Dragon Age Origins

[fren.]

The Fade dream sequence with the shape shifting is long as fuck. Every RPG tends to have that one bigass grind that you don't look forward to, this is probably it. Gonna hate having to go through this again if I start up another toon.

[Nightraid]

The Fade dream sequence with the shape shifting is long as fuck. Every RPG tends to have that one bigass grind that you don't look forward to, this is probably it. Gonna hate having to go through this again if I start up another toon.

Thats the only part of the game i really hated, such a massive waste of time and it cant be skipped...
I do like the hidden perma +1's to Attributes though.

[Amiel]

the part where you're basically soloing?

[Bloodwraith]

yeah, it sucks.

[BRP]

The transformations kept it fresh though. I missed them as soon as I left that part.

[Takedown3]

i didnt mind the fade once i started getting the transformations as BRP noted. the beggining was kind of meh, or when u first see the map and its like FUCK i need to go to all those places

lots of good exp and +1's there so it's fine.

[TheTaru]

Just got to the fade part on my second character myself. Ugh, it took me insanely long to do it the first time(like 6 hours or something because I was lost half the fucking time). Really the only part of the game that I didn't like.

On another note, I can't find the body piece for ancient elven armor. Can anyone point me in the right direction for that?

[Karshe]

Sigh... finished my first playthrough over the weekend, and was excited to start my Mage playthrough. Except this stupid update killed all the specializations and I don't want to get past level 7 until it's fixed.

I've heard mixed reports of clearing the 360 cache can delete the update and in some cases restore the lost specializations... but I don't want all my games to get affected because Bioware messed up.

[miokomioko]

I know I am rather late on this game as I only purchased it (for PC) less than a week ago, but I definitely had a few questions regarding it...

First, a little graphical one that is only a minor inconvenience. I have two Radeon HD 5700 series cards connected via Crossfire X. Whenever I load up any game, regardless of whether the game has been open or not, and also after some pre-rendered cutscenes (such as the zombies attacking Redcliffe), my framerate goes to crap. This seems to only be remedied by alt-tabbing out to my desktop and alt-tabbing back to the game. Bam, the game is smooth, with all graphical options set to max. I just have to do it every time I load a game and I found out alt-tabbing to my desktop during a conversation with an NPC crashes the game. Is this normal or just a Crossfire thing (assuming crossfire even has an effect on this game's performance) or is there possibly something I'm missing that could save having to alt tab every time I die and reload? (edit: I'm also running a dual-screen desktop if that matters)

Also... Does this game discourage grinding and generally force you to really figure out some advanced battle tactics to simply get through the plot? I am not far through the game at all but I am still sticking to the basic party of my main Rogue, Alistair as a tank, my war dog for AoE stun + Overwhelm, and Morrigan for heals/sleep/nukes. I frequently travel back and forth to world map locations, hoping for some random encounters to help level up because some basic fights like the skeleton ambush in the Elven tombs felt way harder than I could handle, but barely lived. The attack on Redcliffe took me a dozen attempts and I only won with 1 character alive, slowly kiting 1~2 undead up the path to Ser Perth's men to kill them for me until it was over.

I've gotten to a point where one random encounter keeps occurring that I cannot even remotely win, with a shitload of ranger darkspawn attacking three elven soldiers, with 2 even-match Shriekers. Even casting Sleep right at the start, the elves all die and all the arrows get focused on me and I end up dead before I can even cast sleep again. And that's just focusing on killing the weaker Hurlock/Gemlocks before I touch the Shriekers... Is it usually this difficult or is there a way to grind while avoiding certain encounters like these that I can't handle. I was hoping for more basic ones like the spider forest and a few dark wolf/bandit ones I've seen...

edit: I've done all of the Warewolf events and the Redcliffe Castle events and pretty much every big battle involved 2-3 members dying and lots of potions being consumed.

[ZarakiKujata]

I never really felt like I had to grind, but the game does get easier as you level. However, the game is difficult in general at anything above Normal and if you want to make it easier get a dedicated healer.

