Dragon Age: Origins: Difference between revisions

- Mages kill everything. Arcane Warriors kill everything and are basically invincible.

- Get Mana Clash ASAP, and pick an element for your offensive spells to kill non-mage enemies. Fire works quite nicely and I think you start with Fireball anyway.

- If you do go Arcane Warrior, keep in mind that you want "sustained" spells that you keep up by giving up whatever amount it costs from your max mana for as long as you have it active, and not offensive spells (except Mana Clash).

- With enough spells active, you're pretty much death incarnate, and Arcane Warrior's special sustained spells let you wear armor and use swords without penalty.

- You will want to keep your eyes peeled for the following items: Love Letters (12), Scrolls of Banastor (5), Corpse Galls (9, OR 18 for a better reward) and Garnets (10). It's very easy to miss them early on if you don't know that you should be looking for them.

- The order the game expects you to go is Redcliff, Mages Tower (when it offers or when you finish Redcliff your choice), Brecilian Forest, and then Orgrimar.

- Go to the Mage Tower first. The stat boosts you gain there will make the other areas much easier, no matter what class you play.  

- Do not go to the mage's tower until you have stocked up on health potions; it is an incredibly long quest that will not let you escape once you start. It does give you the other spell caster though.

- If you need health potions, the elves in the woods sell infinite flasks and material.

- Save the Dalish Elves quest branch for last. Quest there provides a great set of tank armor at high enough level.

- Redcliffe quest branch is not very difficult, suitable for the first choice.

- Specializations are unlocked for every game you start. You can buy a manual for specialization or unlock it from a quest, then reload and save your money or get a different reward.

- Check companion codex entries to see what types of gifts your companions prefer. They will reward you with sidequests and learn skills. Conversations with companions will help discern what items to look for to unlock sidequests.

- Buy backpacks. They will increase your inventory capacity and allow you to carry more loot. You can buy two of them right away at Ostagar.

- You will be very poor for a long time and then you will get very rich. This is fine because the only things worth buying are endgame-power artifacts that tend to be very expensive.

- If you do choose to have a caster in your group, keep in mind that a lot of spells couple with another for a combo. Just look up the combo list online.

- The elves area contains a few gravestones, activate them, but be prepared. The rewards are pretty good.

- Your mage should be one of the biggest damage dealers in your party (if not THE biggest), but you should also concentrate on crowd control. Spells like Winter's Grasp, Cone of Cold, Force Field, Crushing Prison, Sleep/Horror, and Mind Blast will all serve you well by completely disabling most enemies during combat.

- Cold spells have the added benefit of shattering enemies if you do enough damage to them while frozen. Crushing Prison is great because, unlike Force Field, you can still damage the target while the spell is active on them. Fireball has an excellent knockdown effect and the friendly fire damage is negligible if your tank is wearing Wade's armor.

- It's generally worth acquiring full sets of armor to get the bonus instead of wearing piecemeal items for their individual effects. One word of warning is that not all bonuses are the same. You might have two sets of armor that offer the exact same defensive stats, but that have different bonuses for wearing the full set. On the whole, I find that the stamina bonuses (where characters' skills cost less to activate) are more useful than the attribute bonuses.