Installing it

Installing it.

What am I in for?
What class should I play?

An above average tolkien time with random DLC sales men when you move around the map

Edit the config file for free DLC otherwise you will need to play tank. The default are fucking shit.

You can fuck and fight your way out of every problem you come across, and yet this game still leaves more to be desired.


-- Also, be a mage. Fighters have to button mash and Rogues have to learn half of the available skills just to become useful.

a LOT of really tedious combat
$10 you will quit by the mage's tower
$100 you quit by the deep roads
you need to be stoned to enjoy this game's constant stream of long boring as fuck combats

pretty solid game. if you want to be a god, play a mage. if not, be human noble or city elf (avoid forest elf at all cost)

stuns are your best friend. every ability that has a stun or interrupt effect to it is worth getting.

mage

this

also this

rogue + max cunning + all abilites related to backstabbing

A FUCKLOAD of story. Great characters. Witch of the Wilds waifu simulator.

Rogue is obvious and only choice, playing the game on EZPZ mode at that point.

>random DLC sales men when you move around the map

Jesus I forgot about this.

The game is good, don't expect a masterpiece but it's worth playing

You are in for a pretty good story where your choices sort of matter. The gameplay is decent as well. Character art sucks ass.
Pick mage for easy mode, or my personal favourite - the rogue for a more challenging but satisfying experience.

If you're not into CRPG's why did you play DA:O? It wasn't marketed as Skyrim.

>What class should I play?
Either play as a mage
Or make another class and spend all of your time playing as Morrigan

Magic is massively overpowered in DAO, and it involves attention, so in most fights you're going to spend all of your time as the magic user to maximize your spells.

CAN I GET YOU A LADDER SO YOU CAN GET OFF MY BACK

CAN I GET YOU A LADDER SO YOU CAN GET OFF MY BACK

CAN I GET YOU A LADDER SO YOU CAN GET OFF MY BACK

CAN I GET YOU A LADDER SO YOU CAN GET OFF MY BACK

CAN I GET YOU A LADDER SO YOU CAN GET OFF MY BACK

CAN I GET YOU A LADDER SO YOU CAN GET OFF MY BACK

Uninstall button is pretty good

what's wrong with forest elf?
also best mage spec?

how the fuck is magic OP

when I played as a mage I got stomped all the time

>what's wrong with forest elf?
shity story that leads nowhere

>also best mage spec?
ice magic.

You're in for the last good BioWare game.

Human noble so confrontation with Howe is more personal.

I installed this shit the other day and I'm about to go get the urn.

Are any of the Premium DLC worth doing? Can they be done anytime or do they have hidden level requirements?

you must one of the dumbest fucks on Sup Forums than.

forest elf was boring as fuck

Dwarven Noble is best.

this
I hate the fucking mage tutorial level so much that I can't bring myself to play it.
No freedom in that game.

>than

Having a healer is absolutely imperative to play this game. It gives you a pretty good one, but unless you're okay with only being able to switch one of your three party members (one always being you and the other always being that healer), you'll maybe want to become a healer yourself so you can have a bit more variet on the characters front.

This seriously pissed me off when I played it, but maybe you can make your character a hybrid with some combat strenght or some offensive spells.

It's the worst story. Plus you're an elf.

Dwarf Noble and Human Noble are best origins, City Elf is also good, except you're an elf.

Mage spec is all about knowing the spell combos.
For example, pulling off storm of the century which is a 3 spell combo is just very satisfying.

awakening and the dlc on the main story (shale, dragons keep, return to ostgaard etc) is a must.

you can ignore the rest.

Only DLC worth getting from what I remember was Shale.

Best character personality-wise and combat-wise.

