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[capn233]

I started a mage solo at the end of last week.  It had been going very smoothly, especially considering how hard some encounters were for my DW Warrior early game.

 

Then I hit this encounter in the Circle Tower at Level 10 and it was drastically more difficult.  The reason being that it seemed like every single time the Bewitched Templar could get off Holy Smite no matter how early I paused, or what spell I chose.  In fact, nearly everything I tried to cast could not be completed given that the Warden has to waste time getting out his staff, since obviously killing the 500 previous enemies in the tower meant there wouldn't be any future enemies to worry about.  This led to the Warden being killed before the stun wore off.

 

I eventually beat it, but it was almost certainly the hardest encounter for my mage so far, and not really anything was close.  And I had to use a lot of reloads and a spell placed before dialogue to do it. 

 

Before the long story of how I finally beat it, what is the best way to get past this encounter as a solo mage?  Do most do this after the Fade, and what level are they?

 

I saw some discussion about the encounter on a lower floor with the desire demon and multiple Templar, but that one was a lot simpler and I beat it on the first try since I could ragdoll everything at the beginning with Fireball.

[capn233]

I was level 10, character was setup like this:

 

Str 13

Dex 16

Will 16

Mag 50

Cun 14

Con 12

 

Torch of Embers

Helm of Honnleath, Tevinter Mage Robe, Enchanter's Footing (Rough)

Buckle of the Wind's, Apprentice's Amulet, Ring of Study, Iced Band

 

Armor 6

Defense 55

Spellpower 51

 

Spells:

Arcane Bolt

Combat Magic (only used passively for Helm of Honnleath, may not have been great idea)

Winter's Grasp -> Frost Weapons -> Cone of Cold

Flame Blast -> Flame Weapons -> Fireball

Walking Bomb -> Death Syphon -> Virulent Walking Bomb

Glyph of Repulsion -> Glyph of Warding -> Glyph of Paralysis

Mind Blast

 

Basically every time I tried this, I would be hit with Holy Smite right off the bat, and stunned for a long time before I could even use a spell myself.  The exception was that somehow Cone of Cold could be cast, even though it looked like I wouldn't get through the animation, so I could at least briefly CC the Templar and Desire Demon.  I also decided to try to place Glyph of Repulsion such that I would be standing on it while stunned after the cutscene, and getting the positioning right on that was tedious.  I had to take the immediate "Die" dialogue to force the confrontation or the glyph would time out.  This generally protected me from the melee attacks while stunned, so in theory I could survive the Holy Smite stun.

The problem was the Desire Demon liked to cast either or both of Cursed Dance and Horror before the stun would wear-off so I would just go into another CC state, and then the glyph would expire or be dispelled, and I would die.  She would also mix in Winter's Grasp, which had a limited duration, but added to damage.

So reload, then reload.  And so I started off with lesser ice salve, then placed the glyph, ran in, chose the "die!" dialogue, paused before the music could start, Cone of Cold... and this time I was surprised to see that I wasn't stunned.  Either I froze the Templar before he could cast Holy Smite or this was the one time in 100 that he didn't open with it immediately.  So then it was Fireball to CC nearly everything, retreat out of the room and then Glyph of Paralysis for Paralysis Explosion, Walking Bomb and Virulent Walking Bomb on Desire Demon, and then worked on two skeletons that weren't CC'd.  The Desire Demon was free by then, I retreated further, another Fireball to finish the skeletons and the demon, at which point I noticed Leliana's portrait was gone, and Wynne was starting to take damage.  Apparently a random skeleton found the bad spot I tried to hide Leliana and Wynne on hold and they were tanking.  So the lucky break at the beginning was wasted since tanking teammates meant another reload.

