Nearly Solo'd Broken Circle with No Health Pots - No Health Pot Solo Discussion

I have a dps spreadsheet that dainbramage made. Also there is a mod called Detailed Tooltips that shows more information about things in the game when you hover over them.

For this particular comparison, pulled the 2H warrior comparison, adjust the stats for Level 7, switch the weapon stats from Starfang and CGM to Flatblade and Crusher, and then do some work to modify formulas and calculate at other armor ratings and defense.

I had to look up what it was doing for armor exactly, since I had forgotten. Actual value for any attack roll varies slightly, where it is minimum of 70% the rating, max 100% the rating. Uses a random function, but the point is that on average attacking something with 5 armor really works out to 4.25 average armor.

As far as bugs go, I do not think there are so many to affect damage, critical damage, DPS, etc. More affect abilities, and so not really calculating things like stun chance or whatever.

I don't take the numbers to be the absolute truth necessarily, but it works well enough if you want to compare what happens if you change some attributes from Strength to Cunning, or switch gear.


A naked player with no gear and no weapon should have 3% critical chance (I think I wrote 4 above, but I will correct). Which is the same as enemies and companions. There is a bug that this chance is not applied for the player, so you start at 0%.

Equipping Chasind Flatblade, I get +1.65% critical chance. Turning on Precise Striking I get a level dependent critical bonus. At level 5 or 6 in Ishal it will only be ~5%.*

If I do not have a fix for base critical chance, then my total melee critical chance should only be 6.65%. If I have the bug fix, it is 9.65%.

* bonus critical chance from Precise Striking = 2.5 + 0.5*PlaverLevel

As for whether or not this is noticeable, I suppose it depends on how many hits you look at over time.



Garlen's sword was doing more like mid-teens damage per hit instead of near 20. So ~4 or 5 dmg per hit, and that was noticeable.

Actually the drop in damage from lack of strength is enough that in Ishal last night on this guy, I ended up using Enchanted Dagger instead of a sword (since dexterity improves dagger damage). It hit for similar damage, but with more hits over time.


This is part of why I am resistant to playing dex SnS for much of the game. As dexterity grows, but strength remains low, the chance to stun from Pummel, or knock down with Bash gets lower and lower. In Ishal at Level 5 or 6 where the loss is ~9-12 points, it becomes very noticeable against elites. More at the end.



I did through Ishal last night with no health pots, after getting to 20 strength, it has been points into dexterity only. Since I could not get Overpower, I had started on the last shield line.

In retrospect, I thought that the more sensible thing would have actually been to start and get the first line of Archery such that Master Archer would be obtained by Level 9 or 10, which is where the Uldred fight would be, making it fairly simple.

This obviously wouldn't be a pure SnS any more, but really for the best shield experience you need more strength. Really all of the melee weapon styles go off of strength for resistance checks (DW has one check vs cunning - Riposte).


It would have to be a mod to combine trees, but no I was actually speculating about using weapon and shield without the shield talents since they would get weak anyway. DPS would be ok just because of attack speed, but it doesn't make much sense to do it outside of novelty.




I was trying to see if I could get a "lucky" run with just vanilla game items yesterday. That is a streak of stuns better than 50% enough to beat him. But it just didn't happen. If anything, luck trended the other way. I was even just reloading if the first Mighty Blow did not stun.

Maybe I will put some more effort into figuring out if this is plausible without any health regen using only normal game items. But I am not optimistic, even using DN origin with the +25gold from the bribe. Grenades can help a bit, and you can buy the quartermaster's stock twice.


I try to save at least one Fire Bomb and some others, which works decently, and maybe another grenade. You can't control Dog, so he always is taking aggro and helping. Really I think the grenade and maybe a deathroot poison. Most of the time it seems two grenades kills or weakens enough that you can beat them.


The "toll collector" bandits don't give out armor, unless I am misremembering. What I do in solo is intimidate them first so that I can get his "donation" and go into Lothering. That is helpful because you can then use the party picker and remove Dog, Alistair and Morrigan. After that, if you go back up you can fight them either by talking to them, or looting one of their crates. It is possible to run very far away if need be, which will stretch them out, and you can find a corner to fight them where only one can get to you at a time.

For the "Bandits Everywhere" quest, I don't think there is dialogue. For most of that quest, you pretty much have to break up the groups into smaller ones via whatever luring method and position you like, then fight them, and maybe drop out of combat to heal. For the last bit, I am not sure if it is possible to get the 2H by himself, I think that like you say the DW always follows. So you can try to run back towards one of the cottages or other places, or try to knock down the 2H and kill the DW as fast as possible. Deathroot is helpful here again.


I suppose it depends on the rules or definition. I don't mind using a bow if necessary. Also in something with mandatory non-controllable allies, I don't worry so much if they draw some aggro or do damage.

For Leliana, if you don't mind her fighting with you, you can move to the kitchen and LOS them. Or you can just damage the leader as fast as possible and let him surrender.

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I don't have much more to say about the "dex" SnS guy. I did try Ser Garlen's sword vs Barbarian Mace vs Enchanted Dagger, and I think dagger worked best at 20 str and 26 dex.

As far as the ogre went, my first two Pummels did nothing, the third actually did stun him. This was a problem because he hit me every time.

With my poor damage from attacks, I wasn't going to spend a lot of effort beating him toe to toe, I was more interested in whether Shield Pummel would work at all at 20 str instead of 32.

Ogre and Gazarath both sort of encapsulate the whole soloing thing. Many early game encounters are going to come down to exploits of one kind or another, the difference in power or just hit points, between enemy and player is too great. Some people thing luring, or even just standing in a corner where enemies all can't get you is like an exploit.

There is something buried in the wiki by IN about soloing, and IN's own rules were quite a bit different. More about minimal gear, active talents, and no pots. So the type of challenge is different. Gazarath with SnS using Battledress and Blightblood. Ogre with 2H using Dalish Promise, and Cleaver.