Dragon Age: Origins

Always have a rogue in your party - Leliana qualifies so just keep her in the party if you aren't a rogue and level up her lockpicking ability (or just raise cunning and dual daggers - you min/max so I suggest that). If you want more info on how that works let me know, but otherwise I don't want to break the game down into mechanics.

I wanted to like Sten, but I rarely use him. There is a point later in the game where you run 2 parties at once so I recommend having him just in case he makes your 8 deep.

Charaters will always stay one level behind you if they aren't earning their own xp. So if you park a character at level 4, and then decide to use them when you are 16 then they'll be level 15 and you can just level them up. You can keep everyone's levels up to date in camp.

When you go to the world map the party camp is in the top right corner in a seperate box.

You need Solider's peak to get a chest. I didn't end up using mine much though. You still have to travel back there to access the chest.

I seemed to always find one backpack on each vendor - or at least some of the vendors.

** POSSIBLE SPOILERS **


I'm sure there's better characters than others, but I think it's really personal preference on who you use. Leliana is excellent for opening chests and making poisons for the one quest in Lothering. The dog is good too with his area of effect stun and damage.

Sten is just another character you can choose to have. He is a warrior that favors two-handed weapons. They tend to do massive hits and their stuns are also helpful. You can NOT save Sten. But if Lothering is destroyed and you don't save Sten, you cannot return to get him.

All the characters level with you, and I believe they save their points for you to distribute if you choose. I think its one or two levels difference of yours and theirs.

I think its after Lothering that you can visit the Party camp. Its a little icon in the upper right hand corner that looks like a campfire.

The only chest from an un-modded DA:O is in Warden's Keep. I believe there is a mod that puts a storage chest in the Party camp.

Backpacks can be bought from various vendors. Just keep a look out and scroll all the way to the bottom to see if there is one there.

Hope all that helps!

How does the diminishing returns on gifts work? It diminishes if you give the same exact gift to a character twice? Or after giving ANY gift to a character? I'm wondering if I can give these clowns these gifts right now to free up inventory space, or save them for later.

I don't know for sure, but I think that the gift approval rating goes down after each gift you give (for each character). It's wise to give the really good ones first, so unfortunately you may have to save them. :(

There is a Dragon Age wiki if you want to look up more information yourself. Here is a link to their gift section, which is pretty spoiler free, since it just breaks down which gift each party member prefers. It also explains diminishing returns, if the character would consider it a big gift or a small one.

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Gifts

You don't need all the gifts to max out approval, btw. I always had leftover gifts in my inventory when my party members were at 100 approval. The chest in Warden's Keep actually proved useful as I would toss extra gifts in there for later if I really needed them. Some gifts are plot related and trigger video scenes. If you don't recruit Sten, you'll never see his personal quests or learn more about him.

You don't have to recruit all party members, but there's no harm in agreeing to let them join and just leaving them in camp. Here's a few reasons why you want different party members:

1) There's "flavor" dialogue that will trigger when you're out and about in the world and you can hear them talking about you. The conversations are based on who is in your party. A few examples are Zevran giving Alistair lovemaking tips and Alistair freaking out that they're even discussing it at all, Sten and the dog just chatting (since they respect each other as warriors), and so on. I've had different people in my party in each playthrough and each major areas and it's almost always a different experience each time. I hear something about them that I didn't before.

2) There are several "dream" type of events in the game and you get to see different scenes based on who is with you. This is most notable in the Fade when you're clearing the Circle Tower and when you're on the Sacred Ashes quest.

3) There's always a possibility that there'll be a DA2 sequel and why shoot yourself in the foot if the party members you didn't keep end up being useful later on? BioWare's other game, Mass Effect, was set up the same way and now the sequel is coming out in a few weeks. There are consequences in the sequel regarding what you did with specific party members (did you let this person die? why? etc). For example, if you leave Sten to rot in Lothering, what happens when you actually run into his people in the sequel? Will they be cold to you as they are to everyone else or will they let your relationship with Sten pave the way to more future quests? I'm just SAYING. Simpler to recruit, park them in camp, and forget about them if you don't really intend to use them. You don't have to listen to me because if they do announce a sequel, you can always level up a new character and redo your choices and go to the sequel from there. =p

About the backpacks, here's a link to where you can find them all: http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Backpack

If you've patched your game up to the latest patches from the site, you won't be as desperate for space since you'll get money more often than junk loot. The difference was noticable as I'd always be full up hafway through a dungeon. Now I have room to spare when I'm heading back to camp to unload after each event. Tossing gifts and runes in the Warden's Keep chest really helped out as well.

Your other questions have been addressed so I'll end here!

