18 réponses à ce sujet

[Ehrgeix]

Soloing DAO was a ton of fun, and the most common complaint I've seen about DAA so far is that it's too easy. With that in mind, I figured I'd do my first playthrough of DAA solo and play through with a party later for the extra dialogue etc. It's always fun to discuss this stuff, and there were some great threads on soloing DAO by Timortis (amongst others), so I decided to keep a mini-diary of the solo attempt. By solo I mean using the main character only where possible - if you have to use other party members for plot stuff putting them on Any - Wait so they do nothing. I have no problems with pets/decoys/et cetera.

The rogue I'm using had solo'd DAO previously - I took mostly good choices with the exception of things that gave me semi significant chunks of money (asunder, asking for rewards, rogek etc) and finished the game with something like 1050g total earned, 220g~ leftover and the following items:

equipped:
The Roses's Thorn, Duncan's Dagger / Falon'Din's Reach
Spellward, Andruil's Belt, Lifegiver, Key to the City
Helm of Honnleath, Red Jenny Seekers, Felon's Coat, Cadash stompers

unequipped:
Cailan's Armor Set (I had some idea that I could respec for enough str to use this with legionnaire scout and be totally invincible - high armor, high defense and maxed spellresist with +8 health regen (lifegiver/cailan's armor) would be silly.)
Dead Thaig Shanker (+cunning is useful to switch in to open locks, interrupts spellcasting proc seemed useful).
misc. bombs, potions, poisons

Build was pure dex with enough cunning for 4/4 stealth and lockpicking and enough str to use cadash stompers, assassin + duelist specs, and most DW abilities. Skills were coercion, lockpicking, trapmaking, combat training and 1-2? points in survival. I picked up all possible skill/stat/talent tomes and all the fade stat points (as far as I'm aware), and had a ton of spell resistance from spellward + dweomer runes on daggers.

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The start of awakening (map outside keep/inside keep) was easy - I ran around right clicking stuff to death and taking no damage because of ridiculous defense + combat stealth. I recruited anders/oghren/nathaniel and left them all on any - wait, and dropped them from my party as soon as possible. All chests so far were openable with 4/4 lockpicking and 26 cunning (which was great - I didn't want to have to put more points in cunning).

After clearing out the keep I talked to some merchants and unlocked the shadow spec and met wade/herren and picked up two respec tomes (yay!). I was super surprised at how bad the 150g light armor (rainswept) was compared to the felon's coat. I decided to hold off on respecing for now cause I wanted to unlock legionnaire scout and was also curious as to how much cunning I'd need to unlock chests later. Finally I did some misc. quests in the keep (meeting nobles, starting to clear out the basement), then headed to amaranthine.

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In Amaranthine I visited merchants and spent most of my gold picking up voice of velvet (an amazing dagger with +100% crit damage), misery (a bow comparable to far song) and giving the dark wolf 50g to investigate the nobles conspiring against me. I unlocked legionnaire scout and did a few more misc. quests - nothing was very difficult but the Blight Orfans line was totally hilarious. I also respec'd to duelist/legionnaire scout/shadow at this point:

3/4 coup de grace
3/4 evasion (lethality)
4/4 lockpicking
4/4 stealth
3/4 flicker (weak points)

4/4 duelist
3/4 legionnaire scout
1/4 shadow
3/4 dual weapon mastery (dual weapon expert)
4/4 whirlwind

1/4 coercion
2/4 trapmaking
4/4 survival
2/4 herbalism
2/4 poisonmaking
4/4 runecrafting
4/4 vitality

I left 20 attribute points and 4 talent points free so I could experiment with other talents / using cailan's armor / increasing cunning if necessary to open locks. More than 1/4 in trapmaking/poisonmaking and the 2/4 herbalism is just for convenience - it'd be better to craft the stuff I need then drop these for 4/4 clarity, but I'm too lazy to do that right now.

Updates coming sometime soonish. :<

Modifié par Ehrgeix, 22 mars 2010 - 12:18 .

[Sirsmirkalot]

Good luck with the Mother

[Timortis]

Don't you think Duelist is overkill for a Dex Rogue for DAA? Monster attack rates don't seem to be high enough to make that +10 defense necessary for a level 20+ Dex Rogue.

I've been playing a semi-solo game. I wanted to see what the companions were about on my first run, so I started with the intention of not soloing, but ended up putting them all on hold+cautious from the first fight anyway. I still haven't finished because I've been very busy and don't really feel like playing these days.

Modifié par Timortis, 20 mars 2010 - 04:28 .

