Dragon Age: Origins is an epic fantasy role-playing game featuring a rich story, personality-driven characters, and tactical, bloody combat. It is considered a spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate series.
So I finally bought dragon age for like 30 bucks. I am like 4 hours in and lovin it.(only 46 more hours of main story not including side quests.) Do you guys got any useful tips? I still have to buy Shale though because the code was not included in the case.
What class are you playing? I have tons of advice I'll try and be brief.
-The party: What worked best for me was two warriors and two mages. One warrior to tank, shield speced, and another for damage. One mage for damage and the other for healing. Learn a couple of combinations for spells, they can be quite nifty. I use sleep then waking nightmare if I see a large group of enemies and am having a hard time. If you get both those spells off then the enemies will start fighting each other for a period of time. Find what works best for you though. A Rogue bard would be helpful instead of a dmg dealing mage, if you can find out how to make that work.
-Character placement: Learn about character placement. Use choke points like doors or any small opening. Set up a trap or a ward at the door, have your warriors stand at the door and then a third character to lure the enemies around the corner. The toggle for free-movement is under the character portraits.
-Cheat: Sometimes a battle is too hard. Others may not like this but exploits are my friend in DA:O. Sometimes if you run far enough from enemies then you will be put out of combat. This will mean that if you can get to your characters without entering combat again then they will revive. That's the only exploit I remember right now.
-Talk to your party members: This isn't of the utmost importance but sometimes you will get quests by talking to your party members. Also, they get permanent stat bonuses sometimes by being inspired by your leadership.
********************************** I played as a Mage during my first play-through. The majority of the time, my party normally consisted of one of the following combinations:
1) Wynne (whom I leveled as a healer) 2) Alistair or Shale -- (for tanking and sheer strength) 3) I alternated between Morrigan (whom I leveled as a huge damage dealer) and Leliana (rogue skills: stealth, picking locks, enemy detection)
As IzzyGraze mentioned, definitely spend the time to talk to your party members in order to earn the stat bonuses! Check in with any and all vendors you come across for weapons, armor upgrades, and "backpack" space (Don't forget to get rid of/sell your "junk' while you're there to make more room in your inventory).
Get the Warden's Keep DLC and finish it early on in the game. It will give you access to a place to keep your items and it also will allow you to get one of the best swords in the game early. After finishing it you'll come across a random encounter involving a meteor. Take the meteor to the blacksmith at the Warden's Keep for the sword.
Tips: If you're on the PC, mod Lelliana! You'll thank me Get return to Ostagar, it's a nice, emotional DLC. Also, Lelliana's song is a great DLC, but get that when you're pretty much done with this game. Stick with the game. It might slow down in the middle, but the end is just amazing. Use cone of cold (Morrigan) You can win every fight! If you're romancing Lelliana, and are having troubles, ask me! She's definitely worth all the trouble!
A lot of people saying don't play as warrior but I enjoyed playing my warrior the most :/. Probably just because I'm a loot whore. Most of the mage and rogue armour looks the same or just sucks. But all the classes are super fun to play with.
My advice: Do the dwarf area first (forgot the area) and get that out of the way.
Tips: If you're on the PC, mod Lelliana! You'll thank me Get return to Ostagar, it's a nice, emotional DLC. Also, Lelliana's song is a great DLC, but get that when you're pretty much done with this game. Stick with the game. It might slow down in the middle, but the end is just amazing. Use cone of cold (Morrigan) You can win every fight! If you're romancing Lelliana, and are having troubles, ask me! She's definitely worth all the trouble! "
Wow! Modded Leilana is so much hotter than regulary Leilana.
I have two warriors, a rogue, and a mage. I find that works well. One warrior is a dual wielding type, the other shield and sword. The rogue is more long range and I use the mage for that as well.
My advice? Have fun. Don't worry about what people have to say. If you want to mod it, mod it. I wouldn't put any game changing mods until you beat the game first.
Enjoy it. Don't rush through the game. Do the sidequests. Read the books. Look at the DLC that you don't have, if it interests you and you have the money: Buy it. However none of it is necessary for the game. Heck I was *given* the Digital Deluxe edition and I didn't use the golem for the first time through... I just liked my Party to much :)
All the origins are great: I think, even if you don't play the game multiple times, at least play through all the origins.
Before heading into a new mission (the main story missions), make seperate save files. That way you can just repeat those missions for their achievements/trophies.
