dunvi

You can do it with the "jump to tactic #" commands, but it's honestly probably not worth it. Winter's grasp doesn't do too much damage anyway, so I'd just stick it on an any command.

I did end up substituting Alistair in the last time I played, but mostly for RP reasons. It's my own silly pride, though. I mean, my PC can take down all of these other enemies everyone is complaining about - my goal for my next run through is to start cutting the active party down, because I'm having so much success on nightmare, but Loghain I only barely survived, mostly because of Frightening Appearance! I took down Ser Cauthrian this last time through because I decided, "hey, why not?" but this one measly little Loghain character runs me through every single time! To my credit, though, the builds I'm seeing people had success with Loghain on aren't the ones I particularly like. I'm not fond of playing rogues in DA, which is funny since they're my favorite class in DnD, and AW sort of annoys me...

Ugh, I remember that fight. My first character was a DW warrior, and I think I died four times there before I figured out how to do it without even a flinch. Turn into the burning man. Walk through their fireballs. Cast fireball at them. (insta-dead-mages!) Install skip the fade for next time. I actually don't mind most of these battles, but the one I've loathed every time is Loghain, especially because you only get a split second to save before the dual starts. Basically the only enemy my dual wielders can't take down in three hits because for some reason Loghain is impossible to hit and nothing I do seems to fix that. Resisted pretty much all of my spirit mage/blood mage's offensive spells and not much I could do about that. Tedious as hell for my archer, running around in circles until stealth cooled down, until he finally got Loghain to switch to his crossbow at which point it was just flat-out boring. Ugh. Most of the battles that are annoying aren't so annoying if you think of them as a strategical exercise, but there's not really much strategy behind "can I get my stun effect in before Loghain, or am I going to have to go through the entire Landsmeet again".

Only when initiating conversation, the plot line dialogues are fine. I'm mostly just interested in where the bug is coming from.

In the mage origin, when I talk to Jowan after he joins the party only, I'm getting staging bugs. If I talk to him before going into the basement, it teleports me to right in front of the big, outside entryway doors, which is just a pain. But worse, if I talk to him in the basement, it teleports me to the center of the map, in the blank space in the middle of the corridor ring, forcing me to reload! I can't remember if my 1st mage had this error, because I don't remember if I talked to Jowan that time since it was ages ago (okay, more like a month, but close enough). I'll play around with my mods, see if I can figure out what's causing it, but I'm wondering if anyone else has gotten this bug (and could perhaps same me some time)? My first mage only had official DLC installed. Since then, I've added a couple, which I'll list below in case anyone can pinpoint what's going on. I haven't noticed any other issues like this anywhere else in the game, and I can't think of why any of the mods I've installed could cause a problem like this (but I'm not a modder so what do I know?). most recent: Alley of Murders (disabled, will get around to removing when I'm not so tired), storage chest (I forgot I threw that one in. Haven't been to the party camp since I added it...), CC extra tints and tones, that one that removes the second drain life from the spell list less recent: Advanced Tactics, Advanced Quickbar, ZDF, Morrigan Restoration Patch (with Loghain fixes), dialogue tweaks (yes, I have the compatible versions) least recent: Skip the Fade, Character Respec Mod, Dragon Age Rules Fixpack

Trying to run off of a USB hard drive is going to cause slowdown as well. I'm short on hard drive space too (mostly because I'm lazy. That stupid TB under my desk will end up in the case soon, I swear) and the answer is you store your homework and such on the external, not games. For now, if you really want to try continuing to play before you can upgrade anything, see if vsync is enabled and turn it off, and move the game files into an internal hard drive. But I doubt you'll be very happy. Start saving...

Not really important, but as a girl with long hair, I thoroughly approve of the lack of long hair styles. Exhibit A: forgetting to tie it back with five hair ties (think Jasmine in Disney's Aladin), going into a moshpit, and getting my hair tangled between several random stranger's sweaty arms and being pulled along by it. Ew. Long hair in any fight situation is just asking to get your scalp (literally) torn off.

There's only a human noble story line. It's one of the few really disappointing things about the game to me, although I know that even 6 story lines is a ridiculously intensive amount of coding so I forgive them. I won't comment on your over-thinking before you even have the game! :P I also agree that the wiki is not very complete and is difficult to navigate. It's a lot easier, however, when you know exactly what you're looking for in the middle of the game, and has a lot of useful information if you're interested in the nitty-gritty of how the calculations work (which I do recommend because it helps a lot in figuring out how to run your character). All of the builds are good, although some do need some major bug-fixing to be very useful. Sword and shield is fine on its own, and it works really well with the available specializations so that's good. It will be doubling a class early in the game, but soon enough you'll get enough other companions to round out your party. Either that, or get a respec mod and change Alistair up, but I don't recommend this for the first playthrough. I don't know of any shields that are scutums explicitly (and if you seriously care, you're seriously overthinking it but you can ask for a mod on the forums). There are rectangular shields, Fade Wall is the one I thought of first. As for the other styles, two-handed is very powerful if you spec it right and you like that style. I'm personally very fond of dual-wielding, which if specced right can take down entire mobs on their own without even trying, although it does require a lot more micromanaging in my experience than either S&S and 2H which can basically run themselves pretty early on. Ranged you should pass on for a first run - it's much more powerful with a rogue build than a warrior build, it needs a mature character to reach its potential, and it has some really serious bugs. Also consider trying a mage build, perhaps for a second run through (if you don't want to play twice, you're weird :P). For mods, I recommend playing all the way through before modding it, even without bug-fixes. For mods, I'm a purist - I have a few mods installed, but only ones that I feel make the game closer to what it was supposed to be, than ones that make me ridiculously overpowered or the characters super-sexy or what-have-you. The mod I consider a must have is: DA Rules Fixpack which fixes a *lot* of mostly combat-related bugs. I also have a couple of dialogue fixes, Advanced Tactics is incredibly useful, and Skip the Fade is great for re-runs. [ETA: holy crap it's been ages since I used bb code...]