Ug! Well I found my problem, it was lots and lots of dust clogging up the cooler on the CPU. I opened up my tower this morning and found it filthy inside. Once I cleaned it up, and put everything back together, it ran perfectly again. I guess it was the overheating that set off the smoke alarm the other day. I repeat: Ug!
I’d like to know this as well. I’ve been making my choices based on what I think make the most sense in a roleplay way, but I don’t know if it matters.
33 hours in and I’m still doing stuff rated for level 4 to 7 with a level 10-11 crew. I spent too much time clearing the Hinterlands, Storm Coast, and the Mire, I guess.
I can believe that. DA:I certainly makes my system chuff along at around 60C. Overclocked but I have a lot of fans in there keeping things moving as well. Runs problem free for me though – no crashes or lockups yet.
My crew is level 10-11 as well and still sometimes going back into the Hinterlands for things but I’ve noticed a lot of level 9-10 opponents in there. Not sure if the game raises the floor on opponent levels or if the fringes of the region always had them there.
I didn’t even really think about it until tonight but I can’t say that I miss healing spells. Or at least I thought the change have a bigger impact. But the potions (healing and regen) fill the void well enough and it’s nice to not have to commit spell picks to heals.
I do miss them a bit, and at some places you are at the mercy of finding the next supply cache which I find a bit straining on my suspension of disbelief since it reminds me of checkpoints. And in the end you have to commit spell picks to barriers anyways, and warriors need to grab some guard-generating skills. Bioware claimed that the change was because they didn’t want to design combat encounters with potentially infinite healing on the player’s side, but now we have instead potentially infinite guard on tanks and potentially infinite barrier on Knight-Enchanter mages so I’m not really seeing their point. Of course I just generally like healing which if MMOs are a good measuring stick makes me a part of a minority. Most people seem to just like DPSing.
Doesn’t matter much though, given I play on Normal which is completely trivial 95% of the time and mildly challenging the rest 5%. If I do another play-through on Hard later on it might annoy me more then.
I"m not too sure I’m reading your post correctly, but 'll throw this out there.
At the beginning of the game in the prologue there was a supply cache, along with a popup that tells you find these supply caches to refill your potions. I’ve never found a single one of these.
Eventually I figured out that to restock the non healing potions you visit the table in camp where you assign potions to party members, and click on the potion you want to restock.
There’s supply caches in some longer encounters. When you are doing those parts of the game, you never know if there’s a cache after this battle, or whether there’ll be another battle as hard as this instead before the next cache. As I said, not much an issue on Normal but on Hard you might end up blowing all your potions, expecting to be able to resupply … and instead run into another difficult fight you need potions for. As the supply caches only refill your normal healing potions, you can’t even really rely on the regen potions to help you bridge all the gaps.
Ironically, after typing that I didn’t miss healing spells, I hit the final phase of the final major fight in “Act I” and struggled through with only two healing potions left. Took too many tries to get through that where being able to heal on demand would have made a big difference. All in all though I’m still content with the system as is.
After visiting the mages first, I went Templar. The “ally” the mages had hooked up with sealed the deal for me. Plus, I was looking to build an army and the Templars seemed to fit that want better than babysitting a bunch of cranky mages always getting possessed or summoning ancient evils or having a fit about the Circle/Chantry/Templars.
In a sense it doesn’t matter since you get the mage companion during the mage support session later in the game anyway. I assume the same applies if you go mages – you’ll get the companion from the Templar plot line regardless.
Am I the only one who keeps hitting Space to pause combat? That’s usually the standard and I am pretty sure all the other DA games worked that way too. Might have to remap it.
I think this is one of the biggest choices in the game for the game itself (other choices might be bigger for the world but this one changes the plot for you the most). There’s tons of quests and dialogue and lore and whatnot that depends on which one of the two you choose, so more than one being better than the other it’s just a sort of fork in the road with neither direction necessarily better but both certainly different from each other.
Man, the straight male romance options are really uninspired. Cassandra who does nothing for me and Josie who I see once in a blue moon when I’m not trekking over the landscape looking for minerals (well, and saving the world I guess). I’m making a half-assed attempt at Josephine just 'cause I figure what’s a DA game without some dating sim action but… eh. At this point, I want an option to romance Scout Harding. I admire her pluck.
I suppose the F/F options aren’t really better since that just replaces Cassandra for Sera and frankly I want to put Sera and Cole both in a sack with some rocks and toss it in the river.
She’s annoys me too but then I also find she has some of the funniest lines so kinda ok with her. I liked how she dealt with the jerk when you first meet her.
Iron Bull’s humor is pretty good too. Fun to talk to.
I’ve been trying to get Cassandra’s approval but she has a major pole up her ass. Still, I like her character.
Vivienne is smoking hot but shot me down in a most perfunctory manner (Sera was encouraging though). Too haughty for my tastes.
I like Leliana but she’s hard to read. Interesting character though.
Varric is, well, Varric. I want to like him more than I do but can’t really get there. Still, he is kind of interesting.
Josephine is intriguing.
Cullen…meh. Boring.
Soals…meh. Boring.
Cole…just met him but seems emo.
Blackwall…dunno. Don’t deal with him much for some reason.
There are a few left I haven’t gotten yet but I think for all her annoyances Sera is one of the more interesting characters.
