Dragon Age - v1.01 Patch
 

The first patch is out for Dragon Age and if I read it correctly, among a small handful of fixes they appear to have made is easier on Easy and Normal settings. Grab it here for retail (all languages - 13Mb):

• fixed potential corruption of character statistics
• fixed portrait appearance sliders when importing a character from the downloadable Character Creator
• fixed import for preset face settings from the downloadable Character Creator
• made Easy difficulty easier
• slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty
• fixed video issues when running on a very wide screen display, including ATI Eyefinity displays

Steam has already released it for those users.

More information.

Made it easier? Why?

I wish that part was optional, I like the difficulty just the way it is. :-/

OOOOOOOOOO the irony…. will there be an option to NOT install the difficulty part of the patch :S :S :S :S :S …. well guess I will play it on hard anyway :P

I went ahead and installed it, the potential corruption of character statistics fix seems fairly important, better off not risking it.

Well, it does say "slightly". I couldn't notice anything.

My DA game dumped on me last night, and when I went to start it again it auto-updated. I didn't notice a thing - playing on normal, still occasional character deaths, still no full party fails.

As for easy, I know it is controversial, but easy should be there to make the game fully accessible, so that you can more or less just be playing to get the story.

100% agree, you shouldn't have to be a hard core gamer to play/enjoy a game. I haven't seen anyone in this thread or recall anyone recently complaining about an Easy setting. However if you claim your hard core and bitch because there is a CHOICE for an easy setting to attract new gamers, you just think your hard core, also you suck. :)

Good, the DA easy setting was harder than a regular bioware rpg's hard or very hard mode.

Hope I can go back to controlling a single character during combat in real-time.

According to Desslock, over at 1/4 to 3, hard and nightmare are only for those who are intimately familiar with the game. Hard is supposed to be VERY hard. Of course, we'll get a bunch of people claiming to have played on hard their first time through, but with no way to verify….

I'm totally thinking on starting the game on hard when I get it (hopefully today). I might change it to normal if I keep getting hammered, but I doubt it.

FAIR WARNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This patch might have a conflict with your installed Visual C++ 2005 redist package. Mine did, resulting in the "play" button not working and the actual executable throwing a "side-by-side" configuration error when you view the event log.

If that happens to you, (per the Dragon Age forums) install the x86 version from the link below. Yes it worked for me:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d…displaylang=en

Can anyone tell where the version info is ingame???

I'm a bit surprised by the difficulty thing actually. I started my first game on hard, and I'm about 12 hours in. It's challenging, but in battles I've been controlling mostly my main char with some pausing for switching chars and skill queuing. I've maybe had to reload 3 times in tough battles due to full party deaths? Definitely harder than KOTOR, but it seems pretty equivalent to playing infinity engine games on DD hardcore mode, which is the one I used to use.

P.S. I have had to spam heath poultices a lot, because I don't have a healer yet. It's keeping my monetary situation in check unfortunately…

Thank you, this just happened to me! Highly annoying, I just installed this last night and on only my *second* attempt to run it the Play button just fails to do anything without any error messages. Since I literally only started it up once before, I couldn't even be sure the patch was the culprit. I'll go try that solution…

I don't see it anywhere in the launcher, but if you run the configuration utility, it tells you all your version numbers in there. There is also a .log file the patch dumps in your Documents folder that should confirm the patch installed finished properly.

As I've stated in another post… I'll wait till this game is completely polished before I buy it.

When I saw EA logo and when I know the situation about Battlefield Heroes which is beta for 893475688734 years already… I'm not touching anything from EA before 99% users say "it's fully operational". :)

Yea, I know you'll say it's Bioware and not EA… Right. Just like Gothic 3 is PB and not JoWood. I wouldn't be very happy if this will be another bad publisher case, but… We'll see what happens with the next patch.

My mom loves Baldur's Gate, Star Wars KOTC and even Planescape, but she has to play on easy. I'm glad there are easy options so that people like her who like the style of game, but just can't handle to complexities of the battles, can still enjoy the game and the story. The only alternative would be to turn away a customer because the game demanded they be a hardcore gamer.

I'm happy they have the hard difficulty and my mom's happy with easy, it's a win win by all accounts and shouldn't be controversial at all, imo.

After restarting 6 times, number 5 was as a mage, and learning how to abuse the enemy AI on Normal difficulty(it does have it's holes but you don't have to use them) I can't imagine how easy easy mode is. Oh, and if you play as a mage…good lord play on Hard difficulty. I had Fireball by the time I left the Fade and holy crap that spell makes things easy(FYI

Speaking of AI holes, they really should make ALL enemies social (to use an MMO term). I mean hell if I stand at the max range to hit the closest enemy with a spell/arrow and pepper him two things should happen. 1- He should CHARGE me and attack my ass or run back and get his friends. And 2- ALL of his friends standing right there with him should do the same.

