Dragon Age - v1.02 Patch
 

A fairly hefty patch for Dragon Age. Here are the Balance and Gameplay sections of the patch notes:

Balance

• Daggers now apply 0.5 points of damage per additional point in dexterity and 0.5 points of damage per additional point in strength, as originally intended. This increases dagger damage for high-dexterity characters.
• During combat, mana or stamina reserves now correctly regenerate more quickly when reserves are low. This allows players to occasionally use an talent or spell in the later stages of lengthy fights.
• When exploring, mana and stamina now regenerate more quickly at higher character levels. This reduces downtime between fights.
• The spells Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard now have shorter durations and/or longer cooldowns. This ensures that combatants can no longer stun-lock each other by repeatedly casting the same spell.
• The cooldowns for several low-level sustained abilities are now shorter. This ensures that players are not penalized for accidentally deactivating them.
• Certain battles were not scaling properly, resulting in excessively difficult fights. They now scale as intended.
• Enemy corpses now drop health poultices and money more appropriately, resulting in less clutter in the player's inventory.

Gameplay

• In rare cases, enemy corpses were selectable when they contained no loot. This no longer occurs.
• Party members whose combat tactics were set to defensive behavior no longer stop attacking after using a spell or talent.
• In rare cases, combat tactics conditions could fail to determine whether a character had enough mana or stamina to use an ability. This no longer occurs.
• The Rally talent no longer repeats its audio effect if it is active during certain conversations.
• The Rally talent no longer deactivates upon area transitions or conversations.
• The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

The Steam version has already been updated. Hit the link above for the file, otherwise (37Mb).
More information.

Nice!

The only thing to fix a bit more is bows issue and when they do that I'm finally gonna buy and play that game! ;)

I wonder what this means. It's not as if poultice and money was cluttering the inventory…

hmmm… I wonder why they needed all of 37mb for a few basic tweaks…

Uh oh, so my Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard focussed mage has just been nerfed. Thanks, Bioware. :(

I may leave this patch off until I replay with another build (if ever).

It means they drop more stuff (poultices and potions) that stack within your inventory without using slots. Result = more room left in inventory.

Ha ha. Actually, as this patch players and NPCs alike I've found (much like the unofficial dex fix) that this patch makes the game harder, not easier.

I doubt they've been nerfed that much. Besides, the cooldown for CoC was ridiculously short.

I agree about CoC.

But my whole build was built around these spells. So on their own I'm sure it's not a big deal, but all together probably a very big deal.

I'm not experimenting, and taking a chance that this breaks my game….

I guarantee you will be back to winning every fight without a challenge within 20 minutes of adjusting to the new settings. :)

I wonder if this updates your saved games, as far as areas you're presently in.

It looks like the Hotfix page no longer has the file as this patch fixes half the problem (daggers, but not short bows or crossbows). It's likely a good idea to remove that hotfix until a new one gets created.

This was never the case.

Know all they need to do is fix it so I can leave buildings and I'll be able to play…. no word on the memory leak yet?

Ive reached a point w/ my lv14 crew that my fights are becoming routine on normal difficulty, and Ive backed way off on using Morrigan's CC abilities. I have to admit that I do love "sleeping" the enemy, then "waking nightmare" and "horror". But the game does have some really ridiculously tough and unexpected spikes at times that could use a little tweaking imo, like the full on bandit total overwhelms out of nowhere… and I think that's partially because of the propensity of bandits to use some bows in their swarm - which have been ratcheted up x5 w/ the dex hotfix.

Thankfully my rogue has just become a freakin wrecking machine, and actually using combat stealth, poison, traps, and bombs….. woah. Im surprised they havent nerfed those things, then again I dont think most people take the time to use them. That's literally the only way Ive survived the bandits, nailing them w/ bombs and traps, Morrigan cant cooldown quick enough to fire off another CC

Well, I hope this tweak is as it says, just for daggers and I can remove the dex hotfix and quit fearing bowmen instead of mages and monsters lol

Does anyone know how you can tell which version you're running?

