I don’t think they have released the toolset yet. The link is on that horrible “social” piece of garbage EA should die of ass cancer and rot in hell website, but it links to a 404.
Fair enough, but it’s also not very heroic to get pounded into a puddle of red goo. DA isn’t a very heroic game, in any event–it’s a very “low fantasy” affair. Ask the King about how his love of heroism is working out for him.
Some Bioware guy on the forums said the toolset hasn’t been released yet, but it will be soon. I guess they have to sort out of the DLC crap first.
My prediction is that you have to sign up for a separate “bioware builder” account to download the toolset, and that account must be fully integrated with your bioware social account, bioware points account, EA account, EA/pandemic account, gmail account, a certified public accountant, and Count Chocula from the breakfast cereal.
Also it will cost 2400 bioware points, the largest denomination they sell is 2300 points so you have to purchase extra points you can’t spend on anything else, and the site will decline your credit card between 7 and 13 times before working and double or triple-charging. When you complain about this they will take your situation very seriously and totally ignore your ass.
Bioware missed a great opportunity to wink at Baldur’s Gate 1 and some of these cheese tactics by borrowing from your typical adventure party story when the heroes encounter an insurmountable enemy: have them talk about how it’d be a good idea to distract the ogre while everyone else hits him from far away. Hilarity ensues when they bicker about who should be the bait.
I am having a flashback here. Baldur’s Gate I, i was having a hard time with the game, wondering what was a good strategy. I got to see a hints guide in a magazine (it was a time wihout internet…) and i was floored to see how the “strategy” was basically exploting the bad AI with tons of cheese.
So… i suppose this is, truly, the spritiual successor of BG. :P
Playing a mage, and having another healer makes the game much easier, but until I reached that point, it was a huge challenge. I have about 50 potions of health sitting unused on me, plus a great many ingredients. I am looking forward to replaying the game with a rogue to see how much harder it gets.
I have found having 2 mages with the Force Field has been amazingly useful. That is how I passed that first big guy in the tower. I didn’t have much troubles with him: Alistar got agro then I FF Alistar and by the time Alistar was free (45?sec later) that thing was pretty much dead. FF can break all kinds of “grab/stun” type attacks. I have used it vs. Shadow Werewolves to great success as well (they have a grab/stun attack too)
Play it like an mmo.
When i was still playing on hardcore, my general tactic would be something like this…
-Player mage fireballs enemy group doing massive damage.
-they all run to him and he kites them around while templar tries to pick them up, rogue does her thing and secondary mage casts the freeze, heals and other crap.
-my player mage semi heals while running around until they get off him, then he tries to fire cone some of the enemies while also healing.
-if stamina on my templar gets low, i rejuv him so he can hold things on him.
Two mage healers for sure makes things easier. Fireball is also godly for the damage (both direct and dot) and the knockdown. Accurate fireballing using overhead view has won me many fights. I can’t wait until i get taunt. My player mage is an arcane warrior now though so who cares if they attack him!
Talk about how you’re the most badass person in your party, complain that you didn’t get enough heals, and then teabag the enemy after you kill them? (Alternately, blame everyone else in the party if you lose)
Why yes, I have been playing with 15 year olds in WoW recently. How can you tell?
you forgot going AFK while the party dies
For mages I’ve found that a really good build to start off with is: Flame touch, Heal, fire weapons, fireball, walking bomb, mana thing, virulent walking bomb.
At this point you are pretty well rounded. Fireball is a great opener and is really good for the lower hp riff raff. While virulent walking bomb is great for bosses.
So far this been has been by far the easiest to take through the tower where you light a fire.
"Don’t eat the cheese.
– Scratched into the bar of Redcliffe’s tavern."
:-)
I completely agree. It takes him from being a super cool badass pet to a super cool badass pet that sits in the camp constantly while I’m gone.
ZOMG … I’m in that place RIGHT NOW!! You guys are scaring me. Guys … guys?!? Don’t leave me here alone!
I’m digging walking bomb a lot. On normal, friendly fire is weak enough that I don’t much care if they explode right in the middle of my melee dudes. Also, the spell that converts corpses to mana is damn useful.
Now I need to decide whether to push for virulent walking bomb or for cone of cold…
I use the dog all the time. Once he levels up a bit and gets some warpaint and good collar, he’s totally awesome. He now has the power where he jumps on top of a guy and chews his face off while he’s on the ground, and totally kicks ass. I send him straight after the archers or mage at the back of the enemy group. Also, his howl attack is a really big stun with a wide range that often gives your party like 5 seconds to beat the hell out of everyone.
Don’t be fooled by his limited number of abilities!
Edit: By “all the time” I don’t mean he never leaves my party. Just that I use him often - as often as anyone else.
That’s interesting. How often do you swap people out? I tend to just pick the main characters I like or fit with my character and stick with them until the end.
Seems they already have a patch out easing the difficulty:
- Made Easy difficulty easier
- Slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty
I have to say I’m shocked Bioware has managed to release a challenging game. I’d be lying if I said I’d thought that possible at this point.
But eh, to pretend to contribute something useful: encounters in the IE games typically had a fatal weakness to some type of crowd control, some damage type, some type of buff, or some type of manoeuvre. I haven’t picked it up yet, but I would suggest you guys hit pause and examine the enemies and their placement thoroughly (and your own inventories & character sheets), before you resign yourself to cheese or decrease the difficulty. Almost anything in the IE games could be massacred easily without using exploits - if you took your time to examine the encounter before committing.
There ought to be some chance DA:O offers the same, given the descriptions of combat in this thread.
Incidentally, how do you run away from an ogre? Don’t they have much longer legs than the party members? Sounds weird.
I will say the difficulty is helped greatly as the story progresses and you get a different character mix. Namely the addition of a healer and the addition of what’s known as “spell combos” which the game even tells you about with nice little codex entries.
The last hour or so before the healer though … rough. Crowd control becomes a necessity in this game as it seems to throw larger encounters at you as the game progresses.
I have one character with double the amount of tactical orders as the rest and I can’t figure out why. Having those are -extremely- useful. I am able to assign things related to CC and combos, etc. Is there a way to get the larger tactical order amount on other characters? I keep looking for an “add order” button but if it’s there I’m just not seeing it.
I hit my first wall last night, in the Soldier’s Peak place…towards the end I think; if you’ve been there you know what I’m talking about. I went back to an earlier save and ran away, hoping to come back after I level up. I could just drop the difficulty to easy I guess, but I wanted to avoid that. But man, ass-kicking didn’t begin to describe what the mobs did to me.