Monte Carlo

Enoch, there is some kit you get as a result of The Ritual (jug water yadda yadda) that you might want.

^ A career as a judge in an international ice-skating competition isn't for you.

So much for ambition. I'm level 16 and completely badass, trying to gather an epic army for the final confrontation with evil. Yet I'm never happier than when I'm nug-hunting for the dude who pays me 12 silver coins a go.

I've given it a very short review earlier in this thread, mebbe a page or so back. For me, it's a solid 8.5, every point deserved. if you liked BG2 buy this. When the serious modding community get going it will easily be a 9/10. Cheers MC

Which is why this game needs a mod that allows you to make your own party, or a few Pocket Plane group level NPCs. A battle mage who doesn't say much would be a very useful start.

What, do they level up quicker?

Oh, talking about soap opera, I do like some of the banter. Sten and Morrigan loathe each other. As you build Sten's approval up he starts to see Morrigan as the manipulative harpy she is. Morrigan, OTOH, taunts Sten about how she must desire him. Sten is a bit embarrassed about this but finally when she's asking him if he desires her (again) he calls her out and tells her that she will require a certain amount of protective equipment to survive a night Qunari passion. For the first time in the game Morrigan STFU. It's great. I know Sten is a brilliant character because the Bio forum regulars hate him. Ha ha ha.

I built a dwarf commoner rogue, and already having made level 16 (warrior) in another game can see the main problem (for me). Most of my decent skills aren't passive: I feel that I need reasonable STR (for weapons and armour), excellent DEX, excellent CUNNING and, yep, good willpower to power my stamina back up to re-use the activated skills that make the class viable. Dump that on top of my wish to be able to sneak and open locks and you've got a class that is severely hampered by stat-dump spread. You can't make an all-rounded, you have to specialise and it's not floating my boat at all. My dwarf commoner has two-weapon style (flurry) and locks at the moment, I don't think I'm ever gonna find the points for dialogue skills. Warriors? Boatloads of passive skills and easy-to-master skill trees. Mages I don't even need to go there, they rock right out of the box. Rogues? Hmmm, you need to decide whether you are light fighter or support / skill monkey but are gimped inbetween. I'm struggling to warm to the class, to be honest.

^ If you can do that in the game then I take my :: sigh :: back. I thought that was fan-made and symptomatic of the "RPG-as-soap-opera" tendency. My views on the romances have been made, I'll spare you the chore of having to hear them again. As an aside, I did the dwarf commoner origin today and suspect it will be my favourite, it's got a bit of everything, Good Fellas meets Gladiator! Cheers MC

I get the impression that elemental damage really depends on the type of enemy you are fighting - clearly fire-orientated enemies (i.e. ash wraiths and so on) really don't like cold damage. I've also found some good items that add +10% frost damage - put that on Morrigan and start casting Blizzard and you've got some serious artillery. Check out the 'Respec' mod Virumor mentioned, I'm playing with it at the moment and you can start Morrigan up as an excellent Arcane Warrior from day one. Wish I could figure out the rogue - I'm using Zevran and he's useful but not compelling. What skill tree / build are you using for yours? If he's good enough for you on Nightmare he must be good enough for me on normal / Hard (I'm playing Hard for mob battles and down to normal for bosses which is working nicely for me). Cheers MC

:: sigh ::

My party is two tanks, Morrigan and Zevran. I'm thinking of dropping him, just for dragon slaying, for Wynne for a two mage / two warrior lineup. Is there any reason to take a rogue dragon hunting? Telling me Zev has some amusing dialogue would do the trick, I've got some stuff to do in Denerim then I'm back up the mountain to use that horn and summon you-know-who.

