What did you do today in DA? [Spoilers]

This makes me laugh. I romanced him my first run and was so shocked by what happened that my mage lady just stood there staring at him afterwards. Then the little talk icon popped up and I was like, DAMN RIGHT I GOT QUESTIONS.

The things we miss when we go so fast. 

Went through the first part of Descent too quickly. Why can't it be longer, more places to explore? At least I got some nice fried deepstalkers.

Whew. I was super worried I'd open that up and find his clone. Although they are similar, there are enough differences that I feel no need to totally remake him olinar has slimmer features. And he does look a lot like Ameridan!


Natashina
Pretty sure you meant to tag me with that. That's exactly the lil bird I was talking about. I had geared Cass in something that had a tail, so it was swishing too ^__^

Pretty much just finished the Fallow Mire. This my 4th time doing so, and thinking/feeling about it afterwards raises it in my esteem some. I like that there is only one camp; like it's too dangerous to have more, makes you feel like you have to ration. The danger is heightened by trying to avoid the water. I like the lighting and rain. I think the undead could have been explained better and that there should be more hordes on hard mode. But the zone is tight, there is a goal at the end of it, and a battle with an Avaar Barbarian and such that adds to lore.

Cole was finally in my party and gosh, I missed him. Telling me about what was going on in Fallow Mire, surprising Cassandra with his serious nature. Oh, by the way, my team is going to be Cass (LI), Cole, and Varric this run through. Will switch out Varric as needed for companion quests. But I really really want to see Varric interact with Cole and Cass more than I have in other play throughs. Someone once got onto me for having Varric wear something that covered his chest hair, so I've been careful to pick the right outfits. And my tinting is getting more subtle. In previous PTs, I'd picked an overarching color and then run around in all red, all blue, all green sort of out fits. But now I got the Everknit green, onyx metal, with deep browns, and occasional splashes of red. It looks more natural and pretty. ^^

Enough playing for the day. Going to interact with real people tonight which, of course, means I gotta scrub the place down.

Come Anders! (my roomba. yes, I named him Anders.)

Come Anders! To the Foyer!

one of the reasons i stopped using leaping shot.

I decided that our first stop had to be Redcliffe and this Arl Eamon. Make sure he doesn’t die from this disease before we have a chance to talk to him. As we arrived on the outskirts of Redcliffe village Alistair wanted to discuss something. And well, it turned out he is the illegitimate son of King Maric, brother of King Cailan (though they don’t share mother) and thus actually have a claim on the throne of Ferelden. By the stone, that does explain a lot of what happened at Ostagar. That’s why he was initially brought up by Arl Eamon. However, when the arl remarried the new arlessa believed he was Eamons bastard instead of just a royal bastard. Thus, he was shipped off to be a Templar.


As If things weren’t complicated enough we soon found out that Redcliffe was under attack by the undead. Every night walking corpses came from the castle to attack the village. We agreed to help and secure the situation in the village before entering the castle. The arls brother Bann Teagan was there leading the defense and asked us to discuss preparations for the night with the mayor Murdoch and Ser Perth.


Murdoch needed help convincing the village smith to help repairing the arms and armor of the militia. I had to promise the well marinated smith I would search for AND find his daughter up at the castle. Morrigan was especially pleased with us helping the people with their little problems.


We found a shifty elf at the inn who was hired by Teyrn Loghain to keep watch over Redcliffe castle. Odd. Well, we made sure every capable hand was enlisted into the defense of the village. Including the innkeeper coward. As soon as we got the innkeeper out of the inn we made sure the militia boys got their morale boost in the form of ale! Then there was this surfacer dwarf who preferred to die by my sword instead of fighting corpses. No matter. Sod him.





That’s when the arlessa came out to fetch Bann Teagan for some sodding reason. Teagan showed us a secret backway in. He went with the arlessa so as not raise suspicion of “the great evil” inside the castle. According to lady Isolde some evil mage had summoned some evil spirit or some such to wreak havoc on the place. Well we had to find out what lay behind all of this so in we went. That is I, my fellow droogs Alistair, Morrigan and Leliana.

In the castle, we fought walking corpses, shades, darkspawn, and an undead Revenant. We also found the “evil mage” in the dungeons. He didn’t strike me as evil at all. The arlessa had hired him to tutor her son Connor in the arts of magic to save him being sent to the circle tower. Well I knew she was hiding something. I know a liar when I see one, being rather good at it myself if you know what I mean. Jowan believed it was in fact Connor who inadvertently had summoned some demon or something like that. Anyway, Jowan wasn’t all innocent. He had been hired by Teyrn Loghain to poison Arl Eamon. We sent Jowan away and pressed on. I may note on the side that we found the villages smiths’ daughter there as well and sent her home to her take care of her drunken father. All of which more or less filled my todays good deed quota.

