Can you solo?

[Wildeyn]

Good post, but a few questions

Creshnibbon, how did you deal with the corrupted spider queen? Did you just use a greater nature balm? Maybe I am over-emphasizing that one fight, but I am curious.

It seems that getting 100 mag resist is impossible w/o being a templar, at least for the vast majority of the game, but maybe I am forgetting some combo. I realize that you can win fights without such, but I'd say that you have some risk, at least, of getting unlucky and dying w/o having it at 100%.

Did you win the fight with that Arl Howe woman solo, or just lose and go with that storyline? I've never lost that fight, so I only know how it goes if you lose from reading a walkthrough, but I've only tried it with a full party.

As I think about it, nearly every fight in the game is easy with a templar warrior, but a couple of specific fights seem a bit rough, theoretically. Sword/shield has to be far inferior to dual weapon, by the way. With dual weapons, you can go with all dex and daggers and still do great dam. Sword and shield does so little damage. I'm not sure how hard level compares with nightmare, but it might be pretty significant. Again, I'm talking about playing hardcore where you don't die and reload.

Devour tends to disappoint me. It doesn't seem to work as well as it should - corpses seem to need to have been on the ground for a while, and be really close to you, for it to work. And the other reaver abilities are pretty lame.

I agree that the templar abilities are useless. Final blow is also, as it makes you lose the ability momentum. Basically, by lvl 18 or so, I have no more useful talents to take. I've heard it written that archer rogues are best, but that seems absurd to me, in comparison with dual wield templars. I don't see how archer rogues deal with mages.

I find it pretty disappointing that there is such a silly imbalance between dwarves and the other races. There is no tradeoff... a dwarf gets 10% resist and double gold, and the others just don't, with no offsetting advantage. Makes no sense. With all the great things they do in Dragon Age, I don't understand why they didn't increase playability with the simple strategy of making the races differently good in various ways.

Err, also: when did you start soloing? Did you solo the high dragon or just not bother? I can't imagine soloing the bounty hunters in the frostrock plains before you get the templar armor. Once you get that armor, I can imagine soloing from there without much problem, with maybe a couple of fights as exceptions.

[Crenshinibon]

Unfortunately, when I fought her, I had the same idea as you, to use the balm, but when I did, I noticed that the poison damage wasn't reduced, so perhaps it was a different damage type. I fought her one on one though. I carefully approached her spawning place, and when she appeared, I ran back and fired my bow at her to get her away from where the other spiders spawn. Every time I took a fourth or so of her health she would retreat, and since my character saw no hostile creatures, the natural regeneration would kick in. After regenerating I'd repeat the process again. I haven't tried a Greater Spirit Balm on her though, since that is the damage that a Corrupted Spider's Corruption Blast deals. I simply had enough potions to heal through the encounter.

I had one point in the Herbalism skill so I could make Lesser Health Poultices (which costs about three gold for ninety nine of them).

A thread I encountered on the BioWare forums mentioned these things for spell resistance:

Dual Three Slot Weapons:
*Weapon 1:
--Grandmaster Dweaomer Rune: 10%
--Master Dweomer Rune: 8%
--Master Dweomer Rune: 8%
*Weapon 2:
--Master Dweomer Rune: 8%
--Expert Dweomer Rune: 6%
--Expert Dweomer Rune: 6%
*Spellward: 30%
*Ancient Elven Gloves: 4%
*Shielded Dwarven Armor: 4%
*Antivan Leather Boots: 4%
*Key to the City: 4%

As a total, this adds up to: 92%. I'm sure there are weapons and helms that grant more, but if you're playing a dwarf, then you're all set.

I thought that the fight with Ser Cauthrien was the hardest one in the game. I had to use every type of poison and a great deal of potions to defeat her. If you run far enough, the rest of her troops will leave you alone so that you can go one on one with her. As she's a two-handed warrior, the only ability I had that prevented her from attacking was Frightening Appearance. In case you were wondering, if you don't beat here there, you have one more opportunity to fight her before entering the Landsmeet.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the power of a dexterity build, but I just view them as boring. Also, don't forget that you can still become a Dagger and Shield warrior and have even more survivability.

The thing about attacks with dagger builds is that they will do more damage if you auto attack, due to speed, but normal sized weapons will do more damage if you actively use your talents and animation cancel, which is actually what makes a two-handed warrior attack as fast as a sword and shield warrior.

When I played, I based all fights around devour, so for example, before summoning a revenant, I'd try to fight and kill all of my opponents nearby, so that when my health was low, I could fully heal.

Archers have a few talents that can interrupt a mage's spells, which also double as disables. When initiating the fight, you can easily take a mage out with your Critical Shot or Arrow of Slaying.

