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 …. well guess I will play it on hard anyway

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…

Originally Posted by ToddMcF2002
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.

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…

Originally Posted by ToddMcF2002
Can anyone tell where the version info is ingame???

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.

Originally Posted by txa1265
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.

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.

Originally Posted by Majnun
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.

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.