The Gaming Den

To anyone who is worried about spoilers from a three year game: Warning, Winnah's post right before mine contains spoilers.

Morrigan strikes me more on the autistic spectrum than a true sociopath. She dresses herself like that because she's clueless on how to do so, she admits to not knowing how long and when to look people in the eye, she doesn't like touching even when it comes to handshakes, she obsesses with huge impractical books, and so forth. Seriously dudes, she's a sperglord.

And it didn't occur to me to not tell her to shut up, I've gotten her approval up very high already and don't care if she gets pissed.

name_here wrote: Also, she can shut the hell up about how the Circle mages deserve to die for not fighting the Chantry that they've lived with most of their lives and which has demonstrated its capacity to kill literally every mage in a Circle on many occasions and which also teaches them about how to not get their souls eaten by demons.

Actually, it demonstrably doesn't do that. It just tells prospective mages that it will fucking kill them if they do happen to get possessed (if anyone happens to notice). It doesn't teach them how _not_ to, but instead shoves novices into Demonland on their own and sort of hopes for the best. And 'the best' seems to be a cross between 'actually hopes they don't come back possessed' and 'hopes they do come back possessed so they can be justifiably murdered.'

Since the entire Circle goes up in a giant orgy of possession, blood magic, torture and death, (and the ratio of blood mages to loyal circle mages you meet out in the world is at least 5:1) it is a pretty good sign that they have no fucking clue what they are about.

I was hanging out with a friend, and we both go to talking about the Warhammer video games.

Space Marine wasn't bad. We speculated on what else they could feature:

WARHAMMER 40k: Sister of Battle

WARHAMMER 40k: Ork Boss

WARHAMMER 40k: Champion of Chaos

And the crown jewel:

WARHAMMER 40k: Eversor

When I played DA:0, I constantly wished that Morrigan from Darkstalkers would walk out of a bush and take the other Morrigan's place. Or at the very least have a meteor fall on her and crush her.

I don't like morrigan from darkstalkers either. She has DA morrigan's faults without being hilariously clueless on social interaction.

Ted wrote:I don't like morrigan from darkstalkers either.

But, but... BOOBS!

In seriously though, she's fun in Marvel Vs. Capcom, I know that. Plus, I believe I've said this before, but her ending in the first Marvel Vs. Capcom game was funny as hell.

being hilariously clueless on social interaction.

Actually, speaking of cluelessness, Liu Kang and Kung Lao in Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks were hilariously idiotic. I know most people think the game sucks, but really, it's one of those "it's so bad it's good" type of deals.

Also in the vein of fighting games, I've been playing a lot of Soul Calibur V lately. Eventually, it started to get boring. So, in order to spice things up, I changed the language settings from English to Japanese. Instant fun once again.

Video game boobs don't count, the programmers can make them as big as they want without being limited by gravity or biology.

A few things I have been picking up:

1. I didn't realize how many cameos were in DA2. I was surprised that Zevran was in it. Also, Zevran has the highest disapproval drop yet, -25% if you won't have sex with him because you're involved with someone else.

2. Sten and Morrigan have finally stopped getting pissy every time I accept a quest. Maybe they got genre savvy and realized that side quests usually result in xp, gold, and power.

3. I think I broke the game somehow. I'm getting some dwarf dude elected king (not Harrowmont, as a casteless dwarf Harrowmont can eat all the dicks as far as I am concerned). I just went through ortan thaig, and my quest info is pointing me back through Caridin's Crossing to the Dead Trenches, but it's not appearing. I went back to Orzammar to drop off the extraneous shit I had acquired (dragon age 1 loves its trash drops too, it would seem...), maybe that's what bork it.

4. I don't know about Wynne. I considered Anders an abomination, but Anders is a dick, while Wynne thus far seems kindly and nurturing.

Also, is there any good armor that gives a bonus to healing? Thinking about making Wynne an Arcane Warrior at 14 for protection. Not intending on weighing her down with massive armor, just a bit more protection than what she has.

EDIT: Goddammit, I thought I was being clever by naming the dog "Barkspawn". It seems I'm not as clever as I thought...

I never finished playing Dragon Age. I just couldn't get that into it, like most other people. Same deal with Mass Effect. I just don't seem to ever catch the "popular game bug".

Fucking fuck. I really like X-com: Enemy Unknown and it keeps crashing on me in the middle of missions.

