At about 90 hours in now and some things have become clear while others… less so.<\/p>\n
At this point the main quest is completed up to gaining Skyhold, completing Wicked Eye\/Hearts (which is a lot less complicated than the message boards lead on), and saving Crestwood. As for the side areas: The Hinterlands, Fallow Mire, Forbidden Oasis, Storm Coast, Western Approach, Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves, and Hissing Wastes are cleared, Crestwood is about half done, and Emprise du Lion is at about 75% done. Roughly.<\/p>\n
The controls are just as annoying now as they were in the beginning, with the added annoyance of realizing that the eight visible ability buttons on the GUI are all you get (you unlock more than eight abilities? Too bad; can’t use them) and the companion AI is… not very good. So one easily accessible key has to be assigned to “Attack My Target” to make sure your party members aren’t either standing around doing nothing while an enemy runs around panicked, or standing in front of you staring at you ’cause the nearest enemy (which is attacking you or other party members) is slightly too far away to register as a target (e.g. just out of arm’s reach). They also seem to like dispelling the frozen effect from enemies… for some reason. More minor oddities include a complete absence of Blood Mages and Abominations (an overreaction to DA2<\/em>‘s response?), as well as Desire Demons (which look to have been replaced by Despair Demons). <\/p>\n Now we come to a more personal complaint: My current PC is a mage. Unlike the first two games, here… mages are quite limited. They can either be support characters or… support characters. The only decently damaging default spell is Fire Mine, which means most of the time you’re going to be trying to Freeze\/Paralyze\/Panic targets (or casting Barrier) because your damage output is so ridiculously anemic. The only time this isn’t the case is if you’re a highly specialized Knight Enchanter, but that just trades Fire Mine for Spirit Blade. Not exactly an improvement. <\/p>\n The problem here seems to be that rather than scaling with the Magic Attribute, spell damage scales with weapon damage alone (staves don’t have great weapon damage) while Magic just adds a damage bonus. How large a bonus? Not sure, but a piece of armor with +20 Magic increased the damage Flashfire did (with a level 20 character) by… 50 points. Which is practically nothing. There also seems to be diminishing returns, as using a Lyrium Potion (which gives +30 Magic) on top of that increased the damage by another… 10-20 points. You appear to be much better off increasing Critical Chance instead, as you can apparently Crit with magic and doing so seems to give about a 50% damage boost.<\/p>\n Due to the above, and really just in general, not being able to assign your own Attribute points at level-up is bullshit. Now for some random tips:<\/p>\n And we’ll close with some incomplete lists. The first contains the maximum levels the basic enemies of an area will scale to (levels separated with a slash are for areas with starter regions and advanced regions), while the second contains the Fade-Touched material effects I’ve found so far (note that there appears to be two possible variations for each material):<\/p>\n ———————– Hinterlands, Valammar, Caer Oswin – 11 ———————– Bloodstone – +7.5% Damage per nearby Enemy August Ram Fur – Abilities cost 7.5% less Mana\/Stamina || 10% chance of 8 second Horn of Valor Cotton – 5% chance to Revive at 50% Health || 10% chance of 5 second 50% Damage Walking Bomb At about 90 hours in now and some things have become clear while others… less so. At this point the main quest is completed up to gaining Skyhold, completing Wicked Eye\/Hearts (which is a lot less complicated than the message boards lead on), and saving Crestwood. As for the side areas: The Hinterlands, Fallow Mire, Forbidden Oasis, Storm Coast, Western Approach, Exalted Plains, Emerald Graves, and Hissing Wastes are cleared, Crestwood is about half done, and Emprise du Lion is at about 75% done. Roughly. The controls are just as annoying now as they were in the beginning, with the added