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Mage is probably the easiest class to start with. You can take any number of lines and still be successful. Hex’s are badass, cold line with cone of cold is awesome and fireball is downright dirty. You can also get mana clash to one shot most Mage mobs (who are some of the hardest hitting guys in the game). A sword&shield tanking warrior is pretty cool too once you get shield wall.

My first char was a Rogue, and even though in the end he was badass, after playing with a 2W warrior, I can safely say that rouges are a bit harder at first. So for just starting the game, RC, I’d say go with a dual wielding warrior, since I know you like melee dps in WOW. (I didn’t like 2-h warrior that much)

If you start with a DW warrior, get about 20 points in constitution, 36 in dexterity and then pump strength. If you are a mage, just concentrate on magic; willpower is unimportant because you can make lyrium potions for cheap (IMO). Also, for skills, always get coercion and combat tactics; since your MC is the only one that can get coercion, it just makes sense.

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@CLU: From the trailers 2 looks pretty damn good, what I like about DAO is that it’s the first game in a while that I’ve actually sat down and invested heavy minutes in. With all DLCs downloaded you aren’t gonna discover everything in one play through, it’s replay value is remarkable.

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Thanks, homie.

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yeah, I am disappointed that I missed out on the Baldur Gate awesomeness when it was at his hype. I should buy it, enjoy it, and then check out DA, and then DA:2, and then the witcher 2. Can’t wait.

About DA, i’ve been hesitant because of how involved I have to be to play it. if it’s like a good fantasy novel, then i think i’d enjoy it even more.

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So I just started playing Awakening, and I’m trying to finish this shit before DA II comes out into the world.

I kind of already fucked myself though, because of a glitch in a Silverite Mine dungeon. I lost all of my equipment off one party member. : u Now I’m trying to decide if it’s worth going back to a previous save to redo it, when I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get through without it bugging out again. Worse thing was, I could see the mother fucker that had his equipment, but I couldn’t get him to attack me so I could kill him and then get my equipment back. Ughhh.

359

Anybody have any good tactic sets to make your party target who you are? I thought I had mine set right but somebody always wanders off and hits another guy instead of the one I’m hitting.

I wish the tactics set up was like ffxii. That was one thing that square got right.

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You can have it set perfectly and it won’t matter most of the time I’ve noticed. I can’t check at work but I think there’s a qualifier in “Enemy” then “Attacking player”, that’s the closest one I can think of for who you’re target is.

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I played this game at release and was wondering if the Morrigan DLC expansion is worthwhile. I remember thinking it didn’t seem very “replayable” because everything ends up following the same story regardless if you are high born or low born, warrior or mage.

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Okay, under Target Conditions just go to Enemy. There should be an option called ‘Attacked/Targeted by party member’ under which you can choose from main character, or controlled character or any specific member. So it should be Enemy - Targeted by party member - Main character. Then just set what action they’ll take, I assume you’ll want to set an offensive ability of some kind. They should stay attacking the same character you are, that way.

Just make sure that you put this behavior relatively high in the list, so that it isn’t superceded by any others that might disrupt it.

No.
NO.
D:<

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don’t order witch hunt, like I did, waste of money ]:

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I did do that with the tactics. They only do the shit half the time. Damnit.

365

Beat Origins. Gotta do awakenings and the other DLC now. Had a good time with it, but kinda let down.

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So awakenings is weird. I like some of the structure more than Origins, but the thing with conscription just throws me off.

I didn’t find the story in origins to be awesome like everybody else. It seemed really weak, actually. I didn’t care about most of the people or the stuff that happened in the world. Ostagar was fucked up, but that was it. I think it didn’t help that there wasn’t a real centralized villain that was an immediate danger.

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My biggest problem with Origins was that party construction was fucking limited and didn’t allow you to roleplay as much as Knights of the Old Republic or even Mass Effect 2. If you don’t want to be a goody-goody your only option is to roll a healer so Wynne doesn’t flip a bitch about how evil you are whenever you kill pretty much anybody. Good characters have pretty much every possible option but if you wanted to be evil or even neutral without rolling a healer you were pretty much fucked.

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Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess.

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with the right customization a healer really isn’t necessary at all, I’ve seen people solo this game at some point just with the warden because by the time origins was over nothing could touch him. And, if you built him even more off awakening he made the game too easy than it should of been.

at least wynne isn’t locked into that awful shape shifter customization, that alone is a reason not to use morrigan.

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But she has two other reasons why you should.

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Actually, I don’t think that’s the case at all. I had my cunning high as fuck, and there were still instances where she’d flip the fuck out. I ended up playing a good guy, well, mostly, and didn’t catch much shit but when trying to be a villain… Wynne wasn’t having that shit. The trial and error involved in your roles COULD have been interesting, but it ended up completely fucking your team dynamic because you simply didn’t know if you would have to kill one of your own characters based on the role you wanted to play. Now, for some folks that may be cool, but it wasn’t for me. I liked how this kind of dynamic was presented in ME1, but that was really with one character. In this game it seems like the good characters are the ones who will walk the fuck out or have you kill them, and the “evil” characters don’t seem to care one way or another.

