DA:O I'm Hooked

Yes, it's dreaded MMO-speak. DPS vs Tanks vs Healers, etc, etc….

Had another go at the mega-wolf pack.

Blizzard again did nothing to them.

However, Cone of Cold was VERY effective, as was winter blast. So I just had my mage and Morrigan chug a couple of lyrium potions, so they could rotate around on their most damaging and disabling spells and that made it doable. Alistair was pretty weak against the wolfs. The dog was much more effective.

Too bad lyrium potions are so rare in drops. After doing Warden's Keep I'm making straight for the Circle tower (I think Sten lost something there too) ....

You can craft as many such potions as you want, as there are several vendors selling flasks/lyrium. The guy in the camp should always have loads of flasks for you, but you might have to go to the dalish or some such thing to find a vendor with loads of lyrium.

Loads of Lyrium can be found at the Quatermaster for the Mage guild but you must have opened up the main quests before he shows. He has an unilimited supply. If anyone here has the toolset, I think it'd be cool if someone added new recipes. If you have lesser lyrium potions, it'd be cool if just adding distiller would upgrade it to a lyrium potion, adding distiller and concentrator would make it a greater, etc. It's logical within the game's ruleset and it'd make the useless lesser potions have a use again. When you have 400 mana a potion that gives back 40 or 50 really doesn't do much

I'm focussing on the magic attribute, so even the lesser lyrium potions are helpful at level 8. But I sure seem to be short on cash to make or buy new ones.

Is everyone selling the protective salves? I think the fire resistant ones may be useful...

Also poisons, bombs, and traps. Should I sell that stuff and their ingredients or actually have Leilana use/make them?

I should probably play around with them, although I suspect all the undead in Warden's Keep will be immune to poison.

I get rid of all my protective salves, good for a little extra cash.

If you dont want to use bombs/traps that's ok, but I'm finding them a pretty powerful weapon. You gotta be into it tho, and kinda plan out ahead how youre gonna do it if you want to be effective. Most people would rather just have the mage do the aoe and go from there, its easier. For me, it's a little extra aoe that costs no mana, by the time Morrigan gets to them theyre already all messed up. Like the firebomb, it's essentially a fireball spell that my rogue can chuck into the middle of the enemy. Stealthed. Yes, second level of stealth allows you to use items, and chucking a bomb is considered "using an item"

There's a little somthing for all you "stealth is worthless!" theorists to chew on ='.'=

So while theyre on fire, have the tank pop around the corner and nail them w/ an arrow, they all come running into a trap. This is good for a lot of enemies that you may want to soften up before the close combat begins. Takes a little planning tho, I'm totally into playing my rogue so I have fun w/ it, depends on your level of interest

BTW - the freeze trap does NOT literally freeze enemies, it's just cold damage. Wish i would have known that before I cranked out ten of them

Hmm, sounds like fun!

At the next level maybe Leilani will level 2 in stealth. Although I had planned to put some much needed points into dual-weapons (for which she currently has none)...

I'd say if you only have one mage, then the traps and bombs and stuff might be useful. On normal at least, I'm not seriously in danger with 2 or more mages in my party in 95% of the fights. If you have two fireball mages, the first one casts at the group rushing your party. I generally hold party so that tank and rogue don't rush to the bonfire. The second mage follows tank and rogue about halfway and then fireballs the ranged attackers. By the time they get back on their feet, the tank and rogue have finished up with the injured first group and move on to ranged. Your mages and just pick on the targets that avoided the earlier fireballs to whittle them down.

Another tactic once you're higher level is to just go ahead and fireball your allies too. I gear up Shale in fire gear and let Leliana wear rings and armor with fire resistance and go ahead and fireball at will. Leliana rarely gets knocked down because of her dexterity and even if she does, she gets up quicker (on normal) than the enemies. Shale has so many hp that even if she falls, she's not going to take much damage before getting back up on her feet. Shem uses indomitable to avoid falling ever, so if I'm using him, I give him Leliana's gear to resist fire and he can be devastating inside of firestorms and fireballs.

