25 réponses à ce sujet

[ShadowKnlght]

Hello,

 

So with Inquisition coming out, I've decided to do a replay of Origins followed by one of DAII. The intent being to play as if this were the playthrough I'm importing, though I'll be using the Keep when actually doing it. 

 

I did have a previous playthrough, but for various reasons I never finished it and honestly don't quite recall what I was doing when I last left off.

 

I suppose one of my questions is concerning difficulty. The previous one I did was on Hard and I didn't really have any problems, but given that these playthroughs are more to experience the full story while also still having fun with the game itself I'm wondering if it might be worth it to go down to Normal? Is anything of note lost going down to that difficulty other than FF and general difficulty? Or can the game still be gotten through at a good pace on the higher ones?

 

I'm planning an AW/BM build if that helps at all.

 

Thank you.

[Jaison1986]

I find normal difficulty to be highly straining as it is, and look that I usually do some extreme micromanagement (how some people say hard feels easy is beyond me), so I would say normal difficulty, you will likely never die as long as you play smart and don't jump mindlessly into fights.

[mousestalker]

I do not believe that you will lose any story or dialogue choices if you play at Normal. The game should move a bit faster than your Hard difficulty play, but that would leave you more time to play with decisions and dialogue choices.

[DarthGizka]

I'd always recommend Casual or Normal for a tourist run, although combat experience - or lack thereof - has a much bigger influence on difficulty than the difficulty setting itself. Not to mention that Casual can be more difficult than other settings if you like force-fielding friendlies (e.g. tank, self, or suicidal Lloyd). Rumours to the contrary notwithstanding - Bioware, wiki - you lose neither choices nor enemies/XP by lowering the difficulty.

 

A good refresher course would be soloing the whole tutorial phase - including Lothering - with the possible exception of the most tricky bits (Gazarath, ogre, ambushes like the Barkspawn pickup or bandits at the Lothering turnoff of the Imperial Highway). Or pick some interesting fights, like Emissary Bridge in the Korcari Wilds, and replay them a couple of times until you get the hang of things again and get through the fights comfortably without using pots. That way you'll (re-)learn more in half an hour than in a dozen hours of muddling through with a team.

 

DLC goodies like Vestments of the Seer, Sash of Forbidden Secrets and High Regard of House Dace can have a huge influence on pace. At the start of the game they more than double your mana and spellpower, and the Vestments give you tank-like armour. The mana boost is especially nice, because it means you can cast spells with abandon without having to economise.

[Blazomancer]

Yup, difficulty settings only change combat related stuff and potion drop rate. You could start the game in normal, and then jump to hard if you find the challenge underwhelming at any time. Except for FF, the difference between normal and hard is minor.

Dual wielders usually clock the fastest times by endgame, which might be something worth considering, if minimizing gameplay time is a priority; AW/BM is cool though.

[DarthGizka]

CC/nukers can be very fast, too, and they pick up speed around level 3 instead of a dozen levels later. Dual-wielders outpace them against single hard targets at higher levels (melee bosses and fire-proof elites like drakes) but I'd be surprised if they could keep pace with a mage overall. Not sure about Arcane Warriors, though. They may be trickier to get right than a pure melee or a pure caster. A while back someone posted a video of an Arcane Warrior hitting the Warden's Keep with a whole team, and I found it underwhelming. To refresh my memory I reloaded one of my nukers of the same level (11) and soloed the whole Keep on Nightmare in about the same time as the AW took to clear the courtyard and the ground floor.

During the first dozen levels nothing can even remotely compare to a caster mage. I bet rogues and warriors won't even have met Morrigan for the first time when the mage wakes up in Flemeth's hut and sees her for the second time. Just for fun I paced my latest human mage (mere mortal without DLC items): about half an hour to Ostagar, less than three quarters to the end of the Wilds (including all the running around and looting and buying and killing prisoners), less than half an hour for Ishal.

[Mike3207]

A mage in Spider/Swarm form might be even faster than Dual Wielders.Unleash the big AOE spells, transform to Swarm form, and melee 9 different enemies at once.I haven't found anything better for fighting large enemy groups clustered in.

