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Dragon Age - Discussion Thread

Reverend said:
^Watch out for that Cullen bug. Sometimes it's just a case of him not loading properly (easily fixed with a reload, or leaving & returning) but sometimes he can be permanently lost.

What's supposed to happen is that at a certain point, you'll go to his room and there'll instead be a messenger waiting and talking to them triggers a cutscene. However, if you do Sera's "pranks" quest while that messengers is in the room, it can cause a bug whereby when to come to talk to the messenger, the NPC interact icon won't come up and Cullen is effectively gone.

Not to spoil nything but that can be a significant problem later on since there's a fairly important quest that has to eb turned into Cullen to progress. The only way around it is to reload to before Sera's quest, so as a precaution, it's always advisable to go visit Cullen before Sera.
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I got really lucky there. I did the prank with Sera with the messenger in the room, but fortunately, she was still interact-able with after so I got him back.

(On a side note, I know there's a comment that your character makes if she's gone through the romance scene with Cullen before you pull the prank, but there doesn't seem to be one with Jo)

I've just done the Wicked Hearts quest. I didn't quite get the result I was hoping for but it went a lot better than I thought it would so I'm sticking with that for this run through.

I was thinking a lot more stealth would be involved (and I usually suck at that) so I'm reasonably happy with managing to get out with 77 on the approval rating. (With a human non mage rather than an Elf Mage it would have been a little higher)
 
I have cheated a little bit on that quest and used a guide (mainly because i was really stuck at one point and couldn't find a way how to proceed).

Once you get to the part with the ballroom dance use the middle answer which is the most cryptic/non-content/non-committed answer option, basically be like every politician you have ever seen on TV and you should rock at the imperial court :lol:

If you play it well enough during the dance you can get at least 20 points of approval.

I have finished the mission with a 100 percent approval rate for my human warrior and i don't consider it much of a feat since you have so many options to get approval.

I only lost approval once involunaterly when i asked the guards repeatedly who were guarding a closed off door, seems i was considered rude for having asked more than once (there are portions in the palace where you automatically lose favor the longer you are there but it's a necessity at times to move the mission along).

I really liked the political aspects of this mission which was a nice change of pace.
 
One of the losses I got was for not being rude about someone (to one of the Heralds).

Looking at a guide later, I may have got some more approval if I'd found coins (ala Mark of the Assassin I guess) and remembered to pass on all the gossip to Leliana. I'd passed on some but didn't get back to her with the rest in time.

The dance went smoothly and that's where I got a lot of the approval from thankfully.

As for the rest of the game, before I get back on any major quests, I plan on practicing some crafting as my mage staff is a little lacking. I've also got to search for some resources to open up some of the extra skills.
 
Crafting is very important as it usually gives you far better gear than what you can find, the only problem is to get higher level crafting materials (you can only buy basics with some vendors).

What i also can recommend are two Inquisition perks that you need to get as soon as possible - Deft Hands, Fine Tools (which lets you crack any standard lock if you have a Rogue in your group - excluding those you need a special key or some other device to unlock) and Forward Scouts which reveals all Logging and Quarry sites on any map as well as some other points of interest.

Otherwise keep exploring and from time to time venture off the trails and go right through the landscape, sometimes you get lucky and discover some secret sites that are unmarked.
 
^Personally, I wouldn't waste a point on the Forward Scouts perk. It seems really useful, but really, logging camps & quarries aren't all that hard to find (there's way more in the game than you can possibly make use of) and aside from the herb garden, all of the associated Skyhold upgrades are purely cosmetic.

Mostly I'd recommend getting agents wherever possible.
On that I missed until right near the end of the game was ironically one of the first you meet in the Hinterlands as he's the one that directs you to the quest givers to help out the refugees. Easily missed though since there's no quest marker leading back to him--which there really should have been since not speaking to him after sorting all those problems out means that all through the game, Mother Giselle will insist that the refugees are still starving an desperate, which is how I tracked him down.

Anyway, Agents don't only reduce the operation times, they also count as Inquisition perks and count towards those perks (like Deft Hands) that require X number of perks in a given category to unlock. Getting agents means you don't have to spend points on anything you don't really need.
 
Ta. I've got the forward scouts and hopefully the deft hands perk will be available next time I get a perk.
 
John Clark said:
Occasionally, there's a bug where certain people just vanish from their location and from the map at Skyhold.

After the first reload, Bull went missing as well, but after a few attempts, they've now come back. There's a few mentions of it on the Bioware forum. Apparently, it can also hit Blackwall

(For head-canon purposes, Iron Bull went off to talk about getting Qunari support as that's the first conversation we had when he the reload got hum back and Cullen was begging for his clothes back from Jo after the Wicked Grace game :lol: )
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If by "reload" you mean reloading a save, you don't need to do that. You just need to leave the general area and then return and they will appear.
 
That's good to know. I was reloading a previous save (though fortunately a recent one).

