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[dainbramage]

So...

That was my third main quest, so I bought the felon's coat and did the captain chase contract. Ordered the drake scale sets from Wade, though I didn't have enough to do in Denerim to convince him to finish them, so I figured I'd solve the elves problems for them. Little worth talking about, the whole thing is really quite easy. Opted to break the curse. Only reload I needed was Zathrian - initially I tried killing all of his sylvans and shades first because I wanted the experience. That didn't work (misdirection hex and 90 damage winters grasps aren't nice), but just stealthing to him, stun+mark+backstabs did. Oh, and in that room with all the pressure plate traps I couldn't detect one even with 32 cunning and device mastery. Annoying.

Bought the GM dweomer from Cesar, and grabbed masters from Genitivi and Wonders of Thedas, and constructed my spell resistance set. I'm currently going with Duncan's main hand with lightning/lightning/cold runes and the rose's thorn offhand with spell resistance, and a crow dagger in my backpack also with spell resistance. 50 from weapons, 30 from spellward and 12 from gloves+ring+boots is 92, but I kept the cinch (which is still worse than if I just went dwarf and used andruil's) so if I feel like I absolutely need 100 I can use that.

Then once Wade's superior drakeskin finished, it was dragon hunting time. Flemeth's grab killed me from full even with felon's coat, lifegiver and a rock salve, so stayed away from their mouths. Tonnes of potion usage, but both dead without too many problems. Between them I used 26 lesser, 11 regular and 1 greater poultice. Contrast my DW warrior who used 0 on flemeth and 7 regular on the high dragon.

About to test my spell resistance gear on Gaxkang, then it's time for Jarvia.

EDIT: Damn, how much armour does gaxkang's revenant form have? I average 30.6 damage and have 10 AP, and most of my non-crits still only do 1 damage.

EDIT 2: Based on my crits averaging about 18 damage, it seems to be somewhere around 52. O.o.

Regardless, he couldn't hit me, I could hit him (even if it's for very low damage). Arcane horror's spirit blasts and drain (not drain life) are both autohit and don't count as spells, so I did need a poultice unfortunately.

Modifié par dainbramage, 25 janvier 2013 - 12:31 .

[Ferretinabun]

Cannot believe it! FINALLY done the mage tower.

Now that I know, my lack of Momentum really is a huge handicap. Anyone doing a DW character definitely needs to get it ASAP.

Sloth took me a while, but I finally managed to beat him. The forms are all you need. For the first, Ogre form, a combination of Slams and kiting in Golem form will work. Hurl seems tempting as it easily does the most damage, but you simply can't give Sloth the chance to get close. He'll Ram and Massive Attack you, usually stun-locking you. Popping into your normal form and Dirty Fighting also works well. From then on, you're over the worst. Again, stick to Slamming and kiting in the Golem form and the others are fairly easy. Try, if you can, to get a good deal of distance between you and Sloth and briefly pop into Arcane Horror form for Rejeuvenation. But only do it if you can create a huge gap to give you time.

Uldred was a PAIN!!! But like so many things in a solo run, the worst bit is the start. The first thing to do is take out the abominations. Uldred will either start casting (in which case you're dead in the water and time for a reload), or will come over and join in melee fighting, in which case, game on. Remember to keep in melee contact with Uldred, even when fighting the abominations, as he casts spells at range. Also remember abominations explode, so when you kill one, try to run around the far side of Uldred to avoid the explosion.

Then when it's just you and him, it's simply a case of whittling him down. He does miss a lot, but the blows that connect do hurt, so you'll be drinking the health pots like crazy. Think I got through about 20 lesser, about 5 regular, and 1/2 greater. But don't hold back. Throw everyhing you have at him. He is the rainy day you've been saving those bombs/grenades/poisons/poultices for.