If anything, the game was broken with the pre 1.02 versions of those abilities. All 4 of those spells are still excellent in 1.02. It was quite easy to have CoC's duration be longer than its cooldown in 1.01, which is pretty broken. It's still a very, very powerful spell.

Crushing Prison was a long duration CC+DoT that did not break on damage, and instant cast. Toning it down was needed. It's still very powerful, btw, essentially a one-shot kill on white mobs. It's great to take out an enemy Mage. Combined with Overwhelm (Dog) you can immediately eliminate 2 white enemies from each fight.

Force Field was completely broken when used defensively on your tank. I don't know if that exploit still works or not, enemies should not target invulnerable characters. I think they just reduced the duration though, which is still a good thing. It completely removes one character from a fight, that is potentially an enourmously powerful ability, so again, toning it down is a good thing.

Blizzard is still awesome. I love to drop that on groups of archers/mages. Or combine it with Grease in a choke point and force the entire group of enemies to run through it.

This game still needs a lot of balancing. Too many terrible spells, and still several that are overpowering, bordering on totally broken. Mana Clash is still insane. That spell can take all the mana and 75% of the health from some orange bosses. Basically it's an IWIN button versus casters. It should probably be changed to single target, and its damage nerfed by a lot. Just taking away all a caster's mana is huge.

This is a good patch, a good step in the right direction.

If you're finding the game too hard, and found you were relying on abusing the nerfed spells to get by, then I would suggest turning it down to easy until you get the hang of it a bit better. Control seems to be the key to winning in DA. CC is very, very powerful. Control the battlefield, ensure that enemies are focusing on your tanks, keep those tanks healed, and focus your killing efforts on one monster at a time. The key is to eliminate sources of incoming damage so that your tanks can soak up the rest without dying before you can heal them.

To check version, run the configuration program then click Game on the left side. (Not exactly intuitive.)

Loving the money-instead-of-junk thing so far!

Enemies AND allies, thank you. "My weapon is ineffective!" Well duh, maybe you should try shooting somebody else instead of the one with the big force field around him? Grrrr….

Has anyone heard anything about patches regarding the console versions -- or is this patch applied to all versions of the game?

No, this particular patch is PC only.

Perhaps the console versions are updated automatically when you log in?

Yes, I know those those techniques. I've been playing these kinds of games long enough to know those tactics. But when an enemy spellcaster casts a fireball on your party in a surprise encounter, and then follows up with more damage, before your characters can recover, you're toast.

I'm not interested in experimenting with a new patch on a game in progress. Especailly without more detailed information on it's exact effects. Maybe in a later playthrough.

And I did not abuse the overrpowerful spells. I certainly have had no desire to use the "Force Field" exploit on my tank.

I think everyone should decide on the application of the patch with a clear understanding of the risks. Who knows? It could break games in progress. That has happened more often than not with these kinds of patches to NWN 2, for example.

As a general principle I take the prudent approach and do not apply patches mid-game unless it has been demonstrated without a doubt that it will not break my playthrough in progress.

Well I'm already noticing some differences, and they're all positive so far. The biggest difference to me is the random loot drops. I'm getting a lot less crappy random drops - i.e. frostrocks, etc, and more money and health potions now.

I am downloading the patch because I play a rogue with two daggers and like to take Leliana with me. I appreciate daggers doing more damage now if you have the right stats.

Oh, wow — ANOTHER spirit shard. And to think I was just getting low on them!!! :)

Indeed, me too! Plays fine the way it is IMO.

Didn't they promise the bow fix in this patch?

Kinda weird they didn't include it.

I remember that in the discussion about the dexterity hotfix it was mentioned by a developer that it would require retuning (and QA) of all encounters with bow users in easy and normal mode, because those fights would become too difficult otherwise. Guess they just didn't make it in time.

Ah ok…

I was contemplating a replay as a bow user at some point, but it's not like I'm in a hurry :)

The console fixes are coming but need to be cleared through MS and Sony first so when they do it you will see it. Installing the last patch will update you for all previous patch changes…no need to do the previous ones first.

