Hi. I'm currently on my way through this great game but having abit of difficulty on the way. I've been reading these forums and it seems I'm missing something. Alot of you play it on Nightmare, some even solo, yet I'm stuck on normal, thinking it's way to difficult...
I'm a lvl9 Mage with Alistair, Morrigan and erm, the elf assassin who tried to kill me, forget his name... And I'm in Denerim trying to rid a house of v.unhappy Blood Mages. I've got muliple injuries, like the rest of my team and no injury kits left. No health pots and only 1 mana pot. Used about 20 F5/F9's to get to the final battle (so I assume...) and I get ownt.
It's not this battle I'd like help with really, It's combat as a whole. As this seems to be the way with most of the larger battles.
I understand how to use tactics but other than the hp pot <50% I'm pretty much lost. Tried a few things, had Morrigan running at random ranged mobs, Alistair deciding it was better to watch us all die than help.. etc, etc. I'm abit lost deciding what to put in there and I've read the default one's are "lackluster". Any advice?
I've messed with their behaviours and from reading the tooltips the only one's that seem of use are Default and Ranged. Is that so?
I've come this far by pausing ALOT and telling the party what to do myself, however this doesn't work compfortably for me because you can't move party members while paused and it feels when I unpause it to get one of them in posistion the rest go about doing all the things I don't want them to do. Such as attacking something I only just CC'd(hell I don't even know if this breaks CC..), running away from the rest of the party, general bad AI. This is where I need the most help I think. Though probably tied to the tactics part...
I also don't think I've particulary got my skills/talents right but alas that's probably a whole new thread....
Any help is appreciated,
evu.
New player needs some combat help.
Débuté par
evu
, déc. 29 2009 12:57
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#2
Posté 29 décembre 2009 - 03:11
Zecele
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Don't feel bad. That blood mage building is one of the toughest areas I've personally run across so far. Especially the large room with the three mages in it. The can kill your tank before he can even reach the first one. Going to split this into two parts. The first is a brief bit on tactics. Until I tinkered with them a little I was ready to pull my hair out.
First off two very important things about tactics.
a) If you have multiple characters "selected" via either lassoing (dragging your mouse), ctrl selecting, or the = key (select all) tactics for the selected characters will be disabled as the game assumes you want to be manually controlling. Don't confuse this with "controlling" a character as you can only directly control one character at a time. So for instance if I am controlling my PC but also have Alistair selected Alistair will not follow his tactics and the only commands he can be issued (that he'll follow) will be movement and attack commands albeit slaved to the PC's movement/attack.
This one in particular had me going crazy because I would very often select all the characters to focus fire a target and once it was dead they would all stand there doing nothing. In hindsight it makes a lot of sense as just imagine if you commanded all to focus fire and then they suddenly started following their tactics instead.
If you have multiple characters selected for whatever reason make sure and hit F1 to select only your PC character when you want tactics to take over. After a hearbeat the NPC's will start following their tactics.
The second one is that if you use the hold feature (H key) to scout ahead or pull people from one room to another it won't disable tactics but if the character is a melee character they won't move so in effect their tactics won't work until someone gets in melee range. This one tripped me up a little as well. I used Morrigan, Leliana, and Alistair. I used Lel as an archer so her and Morrigan would work fine but Alistair would just stand there until something drifted into melee range.
As for tactics set up here is the system I've set up and it works pretty well.
Tank:
Health < 50% use most powerful poultice
Enemy target of player/hero: Attack
Enemy attacking healer (you'll need to put in the name of healer): Shield bash
If you want you can set up a tiered system with damage abilites for the tank (I.E. put enemy target of hero: Shield Pummel) but I prefer to manually switch to the tank for DPS abilities so I don't find myself out of stamina when I really need a taunt.
Ranged/Mage
Enemy target of hero (or tank): Highest DPS ability (for example my first line on Lel is arrow of slaying).
Enemy target of hero: Next DPS ability
Enemy target of hero: Attack
This will tell the NPC to use their DPS abilities provided they have mana/stamina and if they don't (or the abilities are on cooldown) they will go to a default attack.
You can also set up de-buff chains this way. For example if you go into Morrigan you can make the following:
Enemy target of hero=vulnerability hex
Enemy target of hero = misdirection hex
Enemy target of hero = weakness
Enemy target of hero = Lightning
Enemy target of hero = attack
With this she'll follow all the top ones before she gets to the last.
Healer
Tank health = 50%: Heal
Tank health = 90% regenerate
Hero health= 50% group heal
Surrounded by 2 enemies= CC (mind blast for instance) or defensive buff like Rock Armor/Arcane shield.
Enemy target of hero= attack.
My hero's tactics vary depending on class.
