Dragon Age How to Enjoy Dragon Age: Origins

[Fluent]

Meat of the game is the strong role playing which stems from the diverse and numerous dialogue options. There's no dumbed down diagloue wheel with a paragon, rengade and funny option. There is no karma meter with light side or dark side points.


You can be a mage who is generally an affable person who hates templars with a passion

You can be violent person who has a soft spot for the oppressed and downtrodden elves

You can be a selfless, but also pragmatic person who makes hard decisions for the greater good

Bottom line is there is a lot depth in how you can play your character and there are not many games like this.

great post, Darkman ! thanks for sharing.

i found a great way to enjoy Origins not too long ago, and that is deeply immerse myself in the world. Since there is a deep codex entry for almost everything, I was consistently reading those, talking to everyone and generally dipping deeply into the huge pool of lore that the game offers. It's truly an RPG by all metrics to me, and it feels good to really immerse in the world as though I was playing an Elder Scrolls game, for example. Then it becomes more enjoyable (for me) because u actually understand the world and care about the inhabitants, creatures and overall universe that Bioware has handcrafted for this series. So if u like to roleplay and dig deeply into lore, definitely check it out. If not, u might want to pass, I don't know. But I hope that helps someone! Take care. <3

 

[gurugeorge]

The combat is a boring slog if you aren't playing a nuker mage, it is easily the weakest aspect of the game.


Meat of the game is the strong role playing which stems from the diverse and numerous dialogue options. There's no dumbed down diagloue wheel with a paragon, rengade and funny option. There is no karma meter with light side or dark side points.


You can be a mage who is generally an affable person who hates templars with a passion

You can be violent person who has a soft spot for the oppressed and downtrodden elves

You can be a selfless, but also pragmatic person who makes hard decisions for the greater good

Bottom line is there is a lot depth in how you can play your character and there are not many games like this.

The combat in DA:O is so boring I just have it all on automatic and entertain myself with the random antics of different AI settings. The one thing that stands out is the combo thingies, which I didn't even realize were in the game till much later, so I only had a fleeting experience of them, but I gather they're pretty good fun.

Yeah, you can criticize DA:O on several points, but it's still one of the best storyfag CRPGs ever done, very immersive the first time through, as it's unfolding. It's the only CRPG that's brought a literal tear to my eye with a particular quest resolution, like one might have for a particularly moving moment in a movie.

I think the game's music is also a big part of its charm, more than usually with games - it's a great score, particularly the campfire ambient music, which sets an amazingly elegiac tone to the epic you're partaking in. The game is also surprisingly gritty and brutal in places, re. what happens to the civvies, which helps set a realistic tone as well.

The Fade is also rather well done if you've ever been interested in the Occult, because it's pretty much what occultists are talking about when they're talking about the "Astral Plane." The system is also authentic to the way magic is conceived in most actual human traditions. The power of a mage doesn't come from himself - it's not like he's a mediaeval version of a superhero, like the sorcerer kinda is - but rather from the entities he converses with, and engages the services of, in the Astral Plane, ranging from minor servants to full-on, dangerous and tricksy demons and spirits of various kinds. (Vancian magic also gets this right to varying degrees.) The dream-like nature of the Fade sequences, the bizarre conversations, the riddles, etc., are I think meant to mimic - well, the feeling of a dream, but also the feeling of "Astral travel" or OOBEs. I know some found the Fade sequences tedious, but for the most part I found them interesting because they had clearly been quite well thought-out in terms of authenticity to how "real" magic is conceived in various cultures.

I also find the dynamic between Templars and Mages quite "realistic" as these things go. If magic were real, etc., etc.

The lore is generally pretty good. I thought the live action web show with Felicia Day was actually surprisingly good in presenting another story in the virtual world of Ferelden. Her character played a reasonably highly-positioned elfish slave-assassin of the Qunari, struggling between her loyalty to the Qun and gratitude to the Qunari, and her own longing for freedom. Nothing earth-shattering, but I was engaged enough to watch all 7 episodes.

 

[karoliner]

Shit game, shit thread.

 

[Alpan]

If you want a better campaign, try sea's custom campaign mod Thirst.

