MitchRapp

Hey guys

I just started Dragon Age: Origins and I looked at their wiki and didn't see much of the info I was looking for, so I suppose I could ask it to you fine gamers...


1) Is there fast-travel in the game? so far it's a lot of walking...
2) Does it get any fun? At the beginning, being a mage is kind of boring ...
3) Does it get uber complicated like World of Warcraft where you need some nerdy calculator mod in the game to calculate DPS etc........ (I am SO not into that)


I'm currently a Mage ... like level 2 lol. Just became a Grey Warden and I just found the flower to cure the dog and all... just... a lot of walking grr

Mousey

I say no more

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Tyrsonswood

Yeah!..... Don't go there.

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mkk

You will be travelling by foot a lot, but check the maps oftenly for fast travel oportunities. There can be more fast-travel as the game progresses though. Just make sure the caracter runs all the time.

Just maybe you'd want to try a Rouge or Warrior instead. (I started as mage and it was fun but many mage-related quests are a bit wierd and long so i gave a rogue a try and it proved quite different) The start of the game is varied between various classes/races too. Then again as your party fills up you could choose to control another character mostly when in battle. But the mage almost invariably hangs back to make the most of its potential, unless you want to put a couple of level-ups to strength and put on some armor and maybe a mace for fun.

Not quite like that, but you'll want to look into the party member tactics slots for the ones you don't control directly. That gets necessary later in the game although more critical on the difficulty levels above easy.

Not that many fun options spell-wise yet then. For some effect and fun go for a powerful spell like fireball or similar area-of-effect as soon as possible. If playing at above easy difficulty level it's almost necessary to go for early power-trips. On the other hand if you start controlling mostly another party member in combat then healing might be the way to go. Also if the combat doesn't seem very demanding yet it will quickly ramp up as your characters level. Around level 10 I just had to drop down to easy because I started having to micromanage even the simplest fights to get through. Fighting is not where I'd like to put so much time and effort into the game. There's so much else to explore.

Lol, yeah. You might want to avoid taking all missions you encounter if you feel like they're dragging on. Although that dog is a mean fighter early in the game. When you see him again that is. Story-wise the game is still just getting started. By when you read this quite a lot may already have happened.

iPlayer

You start using fast-travel after that Ostagar part, but virtually all locations are a "dungeon crawl". Anyways, I'd recommend doing the tower first to get the attribute bonuses.

The game combat on itself doesn't get any better later on imo, but at least the story, mostly character interaction, is entertaining.

Meh, the talents are mostly unbalanced, e.g.: Spellscasters are ridiculous, being able to take out large groups at once by chaining CoC with some other AoE dmg ability. AoE disables are all too powerful generally speaking.

Tril

I'm about 20 hours into the game playing at medium difficulty. Be prepared to quicksave and reload often. When in hard battles, you will have to pause very often to control the actions of all your characters. It's especially important to pause with a mage to aim the spells.

My main character is a rogue. I don't find him very strong. A rogue is mostly good at backstabbing (hitting people in the back). So you get ennemies to attack your allies, you get in the back of the ennemies and you hit. You do about twice as much damage in the back of ennemies compared to hitting them in the front. If all my other characters dies, I'm doomed because I can't hit people in the back anymore and I don't have any attack that hit more than one ennemy at a time (you can learn some when leveling up but I haven't yet learned one).

I have found a few new allies now. Currently, my favorite party consists of one rogue, one Warrior and two Mages. One mage has mostly attack spells and the other has mostly healing spells. The character that does the most DPS is the mage specialized in attack spells. It has many different attack spells so it can attack almost non-stop even with the cooldowns. It has a spell to get all the enemies surrounding the character unconscious and another spell to get ennemies unconscious over a large area of my choice. I mostly keep control of that mage and switch to the other characters when needed. The heling mage has a revival spell. It's very useful. As long as the healing mage stays alive and has mana, it will heal all the other party members and it will revive them. The problem is that mana is not infinite.