Behavior: Remember to set this up as well. I kept wondering why Leliana would swap to her daggers and run into melee range after using her first bowshot and it's because I left her behavior at default so once it reached the autoattack portion of the script she would switch to melee for that.
One last bit. Depending on the boss I sometimes choose to disable tactics entirely as the priorites are different than for trash and some abilities don't work very well. For instance Morrigan's debuff chain might get resisted depending on the encounter.
The second part is for a new player I highly recommend abusing the crap out of stealth. You said you were using Zevran, use him to scout each and every room while using the hold command (H key) to check out what's behind the doors. Enemy spell casters should nearly always be your first targets and Zev can be used to issue an attack command from stealth. For REALLY large rooms (like the one I mentioned with the three mages) I used my stealth character to trap the hell out of the room before I pulled. Made a big difference.
Hope this helps a little.
First off two very important things about tactics.
a) If you have multiple characters "selected" via either lassoing (dragging your mouse), ctrl selecting, or the = key (select all) tactics for the selected characters will be disabled as the game assumes you want to be manually controlling. Don't confuse this with "controlling" a character as you can only directly control one character at a time. So for instance if I am controlling my PC but also have Alistair selected Alistair will not follow his tactics and the only commands he can be issued (that he'll follow) will be movement and attack commands albeit slaved to the PC's movement/attack.
This one in particular had me going crazy because I would very often select all the characters to focus fire a target and once it was dead they would all stand there doing nothing. In hindsight it makes a lot of sense as just imagine if you commanded all to focus fire and then they suddenly started following their tactics instead.
If you have multiple characters selected for whatever reason make sure and hit F1 to select only your PC character when you want tactics to take over. After a hearbeat the NPC's will start following their tactics.
The second one is that if you use the hold feature (H key) to scout ahead or pull people from one room to another it won't disable tactics but if the character is a melee character they won't move so in effect their tactics won't work until someone gets in melee range. This one tripped me up a little as well. I used Morrigan, Leliana, and Alistair. I used Lel as an archer so her and Morrigan would work fine but Alistair would just stand there until something drifted into melee range.As for tactics set up here is the system I've set up and it works pretty well.
Tank:
Health < 50% use most powerful poultice
Enemy target of player/hero: Attack
Enemy attacking healer (you'll need to put in the name of healer): Shield bash
If you want you can set up a tiered system with damage abilites for the tank (I.E. put enemy target of hero: Shield Pummel) but I prefer to manually switch to the tank for DPS abilities so I don't find myself out of stamina when I really need a taunt.
Ranged/Mage
Enemy target of hero (or tank): Highest DPS ability (for example my first line on Lel is arrow of slaying).
Enemy target of hero: Next DPS ability
Enemy target of hero: Attack
This will tell the NPC to use their DPS abilities provided they have mana/stamina and if they don't (or the abilities are on cooldown) they will go to a default attack.
You can also set up de-buff chains this way. For example if you go into Morrigan you can make the following:
Enemy target of hero=vulnerability hex
Enemy target of hero = misdirection hex
Enemy target of hero = weakness
Enemy target of hero = Lightning
Enemy target of hero = attack
With this she'll follow all the top ones before she gets to the last.
Healer
Tank health = 50%: Heal
Tank health = 90% regenerate
Hero health= 50% group heal
Surrounded by 2 enemies= CC (mind blast for instance) or defensive buff like Rock Armor/Arcane shield.
Enemy target of hero= attack.
My hero's tactics vary depending on class.
Behavior: Remember to set this up as well. I kept wondering why Leliana would swap to her daggers and run into melee range after using her first bowshot and it's because I left her behavior at default so once it reached the autoattack portion of the script she would switch to melee for that.
One last bit. Depending on the boss I sometimes choose to disable tactics entirely as the priorites are different than for trash and some abilities don't work very well. For instance Morrigan's debuff chain might get resisted depending on the encounter.
The second part is for a new player I highly recommend abusing the crap out of stealth. You said you were using Zevran, use him to scout each and every room while using the hold command (H key) to check out what's behind the doors. Enemy spell casters should nearly always be your first targets and Zev can be used to issue an attack command from stealth. For REALLY large rooms (like the one I mentioned with the three mages) I used my stealth character to trap the hell out of the room before I pulled. Made a big difference.
Hope this helps a little.
Modifié par Zecele, 29 décembre 2009 - 03:58 .
#3
Posté 29 décembre 2009 - 03:55
tetracycloide
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Line of sight is your friend in enclosed areas with a lot of corners and mages. With a few AoE crowd control skills it's fairly easy to run behind a corner and end up with every enemy in a room all bunched together at a door or corner. A ripe target for AoE damage or crowd control. I'm not sure what spells your level 9 mage has, however, and it would be easier to make suggestions if i knew. My mage has the glyphs through repulsion so the spell combination with glyph of repulsion and glyph of paralsys, which can be cast outside of line of sight and through walls, is a massive boon in every fight.