The rather large problem here is that Uldred likes to Massive Attack, which throws you away, and then, being out of range, cast spells at you. And Crushing Prison is in his limited repertoire, which is an insta-kill. The way to avoid this is, the very instant you see him setting up Massive Attack, to run around behind him - to the very centre point behind him. This is important because sometimes he will follow through his failed Massive Attack with another - aimed at either his back left or back right side, and you need to be able to jump to whichever side it isn't pretty damn quick. It's annoying and tough to get right, but once you've got it, Uldred seems to run out of stamina before too long. I don't think he performed a single Massive Attack for the last 60% of his health bar.

And now he's gone. No Momentum, no bombs/grenades, and no tasty equipment. Only one swift salve, Tier 2 Thorn of Dead Gods and Dar-Misu, some crappy light armour, 4 poisons (demonic poison is the one you want when fighting Uldred!) and about 30 poultices.

And thank God that's over with.

Now, onwards and upwards...

EDIT: Btw, thanks for the tips guys. And for the oomph to have one more stab at this solo playthrough. Sounds like I'm over the worst...

Modifié par Ferretinabun, 25 janvier 2013 - 10:31 .

[dainbramage]

Doing deeps roads now. Just killed the corrupted spider queen. Spiders are as irritating as always, again their webs + overwhelms are way more disables than I'd like, and for rogues poison spit is autohit and does quite a decent amount of damage with only my 30 nature resist.

Anyway, I was screwing around with the spider queen. I figured out what makes its poison spit so lethal. Now a single poison spit will do 3 ticks of about 28 nature damage, with no resistances. That's 84, which for a spammed attack is quite a bit. But Andruil's blessing and a greater nature salve takes it down to 21, which is less than many other autohit attacks, and it should take about 14 spits to kill me, not counting for regen (it seems to spit about every 2 seconds - so accounting for lifegiver and rose's thorn, it should be more like 22 spits). Now anyone who's fought it can tell you that you can't survive 22 spits. And you can't.

Anyway, when it spits consecutively, old poison spits don't expire. So if it keeps spitting, that first spit doesn't do 21, it might be 28. Or 35. Or 42. And so on, the longer it keeps going. Eventually the DPS builds up so much that it kills you faster than you can drink poultices. Given that no other skill acts like this (including normal spiders poison spits), I'm going to assume it's a bug. So I have no problem cheesing that fight, especially as a web and an overwhelm while the queen's spitting at you is almost certain death.

[DWSmiley]

Ferretinabun wrote...

Cannot believe it! FINALLY done the mage tower.

Congrats.  I doubt I could have done the Tower with that character.  That was a hard road you set for yourself!

[Ferretinabun]

I don't recommend it. Painful, funless grind, for the most part.

But now I'm coming on in leaps and bounds.

Went to Honnleath. All pretty straight forward apart from that damn Kitty and her stunlock spells. Just kept pummelling away at her with an acid flask and a blind fury until I managed to resist enough spells (yay for dwarves) to kill her. With warmth balms with demons were easy enough from then on.

Since then I've been pretty rosey. Am now level 12. Have cleared out Redcliffe (traps made the revenant easy, while Connor's demon was back to balms and grind), Orzammar up to but not including the Carta mission, and every sidequest I can do within Denerim market district and the Pearl. Have just done the Precious Metals sidequest and now I'm sitting on 138 gold and feeling like a kid in a sweet shop. So many choices. Do I want the Dragonbone Rose's Thorn (SOOO tasty, but at almost 150 g, I'm still not even quite there yet!!!)? Lifegiver (it's very good, but with Key to the City and Harvest Festival Ring, I'm pretty set for powerful rings. I understand it'll be useful for encounters where I'll get overwhelmed, but that's pretty situational. Worth 88 g?)? Spellward? Andruil's Blessing? And let's not forget I'm only one quest away from being able to buy the Felon's Coat. And there are still all those sexy tomes and GM runes being dangled in front of me. So many tempting options.

