Just started Dragon Age and I was wondering if there were any tips to new players, stuff you wish you'd known when you first played it?
I also want to know how I split items, like potions, so I can give some to another member of my party. I had like 6 potions and wanted to give 2 to my other party member but couldn't figure it out and didn't see anything in the manual about it.
Use AOE (area of effect) damage/crowed control spells on your mage(s). The cold spell tree is very useful with cone of ice and blizzard. Aslo put one level into healing tree as it saves a fortune on potions. Also note Sleep is a large AOE spell.
You do NOT need a lock picking rouge as the vast majority of chests contain junk hardly worth picking up. You may still want a rouge using a bow or dagger, but don't worry about chests.
DO NOT throw away any drake/drong scales you may come into possession of as they make
some of the best, if not the best armor in the game. Also note creation time is how long it takes you to enter another building, so you can quick save and play around when you want to make armor out of the scales.
A single dedicated tank with Taunt will help a great deal. When dealing with two tanks AOE damage can use up a lot of potions. Also note you will want to get said tanks strength up to around lvl 38 for massive armor.
No. All items, unless equipped, are placed in a pool for all characters to use.
Dragging a potion from this pool onto multiple characters item bars (quick use) will take a potion from the same stack when used.
-edit- If you have a chest you want to only place X number of items from a stack in, press the shift key while click & dragging the item. -reedit- or it does it automatically, I forget.
Also note there are simple small mods that will add a chest to your main camp so you do not need the wadren's keep DLC to have a chest to store items in. I used this one http://social.bioware.com/project/463/
You need to figure out your potion strategy. Drag the potions to each characters toolbar. The potion will heal the character selected, but all the potions are pulled from the same pool of resources.
For the fun aspect of the game: buy backpacks from merchants and whatnots, level up your lockpicking skillz, and pick up loot anywhere and everywhere you can. The ladies will love you.
No. All items, unless equipped, are placed in a pool for all characters to use.
Dragging a potion from this pool onto multiple characters item bars (quick use) will take a potion from the same stack when used.
-edit- If you have a chest you want to only place X number of items from a stack in, press the shift key while click & dragging the item. -reedit- or it does it automatically, I forget.
Also note there are simple small mods that will add a chest to your main camp so you do not need the wadren's keep DLC to have a chest to store items in. I used this one http://social.bioware.com/project/463/
Rogues are for dealing actual damage, pickpocketing people, and opening chests.
Mages deal damage, but are primarily for holds and heals.
Warriors are there to get beat up so your rogues and mages aren't.
Download and install the loot information module, so you know what you actually got from a pickpocket or quest reward.
Yadoinitwrong then. The click&drag interface is a little weird, you can't drop the actual "square" into the slot, you need to drag the mouse cursor itself. Uhh this wasn't explained well so I'll draw a picture of how to drag items into the quick slots.
Yadoinitwrong then. The click&drag interface is a little weird, you can't drop the actual "square" into the slot, you need to drag the mouse cursor itself. Uhh this wasn't explained well so I'll draw a picture of how to drag items into the quick slots.
PSA, if you need the above diagram to learn how to function in dragons age, then dragons age is not the game you should be playing. Please seek out helly kitty adventure island.
Yadoinitwrong then. The click&drag interface is a little weird, you can't drop the actual "square" into the slot, you need to drag the mouse cursor itself. Uhh this wasn't explained well so I'll draw a picture of how to drag items into the quick slots.
Yadoinitwrong then. The click&drag interface is a little weird, you can't drop the actual "square" into the slot, you need to drag the mouse cursor itself. Uhh this wasn't explained well so I'll draw a picture of how to drag items into the quick slots.
When you move the item you want to give to your companions, the tile will "glow" and you can place the item onto the tile. Otherwise, you may lose the item as DA will think you are destroying it.
PSA, if you need the above diagram to learn how to function in dragons age, then dragons age is not the game you should be playing. Please seek out helly kitty adventure island.
At least I'm calling the game by the right name...
So does that mean you play hello kitty adventure island?
I was able to drag and drop fine to my own character, it was just the other party member that didn't work. That is kind of odd that they made the drag and drop feature that way.
A lot of the fun of this sort of game is trying things out for yourself, especially if you're experienced with the genre. That being said, I'll list a few very general advice tips below with spoiler tags around what I wouldn't have wanted to know before I finished my first playthrough.
For party composition, I recommend one of each role (damage dealer, tank, crowd control, healer) which can play out in many different ways but usually means:
Tanking tips:
- Your tank needs to be able to take aggro and keep it with the Threaten and Taunt skills. Never use up so much of your stamina with offensive skills that you don't have enough to activate taunt when one of your squishies picks up aggro.
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You'll want enough strength to equip the best armor (38 or 42), enough dex to acquire your shield skills (26) and then put the rest into dex and con.
- The best gear you own should be your tank's armor. Fully geared, your tank will be able to shrug off most enemies while requiring minimal healing.
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Shield Wall, Shield Expertise, and Shield Mastery should be acquired as soon as you are high enough level to get them. Don't worry about your specialization until they are complete then I recommend Champion and then either Templar or Reaver.
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If your tank is taking too much damage, a very effective strategy is to cast Force Field on it just after a taunt. This will keep the tank from taking any damage at all.
Mage tips:
- Mages have the best crowd control abilities, do excellent area damage, and are the only healers. Bring one along if you want to have a balanced party.