#4
Posté 29 décembre 2009 - 04:41
SusanStoHelit
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From the sound of it you may need to do some rethinking about tactics and possibly attributes, skills, or talents. But firstly - use injury kits if you have to, but the best (and cheapest) way to heal injuries is imply to go back to camp. Healed. Free.
Secondly, you didn't say, but have you done the mage tower yet? After Lothering, I go straight to the Broken Circle quest so that I can pick up those extra 20 attribute points in the Fade. And to get Wynne. Her healing abilities make all the difference in a tough fight.
Keep the mages (yourself included) back out of the front line unless they're an Arcane Warrior. And make good use of crowd control spells that damage groups of foes and especially that take them out of the action. For example, if a mage hits a large group with Sleep and then Nightmare it disables them, then focus on each disabled foe one at a time. Entropy is a particularly good skill tree for those. Area of Effect spells can be cast even from outside a room - so hit the room with something like Tempest or Blizzard before you waltz on in. For elite foes/bosses (especially mages who can cause you major grief), hit them first with Cone of Cold to freeze them, then with Crushing Prison. This will (at best) cause them to shatter, and at worst temporarily disable them while you take out the others in the room, damaging them the whole time.
And remember, if Normal mode is too hard while you learn the game mechanics and how skills work and where to put attribute points and so on - change to Easy mode. You can change back later when you're more comfortable with it. Normal mode is much harder than Easy, not halfway between Easy and Hard (unless you have the mod that evens out the gradient, making it a smoother progression).
Secondly, you didn't say, but have you done the mage tower yet? After Lothering, I go straight to the Broken Circle quest so that I can pick up those extra 20 attribute points in the Fade. And to get Wynne. Her healing abilities make all the difference in a tough fight.
Keep the mages (yourself included) back out of the front line unless they're an Arcane Warrior. And make good use of crowd control spells that damage groups of foes and especially that take them out of the action. For example, if a mage hits a large group with Sleep and then Nightmare it disables them, then focus on each disabled foe one at a time. Entropy is a particularly good skill tree for those. Area of Effect spells can be cast even from outside a room - so hit the room with something like Tempest or Blizzard before you waltz on in. For elite foes/bosses (especially mages who can cause you major grief), hit them first with Cone of Cold to freeze them, then with Crushing Prison. This will (at best) cause them to shatter, and at worst temporarily disable them while you take out the others in the room, damaging them the whole time.
And remember, if Normal mode is too hard while you learn the game mechanics and how skills work and where to put attribute points and so on - change to Easy mode. You can change back later when you're more comfortable with it. Normal mode is much harder than Easy, not halfway between Easy and Hard (unless you have the mod that evens out the gradient, making it a smoother progression).
#5
Posté 29 décembre 2009 - 05:52
Stitch808
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I used to think having a few mages with the heal spell would be all I needed to keep my parties up. Alas, the pitiful amount of restoration (based on the target's magic stat no less) and the several seconds of cooldown made this micro-managefest unpalatable for making tanks live.
Health potions are your best friend, and this will be the case throughout Nightmare difficulty. You say you're out of these, and you say your party is severely injured. I'd advise you to stop your progress, make your way back to Denerim, then head to camp. Afterwards, get thee to the Brecellian forest and make friends with Varathorn (or whatever that vendor elf's name is) and pick up a ton of elfroot. Head back to Denerim, and go to the tavern, and buy enough flasks to match the elfroot. Morrigan will then convert all those ingredients to lesser health pots.
If you have access to the health pot formula or higher, even better. Make some of those as the barkeep will have Concentrator agents available. Drag those potions from your inventory onto your toolbar below and you can cycle through the different ones, thereby minimizing the cooldown issue.
The others have discussed fighting strats, I've discussed how to keep your party alive to execute those strats.
Health potions are your best friend, and this will be the case throughout Nightmare difficulty. You say you're out of these, and you say your party is severely injured. I'd advise you to stop your progress, make your way back to Denerim, then head to camp. Afterwards, get thee to the Brecellian forest and make friends with Varathorn (or whatever that vendor elf's name is) and pick up a ton of elfroot. Head back to Denerim, and go to the tavern, and buy enough flasks to match the elfroot. Morrigan will then convert all those ingredients to lesser health pots.
If you have access to the health pot formula or higher, even better. Make some of those as the barkeep will have Concentrator agents available. Drag those potions from your inventory onto your toolbar below and you can cycle through the different ones, thereby minimizing the cooldown issue.
