Dragon Age Difficulty

[JPS35]

I know this has probably been addressed in a zillion other threads, but wanted to wait to say anything until I have had a good long chance to play the game.

Overall, a decent game and enjoyable, but do you find that some of the battles just seem ridiculously difficult?

I enjoy a challenge, the planning, tactics, etc., but come on...when one or two hits take you out (even the tank characters), what is the point? Sure, you can load up on armour and buffs, but that drains the stamina/mana ridiculously low. Seems that some of the groups of enemies have "super buff and slash abilities" that never end.

 

[ZzZGuy]

How far have you made it into the game?
What is your character & party build?
What difficulty?
What tactics do you use?
What kills you the most?

Also understand that the various areas in DA have different difficulty ratings (starting area being the easiest, Frostback Mountains (Dwarfs) the hardest, though with exceptions). The game makers have stated that each area has "gateway" battles which if you can not defeat, you should leave and come back later.

You can also reduce the difficulty from the main menu before loading a game and have it apply to your current game. If a battle is too hard you can reduce the difficulty.

There are also random hard battles that will make you think on how to do it perfectly.

 

[Reckoner]

Once my DPS warrior (my main) was able to utilize the blood dragon armor, along with Alistair and the Juggernaut armor, it was easy as pie.

 

[DangerAardvark]

Yeah once my character could use the Blood Dragon Armor I started breezing through stuff. Pump STR ASAP IMO. It's not that it's the best armor in the game, or even close, it's that you can use it much earlier than other good massive armor.

 

[TheVrolok]

My first playthrough was on hard and I honestly thought it was pretty easy. I was a hardcore BG player, too, though and this is absolutely identical as far as combat goes (well, we have mana now so I can actually cast more ). I pause between every "round" of combat though and control all 4 characters. The harder difficulties require this tedious control and still you may lose some of the dice rolls. Also, it depends on your party make up and making sure your strategy is matching your situation.

 

[dighn]

It's challenging. Not as hard as BG2 imo but still requires pausing a lot in some fights.

In this game you need crowd control, so make sure you take a mage and put skill points into the sleep/force field etc line. It makes things much easier. The most difficult enemies I've encountered were packs of wolves. My char can take on demons singlehandedly, but packs of wolves will mess you up D:

 

[coreyb]

It get's easier the further in you get. Once you get some good skills, weapons and armor going it's not really challenging anymore. At least not on normal mode.

 

[sticks435]

Also, the 1.01 patch makes the normal difficulty easier.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Having a mage main makes things disproportionately easier also. I went rogue (Assassin / duelist) first time and turned difficulty down to normal form hard after defending Redcliffe. However once I finished Deep Roads (leaving just elves and everything post-unified forces), the game was ridiculously easy. For my 2nd playthrough with a mage, I started on hard and it was so easy I had to increase it to Nightmare. Beelining shield wall and cone of cold probably helped.

 

[AlgaeEater]

I find the difficulty too varied between classes, so I somewhat agree.

Basically if you play a mage class... the game suddenly goes into easy mode. They have all the benefits of the other classes (Arcane Warrior + Blood Mage is ridiculous) and they have the most utility at any given time. Also, more than likely you have increased their MAG stat so they have the best mental resistance in the game, which is crucial since the hardest battles are basically the ones where you get stun locked / held.

Warriors are very slow to start, but once equipped with the proper gear, they start hitting their groove around level 12, and become unstoppable really around 16 with specific toggles running (Especially if you have them hasted).

Rogues have it the worse in my opinion as archery is quite gimped in this game (even with the dex fix) and rely on momentum on any build to be effective. Plus backstab without a group stun is near impossible and labor intensive.

Other than one specific battle in Denerim which I won't mention for spoiler reasons, the game isn't that hard really. If found Baldur's Gate to be much harder truth be told, even if you were running the cheesy Kensai / Mage build. There aren't any enemies in DAO like mind flayers which can team wipe you in a second if you don't know what you're doing, and the fact you revive every battle + it's cheap to make hordes of healing potions / lyrium potions make the game manageable.

 

[a123456]

I agree with Algae. Low level melee classes have it really rough. 3 mages + tank basically puts the entire game on easy mode, especially if all the mages have heals and CC spells. You can get Cone of Cold and/or Force Field, for example, really early.

Also, fatigue and MP aren't that big a deal. Gold is pretty easy to come by in the game if you do the sidequests and MP pots are super cheap so you can just chain chug pots with a mage if needed for a tough battle whereas there are no stamina pots, which kind of makes for an imbalance.