I just beat awakenings, and overall I’m underwhelmed by the game. It was fun, I still have 3 DLC packs to go through, but the game itself had lofty goals and fell short on execution. There is a ton of depth to the game, coupled with interesting choices abound, but it’s all constrained in a game that’s trying desperately to be epic but breaks down into meandering politics that simply aren’t interesting. There’s no sense of urgency, and the actual 5 things you have to do in order to beat the game are too long. Things should have been broken up and those five things should have been 10+ things, with story and exposition after each area. Having those 5 things be it really didn’t let the game breathe, and didn’t build any urgency to actually get something done. The only time there was any urgency was at Ostagar. Even with the DLC intertwined in the game, it still doesn’t deviate or make things that interesting.

I did feel like the biggest plus of this game was how the origins intertwine with the actual story and create a real sense of emotion when you see things that happened in your origin come up later. My first character was a dwarf commoner and the betrayal that happens to him actually kinda pissed me off. My girl played a human noble, and the stuff she went through at the end with a certain character based on her origin was really interesting as well. This is also really cool when you play all the other origins and find out all kinds of crazy shit about certain characters.

And what’s cool is how different each play through can be based on your choices. I personally had Anora on my side, but my girl’s play through had Anora double cross her. Completely unexpected stuff like that is fucking AWESOME. The problem is, that stuff doesn’t happen as much as it should and it’s by far the strongest aspect of the game.

I’m also disappointed with the cohesion with Awakenings. I felt like I made some difficult decisions in the game, and to not really see ANY of those carried over into awakenings was a real disappointment. I felt like Bioware really dropped the ball in that department. Awakenings also takes the idea of the importance of conscription and throws it out the window. “What are you doing on Saturday? Want to come down and try to be a Grey Warden? First 15 people get a free sword!”

The dialogue was the high point overall in both Origins and Awakenings for me, as were the different situations you can encounter on different play throughs. It’s obvious Bioware put a LOT of thought into how you interact with the world, but didn’t make the world that interesting.

And that’s really the problem. Every other bioware game I’ve played since Baldur’s Gate II really went out of it’s way to establish the world. The codex is great, but I felt like a foot note in the game’s story, despite being the guy who is going to save the god damn world.

Bottom line, great game, but all the actual interesting shit doesn’t change the fact that I feel like this game’s execution wasn’t up to par on a lot of things save the dialogue. DA:O had lofty goals, and didn’t reach those goals. Still loved it, but I know there are people on here who are like “GREATEST RPG EVAR” and I don’t see how. I guess maybe I expected too much, which is rare for me. I normally just go with it, but Bioware has made much better games than this. I have to wonder if the amount of time this game was in development hurt it rather than helped it.

Oh well. I’ll finish the dlc stuff this week and probably start DA:2 at the end of the month.

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You don’t need a healer, there’s actually a lot of ways around things in this game. I had a playthrough where I tried to play a non-mage playthrough (Mages are the best in this game easily. Even with Morrigan’s crappy shapeshifting class, the regular mage spells are just that good). If you have different types of poultices, then you can actually spam them, while the other type is in cooldown. You wouldn’t need much too many poultices anyways if you have a good tank setup, which usually means Alistair in late-game or Shale since she comes joins pretty decent, unlike Alistair who really bites the dust easily in the beginning on Nightmare. I also like Oghren with Indomitable, since I just like to hang around the drunk dwarf. You can have the 2 tanks alternate aggro from each other, while you other people doing something else.

Since Mages are godsend at AoE and Crowd control, I had to settle for an archer Leliana (I made her in love with me so she wouldn’t turn) to fill that role. Having Bard +Ranger is great because the Bear is actually very strong and a great tank too (You can do shatter setups with his skill too, so keep that in mind if you do want a mage). Also scattershot is probably the best archery skill hands down, stuns all around. The hardest part of playing without a mage is trying to counter other mages. You can’t insta-kill them with mana clash but I just try to CC them then try to manuever my rogue to them (or arrow of slaying but I don’t like using all my stamina in one shot).

edit: Yea about Wynne, there’s no persuading her from stuff she really doesn’t like. So trying to roleplay and get the reaver specialization or trying to annul the whole mages tower isn’t gonna fly with her at all. I actually like that in a way because that just means the character is really has their uncompromising morals. Everyone shouldn’t be persuaded so easily imo.

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This thread looks dead. ;( awwww

Still playing this fucking thing, it’s like crack.
DA 2 aint doing it for me.