Dragon Age Thread(Spoilers)

[Agraza]

Well Morrowind and Oblivion both suffer from being hit with an ugly stick for every day of development. The world is anywhere from decent to great, but the characters that you constantly have close-ups with in your many conversations are these pouchy gerbil people. They did a much better job with characters, quest direction, and DLCs in Fallout 3.

Bioware has its faults too, and the hallway->room->hallway nature of many of DA:O's dungeons is one of them. It's supposed to be a game of pros/cons offering choices. They do this well with dialogue creating different ways to solve a problem. The traps/locks are also OK in opening and closing opportunities based on your party. But then they give you this straightforward approach to your objective when you step into a dungeon or even someone's house. I mean, look at the magi tower. Who doesn't put the stairs going down right next to the stairs going up? WHO DOES NOT DO THAT? These magi have to walk a retarded 50-100 yards to get to the next set of stairs when going up and down.

The only way to apologize for it is the cinematic build-up that they try to convey with the linear dungeons. The dead trenches is a great dungeon despite being a well concealed hallway. You can never grapple/jump/swing across the broken bridge that occupies the center of it to skip 70% of the content. That isn't very plausible to me. Don't you bring rope and shit in your epic adventures?

On the issue of conversation choices, which are usually a great big W:
There really needs to be about a dozen "shut the FUCK up!" and "I'm working them for my own ends you shortsighted cunt." persuasion/intimidation responses to Morrigan's disapproval of your activities throughout the game. I'm not even talking about the side-quests. I imagine you could find that dozen just for when she interrupts your progressing the main story. I mean really? We'll just let the evil horde take over the world mmmkay? That work for you sweetie? That (attack) option you see occasionally? I want that for her. It drops my approval and sends her back to camp when I use it to backhand her.

tl;dr Dungeons are, sadly, obstacle courses of inevitability and they pale in comparison to the rest of the game's plethora of options. At the very least the locked door should offer me a shortcut rather than a pantry with some health potions in it.

[Twobit Whore]

The hallway approach actually seems to fit the roots of the genre. The older classic cRPGs had the same design.. which themselves took after PnP. You didn't have many adventures in wide open worlds. It's not a sim. You didn't tell your DM that you wanted to walk that way -> for 7 days and see what you find.

It's not a 'fault' per se. It's just a different design from Bethesda/Gothic/etc. games.

I'd say that DA:O gives a pretty good representation of classic RPG gameplay within the limits of having a story to complete at the same time.

[Agraza]

I see that, and I would have to agree that fault is too strong a word. I would still prefer their growing array of options to apply better to dungeon crawls. I love Bioware's storytelling, and I wouldn't want it to suffer. It's why I actually buy their shit.

[Adam12]

I saved the dwarves for last, and holy fucking shit. The Deep Road part goes from typical cavern crawl into something out of Dead Space in what seems like one turn. Impressive atmosphere, especially with that dwarf bitch chanting as you go along. Easily my favorite dungeon so far.

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Jayblah

I feel like my Duelist/Assassin is under-performing. I have 36 Dexterity, and approx. 40 Strength (I can't recall the precise value). I wield two longswords, have all 4 Dual-Wield talents, including Mastery, keep Momentum running, and manually position the character to flank mobs. My backstab damage is around 44. I hear others hear claiming that they can instagib a caster out of stealth with a Flurry popped, but that doesn't seem to be the case for me.

What am I doing wrong?

What level?

My duelist/assassin is pretty damn strong.
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Same talents. Damage sounds about the same. Have to stun a mage out of stealth, or they will almost always stun her, and get away. But as long as a differant npc doesn't stun her, the stunned mage won't live. Backstab, flurry, dual weapon sweep, or ww will all kill it.
I do run with frost weapon almost all the time

I really recommend, a grandmaster/master paralyze rune on your rogues main hand weapon. That combined with deathroot poison stun, and coup de grace is pretty hardcore as it is. And of course add some frost grenades as needed.


The loading tips screen mentions its, but its easily overlooked. Elec damage drains mana btw.

[Pyros]

I said I killed mages in a flurry, but it does depend on the mages, and I was talking of white mages not yellows or higher. That said, on a lot of mages, they start casting a random shit spell when you engage the fight, which means they don't turn around, you can flurry+backstab, at lvl 12 I flurry for about 100total dmg, with a 30ish backstab after, that's enough to take out a mage on hard mode. Assuming they turn around, Flurry will only land a couple of hits as backstabs, so you have to follow up with a quick dirty fighting and finish them, but that only takes seconds.

