16 réponses à ce sujet

[s1rrah]

I don't have a whole lot of time to play DA:O ... maybe an hour a day and a few hours straight on the weekend; that said, I nonetheless *love* the game and especially the control/interface/combat system.

But I think I just suck at it or something (been playing for quite some time) as I can never seem to get through the game without artificial buffs (console health cheats, etc.). I'm currently using a Mage main character (mostly primal/battle oriented), Morrigan as crowd control mage and Sten as general fighter and Alistair as a tank.

Even with ridiculously good armor on my fighters, I can never seem to when the battles involving say, wave after wave of corpses (like in the Aarle of Redcliff story) or any other fight with lots of opponents. My guys always just get surrounded and pommeled. I've tried moving the mages back and running to other areas but for some reason just can't get the knack.

I think I'm failing to properly implement my mages for crowd control but not sure. Can anybody comment on the best way to manage those encounters when/where you have *tons* of enemies swarming you?

I'm having a great time with the game, nonetheless (this being my second play through) but I'm using console commands for health cheats here and there and I've also ganked some super good armor for my tanks. Furthermore, I've consoled level ups till they are all about level 15 or so (and I'm just on the first of the four quests where you go around Fereldon getting support from the four main groups...currently the Aerle of Redcliff one where you go find the Urn with the Ashes).

I'd have more fun (or at least personally enjoy the game more) if I got rid of all the minor cheats I'm using so any tips on crowd control and managing those big fights would be appreciated.

As counterpoint, I found DA:II to be a bit more manageable, though I'm still playing it on the easiest setting too. LOL ...


Thanks. .joel. 

[Blazomancer]

Keep threaten sustained on the tank, rush him/her into the thick of the battle and use taunt, keeping the mage and ranged attackers in the distance meanwhile. Do everything you can to keep the enemies' attention on the tank, like using aoe sustainables like rally, aoe attacks like warcry, holy smite, and if your attack score is low, keep precise striking on to make sure each swing hits generating threat each time. Just keep the tank alive, and make him do all sort of stupid things to grab aggro. Leave damage dealing to Sten and your warden. Every now and then, a few enemies will cut away from the tank to attack you or Sten, because both of you will be dealing most of the damage which in turn, will generate threat. But if the tank is doing it's job properly, only one or two critter will come towards you which you can easily deal with. One thing to keep in mind is that the AI is controlled by pre defined tactics, so some enemies among the group will always rush towards the mage in your party no matter what; so keep debilitating spells like crushing prison, horror, sleep, nightmare handy. Also if your fragile mage is surrounded by a number of enemies, use mind blast and move the mage away immediately. Bring in the tank and taunt. The best way to keep enemies away from your mage warden and morrigan would be to cast Glyph of repulsion on yourself; each time anyone comes near will have to pass a physical resistance check or thrown away. If you find your tank about to die, use force field on him as last resort.

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

Which means that I'm not the only one who plays easy mode?

Modifié par Riverdaleswhiteflash, 29 août 2012 - 07:23 .

[mousestalker]

If you are doing Redcliff early, then Morrigan is likely your only mage. Two useful spells with Morrigan are Mind Blast, which I think she starts with and Cone of Cold. Cone of Cold is something you should pick up for her as soon as possible (third spell in the cold line). It won't do much damage to undead, but it will freeze them in place for a bit.

Set Morrigan's tactics to use mind blast when she is surrounded by 2-3 enemies. Then park her in the midst of the foe. Pause the game. Use Cone of Cold to freeze large groups of enemies whenever it comes up.

The second most important line of spells for Morrigan are the hex spells. The second hex spell makes everyone in a large area vulnerable to elemental damage (Ie cold damage). As soon as you get it, and you should get it very soon indeed, set Morrigan's tactics to use it on enemies ranked elite or higher.

Alistair is probably your primary fighter. Set him up to be as tough as possible, with the best possible armour and resistance gear. Set your character up to do pure damage. If Leliana has scattershot, then use her and use scattershot manually. Otherwise, use Shale, Sten or Dog (in that order) to do damage.

If by chance you have Wynne, use her instead of Morrigan or your damage dealer and set her tactics to heal you and your party at 50% health.

For that matter, set each party member to use the lowest health poultice at 50% health in their tactics.

Morrigan and Wynne both start out able to make lesser health poultices from the start. Just procure as much elfroot and flasks as possible.

[DreGregoire]

I found it very important to make sure I was stocked up on health potions and poultices. And like stalkerofmice said setting your companions tactics to use these healing items when their health reaches below 50%. I also made sure to have mages consume Lyrium potions when they were low on mana. Also in regards to redcliff. I found it helpful to keep control of my group so that I could forcefully pull everybody back to the main group. If you don't keep your group back with the npc's fighting with you, you will aggro too many enemies to handle at once. Your tanks are great unless they pull too much aggro by confronting enemies at and beyond the fire trap and try to keep them within the semi circle in front of the chantry. I hope things work out for you.

Edit:
I found that if I pulled back far enough everybody would go out of fight mode for the briefest of moments so npc's etc. would heal up before the next wave. It was tricky to get the timing right but once I did I was able to keep from losing anybody.

