Dragon Age Origins discussion...

Thats what I had hoped for. Sounds about like how I played KOTOR. Not that it was the best or most efficient way, but it worked fine then.

I expect the boss battles to pause, as you said they are supposed to be difficult, thats the point. What fun is a boss if you steamroll them?
 
Parmenides said:
Even better... skip the locks... you don't find anything groundbreak. Only extra junk to sell.

The best thing is to just use the lockbashing mod. Totally worthwhile after the first playthrough.
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Well, if I remember, there is this one thing locked away in a chest for a side quest. (I don't want to give too much away.) That's the only time I remember lock picking ever being really useful.
 
Lockpicking is worth XP...pick every chest you come across, disarm every trap, etc...

Anyway, I thought I'd add my two cents in about this game.

I am not generally a fan of western PC RPGs. I've always been more of a fan of JRPGs (though maybe I am outgrowing that lately.) I beat Baldur's Gate II but not the expansion. I never managed to make it all the way through Icewind Dale I or II. I bought Neverwinter Nights but never beat it. Etc., etc. I beat KotOR but it never really gripped me as an awesome game. That's just how it was for me. In particular, the storytelling never grabbed me before in their games...

That said...I bought Dragon Age on sale (yay Steam) and have put 32 hours into it so far. I'm loving it. I'm not sure what Bioware did that made it different from their other games for me, but they did something, because I'm totally engrossed in the game. My only complaint is that for the first bit of the game, combat was a chore, simply because I hadn't leveled enough to get a lot of abilities to use in fights.

The questing in the forest that led to the ruins...well, when I went in there and had to make some tough choices, I really was amazed at the game. I went in thinking I knew what path I was going to take...and then going through the dialog scenes, I ended up making a drastically different one. That's a first for me, in any game, I think.
 
Daggah said:
Lockpicking is worth XP...pick every chest you come across, disarm every trap, etc...
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Yup, you'll miss out on a fair bit of XP if you don't pick the locks and disarm traps. There are a good number of 50xp chests in the game, which is quite a lot considering what you get for taking down a boss. I found Leliana very useful, especially once I set her down the ranger path as well. Her little chuckle was kinda sexy too, although her banter was probably the least entertaining.

*SPOILER TEXT*
Anyone else get a bugged final area? Alistair decapitated Loghain at the culmination of the landsmeet ruckus, yet he came up as a candidate to lead the army at Denerim. He also had something to say when every party member goes through their "so this is it" dialogue, although only as a disembodied voice. To me that is a massive oversight - how did this make it through initial QA and two frickin' patches? I wonder if a similar thing occurs if you choose to take the other side and it is Alistair who gets the chop?
 
ynnek888 said:
Well, if I remember, there is this one thing locked away in a chest for a side quest. (I don't want to give too much away.) That's the only time I remember lock picking ever being really useful.
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Yeah, lots of side quest items in chests.

Anyone else get a bugged final area?
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Chosen a fair few endings, including that one, and haven't had it bug out on me yet. Curious though, sounds like a save variable got missed.
 
ROFLMAO, the party banter is getting hilarious.

(The below may contain minor spoilers)

At one point, in Orzammar, Leliana commented that maybe she'd come back and work for the royal throne as a bard...saying she could do lots of stuff here, like singing, or grabbing items from the top shelf for the king....LMAO.

Then, later on, Alistair asked Wynne to mend his shirt for him because she's, you know, grandmotherly.

This game is amazing.
 
Oh yeah, forgot about the experience from lockpicking. Though it pales in comparison to the experience you can get with the elfroot supplies thing. I just have to say that lockbashing is really enjoyable too.

btw, with spoiler font color, could you tell me the quest where lockpicking is useful? I can think of only one where lockpicking is an option, alongside other alternative methods of pickpocketing or persuasion to get the same desired results.
 
I did every side quest, killed every possible enemy (within reason...sometimes your decisions add some and remove some), and opened every lock and I was at level 22 at the end. I think the game pretty much expects you to turn in a bunch of stuff like Elfroots to reach level 25. Either that or they were just leaving some room for future DLC. Even if I missed some stuff along the way, there's pretty much no way I missed 3 levels worth.

