OK - I went to Circle Tower but I didn’t find anything like a super awesome sword or anything.
What am I supposed to be getting at the Circle Tower?
I assume he meant Wynne in your party since she’s usually where people pick up a primary healer (vs speccing Morrigan to be healer).
Also, by going to the Circle Tower before finishing Redcliffe you can petition the Circle for aid in healing the possessed kid and have someone enter the Fade to rescue him without needing anyone’s sacrifice
Thanks!
Opps, I just spend the last two hours of playtime I got trying to climb all the Basalt formations in Storm Coast, just to see if there were any Easter eggs or anything, instead of doing something useful in the game.
But mainly it’s the 20 odd attribute points you can acquire that make it key.
So you got through the tower ok then? Getting the hang of it?
Is it that many or are you referring to the methods of glitching extra points out of it? I never really found that necessary and actually use the Skip the Fade mod now to avoid the whole tedious thing altogether.
I’m definitely learning as I go, for example it took me a while to realize that characters were getting quickly killed off because they had injuries that needed to be healed and that for some reason Alistair looks great on paper but gets his ass handed to him in big fights.
I figured ~3 per attribute but apparently it is 21. Listed below in the spoilers box (though I’m not sure it’s spoilers worthy)
Strength: 4
Dexterity: 4
Willpower: 4
Magic: 2
Cunning: 5
Constitution: 2
Ah, ok. For some reason I thought it was +1 in each but that might be because DA:I has a similar opportunity. I also know there’s ways to get more points (rapid clicking or something?) but it’s been so long since I’ve done the DA:O Fade segment that I couldn’t remember the details. The Skip the Fade mod automatically grants you the points at the appropriate time so I had forgotten how many there were.
Patch is live!
According to the Bioware forums, the patch hurts worse than it helps :eek: It seems that on PC the graphics settings were locked onto the lowest possible quality. So everyone is stuck with shiny plastic hair, skin complexions are screwed up (scars, freckles etc don’t show up), and background graphics stink.
There’s no way to roll back the patch if it borks up your settings, either. The forums are screaming for a quick fix but who knows when it will happen.
At least you can keep Origin offline and not update automatically, so it looks like I’ll be playing offline until they make a patch for the patch.
I was hoping there would be something in the patch about making Loot easier to see. I know I am getting old but I have hard time seeing it even using the V key.
I’m running in and out of the thread to ask one question:
If you spared the Arishok in DA2, does he show up in this game? I loved that guy.
There is now a hotfix. They did post a workaround before the hotfix came out too.
Loot highlights stay on longer, plus the mini map shows dots where the loot is.
No Arishok as far as Ive seen In fact, no Qunari at all besides Iron Bull, which is disappointing.
Thanks! I must have missed that patch note. Also does the downloading the patch now give me the hot fix or is it a separate download?
Origin will download everything for you, once you turn updates on. 
I ended up having a moment of weakness and buying this for the PS4 when Amazon had it as the daily deal. If nothing else, it’s nice to finally use my PS4 to play an actual game. I’m something like 30 hours in now and I’m enjoying the game, but not in the same way as Origins; by that I mean that DA:O pushed the “old-school RPG” buttons, while this pushes the “MMO/addiction/completionist” buttons. Overall I strongly prefer the former, but there’s room for the latter since I haven’t done the MMO thing for a few years now.
Things I Don’t Like:
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This may just be the new normal for consoles, since I admittedly prefer the PC as a primary platform, or it may be this game specifically: this is easily the most obviously buggy console game I’ve played. It has outright crashed 4 times, and there have been some very noticeable graphic bugs from time to time. Also, the load times are right on the edge of what’s bearable.
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The big downside of the MMO/completionist design philosophy in two words: jumping puzzles. These are only fun when used sparingly to begin with, and DA:I blows way past sparingly. It gets even worse because of…
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There are seriously people who prefer to play RPGs with controllers and analog sticks to go with loose character movement in a kind of iffy camera environment, instead of a full overhead camera and K/M a la DA:O? I think this plays into the fact that I’m just not that big a fan of the third-person action “revolution” of the last few years, but it really sucks when you’re trying to jump up a mountain to get a shard and you don’t have the movement precision of Super Mario 64 20 years ago.
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The aforementioned “too much content for how many levels are in the game” - I’m maybe 40-50% through the content and I’m level 15. Not a huge deal but kind of annoying. Add more levels or remove content are both equally valid ways of fixing this, by the way: “fetch” quests may not be something they should have imported from MMOs.
