Second run powergaming advice

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I am nearing the end of my first run through the game and I have enjoyed it a lot. I have had my PC bloodmage, Morrigan, Shale and Dog during the entire game and it has pretty much been a breeze. Shale tanking, dog running around, Morrigan healing and freezing and my PC basically just killing the crap out of everything. Very powerful party but I have pretty much not used any of the nifty equipment at all or any rogue. Nor did I get a romance as Morrigan apparently wasnt interested in some girl on girl action.

Now I want to run a melee and gear heavy party and would like some recommendations. I am thinking a dwarven rogue dualwielding daggers. I saw some powergaming tips about that and I wonder how I should level him to get the most bang for the buck. I want to not only be a damage dealing powerhouse but also pass every persuasion check and open every lock. The idea now is to run with PCmaledwarfrogue, Alistair, Sten/Oghren and Wynne as they are npcs I didn't use at all during my first run and a party that would let me use most of the loot. This does seem like a fairly romance empty party but what little I saw of Leliana made me think she was not only an annoying twit she was also fairly useless and I am not interested in a possible man/man romance between a bearded dwarf and Alistair.

 

There are two ways to build a Rogue, the Dexterity way or the Cunning way.

Since you want to be able to get the speech checks and all the locks you should go for Cunning. With Lethality it will yield more damage than any Dex based Rogue build.

Dex Rogues are more like decoys so I won't recommend them (unless you were soloing).

Dwarf is the best choice since you start with some magic resistance.

Regarding specializations I'm partial to Assassin (obviously) and Duelist (may not look that good when you take a closer look but the base bonus to damage and Dex is handy). Bards are good with uber Cunning builds since Cunning will make their songs better but I doubt you'd want your main character to act in a supporting capacity. I don't care much for Rangers because I've never liked summons. They probably have their uses and it all depends on your playing style.

To build a good Cunning based Rogue you have to bear in mind a few things:

1) you don't need more than 26 points in natural (unmodified) Dexterity and you are better off putting the rest in Cunning.

2) thanks to lethality, Strength is only useful to equip armours so if you go for the Drakescale Armour II you only need 20 points after item modifiers and stat bonuses from the Fade.

3) you don't need more than one rank in lockpicking to be able to open all locks if you max out Cunning. Each rank is worth 10 points and to open all locks with one rank you need 60 points in Cunning or 30 points with 4 ranks in lockpicking (70 points in Cunning without any rank in lockpicking).

4) you may want to take all four ranks in Coercion if you want to be able to pass ALL speech checks with 60 points in Cunning.

5) focus on getting Dirty Fighting and Riposte asap.

6) don't waste too many points on end tier talents from the Dual Wielding group. Once you have Riposte and Momentum the rest won't make a big difference.

7) Whirlwind and Punisher may look cool but they're not as good as Momentum. You won't miss skipping them.

8) Micromanagement makes all the difference with Rogues. Have your tank gather the attention and backstab as much as you can.

9) Bigger is not necessarily better. Daggers will give you more attacks than larger weapons. You could get away with using one larger weapon since you'll still benefit from a somewhat increased attack rate because of your off hand but you're probably be better off using small blades. Don't overlook the usefulness of runes.

10) Little things matter. You don't need more than one rank in Poisons and Traps if you have an NPC invest 4 ranks in these skills and craft items for your character.

Last but not least, don't overlook the importance of stealth. It seems like a pretty obvious thing to say but it can make a HUGE difference.

 

I would agree with Caradhras about going the Cunning route with your Rogue. Doing so allows you to spend fewer points bring up lockpicking, thus allowing you to get your combat skills sooner. A Dexterity build could eventually open any lock, but it would be late in the game before this happens as you'll be focusing on combat abilities so it isn't worth the hassle IMO. Your party looks fine, just remember to ensure that its Alistair who's drawing the aggro and not you and Sten/Oghren. I suppose that if you were to play as a female dwarf then you'd have a possible Alistair romance...