@Samhain-I think your way of playing might be my next game. Purposely playing a rogue as a rogue instead of a dps warrior, sounds like a lot of fun. I was wondering how an all dual-wield party would work out. Potion use would be high and stamina gear would be at a premium, but it'd be cool to try. Have you found any poisons that seem to work well on Revenants?

My current party for Warden's Keep is my mage (filled out frost line, one level away from Crushing Prison), Morrigan (she's one level away from Tempest), Alistair, and Leilani. I've left Sten, Shale, and Doggie at camp.

It looks like Tempest doesn't stun, though.

yeah, Ive always avoided rogues in crpgs, so it's quite fun to actually center my gameplay on one instead of having them around solely as a handy minesweeper and locksmith.

After burning a good poison on the Rev, it's clear that they are immune to it. They just have killer resistances all around, thankfully they can still be frozen!

Might be bad for my all rogue idea though. I won't be able to freeze him. Still if I can acquire enough cold iron runes, it'd be worth a try. I seemed to do a ton of damage with my one character who had good cold iron equipped, but it was only one battle. I need to fight some more Revenants when my current mage gets higher.

If you give a Rogue talents like Evasion, and a decent set of armor (i.e the dex boosting drake armor), they're capable of tanking Revenants due to very high Def. Especially if they're turned into a Duelist.

Is Evasion really that useful? The description says it allows you to dodge 1 out of 5 attacks, that doesn't sound very powerful for a 4th tier talent.

JDR13 said:

Is Evasion really that useful? The description says it allows you to dodge 1 out of 5 attacks, that doesn't sound very powerful for a 4th tier talent.

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I´d say it depends on what kind of rogue you have.
I think it´s useful for rogues who have cunning as their primary attribute - for such rogues one of the most important talents is Lethality and that one happens to be just one step before Evasion.
In the longer run that 20% should somewhat offset their lesser defense caused by relatively deficient dexterity.

Well, it adds to Defense doesn't it?

This is how I think it works:
Enemy has X Attack
You have Y Defense
Enemy rolls his X attack against your Y Defense. His X wins, and he hits!.. But wait, you have Evasion, so you have a 20% chance to avoid the attacks that actually get through your Def rolls.

Either that or it's just a flat 20% on top of the Def stat (i.e 130 Def providing you with X chance to avoid the attack - your total avoidance ends up being X% + 20%).

If it doesn't stack, the talent is useless. If it does stack, it's very good. Would be nice to know exactly how it works.

In effect it should stack multiplicatively with whatever chance to avoid an attack your Defense gives you. The game is very bad at explaining how its systems actually work and interact with each other, though.

The problem with Evasion is that when it causes you to dodge an attack, there is an Evasion animation that interupts whatever action you were performing.

That makes sense though. You had to perform an Evasion which is an action. If the Evasion action failed then you'll still perform your queued action.

Just want to say that I've been finding the protective salves very useful, especially the fire and ice ones. I have Wynne and Morrigan do fire and ice AoE spells respectively, so it helps against friendly fire in tight surroundings, but the fire ones are good against drakes and fire-hurling magic users too.

Badesumofu said:

The game is very bad at explaining how its systems actually work and interact with each other

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Yeah, the level of obfuscation in descriptions is quite silly.

There´s a "detailed tooltips" mod:
http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=248

It´s not complete yet, since it lacks detailed descriptions of armor set bonuses, poison effects and some others, plus it spoils spell combos (no big deal), but it´s already remedied most of the issues in regards to skill/spell descriptions.

Phonix said:

Hmmm let see if I rember correct, he was "bitching" aboute we was going the wrong way, he do that then you enter a new location, ask that he will do difrend, then he say that he lead the party from now on? chose the "just try" option, and he attack you, then you win you get +13, I think. Well somthing like that.

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Well I've got Sten's rep way up to about 85 without him challenging me, except for one minor conversation in camp. Just talked him up and gave him a few paintings. Now I have his personal quest activated.

It's rather pointless though since he just gets wiped out in battles, having no shield, and not the HP and armor of Shale. He's my fourth choice (after the doggie).