Inquisition Hints, Tips & Tricks

I've seen lots of helpful posts scattered around the internet but it would help to have a thread where people can share them all in one place. Spoiler free, if possible.

• The war table missions depend on your system clock. Change the time to instantly complete missions. Can be repeated to farm gold.
• Most chests contain randomized loot. Quick save before opening a chest, then reload if you don't like what you get. Works in the hinterlands.
• You can fast travel from anywhere but not to anywhere. You don't need to go to a zone exit to travel.
• Turn in research items before selling 'valuables' to avoid selling useful items. Yellow for research, blue for valuables.
• Do not buy the Mystery Box.

More:

• Leave the hinterlands - Everyone
• Loot comes with upgrades sometimes. Remove them before selling. - Bane
• Agents count toward number of perks in each tree.
• If you leave at least 1 item in a chest, then exit and re-enter an area the contents will respawn (fixed and random loot).

@alistercat: im glad you said not to buy the mystery box because i was thinking about it.can you tell me what was in it?

@nasp: You get a war nug mount. Not worth the 10K, unless you have nothing worth buying.

Good tips. Yeah, the way the valuables (really they mean junk to sell) also includes important items you shouldn't sell is very weird. I wonder why they did that? They even have to put some text next to those items to remind you not to sell it, but if you quick sell all you can lose them and not notice. As a totally new DA player I almost lost the first one of those, luckily the buy-back menu exists. They couldn't add a new category or put them with another category? But at the same time it's super silly to see many/all rogue weapons include the text "Not Varric" which I guess is so you don't change out his crossbow? Why not just make it a magical cybernetic crossbow that has fused with his arm or something, lol. Can't believe they would waste interface space on that. And you have to buy/craft only specific unique Bianca upgrade runes just for a single weapon? What kind of merchant would stock those?! I hope this isn't the case for other unique weapons, if there are any later on. And holy crap the crafting system is insane, wow. I hope searching for that one specific type of cloth or whatever doesn't become too tedious.

If it sounds like I'm complaining, I'm not really. I've been having a ton of fun with DA, and I was not expecting to like it at all. I was worried it would be all tactical combat like Divinity but I'd say 95% of encounters so far I can easily handle in Diablo-style which keeps things moving. :)

Another tip that I saw at Kotaku: you can leave the Hinterlands after just doing a few things, and come back to it later, don't need to finish all the loads of stuff there right away.

if you suddenly cant change characters for some reason. save and load the game. i had that problem while handeling another char.
so i tried removing all the chars except my guy and then i wanted to add them again but my char then got stuck in place. only had that problem once but the save and reload fixed that out right away.

I didn't know the loot in chests was randomized. That explains a really crappy thing I had happen. Opened a chest, got blue Bow and some blue Rogue armor both better than I had on Sera. Then I fell through the world and had to roll back a save, got a shit belt out of the same chest. Uuuuggghhhh.

@alistercat: omg that would have been the worst purchase ive made in a game ever.glad i didnt buy it because i wouldnt pay 200 gold for that.

Leave the Hinterlands at around level 5-6. The game gets better the more you explore.

For non-healing potions, you will have to manually replenish them at the alchemist's hut in Haven or at any camp. Just a tip as I noticed the regular healing potions automatically replenished but the mana and the regeneration potions did not.

Pick up everything. Even common herbs such as Elfroot will run low pretty quickly. Which means more running to and from destinations and less using mounts. Mounts are better for trying to run up hills though.

If you use a two handed warrior in your party, as soon as you unlock the Forbidden Oasis you should go to the southern desert, east of the fade breach there is a hill with a hole covered in wooden planks. If you jump on it 4-5 times they break and inside you find a chest containing a 177 Dps 2H epic (purple) sword. No fights are required, so you can go get it anytime you want no matter your level (the sword itself requires a lvl 8 warrior to use it tho)

If you dont want to go to heaven every time before cleaning your bag just "sell all" then you go to the buy back page and get those research items back. They are at the bottom of the buy back list and easy to itentify so it will just take a few seconds.

My tip is dont bother with the requsition quests becouse they are just generic repeatables to get power wich you will get loads of anyway.

If you're facing a bear, taunt it with your tank and just keep running around letting your other party members take care of it. This no doubt applies to many powerful enemies when facing them on their own, though I noted bears as they'll likely prove to be tricky for some because of how early you encounter them, least on Hard mode.

Crowd control is key to survival on the harder difficulties. Try to get two to three crowd control of some sort as soon as possible e.g. warrior's shield smash, mage's ice blast, rogue's sleep powder.

A few tips I've noticed from playing:

Only the inquisitor can use potions other than the basic health potions. For that reason, have the inquisitor stick to health regeneration potions, and save the standard health potions for the rest of your party.

Mages tend to be a little more elemental with the damage they do, as opposed the other classes. For this reason, for every mage in your party, have a staff of each elemental type. Many enemies are especially vulnerable to certain elements. There are also certain "doors" that require a specific element to open, so be prepared.

Once you start picking up shards--which are found by using those skull telescope type things in each area--be sure to unlock the quest associated with them as soon as you can.