Character opinions about Dragon Age:

1. I don't know why people are bitching about Alistair, he seems like a stand-up guy to me.

2. It's kind of cute how clueless Morrigan is. She really doesn't have a clue, lol.

3. I have played both Oghren and Shale in D&D games. The names were different, and my version of Shale was a female personality Warforged, but I know these characters...

4. The dog is adorable. He seems less useful than a full member, but more useful than the dog in Dragon Age 2.

5. Zevran is awesome. He's kind of gimpy in combat, but I enjoy his dialogue.

6. Leilana... well she kind of falls flat with me. She's great in combat (gave her Ranger as her second spec, having a fifth member is pretty cool), but for some reason she's not clicking with me. Maybe it's because I've known a lot of bisexual women that weren't nice people and now I'm prejudiced, maybe it's because I am prejudiced against religious people. Maybe a little of both.

7. I like Wynne. She's got an entirely too nice body to be an elderly woman (although not as bad as DA2's version of Flemeth and Leandra), but I like her personality and some of her interactions are pretty funny (her teaching Alistair about the birds and the bees had me rolling).

8. Sten would suck, but since Feastday Gifts and Pranks are part of the special edition he's awesome (I've used the party-wide group rezz more than once, and it saved my ass).

I also get a few of the references in 2. Like how Kirkwall is less brown than Ferelden. Dragon Age's graphics are muddy and shitty to boot. Battles are less sluggish when you have a party. And being a rogue. I am playing a casteless dwarf rogue, and not having much problems. Duelist/assassin, I'm wearing medium armor so it's not the end of the world if I get aggro, I focus more on sustained and passive abilities so I don't notice the stamina penalty (Wynne is in heavy armor so it's bogging her down a bit. I've been told maxing out Arcane Warrior tree makes it all worth it. But hey, at least she hasn't died since speccing and getting her a decent set of armor and a shield).

I like Darkstalkers Morrigan of course. And she's awesome (as well as highly effective) in Cross-Edge.

Maxus wrote: WARHAMMER 40k: Eversor

Ideally it should play out kind of like the movie "Crank". Where you have an adrenaline gauge and you're in danger of dying when you stop doing increasingly dangerous and stupid things.

At least I think Crank is the movie I'm thinking of. Where the guy wakes up having been drugged with something that will make his heart stop beating, and he can delay the effects by getting bigger hits of adrenaline, so does hits of coke, jabs epinephrine shots into himself, gets into fistfights and shootouts, has sex in public, steals a taxi and so on.

Yeah, that's the one.

That'd be a blast. Turn you loose on a Genestealer-run planet and carve your want through bugs, people, buildings, and vehicles.

Ted the Flayer wrote:Character opinions about Dragon Age:

Thanks to my party makeup, I usually ran around with Morrigan and Sten and then a rogue for lockpicking.

Morrigan kept hitting on Sten and got dissuaded when he finally agreed and told her to have a heated iron nearby to make him unclench his jaws, as he may attempt to 'nuzzle'. Among other advice.

Evidently Sten takes his lovemaking seriously.

Ted the Flayer wrote: my version of Shale was a female personality Warforged,

Thpoilerth.

My typical method is to change my characters up frequently.

I have heard from a lot of people that Dog is terrible. But after tweaking his tactics a bit, the game got a lot easier (he charges mages and archers and keeps them occupied. That does help a lot). Despite his lack of gear, Dog seems like he's doing a lot of damage.

I have not been able to find the highest grade crystals for Shale yet. Sure, she seems to be doing pretty good with the flawless grade of spirit crystals, but not finding any brilliant crystals is starting to get on my damn nerves. My character is level 20 atm.

The game throws a lot of good gear your way that you almost feel bad about getting rid of, but that fucking inventory bullshit gets on my nerves. If I was playing the PC version, I'd be finding an unlimited inventory mod ASAP, 120 items max my fucking eye. I guess it could be worse (Legend of dragoon with 32 items max, or Final Fantasy 5 advance where it truncates your inventory at a certain point and deletes everything you have. Lost halve my inventory that way, although all my good shit was on my characters thankfully.)

My sister used Shale to kill Flemeth. Fire defense crystals and ice offense crystals.

Flemeth had finally worn down everyone else by dint of a few lucky hits and running out of quick heals, but Shale stayed in the game and apparently punched Flemeth's knees to death.

