Monte Carlo

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.

And I never knew who 30 Seconds To Mars were before the video for This is War. Which I'll now be picking up.

Is it me, or does the b00b demon have cellulite issues?

Revenants at low level, the most irritating and powerful pseudo-boss monster before level 9 or 10: Cone of Cold (again) ... they will often fail their save against it. One mage and two warriors performing a variety of melee smackdowns can take a revenant if the mage has enough mana to keep hosing the revenant with ice. A mage can even keep this up whilst the warriors take out mook hordes that usually travel around with the revenant, buying valuable time. While waiting for the cone of cold to recharge, hit the sucka with whatever damage dealing spells you have left to chip away at his hit points. Whatever you do, don't run away from the revenant, he has this magnetic ability to smack you on the floor and drag you to him - omb him straight away and get that ice spell trained on him! Cheers MC

Altho' i now know how the original BG players with no D&D experience felt - choosing armour and spells because they sounded good and wondering what THACO actually meant. In fact, I reckon DA doesn't actually have a ruleset, it's just a joke by the developers. It's all random.

Heaven forfend that when you play a game you might like to know the rules.

No.

Waking Nightmare is like confusion, stun, sleep and charm person all rolled into one. Some critters fight for you, others fall over, others wander around. It has a pretty big AoE and is perfect for crowd control versus it's duration / cooldown time. It isn't as sexy as fireball etc, but it is very useful.

Yeah, Morrigan as shapechanged critter is a waste of her offensive spell-casting abilities. I've not used them once since level 5 or 6. Am eagerly awaiting 'level one NPC' mod a la BG2, when you meet the NPC they are level 1 and you level them up. For Morrigan, that extra point would have got me a bit nearer fireball or walking nightmare. Sten? Sword and Shield. Alistair, mebbe dual-wielding. Imoen-Chick, maybe a decent rogue

Does using a frost spell against a target followed by a fire spell work in your favour or against?

--- Dragon Age: Origins Tactics Thread ---- Note to moderators: Please don't delete. This is the biggest fantasy CRPG release for some time, many of us want to discuss this aspect of the game and the other threads (although enjoyable) do not adequately address the issues. No, we can't all bugger off to the Bio boards. They are all over the place. Plus, we like it here. Hello, please post your tactical advice here, along with character builds, spell combos and so on. Please use spoiler tags where appropriate, although I'm sure we can all use our discretion and assume that most of us are a certain way through the game. No general comments, reviews, spamming and so on. Many thanks. Starter for Ten... The Rogue Question. Not since Schleswig-Holstein has there been so much bafflement. All ideas welcome. Cheers MC

If you think that my comment about command economies = retard then shame on you. Moderate socialism is a tautology. It's like having moderate rabies. So-called socialist countries usually practice wholly corrupt, corporate bordello capitalism, just have more dudes in uniforms putting journalists in prison. China springs to mind, so does Russia. Please quote so-called socialist Scandinavian countries in riposte so I can rend your argument at my leisure.

you work in middle management, dont you?