Dragon Age 3: Inquisition announced

[Mem]

I'm using keyboard and mouse. Which dragon was it?

One in Western approach,throws fireballs at you.

 

[bystander36]

One in Western approach,throws fireballs at you.

Ah, just make sure all your characters have a quick escape, and make sure they are disabled in the tactical tab. When he starts to cast his fireball, hit pause, and unpause until it starts to leave his mouth, at which point, have all your characters use their quick escape abilities to scatter. You also want to make sure your characters stay near him, like with any other dragon. It also gets easier if you invest in +4 potion slots. I often turn off barrier casting as well, so I can be sure to cast it on anyone who is going to get caught by a fireball or your tank.

It helps to have Vivienne for that one. When he guard's up, have her spirit blade his guard down. She gets crazy bonuses against guard.

 

[Red Hawk]

Killed my first dragon, in the Exalted Plains...I kind of felt a little sad for it as it got to the end of the fight and it was clearly acting wounded, struggling, and in pain...

 

[zinfamous]

One in Western approach,throws fireballs at you.

Hissing Wastes gave me the most trouble of all the dragons...I think Western Approach was the easiest for me. I think I had the correct party going in, and I was probably way overleveled.

A few things I have learned:

--dragon melee damage is pretty much shit. A guard-heavy warrior is more or less invincible. That warrior's damage is probably going to be terrible, but dragons don't hurt them. However, you can be overwhelmed if that particular dragon has

Spoiler

baby wyvern adds

. I have taken them solo with my shield warrior for about 15 minutes after rest of party wiped, but eventually capitulated because of

Spoiler

3rd wave of baby adds

--If you have at least some of the doors open in the Crystal desert rooms (the cave where you spend all of those moon shards that you find everywhere), then dragons can barely hurt your inquisitor--all of the elemental resistance.
--Always bring your opposite elemental mage.
--If you've upgrading restore potions to have AoE effect on nearby party members, these are great if you have health problems. Same goes for elemental resistance tonics.
--Sera, or any ranged rogue with the tonic-based specialization is a beast against dragons. I only learned this late, but if you have lightning tonic and the focus skill at level 2 (hundred blades or whatever it is called), that's ~25-30% health hit on the opening of the battle, just form her. It's nuts

 

[zinfamous]

Killed my first dragon, in the Exalted Plains...I kind of felt a little sad for it as it got to the end of the fight and it was clearly acting wounded, struggling, and in pain...

large targets like dragons, and giants, have multiple target areas, like limbs, chest, head. if you pound on the legs of the dragon, as you most likely will for most of melee, you can injure it and force it to stumble and bend over for a spell, getting to more critical areas like its head.

I love doing that to Giants--they hop on one leg for a few seconds, then fall over and you just pound on their head.

 

[bystander36]

--dragon melee damage is pretty much shit. A guard-heavy warrior is more or less invincible. That warrior's damage is probably going to be terrible, but dragons don't hurt them.

My first play through seemed to be this way. My 2nd play through, which was after the patches, did not. Cassandra kept getting 2 shot and I had to change my strategy against them by saving barrier to keep her constantly protected. I noticed in the attributes screen that her melee protection was about -200%, as well as range defense and magic defense. I don't know if that was a bug, or what, but none of my melee characters had better than -150% in all 3 categories (this number should be positive).

 

[zinfamous]

My first play through seemed to be this way. My 2nd play through, which was after the patches, did not. Cassandra kept getting 2 shot and I had to change my strategy against them by saving barrier to keep her constantly protected. I noticed in the attributes screen that her melee protection was about -200%, as well as range defense and magic defense. I don't know if that was a bug, or what, but none of my melee characters had better than -150% in all 3 categories (this number should be positive).

OK, I should amend that by saying player-controlled guard warriors are invincible...

I notice through my so-far 1.01 playthroughs that NPC guard warriors really have no interest in keeping their guard up, which is goddamn annoying.

 

[bystander36]

OK, I should amend that by saying player-controlled guard warriors are invincible...

I notice through my so-far 1.01 playthroughs that NPC guard warriors really have no interest in keeping their guard up, which is goddamn annoying.