The novelty hasn't worn off, it's a very solid game that is more than a respectful nod to the games of yore. It has significant weakenesses - linearity, shoe-horning into a plot, some irritating NPCs... in Bio games these are a given and you have to put up with them. For a first play-through, though, the plot is fun in a campy vanilla kind of way. The great NPCs make up for the weaker ones, for me Sten and Shale and even Zevran are worth the price of admission. I'm not really seeing this darkness thing, they've inserted some moral ambivalence that is refreshing compared to the D&D alignment-based 'Chaotic Stupid' approach. Now you can be fairly lawful evil and serve the greater good - the Chantry is good or bad depending on who you are, the elves can be as bigoted as the humans yadda yadda. But where does it really shine? Enjoyable combat, clean, easy-on-the-eye graphics, brilliantly simple, fun spellcasting system and it's pretty darn big. You could make a great dungeon crawler with this engine, an IWD iteration of Dragon Age where you made your own characters and fought Darkspawn and Blood mages would rock. Given the modding interest and release of the toolset this is what, for me, makes this title the CRPG release of 2009/2010. For all my harsh words and reservations (and some were too harsh) I take my hat off to Bio and give them, albeit through slightly gritted teeth, a hard-won 8.5 / 10 for this game. If you liked BG2 and Diablo 2 and the Lord of the Rings movies (like I do on all three counts) then go and buy this game now. Cheers MC

Thanks, what level was your party, mine's at 15 on normal, is it feasible or do I wait?

Dragons and how to slay them? Discuss.

There goes the next six months of your life. Check out some of the mods for it.

^ It is very annoying, I don't know if they have saving throws every 'X' rounds (are there even rounds?) or if there is a duration based on the critter's 'name colour' code (which seems to be the main gauge of how tough the enemy are)?

^ That's me, and if I'm honest your snarkiness is starting to grate. Had you considered that, prior to that original post, I had no issues with bugs (I didn't). The CTD was about five minutes before I posted that comment. Check it out, I am not a Bio fanboy by any stretch of the imagination but I do call it as I see it.

^ Grom, have taken Alistair the Templar skill route and those skills do have a friendly fire effect. I'm still relying on Morrigan's force field spell at level 15 to take mages out of the game.

I've had one CTD and the weird thingie described above. I agree it's very stable, I just make lots of saves in case a game gets corrupted.

Strange bug - reloaded game (was logged in) and my Bergen's honour helm was gone, as was Morrigan's staff. However, there was a fresh tome of frozen waste (cheers! +3 STR) and the game told me that i'd finished the soldier's peak quest - a definite DLC bug i suspect. EDIT: So I re-loaded an old save, luckily DA does loads of saves for you, about one or two rooms previously and everything was restored.

I've got Alistair in the Warden's Armour, Sten in the Juggernaut Armour and my character in the Dragon Armour and Bergen's Honour helm. I'm wondering if I'll find better armour anyplace else in the game. Am now level 14.

Been playing around with the bombs you unlock with the poison skill. When Sten had a spare talent point I just put it into poison to enhance his greatsword with venom, but also found that he's a reasonable grenadier... him and Zevran open up with a volley of grenades then enter melee, shock bombs are good for buying time to get in close to backstab. Zevran's high stealth means he's good to start up ambushes, de-stealth, attract mob, bomb them, chop them up. Morrigan now has the Tier 4 ice storm-type spell and Waking Nightmare, am beginning to find AoE spells a bit tricky to manage because the radius on the Tier 4 is so big. Force Field, as has been noted, is becoming a serious win button, enemy mages just stand frozen while we chop up all the fighters then stand around sharpening our knives waiting for it to wear off. The game is deeper than I suspected with strategies to deal with mobs, although bosses are still all about grind in my experience so far. Archery is still meh, you can't get enough archers with a party of four although I suppose it would be interesting to play with three archers and a panzer meat shield with taunt to see if it worked. Have just arrived in the Temple in the Sacred Ashes quest, have 25 hours in and am about 22% through the game. I've sort of settled into a party of PC (Noble warrior, beserker specialisation, sword and shield), Morrigan, Zevran and Sten or Alistair depending on the mission. Next time I'm definitely going to try to play a dwarf rogue (duellist / assassin and I'll play around with traps), so it'll probably be Alistair and Sten or Oghren with Morrigan (Wynne just doesn't have the offensive skill set I like playing with). Cheers MC

Does anyone know what corpse gall is for? I'm collecting buckets of guts for what purpose?

True, there's only one mandatory low-level revenant battle, and it's a pain in the arse. I beat him with three party members dead, only Alistair left alive with about 8 health.