Best DLCs?
 

I still have enough Bioware points (or however they are called) left to purchase some DLC. I bought Shadow Broker for my ME2 replay and liked it a lot. Now I am replaying DA:O with a female human noble. I already have The Stone Prisoner and would like to purchase another DLC. Which one would you recommend? Leliana's Song? Witch Hunt?

Do you have Warden's Keep and Return to Ostagar already?

I prefer DLCs that are integrated into the main game, as opposed to ones that are separate.

Witch Hunt is just a series of well designed fights it worth it only for that and don't hope much about the witch. With Leliana you don't play with your character, it's the only DLC I played and didn't finished.

I haven't played yet the Golems of Amgarrak nor The Darkspawn Chronicles. Instead of any DLC I would advise you first Awakening.

For DLC that I know I second JDR3 suggestion, and would add Witch Hunt only if you are mad of fights in DAO. There are also some user made DLC that you should check, if English is ok for you.

I think Golems of Amgarrak is the best DLC for DA:O. However, even at it's best it's not even near as good as Shadow Broker and Overlord for Mass Effect 2.

As I wrote, I only have The Stone Prisoner.

I don't care whether the DLC is integrated into the game. Most important are a decent plot and new locations.

Warden's keep gives you a new location. It's not large, but it's fairly interesting, and you can get a unique talent there if you choose. RtO oviously takes you back to Ostagar, but it's changed significantly, and you get some nice items.

I'd say Warden's Keep and Return to Ostagar are both better than any of the others, mainly because they actually add to the experience of Origins - the other DLCs (Leliana's Song, Golems, Witch Hunt and Darkspawn thingy) are all stand-alone mini-campaigns.

Okay, I will get one of the two. Thank you for the replies!

Warden´s Keep. Fits well with the rest of the game and even though it´s fairly short there´s some effort behind it.
Can´t recommend Return to Ostagar, that´s an obvious cash grab using a rehashed area and barely any new dialogues (and as such doesn´t fit with the rest of the game at all).

I thought Return to Ostagar fit in just fine, and I liked that you are able to obtain King Cailan's sword and armor. Not to mention Duncan's weapons as well.

Honestly the main game (with Shale) plus Awakening is it for me. I mean I own it all, stupid loyalist that I am, but every DLC is crap other than Shale who is arguably part of the main game. When I recently replayed the game for a while I only used Shale and Warden's Keep, and I only used Warden's Keep so that I didn't have an in-game ad for it.

The DLC for Origins is really some of the crappiest DLC ever made if you ask me.

Okay. Warden's Keep it is then.

Not really interested in Awakening. I wouldn't buy any new DLC if I hadn't some points left.

As I see it, DLCs well integrated into the game don´t feel like DLCs.
Considering what RtO´s about, it contains very, very little of dialogues even if you take the companions who were in the Ostagar battle.
That´s not how more important quests in the original game play out and I´m pretty sure it would be executed differently if it was in the game from the start.
Duncan´s weapons are actually a good example of this - Alistair doesn´t comment on them at all, even though in the original game there´s one dialogue with him where he expresses a wish to have something material to remember Duncan by (Duncan´s shield works for that purpose, but you have no option to use Duncan´s weapons for that).

I think that Warden´t Keep also contains relatively little in the way of party members´ comments (at least in Alistair´s case), but it plays like a regular quest from the original otherwise.

I felt no tangible difference between those DLCs in that aspect. I thought they were both pretty good, but nothing extraordinary.

Well, lets agree to disagree then :).
Personally I think only Warden´s Keep is "pretty good, but nothing extraordinary" and consider RtO to be plain bad.

For RtO some companions make the whole difference, RtO is much better with the "right" companions but I don't remember which one, a check in Bioware forums will tell. For me RtO is the only one that trigger some emotion (but through companions) and I enjoyed the fights, that's enough to make it one of the most worthy that I played but I haven't played yet two of them.

Alistar and Wynne were at Ostagar so you should bring them with you.

Ha right, now I remember I bring those both because of the logic, and the third was Loghain if you pick a game where you didn't killed him. But if I remember well, in case you couldn't bring Loghain some companions was working better than other to complete Alistair and Wynne.

Okay, I played through the Warden's Keep quest and enjoyed it. It was too short IMO, but the location was atmospheric and the combat fun. While I like the idea behind the quest, I didn't care much for the characters, though I spend some time thinking about whether a certain person should die.

I haven't returned to the keep yet, so I have yet to see how having it changes gameplay.

Varden's keep is indeed one of the best dlcs I've seen. Really fun to play through. Aside great gameplay, the storyline behind Keep is quite fascinating. It raises an intresting ethical question: How far are we ready to go in a fight against evil? Can wrongs be forgiven if the goal is noble enough?

By the way I hope you didn't overlook the blood potion vial on the table in Mage's tower… Drinking it adds whole new set of abilities on your character. I recall that it activates the power of darkspawn blood you drank during joining ritual. The player could also crush the potion if he hated blood magic for instance.

Keep had lots of cool gear too which werent overpowered. Like the warden commander armour, beautifull and deadly silver warden sword, a really nice ice staff, deadly croossbow etc. Also once you have finished the keep quest, Levi and his brothers will start selling nice gear to you.

In addition if you can find a meteor stone from the gameworld, levi's brother can craft a really nice sword from it. Likely one of the best weapons in entire game.

Levi shop had the property to fix number of slots and allow get at max power the special items with some random. Ie some special items had a strength relative to level of your character and some random, Levi shop allowed sell and buy back the item at max power.

The best is for me The Stone Prisoner by providing a totally new companion for the main game. But well it seems have been included in any game and just a way to force players suscribe an EA account and enter in the DLC system with the goal to make used game less interesting.

They bluntly admitted Shale was supposed to be in the main game. That's why it's the best "DLC" of the lot.

Also, on a semi-related note, one thing I noticed is that the armor the Warden wears in the Sacred Ashes trailer is the one you get in the Soldier's Peak DLC.

I just bought "DA - Ultimate Edition" for $7. Ridiculous value-for-money on that deal!
I really just wanted Awakening, since I already bought the main game at release.. but this was cheaper. So now I got it *all* :)

Played through Lelianas Song this evening, just to get back into the game and re-learn the way it plays before starting Awakening. It's been a year since I last played it after all.
Must say that I actually liked that mini campaign. Much more story than I expected. Didn't really pay much attention to character building though… what's the point if you know the campaign is only 3 hours long. Still, great fun for an evening.

Great deal.. Is that a current sale?

I'm afraid it was a 1-day only offer from a danish web shop that I usually buy my games from. I guess the offer gets even crazier when I add that it was a physical copy of the game… and it included free shipping :) No-one can be making any money from this… maybe they just needed to clear out some storage space for new titles.

Jealousy, here I come ! :D

The "Ultimate" package is still 30 Euros here …
Which is about the half of the price of the full game during release times.