Modifié par DreGregoire, 30 août 2012 - 12:01 .

[mousestalker]

Dre's tip after the edit is a great one.

One other thing is that I tend to do all the DLC stuff immediately after Lothering. Wardens Keep has some lovely armour and weapons. Stone Prisoner has an ugly hat with great stats and my favourite companion, Shale. Return to Orzammar has some amazingly good gear. Then after all those are completed I do the Denerim/Chantry/Mage quests. That levels everyone up a bit and allows for a nice gearing up.

Doing either Orzammar or the Tower as the first main quest allows you to snag yet another companion (Wynne at the Tower, Oghren in Orzammar). The earlier you get a companion, the more useful they are as you can pick their skills, spells and abilities for them. Oghren provides damage, Wynne starts out as and can remain a healbot and be amazingly effective in that role.

If you are using the console, then you are using a PC. You might want to check here for a comprehensive list of useful mods (link is to a blog here on BSN, she has an install guide here).

Edit: If ever you play a mage, the Fireball spell makes surviving Redcliff Un et Deux trivial. The villagers may get incinerated, but you will survive.

Modifié par mousestalker, 29 août 2012 - 08:24 .

[gandanlin]

The only thing I might add would be to get the team working together.

Alistair and Sten can be set to attack the same enemy, and one mage can be doing healing while the other does damage. But remember that the mage that attacks enemies will also attract aggression from enemies, so you may have to counter that aggression with some sort of counter-strategy. Have Sten and Alistair attack enemies that attack Morrigan. Or use mind blast or cone of cold and move the mage elsewhere.

I may be wrong here, but I think the enemies scale more or less to the level of the main character. So being at lvl 15 may be working against you somewhat. But then again, by lvl 15 you have access to spells like waking nightmare and sleep, which are great crowd control spells.

The only other thing I can think of is to take out the two higher-ranked corpses that appear by the Chantry as soon as possible. They will kill a lot of allies if you don't.

[DreGregoire]

Oh right it's been a while but I believe I set up Alistair's (tank) tactics to draw aggro away from more vulnerable characters, using taunt (it was either that or called something else) it was necessary to keep mages alive. I don't have DAO installed right now so I can't tell you specifically what I changed in tactics but I remember it was important to drag up to the top of the tactics list the most important action. For instance you want Alistair to heal himself before drawing aggro if his health is below a certain point or he'll die. Okay I hope that wasn't confusing. Sorry if it was. Have fun!

Edit:

Here's a funny side note. I played a rogue one time that always ended up on his backside until I learned to let Alistair take the heat. Alistair is much harder to knock down. hehe I of course had to add the idea of getting knocked on ones backside to some of my fanfiction. Ah good times.

Modifié par DreGregoire, 29 août 2012 - 08:43 .

[Riverdaleswhiteflash]

Yeah, It's called Taunt. (Btw, that move was basically indispensable in the mage playthrough I just finished.)

[cJohnOne]

Are you patched? They made it easier, I think.

[dainbramage]

Firstly, rather than let your companions do whatever they want, frequently pause and use them intelligently. You can set up their tactics to be reasonably good, but with the limited commands available they're still pretty stupid. AIs attempting to aim cone spells are especially dumb.

Second up, what are you using for crowd control? IIRC, morrigan by default only gets mind blast, which is OK but not brilliant. There are some extremely potent tools like paralysis explosion that will be able to disable the majority of enemies, Additionally you can forcefield a major thread (or Alistair after he taunts everything), and I find grease to actually be quite an exceptional CC tool, because (when paired with a fire spell) it can also do excellent damage as well as slow/trip enemies (grease stacks, and two slighly offset greases will take 20 seconds to cross, meanwhile burning anything that tries for 600 damage... yeah. Is good.)

Quick check to make sure you're not giving your tanks any willpower/cunning/magic right? Unintuitively, constitution is also a pretty bad stat for tanks. Increasing their total health pool is less relevant than reducing the damage they take - they're being constantly healed by your mage(s), so you need to focus on keeping monsters attracted to the tank and reducing the damage taken by the tank. To that end, strength and dex are by far the most important stats for them. Strength for threat generation and damage (after all, dead enemies can't hurt your tank), and dexterity to boost your defense. Typically focus on one or the other, though of course you'd aim for enough dex for the relevant shield talents, or enough strength to wear heavy/massive armour.

When actually fighting, try to get yourself in a good position. Inside a castle, for example, you'll optimally want alistair parked in a doorway (so that he can't be flanked), with behind him keeping him healed, and generally killing everything with AoE. Or your whole party holding position behind a doorway that has a glyph of repulsion on it (whilst killing everything with AoE).

As a final note, enemies' levels actual scale up with you. So increasing your level won't necessarily benefit you, and could be detrimental (as you'll have less gold hence worse equipment than had you leveled up naturally).

Modifié par dainbramage, 30 août 2012 - 06:32 .