Edit:

While you can use Leliana and Zevran (he sucks at first since you have to level him up some more and put points into lockpicking/cunning to make him any good), I definitely recommend playing a rogue in the future. I was FILTHY RICH on my rogue due to lockpicking and pickpocketing. Plus there are rogue only quests that are only available if the main character is a rogue, which I enjoyed immensely because it was all about showing off who I could pickpocket and what places I could break into. I found myself being more ruthless and asking "what's in it for me?" rather than doing things out of the goodness of my heart. Fantastic experience. Plus I would cheat a little -- I'd get tired of clearing dungeons that I ALREADY CLEARED before so I'd stealth up, park my party at the entrance, sneak to the other side, and zone. Voila, party members would insta-pop with me on the other side.

I've been reading the wiki all day, and it's not really clear on the gift thing. First it says "Additionally, if the same gift is given to a character more than once, the approval bonus you get from each subsequent gift decreases to a minimum of +1 per gift, excluding plot-specific ones," which leads me to believe the diminishing returns is only on the same exact gift, and then a few lines down, says "Each gift given imposes an increasing penalty upon subsequent gifts. So the first gift would give +5, the second would generally give +4, etc.", which says the opposite. I was hoping one of you could tell me which one it is for sure. I still don't understand it, since neither of you answered for sure ;P

I'm doing Warden's Keep right now, because I figured the same use for the chest as you (storing gifts I don't need), and that's probably worth the $7 by itself. I ended up doing the whole lighting of the beacon tower quest thingy with a full inventory, which was a major pain in the ass.

No, each time you give a gift, it's worth one point less. It doesn't matter if it's the same type of gift. First gold necklace would be +5, second gold necklace would be +4. Don't get too hung up on gifts. If you have party members present when you accept/complete quests, you may or may not get approval. Just talking to them in camp and asking about their background earns approval as long as you're not a total dick in your responses.

I didn't discover this until my second playthrough, but when you are in the Grey Warden camp before you head out to the Wilds, you find a prisoner in a cage hungry for food. Obviously you already know you can help him out. If you have Alistair in your party when you do this quest (you can do it alone before seeking him out, too), he'll give a +1 approval.

I'm doing a male playthrough right now and I'm floored at the amount of women I can ask for a kiss as a reward. Holy crap. I didn't get this option as a female although I was able to pretend I'd have sex with the guard if I was a prisoner. As a dwarf female, the ONLY quest I couldn't get in Orzimmar was sex-related specifically for the male dwarf player. There were consequences for the male player when he returned later on. I'm not upset by it, but this game clearly was written for horny males living in basements. =p

BTW, this is my 4th character and I've been totally looking things up in wiki because nothing is really spoiled for me at this point and I'm still shocked to find out different options lead to this or that. Nothing that changes the game in a big way, but still. More like "oh, if only I had known, I wouldn't have been such a cheap bastard right then!" Or "damn, I could have gotten an extra weapon if I had picked a different response!" Little things like that.

Roz, I just did the same thing you did (the mom, not the boy though) and Alistair was waiting for me back at camp. I fully expected to feel totally bad about it (I read you can lose up to 51 approval points, depending on your dialogue choices), but I used the persuade option and only lost 10 points overall and actually had him apologizing for second guessing me. LOOOOOOOOOL. I may go back to a previous save and see what happens if I just antagonize him instead. =p

Ten points, babaaay!

Isn't your ability to persuade tied into your cunning? I don't even bother with mine, maybe that's why I lost a crap load. I got him to apologize and drop the subject, but he was still upset. =(

I had rank 3 coercion. My cunning was at 16 on this character. (Doubt I'll invest in more cunning points than that.) Cunning does help enhance your coercion score, but the coercion talent tree does most of the heavy lifting. (Strength contributes to intimidation choices and cunning contributes to persuasion choices.) You can only put points into skills like these every 3 levels (rogues get them every 2 levels). Since you are the only character that can put points into coercion, it's better to focus on that youself and let your teammates do the heavy lifting on other stuff like herbalism, trapmaking, survival, etc. You don't NEED to have coercion. It just opens up more dialogue choices. You can still fail if cunning score isn't quite there just like you can still fail at picking a few chests here and there. Not a huge deal breaker.

I would not worry about Alistair being annoyed. If you are romancing him, you will have many more options to raise your approval points. He's a bit harder in a non-romance. My elf couldn't get him to crack a smile. Oh, well, pout by the campfire for all I care! =p

I'm not quite sure what happened to me in Redcliffe... once leaving the Chantry after first arriving and talking to everybody inside, everybody outside of the Chantry says stuff like, "oh look, it's that thief" and "hold on to your purses, the strangers are here". Is it because I tried to pickpocket Bann Teagen and failed?

Probably. I've heard that there are game text with people sneering at you if you're caught stealing a lot. In some places, there may be a crowd that forms to beat you up (never happened to me). The success of stealing is improved by being in stealth, skill level, and cunning points. It doesn't change the overall gameplay. You just get glares here and there.