This looks interesting. Besides the fix packs and the mods already mentioned I never looked at the custom campaigns for DA:O, assuming the community fizzled out due to cumbersome tooling. Any others you can recommend?

 

[CrunchyHemorrhoids]

I'm playing this game for the first time and it's boring as fuck. It feels like a single player MMO with the most boilerplate dark fantasy setting and absolute garbage combat. Am I supposed to be using mods? Is there a specific class that lets me blast through the hordes of trash mobs as fast as possible?

Ended up having a lot in common with the star wars mmo bioware was also working on. To get through the uninteresting combat fast I just made an accelerated dual-sword wielding warrior and set the other party member's routines to heal/deal damage when appropriate, seemed to work even on the highest difficulty setting.

Most of these games could really benefit from options that reduce the amount of trash loot and trash combat encounters for people who don't enjoy having their time wasted by repetitive content (without having to readjust the game's balance they could just have a couple of sliders: fewer random encounters gives more xp per encounter, less loot gives you more gold per sale).

The annoying repetitive combat system & encounters was the biggest complaint the game got, so much so that AFAIK DAO was the last AAA rpg to feature this realtime w/pause autoattack combat system (the console version of DA2 already featured the awesome button).

 

[DaveO]

Best storyfag game??? Argh! The mindset today...

I can easily think of ten games that beat the attempt at telling a story in DA:O.

 

[Rean]

The combat is a boring slog if you aren't playing a nuker mage, it is easily the weakest aspect of the game.

Your opinion is wrong, and you should feel bad for it.

 

[Darkman]

The combat is a boring slog if you aren't playing a nuker mage, it is easily the weakest aspect of the game.

Your opinion is wrong, and you should feel bad for it.

Warrior combat is slowly drawing your weapon and then waddling into a group of 8 mobs slowing chipping away at their health and then slowly moving moving onto the next one. Very few of the the abilities do anything meaningful and the majority of damage is from auto attacks. Rogue is basically the same but it has a little more depth with backstabs.

Meanwhile mr mage is chucking a fireball into a group of stacked up mobs and watching them bowl over and burn to death from lingering flame damage, while forcing fielding and mana clashing enemy casters and ranged. Combat as anything other than a mage is garbage and boring.

 

[Yosharian]

I played the hardest difficulty with a party consisting entirely of rogues and fighters, the game wasn't more or less boring than when I played as a mage tbh

 

[Falksi]

The combat is a boring slog if you aren't playing a nuker mage, it is easily the weakest aspect of the game.

Your opinion is wrong, and you should feel bad for it.

Warrior combat is slowly drawing your weapon and then waddling into a group of 8 mobs slowing chipping away at their health and then slowly moving moving onto the next one. Very few of the the abilities do anything meaningful and the majority of damage is from auto attacks. Rogue is basically the same but it has a little more depth with backstabs.

Meanwhile mr mage is chucking a fireball into a group of stacked up mobs and watching them bowl over and burn to death from lingering flame damage, while forcing fielding and mana clashing enemy casters and ranged. Combat as anything other than a mage is garbage and boring.

Agree about the Warrior, but I found duel wield rogue fun on Nightmare because of the stealth aspect. Very satisfying positioning my character at the back of an enemy formation to launch an attack against their mages, seeing all of them then bait towards me, and pincering them with my other companions.

Mage definitely tops it, but I'd say DW Rogue is a genuine fun alternative.

It's a real shame they didn't keep and expand on the area affect attacks which the Warrior gets in Awakening.

 

[thesecret1]

Mediocre RPG, all things considered. It was fun enough for a playthrough, but I can't be bothered to ever replay it again. Also, the series is probably the best illustration of Bioware's decline – two sequels and both of them utter dogshit, with the third one in the works no doubt being just as bad.

 

[Absinthe]

If you want a better campaign, try sea's custom campaign mod Thirst.

This looks interesting. Besides the fix packs and the mods already mentioned I never looked at the custom campaigns for DA:O, assuming the community fizzled out due to cumbersome tooling. Any others you can recommend?