Despite the advantage they may have, I don't find dwarves any more appealing to play or the other races any less appealing and I don't think it should be a factor either since it is a roleplaying game after all.

I my two-handed warrior (which I finished earlier this week) was started with the intention of being a solo character. This means that while others may have forcibly joined my group, I disabled all of their tactical settings and never used them, so of course I soloed from the very start. I did solo the High Dragon as well, at level sixteen or seventeen.

What mercenaries are you referring to exactly? I don't think there's a location called "Frostrock Plains" in the game.

[Mister Bean]

Wildeyn,

I've just completed the final battle as a solo Arcane Warrior. The Arcane Warrior is a force to be reckoned with, and lots of fun to play, but you're right that there are a few enemies who can bring him down.

Archers are surprisingly dangerous. Unless I have a Glyph of Warding up, even run-of-the-mill archers whittle away my health. Blizzard + Tempest disables and kills a crowd of them, and you can often get most of the melee opponents stuck in the same storm. However, it takes too long to cast. To buy some time, I love Paralysis Explosion (glyphs combo), or Mind Blast + step back + cone of cold.

I had serious trouble with enemy spellcasters as soon as they learned Crushing Prison and Paralyze. I responded by hitting them with Force Field while I take control of the battlefield, and have Cone of Cold, Stonefist, and other disabling spells handy when the Force Field falls.

Red enemy spellcasters who know CP pretty much require Mana Clash. If they resist it, you can cast Force Field on yourself as a last resort. Speaking of casting FF on yourself, that's the only way to survive Curse of Mortality.

I had some Greater Nature Balm handy for the red Corrupted Spider Queen, but I still ended up double-fisting health poultices (drinking a Health Poultice during the countdown timer of a Lesser Health Poultice).

Ser Cauthrien was an amazing fight. I used some salve and balm, cast a well-placed Glyph of Paralysis, Glyph of Warding, and a Blizzard, crept in to the room, did a Paralysis Explosion, fired off a Storm of the Century and some walking bombs that killed the mage and most of the archers, and then got beaten on by Ser Cauthrien's two handed sword. I was able to take her down eventually, but she recovers from my freezes, knockdowns, and stuns a little faster than I can cycle through them. I died a couple times while figuring out how to win that fight.

That might answer the question about my philosophy on dying, loading, and trying again. I prefer that play style, because means I'm operating at the limits of my character build. If I can play through, making the inevitable missteps and mistakes, and still not die, then I'm much more powerful than my enemies and the game risks becoming boring. The AW will sometimes be caught off guard and killed, or overwhelmed and killed, unlike a 100% Magic Resistant Templar. But it's more fun IMHO.

[Wildeyn]

Cresh, that is a good way to fight the spider queen. And it must be that she does spirit damage. The game seems to confuse spirit and nature damage, such as with walking bomb, which, going by the color, does spirit damage.

By "Frostrock plains" I must have gotten the name wrong, but I meant the area you go through to get to Orzammar that has Faryn. The mercs there are pretty rough early in the game, I believe.

I just realized that, if you have the Blood Dragon Armor, then soloing early on is a lot more doable, including dealing with the above mercs.

I haven't heard of a way around the animation, like you mentioned with a 2h warrior. How does that work? Is it sort of a borderline exploit? (I can't help but exploit the trick to mess with stats a bit using reset to get magic down low and redistribute the points to something like dex, myself - seems to make sense to me that a character can be customized anyway. Besides, health potions are pretty key when you are soloing, so not much of an advantage to redistributing points.)

Smart about planning ahead with devour.

Do you really solo the opening sequence up through the tower of Ishal? That is incredible, if you do that. The early parts of the game seem virtually impossible to solo although I don't really use health potions much (because I have a party and never really need them with a whole party) that I might be overlook how they might change things.

Regarding the list of magic resist items, some of those items would cripple your character against non-mages too much. I guess that you could change gear mid fight, but I have my own little rule not to do that, as it seems pretty cheesy to change armor or even boots in the middle of a battle, even though dragon age lets you do it. But, of course, that is just my own little rule and doesn't need to be followed by others.

[Wildeyn]

Mr. Bean, your post was quite fun to read. I liked to hear how you dealt with those fights (gives me something to compare with, etc.). Very nice strategy.

It seems that you like to go with a spellcasting arcane warrior, assumedly with something like the armor of diligence or Varathorn's early on, and then upgraded Warden's, Wades, or maybe the Eric's plate with the diligence gloves and boots... and with a staff rather than the arcane sword and shield? And a zillion lyrium potions? What spells do you walk around with? Just armor of stone? It seems like you don't try to have much defense, although you also mention glyph of warding, which builds off of your defense score. Do you forego having combat magic up? I assume that you can't use that with all of your spells.