Good times.

Zevran and Alistair convinced me that it would be hilarious to tell Morrigan I killed Flemeth when I didn't. So I did.

The Dog doesn't do any real amount of damage worth mentioning, any of the Warriors will do more once you have a decent weapon. What the Dog does bring to the table is a lot of CC. The howl thing is one of the first AoE stuns you can get, and Overwhelm interrupts almost everything. So if you want t run with "team AoE lockdown" (spoiler: you do) the Dog is a reasonable guy to tap in if you don't feel like micromanaging another mage, or if one of your mages died or ran off.

Alistar is pretty much the only character you get who would be fun to hang out with, which predisposed me to think well of him. That, and his being super hot. You can bet I boned the shit out of him in my first playthrough. However, someone pointed out to me that he spends more time than anyone else whining about how his life sucks even though he has the objectively best life of any of the companions.

I hate everything about Zevran. His voice is irritating as fuck, his "flirting" is crass and hamfisted, and despite the archetype he's clearly supposed to be, he seems to have worse social skills than the rest of the group. Also he comes in at high level without either the lockpicking talents OR the actually good fighting talents, so he's really bad for most of the game. If you get to the high teens, he becomes pretty deadly in combat and able to do thiefy shit, but seriousy.

Ranger Leliana all the way. None of the active Archery talents are worth using, so just stack all her stamina in passives. Bard song + Pet +Rapid Shot. Just make sure you have the patch where bows get to do actual damage. If you don't -- play a damn Rogue yourself.

Shale is a Mage. She has an AoE paralyze that works on almost everything, the boulder toss knockdown, a kockdown punch, and that bombardment move that randomly knocks down people over a long time/wide area. If you're going to use her you actually probably want to make her your take point, so she can set up her bombardment before you jump out to the Warden. After that, CC bot all the way.

@Ted "some dwarf dude"? Your choices are Harrowmont, or Bhelen I.E. the prince who's boning your sister. I'd think you'd remember him, although maybe if you've never played the Dwarf Noble story, it might have been harder to follow. I don't know why you wouldn't have though, Dwarf Noble is the objectively best Origin. The +% healing enchant for armor is broken. It literally does nothing whatsoever. It increments a value that is never called by any processes.

Come to think of it, I never did Dwarf Noble/Commoner origins. I ought to, just for the hell. And the achievements, I guess.

Do Dwarf Noble first. Virtually all of the explanation of what the fuck is going on is in that one. Seriously, a lot of things that happen in the commoner origin are only explained in the noble one. It's also just genuinely cool and gives you more choices and awesome shit to do than any of the others, plus provides the most context for what's going on in Orzammar during the main game. Also if you know how to do it you can rack up about 30 gold before the Origin is over. Oh, and Dwarf Nobles are also mechanically better. A Noble Warrior gets railroaded into Sword& Board, but a Common Warrior gets a spectacularly useless point in pickpocketing. I'd actually rather play a Noble even if I were going Two-Weapon Fighting. But let's get real, you're not going to be a Warrior anyway. You're going to be a Rogue, because they are better at everything. So the question is, do you want a free point in Pickpocketing in the early game where there's nothing good to steal? Or do you want a free point in Combat Training that makes it possible for you to spend your talent points more efficiently and get to key powers like Momentum multiple levels earlier?

Edited to Add: Someone in another thread claimed that when playing a Rogue, there weren't enough talent points in the early game to invest in lockpicking and combat. This is false. If you get 2 ranks of the Devices talent you will be able to disarm everything you find for a really long time. If you get Momentum and nothing else you will kill everything through Ostagar with no problems. That's 5 talent points. By the time you become a Warden you should be level 5, and have gotten 7 discretionary talent points. You can get an 8th almost immediately from Bodahn if you're stupidly wealthy (it's good to be the king.) In terms of longer term goals, here's the deal: all of the single-targeted active talents are a waste of your time when it comes to damage. They're not all literally worse than regular backstabbing, but none of them are enough better that you would miss them. The sole reason to use them is for CC, and the CC comes early. Sustained modes and Passives are where it's at, except that you only even want half of those, because several of them were designed for warriors and do nothing for you. Here's your wishlist, important ones bolded. 20 Talents. Since you start with 3, get a bonus from Wardening and another from Championing, and can get two training books, you can have all of this at level 13. I guess you could also get some specializations, if you felt like it.