- Sleep, Horror, Waking Nightmare, Crushing Prison, Force Field, and Mass Paralysis are all excellent mage CC skills that do not do friendly damage, which means they are excellent tactics for an auto-pilot crowd control mage.
- Cone of Cold is an excellent CC skill that includes cold damage but can affect friendly targets. This is a good one to cast yourself so you can be careful not to hit your own party with it.
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I recommend casting Sleep and Cone of Cold on large groups of normal mobs and Horror, Waking Nightmares, and Crushing Prison on priority single targets (elite mobs, enemy mages). If there are no priority targets, then Sleep followed by Horror is an excellent combo that will turn the targetted mob insane.
- Upper tier DPS skills (Fireball, Earthquake, Blizzard) all have CC components to them but will damage your own party if you aren't careful. They are better for areas like dungeons where you can cast them in a room of enemies and then have your party stand outside in the hall with your tank blocking the doorway. Alternatively, you can cast them in wide open spaces with very careful targetting (at the ground, not an enemy) and at enemies like archers who are holding still.
Grease + Fireball is a spell combination (grease fire) that will massively damage weak mobs but will generate a great deal of aggro to your mage.
- Spirit Healer is required for the mage group heal and the revive, both of which are extremely useful skills for any of your mages to have. However, lifeward and cleansing aura are not that great and easily skippable. Cleansing Aura costs mana to maintain but does fix injuries (like an injury kit), so most people end up only using it between battles as a free injury kit replacement.
Rogue/Warrior DPS tips:
- Poison is extremely strong in Dragon Age but very underutilized because it requires crafting. If you're relying on a rogue or warrior for your primary DPS instead of a mage, you really owe it to yourself to utilize poisons heavily.
- Rogues have top tier melee DPS if you are careful to position them properly behind their target for maximum damage.
They'll also crit fairly often which makes them an excellent combination to use along with Cone of Cold (crit insta-kills frozen enemies).
- Archers are better on auto-pilot because you don't have to worry about positioning, keeping them out of the way of AoE DPS, or healing them. Rogue Ranger is an excellent specialization that gives them a pet to send into battle for additional DPS/distractions. I recommend setting auto-pilot archer tactics to focus on enemy mages/archers first and then to shoot whatever your main character is attacking.
- Archers are also excellent at pulling enemies one at a time from a large group. Shoot them from the maximum range of your bow and then kill them as they come one by one.
- Dual wield warrior DPS spec is more hyped than the two hand spec but that's really just because you have a couple of 2h warrior NPCs join your group and no dual wield warriors. Both are excellent DPS if you treat them as DPS and not tanks - if they are taking much damage it means your tank isn't doing it's job.
Don't forget to regularly use the TAB key to highlight specific interactive objects in the environment that you would otherwise be missing, usually things related to small quests or just for finding secret caches or codex entries which in turn can give some experience or items, etc. I found out about the TAB key very late during my first Origin, and I was amazed by how many things I had missed around during my second playthrough by using it almost constantly.
The absolute number one thing I didn't know my first time through is that YOU CAN INCREASE THE SIZE OF THE QUICKBAR. Didn't know that, and it's DAMN hard to play through with so few quickbar slots.
Definitely TAB -- if it's in the manual I missed it, and went through the first part of the game missing books and such that weren't in obvious piles. Sometimes the hotspot is really tiny so even if you know something is there it can be hard to find.
Can someone share some tips about finding ingredients? I've got lots of bomb/salve/poultice/coating recipes but I can NEVER find ingredients apart from just the odd random plant lying around. I'm just talking basic stuff like Elfroot and Deathroot. Any places I should be looking? It's frustrating that I put so many points and so much money into my alchemy and still end up having to buy health and lyrium poultices all the time.
Can someone share some tips about finding ingredients? I've got lots of bomb/salve/poultice/coating recipes but I can NEVER find ingredients apart from just the odd random plant lying around. I'm just talking basic stuff like Elfroot and Deathroot. Any places I should be looking? It's frustrating that I put so many points and so much money into my alchemy and still end up having to buy health and lyrium poultices all the time.
They can only be found in chests or from fallen foes, or be bought at merchants, but you won't find enough just by relying on the very rare plants you see in the environment. There are some merchants with infinite supplies of specific ingredients, for instance the Dalish Elf merchant (forgot his name) at the Dalish Camp sells infinite Elfroot (quantity is always x99), and the merchant at the party camp sells infinite Flasks and Distillation Agent, and maybe one or two others that I'm forgetting about. But briefly said, if you want ingredients en masse you really need to buy them.
EDIT: Oh, and another very fine tip I can give to everyone, which gives you lots of advantages (I'll explain) especially if used from as early as possible, is to set Lelianna to use her Stealing skill as a Tactic against Normal or Higher ranked foes. The Stealing skill at first is basically useless if used that way, but the point is to max it out as fast as possible, to master it, so that Lelianna will be able to Steal during combat.
Just set the condition as "Enemy = Any" and for that condition use the Stealing skill, or if you prefer a condition like "Enemy = Normal or Higher" and again point that condition to the Stealing skill. I've been using that strategy from as soon as I got Lelianna's Stealing skill maxed out, and then from that point I kept her with me in my party all the time, and each time a fight occurred she would first attempt to steal, and it was generally a successful steal (about 80% success overall). The advantages of that is that you "find" more money and items, it's that simple, they are items that you wouldn't find without that strategy.
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