Once you get stealing to the level where you can steal in combat, you can add this line to your tactics:

Enemy: Any > Use: Stealing

This is a spoiler list of people you can pickpocket and get nice items for it:

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Stealing:_Profitable_Targets

Is there somewhere you can get suggestions for tactics? I don't use mine at all.

http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Tactics for basic "how-to" on Tactics
http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Conditions explanation of all the conditions

So far, I find them the most useful on my healer mage. I haven't figured out how to get them to work properly with aoe spells, but I haven't read through that conditional list yet, so maybe I'm doing something wrong.

In my party I have:
- Me (Spirit Healer Mage)
- Alistair (Tank all the way)
- Morrigan (umm... not sure what I'm doing with her; I never use her shapeshifting)
- Leliana (melee-oriented, dual-wielding daggers)

I generally aim Alistair at a target, and I have Leliana set up to assist him. While she's moving towards Alistair's target, I position my casters and cast whatever opening spells I want (aoe stun, melee buff for Leliana, whatever), then switch back to Leliana and move her behind the mob for backstabs. I don't think the Tactics thing allows for flanking maneuvers :(

The two biggest problems I've had so far were Morrigan casting Cone of Cold all over my bitches, and Alistair running willy-nilly after everything because I had him set up to Shield Bash anything that attacked the healer... and lots of things try to attack him when they first enter combat from afar. I removed both of those conditionals and now everything is working pretty good.

I gave up on trying to hook up with Morrigan... too much work. Leliana is so much easier to please, and has the sexy accent and all.

I think Alistair is pretty funny, but he doesn't like me for some reason :( Too bad I need a tank, or I'd try to find a way to kill him.

I bookmarked this Morrigan thread a while back for when I rolled a male character to romance her. The first post in this thread details how to get Morrigan to sleep with you right after she joins your party, before you head off to Lothering:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=950918&topic=52260304

I followed the above guideline and sure enough, triggered the sex scene in one visit. Didn't even need gifts at all.

And this game practically gives you 5 warriors (well, 4, if you don't think the dog counts). You can sideline Alistair pretty nicely. I thought Shale was probably the easiest tank for me to work with in terms of compete with her for gear since she only needs crystals, allowing me to use whatever weapons/armor I wanted. (Kinda tough trying to keep 3 or 4 warriors all evenly geared. Even when I was giving my warrior the best gear and handing the rest down to Alistair, it started to feel like he was the cliched Steve Trevor tagging along after Wonder Woman, if that analogy makes sense.)

My first line with my tanks are always "Self: Any - Activate Threaten"

and then get Taunt asap and just set it up so if anyone gets hit with a melee attack he taunts - I guess you could set it up for just the healer if you wanted - better than him running after something

just started playing the game! only have like an hour or so invested but so far i like it!

I keep Threaten on, always, and just got Taunt today and have that set for when I'm surrounded by 2 or more mobs. Having more than 4 Tactic slots is handy, too. I read somewhere (here?) there is a mod called Advanced Tactics that lets your Tactics run on your controlled character; with that, I think the game would pretty much play itself with my current setup. It's like a watered down version of my Nedaria's Landing macro :X

Now that I got more Tactic slots from levelling, I added all the turning on of modes like Threaten and Shield Cover and Frost Weapons blah blah, since running into those damnable Templars with their damnable aoe dispell. Damn them!

Beli: I like to keep Alistair around for his silly behavior :oops The interactions between him and Morrigan are pretty funny. I saw in your screenshots that you use Shale... maybe on my next character I'll give her a shot. I just kinda bonded with Alistair and didn't want to ditch him (except for when I want to stab him for not liking me). Shale kinda irritates me. She sounds like my Aunt. I like Spencer - err, I mean "Dog", too... nice crowd control, and easy to gear up.

Pfft, Alistair was a permanent member in my first two playthroughs. I didn't get Shale until my third character!

I just fucked myself by downloading the DAO toolkit (it's available on their website as a free download). I thought it'd be like the WoW model viewer where I could pose my character and make sigs with it. I opened it up, looked around, didn't see anything obvious, played with a few sliders, but did not save anything at all. I decided the program wasn't for me and went back to playing. I noticed the game seemed darker, but no biggie, I upped the gamma in full-screen mode and things were fine. I opened up my screenshots and discovered they were all horribly dark. My screenshots before the toolkit were much lighter and much better. The gamma doesn't change anything as it goes by the quality that you see in windowed mode. I uninstalled the toolkit, updated my video drivers. Nothing on my computer is affected by this, but the game just runs much darker. I can barely see anything unless I play full screen mode with cranked up gamma. Left a message on their official forums, but not holding breath. Ugh. At least it only affects the game and not other stuff on my computer.