrigan won't bug you about it for a while anyway. I've played that battle on Easy, Normal and Hard, always with Wynne and her spell selection isn't really optimal for the challenge. In fact, as long as you don't go completely crazy I see no shame in Re-Speccing Wynne and giving her at least one elemental damage spell tree.

There's a trick to Redcliffe, I used traps, archery and a healthy stock of potions. Hey, let's talk about it in The Tactics Thread!

Di, Go into her Tactics tab and simply enter as a condition SELF > ENEMY and action > USE RANGED WEAPONS removing any references to melee, swapping them with ranged weapons too.

I'm glad somebody referenced Ballard earlier, his dystopias capture what post-modern cities are perfectly. The major city is as much a part of the built environment as a mountain is part of the natural... the only people who have seen cities as 'machines for living' have historically been socialists and other authoritarians. The true nature of the city is more like the corporate bordello described by Ballard, it applies as much to Babylon or ancient Rome. What I'm saying is that you view a city as you would a challenging natural part of the environment. If I were a Masai warrior the bush would be an easy place to live. If I were a Sherpa the mountains are my backyard. I, OTOH, am a Londoner, a finely honed survivor of an equally challenging (albeit urban) terrain Now, as I approach my dotage and look to my son, I ponder moving out to the Elephant's Graveyard of the counties. A well-trodden path that I will walk without too much regret, but having lived all of my twenties and thirties now my early forties in London it's been an incredible experience. Cheers MC

^ Yes, a common denominator of world cities is that hardly anyone living there is from there. I am an exception, I was born in London and have lived here all of my life, bar three years as a teenager in the early 80's and another three at University.

I wonder if the game was designed with this in mind, initially I thought it was because the class was gimped. Or maybe I'm being generous. You have to be fairly patient to build and play a decent rogue without dying every five minutes. The same is not true of warriors or mages (unless you go 2H warrior, that's another finesse build).

^ I could say exactly the same about Amsterdam, fabled home of nothing but cannabis dens and hookers. Of course, that's rubbish. there's a lot more to the place than that because I'm a belligerent SOB and don't believe that any major European city isn't worth visiting. A trip to any large metropolis requires meticulous planning. It rewards the diligent and punishes the lazy - and I don't care if you're talking about Paris or Berlin or even Rome. I'm a New York City veteran and I've got the scars on my back from not planning that one properly (I've mastered it now). Berlin can be an unforgiving bitch of a place to visit if you don't know what you're doing and don't plan. If you do it's incredible, one of my favourite cities. London is very similar. Parts of London are horrible and worth avoiding: other parts are sublime. This is what makes it what it is. Cheers MC

^ This looks indeed awesome, and a couple of years ago would have been my Favourite Waste of Time for six months. Alas, as I've got older I've regressed and become more enamoured of tactical-level and action RTs games. CoH, Warhammer, Total War and the Close Combat series (Best. Tactical. Wargame. Ever) are the meat and drink of my wargaming nowadays. However, the pure awesomeness of your example makes me tempted to go back to hex-based oblivion.

From the top of my London townhouse, and with a very powerful telescope, I can just about espy the provinces. I hear that, now and then, they can be quite a reasonable place to visit. London is a city-state. You're not meant to like it, just benefit from the wealth it generates. London has more in common with Hong Kong or 16th Century Venice than it does with provincial England.

^ one rogue is fine, two is fiddly, three is a nightmare unless you configure the tactics slots just so. I'm now on Tier 3 stealth and have configured my main character to automatically stealth in combat, he's sort of auto-backstabbing most of the time, hmmm well mebbe 50% but that's not bad. A mod that allowed you to set a combat tab for backstab (as opposed to stealth) will be a very valuable addition for rogues in DA. FWIW I use the rogue blood ability from WK much more than the warrior ones (and the fact that one is passive is a real result).

Sure, fiar enough. It's just that we already locked the last tactics thread at 34-odd pages and the current one is lively. I also like to think that other folks might use that thread if they're stuck so I like to keep all the stuff in one place. Not being a Nazi, just helpful to other forumites... this thread is a smorgasbjord of DA trivia rather than crunchy advice.

^ Then you can work it out for yourself, I'm sure.