Mana and healing potions are rare in the game. Ingredients to make potions are also rare. You can find some on corpses/chests, you can buy some and you can make some if you have the skill and the recipe. The frustrating thing is that once you buy all the potions a vendor has in his possession, he will never restock so you won't be able to buy more. When I find someone selling potions, I buy all his stock. I usually try to beat the ennemies without using potions as much as possible since I don't have a lot of them. Most of the time, I die because my two mages used up all their mana and I did not want to use my mana potions to refill them.

Tactics are very important to control properly the other characters. A useful tactic to add is a healing tactic (when health smaller than X%, use a healing potion or a healing spell). You can get more slots when you level up by choosing the proper skill.

I like the storytelling of the game and the interaction between the characters and you. I slept with two party members so far. When you talk to some npc in the game, sometimes your party members take part in the conversation. This is interesting because what you will hear them say will depends on who you take with you. They all have their personality.

The weight limit of what we can carry is annoying. You can increase the weight limit by buying backpacks. I bought two or three so far. You have to find npc selling them. It would be nice if there was a storage chest in the camp. I would store all the items I want to keep but don't need in battle there. Some items weight 1 (like armor), others weight less than that (like potions). It's not very clear how much a potion weights. The weight of items is written nowhere.

At first I hated the fighting system. It was pretty boring. It was mostly click the ennemy, click special attacks until he's dead, click the next ennemy, etc. Now that I have Mages with a lot of spell, it requires a lot more work. I'm pausing the game all the time, moving my mage in the proper position to use a spell that fires in a cone, switching party member all the time to tell them to do something.

Too bad that you can only use four party members at a time. Most of the time, you are outnumbered. Personally, If my job was to save the world, I would take more than three persons with me at a time.

evilchinesefood

Yah too much walking. Be warned there. All and all fun game. I think its worth it.

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Cannyone

Here's my suggestion... If you want to use the Blood Dragon Armor, don't roll a Dwarf Noble! Because the main armor, which you're given with each new character, is taken away from you before you get out of the starting quests.

As for the previously given info on Zevran... If I had not followed that link, , I would have never known that was an "option".

Oh, yeah, one more suggestion... Don't chose the "violent" voice for your character. Unless you like being told by your character: "Can I get you a ladder so you can get off my back!" Personally I'm so tired of that crap that I'm deleting the two characters with that voice. It's little things like this that lead me to question the true intelligence of some of the people at BioWare.

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Tril

Maybe you can get around that. Deactivate the Blood Dragon Armor DLC before creating the dwarf noble. Once you are out of the starting quest, save, activate the DLC, reload your game. You should then have the armor in you inventory. I'm not sure this works with a dwarf.

I have a human noble and I only registered the game and the redeeming code after my game was started. It took me some time to figure out where to enter the two cd keys given by STEAM for the game. The next time I opened the game it downloaded the two free DLC and when I loaded my game I had the Dragon Blood Armor in my inventory.

So far I was able to get in the bed of Morrigan and Zevran.

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MitchRapp

thanks guys
I'm still playing my mage and it's alright for now
walk walk walk !

iPlayer

You can also do it once you are already at or past Ostagar:

Deactivate the DLC
Force load the game
Save Game
Reactivate the DLC

Of course, this all might be pointless considering how high the str req for the chest is.

Tril

You need 38 of strength. Only one of my party members can wear it and he's level 12.

I was complaining that there's no storage chest in the game. I found out that if you buy the Warden's Keep DLC, there's a storage chest in it.

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iPlayer

What I meant by that is you wouldn't have enough strength to equip it pre Ostagar anyways.

I didn't bother with the Warden's keep container, it's just too out of the way. There's at least one player made mod that adds a storage box to your camp:
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joytime365

Worth it??? How much do you get it? I am thinking about this Dragon Age: Origins $35, should i get it?

iPlayer

If you enjoyed IWD or BG, you'll probably love this one.