Momentum doesn't increase your damage directly, only your attack speed, but if you flurry out of stealth it's not important, the important talents are the assassin stuff and the early DW stuff. I do use Telekinetic weapons though, it's a rather huge dmg buff. Ice/Fire weapons work too, I just like telekinetic because I don't have to switch it on frost resistant mobs or shit like that, and it seems to do good dmg on everything.

44backstab dmg sounds pretty low considering your lvl(I assume you're pretty high lvl with 36dex and 40str), since I backstab for 34-42 currently, with the warden sword I stole from alistair(the one you get automatically after the tower of ostagar) and the DLC offhand dagger thingie, and with much lower stats. It might be that you play on Nightmare, or it's simply the telekinetic buff.

[Man0warr]

That part was freaky as hell when she starts sing songing that rhyme before you even get to her, I thought it was my character going crazy and saying it.

[Pyros]

Originally Posted by Adam12

I saved the dwarves for last, and holy fucking shit. The Deep Road part goes from typical cavern crawl into something out of Dead Space in what seems like one turn. Impressive atmosphere, especially with that dwarf bitch chanting as you go along. Easily my favorite dungeon so far.

It's a bit long, the caves leading to that part are quite huge, it's somewhat split in 2 if you do like the minor quests first then go back when you have to get Branka, but still it's huge. That said, I liked the Dead Legion stuff, and really loved the little crazy song too. The boss fights were a bit on the easy side, but that's ok since the fight with Jarvia before was pretty insane. I like the dwarf and mage tower fade stuff the most, I liked the elves a bit but think they could have done more stuff with the werewolves, and disliked the whole castle dracula redcliffe part, but did like the holy grail follow up stuff.

[Adam12]

Yeah, I didn't split it in two but I had to go do RL shit after the Crossing, so I didn't do it all in one sitting. I can definitely see how it would seem a bit too long if you did it all at once. I still actually haven't completed the arc, I'm about halfway through the traps right now.

I liked the Mage's Tower Fade part, to a point, but it seemed a little too drawn out to me. I don't mind puzzles, but after awhile it felt like I was playing a different game.

@Man0warr: Haha, same here. I panned the camera back on my party to see if someone was going crazy.

[Adam12]

What basic spec are you using for your Rogue? Are you going STR to use swords or sticking with Dex/Cunning?

[Pyros]

Currently I've been doing 1/1/1 until 24str, at which point I did the mage tower which gives 2more, I wanted 26 for erm...something, forgot what, anyway stopped at 26 for now, might go higher though unsure yet. I've been doing 2dex/1cun since then, until I reach 42agi, but after that I really don't know, the rogue mechanics are so complicated, because cunning is used instead of str for some stuff if you have lethality, but it doesn't entirely replace str since you only get the bonus dmg out of it(so no attack and no increase to physical checks), and you still need str to use the higher level weapons, while daggers offer more chance to proc poisons... It's a real mess, so I've been going random, I don't think I can gimp my char anyway, all 3 stats are useful.

[Menion]

For those of you playing an Arcane Warrior can you post Screens of your entire spec?

[Caliane]

Originally Posted by Pyros

Currently I've been doing 1/1/1 until 24str, at which point I did the mage tower which gives 2more, I wanted 26 for erm...something, forgot what, anyway stopped at 26 for now, might go higher though unsure yet. I've been doing 2dex/1cun since then, until I reach 42agi, but after that I really don't know, the rogue mechanics are so complicated, because cunning is used instead of str for some stuff if you have lethality, but it doesn't entirely replace str since you only get the bonus dmg out of it(so no attack and no increase to physical checks), and you still need str to use the higher level weapons, while daggers offer more chance to proc poisons... It's a real mess, so I've been going random, I don't think I can gimp my char anyway, all 3 stats are useful.

Don't forget willpower to fuel your actives!
I'm actually doing 1/1/1 dex/will/cunning now that I have enough str for the highest swords.
Definitely a bit of a mess and hard to really plan out well.

[Pyros]

Yeah fuck willpower, I burst everything then just turn on momentum and I'm almost positive I do more dmg autoattacking with momentum than spamming skills(or weaving them).

[Aamina]

Bought it cause this thread made it sound awesome. Well above recommended specs. Get "DA:O has encountered an error and needs to close..." as soon as it launches. Did all the normal update drivers, downgrade drivers, reinstall horse crap. Tech support forums were useless. Taking it back today, and I am a sad panda.