Dragon age discussion

[Gorgon]

I wish there was a way to do over your mage build. If I picked just the lowest level ranged spells from 3 or 4 groups I would be able to spam damage to a single target, then advance a single discipline all the way. The cool down periods are murder.

Edited December 5, 2009 by Gorgon

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

... so it plays like an MMO? Even the spells?

[HoonDing]

Three mages with Fireball, Cone of Cold & Force Field could conquer all of Thedas.

[Gromnir]

Three mages with Fireball, Cone of Cold & Force Field could conquer all of Thedas.

 

am not sure why the gray wardens or wizards were needed to defend thedas. an army of 500 thugs from the back alleys of denerim could easily conquer the world. a dozen o' those guys gave Gromnir all we could handle on a couple o' occasions. 500 such well-armed ruffians would have little difficulty quelling a blight by tuesday, and then conquering the world by friday.

 

the deep roads did begin to wear on Gromnir... were more an exercise in endurance than anything else. how many similar battles does it take before such stuff becomes tedious rather than fun? 'course, keep in mind that we didn't much care for the diablo games neither... precisely 'cause they became repetitive and mechanical exercises. given the popularity o' such games, obviously our personal tolerance for such stuff is far lower than the average gamer's.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Tigranes]

The nightmare playthrough rolls over the halfway mark with a bug-ridden Shale being coaxed through Forest, Redcliffe and Circle Tower. At level 12-13 now and Leliana is once again jumping forward as the big damage dealer, 100+ isn't hard to see. Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold are surely the three best spells...

[Volourn]

"Three mages with Fireball, Cone of Cold & Force Field could conquer all of Thedas."

 

Three mages with x spell could conquer all of Forgotten Realms.

 

Three people wearing super power suits could conquer all Fallout Lands.

 

*shrug*

 

 

"Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold are surely the three best spells..."

 

Dunno.

 

Mass Paralysis is awesome.The spells thatw eaken boss' resistances are also awesome. Some of the different buff spells are fantastic. The various heal spells are life savers. Fireball is awesome.

 

My current run through I don't have any of those three spells, and am doing pretty darn good.

[Tigranes]

Mass Paralysis is awesome.

 

I tried it, and I found the Glyph line to be superior. See, for the Paralysis line, in the end you only use Mass Par, a useful spell, and Miasma, a decent spell. With Glyphs, the Repulsion/Warding combo is the same as Mass Par (in fact, I suspect it's harder to save), though it takes a bit longer and gets allies, too. But you also get Glyph of Neutralisation which is great at taking any spellcasting boss out of the game, e.g. Revenants. I can see how some people might prefer the ease-of-use Mass Par provides, though.

 

Anyway, yeah, I think in general there are a lot of spells that are useful and different, and that means a lot of different mage builds can do a lot of fun diverse things. There are a few spells which are definitely useless and a few trees not worth taking (or taking far), and if Bio patched them up mages would be even more fun, but things aren't bad way they are.

[Gorgon]

I wound up with the necromancy AOE spell, I don't remember it's name. Low damage huge aoe friendly fire is inevitable. trying to get to chain lightning now simply because shooting sith forks out of your hands looks cool, but leveling is slow now and all the steps along the lightening tree are more or less a write off.

 

The walking bomb spells are pretty good though, and the mana siphon from necromancy is a great booster after a fight.

 

Overall I'm overwhelmed, the only party member doing any consistent damage is Mortigan. Started the Redcliff battle 4 times, got wiped out 4 times. Don't have enough mana potions for a prolonged fight.

 

I'm thinking about restarting (again) to get my build right. Unfortunately no cheats that will let me do that.

[Oner]

Trying to get to chain lightning now simply because shooting sith forks out of your hands looks cool, but leveling is slow now and all the steps along the lightening tree are more or less a write off.

Don't do it! I hear chain lightning sucks, big time.

[Monte Carlo]

Overall I'm overwhelmed, the only party member doing any consistent damage is Mortigan. Started the Redcliff battle 4 times, got wiped out 4 times. Don't have enough mana potions for a prolonged fight.

 

There's a trick to Redcliffe, I used traps, archery and a healthy stock of potions.

 

Hey, let's talk about it in The Tactics Thread!

[Meshugger]

So, have i messed up my encounter with

Flemeth? (Morrigan's sidequest)

I have Wynne with me, but alas, i have no frost-spells in her spellbook. I have no equipment that guards against fire for that matter. My party is more or less wiped out within 30 seconds. Should i just save this for later?