Dirty Fighting, Combat Movement, Coup de Grace
Disable Device I, II, III, IV
Below the Belt, Deadly Strike, Lethality, Evasion
Dual-Weapon Training, Dual-Weapon Finesse, Dual-Weapon Expert
Dual Striking, Riposte
Dual-Weapon Sweep, Flurry, Momentum, Whirlwind

@ Orion: I tend to be terrible with names. I just remembered "Wait, Harrowmont doesn't like the casteless? Fuck that guy. I don't care who Bhalen killed, I've killed more people than Cecil B. DeMille. And my sister had goals in life (to bone a noble in order to get her children into a clan), she worked at it, and she followed through. My fictional sister is more coherent than anyone I know in real life.

This is a blind playthrough, I picked the background that appealed to me. I picked dwarf because dwarves are always awesome, I picked casteless because I support the proletariat, and I'm playing a female because female dwarves are cute in this game <3. And I enjoyed friendzoning Leilana, although she gets some points back because the nug I gave her hangs around camp. <3 nugs... Also, she didn't get pissy about it like Zevran did.

I trained Dog to lock down mages, since they seem to be the biggest threat. He also goes after Archers if there are no mages to be seen.

A few things I would have done differently, perhaps on a subsequent playthrough:

1. Play a mage myself. Seriously, AI mages need a lot of babysitting.

2. Put points in combat tactics. In Dragon Age 2, even the most complicated tactics I could devise taking dozens of entries were doable (I deserve a fucking medal for programming Anders to take full advantage of his entire tree when situationally relevant and programming all the warriors to specifically watch him when he's in the party, not to mention that everyone did cross class combos without me telling them to. I started playing with the tactics in Origins, and realize you only get 6 entries, and can only get 6 more with points in skills. Which means if I really want my guys to be crafty, I have to fucking babysit them (and sometimes their AI overrides what I'm manually telling them to do. Getting Shale to drink a poultice (?) is like pulling teeth sometimes). Morrigan and Wynne specifically aren't really capable of acting to their fullest unless I manually control them, they both have so many neat things they can do. I'm going to say this is one of the very few areas where DA2 is clearly superior.

3. There's a few quests where I fucked up and locked myself out of. I could have done both sides of the stealing/burglary quests from the guy in Denerim, I didn't realize Lothering was going to be nuked that early in the game and didn't do a lot there except recruit Sten and Leilana.

4. Maybe switch around the specializations I made on my characters a bit. I am not sure what I was thinking when I made both Leilana and Zevran rangers. What ever it was, it wasn't hard enough. Also, the lack of blood mage is disturbing, that's the only spec I didn't unlock. I am not sure how to do that. Most of the rest was easy, either buy books or pester the person with it to teach everyone until they did.

EDIT: Orion, your recommended list looks very close to how I'm specced, with some minor differences here and there. I'm glad that I seem to be able to pick out good abilities without having my hand held. I didn't bother with evasion because I wore medium armor until I got Wade's improved drakeskin set very recently.

I approve of Ranger for Leliana. As for Zevran, who gives a damn since it sounds like your Warden is a daggers Rogue anyway? Armor is funny for Rogues. You don't actually care what your Fatigue is, so you would wear full plate if you could. The only limit is your strength score. You want to get up to whatever you need for tier 7 leather (20 I think?) by endgame, although you get like +4 for free in the Circle Tower. Anyway because of the way stat requirements work wearing medium armor early on is a totally reasonable thing to do is you bulk up your strength early on. In the end you stick to leather because investing more in Strength does nothing for your damage, while Dex gives DPS and defense, and cunning gives MOAR DPS. Also because the high-end Leathers have massive dex bonuses and other things that up your deeps, while the medium armors... don't. Don't worry about Lothering, there's not much of importance there.

