Dragon Age: Origins

[shadowmaster]

I've managed to sort out the Elves, I admit that was one long long quest. I think I used about 60 health potions to get through it.

[KIAEddZ]

Finished the game last night...

Bring on the community mods.

[Nobull]

Hey all.

I'm a bit of a noob to RPGs to be honest, but I got this cos of all the rave reviews. I've tried Half Life and its not really my thing, and I played final fantasy back in the day as well as Phantasy Star Online on the gamecube.

I'm liking this so far, I'm still early days yet. I have to say though, I'm rubbish at combat. I find the fighting difficult to master, and to be honest a little clumsy and frantic. I've got it on normal and I die frequently, dunno if this is an isolated experience?

I'm usually pretty decent at games, I always complete them, at medium setting at the very least and usually at more difficult levels but I am struggling with this 1.

Do u eventually just 'get the knack of it' or do I just need a serious crash course in tactics?

Can anyone help?

[Haiku32]

Got this game yesterday, not had much time to play due to work and such. Decided to go as an Elven Mage! At the bit where you have to fight the an ogre for the first time in the tower. Getting my ass completely handed to me. I'm on the normal setting, and thus far I hadn't died. Then my meeting with the ogre coincided with my first meeting of the death screen. For the next hour or so I saw that death screen far, far too much.

I'm finding it very hard to control my party. They seem to do what I want as soon as I tell them, but then immediately do something different. I put one tank in front of the ogre and one behind, put the archer at the side, and I attacked with my mage from far away. This went well for 2 seconds after I unpaused, then all 3 of my party decided to run back in front of the ogre and get pummelled. I pause, move them, unpause, 2 seconds later, they run back.

I know there's the whole tactics menu, but I have no idea how to work it. Absolutely loving the game thus far, even if I totally suck.

It looks amazingly good. The scenery is beautiful, the animations are realistic and the gore is... a little cheesy .

[Mithrandir]

This game looks/sounds fantastic. Any high res screenies from you guys?

[shadowmaster]

Just completed the main storyline. Took me almost 40 hours, but I only did a couple of side quests. The main storyline is actually quite short. Anyhow very good game and definetely worth playing.

Next up, some sleep and then Call of Duty or Assassins Creed 2....

[chuckskull]

Picked this up the other day. When even Yahtzee gives a decent a review figured it was worth a look.

Really enjoying it, don't think I've played a good single player RPG since Final Fantasy 7.

Is there any way to store items? Come across a few things I don't wanna sell, but backpacks are expensive and rare(It's a bag ffs, why so much hassle?).

[Geist]

If you pay for the Wardens Keep there is some chest, or the chest can be added via the tool set / mod someone's released.

Backpacks while expensive are needed if like me you keep things to hand 'just in case'. I'm on around 70/120 after selling stuff I don't want to keep.

[Salazaar]

I know there's the whole tactics menu, but I have no idea how to work it. Absolutely loving the game thus far, even if I totally suck.

You'll need to invest some time in learning how it works if you want to play on anything other than easy! However, if you want a quick fix, there are some preset setups in the drop downs at the top of either side of that screen (I'll post screen grabs if I remember this evening), use them to select ranged profiles which will help keep your archers/mages out of trouble for a bit.

[kalniel]

Hey all.

I'm a bit of a noob to RPGs to be honest, but I got this cos of all the rave reviews. I've tried Half Life and its not really my thing, and I played final fantasy back in the day as well as Phantasy Star Online on the gamecube.

I'm liking this so far, I'm still early days yet. I have to say though, I'm rubbish at combat. I find the fighting difficult to master, and to be honest a little clumsy and frantic. I've got it on normal and I die frequently, dunno if this is an isolated experience?

I'm usually pretty decent at games, I always complete them, at medium setting at the very least and usually at more difficult levels but I am struggling with this 1.

Do u eventually just 'get the knack of it' or do I just need a serious crash course in tactics?

Can anyone help?

Normal is deliberately challenging if you've not got the right party/skills/tactics for a particular encounter - some fights are designed to only be doable if you use buffs (eg use protective shards/potions, poison weapons etc. before the fight, use healing/mana during etc.)

If you've already tried using up your supplies then change tactics or companions. If that still doesn't work then drop down to easy just for those battles - a lot of people are doing that if they're used to modern games. Older RPGs were more similar to DA:O.

Don't forget to pause and switch between characters to assign actions. Mages are immensely powerful in this game, so make sure to have at least one in the party, and prioritise them when going against them.

[shadowmaster]

Mages are incredibly useful, with the right spellls you can take out 20 darkspawm at once.

[Haiku32]

I've been using tactics a lot more which has been helping, and pausing every move in combat, but I'm still getting completely owned on normal. Got past the ogre and I'm level 6. My party keeps getting wiped out and it's very frustrating. The warriors don't seem to have any decent attacks, the rogue is practically useless, and my mage just runs out of mana and I can't seem to find enough pots, even after buying as much as I could from all the merchants I can find. I'm not enjoying the game as much as I thought I would because of this. Any tips/pointers before I just just restart and set the game to easy?

[menthel]

Don't forget to forage around for stuff and get someone with herbalism to make pots too. Otherwise turn down the difficulty, get used to the game and then turn it back up!

[shadowmaster]

I've been using tactics a lot more which has been helping, and pausing every move in combat, but I'm still getting completely owned on normal. Got past the ogre and I'm level 6. My party keeps getting wiped out and it's very frustrating. The warriors don't seem to have any decent attacks, the rogue is practically useless, and my mage just runs out of mana and I can't seem to find enough pots, even after buying as much as I could from all the merchants I can find. I'm not enjoying the game as much as I thought I would because of this. Any tips/pointers before I just just restart and set the game to easy?

The danish clans have a merchant that sells unlimited elf root, the dwarf merchant at your camp sells unlimted flask, add someone with the herby skill and you get unlimited lesser health potions

Also I cant remember where but there is merchant (possibly in Orzammar) that sells unlimited lyrium powder and distillation agents so you can make better health potions and lesser lyrium potions.

[Mithrandir]

How would this game play on my rig?
Ta

[shadowmaster]

How would this game play on my rig?
Ta

I would say fine, keep the AA on the low side and it should run like a peach. Its one of those games where you dont need 100 fps to run smoothly, from what I could tell I think 40fps+ would be perfectly playable.

Here are the requirements-

Minimum (XP): Core 2 Duo with 1.4 GHz or Athlon 64 X2 with 1.8 GHz, 1024 MB RAM, Geforce 6600 GT or Radeon X850 with 128 MB, 20 GB disc space

Minimum (Vista): Core 2 duo with 1.6 GHz or Athlon 64 X2 with 2.2 GHz, 1536 MB RAM, Geforce 7600 GT or Radeon X1550 with 256 MB, 20 GB disc space

Recommended: Core 2 Quad with 2.4 GHz (or comparable AMD CPU), 2048 MB RAM (XP), 4096 MB RAM (Vista), Geforce 8800 GTS or Radeon HD 3850 with 512 MB