Dragon Age Discussion

[CoM_Solaufein]

Discuss...

[Aristes]

Fascist!

 

Seriously, okay, I restarted my run recently on hard. I had not really gotten that far in my first run and I found out right away that it is harder than NWN but I wouldn't mind playing it on hard. Mostly, I just wanted to test some thing between games. For example, the difference in experience between normal and hard when facing the ogre, ect.

 

I got out into the wilds and, lo and behold, I had accidently decided to make it just a leeetle bit harder by not equiping my mage staff. I'm like, "why the hell does my pc keep running at things and beating on them with her fist?" Yep, no staff. Now, the staff bolts aren't exactly the battle ending beat sticks that some mages might think them to be, but they sure as hell work better than my mage's butter first smackdown of comedy. I'm going to finish the wilds and go buy back my staff before I do anything else. I've had two injuries so far and I'm over halfway done with the wilds. Not much worse so far, but I think the part after the battle will be much worse. We'll see.

[Spider]

Is anyone playing on nightmare?

 

I tried it at a friends for a little bit while waiting for my copy to arrive (the drawback of importing, it takes a lot longer. But it's also cheaper, so I'll wait). I played through the city elf origin (until you reached the camp anyway) and part of the Mage one (until you left the Fade the first time, in case you go in again). On nightmare. The city elf I played with a rogue and until I started to get the hang of things, I did die a lot. But once I got flanking down and started using my abilities as much as possible, it wasn't overly difficult. I even got an achievement for having my character be the last one standing in all encounters (apparently party wipes don't prevent this).

 

As far as I got in the game, nightmare suited me just fine. It was hard, but doable. I had to plan and be careful as hell, though. Mess up and you die. I like that in a game. So I'm wondering what the different difficulty settings actually do? Do they just up damage and hitpoints on the opponents?

 

The mage managed to go through the whole test part without going down, but did die to a bunch of spiders a bit later on, when I was careless enough to be attacked by three of them. Fighting against one or two by myself was still very doable.

[HoonDing]

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.

Edited November 12, 2009 by virumor

[Maria Caliban]

You can get the Storm of the Century combo with Blizzard + Tempest + Spellw.. (forget the entire name)

 

I like that there's only one thread.

 

And Leliana is still awesome.

[alanschu]

I think you only need Blizzard + Tempest

[Tigranes]

Hard is great for me, i'll probably try assassin solo run on Hard after a couple of playthroughs. I tend not to like anything *too* punishing.

 

The Deep Roads, I've found, are big, *very* big. Having forgotten to stock up on some ingredients I have no injury kits, and most of the characters are now nursing enough broken bones to entertain a platoon of dogs. Shouldn't be too far away now though,

found Branka and am doing the Anvil of the Void trials.

 

 

Still disappointed the darkspawn are no more than orcs in the game, with no thought, culture or whatever of their own, fleshbags that exist to kill other fleshbags. But at least the dwarves are pretty interesting.

[alanschu]

From my impression, they aren't really "orcs" in that, they don't have culture or whatever. They are cursed beings that are kinda guideless without an Archdemon, and focused killing machines with one.

[Starwars]

I'm not crazy about the darkspawn either. It would've been cool if Bioware had chosen to do an all-political plot, since I really think they did a good job on the various cultures and all that in the game. At the moment, the Blight feels more a minor annoyance than anything else. The hubs and their own quests is where my interest lies.

 

I'm playing Hard and have found it to be very challenging. I'm doing Orzammar now though and it's starting to get quite easy. However, it is the last hub I'm tackling and I've completed a lot of sidequests so I might be overleveled for the area at the moment (which is fine of course). Might try turning it up to Nightmare for now but we'll see.

 

Really enjoying the game all in all. Bioware did a great job on this and I think the long development time has definitely paid off.

[Oner]

Hard is great for me, i'll probably try assassin solo run on Hard after a couple of playthroughs. I tend not to like anything *too* punishing.

