kinda stinks that mage stuff has magic and willpower requirements to use. It doesn't allow you to go full blood mage. Heck some of the blood mage specific armor has willpower requirements. :spock:

doesn't really make sense imo

You should be okay if you focus on magic and split your secondary points between will and con. You really don't need that much con - you'd want to focus on items that increase your Blood Magic, like the Ring of Transitional Power, Ring of Ruin, Talisman of Saarebas, Hands of Fate, Voracity, etc. Equip enough items of that variety, and you're getting 7 or 8 or 9 mana for each point of health. I set up Merrill as a blood mage late in my first play, had I think 4 +blood magic items, and she was just a beast. I wouldn't even see a change on her health bar when she cast chain lightning...

Although that said, I wouldn't become a blood mage until 14. By that time you'll have enough attribute points to spread around. I'd be a regular mage up to that point, I can be more powerful at a lower level (Blood Mage is not conducive to power at a low level) and then respec into Blood Mage with a Maker's Sigh once I get the second talent point.

(Along those lines, I've used Merrill on my 2nd play through, again as a Blood Mage, and she really has seemed kind of weak until the last couple of days, now that I'm 15+)


General mage hint that I'm not sure everybody knows: use new staves when you get them. Your base spell damage is calculated by a combination of your magic stat and your staff's base damage staff. So sticking with a lower level weapon because it has nice stat boosts or rune slots actually weakens your spellcasting...

Anders

Ander's is such a whiny little bitch I wanted to kill him way before the incident.

i wonder if you you made Hawke a full blown healer buffer if you could play with a 3 melee group?

Fenris
Isabella
aveline
Hawke Healer

Just finished off the Arishok on my Normal difficulty warrior run. Reaching this point took me around 80 hours on nightmare, and I'm a bit more than 40 hours ahead of that pace right now. I'm also nearly a full level higher, so the +3% xp from the ring and shield have made a noticable difference. I guess that means I should finish up somewhere around level 27.

I've seen people talking about how that they finished it in 20 hours or under, supposedly doing 'everything' and not skipping cutscenes, and I still don't see how in the world that's possible. I'm not sure I'm going to break 50 hours playing on Normal, and I have been skipping dialogue.

I learned something this morning: at least one of the vendors has random loot. The guy who sells armor in Hightown was missing an item I'd seen on him a few minutes earlier. After experimenting with him, it turns out he can have a variety of gear qualities, including (rarely) some gold-tier armor (the kind with the highest armor value as well as 3 additional stats). I don't know why it took me until the end of the 2nd act my 2nd time through the game to figure it out. I guess I was just operating under the assumption that the vendor's inventory was static. I'll experiment with some of the other ones in act 3, see if they can change during the course of the act, or if the items they carry are locked the first time you open them up.

Dragon Age II
 

My son has this game. He said it enjoyed it, but had it beat within the first few days, so it couldn't have been much of a challenge.

I'm hawt

http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/8...1041815120.jpg

and badazz

http://img34.imageshack.us/img34/882...1041815123.jpg

and you could bounce a quarter off my awesome ass!

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/8...1041815123.jpg

Avoiding this thread...I've been slacking off. I'm 35 hours in to the game, kinda lost interest when I got the new video card (since it essentially broke the game). Beta drivers have fixed that, but i'm struggling to finish it. Still in Act 2, just doing some random side quests.

That almost always happens to me when I stop playing a game (for any reason). I stopped Dragon Age Origins in the middle (interrupted first by LotRO and then by ME2) and had the hardest time getting back into it. I still haven't played Starcraft 2 past the first planet.