DA:O How do you know which location is the right difficulty for you?

The tower quite gard? It was 'ok' imo. I went there just after Lothering. These bounty hunters at the beginning of Orzammar are more difficult than anything you find in this tower.

Looks like their scaling system isn't so dumb after all... http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/challenge_scaling

I went in and out on the scaling but after playing the game twice, and actually testing out things like exploration and returning, I found the scaling to be excellent and very well done. I never had any problems with the scaling and level of opponents. I did try entering and leaving a few areas to "lock" things but there are so many separations of zones you really have to work hard to try and break the scaling ... and whats the point of that? General exploration wasn't a big issue, although it might adjust levels in opening areas if you really waited 10 levels to return ... but it would only be for that one limited area. The layout and design of areas and quests help to prevent that problem by having layers of zones. T

There are definitely some encounters that are almost impossible to win without knowing about them beforehand. For instance, in Denerim, if you steal from too many people, there's an encounter between areas where you get ambushed by a very large group of soldiers. It's pretty much an automatic reload if you're not at a certain level, or don't have at least one strong aoe spell at that point. The wolf ambush encounter is another one that comes to mind.

I love those fights. You can get more than one encounter if you do a lot of running back and forth. I ended up fighting the Denerim soldiers two or three times. Even with a high level party, it's a difficult fight.

Is that stealing for the thief side quests or just pickpocketing?

I'm wondering if my mage should take one level pickpocketing to enable the thief quests...

Thrasher said:

Is that stealing for the thief side quests or just pickpocketing?

I'm wondering if my mage should take one level pickpocketing to enable the thief quests…

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I can only speak for what my own Rogue has done, so not sure on other talents. My Rogue does not have any points in stealing. He does have stealth and lockpicking.

While in Denerim you can talk to this guy and he asks where your talents are and then you get some quests that take that into account. So I did 3 quests that were sneaking and breaking into places. I then got a 4th when the landsmeet started, that is the final one.

I am assuming if you have pickpocket you can get some additional quests relating to that talent, I would also assume if yuo had all the rogue skills (lock, sneak and steal) you could do all the quests.

As for just running around the city and opening up locked chests and/or pick pocketing - that sounds less like a quest and more like just running around stealing.

What I don't know is if the quests open up based on class (Rogue) or skills, but I would really think it was based on your class, and not just having that one skill.

RivianWitch said:

Looks like their scaling system isn't so dumb after all… http://dragonage.gulbsoft.org/doku.php/challenge_scaling

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Woo I bow if that's really the design. I'm playing the game for first time and sometime I get some fights I felt awfully hard and had use very weird tricks to overcome these, but overall I have to admit the the game plays rather well with the difficulty level. And I always believed that adapted difficulty was the way to do it.

I haven't noticed it in DAO because I'm still at my first play but in BG2 it was rather well done but also monsters types could be changed in an area to adapt to party level.

EDIT: And about limits of an area, BG2 had most probably another option, it's a relative difficulty level of an area. No matter at what level your party was trying to do an area it was more difficult than for some other area. Ie when scaling the area difficulty to a party it was with a targeted difficulty, like difficulty+2 for some area and difficulty-1 for some other. So there was a dynamic scaling to the party but to reach a different difficulty level depending of the area. BG1 had not such a subtil and precise approach of difficulty setting.