Well, more potential damage with better Armour Penetration. A Dex Rogue has a larger Attack, so will hit more often.

Assassin is the obvious choice for this build and I'd agree that either Duelist or Bard should be the second. A Bard need not be purely supporting- you only need 3 points in the Bard skill tree to get the useful Combat Song. With a high Cun, this provides a decent bonus to all of your party. Of course, a Duelist is also pretty good- after 3 points in this tree your Rogue gets +10 to Attack and Defence, which is strongly worth considering in order to make up for not having a high Dex bonus to these. Plus Pinpoint Strike gives you a heap of crits.

Indeed. This actually forces you to make a choice- you can get Momentum very early on in the game if you go straight for it, but the Fade bonuses would then take you beyond 26 Dex. Powergaming-wise, I think you'd be best going for the Circle Tower first and getting Momentum immediately after exiting the Fade.

This, however, isn't good advice. Each rank of Coercion grants +25 to your Persuade skill. Additionally, each point fo Cunning beyond 10 grants +1 to the skill. To pass every Persuade check in the game, you need 100. Therefore, with 60 Cunning you only need 2 ranks in Coercion. 4 ranks in Coercion on a Cunning Rogue is complete overkill.


With everything else, I agree with Caradhras' post.

 

You only need 24 Dexterity points for Momentum, I push the limit to 26 to get expertise (the third rank on the first line in the dual wielding category I can't remember the exact term).

Perhaps, but I'd rather spend the stamina to fuel Momentum and dish out more attacks especially when I could get the best of both worlds by having Lelianna do all the singing and thus boost my main character as well.

Except that you overlook Intimidation which is based on Strength. I myself wouldn't bother but Joacqin said he wanted a build that passed any persuasion check. I assumed it included Intimidation attempts as well. I agree though that there are better ways to spend these points with a high Cunning Rogue.

EDIT: my phrasing may have been misleading as well as I mention Cunning in relation to speech checks.

 

I can only underline that runes make a great difference. I had a rogue character with two daggers, both with grandmaster and master slow and paralyse runes. Deadly, especially with coup de grace ability. In my current two weapon fighter I use hale runes, resulting in a 100% damage resistance in addition to my armour. Two weapons allow you to use more runes, in that sense it is highly recommended for a power gamer build.

You can amplify the rune affect with a rogue using poison.

My fighter now has a couple swords in his inventory, one optimised for general enemies (hale runes for resistance + grandmaster paralyse rune), another one for fighting undead (+18 damage vs undead) and a third one for fighting darkspawn (+16 damage vs darkspawn). I have that bonus content dagger in the off hand with hale and grandmaster slow runes. I have a set of two daggers against mages with dweomer runes (+26 magic resistance).

As for the whirlwind talent, it is effective in crowds of enemies as it allows to attack multiple enemies at once, much like dual weapon sweep. Punisher is a powerful attack as well, that - but then, I used them in a two weapon style fighter build where I didn't have to spend points on rogue abilities.

 

Oh yes, runes are excellent. They're a major contributor to dual-wielding being superior to 2-handed weapons in general.

The problem with Whirlwind and Punisher is that they are special attacks- this means that you'll never get the benefit of the runes your weapons are enchanted with when using them and, more importantly here, you cannot backstab using them. It's a bit of a shame- special melee attacks are very good early on, but slowly drop in effectiveness throughout the game.

Now you mention it, 24 does sound right for Momentum. Looks like my memory isn't quite up to the task.

Do you really find Momentum draining your stamina? I've never noticed it happen to any significant degree and I've quite cheerfully used other sustainables at the same time. I would generally go for Duelist over Bard in order to get the attack bonus to offset the Cun-build's lower attack, but even then you should really have Duelling activated in fights.

Of course, I was overlooking Intimidation checks. Didn't really think about them as I didn't see much point in requiring to pass all of them, but you are right: if he wants to pass every check then he'll need 4 ranks in Coercion. Not that he needs to, as I'm sure we agree.

