What did you do today in DA? [Spoilers]

Continuing to run around the 'Dirth' doing favors for the Dalish.

One of the big themes I have grappled with in this playthrough is just what can I play with Veilguard coming out and if I would have enough time to do a 'complete' PT of all the things I usually do. Up to this in a weird way since I am quite sure I am nowhere near close to this it would also be nice to hit 1000 hours this PT as a nice round number even though I already have and I am about 950 away. Its silly this whole conversation is silly but its where I have been in what I have been thinking about in regards to this game as I prep for Veilguard.

Like the Dalish is one area I wasn't sure I would bother with because its actually some of the most pure grind of the entire game, but then there is an agent, but then there is an agent that I almost never get enough favor to get with the Dalish because of the lack of Dalish me getting favor and I never do the Golden Halla quest. But then I remembered that I also love doing the Knights Tomb and love giving the tablet to the Dalish in an attempt to heal old wounds and show mistakes were made on both sides so that almost neccessitates I go meet the Dalish and hey I got the time, quite sure, so why not. But then its in the back of my mind the two optional dungeons in the game, the Sulevin Blade place, and the Temple of Dirthamen. Well coincedentally what I forgot about was that the quest for the Dalish the one with the glyphs actually opens up the Temple of Dirthamen and you don't get any favors or to tell them about it till you do so...while I was thinking of skipping it...hey why not I have time? Though most likely won't be doing the Sulevin Blade since the Golden Nug already has me have that place.

Aside from that lots of bugs today. At least the best of which when I was doing the Solas quest something weird happened even on the way to it...but after freeing Solas's friend and geting him to do the aftermath was traveling around and the demon respawned! Now I was really curious about what would happen, I already saved, so I actually attacked, and in the end the thing was invulnerable! I was doing no damage.

Also found something interesting Mark of Death can really benefit from the right party compositon and tactics. I have been struggling with it lately but with Dorian in the party was able to start really kicking butt again.

Currently replaying DAI and I can't, for the life of me, find the last token for the assassin specialisation. I looked online and ran around the map where it us supposed to be and nope, nada, zilch.

yep

Re-read the first two stories in Tevinter Nights, 3 Trees to Midnight and Down Among the Dead Men. The latter features Emmrich and Manfred in small roles. Emmrich apparently likes tea so Solas will likely hate him on principle. Next up is Horror of Hormak (Harmak?). Anyway, the one with the creepy goo abomination pools.

Because my game was crashing right after Alistair grants my boon, I decided to stop going any further. The purpose of the playthrough was to see if Shale, Sten and Zevran show up in the wedding mod. Since they show up when Alistair gives out my boon, I'm going to assume they do show up in the mod. I believe it was because I had all companions wearing custom outfits caused some of the crashes as well as having all companions. I will say the mods I installed for Eamon, Anora, Ser Catherien, Loghain  looked good.   Anyways, with that out of the way, I will start a speedrun. Nothing like what I've seen on youtube, but fast enough to skip a lot of the game. 

The fast playthrough has started. On your mark, get set.....GOOOOOOO. To run this playthrough, we have the mage named Speedy.  She specializes in getting things done in a very effective way without wasting time talking to others and doing things that will slow her down.

The Temple of Dirthamen remains quite interesting and a bit creepy. Bit of a maze. Probably if I looked into the lore enough could parse what happened but...well seems to be a little bit of an indication of something that happened to these people when Solas brought up the Veil. Because they mentioned Dirthamen going quiet so it seemed obvious. Bit of a hint on things that happened...so it seems they divided the priest up and then we can put him back together. Hmm.

Fun with the wartable again and went after the lady and her Venatori who were mining in the area which let Darkspawn out. Seems again in this case no matter what you do the Grey Wardens get their butts kicked enough that they are no longer a viable organization. Bit sucky but then I guess it does serve to let them go out as big heroes and ties off a few plot lines with them.