One of the best things I did in Dragon Age was to make my rouges dual wielding monsters. The bow's just seem ineffective for anything above a normal enemy and stealth/stabby rouges require too much management. Give them two swords and make them kill people, they're weak but do crap loads of damage.
Also get an awesome tank/shield type character, they can just stand in the way of the big guys while the rest of your team deal with the smaller ones. Build up their shield skills and focus on their concentration.
My more general advice for the game is to be careful what you say to characters. I rushed one conversation option right at the end of the mages tower and lost an apparently brilliant character. Watch out for characters that might join your party, not all of them are obvious and you get one chance most of the time. Save often - there are still some bugs in the game that can lead to quest items going missing or stuff like that, the odd save can prevent much sadness.
Mages in this game are probably going to be the hardest enemies, with spells that could knockdown your entire party for a good few seconds.
My advice: Get a 2-handed warrior to tank, not shield. 2-handed warriors get to use indomitable which makes them immune to stun and knockdown, where as shield-warriors are only immune to knockdown. Also, with sweep, 2-handed warriors are much better at keep the baddies attention on himself and not the mages.
@PepsiPat: I'm about 20 hours in and I can say pause often and stratigize, you wont always need to do it but beating some of those tough bosses requires it.
She's the oldish female Mage you meet at the circle tower - she's also the only real dedicated healer in the game - you can kind of alter other party members to provide healing support in Wynnes absence, however that takes away one assault / crowd control character - and none of them are as effective as Wynne at healing.
From just after you meet her to various other points there are opportunities for her to leave your party - god damn i spent more time trying to appease that woman than morrigan - and i was trying to NAIL morrigan! haha!
HAha I haven't done the circle tower yet, did the two others, but I'll keep and eye out for her, and yes I too am trying to bang Morrigan, but we've made out a bunch so its cool
" HAha I haven't done the circle tower yet, did the two others, but I'll keep and eye out for her, and yes I too am trying to bang Morrigan, but we've made out a bunch so its cool "
Haha! she's totally worth it - that sounds weird in a virtually banging pixels way, however i really did enjoy Morrigan s character in that game, and the more 'intimate' your relation with her gets - the more entertaining the dialogue and her character development is totally worth the awkward robo-matronic porno scene xD
Just remember with Morrigan you can't pillage the mermaid hole if she's totally infatuated with you - try to keep it between 70-90 and be sure to do her unique quest for her mothers book - she doesn't want a full on relationship as such so 100 infatuation means she wont give up the goods - though if you find yourself go nail Leiane for a while, should lose you some brownie points with Morrigan.
" Mages in this game are probably going to be the hardest enemies, with spells that could knockdown your entire party for a good few seconds. My advice: Get a 2-handed warrior to tank, not shield. 2-handed warriors get to use indomitable which makes them immune to stun and knockdown, where as shield-warriors are only immune to knockdown. Also, with sweep, 2-handed warriors are much better at keep the baddies attention on himself and not the mages. "
This. Pretty much have your two-handed tank and a sword and shield wing-man. Then two mages and later on if you can handle it trade out your battle mage for whatever you feel works. I've found Oghren to work well to replace Morrigan when Wynne was doing enough damage and way awesome healing.
My biggest advice is USE TACTICS. It seems like an anal-renentive thing but the game becomes assloads easier once you hone in one specializations by giving characters instructions. I still pause a lot but that's only to instruct my main character or abilities that need oversight like area-of-effect spells.
Quicksave often because this game ain't easy early on. I had my character invest in herbalism so that I can make poutlices and potions when I get my hands on cheap ingredients. If you want some advice get to the elves earlier so that you have access to unlimited elfroot from the shopkeeper there. It's dirt-cheap and if you buy hella flasks you can make potions to keep you a long time. Also if you have 2 mages, make a lot of lyrium potions. I felt it hard when I rolled with both Morrigan and Wynne without lyrium potions in the Deep Roads.
" Play mage or rogue, way more versatile than warrior. "
Not really... in terms of versatility Mage > warrior = rogue. Mage can easily tank, heal, crowd control, or do damage. Warriors and rogues are limited to tanking and damage for the most part.
I personally recommend rogue, not because it's more versatile but because they don't give you a rogue you can really turn into a great killer, but they give you a couple warriors you can turn into killers with 26 agi and 3 talents out of the dual wield tree... your choice in mage is also more easily converted to greatness than the rogues.
I clocked around 59 hours and I recommend going all mages. Your tank? Arcane warrior. Your dps? AoE mages. Your heals? Well you know the deal. At the higher difficulties it is imperative.
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