I have to disagree about DA2's superiority on this front. I didn't hate DA2, but the fact that the mages don't need babysitting has a lot to do with them not being able to actually do that much. And their basic attacks being stupidly good. DA1's spells are irritatingly finicky and opaque, but there's definitely more potential there. When it comes to automating DA1 Mages, it's not all *that* bad. Healing and Stamina restoration can be automated with no problems. Crushing Prison and Horror can autocast on elites. Mind Blast works tolerably well as an automated self-defense. I found myself taking control of my mages to do basically two things: throw down a Cone of Cold, or walk into the middle of the fight and Mind Blast. Then I hop out to my Rogue for the stabbing. If you do have blood mages, you usually manually throw down their giant AoE fuckstorm, but that can also be automated since it doesn't hurt friendlies and is so huge it will almost certainly hit everything. Scripting blood magic is just irritating. Oh, speaking of blood magic, there's only one way to unlock it, you have to be playing a Mage, and it requires pulling a serious douchebag move during a main plot quest. Fortunately unlocking it once unlocks it across all saves, even if you immediately reload the same character and take the other road. In the meantime you could do worse than Arcane Warrior for Wynne and Spirit Healer for Morrigan.

Now, as to playing a Mage versus playing a Rogue; I've done both and I enjoyed both about equally. For starters, Mage locks you into one origin, although admittedly it's one of the good ones. If you're invested in spending the maximum possible time controlling your Warden, it does allow you to get more out of your spellcasting than the AI autopilot. Also, a Warden mage is noticeably better than Wynne or Morrigan. Morrigan comes in with a crap specialization, while while Wynne comes burdened with a bunch of mostly-useless buffs. Plus only the Warden can become a an Arcaneblood Warriormage and acquire real ultimate cheese. That said, the NPCs aren't that bad. Wynne's super mode actually is pretty great.

Ultimately I personally prefer Rogues. If you run a Mage, your Warden isn't your lockpicker, which I found actually more jarring than switching characters in combat is. Rogues also benefit from micromanagement, since I don't know how to get the AI to backstab shit. Most importantly, I think the effectiveness delta between a Warden and a Companion is higher for Rogues. I hate Zevran and everything about him. Leliana is fine, but dagger rogues are the power build. The Warden gets tons of bonus stats and talents that make it easier to get your lockpicking and your combat groove on simultaneously. Plus, opening locks and disarming traps gives out stupid amount of XP. By never missing a chest, and actually spotting the traps before setting them off, you actually will level up noticeably faster which will make everyone's life easier.

TLDR; Better a Rogue and Wynne than a Mage and Zevran

Zevran comes off like a cocky and clueless teenager to me. From that perspective, he makes sense. From the perspective of actually being a good character to keep along, I admit to neglecting him most of the time. Everything he does, my dwarf does better. At least Leliana adds ranged DPS and a giant spider. She's fragile, but she doesn't get hit very often. The times I've took Zevran along with me, he tends to drop pretty quick. Doesn't help that he gets the warden's hand-me-downs.

Also, I don't think this quite counts as plot-related, so I'll ask: How does one get brilliant crystals? Shale has a matching set of flawless spirit crystals, but I haven't found brilliant crystals. I'd prefer spirit to be honest, but I'll settle for any other type that's end-tier. Despite that practically it has little benefit, I happen to like + to all stats unless there's something that gives a huge bonus to one stat.

In order to access the majority of sidequests and special options for a rogue protagonist in Origins, you want:

deft hands. Lockpicking and trap disarming. There is some seriously good shit available only to a rogue main character.

stealth. You want to improve this in order to drop aggro as well as for the ability to use items and eventually attack while sneaking. It also improves your odds of theft

coercion. For your dialogue options.

stealing. Not essential...fuck it, it is essential. If you want to buy the really expensive unique items, you want to steal everything that isn't nailed down. Hoarding craft components means you can make sure you have the best poisons, potions, grenades and traps available. Due to the way cooldowns work, always having a special attack avaiable is essential for making it through some of the tougher fights without save-scumming.

trap making is optional, but increasing the range you can detect traps becomes important.

survival. I use the rogue as a scout. Increasing the range at which combat starts is a good thing, especially if you want to funnel opponents into a trap-laden killing field.

Scrambling to improve those abilities, in order to access all of the goodies in the prologue and Lothering (as well as all of the expert and master chests later on), leaves you with less points to invest in in combat skills and talents. That means your main character is weaker in combat, but it means that you can get a lot of money quickly, as well as some decent equipment for Alister and Morrigan.

It does not matter by the time you hit level 10 or so, nor is it important if you want to shuffle though the game on normal difficulty. If your ego demands that you play a masochistic completionist run on the hardest setting, you will have some tough choices to make at the beginning of the game.

Ted the Flayer wrote:
How does one get brilliant crystals?

I recall buying them in Orzammar. Golems can drop crystals...but I can't recall if there were any brilliant drops. Probably not.