[Ehrgeix]

misc. thoughts on skills/talents:

Decoy is pretty cool.

Weak points better be good or the flicker line kind of sucks - whirlwind uses less stamina and does more damage than flicker (albeit in a smaller area, but not so worried about that while solo).

Runecrafting is neat, I just made 5 grandmaster dweomer runes so mages shouldn't touch me.

All the awakening talents are *so much* stamina. Unending flurry seems like it could be super good (it basically doubles? (1.5x?) dps?) but I don't really have the stamina to keep it active for long now. Apparently find vitals gives you a passive 0.1% to crit? Anyone know how big the crit damage bonus is?

Timortis: I don't know whether duelist is worth it, but I guess I don't really rate assassin very highly because anything getting backstabbed is going to die super fast anyway, bard is definitely not worth it, ranger is probably worth it for harder fights but if I can do the game without it I would like to, and I have shadow and legionnaire scout anyway. (I think shadow is definitely worthwhile, though not sure about shadow form for crit dmg, and legionnaire scout seems almost certainly worthwhile because +10 str/con is nice and the immunities are neat). I'm *really* tempted to get the strength required to use cailan's armor and that'd make duelist more worthwhile, I guess?

edit: pinpoint strike is also totally badass vs bosses and such.

Modifié par Ehrgeix, 20 mars 2010 - 05:00 .

[Ehrgeix]

Halfway through the wending woods now and I just tried three points in archery - melee archery, aim and accuracy and I crit with every attack for 200+ damage and have zero aim time with repeater gloves (without repeater gloves you would not use aim). Charsheet shows 156 damage / 125% crit / 20 armor penetration / 283 attack. Archery might be super broken.

edit: Archery is totally ridiculously insanely broken. I think the balance team must have like... put an extra zero on the numbers in accuracy somewhere. I just three shot an ogre and I one shot a lot of normal mobs. You don't have runes for spell resistance though, so I guess that dual wielding does still have a place vs casters. I'm going to keep aim and accuracy, though.

Modifié par Ehrgeix, 20 mars 2010 - 05:54 .

[dwanedibbley]

Accuracy is broken in point how well it scales with dex. i have over 100%crit, criting for 300-400 without other buffs/debuffs then accuracy, arrow of slaying can go for 2000. Soloing as rogue is imbaeasy. Soloing mother is np, just autoatack her -> popup strenght of stone (knoskback, physical, spell imunity) -> profit, if shes not dead use Ghost ability. Soloing Awakening on nightmare is not even challanging (rogues/mages can faceroll it, didnt tried warrior yet).

Aim skill is useless, it just slows autoattack.

Before mother
img30.imageshack.us/img30/4451/75457832.jpg

Modifié par dwanedibbley, 20 mars 2010 - 06:06 .

[Ehrgeix]

Aim doesn't slow autoattack if you have repeater gloves -- they give -3.0 aim time which cancels out the 0.3 base with a longbow and the 1.5 aim adds (most rapid aim items are just -0.3 aim time). This means aim is *great* early cause you can hit 100% crit with mediocre gear, but later i/g if you have 100% crit anyway I guess it's totally pointless because you don't need the extra damage/arp.

In hindsight, I think that archery probably doesn't do that much more damage than dual wield per sec, and DW out damages it while you are actually backstabbing (I mean, DW damage is totally ridiculous too with voice of velvet + roses's thorn DW). The thing with archery is that it requires way less skill points and you also don't have to move to deal the damage, so you can clear small groups faster and such, but you also don't get runes on weapons so you can't have max spell resist while using archery (unless you use that legionnaire scout ability, which is only 15s every 60s). It's still ridiculously good, though. (Probably too good)

Modifié par Ehrgeix, 20 mars 2010 - 06:39 .

[dwanedibbley]

Its called overpowered, not "too good". And slippery ferret's gloves (+4dex, +8cun, +1armor, +10% ranged/melee crit chance)>>>repeater gloves.

[Ehrgeix]

Right now I only have 75% chance to crit with just accuracy -- with aim that goes up to 100%, and I get +10 attack/2 damage/3 arp. So basically repeater gloves = you can use aim when you otherwise couldn't = you gain 25% crit/10 attack/2 damage/3 arp = they're really good. Later in the game when you hit 100% crit anyway they're not worth using, for sure, but they are totally superb earlier on.