I know in my 2nd playthough I'll definitely do some things differently. I think one of the main ones is to get Wynne, and Oghren MUCH earlier in the game. The later you get them, the more likely the CPU has given them a bunch of skills that I would've done very differently.

Plus, I would've gotten sleep/paralyze/waking nightmare much faster, too. The game was insanely hard for me until I realized exactly how virtually game-breaking those can be.
 
Daggah said:
ROFLMAO, the party banter is getting hilarious.

(The below may contain minor spoilers)

At one point, in Orzammar, Leliana commented that maybe she'd come back and work for the royal throne as a bard...saying she could do lots of stuff here, like singing, or grabbing items from the top shelf for the king....LMAO.

Then, later on, Alistair asked Wynne to mend his shirt for him because she's, you know, grandmotherly.

This game is amazing.
Click to expand...

Try getting Sten in your party. His comments are amazing. For me, he is best NPC out there - "Why did you come to Ferelden? - To answer the question". "What you were doing in that cage? - Sitting" Or listen to his banter with Morrigan about qunari mating rituals, they are great too.

On the side note - can't get the "set foot in every area of the game" achievement - done all the sidequests/board quests and still end up with like 80-90% of the game area visited
 
MorgothPl said:
On the side note - can't get the "set foot in every area of the game" achievement - done all the sidequests/board quests and still end up with like 80-90% of the game area visited
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Same I think at 93% with over 80 hours into it and on my second playthrough.
 
I wonder if the different storylines plays into the "set foot in every area of the game" achievement? I got it...but I'm splitting achievements with my wife since we're both playing under my login.
For me it popped up right as I entered the final battle.
I was a noble human and she was a city elf (I think). I wonder if that's the trick?
 
Which of the origins you guys find best? For me the best is dwarf commoner, seconded by city elf. Rest are a bit worse, though have their bright spots (like Dalish choosing to kill the humans :p) - was only pissed off by my dwarf noble origin, when (before 1.01b patch) my special collection items got stripped from inventory

And if the party members are concerned (taking only coolness factor, not usefulness) then
for me it goes - Sten, Morrigan, Shale, Oghren, Zevran, Leliana, Wynne, Dog, Alistair. The last one I find even more irritating then sir Anomen or Aerie from BG2 :) He is such emo grey warden, whining all the time. I guess he is best described by Morrigan. "We have a dog now. And Alistair is still stupidiest person in the party" :)

(and Domingo - get yourself the untrainer mod - www.dragonagenexus.com. It really helps you to make the party fighting as you want)
 
Human Mage
Dwarf Noble (so far, that's the best order to play I've found).
Dalish elf sucked balls - seemed like a joke in comparison to the mage/dwarf noble ones. :(
 
I was wondering if anyone else is having this issue - DA (1.02) kept crashing about every 2 hours. I couldn't even ctrl+alt+del, had to do a hard reset. Not the end of the world since I quicksaved frequently but still annoying. After a bit of googling, I found a suggestion to try changing the processor affinity to 4,5,6,7. This is for i7. I was able to play for about 3 hours last night without crashing. I thought it was heat at first (sapphire 5870) but msi afterburner shows ~55C at load just when it crashed (I'm using the logitech keyboard LCD display plugin that afterburner has)

The strange thing is crysis (1920x1200 very high, 4xaa) has never crashed and I've played it for significantly more hours non-stop. Temps hover around 60C. I do use the 64 bit executable for crysis however.

Guess I could try setting the cpu to stock and/or running memtest. Just wondering if anyone else had similar issues with DA if they're using i7 with windows 7 64 bit?
 
I get odd crashes. It either crashes about 10-15 minutes in (dies to desktop), or it will run about 8 hours and then die (yeah, I had a few marathon gaming sessions). If it did a 15 minute die, it would always run fine after for a long time.
 
I've also got random crashes in DA but can run other games for hours... running an i7920 with a bfg280ocx, drivers are all up to date. Often I can hit cntl-alt-dlt and get DA to keep going for a bit, but it's always a que to save.
 
