Monster Levels

[SkullKnight]

Does anyone know how the levels of monsters (or NPCs) are determined? Are they scaled based on the player's level, or are they static? And if theyre scaled, do they keep leveling up with the player, or is their level set when you first enter the area?

 

Ive been wondering because I avoided some monsters in a dungeon that proved too difficult to kill after several attempts. I was going to level up more and come back, but ofc that would be pointless if the monsters just kept leveling up with me. Advice would be appreciated.

[DarkeWolf]

They, along with many other NPCs scale up with your level.

Once created an npc won't change. So no, it won't level up again, after it's been spawned to match your new level.

 

Now... in some instances where you might face an NPC once in the game, and then again another time in a different area.... I'll use Ser Cauthrien as an example. You can face her at Howes estate (and if she survives that encounter) again at the landsmeet. In this particular case, the game REcreates that NPC as a different character. In which case.. yes... the npc would be scaled to your level again.

 

However, in the case of generic monsters, this doesn't happen. They are made when you enter the area, their stats are saved in your savegame, and thats the stats that they will have when you re-enter the area.

[SkullKnight]

Thanks for the clear explanation! I think Ill come back to the mountaintop temple after I gain some more levels and go pick up those last 3 drakescales and the dragonscale. Right now, its just...ugh. This also makes me wonder if it would be a good tactical decision to visit certain areas earlier on to prevent the monsters from being scaled to ridiculously high levels.

[DarkeWolf]

Not a problem! Glad to help out there :smile:

 

You can make the combat easier on yourself and your team by using tactics. ESPECIALLY if you're playing levels harder than "easy". First, by setting up your tactics so that your NPC teammates dont go chasing off after the first monster that they see. (click on the target icon up at the top of the screen and it should be under behavior, or something like that). If you're using the STEAM version of the game tho... that could be considerably different. I think that version has some interface changes.

 

I.... actually SUCK at setting up the NPC tactics, so I'm afraid that I wont be much help to you in choosing what action for what circumstance. I usually just set them up to not attack unless attacked, then pause it in a fight and tell them what to go after manually. Thats just me, and probably definitely NOT the way to go about it. But I like to solo the game as much as possible.

 

There's an old saying about "Fight Smart". And its true in some of the situations in this game. Set up an ambush. Put your party on Hold (the H key) so that they dont move, and send a character with a long range attack (bow or staff) to draw in (pull) some of group away from the others (doesn't always work, depends on the types of attackers). Or say that you're in a dungeon and you open up a door that has a lot of mages and warriors and some archers thrown in.

Put your team on hold down the hall, away from where the mages and archers can get to them. Send somebody up to the door, open it up, and have the melee fighters chase you up to where the rest of your party is. Pick them apart where the mages and archers aren't pitching in and beating you down, then go in and take on the archers and mages. Preferably have your mage throw in an AoE spell on them beforehand. (if the mages are high enough level).

Paralysis is also really good. I love it. I'll throw in paralysis wards, or stunning traps, or the paralysis spell on monsters, and then have my mage throw a greasetrap and then fireball them. They just stand there and barbeque. Or throw a blizzard (higher level spell) and watch them whittle away.

 

Just remember to hit the H key again afterwards, so that they can move again.

 

Use runes on your weapons that can cause stun, or paralysis. That can definitely help out. Set up your fighter's tactics to use their stun and paralysis or knockdown attacks on a foe first, then follow up with their damaging attacks. That can help.

Or lead your enemies in close to your mage, and have them do a mindblast. Thats a good one.

 

I also tend to have my party fight the main body of the attackers while either I, or my best fighter under my personal control, go after the enemy mage(s) first. To me, they're the ones that are the most dangerous, so I take them out first.

 

Now granted, bosses are a different story, because they can resist, or are immune to a lot of stuff. But I tend to take out their support mages first, then their archers while my other guys fight their backup melee fighters. Then, unless I solo the boss, we all gangbang him/her/it.

 

I also prefer to use the no autolevel mod, so taht I can pick and choose what skills/spells/attacks they have. That way, I can set it up for them to have what I WANT them to have, and what would be best suited for my particular playstyle. http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4

This way I can have my mages have the Area of Effect (AoE) spells when I want them to, I can have them get their healing spells right away, as soon as they can, I can have my fighters NOT have some of the (what I consider) worthless skills and focus more on the ones that I think would be better for them to have. I can also choose which attributes get the points when they level up, so that I can get them into the armor that I want them to have, sooner.