No, that's incorrect. They just designed it in a nebulous way. On the "equip potion" screen, click in the right upper corner and you can switch to your companions. There you can choose the setup you wish and then click on the various potions/tonics/bombs to create them for each character individually

@spaceinsomniac said:

I don't know if this is true for every kind of potion, but Solas has definitely been eating up my lyrium potions unprompted whenever I have them equipped.

I thought you couldn't issue basic attack commands to pary members, but that's only true when you hit pause to out orders. If you enter the tactical mode, then you can set up basic attack commands from there.

And this isn't a tip so much as it's a warning: the companion AI... let's just say it leaves something to be desired. I hadn't noticed until I fought the dragon in the Hinterlands and they were running into fire and standing still in dragon breath while downing potions. Yeesh.

- Press F to loot while near it and spacebar to loot all.

- Holding down R is much better than holding down your mouse buttons for auto-attacking

-For Dual Dagger Rogues, I highly recommend going down the left side of the alchemy tree and stopping at toxic cloud. The amount of additional damage you can do with poison is insane

Cool. Thanks for explaining.

I just recently figured this out myself. After you give your companions a "hold this position" order, they'll no longer be stupidly running into danger. When a fight starts, give your mages and archers "move to this point" orders, and then tell everyone in your party to hold their position. After that, you won't have to worry about your projectile focused classes running into battle and getting themselves killed.

It seems I can only issue the order to everyone, and later cancel it for melee fighters, though. Does anyone happen to know of a way to tell only the targeted character to hold their position?

Get a two handed warrior. Unlock Mighty Blow. Unlock Whirlwind. Spin to win.

@spaceinsomniac: In tactical mode, make a character move to a point and click there again to make them hold that position. It seems like entering tactical mode is basically like Origins pausing, while regular pausing is, I dunno, Mass Effect-lite.

And yeah, holding position is good for keeping them out of the fray, but you've still got to make sure they aren't standing around soaking in AoE damage or something while holding position. All I really want is them to be able to a) attack on sight and b) avoid AoE damage on their own.

I will say this though, that dragon fight was a ton of fun, even though it was a bit frustrating at times. Forced me to get acquainted with the tactical mode, and once I did the party control options didn't feel nearly as stripped down as it seemed when I'd started. Felt almost like I was playing Origins or something. Kinda annoying that it automatically zoomed out all the time, buuuuut you quickly get used to moving the camera in immediately.

Oh, and another tip: take a look at tactics! Unless you're really gonna micromanage to hell your companions, you might wanna set what skills they should and shouldn't use on their own, or set skills to fit particular encounters.

Weapons you find as loot sometimes come with upgrades. Even if you don't want to use the weapon itself you can still remove the upgrade from it and add it to a weapon you do want to use. This saves some materials, and could even net you an upgrade you don't have a schematic for.

I... was almost level 10 by the time I left the Hinterlands, haha. Only thing I have left to do there, is kill that dragon.

Well I sold all my valuables for 18 hours. I hate micromanaging so I never checked there.

Shit...

It's not a huge deal or anything, you've just gotten a little less research. All that does is make enemies a bit easier, it's not like you've missed any story content or anything.

I'm fairly early in, with 15 Power points and there are four missions that require power: one mission requires 8, while three of them require 4 points. Is it easy to acquire Power points? Should I use them for all the missions that are available on the war table or should I skip some in favour of others?

@probablytuna: You get so many. If you're doing all the side quests you can safely take all the missions that require power. There is a major story mission that takes 15 power, but you should have earned plenty by then.

Please no spoilers: did I miss an assassin type character? I just recruited the mages but I don't have any backstabby character in my roster. I specked Sera in archery since it seemed like her thing but I would like someone to give all those daggers to. Any subtle hint you guys could give me?

@pyrodactyl: play more

Unless you're playing with friendly fire. Goddamn my main character is hard to manage when most his special attacks can kill his allies on the front line.

@spaceinsomniac: Other party member can use the other potion types as well, you just need to switch to them (Up or Down on the D-pad using the controller, I think its either the Function keys number keys using the KB but I'm not sure) in the equip potions screen like you would in the inventory screen. There are certain types of potions that can only be used by specific classes though like the Lyrium potion is limited to mages for example.

By the way, I just wanted to point this out since some of you might not know this but you can modify Behavior and Tactics in the same Character Menu where you normally assign points to your skills (you use LB/RB on the controller to switch to them, forgot the KB equivalent).

Tactics

You can remap skills to different buttons/keys in the Tactics screen and also modify AI behavior that will Enable or Disable them to use certain skills or if there is a skill that you want them to spam or use often than you can choose Preferred. For example, my MC dual dagger rogue has Parry set to preferred so from time to time I actually see her pull off a successful parry on her own, while my Cassandra has set Shield Wall as preferred and she actually uses the skill from time to time as if she's using it as a parry to block damage which was really fucking cool.