 

Just saw his mage is AW/BM. Ah well.

[Blazomancer]

The thing is warriors and rogues don't need frequent pauses, zooming in-out, rotating, positioning, retreating and all that. Of course while soloing and dealing with large clustered mobs like the ambushes in Denerim backalleys, mages would be much more faster. But most of the battles in the game are small scale and short ranged, often fought in tight quarters.

[Corker]

FWIW, I cleared much of the Tower and Castle Redcliffe with Glyph of Repulsion/Inferno.  Cast the glyph in the doorway and the Inferno in the room beyond it.  Doesn't work for battles where the bad guys are on you in a heartbeat, or there's no choke point to put the glyph, but it works great in tight quarters when there's lots of doors.  Sometimes a lieutenant or a ranged fighter who was out of the AOE survives until the glyph runs out, but the fight is much easier at that point. (And thanks to DarthGizka, whose comment in another thread somewhere inspired me to go try this. It's so much fun to watch the mooks rush the door and get flung back into  the fire over and over and over...)

[KingoftheZempk]

If you really don't care about combat and just want to be cheap, use the Demon ring mod on the nexus. Ups everything you have so you'll never die due to how much health and mana/stamina you have, and that's only if enemies can hit you as you do one shot kills. Every. Time. Even bare handed. I'm using it right now because I want to try some different scenarios and possibly make this my canon instead of the other one I have through all the dlc and DA2 I had done a year back. Trust me, there's nothing like running around in your skivvies one shot punching Arcan Horrors. I might even do that with the Archdemon...

[DarthGizka]

The thing is warriors and rogues don't need frequent pauses, zooming in-out, rotating, positioning, retreating and all that. Of course while soloing and dealing with large clustered mobs like the ambushes in Denerim backalleys, mages would be much more faster. But most of the battles in the game are small scale and short ranged, often fought in tight quarters.

 

Yes, most of the battles are small scale and perfectly suited to be solved by way of Fireball, Flame Blast and Walking Bomb. In fact, a caster mage is only slowed down if the enemy troops are scattered over a large area, which means they have to be induced to move into an area no larger than 15 metres diameter, for the usual Fireball treatment.

 

The only trick is to keep your own troops out of the firing line (by setting them all to "Ranged" and letting them hang back) or simply to go solo most of the time because you don't need the extra fire power and they would only slow you down. The 'time played' thingy keeps on ticking even when the game is paused; in that sense it gives you an objective value how much time you - the player - had to invest, regardless of how few or how many combat rounds there were in game time. Going solo if you don't need help dramatically cuts down on the amount of pausing and micro management necessary.

 

The thing is, when the rogue is positioning for her first backstab then the mage is already done with that group and moving on to the next one.

 

And where did you get the 'retreating' thing from? A CC/nuker retreats for no one, except maybe for some elite and bossy critters. Drakes, revenants and bossy ogres are an absolute pain for mages whereas rogues and warriors eat them for breakfast, but that's the exception to the rule. And there aren't a whole lot of them in the game anyway.

 

And I wager that even Archie goes down faster for a soloing mage than for a team led by a rogue or warrior Warden... When talk came around to Morrigan attending the funeral in shapeshifted form, over in another thread, I loaded a rooftop save for a mage to investigate and fraps the funeral. Fiona toasted Archie in no time flat without even trying hard, while the team was safely stashed in the far corner of some platform. Eamon, Kardiol and Irving kept Fiona's back free by dispatching the few darkspawn she had pulled following Archie around until he finally settled down to meet his fiery sparky end.

 

Lest I be misunderstood - I don't want to diss warriors or rogues. I love my Reaver/Champion tank, and I love my DW dagger rogues. But I want to light the fire of competition, in the hope that inspiration may result for people to nuke and shred enemies in new and entertaining ways.

[ShadowKnlght]

Thanks to all for the advice. I should have mentioned I'm playing this on the PS3 as well.