I know there are a few others but when it comes to good custom campaigns sea's is the only one I can think of. The custom module community generally went back to NWN iirc. Sea was pretty much doing a solo project anyway. May as well start a new thread on this subject, but iirc the toolset was such a pain in the ass to do anything that Bioware itself simply resorted to extreme level reuse in DLC and DA2.

 

[DaveO]

EARGH!!!
I swear, the lessons that could be learned but for the ubiquitous godsforsaken almost to impossible to work with stuff.

And I'm not even talking about the other big bads of boilerplate writing and the biggest one: Counting those beans. Where numbers mean everything and you mean nothing.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Going to be playing Dragon Age Origins again. Would love to hear your experience on nightmare difficulty. Helpful advice is most welcome.

 

[Ryzer]

Going to be playing Dragon Age Origins again. Would love to hear your experience on nightmare difficulty. Helpful advice is most welcome.

Since it's the hardest difficulty, you tend to elaborate tactics but then as time goes, you begin to just pick the most broken skills/ specialization and whack everything on your way...

 

[razvedchiki]

craft lots of healing pots.

 

[wishbonetail]

Never managed it on hard, always got rekt at that one unavoidable bullshit bandit ambush on a road.
The thing is, if dont prepared to some encounters, you may as well start a new game or lower the difficulty. I dont like such game design.

 

[Absinthe]

Going to be playing Dragon Age Origins again. Would love to hear your experience on nightmare difficulty. Helpful advice is most welcome.

The game sadly largely plays itself. With Advanced Tactics you can literally make the entire party play itself without any intervention on your part. Install Qwinn's Ultimate Fixpack and Dain's Fixes at the least.

If all you want is stupidly strong builds:

• Mages: Always maximize Magic. They don't need other stats, at all, aside from the minimum Cunning to get Coercion. You get extra health and mana from levelups and your health and mana potions scale with spellpower so Magic also addresses health and mana issues. You can just equip items and save up for gear that boosts max health and mana if you want it. Crowd control spells are usually great on Mages. Haste will also buff your party's damage like crazy. Glyph tree is also strong. Spell combos usually do good work also, except the Grease Fire spell combo, which got nerfed massively in 1.04. I can upload an unnerf if you want, since there is a Tower of Ishal fight that basically becomes a joke with the nerf. Mages are generally overpowered in DAO, really. Shapeshifter spec is a bit of letdown though, but with sufficiently extreme spellpower it can still beat enemies silly. Arcane Warrior is great for letting your Mage run around in a suit of armor while still using a staff and casting enemies into the ground, giving you access to all the best gear and fixing any fragility concerns you may have had with its ridiculous defensive bonuses.
• Warriors (Tank): Go sword and shield style, equip a dagger (which is basically a shortsword) which is the only melee weapon with dex-to-damage (every point of str or dex = 0.2 damage), and maximize Dexterity, with only the bare minimum of strength for whatever light armors you feel like equipping. Max dex builds make your Warrior untouchable because their defense score goes through the roof so they can only get hit by abilities that don't use defense (ie. Overwhelm, certain AoEs, traps, and spells) or the extremely rare enemy who uses Perfect Striking. Also give it Berserker spec and 1 rank of Poison-Making to boost its attack damage. For second spec, pick whatever. 1 rank of Poison-Making not only allows you to use all poisons, it also allows you to use all grenades for AoE damage.
• Warriors (Damage-dealer): If all you want is raw damage, go pure Strength and equip a 2hander, add Berserker, and throw 1 rank of Poison-Making on top. Then add Champion specialization (2nd spec only, level requirements are too high for it to be your 1st spec) for the bonuses to attack and defense it provides. If you want to give it a smattering of Crowd Control capability, switch Berserker for Reaver. That way your Warrior has 4 crowd control options in the form of Pommel Strike (knockdown), Two-Handed Sweep (AoE knockdown), Warcry (AoE Knockdown), and Frightening Appearance (10+ seconds of paralysis for targeted enemy), all of which scale their resistance check with your strength score. Early on Sunder Arms and Mighty Blow are great sources of straight damage. An alternate path to damage is to maximize dex with daggers and dual-wield as a Warrior. In this case you want Dual Striking, Momentum, and Dual-Weapon Training (Dual-Weapon Mastery is useless because all those melee weapons are 100% strength weapons - Dex to damage was introduced in 1.02 and it had a lot of bad consequences, like the untouchable dex builds). Here you basically make up for weaker damage per hit by making lots of attacks very quickly and stacking flat damage bonuses to multiply it up, so you want 1 rank of Poison-Making and Berserker spec and get buffs like Flaming Weapons, Frost Weapons, Telekinetic Weapons from Mages (as many as possible), Song of Courage from Bards, along with Haste (only if you have Dain's Fixes installed, or you will run into a bug from Momentum+Haste) along with whatever damage runes you can put on weapons. You can also use this to tank instead of the Dagger + Shield build.
• Rogues (Damage-dealer): Really the main way to go is either a bow or dual-wielding. However, unlike the Warrior, you should never use Dual Striking, since Rogues will auto-crit every time they flank enemies and hit them from behind. Maximizing Cunning and only getting the bare minimum in other stats to level talents and equip items works great here, because every 7 points of Cunning gives 1 armor penetration in addition to giving the same damage strength does courtesy of Lethality, and you can get extra damage out of Cunning with Song of Courage as a Bard and Exploit Weakness from Assassin (but only for backstabs, no ranged). You get a lot of extra damage off of Cunning that doesn't care about your weapon's scaling like that, so daggers with their higher attack speed works, but so do weapons that just scale with strength provided you have a higher cunning than dex. Ranged builds are pretty much for Bards with Ranger or Duelist spec, since Pinpoint Strikes works with a bow to make everything autocrit.

