DA:O Wow I'm Out

Bit of a roller coaster on my opinion of this game, but after playing RedCliffe and the Brecilian Forest today I think I'm going to call it quits on this game. I can't seem to get ahead of the difficulty curve no matter what I do. I disengaged from the Brecilian forest to go to RedCliffe.... and RedCliffe was a serious joke. No spoilers...I actually survived (one lousy warrior) and only by running all over the place and using every potion in my inventory. The economy makes it too difficult to rebuild my inventory now and I'm just not looking forward to the next combat shellacking. I know there are alot of fans of this game and I'm not saying it stinks or anything, just for whatever reason I'm sucking at it.

Unlike BG1 this thing is pretty linear - its either the forest or RedCliffe. No place to strengthen my party. Level scaling? I don't know.

Its not like I'm not familiar with these games. I completed BG1, ToEE, Drakensang, NWN plus all expansions. I suppose I could put the game on easy but I'll pass. Too frustrated to care.

Stupid question but... did you try lowering the difficulty level to 'easy'?

Why don't you just restart?
From what I've read the game is great and you might have even more fun playing another origin/class.

@ the OP

Try lowering the difficulty to easy. This should be fairly helpfull, especially against larger group of enemies. Also, try drawing people out one on one from the larger parts of the group. It sounds a bit cheasy but I did it in Icewind Dale 1 and BG2; great tactics against larger groups.

Did you take a rogue with you; he or she can open locks. There might not be much loot in these chests, but this loot will add to get you some decent amount of money.

Also, did you do any sidequest at all? Stupid question maybe, but according to dev. from Bioware you should be around level 7 or 8 (maybe 9) when you go to the Brecilian Forest.

Sure sounds great! My latest side quest hot off RedCliffe netted me this random encounter:

- 3 shades (yellow)
- 1 greater shade (orange)

I think I did 5% damage tops before everyone was dead. What kind of tactics would save me from that unbalanced joke? I'm in a small clearing maybe 30x30 with no cover, no place to run. Fire attacks no significant damage. No mind spells, no stunning. Elemental buffing does nothing significant. Shield attacks nothing.

Maybe you just suck…… jk


Seriously, are you playing on normal or hard?

I was having some problems with some fights as well. Usually when there's a revenant involved. I've been putting off going to Redcliffe because I read it was a bitch so I can't comment on it specifically but apparently lots of folks did have to turn down the difficulty to easy for it.

What you want is at least one mage with cone of cold. After Morrigan got cone of cold I can dominate most fights. Cone of cold temporarily freezes every enemy in its cone. If they are hit with a critical hit they shatter (except one of the dog's crit attacks for some reason), and no the shatter doesn't destroy loot. Stone Fist (I think that's it) shatters them as well but it's mana expensive and fails alot on oranges & yellows. I use CoC to take out a large chunk of enemies while the others mop up the rest. By the time it wears off its cool down is back up and I can cast it again and refreeze them all. Revenants are so nasty that I really have to either keep them frozen or drink potions endlessly while beating on them. Much cheaper to drink 1 or 2 lyrium potions a fight than use loads of healing poultices.

The dog is actually pretty useful too. His growl attack stuns all enemies in a huge radius around him. Just let them get close enough or charge him in and howl…that gives a few seconds to get control of the fight with the mage using cone of cold. Some things are immune to stun though...but not cone of cold. I haven't seen 1 enemy resist being frozen solid by cone of cold (so far).

I just finished all of the Brecillian Forest/Ruins stuff (except for 2 chests that won't unlock even with lvl 4 lockpicking and 29 friggin cunning…but nevermind that). I doubt it would've been possible (on Normal difficulty) without the dog's AoE stun and Cone of Cold. I'm sure there are other spells that work (mass paralysis, earthquake, blizzard, etc) but this combo works pretty well for me till I can add a 2nd mage to the group.

Well you should do that village lothering first...then you can do a few other things...I think redcliff and the forest aren't your only options....


some tips:

1) take out mages first.
2) use the pause key.
3) know your party and use knockdown techniques.
4) play a warrior for an easier start.
5) take your time.

I'm still playing. I'm in the castle now where tactics are easier to employ. Too bad the game doesnt actually implement meat shields blocking doorways but at least I can use my thief to draw knuckleheads into ambushes. I know the castle is going to get much harder. I have fireball, no cone of cold and I need two level ups to get it b/c I went the fire route. At least fireball knocks folks to the ground.

Still on Normal BTW.

The game is tough, no doubt about it. I ran out of healing kits after fighting <ahem> Something Big and had to go through the rest of the dungeon with people piling up wounds. Life got harder and harder. I finished off the final boss of that dungeon just as the grey warden fighter fell and got his 5th major wound.

(OK, so some of that is because I really love the virulent walking bomb spell. Very cool but my fighters are killed by it more often than not.)

For most battles I use two mages and two warriors, works great on hard with some basic MMO strategies.

One mage for healing/buffs and one for crowd control and AoE damage. My warriors are a sword/shield tank and a 2h damage-dealer/debuffer. The only battle I had serious problems until now was a high dragon (had to resort to kiting)

Ps: Micromanaging every character helps a lot in tough battles.

Zloth said:

(OK, so some of that is because I really love the virulent walking bomb spell. Very cool but my fighters are killed by it more often than not.)

Click to expand...

I don't have virulent walking bomb, yet, but I've tried a combo of sleep/horror/walking bomb and it seems to be working out ok. The ones that arn't put to sleep are occupied by my warrior and rogue and the others Morigan and I deal with. Both of us have horror so that devistates 2 guys right of the bat add in walking bomb and that takes out a few more. If I get hit by the bomb then I just use that spell that sucks the life from dead bodies (can't remember the name right now). So far my guy has only gone down twice using this tactic.

Yeah. So much for their brilliant scaling idea. Instead of it feeling like my party is getting stronger and more proficient, it feels the opposite. I agree with Todd. This game just gets harder and harder (From a ridiculously easy Origin start).

For the first time now recently, I almost got my entire party killed - by the Northern woods bandits - whereas the first bunch of bandits were a walk in the park. …and this is after leveling up…
Heck, I had less trouble with the ogre in the tower and all the groups of Darkspawn ecountered so far. It just doesn't feel realistic, this way.

With so many gamers publicly complaining about level scaling the last few years, you would think that developers would've learned how to implement it better by now.

I went to Radcliff after Lothering and I was level 7. It was hard and I had to bring the difficulty down to easy. But then I found it bit too easy! In the end I finished Radcliff with mixture of easy and normal mode.

So to the OP, Try it at Easy and see what happens. Oh and there is a new patch which supposes to make easy even easier and normal bit easier. May be you want to try that as well. However I have not installed the patch yet.

And I don't think the problems at Radcliff has anything to do with level scaling.

..and the name of this patch is? Have you got any links? I'm not at a point where I find it too hard yet, (though suddenly a lot harder) but I've not been to Radcliffe yet, and all this talk is making me scared now.

Hopefully with that patch on, "normal" would still be harder than the current "easy"?

http://www.rpgwatch.com/#13701

See the link in that news story.

The patch changes very little in terms of difficulty.

Hm, I've looked it up, and at least it seems to have a few bugfixes.

I'm playing it in hard difficulty all the way, and so far no major problems. But, my character is a mage (healer/fire blaster). I don't know how I would be able to manage some of the fights I've had without a healer. My usual party is me (mage), Morrigan (mage), Alistair (tank), Leliana (rogue).