Dragon age origin help

[huckleberryhound]

I've just started my way through Dragon age (i've had it for ages, but better games kept my attention), and i'm finding the battles strangely difficult at the early stages. Iv'e lit the beacon, and have the mage and alister...but both redcliff and the elven/werewolf areas are kicking my arse. I know i'm not the best gamer in the world, but i'm sure the dificulty curve shouldn't be this high...is there anywhere i should go first for the "kill the grunt to win armour" i so desperately need?

Thanks in advance...Huck

 

[Avayu]

The Circle of Magi is supposedly the easiest area. There you also get your first real healer, so that will make the battles much easier.

 

[gritch]

I would make sure you have a balanced team and that you're using each character correctly. Alistar is a fanatic tank, make sure you're using him to shield your weaker classes, your mages and rogues. Morrigan can be a great damage dealer but she needs to be protected in order to survive.

 

[Xerxesrogue]

If you have trouble in Redcliffe, you probably should turn the difficulty down. At least after my experience, everything after that just gets harder

 

[Crystalite]

Yepp.
Kill the grunt to win a healer.
Go to the mages tower first. The fights are a pain if you don´t have a mage specced for it.

 

[ZeroMachine]

The game is notoriously difficult.

Start your first playthrough on casual. Once you really understand the game mechanics, jump to normal (or even hard, which I did).

 

[mireko]

*Focus on aggro management (make sure enemies are attacking your tank) with Taunt and Threaten.

*Use a healer if your tank is getting killed. Something as simple as teaching Morrigan a heal spell will probably work, since you can alternate between that and potions. Group heal is nice too.

*Use potions.

*Crowd control and AoE are two of the most ridiculously powerful things in the game. Spells like mass paralysis, cone of cold, sleep, waking nightmare, etc are incredibly effective against most enemies.

*Use areas to bottleneck enemies. Doorways are especially good for this.

After replaying for a bit recently, the game really isn't hard at all. Nightmare mode is easy to overcome as long as you don't charge in blindly. Except revenants. Those are dicks on hard and nightmare.

 

[rickynumber24]

The Council of Magi tower mission is definitely one of the ones with the minimum level scaling. It also gives you an extra party member as mentioned above who happens to start out healing-focused. More importantly, a big portion of it doesn't really require you to use your own character's abilities much, so it's kind of level-agnostic, and that part gives you permanent stat boosts. So yeah, if you're having trouble, go try that. I did that first, and it wasn't too bad. (I also turned the difficulty up from "normal" to "hard" afterward, too. <.< )

Alternately, if you just need a healer, give Morrigan Heal. She probably ought to get it just in case, anyway.

 

[Amondren]

The Circle of Magi is supposedly the easiest area. There you also get your first real healer, so that will make the battles much easier.

It can be depending on your Character class but its also notably the LONGEST dragging its self out and I always do it last on play through's.

 

[plugav]

I went to Redcliffe, then the Circle of Magi, then back to Redcliffe (it'll make sense once you get to the right point), and after that the werewolf level was a walk in the park. (Just don't wake the revenants.)

If you're having trouble in Redcliffe, though... I really don't know. What class are you playing and who's in your party?

 

[Trolldor]

I've just started my way through Dragon age (i've had it for ages, but better games kept my attention), and i'm finding the battles strangely difficult at the early stages. Iv'e lit the beacon, and have the mage and alister...but both redcliff and the elven/werewolf areas are kicking my arse. I know i'm not the best gamer in the world, but i'm sure the dificulty curve shouldn't be this high...is there anywhere i should go first for the "kill the grunt to win armour" i so desperately need?

Thanks in advance...Huck

First things first - sidequests are your friend. Go to all the boards and visit all the main cities first before trying to do the main quests.


Alternatively, set it to the easiest difficulty.

 

[Jedamethis]

I'm mystified how much difficulty I didn't have with this game. I was playing on normal, killed Wynne, managed to cock-up more times than I can count, but the only place I had to begrudgingly turn the difficulty down was The Circle of Magi, in The Fade...

 

[Zhukov]

Turn the difficulty down?

Other then that...

- Make sure you have someone playing tank (i.e. damage soak).
- Give Morrigan the heal spell. Or just bring Wynne.
- Cone of Cold + abilities that guarantee critical hits = victory.
- Archers generally suck. (Although I'm told they can be awesome if you crunch the numbers.)
- Make sure to invest in crowd-control abilities. Especially for your mage(s).