 

Thanks for the advice, the reason I am focusing on lockpicking and speech checks is that I have played through the game without passing a single speech check and only opened two locks and that was with an animated darkspawn rogue.

I am planning on going the circle tower first to pick up Wynne and now that you mentioned the fade bonuses I have a second reason. Now I recollect getting a really good dagger last night doing the last Shale quest, is it possible to speed up NPC quests even if you dont have them in your party? I would like that dagger but I dont want to lug Shale around for a second time for that alone.

 

Runes are very versatile indeed. Runes that stun are particularly good for Rogues (that goes without saying).

Regarding Whirlwind and Punisher I'm convinced they are both better suited for Dual wielding Fighters rather than Rogues because Rogues get much more use of stunning foes in order to backstab them whereas Fighters can use Whirlwind and Punisher to dish out more damage.

You can leave Shale at the camp or you can just kill Shale instead. Olaf's Cheeseknife (iirc) is a very nice dagger with runeslots so it's not a bad idea to pick it up as soon as possible. Don't forget the Helm of Honnleath while you're there.

I use Riposte and Dirty Fighting almost all the time with my Rogue so yes, after a while I find my main a bit lacking in the stamina department with Momentum activated, it's not that bad as to justify pumping points in Willpower but it doesn't leave much room for other special attacks like Punisher or Whirlwind (which I'd just skip with a Rogue anyway). Assassin helps getting back some of the stamina though.

Perhaps it has to do with the difficulty level, I used to play on Hard after my first run and I've now switched to Nightmare.

By the way, I know for a fact that Momentum only requires 24 points in Dexterity. I put 26 points in Dexterity because it is required for Dual Weapon Expertise (bonus to crits and bleeding wounds) and for the Edge (the special dagger that you get from buying the game before the 30th of November 2009) and lastly 26+items+Fade bonuses+Specializations gives enough Dexterity to have a very decent defense and a high attack rate (the weakness of the high Cunning Rogue in the early part of the game).

If you're intent on powergaming you can do like you said in your post: go to the Circle Tower for the Fade bonuses to spare some points that can be put in Cunning instead (that may account for roughly 3 points so it isn't that much but if we assume a powergaming stance then every point counts).

 

So I get the dagger if I kill Shale? I looted in that dwarven place she unlocks for you and she did it practically right before I started the Landsmeet after having her in my party the entire game although I did do Orzammar last so it could be that.

Just browsed some rogue items and it seems there are two daggers combined with Shale, one from the village one from the thaig both are nice but hte one from the thaig seems to be a wicked mage killer. Otherwise it seemed like most of the best stuff was bought from vendors. Like the Rosethorn which seems to be the best dagger and is obscenely expensive. True I didnt open any locks during my current run and I bought every specialisation manual I could find but getting an item for over 100g will take a while. Stealing/pickpocketing any profitable?

 

I didn't get what you meant. If you want the dagger from the Thaig you'll need Shale (not sure you have to have her in your party since the list for the Shaperate is what is needed to trigger this).

You'll save money on specializations because once they are unlocked they are unlocked for good.

 

Finished the game, the last battle was a bit of a letdown. Had a much harder time reaching the Archdemon than to actually defeat it despite Morrigan getting instagibbed right at the start.

My final thoughts about the game is that Bioware saw the success of WoW and thought that instead of trying to compete with them on the MMO market we create a singleplayer WoW with basically the exact same gameplay and user interface. And it works, it is fun, a bit short really and the battles tended to be a bit repetetive. Not really many bossfights either. Most hard fights were when you were swamped with enemies and the ones with a big enemy were usually a breeze. As we say in WoW: The adds were more troublesome than the boss.

Also quite disapointed by the gear, Bioware created a truckload of awesome massive armour sets and, well, not much else. All in all the amount of loot in the game is poor. Think I changed or upgraded my PC's gear a handful times in the game. Caster loot is a disgrace. It was still great fun and I probably have both one and two runs left in me. Want to try both warrior and rogue mostly to experience the game as it seems to have been inteded. Magic and mages may be extremely powerful but the game seems to have been made to be played as a warrior or rogue despite almost all npcs being warriors of kind or another.