Has anyone installed the patch over a current save game yet and have it work?

I think the bowfix only affects shortbows and crossbows? I seem to recall reading that longbows will continue to work like they currently work - based both on strength and dex for damage. I made a longbow user, and the damage was quite high (even on bosses, Arrow of Slaying will do 150ish damage in one shot - on white monsters, it will instantly kill them by doing 500+ damage. The highest I have seen was 768 damage on some poor darkspawn).

Anyway, a dual wielder will certainly do more damage overall, but they lack the ability to more or less instantly take out enemy casters or archers.

I already did the dual wielder build - and I have no interest in playing a warrior or mage, so I'm not really left with much.

As I feared before release, their character mechanics are painfully inferior to D&D 3.5 edition, but it's still better than Mass Effect and enough for at least a couple of interesting characters.

They have to be really careful with the bow changed because in some later encounters there are literally several ranks of enemy archers. Those were tricky to get through as is.

Indeed.

I understand why they are careful about making bows much more powerful.

I've been playing with it and I can't really tell that much of a difference with my spells. A level 16-17 mage with a focus on cold spells still does a ton of damage. I also use prison to freeze up another foe, while waiting for CoC to recharge. Everything still seems to work fine.

This is bad game design tho, in a way. Dont make enemy archers use the same bows as everyone else. Wtf, shouldnt be too monumental an effort.

Quite agree.

Pathetic balance issue. They can't make bows competitive without breaking balance? That's just weak.

Yes. I had no issues.

They really did tone down Winter's Grasp and Cone of Cold. Some battles have gotten harder whereas before, Morrigan could just freeze everyone and I would hack away. I mean she still freezes people, it just seems they come out a lot quicker.

Oh man, coc was pretty excessive but winters grasp too? Bummed

There is a fix for that, you need to quick save inside the building near the door, exit the game to the main menu, then load the save and exit immediately. Seems they are not flushing textures correctly in small minor areas, when transitioning to main hub like areas.

The patch doesn't cause any issues for old save games. All the nerfed spells are still great spells (still among the best in game, actually) but feel a bit more reasonable now. They've taken a softly-softly approach to nerfing, which is good. It really does suck when a previously awesome spell gets nerfed into uselesness. Nothing like that here.

The problem with archers is that encounters have been balanced for the current power of archers. Archer-heavy encounters could become unreasonably difficult if they buffed archers without retooling the encounters. That's something that takes time, and I'd rather they not hold up all the things they have fixed for this patch until they redo those encounters.

When you keep holding off on patches until one more thing is fixed, then the patches don't materialise, and us punters get grumpy. It's like holding off on buying a new computer for that cool piece of tech that's just around the corner. By the time that tech is out, there are two other new techs just on the horizon.

Anyway, there's no excuse not to instal this patch, except for being a wuss :wry:

PS: there are still loads of AoE crowd control abilities. Sleep is pretty insane, instant-cast AoE, no friendly fire, longish duration, breaks on damage. You drop it on a group, and then kill them one by one. On top of all that, there is the synergy with Horror and Nightmare. Mass Paralyse is similar, only it has a cast time, but doesn't break on damage.

I can reccomend the respec mod. It has worked seamlessly for me so far, and it allows to experiment with different spells and abilities. It also lets you unspend the talent that the game spends for you at the start, which is great, because I hated being a two weapon fighter but having to have a talent wasted in Shield Bash! Apart from anything else, it just seemed very untidy. It lets you respend all your attribute points, skills and talents/spells. It takes into account bonus points you might have from books, plot points, etc. I also used it to turn Lelianna into a dagger Rogue. This way I can explore all the different NPCs and still optomise the party for combat.

Being able to respec obviously affects game balance, as it allow you to create a better optomised party, and reclaim wasted points. So if you're having difficulty with the game, this could help too. If not, perhaps adjust the difficulty up one level.