Gave the histories to the Dalish. Which got me a new agent out of the bargain.

Thanks, I will remember to run the 4GB patch before I play next time, not sure why I didn't this time????

I have stopped playing DA for now, I played both DAO and DA2 twice in a row earlier this year and playing them again so soon and then with the crashes the games were just not holding my attention or enjoyment.

The folder and extension were there and had been run before (recently), I have previously always run it anyway before I play but assumed it was fine. It obviously needs to run every time after the game is reinstalled.

Bit of an extended play session today got a fair few things done.

Bull's Loyalty Mission and, technically, the Storm Coast, up first. On this note I kind of decided to bring the 'I hate Qunari party' for the LOLs. Actually it is kind of funny to that now that at least most of my companions have crafted gear at this point (except Blackwall) I can be free to mix and match. I am trying to remember what Solas said initially which didn't sound right, I know I have brought him along before, but what he said in the beginning sounded interesting. Though I do kind of agree about his whole position on the Qun regardless. I do wonder if the whole thing wasn't a set up for Iron Bull in the first place as well?

Cole's mission was up next and in this case I do have to wonder if he actually did shoot at him or not. My interpretation was that he changed his mind at the last minute but there was a definitive click so maybe he did but Varric didn't load Bianca so he wouldn't be shot? Regardless with other things and with Veilguard well there is a popular fan theory, or at least one I sort of subscribe to, where something something Elves something something spirits. And this quest might be one of the two biggest pieces of evidence on how it went down....but in this regard it kind of is curious about how Cole goes from being a spirit to 'more human'. Afterall according to fairly basic and universally accepted lore 'spirits' embody singular emotions pretty much at any given time. And then if their purpose is corrupted they 'flip' to the other side and start embodying the other emotion. But the thing about being human is that we can, in DA or real life, embody a whole variety of emotions all at once at the same time or transition between one or the other. And what did Cole do here? He embodied multiple emotions at the same time without fully falling to one of them or the other. He wanted to act out in revenge which is kind of similar to where he was in the Spire but he ultimatley did not give in. Also given how some other franchises tend to view human emotion this is actually a bit of fresh air.

Speaking of I sometimes really wish I had ever gotten around to creating my other Inquisitors that I was planning on doing because while most of my thoughts have been lost to the fog of time I was going to carry on and do an Inquisitor whose A team was all the 'aliens' of the group. Some overlap with some of the others but also mainly Cole would have been there and actually probably would have dragged Cole out to most places as sort of a 'weirdness and random lore bomb' detector. Because case in point took him to do Red Water and he just breaks into a whole thing about how this Templar went into Therinfall to protect his daughter but now 'he is red inside' and 'she doesen't know' and that's my horror for the day...

Wrapped up with going off to Emprise du Lion. Note to self I think I still need to talk to Ser Michel...somehow I keep missing him. But anyways the big thing here is I captured the last of the Keeps there and...well given a few things party matchup still was straight A Team. Sera, Dorian, Cassandra, Kara. Mainly since I was worried and...didn't have to do a single thing and don't think I used up a single health pot. Though the Imshael boss fight was more...weird. Then anything else. Kind of wish I brought Cole so I could get the line about the virgins.

OH and before I forget hilarious timing happened. It wasn't intentional because I got lost in Skyhold's battlements so I ended up in Cullen's office...which triggered the romance cutscene between the two where they...take the Dales if you know what I mean. Anyways as Cullen and her is shimmying into position and pushing stuff off the desk the Wartable alert pops up on screen 'Cullen is ready.'