Things I Do Like
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This is easily the prettiest console game I’ve ever played (occasional bugs notwithstanding). I don’t care that much about graphics and I am still impressed both in general and by specific situations (often involving dragons).
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I’m not thrilled by how much they’ve simplified the character building, but the ability trees and classes they’ve got in there are really great. If I had another 60 hours, I’d probably play through again as a warrior.
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I’m still a sucker for the BioWare style storylines and dialogues. Even when they’re not good, they’re entertaining, and they’re something that gives their games a real edge over stuff in the Skyrim mold. Fun supporting characters, too, outside of Cole (unless there’s some really good Cole development I just haven’t gotten to yet).
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The combat toes the line between “fun” and “tedious” - random pointless encounters with wolves and bears who have scaled to my level and have a bunch of HP, I’m looking at you - but usually ends up on the right side. Most of the bigger set pieces are really cool and delightfully chaotic. I can’t imagine playing this on Nightmare without a much better tactical zoom; good on anyone who’s managing.
In summary, I like it and I’m certainly addicted to it for the moment, but I’d call it “good” more than “great”. A 7 out of 10, if you will (using the rating scale that we use for every other entertainment product, not the video game scale where you get a 7 as long as it runs and anything below an 8 is at least half terrible).
I agree with most of your analysis.
The game went full on action adventure mode with a side of MMO, and its the WORSE for it.
Myself, I’m kind of burning out on it. Something I never thought would happen with a dragon age game, considering that even the terrible 2nd one I played through 2 and a half times… well, that last half time was more like 10 short attempts to replay until I got to shit mountain and I was like, no, I can’t do this again. The first game I played easily 4+ times, and enjoyed every one. Mods certainly helped keep the experience a bit fresher too.
In the case of inquisition, I came in certain that I would 100% everything in nightmare difficulty and then immediately replay with another class.
I had turn down the difficulty from nightmare to hard, because the tactical camera SUCKS BIG DONKEY BUTT. There’s no way anyone that worked on the old BG games is still working at Bioware in any sort of capacity. This tactical cam was designed by someone who only ever played console games, and who enjoys clow clickers on ipad the rest of the time.
Working an encounter tactically is a laborious process that actively fights you every step of the way, and only helps to remove the immersion of combat. And so, in resigning myself to only using it on big tough boss battle and going full action, button mashy mode, I had to lower the difficulty because in nightmare, it’s very hard to make progress without exercising direct control your party, as doing so is liable to use up a lot of your potion stash.
So this franchise went from being a pretty great example of tactical gameplay in combat, to being a mediocre example of actiony combat. 
As mentioned, I thought for sure I’d be 100%'ing this, but I’m just mostly burned out at this time. The huge expanses filled to the brim with flowers and rocks to collect, rings to recover, pamphlets to read, garbage to stash, burned body number 4,154 to inspect… It’s all in such stark contrast to the BG games, where the majority of sidequests where fleshed out and interesting adventures of their own. And they just aren’t doing it for me.
I finally got to the Emerald Graves last night, only my I think third large area, and I knew I should have been impressed by the beauty of the place, but I mostly just found myself groaning at yet another fetch quest, more random wolves to slap around, and more fade rifts to close.
I think I’m going to take a short break, since the expansion for Rome II is hitting tomorrow (THIS IS SPARTA!!!), and I’ll come back to the game later this week.
But I think I’m going to mainline it from here on out. Just going do to the story missions, and I might even lower the difficulty to normal. I only care about my companions and the story at this point. The gameplay lost me several hours ago, I think. More damning, I have no interest in a replay anytime soon. Maybe next year, if I’m not too busy with Attila and Elite, and possibly the Witcher 3.
You have to view it as a world of things to do, not that you have to do everything in the world. The only truly essential stuff has the green clouds floating over it on the War Room map. Everything else is optional although you might want to do it for the rewards (gold, companion approval, contacts, etc). But you don’t have to pick up rocks, pick flowers, close rifts, take over forts, save anyone’s cow, find their ring, talk to their mom, scout out the hills, kill dragons, solve elven riddles or pretty much anything else. Just do the stuff you want to do.
I’m a little amused by people comparing DA:I to DA:O and then speaking disparaging of fetch quests (not you specifically, this is a common gripe). DA:O was full of fetch quests. Go get this scroll for the Shaperate, go get some sticks for this elf, get some healing herbs while you’re out, go give a message from this guy to this guy, etc. Fetch quests weren’t imported, they’ve always been a part of Dragon Age.