I still say something changed after the patch. Prior to the patch, my warriors did not take much melee damage, but after the patch, they were getting knocked around hard. Perhaps they changed how much they focused on guard, but I'm not sure about that. They may have made dragon melee harder, or warriors defense worse.

 

[pcslookout]

So how is multiplayer ?

 

[Bateluer]

So how is multiplayer ?

The P2W model was discussed a few pages back.

 

[Red Hawk]

The P2W model was discussed a few pages back.

I wouldn't even call it pay to win. It's not PVP, so you're not getting a competitive advantage on other players. If anything, you want to be in a high difficulty match and have someone who's spent $30 paying for boost packs -- it means you have a higher chance of making it to the end and getting more credits to spend on boost packs yourself!

 

[bystander36]

I'm going to amend what I wrote earlier about dragon damage. I'm pretty sure most my last game, that my warriors were all bugged, perhaps from the patch, but I'm unsure.

From the time I noticed that they were taking massive damage on tough fights, they had approximately -200% in melee, magic and ranged defense, and that was with really good armor. Which meant they were taking about 2 times the damage they would without any defense. At the time, I thought this may have just been how they balanced warriors. However, my new game, all my warriors have 0 to 10% in melee, magic and ranged defense, exactly matching what their armor says they should. They are level 10 in Skyhold.

My experience with dragons punishing my warriors is likely a bug.

 

[flexy]

I am a still waiting for my Z87 board and 4770k in the mail.

Means I am sitting here with an ancient Q6600 system, although overclocked.
My GTX 660 TI sure also is not state of the art anymore.

I am absolutely AMAZED how fluid this game runs on my machine!! I obviously don't have any AA options activated, but this game looks already extremely good and jaggies are not apparent like, say, with Far Cry 4.

Again...I have an ancient system with 4GB and a GTX 660 and this game runs extremely smooth. This sure is not a game that demands a high-end rig to run. It's clear to me this game was possibly planned as a MMO, supposed to run "well" on a wide variety of machines.

 

[Red Hawk]

I am a still waiting for my Z87 board and 4770k in the mail.

Means I am sitting here with an ancient Q6600 system, although overclocked.
My GTX 660 TI sure also is not state of the art anymore.

I am absolutely AMAZED how fluid this game runs on my machine!! I obviously don't have any AA options activated, but this game looks already extremely good and jaggies are not apparent like, say, with Far Cry 4.

Again...I have an ancient system with 4GB and a GTX 660 and this game runs extremely smooth. This sure is not a game that demands a high-end rig to run. It's clear to me this game was possibly planned as a MMO, supposed to run "well" on a wide variety of machines.

Er, I don't think there was any "planning as an MMO", as in they planned it to be an MMO at some point. Scalability likely comes from the fact that it was made as a cross-gen game, playable even on the lowly Xbox 360 and PS3. And the 660 Ti/overclocked Q6600 combo is as good as, if not better, than next-gen consoles.

 

[chavo12345]

Any of you get clipped out of bounds with Varric when you use Hail of Arrows + Leaping Shot combo? This has happened to me 3-4 times each dragon fight, and each time Varric clips out of bounds, it resets the whole battle again (Dragon is 100% HP while everyone in my party is almost dead)... Also when you deal tons of damage to dragons they kind of skip around and twitch.

 

[bystander36]

Any of you get clipped out of bounds with Varric when you use Hail of Arrows + Leaping Shot combo? This has happened to me 3-4 times each dragon fight, and each time Varric clips out of bounds, it resets the whole battle again (Dragon is 100% HP while everyone in my party is almost dead)... Also when you deal tons of damage to dragons they kind of skip around and twitch.

No, but I assume you have him too far away from the battle. I normally have everyone within about 10m of the dragon.

 

[escrow4]

I am a still waiting for my Z87 board and 4770k in the mail.

Means I am sitting here with an ancient Q6600 system, although overclocked.
My GTX 660 TI sure also is not state of the art anymore.

I am absolutely AMAZED how fluid this game runs on my machine!! I obviously don't have any AA options activated, but this game looks already extremely good and jaggies are not apparent like, say, with Far Cry 4.