I would like some more advice on where to spend my first skill and attribute points on my rogue and maybe where to pick up some nice stuff from the get go. I also wonder if Leliana is worthwhile and that maybe Alistair is enough as sole tank? I would liek to be able to get some use of all the two handers this time through though.

 

I'd start by putting some points in Dexterity up to 24 or 26 and then pumping points into Cunning. Going for the Fade bonuses may look like a good idea in theory but it also means that you're going to delay getting many useful abilities because you'll skip Dexterity. The few Dexterity points will also make a difference in your defense and your attack % (although you may still get through the Fade by using the different forms especially the Burning Man).

Dirty Fighting and Riposte are must haves for a Rogue. Don't overlook the usefulness of Below the Belt at the beginning of the game. It may not look like much (well it looks cool) but it's not like you'll have many abilities to use while Dirty Fighting and Riposte are unusable.

After getting Riposte you will probably aim for Momentum so build your character accordingly. Taking a rank in the fighting skill is not a bad move. Coercion can be good too if you're so inclined.

If you want to use poisons and traps investing points in these skills should be a priority although I'd consider picking at least the second rank in combat before that.

Lastly if you go for stealing you may want to maximize this and invest in stealth as well.

There are many different options that are opened to you. Given the number of options Leliana may be invaluable as she will allow you to build your character in a different way even if you leave her at the camp and only take her along for her quest and to level her up. Let's say you want to use the best traps and poisons but don't want to invest all your skill points in this and take ranks in coercion and survival, it's quite simple to use Leliana to craft traps, coatings and bombs. You'll only need one rank with your main to use them anyway. The same goes for herbalism and Morrigan. This tactics makes putting skill points in coercion less irritating (since that's one thing only your main can do and if you maximize it you won't be able to put these points elsewhere although to be fair it is somewhat balanced by the fact that you don't need to put ranks in tactics with your main if you control that character yourself).

Regarding stuff, I can't remember getting uber stuff in the Dwarf Commoner origin whereas you can get some gold in the Dwarf Noble origin.

Spoiler

Make sure you sell most of your stuff before it's too late especially if you got the deed from Lord Dace.

I bet you all know about the chest in Ostagar but I've found out that

Spoiler

you can get the sword from the elf servant who is running around the camp when you first get there.

In Dragon Age two handed weapons specialists are really good against bosses. Thanks to critical strike and mighty blow they go for high damage versus a high number of attacks (obviously they're not a DPS build) and they don't benefit from shields and protection from flanking (so theyr'e not good tanks) although they do have the indomitable mode that prevents them from being stunned or knocked down is priceless. Besides their abilities are perfect against heavily armoured foes (destroyer) and golems (shattering blows). Don't forget to use two handed sweep when surrounded. Sten and Oghren should be rather useful additions for most parties.

Of course if you take Leliana, Alistair and Sten (or Oghren) that doesn't leave any room for a magic user. Either you want a more difficult game and you skip Morrigan and Wynne or you can leave Leliana in the camp and only take her along when you need some crafting done.

Alistair is a good tank but since he'll be tanking you'll have to be careful not to let him die because he will likely be the one taking a beating for the entire party. Sword and Shield is a very solid set of abilities with a strong emphasis on defense but a few excellent attacks (pummel, bash, overpower, assault).

Warriors who use two handed weapons mainly rely on Strength whereas dual wielders need a rather high Dexterity (36 to get every ranks). A Sword and Shield Warrior needs both Dexterity and Strength. I'd suggest pumping points in Dexterity first and then go for Strength.

You should have at least enough points in Dexterity to get the maximum rank in Sword and Shield for your level and once you're there put a few points in Strength so it isn't left behind which means that after getting 26 points in Dexterity you can put all the rest in Strength.