Not much is presenting a struggle these days. I am luring a LOT though (read, almost exclusively). Not sure it's a tactic which sits perfectly comfortably with me, but hey, it works (made the Redcliffe suits of armour a joke)! Plus now I can brew them, I'm chugging away on the health pots like my mouth's on fire.

Again, thanks for laying what you're both up to out here. It helps no end that I'm following in your footsteps.

Modifié par Ferretinabun, 29 janvier 2013 - 11:00 .

[dainbramage]

I'd go with lifegiver first. It's really quite surprising just how much the 50hp+3armour+3hp regen will make fights go from spamming poultices to not needing any. Plus of course being a lifesaver for overwhelms and stuns/knockdowns/other disables when you can't heal yourself.

To me anyway I feel like it's a significantly bigger difference than upgrading to the rose's thorn or the spellward, neither of which you can 'properly' take advantage of early. Rose's thorn shines when you can spam dirty fighting and riposte and have coup de grace. Spellward's 30% alone isn't enough - if you resist the curse of mortality the cone of cold will still screw you up, or something like that, so I don't see to much point getting it first.

You also get plenty of money to buy them later anyway. My HN had enough to buy lifegiver, the rose's thorn, 3 GM runes, a full set of tier 5 dalish armor and a couple of skill books *and* still have enough money to buy the felon's coat the second I finished the third main quest. DNs will have even more cash than that, so splurging on lifegiver doesn't delay your other items much at all.

[Ferretinabun]

Thanks. All makes good sense, I suppose. Lifegiver it shall be (for now).

[DWSmiley]

Ferretinabun wrote...

Not much is presenting a struggle these days. I am luring a LOT though (read, almost exclusively). Not sure it's a tactic which sits perfectly comfortably with me, but hey, it works (made the Redcliffe suits of armour a joke)!

I think that's just shell shock.  With all the gear you've added luring shouldn't be necessary.  Though you may be using the word differently than I do.  The suits of armor all activate at once, so I see no luring/pulling there.  Of course, one wants to get into a corner where only a couple can attack.  And if you run into Eamon's office some of them may not follow, but that's not luring in my book.

[Ferretinabun]

That's what Combat Stealth is for. :-)

[dainbramage]

So... update time!

Finished off the deep roads. Nothing problematic at all in Bownammar. I don't think I needed a single potion there. Took down the broodmother with my bow. Needed a couple of potions at the anvil - golems' hurls and slams are autohit, so when facing the 4 in a row and the pairs later I needed to chug a couple. Ditto for the statue thingy at the third stage when it periodically drains life.

Branka was easy. Backstab the golems while they're fighting the two friendly ones (sidenote: golems are immune to crits but not backstabs. Does that seem weird to anyone else?), then tag all the lyrium veins before Branka can. She actually hits hardish when you have no defence (pummel made it through my physicla resistance once) and applies some odd debuff with no description, but overall not a hard fight and no potions were needed.

Then on to denerim and pre-landsmeet. Howe was standard up to Cauthrien. I did one try of staying in the room, and... it actually worked? Basically this was just down to being fortunate, in the form of the AI being stupid. My last attempt (on the significantly more durable DW warrior) involved being instantly pincushioned and near-killed by 10 scattershots (note: scattershot always hits, no matter your defence), with Cauthrien finishing the job with a sunder while I was still stunned.

With the rogue, only two archers chose to scattershot - the perfect number really, as the second hit overrides the first hit's stun with its own much shorter one. The rest simply tried to autoattack, and Cauthrien never activated perfect striking. The result was basically me being able to kill the mage, and then nothing else in the room would hit me, despite having talents that were perfectly capable of killing me instantly.

Now I was kind of unhappy with a dex rogue sharing the "able to solo cauthrien without leaving the room or using a potion" pedestal with arcane warriors, so I saved, loaded the pre-Cauthrien save and tried again, and was instantly killed by mass scattershots. No idea why they didn't use it the first time. *shrug*

Did the alienage which was easy. Used one lesser poultice against Caladrius because of the chip damage from his staff, that was it. The chest in the room gave me two Master Dweomer runes though. That put me up to 2 GM and 5 Master runes, so my rogue literally couldn't use all the master dweomer runes he found (lolwut). Shame I'm past all of the tough mage fights.

