HoonDing

Only when there was a powerful evil entity behind them that controlled & inspired them (Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman)... without those around they were mindless & animalistic and hardly a threat, similar to Darkspawn without an Archdemon. That said, though, can Darkspawn speak? Since there are some that can do magic & some that wear fancy armour (Alpha Hurlock/Genlock) there should at least be some intelligence involved..

They're exactly like the classical Tolkien Orcs, then.

I like Normal just fine. Miss Morrigan picked up the Blizzard spell yesterday and now my party mostly just stands back and watches how she destroys entire groups of enemies. Very useful during those never-ending random encounters in Denerim.

I'm surprised Purkake hasn't replied to this with a gif yet.

Blood and saliva:

When I'm replaying the game as a mage, she can stay at camp forever. I bet she doesn't even leave when you get her approval to 0, considering her being the face of the game and all... I've been wasting a lot of gifts to keep her approval around 0 and all for nothing. Leliana is the companion with the most interesting backstory for me. I triggered her quest yesterday and it's pretty interesting.

Which item would that be? I pickpocketed a few people but didn't notice any strange items in my inventory..

Well, he does become a lot less awesome once he 'opens up' to the PC.

There's more to it than that, actually:

I find Zevran severely underwhelming. At least Alistair has some entertaining trash talk with the PC. Random encounters everytime you travel across the map are really nerve-grating. Especially Denerim... each time I travel across the map there's 20 guys waiting for me. I feel as if I've depopulated the city already.

It's some Tier 3 Dwarven medium armor I acquired in Redcliffe. I never raised Leliana's strength, so 18 is enough.

Never heard of this FiringSquad before. It's funny how he complains how the system needs to be explained. Games like Morrowind & fallout 3 don't explain how armor works or how damage/accuracy is calculated... and nobody gives a hoot about that.

I rather dislike Morrigan, but unless the PC is a mage she's quite indispensible for her Force Field, Sleep & Cone of Cold spells.

First half of the game is brilliant, lots of quests with multiple ways to solve, C&C, quite challenging combat (unless you're a mage). But the second half of the game is all grinding & combat, similar to Risen. I noticed that are still some bugs in the English version, even a couple of gamestopping ones. So an English patch is probably underway.

Put Shale on the bridge, lure undead towards him and watch him wreck some havoc.

The only time Leliana died in my game, is when she got stuck in a fence and it was impossible for her to move away from some Genlocks. Since I'm tired of returning to camp and swapping a character for her because I left behind some locked chests, I just take her with me all the time now.

Cute..

I have AMD Phenom 9500 (quad-core) on Vista 32-bit. But I notice when I restart the game, the loading times are normal (< 10s). Maybe it's because I use quicksave a lot?

Maybe to get a ridiculously high defense. Since rogue isn't going to wear Dragonbone armor...

Well, it'll take a while before Morrigan will pick up Crushing Prison. Anyway, are there any tactics against *insane* load times? It takes 2-3 minutes to load by simply changing floors in Redcliffe Castle... I suppose this is a sloth demon at work?

I just went through the Mage Origin and there's something I don't get:

Immediately putting him/her/it in a Force Field is best, imo. But if the sucker managed to use Curse of Mortality, one is forced to bull-rush and kill him as fast as possible and run into a series of fireballs, ice & lightning.

Best tactic when encountering a group of Hurlocks led by an orange marked Hurlock Emissary: refer to an earlier save.

I miss a Knock & Disarm Traps spell for my mages. Or bashing chests. I can usually keep Imoen chick out of trouble though. Enemies target the dudes in heavy armour first, it seems, so if I put her somewhere away from the crowd and let her shoot arrows, she's not that bad. And at least she can kick people in the nuts.

Dilemmas...