What happens? He stands there and pops Berserk or whatever random skill he has, and then dies while I shoot him. I'm sorry but this is BAD AI. I know, like I said, you don't HAVE to abuse it…but hell it's so hard not to.

I agree about the enemy AI problems. It also seems to mess up quest triggers as well (i.e. you're supposed to kill all of the enemies, but they don't all charge in on the attack). It is the main problem I've had with the game so far…only one crash to desktop, no other bugs yet.

Yes, I noticed that as well. It's too easy in some places to just equip everyone with ranged weapons and pick off enemies one at a time.

Just don't use that exploit. Makes the combat pretty boring if you use it anyway and single player games are meant to be fun.

I agree, but just the fact that it exists is still pretty lame.

Piranha Bytes managed to script realistic reactions when you attacked an enemy from a distance in Risen, but mighty Bioware couldn't do the same thing in their AAA blockbuster of the year?

There really isn't any major problems with this game and at least for me never had the AI problem stated above my post. It seems like EA didn't ruin the development of this game like they have done in other games and they had plenty of QA time. (6 months extra)

I have never heard of a stat corruption bug but it did say potential so maybe no one has had it. The difficulty is good as it is so that change isn't necessary.

AI enemies not helping each other when one is attacked sounds like a bug to me. Do the console versions do it, too?

I really haven't noticed it - I have definitely had enemies break from melee to come at me (as the mage)

It only happens if you stand at extreme range and attack them with spells/missile weapons. If you move even a little closer and attack they usually charge/move to return fire range like they should.

No idea about the console version.

I play a mage and stand at the range limit and the enemies come to attack me.

I don't know the extent of the exploit in DA but you can do the exact same thing in Risen too. I have killed many Ghouls and one Ashbeast(!) using a crossbow at lvl 1 :)

And ghouls and ashbeasts didn't chase you all over the place?
Did we play the same game?

Dunno. I almost never managed to do that in Risen (maybe this is important - I played Risen on PC) that way. There are only two places ingame where I managed to do it. One of them is Eastern temple where an undead priest can't cross the abyss to get near you. All other places monsters are not happy when they get hit.

I played Risen on PC, and that almost never happened to me. I do remember once or twice where I was able to do that to Ghouls, but 99% of the time, if you fired a ranged weapon at an enemy, *all* the enemies around it would react.

well,if youre rolling ranged it's a bit tough not to!

That happened more than a few times with my game. I just took out my bow and kept peppering the deformed sucker till he was dead. It only took…oh about 5 minutes ;)

It was only with ghouls though, everything else got really mad and charged just like they should. Maybe those ghouls just couldn't feel pain :D

I honestly also had more times in Risen where the two skellies together would react to my mage spells, but the other three in the area would just stand there. Haven't seen it in ~30 hours of Dragon Age.

Same here, it was only with ghouls, almost as if it was designed AI for them.

Then they must have been standing out of range, there was *never* an instance when I fired a ranged weapon into a group of enemies in Risen and not have them react. Even enemies that were out of my visual range would react if they were close enough to the one I fired at.

It is as you described. Its pretty clear to me that PB "borrowed" much of the code from G2. The behaviors are identical. Proximity activation, run and pause technique to filter off individuals from the activated group. No wonder Risen came to market so quickly.

I'm not sure if the patch fixed this and it's just not in the notes or if it was just a fluke before. I could exploit this pretty consitently in Korcari wilds with my rogue edging up and picking them off with a longbow (didn't play him past the tower though).

With my current character I tried it with every encounter in the wilds and the enemy reacted like they should.

As for Risen I never could manage that but I found you can use terrain obstacles and run any melee using enemies in circles around them (like stalagmites, rocks, etc) and whack them as they get stuckish trying to come around the obstacle. It's still dangerous but sure made killing ash beasts and brontaks fairly early alot easier.

I haven't noticed such an exploit, but I don't use archers of any kind, all my ranged attacks are magical. If I attack one member of a group, the others within a reasonable range aggro as well.

This game was released in a more polished state than most games ever reach. The only issues have been with the social site.

My 'tutorial' character (that's how I call my first character in cRPGs, they're only there for me to make mistakes) was a rogue, and my main character now is a mage, both using ranged attacks, and believe me, they come for me!