Dragon Age Party configurations and tricks

[Grifthin]

Must be some sort of items boosting it. If you get to max level and put only skill points into magic then you can get +75 to your magic attribute. IF you could get 25 as your starting magic value (I don't know if that's possible even) then you would have a hundred magic. I suppose the other 20 could be made up of skill tomes and equipment. I sort of doubt it though. Sounds like the usual hearsay on forums to me.

I've found a more balanced apporach is best. I've got a level 19 Mage now. I find that spreading points between Magic, and Willpower is best. No use having UBER powerful spells if you run dry after 2-3 of them and there's still a million enemies left. I've got about 40 Willpower now and 50 Spellpower. With my equipment I have about 400ish mana. Good for sustaining multiple abilities (weapon spells, rock armor, Combat magic and still having mana left to cast with.)

 

[DreadMessiah]

Yes when mana potions are so expensive and rare. Seriously though I had probably 50-70 mana points less than that. Not a huge difference. Just pump magic and drink down mana potions when necessary. Also rejuvinate and full rejuvinate are good for filling mana up in some fights. Also higher magic stat means a potion gives more points when refilling health/mana.

 

[Grifthin]

That depends - I don't like making OMG MILLIONS of health potions because they are damn expensive. You need lyrium dust for mana potions. Lyrium + Bottles. Now make 99 potions.

99 Lesser potions I might add takes a bit of money. Now what about regular potions ? What about Major or potent ones ? One lesser lyrium potion costs 6 silver and 50 bronze. So if you want 100 of them (as you all seem to indicate) that's 6 Gold. 6 friggin gold for something what will barely refill a quarter of your mana bar.

Normal lyrium potion costs 80 Silver, Greater costs 2 Gold 20 silver, Potent costs 1 gold, 19 silver 57 copper. Multiply by a hundred ? That's insane.

Start multiplying that and you will quickly run out of money if buying them. Crafting them ironically works out MORE expensive due to the cost of the components. Thus crafting is only good for ingredients you pick up and work horse items like mabari crunch, injury kits etc.

I never have enough gold. I pick up and sell everything and I still need to pick wisely what I want. I've spent about 400gold in this game so far with my current character trying to outfit everyone with the best magic armor, weapon, rings, amulets, helmets, shields etc. 6 Gold is a rather large number to blow on consumables. I prefer just jacking willpower for a massive manapool and relying on my characters being self sufficient than guzzeling a very expensive consumable to keep me going.

 

[made]

You're being ripped off, son.

Lyrium: 2,40 in mage tower
Flasks: 1,50 in camp (where everything is more expensive than in normal shops btw)
Spamming spells forever without putting a single point into willpower: priceless

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

in dragon age gold is scarce, there are so many things i want to have but can't afford it...

 

[Freelance Henchman]

I can sort of see the lore-correct reasoning why you can buy unlimited crack lyrium at the Circle (they are almost the sole legal distributor on the surface and obviously need tons of it to train mages), but it still bugs me that making potions becomes so cheap due to that.

 

[made]

in dragon age gold is scarce, there are so many things i want to have but can't afford it...

Yea, until you realize there's no point buying any of the 100g+ gear that they put in the game purely as a gold sink because you can make do just fine without. But at least it's preferable to other games where you can buy whatever you want and still have piles of gold lying around.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

in dragon age gold is scarce, there are so many things i want to have but can't afford it...

Yea, until you realize there's no point buying any of the 100g+ gear that they put in the game purely as a gold sink because you can make do just fine without. But at least it's preferable to other games where you can buy whatever you want and still have piles of gold lying around.

yes you can do without, you have no choice after all, but a staff of the magisterlords, spell shield amulet, reaper robe... great stuff to have

 

[BrunoKoveras]

on a mage putting points on willpower is not good(i think).

you lose potencie on mana amd health pots, one (lesser) health pot was full heal and i have 270 hitpoints. liryum healed 160 with the lesser.

rejuvs and etc are useless and time consming, better just killing badies with area spells.

I like killing fast and without a mess.

100 lyrium cost about 4 gold never. didnt need much more, health a bit more just becouse i was using my worrior to tank.

my mage base attack was doing ~50.

Storm of the century max power two killed broodmother easely just used 2 mana pots.

 

[Grifthin]

Willpower can be good depending on the type of mage. For example Wynne.
Just pump spellpower to the required level for her T4 spells.
No Just max out Willpower after that. She will have a massive pool of mana to use for Group heals, Buffs and the like. It's especially nice for a warrior heavy party that uses weapon/shield skills for crowd control.

 

[RK47]

Actually have to agree with you on healer part. Magic does mean bigger heals and makes Wynne's Earthquake more effective in knocking down people.

Morrigan is also an excellent candidate for Arcane Warrior too. I'd like to give that build a try on my evil playthrough soon. Shapeshifter doesn't seem that awesome, but maybe I'm missing something.

 

[NOVD]

Wynne with her Vessel of the Spirit, autoraise, and beginning talents makes the best Arcane Warrior. You can try to make one yourself, but you'll never be as good of an arcane warrior as Wynne.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

fireball at level 3

kind of owns

my restart's gone slowly, i want to have this game finished before i go back to school but i'm only at tower of ishal.

hopefully my powergamed party will be able to handle everything at hard, i hated switching to normal or even easy with my shitty rogue

 

[Grifthin]

Wynne would make a good arcane warrior I suppose, however I found that she's more useful as a back line Buff bot and healer. Wynne did less than 4% of the damage in my party. I just used her for haste, the various heroism spells, Telekinetic weapons, and of course things like dispelling magic etc.