With that said, I'd prefer this thread stayed on topic as solo-related stuff -- and an archer definitely does seem amazing for soloing the game so far. Where do you get the slippery ferret's gloves? Right now I've just done the wending woods (no problems) and started the silverite mine -- it seemed kinda scary at first (when you are naked) but basically you get a good bow from the architect's experiment and then nothing hits you and you murder everything super fast anyway, so.

edit: ok, finished the silverite mine and got the slippery ferret's gloves from the end of there. The final fight was actually kind of tough - I got overwhelmed by the two dragons in a row and ended up at 20%~ health, but was able to heal up after that, so I've still had no need to reload. Happy to have 8 cunning from the slippery ferret's gloves - with that and the dead thaig shanker I think that 22 base cunning will be sufficient to open all the chests i/g (maybe less? I still hadn't come across any I couldn't open with 64 total cunning, and now at 72 with +5 optional).

The merchants in amarathine don't appear to be selling anything new and I still have no runes on my armor - I really wanted to get a maxed set of barrier runes, but. I still haven't upgraded much gear - using misery, voice of velvet and the slippery ferret's gloves when dual wielding -- all my other gear is from origins. Surprised I haven't found an upgrade for key to the city or cadash stompers yet.

Modifié par Ehrgeix, 20 mars 2010 - 07:37 .

[dwanedibbley]

I has key to city till end, didnt found better. Try upgrade boots to Wolf treads. At and i still had 4 items from origins.

[SunnyD]

Ehrgeix wrote...

Halfway through the wending woods now and I just tried three points in archery - melee archery, aim and accuracy and I crit with every attack for 200+ damage and have zero aim time with repeater gloves (without repeater gloves you would not use aim). Charsheet shows 156 damage / 125% crit / 20 armor penetration / 283 attack. Archery might be super broken.

edit: Archery is totally ridiculously insanely broken. I think the balance team must have like... put an extra zero on the numbers in accuracy somewhere. I just three shot an ogre and I one shot a lot of normal mobs. You don't have runes for spell resistance though, so I guess that dual wielding does still have a place vs casters. I'm going to keep aim and accuracy, though.

This.

I mean really, with aim on top of that and weak points, shoot once then hit crit shot and it's game over. If you really wanna be a buster just scatter shot, rain of arrows, then whoever is left pick them off one by one. Add in the fact you train Duelist for the extra attack and Bard for Song of Courage and your attack is insanely through the roof. It's dumb.

[Ehrgeix]

Finished up the area under the keep with no problems, set up armor with grandmaster +con runes, have 600hp now.

Started blackmarsh - everything was easy until I met two lieutenant blighted shadow wolves who overwhelmed me back to back and actually killed me from full (600!) hp (the overwhelms are basically unavoidable, one destealths and overwhelms you and then the next overwhelms you as soon as you recover, you get to do nothing in between). At this point I decided to respec to use cailan's armor -- it's really pointless to have such high defense (200+) when you can set up to still have almost everything miss you (170 defense) and also get ridiculous armor/health regen.

I kept my leather gear to switch in for when I use archery, but it's neat being totally invincible while dualwielding and also being able to use archery for fights where it's important. I think the blight wolves might be one of the hardest fights i/g solo though (not hard tactically, but hardest to gear up to survive) - I only had 120/600hp after the two overwhelms even using cailan's armor. After typing this I realize I could have just used the legion of the dead ability to take damage from stamina rather than hp (since I have 300 free sta), but I think the cailan's armor point is still pretty relevant - you lose a little damage and 10%~ crit but gain like 12 armor and the health regen, chance to dodge, etc. Basically you're invincible with it.

Anyway, I just finished up blackmarsh - the normal blackmarsh/fade was easy bar the death at previously mentioned wolves, and more statpoints makes it seem like things will get even easier from here. The baroness seemed kind of tough initially (portals, shades, arg) but I actually killed it first try. I used archery to hit the portals/shades as they came up and do some damage to him, then switched to DW and just melee'd it to death with paralyze procs, stealth and decoy abuse. It seemed like an interesting fight so I tried it a few more times and figured out that DW is basically not reliable, you just want to use as many paralyze runes as possible and hope for a lucky proc string combined with decoys, pandemonium, quiet death and stealth while it's under 50% health (realistically, burn all your stuff when it's at 30% and it should go down, rely on luck to go from 50% to 30% since you're at no risk of actually dying anyway, it's just getting the kill that's the problem).