 

[phexac]

I actually found the game to be surprisingly easy. I played most of it on hard. My main character was dual-wielding warrior, and he just kicked ass. Morrigan and Wynne combined raped everything approaching and my warrior and Sten just cleaned up. Grease+fireball followed by earthquake+firestorm just rapes large groups since they keep falling down and can't get out.

I really kind wished there were more difficult non-boss battles. There I just turned the difficulty down to normal and won that way. Once my characters got to level 12, I really was almost never challenged except for one or two spots where the unique boss just did absurd amount of damage per swing. I killed my first dragon at level 11, and was the best battle in the entire game. It was perfect in that it was extremely hard but beatable though good planning and tactics. By the time I was level 18 and ready for final battle, I killing Flemeth on hard was a joke, as was the final dragon. And in the final battle all the regular white-name darkspawn would just die to any 1 hit for some reason (I think it was a preset by the game). As a result, the whole buildup to this huge confrontation with darkspawn was a letdown because the final battle was short and easy.

One thing that I felt would make the game better is more mages and more threat from mages. Most big bosses were just big melee dudes. One of the things I remember from BG2 were all the difficult high-level mages and liches who would use cool high-level spells to just own my party and were a real threat. In DA, the one thing you really see are the Emissaries, and they are basically wimps who don't do much.

 

[Elcs]

One thing that I felt would make the game better is more mages and more threat from mages. Most big bosses were just big melee dudes. One of the things I remember from BG2 were all the difficult high-level mages and liches who would use cool high-level spells to just own my party and were a real threat. In DA, the one thing you really see are the Emissaries, and they are basically wimps who don't do much.

Lich: Hi, Time Warp, Demon Summon, Mass Kill spell...

Character: EEEP!!!

That's kind of what I miss in Dragon Age.

I feel as though yes, this dragon may be difficult but it does nothing to me that makes me go "oh god oh god oh god" and make me think "any second I am going to die", like the numerous Liches in BG2 did.

There were no epic fights I am afraid... except maybe the High Dragon @ level 11 on Normal, she was awkward.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

I certainly feel like there were a few fights in BG2 that were not beatable without Time Warp. DA definitely doesn't have anything like that. They love to throw hoards of archers at you, but that's pretty easy to deal with with Sleep/MassParalysis/Any of the AOE DMG spells. And the game has a serious lack of problematic magic foes.

 

[JoshGuru7]

The difficulty is inversely proportional to your crowd control abilities. Crowd Control suggestions below (spoilers):



- Grease -> Fireball combo on low hp mobs/archers/mages
- Sleep -> Horror combo on 3+ mobs and the one you want to kill first
- Waking Nightmare on harder mobs after sleep wears off
- Mass Paralysis on 3+ mobs
- Glyph of Paralysis + Glyph of Repulsion combo for awesome AoE stun just be aware it can stun your party members too
- Force field + Crushing Prison for the equivalent of a fireball that doesn't do friendly damage

 

[crownjules]

Spoiler

By the time I was level 18 and ready for final battle, I killing Flemeth on hard was a joke, as was the final dragon.

Thanks for that. There couldn't possibly be people reading this thread that haven't progressed that far yet (I spoilered for him).

 

[BrownShoes]

For me, the hardest battle was against the one who was "behind-the-scenes." I reloaded once. It was just a long battle and I ended up using a bunch of mana potions.
The 2nd hardest fight, for me, was at the end of the Dwarf line. I had to go back to my last save probably three or four times on this one. 3rd hardest was the summoned dragon. I didn't reload but it was long and I used at least a couple of mana pots.

Overall, I think the game has been easy on Normal. I'm going to try it at the next difficulty if I play through a second time.

 

[StinkyPinky]

i don't get it - how are you guys playing with no lockpick character? To be honest, I'd like to ditch Leihenia but I keep her around for lockpicking and a few other thief talents. Am I missing some lockpick spell?

otherwise i'd ditch her like a stone and get a second mage.

 

[NoSoup4You]

I played with a Rogue main, two tanks and Morrigan throughout most of the game until finally unlocking Wynne (did Mages Circle next to last of the treaties). The game was perfectly balanced on normal with this party setup on Normal. I only had one mage and Morrigan had 'Heal' and that's it. No 'Group Heal'...etc. It was tough and I had to chug potions a lot, but it was fun as heck and tough but beatable.