[gandanlin]

The cool thing about DAO is that -- with the exception of a couple of sections of the game -- it is not absolutely necessary to play in the role of the main character. If desired, you can play as Morrigan, or Leliana, or any of the other characters you recruit.

Sometimes playing the game as Morrigan or Wynne can add an extra element of control. Melee warriors, DW rogues, and archers are fairly easy to set the tactics menu for. But mages, especially when they have a large array of spells at their command, are not so easy to set the tactics for. So I have played almost entire games in the role of Morrigan. Not that I was particularly interested in roleplaying her, but more that it gave me full control over her spell arsenal.

Deciding when and where to use spells, especially at the higher difficulty levels where friendly fire damage gets to be a larger issue, is maybe better left to the player and not the tactics menu.

Modifié par gandanlin, 30 août 2012 - 07:46 .

[Statsman1]

If you are a rogue that masters range weapons, getting a serious bow with some specialized arrows, then getting into fights along with Alistair and another big dude like Sten makes a lot of combat easier. Make sure your Healer is safe from harm, and pick off everything that moves from a distance. Makes life a lot easier.

[BelgarathMTH]

I'm playing on nightmare difficulty and have been up to defeating the ogre in the tower, and the bandits outside Lothering.

I almost never even need a single health poultice.

My strategy is to use ranged fighting to maximum tactical advantage. First of all, turn off the tactical AI, and manage your party yourself. Also learn how to use the "hold position" button. Formation is critical to a good military commander, and that's what you need to be.

*Everybody* keeps a ranged weapon equipped. It doesn't matter if your fighters have taken special archery abilities or not. Bows and crossbows are *highly* effective, just like in Baldur's Gate. Your mages already get a decent ranged weapon in the staff, though it's not as good as a bow.

You do *not* charge forward like an idiot into enemies who have a superior position. Nine times out of ten, you are going to see them far in the distance when you are outside, and you can hold your position and start picking them off at range.

When the enemies are closed to melee range, and that will happen, have your fighters switch to melee weapons. Your mages and rogues can run back a bit to get some range, and then start casting and firing.

Either you learn good tactics in this game, or you move the difficulty slider down.

I personally enjoy having it on "nightmare" and knowing that my good tactical sense keeps winning battles, and I'm not letting the game play itself by trying to use the complicated AI "tactics" menus.

[fox99]

@s1rrah

I'm currently playing my first campaign on DA:O v1.05. I'm playing on "nightmare" from the start and only had to set the difficulty down to "hard" for a handful of major battles until level 12 of my hero - when I wasn't used to how DA:O works.

Apart from the good tips above, here's my two cents (only general ideas; no en detail tips):

- pause often in difficult battles and take a good look around (at your guys and the enemies and what's going on)
- think tactically and don't play the battles real-time- and arcade-like as in games as diablo
- give your guys good tactics via the tactics menu; but in difficult battles pause often and give them direct orders
- take your time to read the describtions of the spells and talents; and use them wise and in the appropriate situation


LINKS:

Have a look at this very informative and extensive Dragon Age Wiki and use it's search option for items, spells, talents, characters and so on... - here are a few examples:
-> Difficulty settings
-> Item sets
-> Tactics
-> Romance


Have a look in the Dragon Age: Origins Characters, classes and Builds (Spoilers Allowed) thread; ... eg:
-> Guide Compilation
Have a look in the Dragon Age: Origins & Awakening Gameplay, Strategy and Tactics (Spoilers Allowed) thread; ... eg:
-> Spells

Regards!

[Shadow Fox]

Old thread but I have advice.

Playing as a Mage it's a foregone conclusion you'll need a:

Tank: Alistair is built for this role max out the S&S tree and Warrior tree I'd reccomend boosting his Str to 42 then put everything else into Dex equip items that boost defense and set his tactics to Defender and Defensive and to make him chug healing potions at low health.

Healer: Wynne is tailor made for this max out the Spirit Healer tree set her Tactics to Ranged and Healing and set her to use Heal and Group Heal when she or allies reach 50% health and make her chug mana potions

Crowd controller: Morrigan is really good at this set her Tactics to Ranged and Damager make sure to get Fireball,Tempest and Blizzard as soon as you can and set her to use them And make her chug Mana potions.

Modifié par Arcane Warrior Mage Hawke, 25 septembre 2012 - 05:26 .

[keeneaow]

There are 2 reasons for that,
1] too low lv
2] poor armor
In the Toscari wilds, when you are ordered to get 3 vials of blood & papers,
return with the 3 blood, but not the papers.
Return to Duncan, -You will get experience for coming with the blood, but ordered back to get the papers.
Now, don't go anywhere, but instead initiate dialog with Duncan yet again,
and you will get experience for bringing the blood, and ordered back to get papers.
.....Continue until you reach whatever lv you want, before you finally go and get those papers.

For armor & other stuff, there is Add Any Item Visual Deluxe,
you just type:
runscript get evon
[enter]
and you get to pick any item with the letters 'evon' into your inventory,
in this case Evon the greats mail
http://dragonage.nex...s.com/mods/1825

You may also want 'gain triple exp w memory band' mod
http://dragonage.nex...s.com/mods/1566