spoiler Didnt know this, and ive been playing DAO since launch.

[RelicDuDe]

Soz guys, but i just had to post this, coz i wonder...

 

I have played DAO so many times since launch, that i have a whole USB drive filled with characters. But a few days ago, i played an evil (to humans) Rogue Female City Elf, (my favorite role) as she is a mean killing everybody and helping nobody kind of girl... Hey, she hates humans.. right ?.. yeah, she even kills Connor, a child.. because she absolutely hates his mother with a vengeance.. and because it pisses off Alistair... two birds, right ?... :wink:

 

Except Leliana ofcource.. which explains nicely why she wouldn't wanna marry a guy.. and even when i wanted Alistair, i will not marry him, and become his concubine... which is kind of a slave.. if i marry a king, i expect to become queen, not some prostitute.... yeah.. that always makes me angry.. and i haven't found a mod to correct that... so i am probably alone in this.

 

I had become rather powerful, so i decided to take on the urn of sacred ashes quest, with just my regular girlfriend Leliana and Wodan. (my dog, for drawing aggro) on nightmare difficulty..

 

I gathered that this would be a challenge... but halfway through.. i realized that it would probably not even be possible when i encountered the gauntlet, because you need 4 party members to do it, just like the fade quest.. take less party members there.. and you get stuck... But i decided to continue until i got stuck, coz i was having fun...

 

When i finally got to the gauntlet.. an Ash Wraith spawned.. that never happened before, but i figured they wanted to punish me for playing with less party members.. and i was just about to attack it.. when i found out that i couldn't, because it was friendly ?... looking at it, i had to laugh out loud because the game had noticed i lacked the party members required, and spawned a party member to replace the missing one.

 

Bioware must have known that some crazy players would try this game alone, or with less party members, and build in temp re-placer. (He disappeared right after, which is a shame..tbh)

And also, they made him a spec-able mage, so you could heal yourself and/or other party members if needed..

 

I already knew this game was a master piece, but this really took he dogs nads... I had never read or heard about this anywhere.. in all the time i played this... and i wonder.. did others know about this ?.. must have.. you are never alone with anything in this world... or am i the only nutcase that plays solo or with less party members ?.. And why didn't they do this kinda thing in the fade quest ?...

 

 

Anyway.. i do not post much... but i thought this was post worthy... :wink:

 

(Screen included...)

[theskymoves]

Not sure what you mean by why didn't they do something to add party members during the Fade quest, since that's intended to be a solo experience and there aren't any mechanics that would break as a result of not having a full party...?

 

And no, you aren't the only player who doesn't feel the need to fill out the ranks at all times... I would quite often quest with less than a full party, or parties that make no sense in terms of utility, like an all-warrior party; for example, after my first playthough, I always ran Return to Ostagar with just Warden/Alistair/Dog. The latter was a roleplay choice (as it never made any sense to me to drag anyone not a Grey Warden along for that story arc) and the former was due to the game becoming too easy (even on Nightmare difficulty) once I knew the mechanics for each encounter.

 

Gaxkang is fun to fight with just a warrior and a dps mage (no healer). And I love to solo high dragons, in all three DA games.

 

Not!Andraste, solo S+B Warrior:

 

 

 

My characters may all be incredibly ugly, but they are good at killin' stuff..

Edited July 26, 2019 by theskymoves

[balmz]

i found out about this on the wiki, and there's supposedly a way to have the ash wraiths as a permanent member

 

https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Ash_wraith

 

always wished someone made a mod that adds them as a full member

[RelicDuDe]

Not sure what you mean by why didn't they do something to add party members during the Fade quest, since that's intended to be a solo experience and there aren't any mechanics that would break as a result of not having a full party...?

 

Well.. i don't play the fade, i use the "skip the fade" mod. but the moment you find a party member in the fade, is the culprit.. If one is absent.. you cant go to the next... and you are stuck. Now this could be, and probably is, an unintended side effect of he "skip the fade" Mod, but I also have the "meta Items" mod.. to make sure that i can always change a party where ever i am.. which i do before playing the fade, if i am soloing, or use less then 4 party members.. to do the circle quest.

 

Getting a good looking character is just a matter of time... i can spend hours creating a character.. it has to be just right.. after all.. you will spend hours, days.. looking at the character, might as well be a good looking one.. for you that is.. coz beauty is in the eye of he beholder... i think i did a nice job with Kitty.. (in the screenshot) although getting the skin right is hard. with the abysmal lighting in the CC.

 

Good to know i am not the only crazy one.. ;)

[RelicDuDe]

i found out about this on the wiki, and there's supposedly a way to have the ash wraiths as a permanent member

 

https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Ash_wraith

 

always wished someone made a mod that adds them as a full member

 

 

I am not going to break my game over it... but it would indeed be nice to have a demon next to you to do the circle quest with... lol. - I flew around with it quite a some time before actually solving the puzzle... it was great.thanks for the link btw.. but that tells me that the ash Wraith was not supposed to be a mage.. so Bioware actually made him a mage on purpose... which made it even more cool...

 

Oh bioware.. why did you fall so low... must have something to do with EA.. or am i being to negative now... I just cant imagine that the people that made this masterpiece, (for its time) made a hunchback like Anthem..

[theskymoves]

The issues in the Fade could result either from cheats, or from a combination of mods that don't work correctly when combined... but what you've described is not a bug that occurs in a game where the player actually plays through the Fade as is expected... there are some known bugs (or, more properly, glitches) associated with the completion of the companion rescues - the final dialogue not triggering and the quest journal not immediately updating - but both have simple workarounds and thus do not impede progress.