 

I'll probably do Normal and maybe bump it up to the harder difficulties if I feel like it. I'm doing a build based on a few builds and suggestions I've seen in the past and taken note of such as this: http://forum.bioware...rcane-warriors/

[Blazomancer]

^Have fun. I have referred to this particular guide in the past. It's good.


@DarthGizka - Dual wielders aren't just backstabbers, and backstabbers need not backstab all the time. Be it what it may, I guess it's the total time spent playing that the OP has mentioned, and those pauses would surely add up to something in the long run. Since I don't have access to someone else's timings, I can only speak about what I've experienced myself - which is that my dual wielder warriors and rogues clocked a couple of hours less than my mages in the post coronation save. It may very well be the other way round for some folks, as I assume is in your case, which in turn might be related to the player's experience with the battle system. But that can hardly be used as a generalization, especially for someone who's playing the game only for the second time. Mages are no doubt the most powerful, but they are tricky and requires quite a bit of thinking, premeditating, strategizing and what have you, which I believe is very much next to impossible without meta knowledge, be it from repeated playthroughs or trial and error.

I am doubtful about a solo mage slaying the Archdemon quicker than a full team. How quickly did Fiona slay it?

[Mike3207]

I've read on the forums in an older thread that some spells are more powerful solo than with a team.If that's the case, the archdemon might go down quicker with a solo mage.

[Blazomancer]

^True but it is only the effect duration that is increased, by (4 - partysize)*rankmod seconds that is. This essentially means an increased effect duration of 0.6 seconds on elite bosses for a solo warden, and since all the DoTs ticks at intervals greater than this, it practically makes no difference.

[DarthGizka]

I thought it was only Mind Blast, Force Field and the Paralysis line of spells that were affected by the party size modifier... Anyway, about the only appreciable difference in daily adventuring is with Mind Blast against grunts (6 seconds instead of 3), and in a minor way with elites because you can cast one more spell at them before they wake up.
 

I am doubtful about a solo mage slaying the Archdemon quicker than a full team. How quickly did Fiona slay it?

Time played is 92:05:45 for the rooftop autosave and 92:14:41 for the post-campaign save. That's pretty much exactly 9 minutes, but a good part of that is the 6:10 minutes of cutscenes - Loghain, detonation, coronation, funeral - which I had gone there to record. That would make it almost 3 minutes of fighting time even though it felt shorter. But 2 to 3 minutes seems about right, there's always lots of running around with Archie fluttering to another perch before coming back and taking it on the chin, Eamon needing to be bailed out of Archie's mouth from up close with Cone of Cold because Force Field is still cooling down from the previous bailout, stuff like that. Also, Archie had resisted both hexes two times in that session, and this put a bit of a crimp into things.

Anyway, it's not any full team - it's a full team lead by a rogue or warrior Warden. I'm excluding a destructionist Wynne here since she can boost her spellpower up to 80 points higher than any soloing mage Warden, which has a double effect with higher spell damage getting amplified by stronger hexes. Also, Leliana and Zevran could multiply Wynne's damage with Mark of the Assassin.

With Corruption and Lifegiver you can regen away the damage from Archie's purple sneezes, which means one toon gets a free pass to the dance. Perfect for a soloing Warden, not so perfect for a team. I.e. headaches and management effort, not to forget the required tactics setup and/or micro management.

The reason for my wager is this: all I had to do with the companions was position them out of sight behind the northern-most ballista (NW corner of that platform), and that took an inordinate amount of time and attention away from Fiona and her battle. Fiona cast more than half a dozen spells during that time and even followed Archie when he changed position. Had he landed on her or tried some chomping or tail swishing she'd have been toast. Now imagine that you have to do more with your companions than just send them to a particular position. A bloody nightmare: pausing, switching, positioning, watching cooldowns and HP/MP levels, gauging safe distance to the nearest enemy cluster... Eeeek!

[Blazomancer]

Hmm, I think three archers, warrior or rogue, can do it in about a minute with minimal micro and movement. I'd give a melee warrior or rogue about 30-40 seconds extra. Still it would be below 2 minutes, I reckon.