And finally after all this, more build stuff. 8 playthroughs, at least! And I have been really working on builds...and well either still refining even after all this time or forgetting things I remembered the last time. Anyways now that I have everything I want in the subterfuge tree and with the Inquisitor point putting the remaining points into Sabotage. And well one of them does mention that it gives you stamina on Critical Hits...10 stamina per. As often as Kara is crit hitting between her fights it can be a bit of a boon and helps off set the Sigil of the Great Bear stuff. But just regardless continuing to mess with tactics to. At times I have no hit 30K when detonating Mark of Death. Actually in truth I am trying desperatley to get things back up to snuff because Descent and Tresspasser is brewing and...yikes, so it is encouraging. But the other thing here is that well I was pretty sure that if you used MoD while stealthed it counted as breaking stealth. Well I used it and it didn't seem to knock me out of stealth...but then didn't give me the critical. Later on it seemed to. If this does work out to it could be huge for the DPS given that when I stealth I usually have a choice between Full Draw or Mark of Death and then not getting max damage potential. Also explosive shotted the rift in the Storm coast and it was like a nuke went off with all the crit and poison damage.

Tripple Dragon madness to start today. Crazy to think just how close I am at least in some ways of getting through the 'main game.'

Continued staying in the Emprise and so far my initial thoughts of having to go back and forth between it and the Hissing Wastes did not come to fruition. I stayed in the Emprise because I levelled up very quickly into it and well didn't think that was fair...so I esentially ended up finishing it all before going back to Skyhold. Which did lead to me clearing out all three Dragons. I was having some trouble differentiating between two of the fights...but then I realized because they are esentially the same fight in an arena type thing. Got through them both pretty easily honestly. I had the 'C' team in the field against the first one so that was a bit of a grind fest DPS wise but I still got it and used up six potions. Against the next one used up 5 potions even with Sera and Cassandra in the party. Didn't get off to a good start as Kara went down. Third Dragon typically one of the three toughest Dragons in the game, had the entire A team in and it did go pretty well but it was also fun since despite things got really intense and forced me to pay attention at times. And was a bit surprised I went down to 2 Health pots at the end. Oh I found it funny to I couldn't codify it because I have a bad memory but a couple of posters have been complaining about how 'mobile game' Veil Guard looks because of the AOE markers...well the last dragon here was emitting AOE markers! Also just picked up a crap ton of Dragon materials. Also found it a bit amusing I had Bull in the party but afterwards we dealt with the Overseer in the Hissing Wastes whom I think was a mage and it was a brief but brutal fire fight between us that resulted in liek 8 lost pots. Almost as tough as a Dragon...though this actually does make SOME sense given us normies can also defeat a Dragon.

Off to Leiliana's mission in the Valence cloister. As painful as it is to watch, yeah there is going to be a lot of this 'regret', thing going into DA VG it actually is good to watch in a way Leiliana going all murder nun against the Inquisitor's wishes. Though it did occur to me almost wish the game gave us the option of removing her as spy master there. I mean I get cold blooded practicality at times, its how I play a good many of my characters, but a lot of what she was proposing sounded too far...and she disobeyed if not an order then a direct suggestion. Would've been interesting.

To the Hissing Wastes to wrap it up with the Tombs of Fairiel and not that much to say. Bit weird that of all the quests in this game this one isn't on the map at all you have to go hunting for it. Makes me wonder about VG and its guided mode. Took Varric because of course I did.

So yeah almost done really. Two more dragons, the Shrine of Dumat, and clearing up the Hissing Wastes at least before moving onto other things and effectively the endgame + DLCs. Right now I must say watched another DAI video that was like 'great game, side quests suck,' and nominally I agree and see the point a lot of it is bad. But it is something I have grown in appreciation more recently. Given the games that actually DON'T have good side quests and the games that have amazing side quests DAI is nice and in the middle. And I still avoid most of the really big fetch quests and the like out in the world and only focus on what I want to do and still have over 200 power and have reached level 27 and I'm nowhere near the end game. Well I am but not THAT close. This game is still pretty meaty without being overbearing with it so its something to appreciate. Comforting in a way. 

Also next chapter us up: www.fanfiction.net/s/14395351/2/Rise-of-Rook