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Dragon Age: Origins
Anyone using the golem? I hear loads of good things about that guy. I haven't got him yet, but I'm doing the quest right now.
 
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Anyone using the golem? I hear loads of good things about that guy. I haven't got him yet, but I'm doing the quest right now.

My main character is an elf archer dude...but I've found that controlling Morrigan is the only way I can win against things like Revenents. But even then she is the last man standing.

Anyone using Sten as a tank? I think he sucks as a tank because his health drops faster than the girls.
 
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Strangely I'm finding the exact same thing with Sten, and I've put my heaviest armour on him. His strength is pretty high, but I guess his constitution needs some work.

I just adore Morrigan while she's in her spider form - she seems pretty tough then, and her web is the best thing besides freeze and paralyse spells.
 
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I have not had much trouble but I think I have a good mix. My main is a mage with spirit healing and buffs. Basically a "cleric" type. I also have some good primal (cone of cold + stone fist = WIN) spells. I also have some excellent tactics set up that keeps all the characters using abilities and potions without wasting them. I pretty much leave them all on autopilot except for boss fights.

Right now I have Alistair (tank, with taunt on AI), the Dog (with tactics for dread howl which is awesome as it stuns a whole bunch of people) who is a very good and powerful tank, and either Morrigan or Zeveran.

I tend to play between normal and easy. However I did Redcliffe all on normal however I was at level 10 at the time - although if their is scaling that should not have made any difference I suppose.

I find doing the magi circle first is the best path. You get plenty of permanent stat bonuses in that quest, plus a lot of experience and practice with solo work that is fairly easy.

I think the best help I have is putting a lot of time into good tactics - it makes all the difference between micro-managing every single "turn" in the game versus letting 80-90% of the battle go on autopilot while I stand back with my healer/mage and buff, heal and crowd control.
 
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Anyone using Sten as a tank? I think he sucks as a tank because his health drops faster than the girls.


What tactics are you using for him? By default, he is set up to activate "Threaten" as soon as you engage in combat, that causes more enemies to target him.
 
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What tactics are you using for him? By default, he is set up to activate "Threaten" as soon as you engage in combat, that causes more enemies to target him.

Yeah, and he has the "taunt' skill as well. I've just disabled both of those on him.

Unrelated question - so can a poisonmaker only apply poison to her own weapons?
 
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Unrelated question - so can a poisonmaker only apply poison to her own weapons?


That seems to be the case, although I suppose you could always switch someone else's weapon to the poisonmaker, poison it, and then switch it back. Of course it would have to be a weapon that the poinsonmaker can equip.
 
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RedCliffe was very hard even on easy , if i need to reload then the game is not easy at all . Also the game gets harder as i level and ... yes i am still using the bow i 've got from the camp because i have not find any better, tens of swords and 5-6 staffs but no better bow...

The bow elf seems useless , unless i kick someone in the balls using rogue's skill i got pwned , specially by heavy armorer guys and "Warcry buffs" .
 
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In the Redcliffe fight i used to pull the groups from the church up to the knights. They helped me kill them after which i went down to pick up some more. That fight was hard, but the knights saved my game.
 
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RedCliffe was very hard even on easy , if i need to reload then the game is not easy at all . Also the game gets harder as i level and … yes i am still using the bow i 've got from the camp because i have not find any better, tens of swords and 5-6 staffs but no better bow…

The bow elf seems useless , unless i kick someone in the balls using rogue's skill i got pwned , specially by heavy armorer guys and "Warcry buffs" .

It seems bow/crossbows are bugged in the game. They do less damage. There is an unofficial fix (it is by one of the dev but not released by bio yet) which increase the damage of archers. However it also increase the damage of enemy archers since they also use the same rules.

The dev who created the patch said that, if you use the patch, the enemy archers effectively gain an level.
 
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You need better magic. A number of people that I've talked to who haven't started as the Mage origin have found the game significantly tougher than I have. I'm playing on Hard and only the Revenants/Arcane Horrors caused me trouble.

The problem is Morrigan isn't a particularly good party support mage until you level her a bit. She has no healing, no AoE and her buff/curse options are limited.