Keeping the templar dude alive in the orphanage quest was kind of a **** though, due to the lack of crowd-control skills. Then I realized at the end that he responds to having hold activated (hold and walk still is still active even when solo, despite the icon not being there. Say if your pc is attacking a rogue who dirty fightings then runs off to use a bow if hold is on you won't chase when the stun wears off; if hold is off, you will chase. Additionally slight repositioning can cause you to stop attacking due to the bad guy being 0.01m out of range with hold on, and your pc will sit there looking stupid) and I could've just left him alone at the start. Killed taoran and turned the collective in, now up to the landsmeet. Organized to marry Anora. Annoyingly leliana cut off the relationship even though I hardened her. I thought she was meant to stay on as a mistress? Oh well, my sex-addicted guy will have one less girl to bonk .


Overall, same trend with all other solo characters in that the game gets vastly easier the longer you play. I've seen a lot of people comment that dex is broken and you're essentially invincible. That's still not the case as one stun can be perfectly enough time to kill you, and scattershots (cauth's archers doing 50-70 damage per scattershot) kill my 280hp character embarassingly quickly. One funny thing is that SnS warriors are typically lowest priority on my other characters, but on my rogue they're killed before DW or 2H - because shield pummel will stun even if the hit misses. And even with 100 physical resistance, probably 1 in 4 will succeed at the check. Overall it feels less durable than my dex warrior (who had slightly less defence, but over 40 armour and 400hp), and not really any tankier than my SnS warrior (a str build - 46 armour, 110 defence), or even my 2H (40 armour and stuff all defence). The rogue desperately lacks crowd control apart from stealth - while excellent, it's still only one use per 10 seconds in combat and is a complete no-go against elite bosses, so even statistically much more fragile warriors can survive as well or better.




So basically that's all hard fights down. The final battle sequence is hilariously easy with the exception of the entrance to fort drakon, and the archdemon's easier than the high dragon. I'll get around to them eventually, but the rogue solo's basically done. Not sure what I'll do next. I've never really done a proper playthrough with zevran in the party, so maybe something that focuses on my least-used party members. Zev + Shale + Oghren + PC mage maybe? Though I had a recent playthrough with Oghren (4 2H champions - actually hilariously easy with 9 AoE knockdowns in the party) and don't want to rush Orzammar first again. I dunno, we'll see I guess.

Modifié par dainbramage, 01 février 2013 - 02:34 .

[DWSmiley]

DW rogue can beat Ser C in-room most of the time. Pile on the bottled goodness - swift salve, incense, quick death, concentrated demonic, concentrated soldier's bane. Race into the nook to take out the mage, which gets you out of line-of-sight of 8 of the archers. Stay there while fighting the melee mooks and Ser C, keep dirty fighting off cooldown to interrupt her mighty blow. Wade's/Evon's and rock salve helps, too.

May the odds ever be in your favor!

All-warrior is a fun group. I tried 3 rogue archers + Shale but that didn't hold my interest. Maybe the Beast Legion? Three shapeshifters and a ranger...

[dainbramage]

I actually started a 3 archer party (well, started as in done the dalish origin as a rogue). I've never properly used shale before, so even if it's just hold position and autoattack on the archers at least I can micromanage shale.

Still kinda curious on a rogue doing cauth in-room. At least in my experience it was hard to hide from all the archers, usually at least a few could get hits off. And even 4 scattershots at about 40 damage apiece (with evon's and rock salve - they were doing 50-60 to my 28-armour rogue) would kill me if Cauth also gets off a sunder while I'm stunned. Stealth isn't an option since Cauth's an elite boss. I think you'd just have to rely on them not using it like happened in my first run. Maybe there's a way you can game the AI into not scattershotting, I'm not sure.