You know you won't get extra xp for soloing, do you?

[HoonDing]

From my impression, they aren't really "orcs" in that, they don't have culture or whatever. They are cursed beings that are kinda guideless without an Archdemon, and focused killing machines with one.

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

[Tigranes]

Actually, now that I think of it, yeah, they're not even fleshed out enough to be cmopared to orcs. Tolkien orcs were in fact quite intelligent beings with their own dietary systems, military and disciplinary structure, political machinations and even factionism. For the darkspawn, what's the difference between a 'genlock' and a 'hurlock' (or whatever)? In fact what are they anyway? Who knows. They're not even 'focused killing machines' because they don't have any distinctive tactics, technology or whatever. They're just things that go around going bash bash.

[HoonDing]

Actually, now that I think of it, yeah, they're not even fleshed out enough to be cmopared to orcs. Tolkien orcs were in fact quite intelligent beings with their own dietary systems, military and disciplinary structure, political machinations and even factionism. For the darkspawn, what's the difference between a 'genlock' and a 'hurlock' (or whatever)? In fact what are they anyway? Who knows. They're not even 'focused killing machines' because they don't have any distinctive tactics, technology or whatever. They're just things that go around going bash bash.

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..

[Rosbjerg]

A question for Alanschu though. You said Morrigan has a different epilogue if you romance her, how do you get it? I had the ring and approval of 100% but I just get the standard epilogue. No thinking of the PC. Is it because I selected that I understood and was thankful for everything she had done? Not that I care or anything.

 

I don't remember the details. Though my decision was to agree with Morrigan's request. I imagine that if you don't, there's not much difference in dialogue. When I quickly made it to that scene in a hacked/speed playthrough where I warped to that part, her lines were spoken with much more indifference for her request.

 

I couldn't get a romance with Leliana going, so I went over to Morrigan and asked if she wasn't ever lonely in the big forest.. that made her go from "friendly" to "caring", even if the approval number was the same. So my guess is that you have to trigger a specific dialouge that "flirts", I think this is true with everyone. Like saying you approve of the elfs homosexual tendencies. I had also done her quest, so maybe that is necessary.

[Rosbjerg]

A question for Alanschu though. You said Morrigan has a different epilogue if you romance her, how do you get it? I had the ring and approval of 100% but I just get the standard epilogue. No thinking of the PC. Is it because I selected that I understood and was thankful for everything she had done? Not that I care or anything.

 

I don't remember the details. Though my decision was to agree with Morrigan's request. I imagine that if you don't, there's not much difference in dialogue. When I quickly made it to that scene in a hacked/speed playthrough where I warped to that part, her lines were spoken with much more indifference for her request.

 

I couldn't get a romance with Leliana going, so I went over to Morrigan and asked if she wasn't ever lonely in the big forest.. that made her go from "friendly" to "caring", even if the approval number was the same. So my guess is that you have to trigger a specific dialouge that "flirts", I think this is true with everyone. Like saying you approve of the elfs homosexual tendencies. I had also done her quest, so maybe that is necessary.

[Spider]

I like that there's only one thread.

 

I think there's room for two threads. A general discussion one like this, and Dragon Age:Tactics that the other MC suggested. Other than that, I think we're good.

[Monte Carlo]

I politely asked the mods for a tactics thread and they demurred, we are now stuck with a generic comment thread where we have to wade through all the other chat to get some actual advice.

[Oner]

Actually, now that I think of it, yeah, they're not even fleshed out enough to be compared to orcs. Tolkien orcs were in fact quite intelligent beings with their own dietary systems, military and disciplinary structure, political machinations and even factionism. For the darkspawn, what's the difference between a 'genlock' and a 'hurlock' (or whatever)? In fact what are they anyway? Who knows. They're not even 'focused killing machines' because they don't have any distinctive tactics, technology or whatever. They're just things that go around going bash bash.

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..