[SkullKnight]

Ive been using pretty much the default NPC tactics to deal with special attacks and sustains, but Ive tried changing the behavior to Defensive to keep my party members together, instead of Alistair chasing a fleeing enemy into a huge mob :P, but sometimes Ive found that to make them too passive in battle (recently I had Shale standing and watching me solo 2 lieutenant monsters -.-). The main tweaks I have made in AI tactics is to make them automatically apply health poultices and lyrium potions as necessary. When Im entering a difficult battle, Ill usually set the threshold higher (so the massive DPS doesnt overwhelm them before they successfully heal).

 

My playstyle is actually quite the opposite of yours lol. I generally only control my main character, and let the AI handle the rest. It makes fights go faster since I dont need to pause and switch characters to give orders all the time (it also adds to the immersion and realism I guess, since I pretty much "am" my main character). However, it does require me to put points into combat tactics (AI's use of talents is limited by how many tactical slots there are). The AI has a quick reaction, but the "one condition -> one action" tactics are rather simple and dont allow for fancy maneuvers. I also end up quite unfamiliar with the talents of my party members, so I end up staring at the quickbar cluelessly when my main character dies lol. But, I guess thats the price to pay for playing in such a lazy way :P. As more tactical slots free up, I might do some experimenting with the other conditions and actions I havent tried yet. Advanced Tactics allows for more precise configuration supposedly. I will certainly try out the no autolevel on the next char I make, or in DA:A.

 

All of that said, Im happy I managed to defeat the high dragon (although only Leliana survived, who killed the dragon while I was gawking at the quickbar with a puzzled face :blink: ). Im probably gonna hold off on getting more armor made in case I want to buy something else from the shop.

 

Also, qwinn's fix pack mod seems to cause crashes, any reason why? Yes, I am using version 1.03 non-steam.

[SkullKnight]

/bump (sorry, but I decided it was better to double post than to make a new topic on a related subject)

 

Another thing, are looted items generated and scaled to the player's level when the container is spawned, or when the player opens it? And is creature loot spawned when the creature is killed (it seems to be the case).

 

Also, is the "Most powerful enemy defeated" determined by the monster's exact level (which is in turn determined by the player's level during the encounter), or by the monster's scaled difficulty/rank?

[DarkeWolf]

First off, I'm sorry for not replying sooner to what you had posted a while back. I get TONS of email notices from here, and sometimes I accidentally delete one that I havent read yet. (Such was the case with your reply). I really do apologize for that, I didn't intentionally blow you off :sad:

 

With loot, it depends. Not all weapons/armor/items scale. Some of them have a pre-assigned set of stats, and that's it. Unless you influence them with something like the Upgrade Wand, The Winter Forge, or mod their files in the toolset, that is all that they will ever be.

Specialty items sometimes can scale. I know that those you can make them advance by selling them to a merchant and then buying them back. (Unfortunately they aren't LABELED that they will scale, so you dont really have an indicator of which ones will or won't).

It also depends on if the chest is actually marked by the game to have certain loot in it, or if it's a random drop. Random drops are usually pretty generic, and dont have the script in them to scale. (as far as I know, but I could be wrong). Spawned loot on corpses is the exact same way, as they both use the same methods for spawning loot.

Whether specialty items scale to the player.... I dont think so. I dont know for sure, but I have seen some folks complain about such and such sword or axe or armor having low stats for the level that it was in (the game refers to maps as levels, btw. Want to make that clear so that it doesnt confuse you).

 

Most powerful enemy defeated.... doesn't apply. They have different ranks. I dont know the exact structure of the ranks, I havent researched it. I do know that many NPC's are player rank. Others, like Ogres, are Lieutenant rank (This rank and higher has the possibility to trigger a death-blow cutscene when killed) and that there are Boss ranked NPC's. As I said, I dont know the exact names, all I've seen for them are number values. So MPE is based off those number values. (And the system has bugs in it for recording those).

 

Some really good questions tho. Definitely not the usual stuff that we get around here :thumbsup:

 

 

As for the tactics, it largely depends on playing style. Tho yeah, there's times where you want to set them up with different tactics than usual to fit a given situation. Like I said, I usually like to play solo, so I have my guys set up not to attack if they aren't themselves attacked. And for me, it doesnt break the immersion to stop and take control of them. I'm actually very used to it, since I stop to screenshot A LOT.

Yeah, those quickbars... I learned VERY early on in gaming to set those up for convenience. In multiplayer games that I used to play, having that quickbar, and/or your hotkeys set up to match you was incredibly important. Being able to roll off attack combos or healing combos could be the difference between victory and defeat.

Hahaha tho then you start to drone. 1234 890 Over and over for a couple of hours. *yawn*

[SkullKnight]

I rescaled some of my DLC items with the merchant trick successfully, so my armor is badass now :D. At level 19, a lot of the loot that is appearing is tier 7 anyways (did the dwarven quests last, so its the deep roads loot). Tier 7 armor has rather steep reqs for my companions who dont use strength :/.