Game wasn't crashing... until I patched it :p now sometimes it goes down. Guess it must be some issue with 1.01b
 
reg411 said:
I was wondering if anyone else is having this issue - DA (1.02) kept crashing about every 2 hours. I couldn't even ctrl+alt+del, had to do a hard reset. Not the end of the world since I quicksaved frequently but still annoying. After a bit of googling, I found a suggestion to try changing the processor affinity to 4,5,6,7. This is for i7. I was able to play for about 3 hours last night without crashing. I thought it was heat at first (sapphire 5870) but msi afterburner shows ~55C at load just when it crashed (I'm using the logitech keyboard LCD display plugin that afterburner has)

The strange thing is crysis (1920x1200 very high, 4xaa) has never crashed and I've played it for significantly more hours non-stop. Temps hover around 60C. I do use the 64 bit executable for crysis however.

Guess I could try setting the cpu to stock and/or running memtest. Just wondering if anyone else had similar issues with DA if they're using i7 with windows 7 64 bit?
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No issues at all on my i7920 and that's even with HT on and overclocked to 3.8
 
I'm on my third play through now! I seriously can't remember the last time I played a game more than once, it's crazy!

So far I've played a Human Noble 2-Handed Warrior, City Elf Rogue and have started both a Dwarf Dual Wield Warrior and a Human Mage.

I can't get enough haha!

And fingers crossed RtO will be available soon.
 
I was able to play for 6 hours last night without crashing after doing that affinity thing. Whatever it does, seems to be working for me.

I can't remember the last time I was so hopelessly addicted to a game. I turned off tactics for everyone and just pause/assign commands for everything. I know some hate this, but I love it. I have 3 mages and an archer and it's stupid how many CC and heal options are available. Lvl 10 at the moment and have just finished the fade quest. Main guy is arcane warrior so he tanks. Morrigan & Wynne heal/cc. Morrigan just learned blizzard last night and I already have force field on main. Oh boy, I can't wait to rush into a room, force field self, then have her blizzard me. Although I'm scared they'll ignore me and head for her! That's when wynne comes in with her earthquake, LOL :eek:

Although I'm only 12% done, I've already started thinking about my second playthrough on hard. I'd like to go human DW dagger/dagger cunning rogue because everything I read points to them basically being a chainsaw. The part that concerns me is in the early-mid early game cone of cold and force field/crushing prison basically got me through some early ambushes. I won't have them or be severely limited (main rogue/morrigan/Alister or shale/wynne). I imagine I'm going to have a much tougher time without the multiple mage ez mode that it is now. I guess I'll have to do some potion spamming. I know rogues get dirty fighting, but that still is only 1 guy CC'd, the rest will have to be "tanked" properly.

I know people do it but I cannot even imagine playing without at least 2 mages, is it a potion spam fest on hard & nightmare?
 
reg411 said:
I know people do it but I cannot even imagine playing without at least 2 mages, is it a potion spam fest on hard & nightmare?
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Without realizing it, I made my life a lot harder than it had to be my first play through. I was on normal, and my DW rogue was focusing mainly on rogue skills (i.e., not so much dw skills). Not only that, I the party would mostly include a tank (Oghren or Sten), off-tank (Dog), and healer (Wynne). Things got a little easier when Wynne got Petrification and Stone Fist, and a lot easier when I finally dumped Dog for Morrigan. I had to leave dungeons in the middle sometimes to make more potions, and sometimes ran out of gold doing it. So yes, it was a potion-fest from hell.

Once you've played through once, Hard and Nightmare are very doable and not scary at all. My favorite party is me as tank war (with all shield skills), and Wynne, Morrigan, and Leilana (although if there were a third mage, she'd be gone). I also like my nuker/healer mage with Wynne, Morrigan, and Oghren/Shale (never cared for Alistair or Sten). I've also got a necro type with death magic and spell might/animate dead, but he is a little bit harder at the start on higher difficulties.
 
I have a question about a quest.. I went to the dwarves last night and started the quests.

i got into the political quest line where you have to support one or the other.

being good i decided to support Horrow...something something.


anyways my question is, i received the quest from the bad guy to show the documents and say he's cheating you, change your vote.

turns out the documents are a fake, so I take them to the memory guy and he says they are a fake. I then decide, hey i am going to go tell the people who made the deals.

i goto the daughter and she says her fauther is in the Deep so i go there, i fight the deep stalkers and the dark spawn and i get to her father. I figured i battled through all this to tell you that the bad guy is trying to swindle the vote by producing fake documents about your deal. Surely your vote will be more secure for lord horrowsomethingsomething after I tell you.

