Stitch on 8/1/2010 at 15:45
My party was 20th level by the end, and as I understand it there's no level cap.
Here's what I did and did not do to reach that 40% played (minor spoilers that don't really spoil anything, but whatever)
* I cleared every map of bad guys I could find (including some of the Deep Roads maps that seemed optional)
* I did nearly all good-themed sidequests I could find (Including the Chantry boards).
* I performed no blackstone regular/mage/morally questionable sidequests.
* I did the character-related quests for Alistair, Wynne, and Morrigan.
* In other words, I killed Flemeth :cool:
* And "Andraste" the dragon :cool:
* I did not kill Gaxkang the Unbound as I didn't feel like grinding through all of my healing and lyrium potions at that stage (and I was lacking a few spell-disrupting tools needed to make the fight feasible).
* I completed both the Stone Prisoner and Warden's Keep DLC quests.
* I did not do the whole orphanage bit in the Elven Alienage. I didn't find it in time and was more or less ready to wrap up the game at that point.
* Not sure is this counts as part of the %, but I romanced Morrigan and nobody else, became best buds with Leliana, Alistair, and Wynne, and got no other party members above "warm." I cheesed off Alistair by placing Anora on the throne. I (okay, this is a big end-game spoiler, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK) knocked up Morrigan with a demon baby.
So clearly there's more I could have done, but a full 60%? Christ.
Edit: blocked out one more bit with spoilers tags
Vraptor7 on 8/1/2010 at 15:58
The game counts everything you do with the profile, as opposed to just one particular playthrough. Try playing some of the other origins, I think that'll affect the total percentage.
mothra on 9/1/2010 at 03:33
I'm going through the deep roads (orzammar) with the anvil/paragon of her kind quest and it's getting boring again. every map I have the feeling I rounded that corner with the 5 darkspawn/ogre already but no, it was a new corner.....
up until now I found the orzammar story to be the best sofar. I can't wait to do support the other guy next time. and now I am fighting an evil anvil - wtf. well, still ok. the dwarf guy sucks but I had to take him along. so now I have wynne/me as battlemage/alistair/the dwarf guy. i hope that was the right choice. btw, I survived the broodmother fight first try (without ever going for anybody else than her) with only me and alistair standing. I found a good spot where no tentacles spawned and I could just spam freeze.
Aja on 9/1/2010 at 04:51
just wanted to drop in and say that I enjoy scanning this thread; thanks for the spoiler tags everyone :)
mothra on 10/1/2010 at 02:58
well, orzammar is done (including sidequests) and I must say, it was the best sofar. at last Alistair's buff enough for the blood dragon armor.
but I got only 3 drakescales although I already did the urn quest....I will go back later and face "Andraste", maybe they are still there/spawn again. well, now I'm off for the elves and then it's denerim/loghain revolution time. I switched zefran for leilana and it's much better now with Shale/Alistair (2tanks) + Leilana + me (mage). I wanted to learn arcane warrior but I think I'm gonna ditch wynne and learn spirit healer myself.
Ostriig on 10/1/2010 at 13:28
If you didn't know, you can have two specialisations, so you could take both Spirit Healer and Arcane Warrior if you wanted. Though the way I play AW I wouldn't have a lot of mana left over to work as the party healer, so consider that. On a different note, if the only reason you want to take SH is to get rid of the old fart bag, you could just swap her out for Morrigan and make her a SH. Works perfectly fine for me.
If you do decide you want to unlock the Arcane Warrior specialisation, though, you should pay attention in the ruins bit of the elves' main quest - you can only discover it rather randomly, through exploration, as there's nothing leading up to it. If you want, I think I took a screencap of the map showing where to go to unlock AW.
Finally, about the drake scales, you get all six out of three different encounters in the Caverns, so make sure you've explored the entire level. The first three drakes spawn when you search through a Pile of Filth in the room with the animal pens (it's the only room that you get to if you take a right at an intersection early on in the level). Then, if you recall, there's this other intersection where if you go left you meet Kholgrim a little further up the road; but if you go right it leads to another room with an encounter that spawns another two drakes, and from that room you can go to yet one more where you'll find the final drake.
mothra on 11/1/2010 at 08:43
I just went for SH and won't get more spez for my main character. Arcane Warrior is too late to do imo, I'd rather get some spirit spells which I don't have any of and would have needed for Andraste/Cauthrien.
And yeah, I did find that old man and after doing all other quests I put him out of his lousy blood mage misery.
BUT something is major broken here with the scale quest. I went through all the rooms when I did the Urn quest, I'm SURE of it. I checked again yesterday since I got to the "gather the army" part and walked the map to gather all my stuff and buy some lyrium dust. so I searched the whole area, no drake scales left (or dragons), then I went to Mountaintop and thought, what the hell, just get those dragonscales and after the 2nd attempt I killed awesome andraste without anyone falling in battle. It was lackluster since I killed it in the air so no finishing move ;(
well, anyways, dragon is dead -> NO LOOT WHATSOEVER. no dragon scales, nothing, nada. So it seems through a certain combination of quests done or not done or not existing yet you can have the Wade-Scales-Quest and still the loot does not spawn when you do the Andraste Quest and further.
All those work for nothing but at least it was one of the best fights in the game without any annoying archers on the sidelines :)
Now I rescued the Queen and had to fight Ser Cauthrien (well, i decided to) which went pretty well (after 3 tries). I just ran out of the room leaving the 12 archers, the mage and the 3 guards alone into another part of the map and concentrated on Cauthrien which was the only one following. The rest was just spamming blizzard and having leilana pick em off one by one. but damn, cauthrien can dish out the pain, almost a one-hit kill wonder like Andraste was
PS:
well, just browsed the DA:O wiki and yeah, there's a bug with the scales, poor me. but I'm a dragon slayer, that's all that matters and Alistairs Juggernaut Armor is more than appropriate.
mothra on 13/1/2010 at 15:00
ok, finishing line.
"let's make the game long enough and the loss of private life will force you to accept our NPCs as valid characters" works pretty well, never had that much fun with sidecharacters and friends in a game.
Unfortunately the end of the game is just a series of "let's throw everything we have at the player" combat maps without any interesting things to do. It's just another test in patience, I would say Redcliffe x 10 in boredome.
When I reached Denerim the only thing I was motivated to do was to start another character playthrough with different alignments (and better levelling by me) but I had no motivation to finish the game and wade through 4 maps of random darkspawn only to see an ending which was already decided the night before. They could have made it a little better - dramatically speaking - all the emotions are off, everything has been said, now it's just go there and wait for the respawn-timer to end or the trigger-area to fire.
Stitch on 13/1/2010 at 17:23
I had fun during the final battle, but I could easily have done without all the Fort Drakon maps that led up to it. By the time I killed the two generals I was pretty much ready to cut straight to the archdemon. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that the cinematic death of Riordan creates a narrative momentum that is utterly squandered by the slog that is Fort Drakon.
Ostriig on 13/1/2010 at 18:48
I'm with you two on that, Fort Drakon went to hell in a handbasket. After finishing off the two generals I just gave up, enabled the console and steamrolled forward with the instakill cheat. It's not challenging, just incredibly bla and annoying, especially since you're hyped to see the way it all works out after the Landsmeet.