 

[Avayu]

The Circle of Magi is supposedly the easiest area. There you also get your first real healer, so that will make the battles much easier.

It can be depending on your Character class but its also notably the LONGEST dragging its self out and I always do it last on play through's.

I don't particularly like it either. The Fade section can be incredibly frustrating and exhausting, not just for your eyes.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

Go to the mage tower first. Wynne is named that for a reason
A dedicated healer makes the game alot nicer.

 

[huckleberryhound]

So far...I'm an elf, i have alister, the dog, morigan, and the guy i found in the cage.

I've only done the side quests in one town, then i headed to redcliff...the knights fought ok, but the militia sucked balls and i ended up getting regularly over run...i then went back a savepoint or two and went to the werewolf forest instead. I'm doing ok, but judging by the amount of times i'm getting beaten, i'm sure i wont be able to beat whatever is at the end...off to the magi for the healer i guess.


I don't want to drop to easy... that's admitting defeat.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

So far...I'm an elf, i have alister, the dog, morigan, and the guy i found in the cage.

I've only done the side quests in one town, then i headed to redcliff...the knights fought ok, but the militia sucked balls and i ended up getting regularly over run...i then went back a savepoint or two and went to the werewolf forest instead. I'm doing ok, but judging by the amount of times i'm getting beaten, i'm sure i wont be able to beat whatever is at the end...off to the magi for the healer i guess.


I don't want to drop to easy... that's admitting defeat.

The game is horribly good at stomping you into the ground. There is no other way to put it. I note that you don't include Leliana in your list of characters. I hope that means you didn't miss her. If you did, head back to Lothering and get her. She's useful. Anyway, here are my tips:

Have Morrigan learn heal, then have her set to heal whenever a character's life drops below 70%. I know this seems high--and it will tear through her mana pretty fast--but as you've seen, your characters can go from perfectly healthy to dead really fast.

Get Wynn as soon as you can, because then you have two healers. Unfortunately, this means you must go through the Circle, which is LOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGG and at points boring. Bring LOTS of potions too. However, the plus to getting Wynn is that you now have access to Spirit Healer. Have Morrigan learn this too. When you reach level 14, have them both learn Cleansing Aura. Health will no longer be a real problem with you (if you're a mage, you learn it too).

Warriors and Rogues have a special skill that will save your life. Rogues have the skill dirty fighting, which stuns enemies. Warriors have shield bash and pommel strike, which knock enemies down. Time these skills right, and you can make a fight of three-vs-three change to three-on-one, thus destroying a target before the others can recover. The Dog also has Howl, which is a group affect dirty fighting.

Keep at it. Eventually you will become strong enough to hold your own. Now, if you can get your hands on some of the DLC, you get items that make you super strong and the game balances much better. Good luck.

 

[Confidingtripod]

difficulty is a matter of taste, I say go to redcliff, you dont need to fight the boss because you get a really nice moral debate before deciding, then go to the tower, get a healer + its one of the more interesting levels, the boss there summons abominations but you can stop them from forming if your fast, from there go elf, if you aim to complete redcliff with the ultamite "everybody's happy" ending you need the mages tower complete, and then a one on one boss fight using any mages you have, then you start a second part that activates another interesting mission.

Good luck

 

[ZtH]

This game is surprisingly difficult for the first time through. In my first attempt I was playing a rogue and repeatedly got mauled in the blood mage den in denerim due to 2+ mages per encounter on the enemy team. My new playthrough I'm a mage and had a really tough time taking Jarvia in Orzammar before I switched my characters to include both Sten and Shale for tanking, and Morrigan and my main character for damage and crowd control. The point where I started getting better at the game was in the Mage's tower on my first run when I ran out of health potions because I fought a revenant that I wasn't prepared for. Doing the entire rest of the area with no health potions was quite difficult, but I learned the value of the pausing tactics very well from that.

 

[kuyo]

The Circle of Magi is supposedly the easiest area. There you also get your first real healer, so that will make the battles much easier.

you also get a bunch of free stat boosts.
Use Area spells whenever you can. (I liked to cast some through plot/locked doors and take out enemies before they can do anything)
Use rogue/mage sneak attacks to start battles. Sometimes,you can off Mages before the battle, so they can't annoy you later. This makes a nice pincer attack with your rogue on one side and everyone else bullrushing from the other (aside from the mage who can chill (ie use frost spells) in the back row.)
Blood magic is useless.
Don't play as a warrior. (your party consists of two mages and two rogues each with very different default leveling patterns, eveyone else is a warrior/meatshield)