Again...I have an ancient system with 4GB and a GTX 660 and this game runs extremely smooth. This sure is not a game that demands a high-end rig to run. It's clear to me this game was possibly planned as a MMO, supposed to run "well" on a wide variety of machines.

Define fluid. I'd like to see some Afterburner screenshots.

 

[frozentundra123456]

I am a still waiting for my Z87 board and 4770k in the mail.

Means I am sitting here with an ancient Q6600 system, although overclocked.
My GTX 660 TI sure also is not state of the art anymore.

I am absolutely AMAZED how fluid this game runs on my machine!! I obviously don't have any AA options activated, but this game looks already extremely good and jaggies are not apparent like, say, with Far Cry 4.

Again...I have an ancient system with 4GB and a GTX 660 and this game runs extremely smooth. This sure is not a game that demands a high-end rig to run. It's clear to me this game was possibly planned as a MMO, supposed to run "well" on a wide variety of machines.

Sorry, have to disagree. I think the game runs marginally at best for the hardware it requires. Not by any means a mess like ACU, but I have a sandy bridge i5 and a HD7770, and performance is far from outstanding. I can only run medium-ish settings, and some of the textures look absolutely awful. Like some kind of plastic action figure. Adjusting texture setting sometimes cures this, but then a patch comes and the awful textures are back.

On my what I suppose is a low end system now in the era of high vram demands, I thought Tomb Raider, Metro LL and Witcher 2 all were at least equal in visuals and performance vs DA:I. (that is at settings my system will run adequately).

BTW, a 660Ti may be long in the tooth, but it is still quite powerful.

 

[chavo12345]

No, but I assume you have him too far away from the battle. I normally have everyone within about 10m of the dragon.

I uploaded a small video of it here: http://youtu.be/fR_KhhmGNDs

He kinda flys out of bounds lol

 

[bystander36]

I uploaded a small video of it here: http://youtu.be/fR_KhhmGNDs

He kinda flys out of bounds lol

It looked like he fell through the ground. Definitely a bug.

 

[zinfamous]

I uploaded a small video of it here: http://youtu.be/fR_KhhmGNDs

He kinda flys out of bounds lol

lol.

did it also reset the fight, or was that just a cut on the video?

 

[chavo12345]

lol.

did it also reset the fight, or was that just a cut on the video?

Yep, the Dragon goes back to sleep and is at full HP again (When he was at half HP before Varric spazzed out), so I just reloaded afterwards to try it again.

 

[Red Hawk]

Sorry, have to disagree. I think the game runs marginally at best for the hardware it requires. Not by any means a mess like ACU, but I have a sandy bridge i5 and a HD7770, and performance is far from outstanding. I can only run medium-ish settings, and some of the textures look absolutely awful. Like some kind of plastic action figure. Adjusting texture setting sometimes cures this, but then a patch comes and the awful textures are back.

On my what I suppose is a low end system now in the era of high vram demands, I thought Tomb Raider, Metro LL and Witcher 2 all were at least equal in visuals and performance vs DA:I. (that is at settings my system will run adequately).

BTW, a 660Ti may be long in the tooth, but it is still quite powerful.

Well his 660 Ti is a good deal better than your HD 7770.

 

[Bateluer]

Sorry, have to disagree. I think the game runs marginally at best for the hardware it requires. Not by any means a mess like ACU, but I have a sandy bridge i5 and a HD7770, and performance is far from outstanding. I can only run medium-ish settings, and some of the textures look absolutely awful. Like some kind of plastic action figure. Adjusting texture setting sometimes cures this, but then a patch comes and the awful textures are back.

On my what I suppose is a low end system now in the era of high vram demands, I thought Tomb Raider, Metro LL and Witcher 2 all were at least equal in visuals and performance vs DA:I. (that is at settings my system will run adequately).

BTW, a 660Ti may be long in the tooth, but it is still quite powerful.

What kind of miracles are you expecting from a 2 and a half year old low end graphics card? Running DAI at medium-ish settings with that card is right in line with what I'd expect.

 

[Red Hawk]

I'm looking to test the game on my brother's stock Q6600 and Radeon HD 5770 once I give the game to him for Christmas. He uses a 1440x900 monitor. Hopefully I can at least get it to stick with textures and mesh on high...