[DarthGizka]

Yes, I can see a team of archers doing extreme damage against Archie, especially with appropriate gear/training and all of them singing songs of critical damage augmented by Shale's aura. Shattering Shot from different archers stacks and it cools down faster than it wears off, so Archie's armour is even less of a problem than it already is (compared to Archie's magic resistances). Even my sword & shield warrior did better as an untrained archer than with the longsword she had trained for.
 
But on the order of a minute? That I'd like to see. I've lead a team of amateur archers into the battle to see how it works out, but they weren't any faster than Fiona alone. Zevran was dead and Leliana couldn't be picked because she was heading the team at the gates. So I'm curious how an experienced player would do it, and how fast real archers with +critical can shred Archie.
 
I figured out how to fraps with good quality and recorded Fiona toasting Archie (fighting time 2:15).
 

[Mike3207]

I was able to take out the High Dragon with Zevran,Leliana, and Wynne all at range and my Shapeshifter Bear tanking along with Great Bear and about 6 summoned Spiders for support(after the Great Bear died). That fight was a lot of fun.

[DarthGizka]

Next time tell Leliana to bring a camera, please. ;-)

 

I forgot to mention one big advantage of an archer team: apart from directing occasional troop movements, you can just lean back and enjoy the show. Tactics setup is minimal as well.

 

With Fiona I had to work constantly and didn't have even one second's rest. Tactics setup for auto-casting took up all slots but it was suprisingly effective, in a test with Leliana as impartial observer (since tactics don't work for the controlled character).

[Mike3207]

Yes, the big difference is that with the Archdemon you have that army of darkspawn all trying to take you down at the same time you have the Archdemon to deal with.Swarm Form would be a good strategy if you didn't have to worry about your entire party getting killed.You might swap Shale out for Wynne and give her the entire Arcane Warrior line to protect herself.

I'm not entirely sure how you make Youtube videos.I'll try and do it the next time I face the High Dragon.

[DarthGizka]

Yes, the big difference is that with the Archdemon you have that army of darkspawn all trying to take you down at the same time you have the Archdemon to deal with.

The armies just stand there watching the show, unless Kardol, Eamon or Irving get an itch and go looking for trouble. Just watch the video with Fiona; an archer team can do it in exactly the same way, and with them you have a clear view of the darkspawn audience. For a mage, the spell FX tend to obstruct the view past Archie.

I figured out to embed a video only after you'd already answered my post, so you probably haven't seen it.
 

I'm not entirely sure how you make Youtube videos.I'll try and do it the next time I face the High Dragon.

It's easy if you can afford fraps (27 €). In the past I often wished I had it, for recording interesting fights. For example, a while back I found by accident a method for killing the 'receptionist' abomination at the Keep before the undead wardens can heal him up (nightmare solo mage). Then I replayed the fight two times from the autosave, to see whether it was a fluke. It wasn't. But that's all I remember. Next time I go there I'll have to figure it all out from scratch...

Fraps records uncompressed video, either full size or half size. A free program like Handbrake can compress 'keepers' to MP4 so that they can be kept a while longer (or for free posting on YouTube), the rest can be weeded out every once in a while. The Fiona video was about 3.5 GByte raw at full resolution (1280), and 44 MByte compressed to MP4.

Last week I finally went and got fraps. Wish I had done it earlier.

[Blazomancer]

I've linked a few of my videos in Darth's videos thread.

[DarthGizka]

I've linked a few of my videos in Darth's videos thread.

 

That's what this forum needs a lot more of: fast, furious action instead of - or in addition to - our endless theorising. Seeing is believing. Consider me floored.

 

[KaiserShep]

If you really don't care about combat and just want to be cheap, use the Demon ring mod on the nexus. Ups everything you have so you'll never die due to how much health and mana/stamina you have, and that's only if enemies can hit you as you do one shot kills. Every. Time. Even bare handed. I'm using it right now because I want to try some different scenarios and possibly make this my canon instead of the other one I have through all the dlc and DA2 I had done a year back. Trust me, there's nothing like running around in your skivvies one shot punching Arcan Horrors. I might even do that with the Archdemon...

Man I wish I was playing on PC. This sounds pretty amusing.