My inclination is to start with a spellcaster configuration, and then cast combat magic and switch to sword and shield later in the fight, but the problem with that is you then need pretty high dex to be able to hit and such, and miasma helps also, but I don't think you learn the miasma tree.

I like the idea of casting force field on yourself as a rare option. For some reason, I erroneously had it in my head that you couldn't do that.

Do you use blood magic much?

Your philosophy about reloading a bit vs. the game needing to be quite easy so that you never die makes sense, certainly. I tend to get a bit identified with the story and character to the extent that I have more fun not dying and reloading, but your point of view makes plenty of sense.

[Crenshinibon]

Wildeyn: That particular encounter you can avoid if you hug the left most side of the map and sneak by them, which is what I did, engaging them right after buying the armor.

For me, the Spider Queen's poison attack showed up red, which is physical damage I think. For the bomb spells, the initial, single target damage is spirit, but the explosion is physical.

After being able to equip the Blood Dragon Armor, a lot of the encounters become very easy, but this only lasts for a level or two.

Animation canceling is just what it sounds like: canceling your character's animation. I picked this trick up during my Warcraft III days and basically, you use this to increase actions or attacks over a period of time. So, when a two handed warrior swings his weapon, let's say it goes from the right side to the left side and then then back to upright position. The damage however is dealt midway through that animation. What you'd do to cancel the animation is any of the following: move, use an item with an animation (such as a potion) or use a talent. When I play, I use talents, right when I see the opponent take damage, which cancels the first animation and initiates the new one. With this and the talents (two of which actually make you attack twice while also having a short cooldown), the warrior can deal a lot of damage in a short period of time, while also landing debuffs on the targets.

Like I said earlier, I solo the ENTIRE game. Being alone, without summons or being able to use party members (because if you do, it's not a solo game), I had to face the ogre head on, which of course used up a good amount of potions.

Well, when you solo, you want to fight small groups and when you do this, you draw out either the mage's guards on the mage himself/herself. It's often possible to draw the mage around the corner so that they face you in melee range, at which point all you need to do is land a stun. Also, Frightening Appearance is a pretty long disable and comes in handy when wanting to suppress mages.

Also, for the Arcane Warrior, which was my first character, I put absolutely no points in dexterity or any other stat except magic. The way he was setup was that he had enough mana to cast one, maybe two spells, and the rest of the mana was spend on sustained abilities. I found that using Miasma debuffs the enemy enough to hit them most of the time.

Both armor spells add to the armor score and not defense, which gives you the most armor in the game.

When I played, I use Blood Magic a good amount for four reasons: having no mana, it was the only way I could cast spells, Blood Sacrifice healed me twice the damage that the allies took, Blood Wound was an AMAZING spell - think area of effect Crushing Prison and of course Lesser Health Poultices healed me for over one hundred and twenty health.

[Mister Bean]

Wildeyn,

As a soloist, you have to deal four times as much damage as a member of a party would. It follows that I might use about four times as much mana in combat as the regular mage. It's impractical to meet this requirement with willpower or even mana regeneration. Gold is in good supply, and I use Lesser Lyrium Potions without hesitation or consideration of the cost. I buy 400 dust at a time from the Quartermaster, and 400 flasks at a time.

My character is extremely focused on maximizing his spellpower. This means putting points into any stats other than Magic must be done reluctantly. My character's final stats, at L21, were 19 Wil, 70 Mag, and 28 Con. In hindsight, it would have been better to go with 14 Wil, 65 Mag, and 38 Con.

I put a few points into Willpower before I discovered Wade's armour, which has good protection and exceptionally low fatigue for massive armour. Before that, I wore whatever massive armour I had lying around. At one point, I bought the Boots of Dilligence, which were nice.

Staves kill things slower than spells. Thus, by the time I reached L10, I no longer used the staff as a weapon. Once I got D's shield, I equipped it with no sword, just for the defense and the boni.

As for the Tower of Ishtal, I stripped Alistair, Tower Guard, and Soldier down to their undies and let them punch the darkspawn. The Tower was easy. Lothering was very, very hard because I didn't yet have the ability to equip armour, nor enough spells to keep the enemies at a distance.

My defense rating may not be great, but my armour rating is high enough that only mages, archers, and rouges are a threat to me. I walk around with just Arcane Shield and Rock Armour, which means 50 armour, 89 defense, 98 missile deflection. While standing on a Glyph of Warding, it's 119 defense, 158 missile deflection. I probably should have learned Shimmering Shield and used it during fights against magical bosses.

