There is Dragon Age: Origins Guide.
I had the opposite : since Alistair and I were in loooove, I wholeheartedly supported the Queen’s ambitions - what did I care ? I was going to go back to the Dales and leave Ferelden anyway, hopefully with Alistair in tow. Alistair was thrilled to dodge the throne as well.
When the whole sacrifice angle was brought up, I decided to do it myself, but when the moment arrived, Alistair said “If I’m going to be a king, I want to be a good king, and die right now”. Didn’t even give me a choice, the selfish bastard.
ETA : @Jihi : yup, it’s possible, but I think only if you’re a male human and don’t kill Loghain
I finished it last night. The last battle was epic!!
I actually went through two Landsmeet options before the final battle (so I got to do the final battle twice, which was way cool).
[SPOILER]First time around I let Alistair fight Loghain (who he automatically kills at the end of the duel), then I picked Alistair as king. He dumped my poor little Dalish elf, going on about how, as king, he’ll be expected to have a kid and it’s a bad idea for Grey Wardens (tainted blood and all) to make babies :rolleyes:. He wouldn’t agree to keeping a mistress either. His little appreciation meter didn’t drop, but did change from “Love” to “Friendly.” So I made him sleep with Morrigan for revenge! Well sorta. You get to see a LOT more Alistair in that scene than in the campsite love scene.
Second time around I let Alistair fight & kill Loghain, but chose Anora as queen. I did the Morrigan ritual thing again just for entertainment :o - and because I really didn’t want to die at the end. The only difference in this version is that my character didn’t get dumped and I got an extra dialog option with Alistair at the very end. I wouldn’t say they “lived happily ever after,” which is what I was hoping for, but at least they stayed together.[/SPOILER]
I started a male human noble and a female human mage last week. I think I want the guy to be the super friendly, everybody-loves-him-even-the-dudes type. My goal is to get to 100 with all the NPCs. I don’t know if that’s possible since some of the story options give you conflicting responses from your party members, but I’m hoping I can make up for it in other ways. I’m going evil vixen with the mage :D.
An interesting thing I noticed was that, as a male character, the opinions of the female npcs seems to increase more quickly than the opinions of the male npcs. And vice versa for female characters.
Not quite the detail I was looking for, but it’s still pretty solid.
I’m not looking forward to the finale. I lost my crowd control when I refused to impregnate Morrigan, nor to let anyone else impregnate her. So my only mage is Wynne and she doesn’t have the same crowd control and debuffing abilities. This game really wants you to be a mage.
I had that exact issue myself in the endgame. I made it much harder than it would have been otherwise. But A chellenge is a good thing. 
My current playthrough as a sort of nice PC (good at heart, but no-nonsense and terse) ended with all but two NPCs at 100%. Only Oghren and Zevran were left behind at 70ish, the first because short of taking him along there really aren’t that many way to raise his appreciation as he doesn’t seem to talk much and the booze only goes so far, the second because I wanted to keep him dark and mysterious, for my next character to explore. So it’s very possible.
Heck even after dumping Leliana mid-romance and badly breaking her heart, showering her in flowers got her back to full friendship, to the point that she giggled and asked for details about my extracurricular activities with Alistair, which I found a little disturbing :).
I did keep Morrigan in camp for the whole game, though - she’s very, very hard to please in the field if you’re not the kind of person who answers “please good sir, my starving little puppy with cancer has been raped by darkspawn and thrown down the well !” with “So ?” 
I also stash Morrigan back at camp. It has been some years since KOTOR but it’s kind of disappointing that Bioware is still reusing the Influence/Approval system. Give me some ways to change the darn mindset of my companions please. Morrigan is a nag, nag, nag all the way. Wyne, thankfully, is slightly better. Yah, there are gifts to offset the problem. Which takes up valuable inventory space. grumble
The best way is to get them to 100% is don’t bring them along. Memorise all the fights in Lothering, get Lelindra ASAP and swap her for Morrigan, then do all the quests, and rely on gifts and chit-chat. But Sten is probably going to be tough.
I also hit a bug where after bringing Lelindra to 100%, I brought Morrigan’s approval up to 80+ and the next time I talk to Leindra she was accusing me of two-timing, but I didn’t do anything, I just talk to Morrigan to raise her approval (heh). I bet you get the same problem with the elf.
Bioware having bugs in romances? We veterans of the Jaheira romance know that doesn’t happen in Bioware games.
I’m getting my ass kicked by a Revenant fight. I play a cold-specced mage with a bit of healing; my party is otherwise Leliana, Wynne, Aleister. Does anyone have any suggestions?
You shouldn’t be. Alistair should be taking up his attention, Leliana should be stabbing him in the back, Wynne should be healing them, and you should be trying to keep the Revenant in a block of ice for as long as you can.
After that, it should be gg for the Revenant.
Seems a hair mage heavy for a Revenant. They’re immune to most staff damage I believe and to cold damage (not that you shouldn’t be trying to freeze him constantly just be aware that’s not how you’ll hurt him). Unless you’ve spec’d Wynne into elemental/debuff I’d say drop her. The low level heal spell simply doesn’t keep up with the amount of damage a Rev puts out so you’ll be chugging health potions anyway.
Shale is the obvious alternate choice followed by Sten though he folds easy unless you have him in blood dragon armor or some other top tier armor. Also the Rev has several AOE sword swipes so make absolutely sure that Leliana (unless you turned her into a Dual Rogue and even then you’ll have to keep your eye on her constantly or she’ll drop fast) and your Mage is out of his way even if they don’t have argo. Obviously if the Rev has weaker skeletons around you’ll want whoever your main tank is keeping its attention while you use your party to clear out everyone else.
Though really past level 10 or so Revs should cease to be a problem no matter what team set-up you have. It’s only when they can kill your tank in 3 blows that they are unstoppable.
For a revenant you want mage heavy. Melee take way too much damage even if the tank holds aggro the whole time. You want one tank and 3 ranged, preferably casters but archers would do. If you have force field its a breeze, just force field the tank and try not to pull aggro from him, otherwise just tank and spank.
Does anyone use archers? I don’t.
Archers are great on single mobs. a 420 Point critical shot is pretty sweet.
I don’t even know what that means.
I could also get in there, and, you know, hack the crap out of that poor target creature.
Against a revenant the more people you have in there hacking the crap out of it the more healing you will need. Archers won’t do as much damage as a melee but it also won’t be getting hit by what appear to be 360 degree sword slashes the revenants do by default. Keeping one guy in heavy armor and a shield alive is a lot easier than 3.
I disagree. Unless you have tons of direct damage spells mages can’t do anything to a Rev with their normal attack. Just shoot it with a mage staff and all you’ll see is ‘immune immune immune’ endlessly. They’re also immune to the cold tree. Now if you’re using one mage as a stun lock and another as a lighting/fire damager I suppose that might work. But I doubt his inclusion of Wynne really fits that.
I approve of archers though. They’re not great but they’re far better then people give them credit for. Rapid fire gives good sustained damage unless they come across something that’s hard to hit then aim gives solid (though slow) damage. Outside of Mana clash arrow of slaying gives the easiest one shot damage that I’ve found.
Well i always have least two direct damage spells on my mages and they do plenty of damage to revenants with those, i always have to be careful about pulling aggro away from the tank with the mages, never with the archers.
It means that a good archer can use their top-tier abilities to utterly rape the strongest enemies in the game. Rape rape rape. Raep [sic].