 

As far as character creation goes, I could spend the rest of my life faffing in the toolset - I used that for morph creation, not the in-game CC - and the resulting toon would still be vomit-inducingly ugly... some people simply have no talent for aesthetics and if I had a nickel for every time someone offered, out of the blue, to make me a Dragon Age morph that wasn't monstrous, I'd have a really sizeable pile of nickels.

 

Some of my ugly elves (the red-haired rogue in the top row was my first Warden and made in the CC; all the rest were toolset failures):

 

 

And some of my ugly hoomans... the warrior toon went through no few than four extensive revisions before I gave up):

 

I only ever had one dorf, and I don't think I even bothered to make any screencaps of her.

 

tl, dr; not everyone can make attractive characters in cRPGs, no matter how much time and effort they put into it and no matter how badly they want to do it properly. :wallbash:And hats off to your morph-making acumen, I have nothing but respect for anyone who can coax chargen tools into creating anything that doesn't deserve and inspire open mockery.

Edited July 27, 2019 by theskymoves

[RelicDuDe]

The issues in the Fade could result either from cheats, or from a combination of mods that don't work correctly when combined... but what you've described is not a bug that occurs in a game where the player actually plays through the Fade as is expected... there are some known bugs (or, more properly, glitches) associated with the completion of the companion rescues - the final dialogue not triggering and the quest journal not immediately updating - but both have simple workarounds and thus do not impede progress.

 

As far as character creation goes, I could spend the rest of my life faffing in the toolset - I used that for morph creation, not the in-game CC - and the resulting toon would still be vomit-inducingly ugly... some people simply have no talent for aesthetics and if I had a nickel for every time someone offered, out of the blue, to make me a Dragon Age morph that wasn't monstrous, I'd have a really sizeable pile of nickels.

 

Some of my ugly elves (the red-haired rogue in the top row was my first Warden and made in the CC; all the rest were toolset failures):

 

 

And some of my ugly hoomans... the warrior toon went through no few than four extensive revisions before I gave up):

 

I only ever had one dorf, and I don't think I even bothered to make any screencaps of her.

 

tl, dr; not everyone can make attractive characters in cRPGs, no matter how much time and effort they put into it and no matter how badly they want to do it properly. :wallbash:And hats off to your morph-making acumen, I have nothing but respect for anyone who can coax chargen tools into creating anything that doesn't deserve and inspire open mockery

 

 

I think that the lower bottom right isn't that bad at all... I would have done more with he makeup and the hair... hair can make or break a girl considerably. But that one has a more then decent basis... especially the freckles are a cool idea.. i could never make them fit my characters. I just made a Noble female... i would love her to have a few freckles but... thats not in my tool-set... :smile:

[theskymoves]

 

I think that the lower bottom right isn't that bad at all... I would have done more with he makeup and the hair... hair can make or break a girl considerably. But that one has a more then decent basis... especially the freckles are a cool idea.. i could never make them fit my characters. I just made a Noble female... i would love her to have a few freckles but... thats not in my tool-set... :smile:

 

Heh! Thanks for the feedback... I'm gonna bookmark it for the next time I start to miss playing and modding Bioware games. :ohdear:

 

That particular character (a humourless, deadly serious Templar-specced Warrior) was was barely aware of the fact that she was female... had her hair or makeup been any more 'girly' or extreme, I would have been reduced to cackling insanely every time I opened the game. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

 

And yeah, realistic freckles with a lot of tonal variation are easy to do with the toolset - I always meant to write a tutorial on how I approached it, and never got around to it. The CC, unfortunately, is limited to either combining a freckled skin texture with a simple freckled tattoo overlay for some depth, or finding the perfect custom skin.

[RelicDuDe]

 

 

I think that the lower bottom right isn't that bad at all... I would have done more with he makeup and the hair... hair can make or break a girl considerably. But that one has a more then decent basis... especially the freckles are a cool idea.. i could never make them fit my characters. I just made a Noble female... i would love her to have a few freckles but... thats not in my tool-set... :smile:

 

Heh! Thanks for the feedback... I'm gonna bookmark it for the next time I start to miss playing and modding Bioware games. :ohdear:

 

That particular character (a humourless, deadly serious Templar-specced Warrior) was was barely aware of the fact that she was female... had her hair or makeup been any more 'girly' or extreme, I would have been reduced to cackling insanely every time I opened the game. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

 

And yeah, realistic freckles with a lot of tonal variation are easy to do with the toolset - I always meant to write a tutorial on how I approached it, and never got around to it. The CC, unfortunately, is limited to either combining a freckled skin texture with a simple freckled tattoo overlay for some depth, or finding the perfect custom skin.

 

 

Freckles have always been a problem for me in DAO. and so was the CC ... way to dark, and the makeup was a joke... i can do part of my eye-shadow with he blush button.. how cool is that :/... I am no modder, but i have thought about learning many times.. at least for smaller things.. like i did in fallout 4.. i hated how my character didn't lower her gun quickly enough after a fight.. (i am such a nerd for the small details) and she walked on as if she needed a toilet fast. so i made a small mod (gun lower) and problem fixed... Never put it on the nexus though.. nobody seemed to need it..

 

But i digress.

 

So your warrior was a tom-boy eh ?... yeah.,. i thought about that when i created Kitty.. after all.. she was a human hating lesbian city elf.. forced into marriage with a man.. (hint of Dorian there) and men are lying pigs... well.. most of them anyway.. and i can know. coz i am one, and know exacly how they think.... And i can get seriously pissed off.. if an elf is treated the way that Kitty was... i really go on a rampage... get seriously mad.. i mean seriously... i open every door in the castle, hoping to be able to kill more humans.. I am a sucker for the underdog... must be telling more of me then the game...but heh... Maybe to much getting in to my own story ?...

 

And don't worry.. i got the DAO bug two weeks ago... been sick ever-since,,, ;)