 

My party:

 

- Me, a lvl 9 rogue.

- Sten

- Alistair

- Wynne.

 

Difficulty: Normal.

Edited December 6, 2009 by Meshugger

[Tigranes]

I wound up with the necromancy AOE spell, I don't remember it's name. Low damage huge aoe friendly fire is inevitable. trying to get to chain lightning now simply because shooting sith forks out of your hands looks cool, but leveling is slow now and all the steps along the lightening tree are more or less a write off.

 

The walking bomb spells are pretty good though, and the mana siphon from necromancy is a great booster after a fight.

 

Overall I'm overwhelmed, the only party member doing any consistent damage is Mortigan. Started the Redcliff battle 4 times, got wiped out 4 times. Don't have enough mana potions for a prolonged fight.

 

I'm thinking about restarting (again) to get my build right. Unfortunately no cheats that will let me do that.

 

You're picking decent spells but none of the really useful spells, or spells that tend to be favoured by players who've tried a few. Which is fine if you just want to fool around, but if you're getting screwed and want to start again...

 

In Primal, Lightning is easily the weakest. Blizzard is like Tempest but freezes people; Cone of Cold can prepare enemies for instant shattering; the first ice spell is also good at low levels to get the mage out of trouble. Fire line + Grease is a good combo as well if you like destroying things from range. Earth is good combination with Ice for obvious shattering stuff, but won't do much damage on its own. No real reason to go Lightning IMO.

 

Go for the Mass Paralysis line, the Glyphs line or the Force Field / Crushing Prison line if you find you are taking too much damage too fast, as they will let you disable enemies and exercise some crowd control. If you find your vulnerable party members (mages, etc) are getting targeted and killed too easily, make your warriors learn Taunt, make them use it, and then use Force Field on them so the enemies are attacking someone who can't take damage.

 

The first healing spell is a must for any mage, all mages.

 

Walking bomb is pretty nice but requires careful maneuvring. Again, it works best with some form of paralysis spell that can hold the enemies in one place while you burst the bombs.

[Monte Carlo]

So, have i messed up my encounter with

Flemeth? (Morrigan's sidequest)

I have Wynne with me, but alas, i have no frost-spells in her spellbook. I have no equipment that guards against fire for that matter. My party is more or less wiped out within 30 seconds. Should i just save this for later?

 

Difficulty: Normal.

 

My advice is to leave it until you are level 12 or so at least. Morrigan won't bug you about it for a while anyway. I've played that battle on Easy, Normal and Hard, always with Wynne and her spell selection isn't really optimal for the challenge. In fact, as long as you don't go completely crazy I see no shame in Re-Speccing Wynne and giving her at least one elemental damage spell tree.

[Enoch]

I regretted taking the whole Paralysis line with my Mage. I found the Sleep line to be more useful, overall. Both have useless tier-1 spells and near-identical tier-2 spells (Horror is shorter range, but gets the edge because of its spell combo with Sleep). Mass Paralysis is nice, but it has a casting time, and it attacks an enemy's physical resistance. Sleep does much the same thing (enemies wake up when you hit them, but you should be concentrating fire, anyway), but it fires off quickly, has a larger area of effect, and attacks mental resistance, which is lower for most of the standard mobs you face. Walking nightmare is an OK spell, but you can get away with stopping at Sleep-- it sets enemies to treat each other as hostile, but half of them usually just keep going at your people (is threat level the reason?), and the duration isn't long enough for the in-fighting to do serious damage.

 

The Glyphs line is also nice, but I think that Sleep + Force Field + Crushing Prison + Cone of Cold = all the crowd control you need. Focus the rest of your spells on ones that are effective in boss fights. (Hexes!)

Edited December 6, 2009 by Enoch

[Meshugger]

So, have i messed up my encounter with

Flemeth? (Morrigan's sidequest)

I have Wynne with me, but alas, i have no frost-spells in her spellbook. I have no equipment that guards against fire for that matter. My party is more or less wiped out within 30 seconds. Should i just save this for later?

 

Difficulty: Normal.

 

My advice is to leave it until you are level 12 or so at least. Morrigan won't bug you about it for a while anyway. I've played that battle on Easy, Normal and Hard, always with Wynne and her spell selection isn't really optimal for the challenge. In fact, as long as you don't go completely crazy I see no shame in Re-Speccing Wynne and giving her at least one elemental damage spell tree.

 

Thanks, i was under the impression that the mission was really urgent.