For control, probably the single best option for boss fights is kinetic barrier. Morrigan starts with Mind blast, it's the next spell in that chain. Basically, it allows you to lock out the boss creature (revenant) from the fight for 20 seconds, giving you time to slaughter all his support. They are much easier when EVERYONE is whacking on them. You can also use it to make one of your party members invulnerable if they are about to go down. The glyph line of spells also offers fantastic ways of controlling the fight, blocking choke points and keeping melee off your spellcasters/archers.

Secondly, healing. Two mages with the first healing spell makes a big difference.

Finally, AoE. Fireball, Blizzard, the cone effects, all are good stuff. Morrigan's starting spells just don't have the kick.

I'd advise you go to the mage circle immediately and get Wynne. She doesn't have much AoE or great control, but her healing is top notch. With her in your party you will find things a lot easier, which should allow you to gain the levels necessary to level up morrigan. Once you dip further into her cold/electricity line of spells for AoE you should be fine.

I only shapechange Morrigan as a last resort, when she is out of mana.
 
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Anyone using the golem? I hear loads of good things about that guy. I haven't got him yet, but I'm doing the quest right now.

He is good tank in term of delivering huge damage and lot of health to withstand damage from enemies, plus resistant to several magic attacks. He can't wear armor or use weapon but more a melee character. He has four special talents; one offensive skill line including pulverizing blows, slam, quake and killing blow, and while another ranged offensive talent, something to do with hurling boulder, rock barage, etc. The rest two talents lines a) grant beneficiary auras to your party members such as bonuses to attack, defense, health regeneration, and b) something similar like taunt that attract attacks from enemies.

PS - you can customized additional attack bonuses / magic damages by adding different crystal types on him.
 
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Yeah. So much for their brilliant scaling idea. Instead of it feeling like my party is getting stronger and more proficient, it feels the opposite. I agree with Todd. This game just gets harder and harder (From a ridiculously easy Origin start). {snip} Heck, I had less trouble with the ogre in the tower and all the groups of Darkspawn ecountered so far. It just doesn't feel realistic, this way.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. It seems levelling up is a Bad Thing (tm) in this game. After slaughtering boatloads of darkspawn, including the frigging ogre in the tower, I thought a few bandits on the road to Lothering would be a cakewalk - only to almost get my butt handed to me by these stragglers. Something's a bit off if a 3 meter tall monstrosity of dark magic (or some such) is less of a threat than a few run-of-the-mill deserters turned highwaymen.
 
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I come from the land of ice and snow
And yet i think a game that maintain certain level of challenge is a must. I finished Lothering, Recliffe tower, warden's keep and stone prisoner quests and all of them providing challenging combat sessions. My party got wipe out several times - including by a group of malabri dog when i thought our badaas group son of **** could kick their butts. Still in the end if i use pause, or carefully micromanage or pay attention to combat strategy i could defeat them anyway.
 
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Some of the random encounters are dangerous, but that is very pnp to me. I believe the level scale of a area is decided the moment you unlock it, so a random encounter is going to be your level, I guess (not sure on how the randoms are generated - some are not random for sure). If you miss Lothering the minimum area level might get prohibitive.
 
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I'm going to sing a slightly different tune than when I opened this thread. After stewing over the difficulty and venting in this thread I decided to go at it again and passed the two "big" tests (Revenant and the Drake). Yes I got wiped out a few times, especially with the Drake, but in the end I tried multiple combinations, buffs, smacking my head against the wall, drawing blood and making symbols next to my laptop etc. and won. The game is just plain FREAKIN hard, but when I'm not ready to throw my laptop down the stairs I'm having that "sense of accomplishment" factor that keeps pulling me back in. I'm SURE I'll be back whining soon though :)

One thing that sort of surprises me is that this is being marketed as mainstream accessible. It AINT. At least not on normal. I can't imagine a non micromanaging RPG junky getting anywhere in this game on normal. I'm trying every tactic I've ever employed along with real world ritual sacrifices to scrape by. Anyway I'm off to play now. I've got my ritual dagger - were is that other cat?
 
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Learning some combos like sleep then horror are most handy.
 
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I'm also starting to get a bit frustrated sometimes, but not because the game is genuinely difficult, but rather because the shoddy AI makes some battles harder than they should be.
 
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