Only Darkspawn emissaries can speak.

What I don't understand is what the Darkspawn are doing while you cruise around country. Busy eating the dead? And what the hell does gen/hurlock mean anyway?

[Majek]

Does it have to mean anything?

 

And they're slowly marching to the capital. Sleep at day, move 5 feet at night. Besides what's the in game time frame of the whole game anyway? 2 weeks? a month?

 

And i can't decide who'll save

Connor 8 ( the redcliff boss)in the Fade Any suggestions? i'm thinking the blood mage, giving him a chance and then when he succeds OFF with his head! for the reward. :D

( i'm at work not at home right now, i can't try them all.)

[Oner]

I am hoping that the translator(s) who localized the game didn't just come up with random words.

[Humanoid]

I could have sworn that one of the NPCs referred to the event of the game's first battle as being "a year ago."

[deganawida]

Fascist!

 

Seriously, okay, I restarted my run recently on hard. I had not really gotten that far in my first run and I found out right away that it is harder than NWN but I wouldn't mind playing it on hard. Mostly, I just wanted to test some thing between games. For example, the difference in experience between normal and hard when facing the ogre, ect.

 

I got out into the wilds and, lo and behold, I had accidently decided to make it just a leeetle bit harder by not equiping my mage staff. I'm like, "why the hell does my pc keep running at things and beating on them with her fist?" Yep, no staff. Now, the staff bolts aren't exactly the battle ending beat sticks that some mages might think them to be, but they sure as hell work better than my mage's butter first smackdown of comedy. I'm going to finish the wilds and go buy back my staff before I do anything else. I've had two injuries so far and I'm over halfway done with the wilds. Not much worse so far, but I think the part after the battle will be much worse. We'll see.

 

I'm playing on hard, as well. It's required me to reload a few fights, most notably the first fight on the first floor of the Tower of Ishakal, the top floor of same, some of the random encounters, and the third group of bandits in Lothering. I ended up passing up on

Flemeth

for the time being, though I had no problem with

the high dragon at the sacred urn temple

. I think part of that is my party configuration at the time. Oh, and

I had an incredibly hard time taking the blood mage through the Fade to save Conner, as he had no items and his only heal was Drain Life.

I do lose someone in a fight at least 20% of the time, so I use the injury kits. This is very different from my first aborted play-through, when I tried normal difficulty. On normal difficulty, it felt as though I were steamrolling through everything. This doesn't mean that the game is too easy, just that normal was too easy for me.

 

All that said, I am restarting tonight. I unlocked Berserker and Champion last night, and I think that's the way I want to go with my sword'n'board warrior PC. Sword and shield really rocks in this game, doing good damage and having fantastic animations. Kudos to Bio for that.

 

I also feel compelled to state that thus far DA is better than BG2 to me. That's saying a lot, as BG2 is in my top five favorite games, and one which I played continuously for four years. Bio seems to deserve the praise which this game has received, and I for one am glad for this little shout-out to their older fans.

[HoonDing]

Isn't it a trope that the Hordes of Evil march in a tempo slow enough so that the good guys can amass an army just in time for an epic last stand?

 

Even Lord of the Rings takes two years.

[Monte Carlo]

^ Meh, the Darkspawn don't exactly strike me as the disciplined, Blitzkrieg types. More like maraud, torture, feed, sleep, probably fight among themselves for a bit. Go backwards, torture a squirrel... they're like zombies with a bit of army training.

 

Mages own this game, it's very mage-centric. My main character taunts, everyone attacks him, he uses the fortress shield ability (I am a one-warrior Roman army tortoise formation) and Morrigan dances around freezing, smashing, burning with glee. I am just the bait.

 

Still enjoying it, very good game. It could have been truly great, but...

[HoonDing]

Sending her into the pack, casting Blizzard and Force Field on herself works. Somehow enemies don't mind bashing into an impregnable shield while they're getting their asses frozen off.