As for Blood Magic, I chose the specialization just for the +2 Con, +2 Spellpower. I put zero points into its spells. I think Blood Wound and Blood Control would be cool, but they're not worth four picks.

I just realized, there's another way to survive a Curse of Mortality: Glyph of Neutralization drains all mana and eliminates all magic effects and damage within its borders. Cast the glyph on yourself, drink health potions, get off the glyph, drink mana potions.

I love playing a game as complex as this one, because I enjoy analyzing the rulebook and coming up with clever solutions like these.

[Wildeyn]

Yeah - I am the same about enjoying analyzing complex games. I like to have the fattest possible manual with as much mechanics as possible so that I can make decisions. I actually wish that Dragon Age had done more that way and left less stuff ambiguous ("rapid aim" etc.). I found most of the mechanics online eventually.

I think the best armor combo for arcane warrior is gloves and boots of dilligence, plus, once you unlock the better items, Evon the Great's Mail, although that is a bit expensive, perhaps. It's relatively low fatigue puts you at about what Wade's dragonbone would do for you, and you end up with a lot more armor and other benefits.

I have a theory about arcane warriors in which focusing on dex and wielding a dagger with flame weapon is actually a pretty viable strategy. You attack faster, get about 17 extra dam from the flame enchantment, and your defense can be about 30 higher than if you didn't put a lot of points into dex.

Spellpower matters, but not quite as much as one would expect. It takes 10 points into magic to get 1 point more of defense, for example, with arcane shield. (edit: that isn't quite right, because points in magic, combined with spell might and spell wisp, can give a greater than 1:1 return, but still it takes 7-8 pts in magic to get 1 point of defense.) Damage usually has a base amount (like around 30 for fireball, and then does extra dam based on spellpower). If you take spell might and mana wisp, that gives you a spellpower boost for your sustained spells.

Then, you cast a couple of spells at the beginning of combat, such as mana clash, fireball, or whatever, and then focus on using your dagger with combat magic, miasma, etc.

At least it has the cool benefit of being a pretty unique build. Combining defense with good armor really adds up, especially because of dodging shattering shot, and especially because of how health poultices work. A key to staying alive in Dragon Age is for your health to go down slowly. I would say that, within reason, that is more important than killing enemies quickly (although killing enemies quickly can definitely matter a lot).

That is probably why you, in retrospect, would have chosen to have more health, because more health helps keep you alive for the next health poultice.

Interestingly, by contrast, if enemies drank their own health poultices, then it might be more important to do more damage faster. Since they don't (other than the rare healing spell), focusing more on "dying slowly" may be the way to go.

Cresh - yeah, I didn't realize that it was possible to solo the opening acts, but I did it yesterday with a mage. I did a couple of things that are somewhat sketchy, however: I had the blood mage armor dlc, I got behind the barrels and beat the Ogre easily that way (although I did have to reload once after a hurl, massive attack knockdown, followed by a killshot all in a row), and I did the reset-the-stats trick to reduce my str and redistribute those points to where I wanted (magic, of course, in the beginning).

I had to reload twice for Gazgarath (sp?) in the Wilds, and about 2 other times when I fireballed myself at an inopportune moment =)

I imagine that, if Uldred resists my mana clash, I'll have to reload that fight also. It sounds like you probably played an arcane warrior before they changed shimmering shield so that it is now totally different - it drops off when you run out of mana, and considering that it gives you -10 mana regen/sec, that is a big change.

I'll try doing the dwarf noble story solo, but it seems to me that that will be quite rough going. You can't buy health poultices, and some of those fights, even after you flee away from most of the enemies, seem like they are going to be very tough with 1 guy.

Thanks for explaining the animation cancel - that makes sense and doesn't sound cheesy to me.

Good to know about the dam type from bomb. Hmm... so high armor protects yourself against it? That will be interesting to check out. Err, but I don't know that high armor protects against Fist, so maybe it doesn't protect against "magic physical" damage very well. Maybe it is like staves, some of which do physical dam, but have very high penetration.

All damage to your own party and char are red. Color coding damage only applies to enemies, so you can't know what type of dam enemies do to you, except for common sense or trying different dam reduction types.

[Crenshinibon]

Wildeyn:

I also though that the dagger builds might be good, but honestly, I don't think that they are worth it. By adding points to dexterity, you reduce magic, thus decrease the potency of your spells and the damage they give you. Out of the three "weapons spells" I'd use Telekinetic Weapons, as it's the heavy armored opponents that are the hardest to kill. Also, by not using a shield you lose armor, defense and mana, not to mention some of the health gained from poultices, which is something to consider. Dual wielding with an Arcane Warrior isn't as good as you'd think, since the charm of the non-mage dual wielders is the momentum spell as well as the higher damage in the offhand. Don't forget that in order to get Flaming Weapons, you essentially need to waste a talent on Flame Blast whereas ALL talents leading up to Telekinetic Weapons are useful.