>the rogue
>more challenging
Rogues are pretty powerful. In DAO fighters are the weakest, all you can do is tank damage while the rogue/mage does the killing.

the later you do a DLC the more difficult it is but the better the rewards

only exception is the stone prisoner where the reward is a (great) party member so do that one ASAP

Story doesn't really matter after the prologue anyway.. Pick whatever you want OP

is Shale a good Alistair replacement?
I always want to do a more evil-oriented party but I'm stuck with Alistair and moralfags like Leliana and Wayne for 80% of the game

the one with the harvester is worth it if you like the combat system as it features the only challenging boss in the entire game

if you hate the combat skip it

It's not BG2 quality stuff. Areas are literally 10+ rooms of each room having the same fight with 8 of the same enemy. It's popcorn fights, just padding the game's length and it sucks. To make it worse the party is retarded so you have to pause every turn.

Your party is going to consist of 1 or more tanks (mandatory because of the large volumes of enemies), which means Alistair or the golemn,

1 mage who spends the whole battle casting CC to try and contain the large volume of enemies, which means either morigan or yourself,

1 healbot (mandatory) who hopefully can cast a bit of CC as well, which means wynne,

and you being in charge of the damage output so that you can actually kill the damn shit since the AI never will. You can outsource the damage dealing to Lillana or the elf if you want, though it's not optimal and just makes battles longer.

Which is why mage and rogue are the only viable class picks, unless you love being cucked and want to play healbot / tank in a single player game.

Elf race. Mage class. Arcane Warrior and Blood Mage specializations. You literally don't die

Shale's a functional tank if you build her like that
inferior to Alistair but okay if you have build your character decently

This pretty much. For a game called Dragon Age: "Origins" your actual origin story matters very little in the long run (other than a few characters commenting about your race if you play as a Dwarf or Elf)
Yeah pretty much, Shale is a complete fucking tank.

shale is THE tank. makes alistair look like a baby bitch.

this
I want to have Oghren in my party but there's literally no place for him.

Are you serious? Cone of Cold dominates the early game, and once you get blizzard and tempest you can Storm of the Century your way through the game by yourself.

I suspect you don't realize you need to combo your magic skills with your party's skills.

This this this

Get 2 support mages to learn haste and always have it on. Haste and momentum (rogue attack speed buff) don't stack, so keep using momentum til you get haste on two mages. Then you can stack both hastes for the fastest attack speed possible. Once you do that, stop using momentum because it actually makes you attack slower due to how attack speed is calculated.

>random DLC sales men when you move around the map
What?

Dwarf noble is best origin story, with dwarf commoner in second.

Alistair has great dialogue though.
Fuck Shale.

>entire Orzammar questline is about Bhelen framing you for your brother's murder
>literally the longest quest line in the game is wholly centered around your origin story

rogue can solo at hardest level

Basically, there are events on the world map that you can go to. Some of them are like mini-sidequests, but others are the (unmarked) entrances to a DLC and the NPC there basically asks you to buy the DLC.

It's retarded.

Sorry but after reading your first sentence it was clear you glossed over a huge portion of mechanics so there's no further need for me to have a discussion with you.

Thanks for explaining. That does sound stupid.

Good game with great story and characters
Go Human Noble.

What if you own the ultimate/goty edition with all the DLC included?

In his/her defence, BG2 was a legendary game.
To date still the best team based RPG I've ever played.
DA:O is pretty good but it's no BG2

OP, don't play a boring ass mage if you want to wreck. Mages have a lot of utility and little downtime, sure, but they can't fucking annihilate bosses in 5 seconds. Double dagger backstabbing assassin rogue is incredibly strong, and really fun. It really starts to scale crazy when you learn the assassin specialization, and you can backstab stunned enemies. Throw every single point you can spare into Cunning. It'll magically convert into MASSIVE damage once you turn into an assassin.

Like he said
Save the mage for a 2nd playthrough

Note: playing a mage robs you of your unique origin / backstory by defaulting to make backstory. Pick your favorite race/origin first and go rogue

Then you can enter the DLC.

If not, you just wasted your time going there for no reason.