In general Trap-Making is a fun skill that the game isn't well designed to handle, so you can trivialize a lot of combat with that too. Small Claw Traps have enormous physical resist checks and failing it leaves an enemy disabled for 15 seconds. Large Claw Traps are usually inferior to small ones because they consume more materials and only do more damage, while the resist check and disable duration remains the same. It says it immobilizes enemies, but in reality immobilized enemies are basically just stunned, really. On that note, Rogues can usually do a decent job of stealthing up to an enemy mage or something and dropping a Small Claw Trap at its feet to disable it. You can also use Rogues to pull enemies with a bow while your party hides behind a corner and the Rogue runs back to them. This can let you use traps a lot more effectively as well as ensure enemies don't immediately proceed to fireball everyone, etc. but some fights will just cutscene reposition you and the like.

For handling party members, either get Advanced Tactics and get used to setting tactics (ie. party member AI) or basically disable all tactics and use hold position commands while manually controlling the party. Obviously the latter is more powerful, but you can handle the game with a good enough Tactics setup too, although that might start to feel like the game playing itself. Honestly, letting the player program party member AI was one of the best additions Bioware made to DAO.

If you have any more specific questions probably you can get more helpful advice.

 

[Semiurge]

It's the only CRPG that's brought a literal tear to my eye with a particular quest resolution, like one might have for a particularly moving moment in a movie.

Softie!

 

[Late Bloomer]

The game sadly largely plays itself. With Advanced Tactics you can literally make the entire party play itself without any intervention on your part. Install Qwinn's Ultimate Fixpack and Dain's Fixes at the least.

If all you want is stupidly strong builds:

• Mages: Always maximize Magic. They don't need other stats, at all, aside from the minimum Cunning to get Coercion. You get extra health and mana from levelups and your health and mana potions scale with spellpower so Magic also addresses health and mana issues. You can just equip items and save up for gear that boosts max health and mana if you want it. Crowd control spells are usually great on Mages. Haste will also buff your party's damage like crazy. Glyph tree is also strong. Spell combos usually do good work also, except the Grease Fire spell combo, which got nerfed massively in 1.04. I can upload an unnerf if you want, since there is a Tower of Ishal fight that basically becomes a joke with the nerf. Mages are generally overpowered in DAO, really. Shapeshifter spec is a bit of letdown though, but with sufficiently extreme spellpower it can still beat enemies silly. Arcane Warrior is great for letting your Mage run around in a suit of armor while still using a staff and casting enemies into the ground.
  