Started off the some way again:  lesser ice salve, glyph of repulsion, "die demon," pause, cone of cold, stunned by Holy Smite.  Glyph was in the right spot.  Leliana and Wynne moved to different spot on hold, Desire Demon tries Cursed Dance (must have been resisted), Winter's Grasp... and then I am free.  Health Pot, Fireball, retreat to door.  Several skeletons nearby.  Mind Blast. Lesser Lyrium. Desire Demon closing, so back up slightly, Cone of Cold again.  Then I am tired of this so Shock bomb, Fire Bomb, Acid Flask, Soulrot bomb.  Desire Demon and several skeleton's dead.  Hit by Templar Shield Bash... Health Pot, lesser Lyrium then Arcane Bolt to kill Templar and then killed the last skeleton.

 

It was nice to beat the encounter, but this would hardly be a consistently repeatable tactic unless you include reloading to get past rng as a tactic.

[dainbramage]

It's an annoying fight, but I don't think I've ever been smited. Admittedly I do circle tower straight after lothering as a solo mage, so I'm a lower level. But generally glyph of repulsion in the doorway, run outside, when everyone bunches CoC, paralysis explosion, VWB, pop the bomb and the fights over.

Gets complicated if vwb is resisted (normally means a reload) or someone resists glyph and coc

[capn233]

It's an annoying fight, but I don't think I've ever been smited. Admittedly I do circle tower straight after lothering as a solo mage, so I'm a lower level. But generally glyph of repulsion in the doorway, run outside, when everyone bunches CoC, paralysis explosion, VWB, pop the bomb and the fights over.

Gets complicated if vwb is resisted (normally means a reload) or someone resists glyph and coc

 

Yeah I did Lothering -> Denerim (Bandits, Merc Groups, Solving Problems, Blood of Warning) -> Honnleath -> Tower.  Really there wasn't a great reason to go to Honnleath since I was a mage. 

 

Wonder what the tipping point is for that guy's power use.  The encounter on the lower floor with the Desire Demon and 4 or 5 templars was simple enough because I could just fireball them, then mop up with other powers.  Not sure if they even had Holy Smite, they were CC'd most of the time, but I doubt it since one of them was free for a bit after the first fireball.  One attempt, straight-forward encounter.

 

The room next door to the bewitched templar has 3 templars that all had Holy Smite though (the room with them and one blood mage).  I had that room confused with a different one and strolled in the door, and was hit by three simultaneous Holy Smites for an insta-death.  But the next time it was a simple enough matter to cast Glyph of Repulsion on the templars to start (before they are alerted), then paralysis explosion, then fireball, etc.  Nobody ended up even making it to the door that time, although the Blood Mage got off a futile lightning before she was killed at the end.

[Mike3207]

I would have picked up either Tempest or Inferno before heading to the tower, maybe in place of Mind Blast. You can cast those outside rooms and a Glyph of Repulsion will work to keep them out. There is one battle with a desire demon where you have to enter the room to start the fight.

 

I hate smites btw, because it being cast will also knock a shapeshifter out of shift into their normal squishy form. It makes the higher levels more challenging for a shapeshifter mage.

[capn233]

So it actually took me way more tries to beat Sloth than I expected.  Also it seemed like it took much longer to kill the ogre form than my DW Warrior did, both using Golem.  I had to use a lesser spirit salve and barely lived through a Crushing Prison as the Golem against his stupid Arcane form.  After that I was able to keep him mostly cc'd.

 

Uldred wasn't exactly hard, although it was hard for me to kill off the initial wave of abominations without letting Leliana or Wynne get targeted or take damage, and without me getting hit with a Crushing Prison.  I ended up using Cone of Cold on two of them plus Uldred, then moved slightly, and dropped a strategically placed paralysis explosion to get them, followed up with Virulent Walking Bomb and some direct damage, then the three blew up.  I drank a bunch of lyrium v Uldred, and used a couple health pots plus the lesser spirit balm at the beginning.  Mainly I just tried to dance around him then use Cone of Cold or something to stick him when possible, and throw on some dots from fire or walking bombs.

 

In any case, probably makes a lot more sense to go here at a lower level.