>Your party is going to consist of 1 or more tanks (mandatory because of the large volumes of enemies), which means Alistair or the golemn,
or Oghren or Sten or don't use one at all because you can literally beat the with just mages.

Hell, you can solo the game on highest difficulties with an arcane warrior mage

You don't need two mages if you git gud. DAO throws a million health potions at you, isn't particularly difficult at the worst of times and most of the big battles have choke points to abuse.

can a two-handed warrior tank?

Sword and shield is better but yes.

>great story
>literally "an ancient evil awakens and all your friends are dead you're the world's last hope please help us - oh by the way the other guy who could help you is a massive retard who refuses to do so because he's so evil and menacing"
come on now

Go at any time, but you should probably complete one of the main areas first.

Also it should be noted, there are 2 modules you can play when starting a new game (apart from the Awakening expansion or the base game)

This is the ideal play order

>Main game
>Leliana's Song
>Awakening Expansion
>Witch Hunt

By the way, conscript Anders in Awakening. If you don't do it right there and then, you'll lose him forever

This. Don't play witch hunt til you finish everything else. It'd the canon final ending of the game, as in chronologically the last thing that happens.

And some advice for a certain boss fight, USE THE BALLISTA. You will know what I mean when you get to it.

>the secondary antagonist who is also the guy who kicks off the inciting incident of the story has no actual motive besides being a douche
in hindsight, this game's story was a bit retarded...

MAN THE BALLISTAE

uninstall it. guildwars 2 isn't a good game at all

Pretty realistic for a medieval inspired story

Lawful good human male warrior

If the game's intention was to be realistic there wouldn't be magic and undead orc dudes running around

>I post in the thread
>Suddenly everyone else stops posting
Why does this always happen?

TFW no cleric class

I don't remember that game very well after so many years.
Is it the final boss?

You have a pretty decent ability to be a support mage though

Pussy

>Tolkien
You cucks should kys, honestly. Even Robert E. Howard predates Tolkien.

fuck you want to play cleric when u got wynne with that big ass spirit

>Arcane Warrior
>Speed buff stacks
How is it not?

whats with the DA:O threads lately

Clerics don't use staves, they use maces baby

Shills generating interest for upcoming announcement of da4

it's a generic fantasy with samey combat
Has lots of annoying levels and honestly, the only reason it's regarded positively is because it was the last RPG Bioware made

Who's that?

It is amazing. Story is really good and the decisions do kinda matter. Game is kinda hard. different classes and races have different starts. Mages all start in the tower of magi. Rouge is really fun. Mage is also very fun but can do friendly fire. Don't tank since alistar is a better tank.

...

I got bored playing and spent the entire second half of the game having and fucking two girlfriends but hiding it from the other

>Story is really good
lol

>Story is really good
it's really not
It's just a mediocre LOTR rip off with Christianity references thrown in here and there.

It's endearing, but too modern for its own good.
I coudn't fully connect to the characters or plot when the writting is so blatant about shoehorned issues of the modern world irl.

It's probably a worthwhile game for people into the genre though.

one of the most cringiest, most boring, most generic games of all time that is an insult to every RPG that came before

*tips fedora*

Kingdom Come Superman will always and forever remind me of Bruce Willis.

Sonybros and nintenbros hand in hand!

There are 3 extremely powerful ways to play a mage compared to 1.5 for a rogue and 1 for a warrior. If you look at the skill sets mages also have the same number of options as warriors and rogues put together.

If you want a traditional party you can play an amazing support with flame/frost weapons and telekinetic weapon, buffing attack power with heroic offense and haste and following up with strong healing and debuffing. On long fights you can swap into blood magic if your lyrium potions aren't cutting it and never run out of spell casting ability.

Arcane warrior is the best tank but it takes far more effort than a sword and board warrior who is nearly as good and you cant effectively tank heal and damage not to mention that the 3 mage set up below doesn't need a tank.