[Enoch]

Last night I earned the "Sidetracked" achievement--

killing Gaxxkang

was the quest that put me over the top, which I thought that was an amusing coincidence. Then I talked to Arl Eamon and triggered the "go to Denerim for the Landsmeet" stage of the game.

[Monte Carlo]

^ Yeah, I haven't got that one yet although my rogue has just met some dude who keeps offering me thief missions in Denerim... ha ha ha. That might push me over the edge into the 75% territory.

[Gromnir]

"There's a trick to Redcliffe, I used traps, archery and a healthy stock of potions."

 

the trick to redcliffe is meta-knowledge. chances are you won't have a healthy stock of potions if you does redcliffe first. the first village you visit post ostagar does not have merchants that sell much lyrium or lyrium potions. even your camp merchant doesn't sell much in the way o' lyrium or lyrium potions... and his prices suck. so why would the player without foreknowledge blow virtual his entire cash reserves on lyrium potions before going to redcliffe? surely the developers wouldn't put you in a position where you needed a big potion reserve but could not buy such supplies at redcliffe, no? is likely if you play straight, you walk into redcliffe with a bare handful of lyrium potions. after all, how would a typical player know that they can go to mages tower and buy unlimited lyrium before doing redcliffe?

 

the "trick" is also making sure that if you is not playing a mage, that you have morrigan built proper. imagine trying redcliffe with a level 7 or 8 morrigan sans cone o' cold or any crowd control spell. low level archery is poor w/o the benefit of area effect spells that slow or damage oncoming melee combatants.

 

traps would again require a certain amount o' meta-knowledge to make proper use of during the night battle. in the castle, if you is patient, they is no doubt very effective.

 

as for the easily side-tracked achievement, Gromnir also got that one very late in game. we didn't do the rogue missions or the crow stuff... and there were a couple o' potion related blackstone irregulars and circle of friends quests we didn't do, but is difficult to imagine that we missed near 1/4 of the optional side-quests.... and Gromnir ended up a mere 500 points from level 23 at the end of game.

 

HA! Good Fun!

Edited December 6, 2009 by Gromnir

[Monte Carlo]

^ Sure, that is meta-gaming.

 

First time I did it, like every other schmuck I had about ten minor health potions and a half dozen lyrium. My sword & shield fighter was pretty good, I had the walking panzer shield ability and my vanilla Morrigan had the cone of cold type spell. I also had a not every well armoured Sten (splintmail straight outta the cage) and Imoen Chick with a bow and a dagger.

 

Bejaysus it was tough, I think I did three or four re-loads. As I posted before the initial battle was OK, but after that I had to beat it by kiting the zombies up the hill in groups to engage with the knights at the top. Did I mention I killed the dwarf in a fit of pique who in subsequent battles is very useful? Anyhow, I was last man standing.

 

I'm also the half-wit who not long after took on the revenant in the courtyard without figuring out how to let the knights in. Again, one last man standing at about 3hp.

 

Now I can do it on hard and hardly take any damage!

 

Cheers

MC

[Gorth]

I need two mods for this game... one that removes all head wear gfx and one that removes the obnoxious guy with the big yellow "BUY ME!" sign (I know, it's only a big exclamation neon sign but still) over his head in my camp

[Monte Carlo]

^ Both of those are available at either the DA social site or DA Nexus.

[Tigranes]

Got 'sidetracked' the first playthrough.

 

Gorth, I currently use this no helmet mod and it works fine. Ignore all the gibberish about using the cloak slot because it can end up being messy - just keep equipping your helmets normally, they''ll show on inventory paperdolls but never in-game.

 

And yes, most players will go to Redcliffe first in their first game without a decent potion stock and with no real crowd control, and still not quite used to the game to boot, because that's what the game will encourage you to do. Then you are awed by the difficulty of the game, until you realise it was just you being shortchanged. I'm not sure if it was deliberate...

[Monte Carlo]

Now I know better, and realise that the game sort of scales to level, I go:

 

* Shale

 

* Warden's Keep

 

* Mage Tower

 

* Redcliffe

 

Yes, I know my twinky DLC gives me all sorts of Gucci kit and an XP boost. Bite me.

[HoonDing]

Doing Orzammar early until you get Oghren, and then head out instead of doing the Deep Roads works fine too. Otherwise you're missing out on much of Oghren banter & quest input.

 

Besides, Oghren > Sten.

Edited December 6, 2009 by virumor

[Monte Carlo]

^ I was wondering about Oghren, is his dialogue fun?

 

Personally I find Sten the best NPC in the game, but that's just me.