[dainbramage]

A bit late for uldred, but handy for other bosses. Cast WB wait 10 seconds, cast VWB. Just before VWB expires cast WB again. When dots are overridden their damage ticks stick around (incidentally, this is why the corrupted spider queen's spit hurts so much), so you get double dps from the vwb and triple from the second wb. It also seems to duplicate other dots like fire blast. Very efficient boss killer anyway, though depends on how much you like to take advantage of bugs.

[capn233]

I was able to use that to my benefit on the Revenant in the Redcliffe courtyard.  Along with vulnerability hex.  I thought DOTs just ran concurrently, that is good to know.

[capn233]

I did Brecilian Forest, and it did not go quite as I expected.

 

I did all of Werewolf Lair through fighting Zathrien in one go.  I was overwhelmed one whole time by one Shadow Wolf, the rest never really got into melee range without getting CC'd.  With Lifegiver and Rock Armor, all I had to do was spend a lesser health pot after the overwhelm.

 

What I did have trouble with was fighting the Revenant in the E Brecilian Forest at the tombstone (to activate Mage's Treasure quest) and his four skeleton lackeys.  I was Level 14, took Blood Mage for the stat bonuses, and had 71 spellpower (Wintersbreath staff... not ideal).  The annoying bit was that the yellow devouring skeleton and the Revenant seemed to resist about half of my spells.  Revenant resisting... ok whatever, but the skeleton resisting was just annoying.  Also the Revenant would pull nearly non-stop, and oddly sometimes even in melee range.

 

The first time I beat this section, I basically let the Revenant pull me (since the three near skeleton's are spread out anyway), then basically tried to get some DOTs on the Revenant and periodically CC it, while keeping a Glyph of Repulsion under me to ward off the skeletons.  When Fireball was off cd I would try and hit skeletons and the Revenant.  This ended up requiring a fair amount of lesser health and lyrium pots, and a couple lyrium pots, but got them all eventually.

 

Not happy with the cost of this encounter, I reloaded and tried a couple different things.  But eventually I ended up using a FF to open and then a massive amount of kiting around the hill, and CC'ing the Revenant when possible, and trying to keep Vulnerability and Affliction Hexes as well as damage dots up on the Revenant. 

 

I did it once killing the Revenant with Aodh and Edge (couple mediocre flame and lightning runes on them), and oddly that was actually doing at least as much DPS as spells, with lower lyrium cost, but it took more health pots.  This was just with Rock Armor, Combat Magic (w/ Aura of Might) and Flame Weapons, no Arcane Shield or Shimmering Shield.

 

What level are these guys supposed to be?

[Mike3207]

There's this:

 

Dragon Age origins employs what BioWare calls a 'limited, persistent' scaling system. It tries to solve the problems scaling systems are created to address while avoiding some of the obvious drawbacks that can cause the game experience to be diluted.

How it works

Dragon Age: Origins employs several different layers to balance creatures against the party (or not)

Area Limits

In Dragon Age: Origins, every area has a minimum and maximum level. If the player enters the area, the party's level is taken and compared to the area limits. If it is between the limits, the creatures in the areas scale to the party's level. If the party level is outside the limit, the creatures scale to the upper or lower bounds of the area limit, whatever appropriate.

Once this has happened, the game stores these values and they are never changed. Creatures in Dragon Age: Origins, once encountered, will never change their existing level, to allow the player to come back to an area later and overcome previously impossible challenges, therefore having getting sense of accomplishment.

 

The Ruins could be a max level of 18, but the Revenant will likely be a couple of levels higher as a boss, and could end up in the range of 20-22, depending on when you first encountered a revenant, and what level you were when you first encountered one.

[capn233]

Yeah I might have seen this before, but wasn't sure what the range actually is for the Brecilian Forest, or if the Mage's Treasure creatures had a different range.  It seemed like the Revenants and their lieutenants resisted a lot more spells than any of the enemies in forest proper, the Ruins, or the Lair of the Werewolves.  Granted, there aren't really many (any?) lieutenant skeletons in the ruins, but there are the Revenants for Black Vials, both of whom seemed to resist fewer spells and as such were easier to kill than the mage's treasure ones for me.