The reason why I suggest putting points in Dexterity first is because at first you may want your defense to be higher rather than your hits to be harder.

If you don't want to spend to much time micromanaging him you should pick "passive" abilities first but don't overlook the usefulness of tactics when it comes to configuring the use of activated abilities. You can set stunning attacks to target foes who use magic or attack your main character and use one tactic slot to have Alistair drink a health poultices when his health gets too low (get ready to stack a lot of poultices if you do that). I wouldn't put taunt and threaten in the tactics list though since I'd rather control the moment when I'm going to use them (mainly when the NPCs realize that the tank is not the one hurting them or if they start going after my mage).

 

I've heard that the best way to powergame is to play a mage.

 

It is.

A mage's damage output is insane. Just think about AOE spells, and spell combos. Storm of the century is usually so powerful that when facing a horde or enemies in the deep roads, what was left to melee were a few stragglers - everything else perished, including the usual sub-bosses (emissaries and alphas). I have a party with a mage character and I tend to play with Leliana, Shale and Morrigan. It is difficult to underestimate the mayhem two mages in a party are able to cause.

I have also played with mage character, Morrigan and Wynne and some tank - powerful. Main char and Morrigan deal damage while Wynne heals, and tank tanks. I also used Shale to provide her support aura. I only tried that on normal battles though. I wouldn't approach real boss fights that way.

 

I for one find playing a Mage rather boring and unchallenging. The point is that you can really abuse some spells (casting through walls, abusing the fog of war) and even if you don't there is no denying that magic makes for a much easier game.

Having Wynne to heal your party allows you to relax and just take it easy.

Having three mages and a tank must be incredibly cheesy.

Mages make for interesting foes though.

That being said Rogues do have an edge. If you play your Rogue right an enemy Mage stands no chance: a stunned Mage is a dead Mage.

 

My first run I just brute forced my way through everything. Let Shale and Dog run around keeping aggro while my PC dished out death together with Morrigan although she was mostly there as a healer and eye candy. The last two bloodmagic spells are obscenely powerful and they are instant. The second to last both stuns and does mad dmg while still being instant and the last either controls a very powerful foe or does really nasty dmg. Fun but it got a bit repetetive as those two spells were enough for 4/5ths of all fights.

 

Despite what you may think at first, the primary stat for Alistair if you want him as a tank should be Dexterity. Strength is useful in order to equip the massive armours. Strength would also boost his damage per blow, but that's not really the point of having a tank. If you have enough strength to equip the items you want, the other points are best placed into Dexterity in order to boost his defence. Remember to use Shield Defence and Shield Wall- I would advise putting his talent points into the defensive shield skills first and foremost; the offensive shield line isn't all that great after the first couple of points. If you have a mage with Glyph of Warding, cast it on Alistair when he's tying down the enemy- it boosts his defence by a pretty decent 30 points IIRC.

 

Just remember that mages excel at doing AoE damage. Single-target damage is another thing entirely, and you need that too.

 

Yes, for me as well; he's almost always the first to go. I usually leave him at camp now.

I really don't know if I like this game or not. But I have not finished it, and I'm maybe only half-way though it.

The game lacks the depth of BG2 and the variation of IWD. The graphics are only so-so and the audio is terrible, like NWN. I do like the characters. The voice acting is very good, and I like how the characters argue a bit while adventuring (of course!), and the storyline is still pretty good, for its lack of depth.


As for the Mage's Tower, I liked the game OK until I got to the Mage's Tower, which I really hate. Plus, you have to do it twice, only the second time just all-blurry. I do like the shape-changing, which I thought was fun for the first 1 or 2 sections.

My disappointment with the mage's tower is that I was expecting something like Watcher's Keep, which was real fun and kind of spooky. Instead, you get to walk into the same 3 dozen ransacked rooms, over-and-over again, while being attacked by pretty much the same creatures over-and-over again, and then you get to do it all over again once you get to the top.

The only question I have is, what took them so long to make this game?