Some of the people on other forums seem to have been going 20 or more hours between saves (I assume they mean manual saves rather than just the continue from where you left off at the main menu though)
 
Ok, finished my DA2 mage playthrough. I think I may make this my new canon Hawke. I mean, snarky, Isabela-romancing, rogue Hawke was fun and all, but ultimately it doesn't feel as relevant to the overall plot as a mage Hawke who romances Anders and supports the plight of the mages 100%, unlike my rogue who tried to stay neutral, which is of course ultimately futile. The mage rebellion happens no matter what, might as well go all in with it! I finally got to see post Act 1 Carver as well, and he becomes a way more mature and likeable character once he becomes a warden. I always ran around with Varric, Anders, and Aveline, unless I was doing someone else's companion quest, but whenever Carver became available, so long, Aveline! I used a spirit healer build and took every sustained party buffing ability from the other trees, so I was able to just stand there and use basic attacks while my buffed up party tore everything to shreds, and tossing out heals as needed. Worked out really well, with Anders taking care of the nuking spells. Makes me want to go try a spirit healer in Origins now! So yeah, good times. :techman:

Screenshot20150105212702903_zps1d7d6d1e.jpg
 
Yeah, Mage is definitely the way to go in DA2. I always found Carver more interesting than Bethany after Act I, especially if you have him become a Warden.
 
I knew from the recent novels that the tattoos were slave markings (which just shows how little the Dalish really know about what they're preserving) but it didn't occur to me that they equate to specific gods. Interesting that there aren't any marking for Fen'Harel, but not surprising. If the Dread Wolf ever had a sect or cult dedicated to it, you can bet that slaves wouldn't be it's style.

On a related note, I spent a little time reading some fo the new codex entries and this one rather grabbed my attention.

If I'm reading between the lines correctly, it seems as if one of the elven gods (maybe even Mythal?) was associating with humans in elven form ("Gifted from her leaf-eared lover, laughing lady of the skies.") well before the fall or Arlathan and was partly responsible for founding the Avvar tribe.

If it was indeed Mythan then she appears to have named Morrigan after the daughter of her human lover. Who, incidentally would end up killing (and be killed by) the warrior who inspired the formation of the Ash Warriors. Could be just coincidence, but we already know Mythal as Flemeth is a manipulator who plays a long game.

P.S. In case anyone doubts how far in advance some of this mythos was worked out, note that in DA2, Merril explains that the alter Hawke used to resurrect Flemeth was a shrine to Mythal.
 
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I've been feeling the urge to play more DAI, so I'm currently planning a second playthrough. I've gone through the Dragon Age Keep and set up a very different backstory for the last two games, and I'm planning on playing a female Qunari Two-Handed Reaver Warrior. Its about as different gameplay wise as I can get from my first playthrough, so I figure it should be fun and a bit different this time around.
 
Started playing my dwarf artificer again today. Did some respeccing, and combat is going much smoother now. The most important change I made was to give myself both ranks of hook and tackle (grapple onto an enemy and pull yourself to them.) The second rank eliminates the cooldown and stamina cost entirely, so now I can whip to and fro around the battlefield at will, backstabbing and dropping mines. Super fun, and pretty much eliminates all the mobility issues I had with the melee rogue before. No more wasting time having to manually run over to stuff! Also makes hunting little stuff like fennecs and nugs much less of a hassle. One hook and tackle and they're dead. Should help with staying up close to dragons as well.
 
Evil Twin said:
Started playing my dwarf artificer again today. Did some respeccing, and combat is going much smoother now. The most important change I made was to give myself both ranks of hook and tackle (grapple onto an enemy and pull yourself to them.) The second rank eliminates the cooldown and stamina cost entirely, so now I can whip to and fro around the battlefield at will, backstabbing and dropping mines. Super fun, and pretty much eliminates all the mobility issues I had with the melee rogue before. No more wasting time having to manually run over to stuff! Also makes hunting little stuff like fennecs and nugs much less of a hassle. One hook and tackle and they're dead. Should help with staying up close to dragons as well.
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Yeah, I found the same thing for me DW assassin. Upgrading hook and tackle is really a must to make dagger wielding even remotely viable.
 
How did you manage to take an action shot without the GUI showing up? I've been trying but no matter what I do (short of messing the the dev console) I can't get the hotbar to go away.
 
Still doing my first run through and finally got around to actually fighting one of the dragons. In this case, it was the Exalted Plains one (Gamordan Stormrider?) and I had Cass, Varric and Dorian along with my mage all at level 15.

It took a while, but I managed. I was actually looking for the Snow Wyvern at the time though.

Still enjoying the game:)
 
If you're at lvl15 you should have little trouble with the Hinterlands high dragon which is only lvl12 IIRC. The trick--which a lot of people seem to get caught out on--is to not get bogged with all the dragonlings that initially come after you and just power through to the end of the valley where the high dragon will land and wait for the battle proper to start.

Aside from that it's all common sense. Use fire resistance potions, ice staffs for any mages (at least one of which should have barrier) a well equipped tank who can generate guard and hold aggro and just learn the attack patterns like any other video game boss.

Just watch out for dragonlings going after your mage or rogue. At least one point is stealth should be enough to keep Varric & Sera out or trouble, while fade/frost step should give a mage an easy way to get out of strife fast.

Really in a lot of ways the Hinterlands dragon is the most complicated fight of them all. Most of the others are pretty straight forward by comparison.
 
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