[miokomioko]

I want to at least be able to grind as I am tired of every fight I encounter being barely winnable and only if I end up drinking a dozen mana/hp potions in the process. I am just not sure why this one single random encounter is the only random battle I am coming across when it's way too difficult for me... Do I have to donate more Deep Mushrooms/Deathroot to the Elf at my party camp to bolster their numbers on this battlefield? I doubt it would really matter much even if they had a few more units as they are behind barricades and 95% of the enemies have bows.

[volcanicweather]

What sort of crowd control spells do you have? Crowd control is super important in this game; spells like Cone of Cold are amazing. If I were you, I would ditch the dog and get another mage in there, depending on what characters you have. Healing/buffing/debuffing/crowd control is a lot of work for 1 mage, even if your targets are going down quickly. As Zaraki mentioned though, the game does get easier at higher levels and you do get more healing potions. If you're going to stick with your current party formation have at least 1 character max out their alchemy skill so you can churn out a lot of potions and let Morrigan focus on CC/buffing/debuffing and not healing.

[ZarakiKujata]

Cone of Cold is like the sexiest spell ever, when I was having same problems as mioko on my first playthrough Morrigan was usually my last person standing cause of it lol

edit: and Morrigan has alchemy already so just work on hers, and with Spirit Healer she was able to function as healer and DD just fine for me

[Thunder]

Sigh... finished my first playthrough over the weekend, and was excited to start my Mage playthrough. Except this stupid update killed all the specializations and I don't want to get past level 7 until it's fixed.

I've heard mixed reports of clearing the 360 cache can delete the update and in some cases restore the lost specializations... but I don't want all my games to get affected because Bioware messed up.

Do you know if it's being worked on? Or if it's already fixed? Don't want to restart and make it all the way to unlocking a specialization only to find out it's still broken.

[Cyn]

I don't know what you guys are talking about, I finished the game easily with absolutely no offensive magic being used. Just an archer a healer and 2 warriors, only crowd control was SnS knockdown and rogue stun.

I played on PS3 normal, but I can't see how it would have mattered much since I never used an AoE anyways.

[Karshe]

Do you know if it's being worked on? Or if it's already fixed? Don't want to restart and make it all the way to unlocking a specialization only to find out it's still broken.

It's not fixed yet, but I finally cleared my cache and it did fix for me. Clear your cache, load up a game, it still won't be fixed... save the game and exit out (I turned off my 360, not sure if it's needed). Load up the save again, and it'll fix the problem.

[miokomioko]

Cone of Cold was probably the best spell I've seen thus far and it probably has single-handedly got me out of my rut (essentially from solely farming exp from lockpicking/codexes). Sleep sucks, especially with even-match targets or higher, unless that next-tier AoE Horror spell makes it last much longer?

Also, considering I'm trying to save at the fork-in-the-road-to-do-bad/good-to-unlock-specialties, are any these paths rather long? The Reaver one wasn't so bad with either pouring the blood or not with the almost immediate reward for being an asshole. Is the path from decision to reward length about the same for learning Blood Mage, for example?

[fren.]

Why does Shale have to run so fucking loudly?

"THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, THUMP"

[noblemountain]

Cone of Cold was probably the best spell I've seen thus far and it probably has single-handedly got me out of my rut (essentially from solely farming exp from lockpicking/codexes). Sleep sucks, especially with even-match targets or higher, unless that next-tier AoE Horror spell makes it last much longer?

Also, considering I'm trying to save at the fork-in-the-road-to-do-bad/good-to-unlock-specialties, are any these paths rather long? The Reaver one wasn't so bad with either pouring the blood or not with the almost immediate reward for being an asshole. Is the path from decision to reward length about the same for learning Blood Mage, for example?

It's pretty short, so it wouldn't be too bad. I just unlocked them over different playthroughs myself though. Sleep is really awesome later. I just set it to use sleep when enemies are grouped in 4 or more...works really well then.

[volcanicweather]

For PC people, I just used a mod to unlock all specializations:

http://dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=316

It was much easier and that's all the mod does. Just download it and open up your dragon age folder, go to the bin_ship folder, and open daupdater.exe .

In the daupdater, choose "Select DAZIP files", choose the file you just downloaded, and click "Install selected". Next time you open the game, you will see the Specialization Unlocked messages for all of the specializations you don't have. Very helpful in case you missed stuff like Blood Mage because you aren't a main mage or you chose the wrong story.