[capn233]

Used the "more dots" tactic on Corrupted Spider Queen.  Killed her pretty soon after she summoned the first two minions.  I had actually bought Evon's so I could get to absurd armor rating if need be with Wade's gloves and boots, but ended up just doing it in Tevinter Mage Robes with the Cinderfel gloves and Magnus boots with Shimmering Shield up (to attempt web resist).  6 more spiders showed up after she died, but they basically died to a fireball.

 

Speaking of which I ran into something I hadn't seen before.  I killed Flemmeth after Brecilian and when I wanted to swap to spirit or cold damage gloves, I realized I hadn't picked up Cinderfels (20% fire) yet.  Of course they are looted from Uldred, so I missed that probably in part since I told Irving just to lead on back to the first floor.  So I go back up the tower to pick them up and when I get to the top floor, Uldred is alive again.  I imagine he was the same level as before, and he was pretty simple.

 

From Flemmeth to the Urn Quest to the Orzammar quest line briefly:

 

Flemmeth - Greater Warmth Balm (didn't have SS anyway), tried to use hexes and dots along with cold.  It turned mainly into a drinking contest since she was resisting many spells.

 

3 yellow drakes - probably the toughest part of the whole Urn quest, partly due to overwhelms, and partly because I didn't want to blow myself up in the small room using walking bombs.

 

Kolgrim on Mountaintop - it is funny seeing him go from silverite armor in one scene to dragonbone in the very next.  I actually fought him after the Gauntlet because I don't think I had ever done it that way, but it ended up being simpler.

 

High Dragon - seemed to resist fewer spells then Flemmeth, my spellpower shouldn't have been much different though.  I was able to freeze with cone of cold and paralysis explosion a couple times, but I hadn't picked up another Greater Warmth Balm and had to use Lesser.  I did have SS, but thought I should leave it off so I could have a little mana regen.  Might have been better to put it on and guzzle lyrium though (at least in terms of efficiency).

 

Jarvia - This isn't too bad, and I did it as pure mage basically.  I was trying not to use any health pots, but ended up having to use one.

 

Ogre Alpha in Caradin's Cross - had to kite this guy around a bit since I couldn't keep him locked down the whole time.  "Yellow" level ogres I could kill with basically one paralysis.

 

Spider Queen - see above.  Thought this would be the hardest fight, but it wasn't.

 

Broodmother - I just went on the ramp and stacked dots, and the mooks funneled themselves for flame blasts and cone of colds.  She could still hit me with poison spit, but that was it.

 

Branka - this was the hardest fight because Branka liked to resist things.  I don't think she resisted fireball once though, but she somehow escaped a paralysis explosion.  She escaped another one by crashing my game when I detonated it.  I also didn't use SS because I wanted to be able to cast more with fewer lyrium pots.  The berserk animation after using lyrium veins is pretty terrible.

[capn233]

My leveling has been a bit odd from the mid teens, it was partly based on the idea that I would want to stab things every now and then, but in reality I have only used melee weapons a handful of times and it was probably not worth it.  Also I was trying to avoid getting Mana Clash for most of the game so as to deal with mages in alternative means, and save points.  But by 20 I thought maybe work towards clash anyway, even though I wouldn't be able to get it without a lot of elfroots.  This was where I did Howe's Estate and Cauthrien, and then impatiently went and just did Gaxkang w/o clash.

 

Level 20

 

Str 21 (15)

Dex 33 (25) - I spent seven pity points here, and probably should have just put it in magic.