Behavior

The Behavior screen functions similarly to the AI behavior menu in the Origins but is overly simplified. You can modify the threshold of when a member stops using skills when mana/stamina drops below a certain percentage, at what health threshold do they start drinking health potions (e.g. < 30%, 50%, or 80%), when to stop drinking potions when there are only X number of potions left, and lastly, who they target for attacking or which member would they defend.

For the last behavior, by default it is set to "Controlled Character", meaning when not in tactical mode your AI companions would target whatever enemy the current party member you are controlling is currently engaging. The menu choices gives you other characters (or themselves) as options so for example, you can set Varric's Targeting Behavior to Cassandra so the AI controlled Varric will by default defend Cassandra from anybody who is currently attacking her unless you override his behavior in Tactical Mode.

Personally, I set their behavior to them selves (e.g. Varric's targeting behavior is set to Varric), which means that I can set up other characters to hold position or attack certain enemies or position Cassandra to use War Cry in an area where the enemies are most concentrated in Tactical mode and they won't deviate when I get out of Tactical mode to control my main character and switch their targets to whoever I was currently engaging with.

Its weird saying this but reading the manual (or the in-game tutorials in the codex) actually helps specifically, pages 12 - 14 contains the descriptions for the pictures contained in the Dialogue Wheel. The pictures themselves are pretty self explanatory but its nice to be able to read descriptions for them nonetheless.

@alistercat: Good to know, cheers.

As much as I enjoyed having to properly aim AoE attacks in earlier Dragon Age games, I had to turn friendly fire back off here. Solas kept murdering me with his arc lightning. I'd be at full health in the middle of backstabbing dudes and all of the sudden, dead.

@conmulligan: You can modify his behavior in regards to potion use...wait, maybe its just the health potions but I think it applies to special potions, too.

@gkhan: Ah good. Playing on normal and doing most of the sidequests, the game is easy enough as it is.

Thank you.

Hard is probably the ideal in terms of the right amount of challenge. Tactical mode is a must and at my level (MC:6, others 5), I currently can't handle a Rift that has 3 Despair Demons and 2 Greater Terrors. 2 Lesser Terrors were already a handful at early levels (apparently they're unaffected by taunt since they try to go for Varric and Solas EVERY FUCKING TIME) but TWO Greater Terrors, at my level? Fuuuuuuck that.

@gaspower: You should probably check their level. No way they're at lvl 5-6 like the enemies you should be fighting right now. Hard is already pretty challenging vs enemies at your lvl, don't make it impossible for yourself, especially if like me you're playing with friendly fire

@gaspower: There's one rift not too far East from the horse farm in the Hinterlands where the level is way higher than everything else. I think I had to come back around level 10 or 11 to finally seal it.

Since you want me to be subtle: don't worry about it. It'll probably work out. You can keep Sera in archery, no need to respec.

@pyrodactyl: Oh yeah I know it was either level 8-12 (the terror's were around 12 I think)...something around that range so I was completely outmatched. I was able to handle 2 Despairs and 1 Greater Terror but it was in the next wave when they came out with the numbers that I described in my post. I knew I was going to get wiped the moment the first Terror used that AOE ability and took out about 1/4 or more of life so I high tailed out of there. Only my rogue was able to make it out successfully. (It's the rift that is in the river in the Hinterlands, close to the horse master's farm).

I can handle level 8 enemies just fine as long as I keep Cassandra alive and I don't mess up my positioning. It's kind of a neat touch where a higher ranked enemy type would also reflect their level and not that there is a level 12 the lower tier/ranked demon.

I don't think I'll ever mess with friendly fire. Are you playing it on Hard with FF on? That's nuts.

@alkusanagi: Yeeeeeep, that's the one.

I have a question for you guys farther in. What does "agent acquired" do exactly? I'm still in the hither lands for the most part and a few quests had that pop up. Does that come into play later or does it just add more influence or what!? There's so much to this game and I really like it!!

@sackmanjones: Agents are added under the Inquisition perks. They mostly count for reducing cooldowns for your advisors, but they also count as number of points in that tree (for the perks that require you to invest a certain number of points to unlock the more advanced perks).

@alistercat: ok cool. There are just so many systems and numbers in the game that it's a bit overwhelming to nail them all down.

@sackmanjones: It's not your fault, they don't explain it at all. At least, I didn't find it. Finding the agents and their requirements feels like luck as well.

Prolly been said, but invest Inq. perks in the second option(awareness or something like that)in war map and get the 'deft hands' skill so you can unlock some doors for certain quests like the Grey Warden's. Needs 4 invested before you can unlock it btw.

Can confirm. Although I got that same purple 2H greater sword w/182 dps. Helpful. TY.

Big big tip... When you meet Hawke in game do not customize his appearance if you choose to change your characters voice from the default setting. If you did change it from default and you customize what Hawke looks like (to make him look like your version) it will change the voice of your inquisitor which is just a tiny bit off putting and annoying.

That's what I did, but if you do the one that's called Battle Training, or whatever, that unlocks additional tiers of your ultimate abilities. Though those master locks do tend to hide some good loot, good gear is so easy to find/craft, it's probably better to go the other way. Still, do what you feel!