Modifié par dainbramage, 03 février 2013 - 11:15 .

[Ferretinabun]

3 archer plus shale is fun.

I'm assuming you know that Song of Courage is stackable, and mixes well with Shale's Rock Mastery?

[dainbramage]

Yeah. Plan was as close to 100% as possible with double Shale aura, triple SoC and aim. I think give Z the most crit boosts then leliana then PC, and activate SoC in the reverse order.

[DWSmiley]

If you apply swift salve immediately and run into the corner of the nook, the corner groups of archers don't have time to scattershot. The other two are usually survivable, as it takes a few seconds for Ser C to catch up with you and she usually doesn't sunder right away. Momentum + swift + quick death stuns her often, so it's bad luck if she gets a chance to sunder while you're stunned.

Archer talents are the least interesting, imo, though I did enjoy unleashing my own barrage of scattershot after being on the receiving end so many times. I like to have Shale head off to the second rank of enemies, slam and quake safely away from the group, then switch to another mode.

[dainbramage]

So, finally got around to finishing off the rogue solo.

Grabbed the tears of andraste from Bann Franderel's estate. Tried the poisoning option but it didn't do anything. Waiter walked up and gave them their drinks, then... nothing. So slaughtering the estate it was. Of note, the steel golems aren't any more resistant to electricity damage than they are to other types, contrary to what the wiki said.

Then to redcliffe, bonked morrigan and on to denerim. The 5-ogre + emissary fight at the marketplace needed a reload as I got chain rammed. At theentracen to fort drakon another reload was needed as the dragon thrall's overwhelm was a one-hit kill. Also noteworthy is that the genlock alpha there managed to hit me with non-autohit attacks despite me rocking 213 missile deflection. Apart from those two the whole thing was smooth sailing. Archdemon wnet down quickly, the first spirit balm had only just run out when it died.

End-of-game screenshot. No idea what happened for there to be one more kill by the party than by the PC. No other characters have a kill to their name, and the PC has 100% party damage. Been the same with all my solos, dunno what causes it. *shrug*

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to list gear.

MAIN HAND: Duncan's dagger, 2x GM lightning 1x GM cold runes
ALT MAIN HAND: Crow dagger, 3x M dweomer runes
OFF HAND: The Rose's Thorn, 2x GM dweomer, 1x M dweomer runes
SWITCH: Whitewood Bow
HAT: Helm of Honnleath
ARMOUR: Felon's coat
GLOVES: Red jenny seekers
SHOES: Cadash stompers
NECKLACE: Spellward
BELT: Andruil's blessing
RINGS: Key to the City, Lifegiver

EDIT 2: As an aside (re archer+shale party), the shale talent damage formulas on the wiki were off, so I fixed them a while back.

Modifié par dainbramage, 25 février 2013 - 09:30 .

[McBough]

 Yeah I see this thread is kind of old now, but I've done the nightmare with no dlc with SS warrior, DW rogue, and a SH Mage that was overall kind of a dud, just there for support, but managed to have good survivability by activating rock armor and arcane shield after spell might. With my SS tank I actually beat the game without poultices, but had Wynne in the party the entire game devoted only to healing. The trick was high strength for my tank, like 70 something, and having Wynne cast glyph of warding on him while he was being attacked by the mob, and heroic defense when he was being attacked by magic. That way he could taunt, and dish out punishment to maintain the threat, while Leliana and Morrigan dealt the real massive damage. Ran with Juggernaut Plate set till I got Wade's dragonbone plate. Did Orzammar last and got lifegiver. On the last battle I equipped corruption and between the spirit resistance and the health regeneration from lifegiver and berserk, my character didn't need any health pots even after Wynne fell during the battle. Just started playing the game again recently, this time with AW/BM build. I really love the replayability of this game.