Will 35 (18)

Magic 78 (72)

Cun 23 (17)

Con 30 (12)

 

Arcane 4

Mage 4 - I thought I could make up a little spellpower here from dex, but it robs talent points

Fire 3

Earth 2

Cold 3

Glyph 3

Spell Shield

Mana Drain

Death 3

Telekinesis 2

Hex 2

 

Helm of Honnleath, Tevinter Mage Robes, Magus War Boots

Staff of the Magister Lord / Edge - Rose's Thorn

Spellward, Andruil's, Key to the City, Lifegiver

 

Really I didn't have much of a plan for the late game mapped out.  My original idea was to avoid Blood Wound, Mana Clash, and Inferno altogether, and I will probably end up sticking with that.  At 21 I took Mana Cleanse en route to Spell Might.  Maybe I should have picked up Wisp.

 

Spellpower was part of why I had stuck with Tevinter Mage Robes instead of buying Reaper's, or actually equipping real armor.  But spellpower still seems a little light anyway.

 

Cauthrien - So I was able to beat her staying in the room and not casting anything beforehand.  However, it was pretty expensive.  10 Lyrium Potions, 6 Health Pots, Acid Flask and Soulrot Bomb.  I might have been able to reduce some of the lyrium and health cost if I spent more grenades (I actually had something like 36 total adding up all the elements), but I wasn't really interested in trying a bunch of things with this character.  Reaper's might have helped with the health a bit, I don't know if the 5 spellpower loss would have drastically changed the number of spells Cauthrien resisted.  Pulling Cauthrien cost 6 lyrium pots and one health pot.

 

Gaxkang - I drank a bunch of lyrium to kill him, and it might have been cheaper to just stab him with sustains up, although slower.  Or maybe I should have just spammed elfroots for Mana Clash.

[dainbramage]

The Brecilian forest revenants have high spell and elemental resists (except lightning) for some reason.

[Mike3207]

My view on point distribution for mages and what stats make sense-

 

Dex-you want to put points in it if you plan on using daggers with your mage or you plan on utilizing Poison Spit a lot with Spider Form. Arcane Shield will build your defense with more spellpower, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to increase dex for that reason.

 

Strength-it does help with damage as far as your shifted forms and it also builds attack as well, but that's really the only reason you would give strength to a mage.

 

Willpower-not necessary. Use more mana potions. It does increase mana, but most mage gear give enough boosts that it isn't needed, along with you normal mana increases as a mage. Never mind, I saw base will is 18. I don't think that's too much.

 

I'd say most of the time I go all magic, but I might put enough points into STR to get strength to Helm of Honnleath level.

[capn233]

I ended up buying Reaper's Vestments as I had 200 gold and didn't have really anything else to spend it on.  I hit 22 doing Tears of Andraste (Spell Might) and with the Landsmeet point I took Mana Clash.  Ended up at 23 in the Battle of Denerim, and took Lightning as my last power although I almost took Wisp, but figured it wouldn't even matter all that much since the game was nearly over.

 

The Brecilian forest revenants have high spell and elemental resists (except lightning) for some reason.

 

The one element I didn't have of course (except on runes).

 

My view on point distribution for mages and what stats make sense-

 

Dex-you want to put points in it if you plan on using daggers with your mage or you plan on utilizing Poison Spit a lot with Spider Form. Arcane Shield will build your defense with more spellpower, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to increase dex for that reason.

 

Strength-it does help with damage as far as your shifted forms and it also builds attack as well, but that's really the only reason you would give strength to a mage.

 

Willpower-not necessary. Use more mana potions. It does increase mana, but most mage gear give enough boosts that it isn't needed, along with you normal mana increases as a mage. Never mind, I saw base will is 18. I don't think that's too much.

 

I'd say most of the time I go all magic, but I might put enough points into STR to get strength to Helm of Honnleath level.

 

Yeah the 7 pts of dex were to allow me to equip decent daggers, since I like to dual-wield on Arcane Warrior when he is using melee weapons.  The 3.5 attack bump probably wasn't very important.

 

Everything else I put in magic.  Could sidestep strength equipment issue with Combat Magic since I was AW, although I went AW at Level 7, and if I was playing it again I might choose Blood Mage first though.  Dunno.