The others have discussed fighting strats, I've discussed how to keep your party alive to execute those strats.
#6
Posté 29 décembre 2009 - 09:13
evu
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Thank you all for the informative replies. I got past it with your help 
Changing the tactics so they all focus on your target helped greatly. And I will make sure I stock up on hp pots/injury kits from now on. I'll also have to check out that mage tower thing I guess. I'm not really sure I've spent my attribute/skill/talent points right so think I'll have to throw that thread in when I get chance.
Thanks again,
evu.
Changing the tactics so they all focus on your target helped greatly. And I will make sure I stock up on hp pots/injury kits from now on. I'll also have to check out that mage tower thing I guess. I'm not really sure I've spent my attribute/skill/talent points right so think I'll have to throw that thread in when I get chance.Thanks again,
evu.
#7
Posté 30 décembre 2009 - 12:42
Steel Majere343
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evu wrote...
Hi. I'm currently on my way through this great game but having abit of difficulty on the way. I've been reading these forums and it seems I'm missing something. Alot of you play it on Nightmare, some even solo, yet I'm stuck on normal, thinking it's way to difficult...
I'm a lvl9 Mage with Alistair, Morrigan and erm, the elf assassin who tried to kill me, forget his name... And I'm in Denerim trying to rid a house of v.unhappy Blood Mages. I've got muliple injuries, like the rest of my team and no injury kits left. No health pots and only 1 mana pot. Used about 20 F5/F9's to get to the final battle (so I assume...) and I get ownt.
It's not this battle I'd like help with really, It's combat as a whole. As this seems to be the way with most of the larger battles.
I understand how to use tactics but other than the hp pot <50% I'm pretty much lost. Tried a few things, had Morrigan running at random ranged mobs, Alistair deciding it was better to watch us all die than help.. etc, etc. I'm abit lost deciding what to put in there and I've read the default one's are "lackluster". Any advice?
I've messed with their behaviours and from reading the tooltips the only one's that seem of use are Default and Ranged. Is that so?
I've come this far by pausing ALOT and telling the party what to do myself, however this doesn't work compfortably for me because you can't move party members while paused and it feels when I unpause it to get one of them in posistion the rest go about doing all the things I don't want them to do. Such as attacking something I only just CC'd(hell I don't even know if this breaks CC..), running away from the rest of the party, general bad AI. This is where I need the most help I think. Though probably tied to the tactics part...
I also don't think I've particulary got my skills/talents right but alas that's probably a whole new thread....
Any help is appreciated,
evu.
well it depends on what difficulty you play at versus what you need. dont feel bad at all though, the difficulty in this game fluctuates A LOT. one room could be easy then the next could be frusteratingly hard. if you want to survive the whole game on normal you will want a spirit healer, its a specializationg and you can get one right after lothering if you go to the mages tower. if you dont want a spirit healer you will have to use a lot of potions. and make best friends with a guy named varathorn to buy a lot of elfroot and make a lot of potions.
on easy its possible to survive the entire game with the one heal spell (i think, never actually tried it)
you will find a lot of people who will come here and tell you how easy this game is where they can beat the whole game solo with a naked mage, punching everything in sight.
here are your general options without telling you which overpowered spells to get.
normal:
spirit healer + some potions for backup
or
horde of potions
casual
healing spell
or
some potions
#8
Posté 30 décembre 2009 - 02:19
perry2
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Don't forget to take the herbalist skill so you can make your own potions. I used to sell the Elfroot and Deep Mushrooms and then pay 50 times as much to buy potions I could have made.
Watch then for which vendors have unlimited supplies of the components for these. Elves the Elfroot, Mages the Lyrium etc.
Make sure to have the best ranged weapons your fighters can handle and that your mages have spells like Cone of Cold which might be their single best one as it can freeze the strongest opponents and give you time to set up backstabs, poison weapons, or take healing potions.
Remember you can often use area affect spells like Blizzard and Inferno on opponents you can't even see. These will fry enemies who are still behind closed doors.
And don't split ability scores like a D & D character. Balance is unneccessary. Load up the main two scores and your striking power goes up for all classes.
Watch then for which vendors have unlimited supplies of the components for these. Elves the Elfroot, Mages the Lyrium etc.
Make sure to have the best ranged weapons your fighters can handle and that your mages have spells like Cone of Cold which might be their single best one as it can freeze the strongest opponents and give you time to set up backstabs, poison weapons, or take healing potions.
Remember you can often use area affect spells like Blizzard and Inferno on opponents you can't even see. These will fry enemies who are still behind closed doors.
And don't split ability scores like a D & D character. Balance is unneccessary. Load up the main two scores and your striking power goes up for all classes.