At last we could enter the hall to confront Isolde and Connor. As suspected Connor was possessed by some demon we had to fight Teagan and some guards. The kid Connor ran upstairs during the fighting and Bann Teagan was released from the demon’s influence. The poor kid Connor was the demon’s way into our world from the fade and our only way to stop the demon was to kill the boy. Morrigan had some idea of some ritual involving several mages but since we only had one it was out of the question. We went back to camp to discuss it all and I managed to make Leliana see truth about what had to be done but Alistair wouldn’t. So, I took Sten with me instead of Alistair when we went looking for Connor. We found him alone playing. I explained to him what had to be done. I think he understood. He had only sought to help his father but we all know that evil often prey on innocence. Before I could end his suffering the demon took control over him again. We sent the demon back beyond the veil but it would no doubt be back as soon as it gathered its strength. Lady Isolde came running again pleading for Connors life. Never once contemplating the amount of death, despair, and destruction her meddling had already caused the people of Redcliffe.



We were all a bit distraught afterwards, not even Morrigan had a sly remark. The lady Isolde was of course totally crushed.



Her spirits rose somewhat when I declared that we would search for the Urn of sacred ashes in the rather vain hope it could restore Arl Eamon to health. The arlessa had Brother Genitivis address in Denerim.
So, that would be our next stop. With a bit of luck, we will make it there and out again unnoticed…

--Did half of the Frostback Basin. I actually did the shards out there. I forgot how annoying they are. The platforming is much easier on a controller, but finding the damned things are a pain in the butt. I cracked open the vault and found a really creepy codex. It was basically laying a curse on the entire elven pantheon before giving you something like a total of +15 cold resist. You can't read it unless your IQ drank from the Well.

--I kinda like the look of veil crystal. That bright glimmering green compliments dragon leather nicely. I only wish we could tint weapons. I'd love for my axe and shield to match. I'm such a girl sometimes.

--My banter bugged out. It was firing, that wasn't the problem. The problem was repeat banter. I got the Solas/Varric post-WHWM conversation 4xs. Once was in the Emerald Graves. However, the other 3 hit in JoH. When I got the same banter twice in a row (the WHWM one,) I swapped Solas out. Varric and Dorian bet on the IQ's success twice in JoH, and this is the third time in the game I've seen it. I've had to change up my preferred team. I've got Solas/Bull/Dorian instead of Varric/Solas Dorian.

I left the zone, crafted some gear since Bull is very squishy in this DLC and came back. Hopefully I won't have that happen again. Banter has been odd ever since I ran into the Judgement bug.

--I've arrived at Stone-Bear Hold. I'm about to swap around party members and think of a replacement for Bull. Bull isn't going to like the Augur very much. Cass doesn't either but I haven't used it very much at all this time. Probably because she never left my party on my rogue.

Edit: Set up your tactic menu on Sera and Varric to shut off Leaping Shot.  I've found that it's more trouble than it's worth outside of major boss fights.  If you're doing Descent with her, shut that off before you get the final boss.  Otherwise they will flip to their doom.

Trilobite Derby
The best way to rivalmance Sebastian is to constantly push him to take the throne. That gets you rival points whereas pushing for Chantry Seb gains friendship points. Also, don't agree to go right away on his Act 3 quest and approve of the Exalted March idea. Though if Hawke is pro-mage freedom, she probably wouldn't do that last one.

Seb is really all over the place in that quest. One minute he can't believe the mages could be much of a problem, the next he's like, "Ahhh, the mages must be stopped!"

By the way, I'm really interested in why the Grand Cleric is so much against the Divine's investigation?

Still doing penance on NM for beating the Ravager so easily yesterday.

Headed to the Hissing Wastes to see what the remains of the Venatori are up to. I've got Bull and Solas, to hopefully trigger their chess game, and Varric for dwarfy stuff. It's not working so far. Last time I wanted the chess convo, I had to go to about 6 different zones and do nothing but wander. Hopefully it won't take that long this time.

So, they closed some rifts, killed more Vints and RTs, explored the first of what looks to be several dwarfy tombs in the area and found maps to more. There's also been mention of a large "beast" nearby that makes the local poison spiders wary. Bull is really hoping it's a dragon.

My goal next time is to get to the dog merchant. I'm hoping he's got at least one more T3 schematic that I don't have. How do you know if you have them all?

If you have bought the schematic from him, it will not show up on the list again. However, with mods, it'd probably show up on another vendor. That is, if you installed shopping mods that allowed vendors at other places to sell T3 and T4.