annoyance of realizing that the eight visible ability buttons on the GUI are all you get (you unlock more than eight abilities? Too bad; can’t use them) and the companion AI is… not very good. So one easily accessible key has to be assigned to “Attack My Target” to make sure your party members aren’t either standing around doing nothing while an enemy runs around panicked, or standing in front of you staring at you ’cause the nearest enemy (which is attacking you or other party members) is slightly too far away to register as a target (e.g. just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[135,477,28,121,473],"class_list":["post-979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc","category-video-game-related","tag-dragon-age","tag-exploration","tag-fantasy","tag-rpg","tag-third-person-perspective"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\nMax Enemy Levels
\n———————–<\/p>\n
\nStorm Coast, Forbidden Oasis, Fallow Mire, Crestwood, Western Approach, Exalted Plains – 11\/15
\nTemple of Dirthamen, Shrine of Dumat (Leliana\/Templar) – 15
\nEmerald Graves – 15\/19
\nHissing Wastes, Shrine of Dumat (Cullen\/Mages), Cradle of Sulevin – 19
\nEmprise du Lion – 19\/??<\/p>\n
\nFade-Touched Items
\n———————–<\/p>\n
\nBlue Vitriol – Max Stamina +10
\nDawnstone – Heal 25% of damage taken over 10 seconds || 10% chance of 3 second Walking Fortress
\nDrakestone – Max Stamina +10
\nEverite – Heal 25% of damage taken over 10 seconds || 10% chance of 3 second Walking Fortress
\nIron – Heal 15% of damage taken over 10 seconds
\nLazurite – Max Stamina +15
\nNevarrite – Target Explodes on Death for 75% Damage || Chance of Pull of the Abyss
\nObsidian – 10% of 75% Damage Chain Lightning || +3 Guard on hit
\nOnyx – 10% of 50% Damage Chain Lightning
\nParagon’s Luster – Heal 20% of damage taken over 10 seconds || 10% chance of 3 second Walking Fortress
\nSerpentstone – +10% Damage & -100% Damage Resistance || 2% chance of Shield Bash
\nSilverite – 10% chance of 100% Damage Chain Lightning || +5 Guard on hit
\nStormheart – +30% Damage & -300% Damage Resistance || 10% chance of Shield Bash
\nSummer Stone – +5% Damage per nearby Enemy
\nViridium – +20% Damage & -200% Damage Resistance || 5% chance of Shield Bash
\nVolcanic Aurum – +10% Focus per nearby Enemy || 10% chance of Unbowed<\/p>\n
\nBronto Hide – +10 Max Stamina || +20 Stamina on Kill
\nCanine Leather – +10% Damage if not hit in 5 seconds
\nDeepstalker Hide – 5% chance of Poison || 2% chance of Fear
\nGreat Bear Hide – +50 Stamina on Kill
\nGurgut Skin – +50% Stealth Movement Speed
\nHalla Leather – +15 Max Stamina
\nHardened Gurn Hide – +30% Damage if not hit in 5 seconds
\nLurker Scales – +75% Stealth Movement Speed || 10% chance of Veilstrike
\nNugskin – +25% Stealth Movement Speed || 2% chance of Veilstrike
\nSnowfleur Skin – Heal 1% of Max Health on hit || 10% chance of 12 second Horn of Valor
\nWyvern Scales – 10% chance of Fear<\/p>\n
\nDales Loden Wool – +30% Focus Gain || 10% chance of 70% Damage Caltrops
\nDarkened Samite – +7.5% Focus per nearby Enemy
\nEverknit Wool – +7.5% Focus per nearby Enemy || 10% chance of 50% Damage Caltrops
\nHighever Weave – +20 Magic for 10 seconds on kill
\nInfused Vyrantium Samite – +10% Focus per nearby Enemy || 10% chance of Mind Blast
\nKing’s Willow Weave – +30 Magic for 10 seconds on kill
\nLambswool – 10% chance of 30% Damage Caltrops
\nLustrous Cotton – 10% chance to Revive at 50% Health || 10% chance of 5 second 75% Damage Walking Bomb
\nPlaideweave – +10 Magic for 10 seconds on kill
\nPlush Fustian Velvet – Abilities cost 10% less Mana\/Stamina || 10% chance of Hidden Blades with +5 hits
\nRing Velvet – Abilities cost 7.5% less Mana\/Stamina || 10% chance of Hidden Blades with +4 hits
\nRoyal Sea Silk – Abilities cost 20% less Mana\/Stamina if not hit in 5 seconds || 10% chance of Fade Cloak
\nSamite – +5% Focus per nearby Enemy || 2% chance of Mind Blast
\nSilk Brocade – Abilities cost 15% less Mana\/Stamina if not hit in 5 seconds || 5% chance of Fade Cloak
\nVelveteen – Abilities cost 5% less Mana\/Stamina || 10% chance of Hidden Blades with +3 hits<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"