The more consistent way to win is to use archery - get to phase 2 of the fight (easy), then run back to the gate and spam attack it/keep firing, it'll run towards you when it gets low, start draining, then walk all the way back to his original spawn spot after the drain (while you keep firing), and basically you out damage the potential drains and eventually it dies, 100% reliable. You can also use stealth when it runs towards you and it seems to bug out its ai script and totally random **** happens, sometimes it'll just die, sometimes it'll start spamming crushing prison - firebolt - frostbolt, etc.

Anyway, so far nothing is impossible as a dual wielder and it feels as strong as archery in most fights and stronger in those with mages spamming spells (though there've been almost none of these) - the baroness fight was definitely way more consistent (shorter and less frustrating - easier) as an archer though.

edit: Also worth noting, nothing the baroness uses other than crushing prison (very rare) is actually a 'spell' so dweomer runes don't work. Paralyze runes are definitely the way to go.

edit #2: Hadn't done spectral dragon! As an archer it was super easy, two shot each globe and do massive damage to the dragon at range. As a DW rogue it was slightly harder but way possible -- kill a few globes and grenade the rest as they get close, 3~ get through but all are wounded, dragon doesn't heal much then dies. You have to use a greater grounding elixir/spam health potions, momentum gets turned off a lot because stamina hits zero, it's long but very doable.

Modifié par Ehrgeix, 21 mars 2010 - 01:22 .

[dwanedibbley]

Ehrgeix wrote...

Anyway, so far nothing is impossible as a dual wielder and it feels as strong as archery in most fights and stronger in those with mages spamming spells (though there've been almost none of these) - the baroness fight was definitely way more consistent (shorter and less frustrating - easier) as an archer though.

Imho mage fights r easier as archery, u can open by arrow of slaying from stealth or scattershot if there r 3 mages in group. But basically autoshots interupts casting (yes even on Mother each shot inerupted her).

[Novadove]

best solo rogue imo is this:



assassin, bard, legion scout.

[dwanedibbley]

As archery dex based rogue is bard useless. I have more then enough of hit, crit over 100% so only thing is dmg increase from song of courage, with 22 base cuning for lockpick(4) boosted by items to 50 it gives (2+0.05*[50-10])=4 dmg. I rather picked duelist for 2dex and 1dmg/hit bonus without upkeep (and cheap sustainable defense for early levels whenever its needed).

[Ehrgeix]

Haven't played any more yet but some more misc. thoughts:

Assassin and bard are not really valuable specs because you do not have any problems dealing damage as either a DW rogue or an archery rogue - shadow gives you an AE disable, decoy (which is amazing), 5% crit, and some (?) extra crit dmg if you use shadowform. Legionnaire scout is amazing for the 100% resist ability because it resists *abilities* rather than just spells, and the +10 str/con passive is neat too -- essentially I think you should always use these two specs. Of the last four, duelist is useful for me because as DW i have 20 points in str to use cailan's armor (which is still ridiculously powerful because of the health regen setbonus), and pinpoint strike is really good when you are solo also. Ranger is probably the totally optimal spec because actually using a pet in any hard fight is a larger bonus than stuff you get from duelist/assassin/bard, but it's kind of cumbersome and unnecessary. Basically though, you have no problems with damage, so you tool your specs up for utility (and this often results in you actually dealing more damage, because you are immune to abilities or people are attacking your decoy or pet so you can backstab them, et cetera).

I was thinking that DW and archery were kind of comparable in powerlevel because DW has some advantages archery doesn't (41 armor vs 28~ armor, cailan's armor for health regen, lower defense and much lower attack but still enough to be missed 95%+ of the time and hit 95%+ of the time, + 100% spellresist on a DW rogue (if dwarf, 94%~ otherwise), similar damage per sec), but so far none of the fights in game have actually played to DW's advantages -- there've been no fights with scary spellcasters that you really wanted 100% spell resistance for, and only two fights where chain overwhelms/disables were particularly dangerous. The rest of the more difficult fights in game have all favored archery because dealing damage at range and not having your damage interrupted by knockbacks etc is just so good, and there's almost no situations where having health regen/armor/spell resist is important.

So far I think that while soloing there are only two things you really need to be able to do -

a) Survive back to back ten hit overwhelms from the two blighted shadow wolves (hits for 15-30 when at 41 armor).

Actually kill baroness. Surviving is not hard at all, but it will just grab/drain you to full health at random times when it's under 50% health unless you have a way to deal with that.

On that note, dwanedibbley -- how did you beat baroness with a mage? CoC to freeze it whenever it got close and virulent walking bomb/stinging swarm and stuff to deal damage? (Basically just kiting it while it wants to drain you)

Modifié par Ehrgeix, 21 mars 2010 - 02:07 .