While having your Arcane Warrior rush in, cast all his spells and then turn all of the sustained spells on sounds good, in reality it's very innefective due to the ammount of time it takes to execute all that as a lot of the cast animations are quite lengthy.

When I play, I never reset my stats as I consider that unfair and even then, the benefit that it gives you is minuscule and you do lose something, depending on the stat you lowered.

I never tried Mana Clash on Uldred, but I do know that you HAVE to stay in melee range, which can prove problematic for a mage since he also has powerful melee attacks.

I don't think armor helps against spells that deal physical damage perhaps it's only the physical resistance that's taken into account.

When I played the Arcane Warrior, it wasn't a solo game either. I tried to muster up items to counter the mana degeneration, but I could only muster up six points worth of regeneration.

[Wildeyn]

Cresh,

I actually meant playing an arcane warrior that _single_ wields a dagger with a shield.

I'm also quite certain that flame weapons is better in nearly every case than telekinetic. Flame weapons can do 17 fire dam against undead and darkspawn, and around 12 to humans and such, because they cap at 10 damage, but the cinderfel gaunts, ring of faith, staff with 10% extra fire, and even a 5% amulet if you find that randomly, and darkspawn seem to be extra vuln to fire.

A single wield dagger arcane warrior would have the highest defense in the game.

There is a statistical truth that it interesting that you may be aware of; it is most easy to see in DnD. Let's say that an enemy can hit you on a roll of a 15 or higher, or 6 out of 20 chance. Then you increase your AC by 4. Looked at one way, the enemy has a 20% worse chance of hitting you. But, looked at another way, the enemy now needs a 19 or 20 to hit, which means the enemy will only hit you 1 in 3 times compared to before you raised your AC by 4. Raising your AC by 4 was a lot like _tripling_ your hitpoints in that instance, not just increasing your HP's by 20%.

Likewise, that last 20 defense points could theoretically make the enemy only hit you 1 out of 4 times as much as they would have otherwise hit you, in Dragon Age. I don't know the mechanics, but it probably works roughly the same way. So, it is possible that a dagger/dex arcane warrior would get hit far less because of that extra 20-30 dex/def points than a high magic warrior would be, which could make them ultimately more powerful, or at least more easily survivable.

[Crenshinibon]

Ah, I see what you're saying.

I tried it out with my Arcane Warrior and here are my thoughts on the two possible builds:

*Sword and Shield, Magic Based: I think that this is the best build for an Arcane Warrior for multiple reasons. First, you have a decent defense (plus bonus stamina depending on the shield) and deal the most damage per hit (I've had Flaming Weapons add anywhere between fifteen and twenty with 121 spellpower). Also, because you focus in Magic you can automatically use most of the equipment available to you as soon as you take the Arcane Warrior specialization. Also, because you have a high Magic score, your healing potions (and spells) are MUCH more effective than they would be otherwise. Another point, which I consider important, is the early game. I think that this build has the easiest one possible as their spells will be strong and hold through up until they are able to specialize.

*Dual Dagger, Dexterity Based: This build, to my surprise, held up pretty well. Mind you, I just tested it by respecing my Arcane Warrior and running through the Warden's Keep DLC on Nightmare, so I never played this build earlier in the game. I'd say that this build equals the first in terms of DPS, since it deals about half the damage but attacks at twice the speed (assumption). In terms of defense, I was able to achieve about 130. For attribute point distribution, I raised magic to about thirty (though I could have gone to thirty six, so that with items I'd be able to wear Massive Armor (Warden Commander Boots in particular). Another thing to note is that this build will have the most. The disadvantages of this build become apparent when looking at potions (which for me turned out to be half strength than that of the first build) and the early game, which I assume would be a bit rough since you would stop pumping Magic pretty early on in favor of Dexterity, which of course means that the spells will be about one third as strong as those of the first build.

Honestly, I don't think that the Dagger/Shield, Dexterity based build is worth it because you'd lose out on half of your DPS, lose about 20% magic resistance while gaining about ten defense, 25 stamina and bonus mana regeneration.

Unfortunately, I set all of these builds as pure combat builds, so they either had no mana, or enough to cast a single spell. This of course makes the Blood Mage specialization very appealing, especially to the first build which gets the most out of potions (where a Lesser Health Poultice can cover for about three or four spells).