But that isn't an option in his dialog, infact every option i have is to tell him the opposite "you are being cheated , change your vote etc etc.."

did i do something wrong? so i decided to get out of the deep and just goto the arena and fight for the good guy.


the steps i took were

talk to lord horrow (Dalin), get quest for arena
talk to prince badguy and get quest for documents

show documents to memory guy, he says they are a fake
go talk to Lady Dace, she says go speak to my father
goto father..


also how do you get the love letters form Mylian for Baylian, i talked to her and there was no option to "strong arm her" :)
 
How does one get the DLC working? I bought this during the steam sale, and according to steam I should get shale and the blood dragon armor. Ive registered on the website, registered my game, and Ive been playing logged in, yet it when I go to the DLC tab it still wants me to pay for the shale DLC and the vendor in camp doesnt have the armor.

Im almost done my second playthrough. First time i played on normal running mage/alistair/morrigan/wynne. Talk about ezmode. The only thing that really killed me was friendly fire till I got force field. Im currently playing on hard with DW war/sten/leliana/wynne and I have to say its a hell of a lot more difficult. I cant imagine playing nightmare.
 
Heres a question, with possible spoilers. Once I have crowned who I wanted to be the king of Orzammar how do I get rid of the quest line for the other guy?
 
CmaN3 - go to windows/accessories/run. type services.msc and check your Dragon Age settings there, on list of services. Click on it and change it from "manual" into "automatic". That should help
 
Chombo said:
Heres a question, with possible spoilers. Once I have crowned who I wanted to be the king of Orzammar how do I get rid of the quest line for the other guy?
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I think it stays. Minor bug, but shouldn't affect anything.
 
SPOILER AHEAD

I found something quite stupid about the AI in this game yesterday. I was doing that quest to find and kill the 3 bandit groups for the Chantry in Lothering and i discovered that if i tell my archer to attack one guy from the group from a long distance, he will come to us alone and the rest of the group won't be alerted.

So i killed them one by one, having my archer shoot from long distance and luring them to my party.
 
I'm really late to the party but finally got into the game after finals/intercession classes and Christmas break. This game is incredible long... I couldn't believe it took like 6+ hours to beat the mage tower alone. I suck at this game though and have had to do some of the fights mutliple times :(
 
IsaacMM said:
SPOILER AHEAD

I found something quite stupid about the AI in this game yesterday. I was doing that quest to find and kill the 3 bandit groups for the Chantry in Lothering and i discovered that if i tell my archer to attack one guy from the group from a long distance, he will come to us alone and the rest of the group won't be alerted.

So i killed them one by one, having my archer shoot from long distance and luring them to my party.
Click to expand...

actually, that's by design. It's called pulling :)
 
How do I enchant a weapon?

I did it once by talking to a dwarf (Sandal) but I can't find him any more.

Everything on the web says go to the camp but where is this camp?

I read it's outside Lothering, but on my map Lothering is destroyed so I can't travel there.

So how do I enchant my weapon now ???

Oh god, please help me !!!!! :mad:
 
he's in your camp.

upper right corner of the map - it's everywhere ;)
 
Last edited:
They are referring to your party camp. It's on the top right hand side of the map, just hover your mouse over it to make sure it's the right one.
 
Jared701 said:
I'm really late to the party but finally got into the game after finals/intercession classes and Christmas break. This game is incredible long... I couldn't believe it took like 6+ hours to beat the mage tower alone. I suck at this game though and have had to do some of the fights mutliple times :(
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It took me a while to get the hang of it, but once you do, you'll be having a blasting owning Darkspawn. Don't forget to "pause". I've also found it very handy to have a Healer and/or a Mage dedicated to crown control. If you don't want to rely on a healer, make use of potions, they rock!
 
Ok, I already have redcliffe, danish elf and mage support for my war and am close to getting the dwarves as well (I think). I've played for 34 hour, done most of the quests everywhere I've went, explored 61% of the land and only completed 18% of the content according to the game. Is this normal??? I think I've seen way over 18% of the content but maybe that number includes playing through the same areas with every character available. My party has been me (dwarf warrior) alistaire, morrigan and wynn ever since I was able to get that group.
 
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