Combo mage. Combos are ridiculous. Early on Hand of winter and cone of cold are very strong on their own but they combo in with stonefist for a shatter instant kill and later crushing prison also combos into a shatter and it is ana mazing spell on its own. Nightmare is also very strong CC early game allowing you to keep HoW and CoC for use as offense, You put a group to sleep and just before it ends you pick a target and horror it for a big chunk of damage and you effectively chained CC on it. Paralysis explosion is very strong AoE CC, early on paralysis is a big help and while glyph of repulsion comes a little late it still helps greatly on scripted fights where you get surrounded, put them together and you have 10-20 seconds of aoe paralysis. Grease fire is a great AoE early on and is only outshined by the core combo which is storm of the century, Spell might blizzard and tempest all late but great spells put them together and it does insane damage and drains stamina from those hit making any clever rogues or warriors that get through completely useless except they wont get through because running with three mages means you get all this x3.

If it's the first one get ready for a load of dogshit story telling and awful gameplay. I can't believe the cucks on Sup Forums actually like this.

Game aged like milk.

The fedora tipping contrarian would be the people that like this game not the other way around. It reallly goes to show that v has no fucking taste in games.

This is true. What he ought to have called you is 'useless grognardian fartbag'.

Go mage and pick

Arcane Warrior

Blood mage

You win!

>Grease fire is a great AoE early on and is only outshined by the core combo which is storm of the cent
Let me just stop you there. Dealing damage is a waste of mana, you already have one whole class specialized for doing that. Just help the warrior disable the fight and let rogues do the killing.

Also there are 3 powerful ways to play a rogue and 2-4 for warriors, depending on what you consider a different build.

Because healing ends up not being much of an issue even on nightmare when you are playing properly Wynn being the only spirit healer works well, Morrigan is already a shapeshifter but that specialization is absolute trash because it incorrectly does not use the magic skill to calculate damage instead of strength, both of these mages are excellent candidates for blood magic for extended casting, additional AOE damage and CC options and the fact that multiple Blood Mages can use Blood sacrifice for a positive health gain. As the PC Arcane warrior/blood mage is the best choice because even without using combat magic you still gain the ability to use magic instead of strength for gear use and shimmering shield is a strong defensive buff with very little fatigue. On top of that combat magic allows you to instantly switch to being a great tank at will.

Because you can only ever have 3 mages in DAO and at least one of them can be a tank if you ever screw up and need one, your fourth member should be a rogue. Because your mages will be throwing overlapping areas of friendly fire spells you should focus on the bow which is no slouch even with no backstab options. Bard offers Strong mana regen and CC, assassin is great because of Mark of Death even when you wont make use of the rest of the tree because of few backstabbing options. Duelist is still very viable at range because Dueling/Keen Defense are strong buffs for the rogue and pinpoint strike does work on bow shots which is actually quite devastating. Personally I would choose Duelist/Bard for a stronger over all rogue in this play style but I would take Duelist/Assassin if you want to micro sometimes to put your rogue behind a high value target before the fight.

tl;dr Mages are viable early game and completely broken mid to late.

Why the fuck everyday someone is starting DA:O and make this thread

>you already have one whole class specialized for doing that
Let me just stop you there. Combo mage is for a 3x mage run where you don't need a tank and the mages do the damage. The early game is focused around CC and focus target. Mid to late game you have more damage than than any other class plus it's all AoE which is where rogues and warriors falter later.

Warrior damage is trash and they have to run between targets so the only good warrior build is a tank (1). Backstab rogues damage is pretty good but it is single target and he still needs to move between targets (1) a bow rogue is still okay damage, better than a warrior anyway, but they don't have to move between targets (0.5). so that is one (1) good warrior spec and one and a half (1.5) good rogue specs.

If you think a minmaxed Duelist/Assassin can match a single combo mage late game, you have not played a mage.