 

As for the most powerful enemy defeated, I know that they have different ranks (shown by the color of their name), but how does the game decide which "Elite Boss" is "more powerful"?

 

...And I have a few other random questions lol:

 

1. Will I lose the achievements from a DLC if I temporarily deactivate (uncheck) a DLC, or will they still be unlocked after I reactivate it? Been having a glitch that may require me to uncheck and recheck, but Id rather keep my achievements.

 

2. Is it possible to have both Alistair and "Secret Companion" in my party at the same time? Or will I have to get the recruiting achievement over several playthroughs (or keep a save from before the decision point)?

 

3. Can I go back and finish up side quests after finishing the main quest, or will I be forced to import to DA;A after the main quest? And is there any mod that adds respawning mobs? The game gives me the impression that the enemies simply go extinct after I travel through XD.

[DarkeWolf]

Heyas! Sorry if my answers are a little short. Just finished up an hour of research and then an hour and a half of typing. Kinda worn out, hahaha.

 

Nice, thats cool that you rescaled the DLC stuff. :thumbsup:

Yeah, dragonbone does have some pretty steep req's. Its meant as endgame gear and its their way of limiting it to lategame characters. (for those of us that dont cheat) :whistling:

 

MPE goes off those numeric values listed in their .utc files that I mentioned aforehand. ;) The higher that number is, the higher their ranked for the MPE.

 

1) Achievements- Ya know... I'm not sure! I mean the achievements get logged, since they can go to your online account. But I'm not sure if you uninstall a dlc that they would remain in your PC log or not. Good question!

I also dont know which file they are saved in. Perhaps somebody can fill us in on that?

 

2) Technically, no. If you choose to leave Loghain alive, Alistair leaves. period. no longer accessible.

same as if you choose to not take morrigan up on the ritual before the big fight. She's gone for good if you refuse.

If you choose to kill loghain alistair stays, and then you can choose to add "you-know-who" to your party via console command. This method does however, have limitations, and a few issues. One being that afterwards you CANNOT get rid of him! http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Console

now, I also wanna mention that some of these commands have bugs. Some are mentioned, others arent. So use the console for cheating SPARINGLY. And dont add any "companion" to your group before the situation where you can recruit him. That will bug your game.

 

3) Unfortunately, no. Once you finish the game, the map is locked. You can still travel to DLC areas and to the party camp. But cities/towns are locked out. :( :verymad:

DAA doesnt actually continue the original content (OC), it starts you out on a completely seperate adventure, in a completely seperate land, with, for the most part, completely seperate allies. Its essentially a completely different mini-game.

As far as I know, nobody has figured out how to do respawning mobs for DAO. I hope they figure it out soon tho, I'd love to be able to go on a killing spree in some of those areas again.

[SkullKnight]

Lol, I almost freaked out when I upgraded the warden commander armor to tier 7 and Alistair didnt have enough strength to wear it anymore. I got around it by equipping +attribute rings on him just to get the armor on. I like how the armor stays equipped even when your stats drop below the requirement (unlike some games :P).

 

Achievement data appears to be stored in the Profile.dap file located under Settings. I opened it up and its a lot easier to understand than I thought it would be. "ACH_ABI_ACCOMPLISHED_WARRIOR;default;1@" for example indicates that I have already unlocked the Accomplished Warrior achievement. I just had to look at the first achievement to figure out where each entry started, and it only makes sense based on what I have seen that the entry starts with the name of the achievement and ends with "1@" for unlocked, and "0@" for locked. So if disabling the DLC temporarily wipes the achievement, I know how to edit it back in :D.

 

Ah well, it means I have to go around everywhere and finish those side quests before I fight the epic battle. And it seems that Ill end up with Alistair leaving unless I go back on a deal I made. That means I should probably confiscate his warden commander armor before the Landsmeet ;P. I could use the console to add him back in later, but tbh I dont like the DAO console very much. Lots of features can bug your game and you cant do crazy stuff like in oblivion (i.e. spawning 10 minotaur lords in a bustling marketplace XD...but ofc the console can be used to fix bugs as well if you choose).

 

I was thinking respawning mobs could be done with a script that runs whenever the area is entered, making more mobs. However, Im not familiar with DAO scripting so idk if that is even possible with the game engine (like how there isnt even a give item command, although there is a mod for it). Even if it were possible, I would imagine it could corrupt your save with bloating (all of those new monster references are gonna have to be recorded into your save). Perhaps reviving monsters...but ofc this is all speculation.