DA:O Another play through and advice

Dragon Age: Origins

CelesteGB

Watchhamster
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Ok, I'm trying very hard to stay away but I don't think I can ;)

Spoilers!!

My party will be probably be Me (duel-wield rogue), Alistair, Dog and either Morrigan or Wynne. I need to decide between these two. Since this play through I won`t have two mages, I`m going to have to rethink how I play a lot of things. I`ll also have 3 melee characters as opposed to one.

What would be the best way to build either of them for good AoE and healing and buffs? Previously I used a lot of Petrify and Stonefist, and Blizzard or Earthquake. I supposed I need to make one a Spirit Healer. Should I go for Mana Clash or Glyph of Neutralization for those pesky mages? Any suggestions to help me think outside the box?

Oh I'll probably try some traps and definitely poisons.

I did love Morrigan and had her up to like 97% friendship but I'm mad at her because the devs made her make me force Alistair perform the Ritual *sniff* I know, I know…I didn't have to but after 130 hours of gameplay I sure as heck wasn't killing myself or Alistair :)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
 
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I'm going way different my next playthru - no static companions. Early in any party-based game, I always shore up my main party and roll w/ them the entire game, regardless of who else I encounter. Next time, I'm shaking it up a bit and choosing companions per mission outing instead. I may go rogue again, but archer this time.

My mage loadout was only Morrigan the entire time, using basically the AOE's of Cone of Cold, Blizzard, and Sleep on everything to get things under control. It was a challenge at times not having a healer, mid-game I gave her some healing abilities to help a bit. You may want to really delve into the Herbalism thing and make scads of potions to offset your dedicated-healer deficiency, instead of sacrificing damage. That's what I had to do.
 
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That is what I need to think about-herbalism. I had it but just didn't really take advantage of it. The first time through it was soooo easy to just have Wynne healing away while I (rogue archer) oversaw all the combat choices. I also hated to give up a tactic slot at that point for healing poultices :) I know I had prepped for the battle and thought I had enough lyrium potions but didn't know I had to go all through Fort Drakon and near the end I noticed Wynne chugging back lyrium like Ogren chugging ale and I was cleaned out before the final battle :blush: I ended up using the console to put some in because I just refused at that point to start all over before it. Then I ran into Sandal and was like, "ooohh, thank god for that" I blew a fortune stocking up…just in case.

Did you ask Sandal about the roomful of dead darkspawn?

"Enchantment!"

Btw, for Christmas, I bought my 16 year old son a t-shirt that says, "Enchantment?" He loves Sandal.

How many levels did you put in traps and poisons? I will be maxxing out coercion again.
 
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this may work out good - I give you dual-wield advice for archer advice ='.'=

Make a companion your dedicated pharmacist, and once you know where to get the elfroot youre pretty much set. Check out this page. When you get the Dalish merchant/camp merchant routine down, you'll be swimming in potions.

I know that I maxed traps and poisons out on my rogue. It's worth noting that while more levels in poison will allow you to make a more varied arsenal of poisons and grenades, only one level is needed to actually use all of them. Toward the end, I gave Al a level of poison and would hook him up w/ some deathroot extract for the tougher battles. I'm not sure about the traps thing, I never had any need for anyone other than my rogue to sneak ahead and use them.

Also - really all that you need is deathroot extract and concentrated deathroot extract. Crow poison is cool too, but youll get that much later. 99.9% of the time I was just using deathroot. It's cheap, it has a chance to stun - it's theoretically all that you need. Hindsight being what it is, I'd have no problem dropping the coin on just the deathroot and crow recipes (and a few grenades), and leave the rest behind. Maybe I missed out on all the mana and stamina-draining and other such nonsense, maybe my game could have been better, maybe I didnt explore it to the fullest…. whatevr. I just know what worked, and deathroot/crow seemed to work for me. My enemies died horribly.

No, I never asked Sandal about the darkspawn. I'll make a note of that for next time!
 
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My party will be probably be Me (duel-wield rogue), Alistair, Dog and either Morrigan or Wynne. I need to decide between these two. Since this play through I won`t have two mages, I`m going to have to rethink how I play a lot of things. I`ll also have 3 melee characters as opposed to one.

Why not rotate your members this time? I thought it was a lot of fun to go back to camp and try to predict who would be a good fit for a particular mission.

For me it depends on the game though. I don't do that with games like Baldur's Gate, due to the way XP is dished out.
 
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To answer the original question:
In a melee heavy party, I generally prefer to stick with a mage built for healing + crowd control (Cone of Cold for example). I also spend a little time setting up the AI of the melee characters properly, so I end up mainly controlling the mage during battle (it's practically impossible to set up mages to do well on their own).

If you have a few spare points after getting healing + a bit of crowd control, put grab some sort of area attack as that is also a drawback of melee characters. I prefer fireball due to the knockdown effect.
 
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I might just try mixing it up. It will make me rethink every time I swap out companions. I never used Zev or Leliana because I was a archer rogue but Zev always seemed to have such fun going on his little murder spree :biggrin:

Ok, so I want healing for sure. Cone of Cold...good...now what about the Glyph line? It has repulsion and Neutralization which seems really useful for both melee enemies and those pesky mages.

Sigh...I will miss Crushing Prison and Petrify/Stonefist :)
Note to self: This time remember to use Cone of Cold myself. Morrigan or Wynne would fire that sucker off and freeze all of us :D
 
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Oh and if I don't pick up Heroic Defense to cast on Alistair, what else would help with spell resistance besides potions?

You know, I keep remembering that quest "The Last Request" in the Deserted Warehouse. Dear lord, that was a hard quest. I think halfway through I brought Shale in with some nice crystals although I never learned to use him properly. Still, she was awesome to watch.
 
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Hey...I was just reading something. Did you know you can use Glyph of Neutralization either offensively or defensively? Cast it on a mage to prevent spells or cast it on your tank to avoid all incoming magic! Cool, that answered my question about what to do if I don't get Heroic Defense :D
 
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Glyphs also have a pretty neat AoE paralyze if you cast Glyph of Repulsion on top of Glyph of Paralyzation (or vice versa). Just make sure none of your characters are nearby when it goes off - it will paralyze everyone in the area.
 
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