[dwanedibbley]

tbh i never noticed this drain ability, as mage i used mostly kite over traps (there r some nasty new traps in awakening) and cc (keepers top spell knocked her away). About dw vs archery in matter of armor, who needs armor if u r rarely in melee range and then just dodge/miss those few melee hits before mobs dies or simple stealth away.

[Ehrgeix]

final updates:

Finished Kal'Hirol - nothing was hard, the lost/inferno golem didn't do any damage to me (decoy + backstab the lost to death, inferno golem can't hit me), chain overwhelms from the children did basically nothing vs cailan's armor (was DW for the entire area, archery would have had no problems either though -- maybe had to use a health poultice after chain overwhelms, but I doubt it).

Defended Amaranthine - nothing was hard though the armored ogre took a while to kill.

Dragonbone wastes -- the first darkspawn I see are level 10? Murdered everything as DW, took out high dragon - was easier with archery but not hard as DW either.

Drake's fall - architect dead, didn't have to use a potion. Actually, I think the only fight that requires a potion/elixir use is the spirit dragon? (I might be wrong on this one, but I can't remember any others off hand). Found one chest (last in the game?) that I couldn't open with 26 cunning + 4/4 lockpicking. Equipped dead thaig shanker for 31 cunning and it opened, so I assume the lockpicking cap is still 70 a la origins.

The Nest - the mother died. I was DW and didn't use any archery stuff and right clicked her repeatedly (+ used legionnaire scout immunity/decoy/pinpoint strike when they were up). I did actually use a health poultice after getting grabbed (left at 200~ hp when she was at 20%~), but it turns out she'd have died before I did anyway). It'd have been totally trivial with archery but was easy as DW anyway.

edit #2: I experimented a little more with the mother fight. If you ignore the tentacles and just attack the mother no grubs ever spawn and she just dies. This is how I did it the first time. If you kill the tentacles waves of grubs spawn and you have to deal with them chain overwhelming you and it's annoying. You're still at zero risk of ever actually dying, though. But yeah, it's definitely way easier to just kill the mother. With archery it's really totally trivial -- it goes like, start fight, right click, use legionnaire scout immunities and attack her a lot, use decoy and attack her more, spend a little time getting knocked around by tentacles and then get to attack her more and she dies. No grubs spawn as long as all four tentacles are alive.

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Basically awakening has a great story and was fun to play through, but combat on nightmare was too easy, even solo. I reloaded once (two lieutenant blighted shadow wolf overwhelms) and wouldn't have had to do that if I'd used cailan's armor as DW from the start of the game. For people who have solo'd origins I would say like, think twice before soloing awakening -- it's very easy if you can solo origins, so you might have more fun just playing through with a party and enjoying the dialogue. Still, I had fun doing it and I hope this was an enjoyable read for some people.

-

edit:

Gearwise,  I finished using:
dual wielding: cailan's armor, voice of velvet, the roses's thorn
archery: helm of honnleath, felon's coat, wolf treads, repeater gloves, heartwood bow
both: spellward, andruil's blessing, key to the city, lifegiver

I hear there's some new gear that shows up if you defend the roads rather than the farms, so maybe some of that is better than pieces above, but it seemed like the best origins gear held up really well into awakening - heartwood bow is a really minor upgrade to far song at best, if it *is* even an upgrade (not that I had far song), voice of velvet is a huge required upgrade but you can get it immediately for 175g~ when you start awakening, and wolf treads are a minor upgrade to cadash stompers (and debatably not an upgrade at all since they have less armor and armor is very useful vs things that can kill you). Cailan's armor is incredible and maybe the best thing one can use for a solo run in the entire game -- combined with lifegiver/the roses's thorn you get +10 health regen/tick, 40 armor and it just makes you completely invincible.

Modifié par Ehrgeix, 21 mars 2010 - 11:10 .

[dwanedibbley]

I send guards to defend everything, l8r in game some1 told me that 1 merchant have some resupply, but it was just junk. Soloing awakening vs origins is just silly, in awakening u dont even need traps and mobpulling. Accidently i found place where tentacles cant reach me and i was still able to shoot on Mother (i was knocked there by tentacle)

so for ppl who cant pwn her (it with party since i rewrited solo savegames, but they r way back in enterance to room), on this sc u can also see common dmg without any special buff/debuff and how it easily interupt spells.
http://img716.images...10032216210.jpg

Modifié par dwanedibbley, 22 mars 2010 - 03:36 .