She made our weapons ignore armor, healed us, made us faster, Defence vs archers and more attack rating. You will be amazed at what a coupla warriors can do when buffed like that. In that respect I like DA more than the IE games - no need to recast buffs the whole time. I hated having to buff up after every rest in the IE games, was so time consuming at later levels.

As far as broken classes go - mage with Blood magic/Arcane warrior using primarily sustained abilties is pretty broken - mine was hitting for about hundred odd damage without crits. The spellweaver blade you can get from the cultist overseer was so broken. I ended up using the sword with a shield that gives mana regen and the superior Dragonplate armor. Man did I dish out the pain - the only problem with arcane warrior is you have to sheath you sword to cast some spells AND you lack the knockdown immunity that a 2 handed warrior or sword and board gets. It hurst alot in some places.

 

[1eyedking]

yes you can do without, you have no choice after all, but a staff of the magisterlords, spell shield amulet, reaper robe... great stuff to have

Yes, they're very unique items indeed.

Not of the +2 willpower, +2 magic, +2% spell resistance, +2% backstab damage, +20 stamina, reduced hostility kind, am i rite?

 

[Volourn]

"sword and board"

Why the fuck do people write this shit? Shield and BOARD? WTF? When did this garbage start? Must be new age slang! FUCKKKKKKKKKKK FU-FU-FU

 

[Grifthin]

I don't know about you Volourn - but locally (speaking of my area) - thats been the term for Sword and Shield using fighters/Paladins for years. Recently (last 2 years or so) it's started to be used in describing any warrior using sword and shield combo.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

yes you can do without, you have no choice after all, but a staff of the magisterlords, spell shield amulet, reaper robe... great stuff to have

Yes, they're very unique items indeed.

Not of the +2 willpower, +2 magic, +2% spell resistance, +2% backstab damage, +20 stamina, reduced hostility kind, am i rite?

it is of this variety but with bigger numbers, so I want it. Period.

 

[Norfleet]

Not of the +2 willpower, +2 magic, +2% spell resistance, +2% backstab damage, +20 stamina, reduced hostility kind, am i rite?

+2 will/magic is about the only ability that DOES anything. 2% spell resistance doesn't do jacksquat, mages don't backstab, mages don't use stamina, and reduced hostility never works, since any enemies that survived your attack are plenty pissed off, and those that didn't, well, who cares what they think? Used by anyone else, well, +2% backstab. Exactly HOW much are you backstabbing for again? 30, 40 points, maybe? So, you'll get, what, less than a single point of damage extra? Whoopy do. Basically, this is an overpriced useless item that has an inflated cost because tries to be something for everyone, but ends up being nothing at all to anyone.

 

[Grifthin]

Actually that's incorrect Norfleet. If one equips a mage with +stamina items they get mana equal mana from it. So +25 stamina = +25 mana.
Spell resistance adds to your spell resistance percentage when a hostile spell hits the party,
+2 to willpower gives you more mana and a higher chance to resists magic stun effects and + 2 Magic gives more damage to your spells as well as making them more difficult to resist. Granted the backstab is a bit useless for mages.

Best Mage Items:

Libertarian's Cowl
Reapers Vestments
Dragon Breath Staff

Best tanking armor set:
Juggernaut armor
Ring of ages (combined with armor gives 40% resist to everything)
Ring of +10 Constitution
also the "effort" set
Legion of the dead armor
Wades superior Dragon plate



Best bow:

Falendan's reach
There's another bow - the name escapes me (bow of sun and moon ?)

Swords:
The keening
Starmetal blade
Spellweaver blade


That's just some of the cool items worth getting.

 

[Malakal]

Heh this shit aint worth getting. I played dps mage and he had over 60% of party kills. The trick is massive magic increases mana gained from potions so lesser lyrium potion (I used about 300-400+ of those) gave me 2/3 of mana bar. My mage soloed Flemeth.

For harder fights just spamm mass cone of cold/force fields/crushing prisons/sleep/walking nightmare.

For easier fights (ie almost all but boss fights) I turned off party AI and went solo with my protagonist.

DA is too easy and then it gets too hard (ser Cauthrien I'm looking at you slut, I had to pound you full of cone of colds bitch huh, you like it?).

 

[Grifthin]

yeah - but the stuff looks cool and if your not playing a cheese mongering mage actually helps alot.

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

yeah - but the stuff looks cool and if your not playing a cheese mongering mage actually helps alot.

that's what I thought too, I'm saving moneyz for the reaper robe

 

[Malakal]

yeah - but the stuff looks cool and if your not playing a cheese mongering mage actually helps alot.

Cheese huh? That greatly limits spells that can be used doesn't it? Because even the most basic ones can be considered cheesy. Actually its hard to make any kind of mage other than a buff/heal bot.

 

[Grifthin]

Ring of Ages + Juggernaut armor + +10 Constitution Ring +Starmetal sword is fucking awesome. If your a tank. Just makes your sooo much tougher to kill.

The reapers vestments are a good defensive investment if your mage doesn't wear armor. I had wynne use them + Maxed Wisdom her ending mana pool with all her equipment was about 600. She could buff/heal the shit out of us in a fight.