Basic tip to enjoy DAI is: There are so many activities, do the ones you enjoy and avoid those you don't enjoy. If you find yourself not enjoying something, don't do it, but do something else. You won't be punished for it.
The idea is explained in the reddit post: Get out of the Hinterlands
DAI gameplay consists of three areas: Open areas, story quests, Stronghold (war room).
- Stronghold is obvious (Haven et al). You go there to chat with your companions as much as you like, craft your stuff and determine what the inquisition should do with its forces and what you want to do next in the war room. You can spend a lot of time there. Return there often!
- There are only few story quests, which advance the story and a pretty important. Once you start a story quest, you have to go through with it. They are one at a time, their structure is linear, they are are always given a level range in the war room and trigger certain events. While there are once-to-use resupply caches for your pots, the total number of pots you have on those missions is limited. Don't be too wasteful with them, but also don't be too cringy, because the resupply caches come on regular intervals. There are two story quests which require only a very minor power investment. These are the big ones!
- Open areas are pretty much optional (you can skip entire areas) and contain masses of quests, which you can do or not. They often span a very big range of levels. You can skip entire areas without losing out on the main story.
Hinterlands is the most extreme open area. You arrive there at level 3, but soon encounter mobs at level 12, who will swallow you whole. So you die or escape, and then do something else in the Hinterlands. But there are so many quests that it's absolutely fruitless to do "everything" there. It doesn't even pay off to do everything else. I had more than a dozen quests open in the Hinterlands (and quite as many in other areas) when I finished the game. If you enjoy the quests there, do them. If you don't, go to the next story quest. If your Inquisition need more power, close a few rifts -- that's a quick way to gain power points.
But please don't perform 20 gathering quests and then complain how boring DAI is, because it's all about gathering quests in the Hinterlands. It can be, if you want it to be. But if don't like it, just move on to Val Royeaux.
Things you can do, but don't have to do:
- Opening areas: Each area costs a bit of power (the more difficult the area is, the higher the power cost). You don't have to open up every area in the game.
- Gathering quests: If they serve as an incentive for you to explore, good. If you find it tiresome, skip it. The power gain is usually not worth the effort and you get more than enough power anyways to open up everything you need.
- Minigames: Scouting gems and painting pictures in the sky might be something you enjoy, but can be skipped entirely.
- Filling requisitions: Not only did I find them tiresome, but I also prefered to save my crafting materials for, you know, crafting. Again, the power gain from turning in crafting materials is usually not worth it. Strengthening your stronghold is cute if you like a nice stronghold, but isn't critical for the story. This is not like ME2, where people die if you didn't upgrade your courtyard or plant a garden.
- Reaching Camps: Camps are great for resupplying potions if you want to explore a lot. They also give easy power. So usually worth doing if you're going to hang around in the area.
- Fighting dragons: Big fights, big rewards, entirely optional.
- Winning keeps: medium fights, pretty good rewards, entirely optional.
- Talking to people: The "?" icon shows entirely optional additional information you can get from the characters if you are interested in their motives, options or the story. If you just want to head into the next fight, skip them.
- Caves and ruins: Often contain good loot, sometimes riddles.
- Crafting: Crafting gives VERY good equipment. Most of my final gear was crafted. Sure, you can do without it, but crafting your stuff usually gives you an edge in combat.
- Combat/Healing pots: If you find combat annoying or run out of healing pots every 2 or 3 fights, lower the difficulty. Or learn how to guard and shield your party.
- Romance/Flirts: Ok, so looking at Dorian's butt is not optional, but imperative.
But, yeah, you can skip that as well. Flirting doesn't really work all the time, but it's mostly harmless. I started a romance with Josi on my playthrough, but lost the thread somewhere.
The trick is that with so much going on, it isn't viable to see everything on the first playthrough. Chances are you're getting burned out while trying, and also screw up your leveling curve, overleveling the story quests once you reach them. It's better to look around a bit, take what you like, then go back to the stronghold and do something else.
Above all: Do what you enjoy. Don't do what you don't enjoy, just because you think that you have to do it.
If you follow that, DAI is a great game (which does have problems, but "I have to gather 1000 gems and it's boring" isn't one of them).
Where am I coming from? Finished the first playthrough (hard, without ff, female human rogue, atheist, doesn't like chantry and templars, very nice otherwise) in about 70 hours at level 18 without any problems, taking a fairly leisured pace. Now I got several other characters at the start.
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