Getting Wynne and now finally Shale (Orzammar was my last treaty quest) has made the game laughably easy...

 

[ZzZGuy]

i don't get it - how are you guys playing with no lockpick character? To be honest, I'd like to ditch Leihenia but I keep her around for lockpicking and a few other thief talents. Am I missing some lockpick spell?

otherwise i'd ditch her like a stone and get a second mage.

90% of the stuff you find in chests is pure junk. Everything except usable items (eg, potions) and gold is just junk to be sold. I would venture to guess having Wynne (limited use of potions) saves as much or more then what you would get from chests. If your really good you have even less need to loot from the chests.

That being said, I'm still going through most of the game with Leihenia just to see what is in all the chests and to try and bone her and Morrigan at the same time. Next playthough though, I'm not even going to bother.

 

[StinkyPinky]

90% of the stuff you find in chests is pure junk. Everything except usable items (eg, potions) and gold is just junk to be sold. I would venture to guess having Wynne (limited use of potions) saves as much or more then what you would get from chests. If your really good you have even less need to loot from the chests.

That being said, I'm still going through most of the game with Leihenia just to see what is in all the chests and to try and bone her and Morrigan at the same time. Next playthough though, I'm not even going to bother.

My dude has boned both of them already.

Next stop is the gay elf guy and then my dog, Ass Stench.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

Sleeping with the various women and elves aside, I have found the difficultly playing through as a two handed fighter to be insane. It has been a very frustrating 40 hours of my life for 35% complete or so. I'm not a huge nerd, I have played many RGPs at varying difficulties, I just think two handed main characters is not a great plan. I'm tempted to restart and play as a mage.

 

[JoshGuru7]

Sleeping with the various women and elves aside, I have found the difficultly playing through as a two handed fighter to be insane. It has been a very frustrating 40 hours of my life for 35% complete or so. I'm not a huge nerd, I have played many RGPs at varying difficulties, I just think two handed main characters is not a great plan. I'm tempted to restart and play as a mage.

There's definitely room in a party for a 2h warrior but you do end up chugging health potions earlier on when you're playing without either a tank or a cleric in the group. However, at 35% or so you've probably turned the corner on the difficulty. Alistair makes an excellent tank if you finish out his sword/shield masteries and you can use him to pull aggro off your main character with Threaten and Taunt. Use Morrigan to crowd control and heal. Finally, if you haven't been to the mage tower yet, that's an excellent place to hit early as you pick up a valuable squad member there.

 

[RyanPaulShaffer]

I have to agree that this game is annoyingly difficult. I'm playing a Human Warrior with sword and board, on normal, and half of my party ends up taking a dirt nap after every single encounter. I have my main, Alistar, Morrigan and just got Leilana last night. It's ridiculous...I chug pots like crazy, have my main and Alistar both set up with the Sword and Shield defensive talents, and they just drop to random mobs almost instantly. The only way I can get close to winning is microing Morrigan to cast the spells that I need.

I don't mind a good challenge, but it is ridiculous and not fun when every other class is useless except for Mages. Why bother taking along a "DPS Warrior" or any Rogue when a tank + three Mages will just decimate everything?

Don't get my started on enemy Mages...I had to reload like five times in that one room in the tower because there was a singular Darkspawn Mage there blasting my entire group for 50-60 HPs every ten seconds or so.

So far I am very underwhelmed with this game. Looks like I wasted $40...but I should have known better than to believe the hype!

 

[sourceninja]

I'm playing on hard with a party of

me - arcane warrior/blood mage
Wynne - heal/blood mage
allister - shield/sword tank templar/champion
and Leihenia as an archer spec bard/ranger

Basically I keep Leihenia's bear pet up all the time to help protect her and Wynne. Then Allister just runs in and pisses everything off. I use my CC spells to lock down as many targets as possible, then I just hit the arcane warrior talents and smack shit with my sword. I never control wynne. She is just a heal bot with rules setup to use regen at 75%, heal at 50%, cast defensive spells on targets getting arrows shot at them, cast offensive spells on me and allister, and turn things to stone/stone fist anything that physically attacks her. Lately I've added having her cast wards on allister to help with CC.

I almost never have to take over any other characters but mine. I just hit crushing prison, then mass paralyze, sometimes force shield/crushing prison, and if that doesn't lock everyone down, then I hit blood magic, shoot off a mind control from that line then boil everyone's blood.

I've been playing on hard and I find the game a little too easy.