• Warriors (Tank): Go sword and shield style, equip a dagger (which is basically a shortsword) which is the only melee weapon with dex-to-damage (every point of str or dex = 0.2 damage), and maximize Dexterity, with only the bare minimum of strength for whatever light armors you feel like equipping. Max dex builds make your Warrior untouchable because their defense score goes through the roof so they can only get hit by abilities that don't use defense (ie. Overwhelm, certain AoEs, traps, and spells) or the extremely rare enemy who uses Perfect Striking. Also give it Berserker spec and 1 rank of Poison-Making to boost its attack damage. For second spec, pick whatever. 1 rank of Poison-Making not only allows you to use all poisons, it also allows you to use all grenades for AoE damage.
  
• Warriors (Damage-dealer): If all you want is raw damage, go pure Strength and equip a 2hander, add Berserker, and throw 1 rank of Poison-Making on top. Then add Champion specialization (2nd spec only, level requirements are too high for it to be your 1st spec) for the bonuses to attack and defense it provides. If you want to give it a smattering of Crowd Control capability, switch Berserker for for Reaver. That way your Warrior has 4 crowd control options in the form of Pommel Strike (knockdown), Two-Handed Sweep (AoE knockdown), Warcry (AoE Knockdown), and Frightening Appearance (10+ seconds of paralysis for enemies), all of which scale their resistance with strength. Early on Sunder Arms and Mighty Blow are great sources of flat damage. An alternate path to damage is to maximize dex with daggers and dual-wield as a Warrior. In this case you want Dual Striking, Momentum, and Dual-Weapon Training (Dual-Weapon Mastery is useless because all those melee weapons are 100% strength weapons - Dex to damage was introduced in 1.02 and it had a lot of bad consequences, like the untouchable dex builds). Here you basically make up for weaker damage per hit by making lots of attacks very quickly and stacking flat damage bonuses to multiply it up, so you want 1 rank of Poison-Making and Berserker spec and get buffs like Flaming Weapons, Frost Weapons, Telekinetic Weapons from Mages (as many as possible), Song of Courage from Bards, along with Haste (only if you have Dain's Fixes installed, or you will run into a bug from Momentum+Haste) along with whatever damage runes you can put on weapons. You can also use this to tank instead of the Dagger + Shield build.
  
• Rogues (Damage-dealer): Really the main way to go is either a bow or dual-wielding. However, unlike the Warrior, you should never use Dual Striking, since Rogues will auto-crit every time they flank enemies and hit them from behind. Maximizing Cunning and only getting the bare minimum to level talents and equip items works great here, because every 7 points of Cunning gives 1 armor penetration in addition to giving the same damage strength does courtesy of Lethality, and you can get extra damage out of Cunning with Song of Courage as a Bard and Exploit Weakness from Assassin (but only for backstabs, no ranged). You get a lot of flat damage like that, so daggers with their higher attack speed works. Ranged builds are pretty much for Bards with Ranger or Duelist spec, since Pinpoint Strikes works with a bow to make everything autocrit.

In general Trap-Making is a fun skill that the game isn't well designed to handle, so you can trivialize a lot of combat with that too. Small Claw Traps have enormous physical resist checks and failing it leaves an enemy disabled for 15 seconds. Large Claw Traps are usually inferior to small ones because they consume more materials and only do more damage, while the resist and disable lasts the same. It says it immobilizes enemies, but in reality immobilized enemies are basically just stunned, really. On that note, Rogues can usually do a decent job of stealthing up to an enemy mage or something and dropping a Small Claw Trap at its feet to disable it. You can also use Rogues to pull enemies with a bow while your party hides behind a corner and the Rogue runs back to them. This can let you use traps a lot more effectively as well as ensure they don't immediately proceed to fireball everyone, etc. but some fights will just cutscene reposition you and the like.

For handling party members, either get Advanced Tactics and get used to setting tactics (ie. party member AI) or basically disable all tactics and use hold position commands while manually controlling the party. Obviously the latter is more powerful, but you can handle the game with a good enough Tactics setup too, although that might start to feel like the game playing itself. Honestly, letting the player program party member AI was one of the best additions Bioware made to DAO.

If you have any more specific questions probably you can get more helpful advice.

