Deraldin

Mayhap. But I used it before and he seemed fine. I'll have to try it again. I need to respec Morrigan again because the fire spells seem pretty pointless. They do good damage against clusters of archers, sure, but then they all blow right past Shale (tank) and kill her. I think the Waking Nightmare spell, or whatever it's called, that causes everyone in an area to go berserk and attack each other, is probably the best. I'm getting some pretty good use out of the fire spells actually. Have Shale run into the middle of a group, use the defense mode that draws enemies then throw down a taunt. Everything will come after Shale. Toss a force field on Shale then drop an Inferno on the area and generally everything dies before the force field runs out. The tank with force field works best on the higher level enemies. On lower level enemies you can use earthquake to keep them in the affected area instead.

I took Shale along with me on my current run. Sten and the Dog will likely be part of my next run through the tower.

Screw you EA! Get this RPG crap out of my C&C!

Where is he? I didn't see him on my first run.

The one inside Lothering was crazy easy for me because of the way the wolves respond to attacks. Attacking one wolf at range will set off the entire swarm, but instead of charging me, they all cluster on top of the body. This allows you to lure them away one or two at a time with ranged weapons. The painful wolf encounter for me was the random encounter I hit just after Lothering. You spawn in the middle of a group of probably 10-12 wolves and there is no way to prepare or pick any of them off before you are surrounded.

I like this one better.

On Denerim:

Wing Commander is the first thing that came to mind. It actually took me a couple minutes to figure out what the other meaning you were referring to was supposed to be.

There should be a book somewhere in Denerim IIRC. Check the merchants.

Too bad it's gimped on PC as Crushing Prison can't be used on non hostile targets. I haven't played on anything about normal yet so I don't know how effective the stun on Cone of Cold at those levels is. On normal and below however it will freeze anything not orange for about half a second longer than the cooldown on the spell so you can keep entire groups frozen as long as your mana runs out. If you toss in a force field for those enemies that don't freeze properly you can pretty much walk all over most encounters.

Ditto! Never played #2, but in a couple years when they release Modern Warfare 3 I'll be right there with you! I have trouble with ME for Mirror's Edge and Mass Effect. Half the time I end up thinking of the wrong one even through I know the conversation is about the other one.

I assume it's the "You should stay here" option in dialogue correct? You can't tell her "Sure, come along!" and then not put her in the group.

Truth be told, I applied common-sensium and didn't try to tackle them without golem form. I tacked the bosses with my no-form warrior as well. I was only playing that section on easy, but after playing through again on normal with my mage I'm pretty sure it would have been easier without the forms on normal as well. Despite what Gromnir said about having to use the forms abilities properly, I never got the hang of them in that fight. Quake was fairly easy because it had a short enough activation time that it could be used to interrupt. The other two however require pure dumb luck to stop an attack because they take longer to activate. I suppose if you switched back to your normal form before/just after getting hit by the special attacks you could get up faster and then switch forms once you're up, but I never tried that. Having immunity to those damn chained knockdown attacks was very useful.

No actual numbers but apparently both the normal and deluxe editions came in at 1st and 2nd on Steam and D2D. D2D also had a bundle with a strategy guide that came in 3rd.

Yeah, too bad for my first run that it was only ever used against me. That fight at the start of the outdoor area for Orzammar kicked my ass several times with repeated fireballs.

What armour is Leliana wearing in that picture?

I actually had the same sniper rifle plop down once during my first playthrough and once during the second, with the second one being a vast upgrade over the first. Pretty nice, though. It is a shame that most of the bosses drop the same weapons every time you kill them. And it's too bad that, for the most part, they're unusable. They're usually awesomely powerful but have some huge drawback that makes them vendor trash after you fool around with them for a bit. At least Sledge's Shotgun

Well I finally beat it! Total play time for that character was just under 44 hours (43:58) and I was somewhere in the 80's for percentage of the world explored and had done very few of the side quests. Constantly running across the country with the load times I was getting would not have been pleasant. No more all nighters! The final battle actually wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.

I hate this thread. It has confirmed that my game is screwed up. I've got everything on high and still have low res textures on most objects, notably armour.

I'm at 42 hours (Main character + 4 additional origin stories) with 36% game completion and 82% of the world explored. I'm almost finished my first run. I'd expect that I'm not more than 1 or 2 areas away from the final boss. I am currently Currently level 18 I believe. Hoping to get Wynne to 19 before the end so I can give her Cone of Cold.

The only thing I've ever been carded for was alcohol. None of the game stores around here ask for ID, not Future Shop, not EB Games.

1. Poison blade 2. Engage enemy 3. Run behind enemy 4. Backstab FTW! the instant win button for every encounter. No, the win button is cone of cold. The freeze effect lasts about a second longer than the cooldown on the spell.

Hah! That's the first place I went with my first character. Outside was easy enough, although somewhat time consuming. It could have been a lot more dangerous had there been more focus on me, but I managed to keep almost everyone alive. Inside seems to be a little tougher. I've only gotten a few rooms inside though. Anything that has the ability to take you down for extended lengths of time and do damage can go to hell. I'm looking at you wolves/spiders/mabari!

I kinda like the Templar helmets, but I haven't seen much else that I liked. I liked that scene if only because I had an odd moment with Leliana who promised that we wouldn't make trouble, but then because of the camera angles and character positioning, broke the fourth wall and gave me a worried look.

I have to admit that the game is a lot more difficult than I expected it to be. Maybe it's because of party composition or something, I don't know, but I've had several full party wipes already. I did manage to make it through the origin story (Human Noble) with only one person (well, dog) incapped thanks to a lucky critical hit by an enemy just before he died. My next full party wipe didn't happen until Lothering when I tried doing some quests out there. The Ogre at the top of the tower seemed to be rather luck based on whether or not he'd incapacitate any of your group. My first time through I ended up taking him down with Dog and a Circle Mage kiting him around the room as fast as he could. The Ogre would either pick me up and repeatedly punch me to death, non-stop ramming or various other stunning attacks that ended up with someone killed. Performance seems pretty good overall. No major slowdowns yet. Two unexplained crashes with a generic "This program has encountered and error..." messages and some absurdly long load times for the tiniest areas I've come across. Will need more testing to diagnose, but in the mean time I'm having fun.