Dragon Age: Origins

[PhatoseAlpha]

Out of curiousity, are there any spell point trainers or mods out yet? I'm about to finish my second run through, fairly, but didn't get to see a lot of the spells - the fourth tier ones require a lot of points, which is hard to swallow if the first three tiers aren't pretty useful.


Anybody else seen the codex entry where they're busting on Mass Effect?



Anyway, various end game spoilers underneath.

Spoiler

Reaching the end of the game, second time through as a mage, I realized that the whole prison sequence was absolutely insulting. I know there are balance issues, but the guards there were so dumb I expected one to be named Sgt. Schultz.

Toss me in a jail, no antimagic wards, the only guard isn't even a dwarf, let alone a templar. I would've felt bad about killing him, seeing as I had surrendered to prevent needless loss of life, but I figured this fell under the banner of 'Too Stupid To Live'. And of course, they leave all my stuff in a box right outside my cell, just in case I decide to kill the guard with a spell. Then, one stolen uniform and a few conversations later, they let me walk right out the door to go 'on patrol'. Somehow, I imagine prison management were all put on the rack for that one.

The Loghain duel, which was supposed to be epic, was not. In fact, it consisted entirely of me tossing him into a crushing prison, then covering him with bees and laughing until he fell over. Felt bad for him at first, then I remember the prison for morons he had tossed me into.

Alistair turned out to be a little bitch - see a chance for some poetic justice, but no, I have to kill him or you'll throw a hissy fit. My way or the highway! But I don't want to be king! Whiny bastard.

Then Morrigan shows up with her little 'plan'. A baby, produced by two of the most powerful mages in the land, harboring a soul of an ancient sort-of-god who was not-god-enough-to-keep-from-being-corrupted. Oh, and some questionable darkspawn taint from dear old dad. And raised by a woman entirely dedicated to selfishness. Yeah, great plan!

Where is the 'cover her in bees' dialog option?

 

[phexac]

I don't use any tactics at all. Instead, I issue order to all my characters individually. The only thing I let them do is auto-attack enemies. Tactics really make it harder to get your party to preform optimally.

Maybe that's why I thought the game was pretty easy...

 

[s44]

Did you just spoiler the end? Stop it! Use spoiler tags.

 

[Mem]

I notice there is another patch out when I was at their forums dated Nov 16th.

Dragon Age: Origins 1.01b

Patch details:

• 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
• fixed an issue with Dragon Age and Windows Game Explorer
• updated Visual C runtime libraries

http://files.bioware.com/dragonage/patch/1.01/DragonAge1.01b.exe


They have an official patch update thread here http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/58/index/113559

 

[HunterDT]

yes

Spoiler

i did the mage tower last night and got wynne. and havent had to pot until i fought the big dragon in the mountain again

thanks for the advice, she made a huge difference

LOL, during the mage tower

Spoiler

I agreed with the templar that we must kill everyone upstairs and right there, Wynne decided to fight me. Poor Wynne. My character was helplessly in love with Morrigan at that time though, so he was trying to stay on her good side. Morrigan can do that to you...make you do things that you wouldnt normally do. hahah

And to add to the conversation with a non spoiler with a copy/paste from another post of mine:

Just finished the game last night. One of the best games I have ever played. I have never been so engrossed in a main plot. Every bit of dialogue and response choice had my full attention. I have never felt so attached to the characters of a game before. Speaking with my companions at the very end just simply game me chills....Shale, Sten, Allistair, I will miss them. LOVE LOVE LOVED it! A true masterpiece.

 

[HybridSquirrel]

LOL, during the mage tower

Spoiler

I agreed with the templar that we must kill everyone upstairs and right there, Wynne decided to fight me. Poor Wynne. My character was helplessly in love with Morrigan at that time though, so he was trying to stay on her good side. Morrigan can do that to you...make you do things that you wouldnt normally do. hahah

Spoiler

Leilani made me choose between her and morrigan...it made me want to cry...then i killed flemeth thinking there would be something bad ass in her hut for me...nope only something for morrigan...so i dumped her thinking leilani would do me...but nope...so now im gonna try to tap that cougar wynne. giggity gig

i think im near the end...idk though it says 80 hours of gameplay...and i am at 27 or so... but it feels like im at the end or at least super close to it, i could be wrong though. im really impressed by this game and have considered cancellig my wow account.

 

[TheVrolok]

Spoiler

Leilani made me choose between her and morrigan...it made me want to cry...then i killed flemeth thinking there would be something bad ass in her hut for me...nope only something for morrigan...so i dumped her thinking leilani would do me...but nope...so now im gonna try to tap that cougar wynne. giggity gig

i think im near the end...idk though it says 80 hours of gameplay...and i am at 27 or so... but it feels like im at the end or at least super close to it, i could be wrong though. im really impressed by this game and have considered cancellig my wow account.

The 80 hours is definitely a bizarre calculation. My first run through was 38 hours with 50% done (50% of the achievements) and 92% of the map explored. From what I could tell I only missed a handful of side quests.

 

[HybridSquirrel]

The 80 hours is definitely a bizarre calculation. My first run through was 38 hours with 50% done (50% of the achievements) and 92% of the map explored. From what I could tell I only missed a handful of side quests.

i kinda figured the calculation was way off, but ive talked to people and they said it took them around 60-70...i cant wait till the end though. im getting anxious.