At about the halfway point through the game now, maybe a little less. This advice is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks for that. So far the only real difficult time I have had was when I was controlling Jowan, alone, in the fade. Some mild RP choices lead to Jowan goiing into the fade which cost me during that fight. Had to cheese it pretty hard but managed to get through it. Other than that its been smooth sailing. Thanks again for the detailed write up.

 

[Absinthe]

No problem. You should really install those two mods (Dain's Fixes and Qwinn's Ultimate Fixpack) though, and probably More Detailed Tooltips too, which includes adjustments for Dain's Fixes. The first two mods fix the massive amount of game bugs and the third mod makes tooltips actually useful as a means of figuring out how your abilities and items work. The second mod in particular fixes a lot of quest bugs, missing cutscenes, and missing dialogues, so there's just a lot of stuff you will miss out on without it. I tend to consider these 3 mods pretty essential, really. They're not game altering mods, just lots of bugfixing Bioware never got around to.

If you want to spice up combat with more difficult, varied and interesting enemies, try installing Slink's S3 Ravage (but I recommend the Fix Pack version over it - the original link is just there to see what the mod does).

Lastly, if you need another campaign to play on DAO, try installing Thirst, which is made by sea.

 

[Late Bloomer]

No problem. You should really install those two mods (Dain's Fixes and Qwinn's Ultimate Fixpack) though, and probably More Detailed Tooltips too, which includes adjustments for Dain's Fixes. The first two mods fix the massive amount of game bugs and the third mod makes tooltips actually useful as a means of figuring out how your abilities and items work. The second mod in particular fixes a lot of quest bugs, missing cutscenes, and missing dialogues, so there's just a lot of stuff you will miss out on without it. I tend to consider these 3 mods pretty essential, really. They're not game altering mods, just lots of bugfixing Bioware never got around to.

If you want to spice up combat with more difficult, varied and interesting enemies, try installing Slink's S3 Ravage (but I recommend the Fix Pack version over it - the original link is just there to see what the mod does).

Lastly, if you need another campaign to play on DAO, try installing Thirst, which is made by sea.

Thank you. I play Dragon Age once a year or so. I have never modded it. I suppose thats odd considering I mod Bethesda games. I really appreciate the mod links you provided. I will use them on my next playthrough. The Qwinn's Ultimate Fixpack says I can add it in on a current playthrough without messing anything up so I will toss it in. I am really interested in the cut content portion of the mod. Thirst sounds right up my alley. Not enough time per day it seems. Thanks agian.

 

[Semiurge]

No problem. You should really install those two mods (Dain's Fixes and Qwinn's Ultimate Fixpack) though, and probably More Detailed Tooltips too, which includes adjustments for Dain's Fixes. The first two mods fix the massive amount of game bugs and the third mod makes tooltips actually useful as a means of figuring out how your abilities and items work. The second mod in particular fixes a lot of quest bugs, missing cutscenes, and missing dialogues, so there's just a lot of stuff you will miss out on without it. I tend to consider these 3 mods pretty essential, really. They're not game altering mods, just lots of bugfixing Bioware never got around to.

If you want to spice up combat with more difficult, varied and interesting enemies, try installing Slink's S3 Ravage (but I recommend the Fix Pack version over it - the original link is just there to see what the mod does).

Lastly, if you need another campaign to play on DAO, try installing Thirst, which is made by sea.

Do those mods address the stability issues at all? Is there no fix for the game's crashing and flickering textures when you use a deadly combination of high resolutions and maximum quality visual settings?

 

[Absinthe]

Do those mods address the stability issues at all? Is there no fix for the game's crashing and flickering textures when you use a deadly combination of high resolutions and maximum quality visual settings?

Download the 4GB patch, and apply it to daorigins.exe. It raises the memory limit of DAO from 2GB to 4GB.

 

[Semiurge]

Do those mods address the stability issues at all? Is there no fix for the game's crashing and flickering textures when you use a deadly combination of high resolutions and maximum quality visual settings?

Download the 4GB patch, and apply it to daorigins.exe. It raises the memory limit of DAO from 2GB to 4GB.

Is it not hosted anywhere else, at nexus for example?