--- More Roguishness --- I tried Recliffe Castle with three rogues and a mage (Morrigan). I viewed it as a commando-mission-come-burglary opportunity. The game plays very differently. We used the whole gamut of thiefly tactics - backstab, sneaking, bombs, poison, traps and it worked very well, but I'd suggest that the mage is still essential for crowd control (3 backstabbing rogues on a frozen mob is pretty effective). Imoen Chick is best configured as a pure archer, though, in my humble. Basically, if you like lots of micromanagement, you'll have a blast with the rogues although it would be a bit much even for me to play like this all the way through... I might try the Brescilian Forest / Elf ruins though, just for a laugh. If you like only managing one or two characters and have the rest do their own thing then Imoen Chick is good because you can configure her tactics slots to just stand back and shoot people. Traps are underrated, and MC tip of the day is give the skill to a non rogue because those points have to go somewhere. As for stealing, Imoen Chick pickpockets everybody and although you're picking up fairly minor items it all adds up (equivalent of a gold coin from a quick pilfer of the court at Redcliffe for example). Cheers MC

^ Step into the Tactics thread and we will discuss this at your leisure

I think the whole Grey Warden thing is interesting - after all it's like a really cool special class... with no special abilities whatsoever. Save one notional story-driven power at the end that I shan't reveal. I'm torn between thinking (a) this is actually rather clever - a story-driven 'class' that let's you identify with a role without any tangible in-game powers -- or -- (b) really lame - I like tangible in-game powers. It seems to me that the Grey Wardens are basically like the Foreign Legion: desperate men who can tolerate drinking nasty substances during the hazing ceremony. Anyway, a real moral choice would have been to become a nihilistic, demon-tainted, blood-magic junkie who becomes a Dark Warden, becomes one with the Archdemon and helps The Blight spread even further afield. A bit like NWN2 in fact. It's no biggie, am really quite comfortable with the people-doing-bad-things-to-achieve-noble-aims schtick, hey the Mage Tower is obviously a simile for Guantanamo Bay (chuckles). Cheers MC

I can't find all this exciting evil blood magic stuff anywhere, I'm feel like the guy in the adult movies section who can only find Mister Bean DVDs. Do you have to be a mage or something?

In an ironic piece of marketing altruism, you can make money for the (otherwise excellent) charity War Child by playing this game* online at the weekend. I know charities need money but why does this make me feel ever so slightly uneasy? * Edit: MW2 is the game I'm referring to.

^ Nope, nuthin' to do with Orzammar. It just appeared in my rogue's inventory... perhaps yesterday? I did preorder Dragon Age and got it on release day, maybe it just DL'd via that Big Brother online verification thing.

^ oh yes it can Anyway, Musopticon thanks for the heads up, it looks right up my street. It's online D2D as per Morgie's link (I like calling him Morgie, it sort of takes the sting out of his tail) but can't find the XP, I'd like to buy them together but not via Steam. Cheers MC

Strange. A magic dagger called The Edge (no, not the bloke from U2) appeared mysteriously in my inventory. Is this a free DLC item I'd missed?

^ thanks, that was v helpful.

I was looking to get it with the THQ collection set, heck it was the main reason because I've had difficulty finding it. Would you mind making a few comments about how you found it, gameplay etc? Am looking for a fun, old-skool H&S to play after DA. Cheers MC

^ Morgie, was it you playing Titan Quest? I have questions.

Whilst Sawyer burns the midnight oil, committing his thoughts to papyrus with the ink made from the ichor of a ****atrice egg, I shall say what I'm getting at. Developers have written frequently of the need to escape the orbit of pen & paper game mechanics to properly fit the medium of computer gaming. And they're right. The tricky bit is, how do you do this yet retain the soul of what CRPGs are? After all, it's a bit like modern artists building installation scultpture and saying they need to escape paintings by Pollock or Warhol - when by a process of osmosis that's partially where they've come from themselves. Dragon Age is, in a sense, immensely disappointing from this POV. It comes across as a hard-hearted decision - make a game familiar enough to MMO / twitch / console gamers but with a hat-tip to old school CRPG players. And the result is strangely lacking in flavour, and (crucially) seems semi-detached from the setting. What is a rogue in Ferelden FFS? Where do the little sub-classes fit in? Why with so many options are classes forced into little boxes like sword and shield or two-handed fighter? I only mention DA because I imagine it was a pretty good place to be for Bioware designers - original IP, your own ruleset, your own world to tinker with.... and yet they came up with this. Like I said, I actualy really enjoyed the game. I like Dave Gaider's thinking man's Ed Greenwood mish-mash of Celtic & Dark Ages mythos. But the ruleset... it's like making a soup with stuff from an expensive farmer's market but using powdered stock from the budget store. So my question to the Obsidian guys, whose work I know and trust, is what would you have done? Not specifically to DA, but in that fantasy football scenario where you pick your own new game with all that clout behind it. How do you capture the spirit of the genre, break new ground and make a more satisfying experience... and still shift units? Cheers MC