 

[s44]

I've hit 80 hours and haven't even started the endgame.

 

[RaistlinZ]

How important is skill point allocation when you first create your character? Is having 15 Str instead of 16 going to make a noticeable difference end game, and is it better to have stats kind of evenly allocated or just put all my 5 points into one thing depending on the class I choose? Thanks.

 

[ayabe]

Can't believe some of you are on your second go around....yikes. Maybe if I were unemployed and lived in a cave.....j/k

Those are some serious hours of gaming fellas.....

 

[s44]

A couple of stat points won't matter (there's one place you get permanent boosts to every stat), but you do want to focus on the major ones for your class: magic and willpower for mages (mostly 2 to 1), dex and cunning/str/will for rogues (depending on build), and str + con/dex/will (again depending on build) for warriors. Note that it's very helpful to get the stats for your top-level talents/spells/armor as soon as possible.

 

[smackababy]

How important is skill point allocation when you first create your character? Is having 15 Str instead of 16 going to make a noticeable difference end game, and is it better to have stats kind of evenly allocated or just put all my 5 points into one thing depending on the class I choose? Thanks.

Depends what you're doing. I find that if you're going to be a 2-handed warrior, just strength would probably suffice. Being anything else would take multiple stats.

 

[HybridSquirrel]

Depends what you're doing. I find that if you're going to be a 2-handed warrior, just strength would probably suffice. Being anything else would take multiple stats.

my level 18 warrior has 56 strength. i would agree with him saying if you are using 2 handed warrior put it mainly into strength

 

[you2]

Bleh; my first crash after about 4 hours of play. Does this game crash a lot ? I guess I need to hit quick save more often

 

[HybridSquirrel]

once or twice a day for me. not that often

 

[datalink7]

Mine didn't crash once. I just beat the game after about 57 hours of play I think it said.

 

[IEC]

Maybe I'll go from 6 hours played to 10 by next week... looks like I have a long way to go.

 

[ZzZGuy]

Bleh; my first crash after about 4 hours of play. Does this game crash a lot ? I guess I need to hit quick save more often

~80 hours of gameplay and two crashes related to alt tabbing.

 

[coreyb]

Game should take 60+ hours if you take your time and do most of the quests. Don't understand why anyone would want to rush through this game.

 

[phexac]

There is one thing I did not like about the game. And it's story-related.

Spoiler

Basically, I did not like that the final battle against the darkspawn was so short. I really loved the beginning of the game where there was a huge battle against the darkspawn going on and I had to go and light the beacon. It made me feel like I'm a part of a larger battle, and I really enjoyed fighting the darkspawn.

Then I was side-tracked into assembling an army and dealing with Loghain. The way it seemed to me was that, once I assembled the army, I would get to go back to the big campaign against the darkspawn, which would be at least as long and involved as the gathering of allies part. Instead, there was just a quick run through the city, that was not all that involved or challenging, before the final battle against the dragon. I really wish that part of the game were longer and we had gotten a chance to push the darkspawn back south before finally facing the archdemon. As it was, there was this whole epic build-up of gathering forces, and then barely any fighting against the darkspawn at all. Moreover, the game was preset so that most white name darkspawn in the final battle just died to one hit of anything, so it seemed sort of a joke that we gathered all these forces and then fought a bunch of wimps. I believe there should have been A LOT more attention devoted to the campaign against the darkspawn before the final battle. It was what I was looking forward to throughout the gathering of forces, and it ended up being a letdown.

One other thing, that was not quest-related, is I wish there was more of a threat from enemy mages as well as more mages in the game in general. As it was, most of the enemies were melee, so all those elaborate resistances were kind of useless, with the exception of fire. There weren't that many mages, and they didn't do much when they were there.

All in all though, I thought this game was great and very-well crafted. Just the balance of prepare your forces versus final campaign was off for me.

 

[s44]

phexac: I agree with your first point. It's even more noticeable

Spoiler

if you've read the books, since the second one has all this nifty behind-the-darkspawn-scenes stuff you'd definitely expect to be in the game, including a number of named big bads.

Still, a great game.

 

[RaistlinZ]

I never understood why people like to rush through RPG's and finish them in a week. Defeats part of the fun IMO of just taking the time to explore around and such. Kind of like a good novel - I like to get a little bit of it each day so it lasts a while, not finish it all in one sitting.

To each his own I guess.

 

[Alienwho]

I'm at 65 hours and I just

Spoiler

named Alistar king

and my game currently says I have explored 65% of the map and have completed 33% of the game. I feel like I am about 5 minutes away from the end of the game and I have completed most of the quests (some of which I still need to turn in). But wow.

 

[datalink7]

I never understood why people like to rush through RPG's and finish them in a week. Defeats part of the fun IMO of just taking the time to explore around and such. Kind of like a good novel - I like to get a little bit of it each day so it lasts a while, not finish it all in one sitting.

To each his own I guess.

People finishing it in a week aren't necessarily rushing through it. I finished and had logged over 60 hours into the game. Dont' think that is rushing... just playing a lot because it was so good