What did you do today in DA? [Spoilers]

I couldn't find this thread a couple of days ago I forgot what section it had been in.

But I started a new playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins. I chose the human noble origin and playing as Aedan Cousland. Did the origin with Howe betraying Teyrn Cousland. Was introduced to Duncan for the first time. Both parents died and Fergus had already left. So I escaped with DUncan. We arrived at Ostagar where the King's army was camped along with every major player in Fereldan. Met everyone including two other Grey Warden recruits Daveth and Ser Jory. Also met a junior Warden named Alistair. We went back to Duncan and he told us of a Joining Ritual all potential Grey Wardens had to take and that it was secretive. He sent us to the Kocari Wilds to locate 3 vials of Darkspawn blood and some ancient treaties. In the Kocari Wilds we met a mysterious woman named Morrigan. SHe told us that the treaties we were tasked to find were no longer there and that her mother had taken them. SHe invited us to see her mother an equally mysterious older woman named Flemeth. SHe gave us the treaties and warned us about how dangerous this new blight was.

Went back to the ruins of Ostagar and brought Duncan what he requested. We went to the Joining Ritual were we found out that we had to drink from a concoction that included darkspawn blood. Daveth was the first to try and sadly died. Jory was hesistant and said no to the ritual. He drew his sword and Duncan killed him. Now it was my turn I drank for the cup had a vision of the arch demon and passed out. Woke up some minutes later and both Duncan and Alistair welcomed me to the Wardens. At the battle of Ostagar Alistair and I were tasked with lighting the beacon which would let Teyrn Loghian when to attack with his army. After killing a bunch of darkspawn at the Tower of Ishal we lit the beacon. Loghain ordered his army to retreat betraying both the King and the Wardens. Both Cailan and Duncan died in the battle. Alistair and I were overunned by darkspawn. I woke up in FLemeth's hut were Morrigan was and she told me what had happened at Ostagar after both Alistair and I were knocked out.

Went outside and spoke to both Flemeth and Alistair. Alistair was still grieving Duncan's loss. We spoke to FLemeth she reassured us that hope was not lost and that Warden's could demand the assistance of all races as long as we had the treaties. She told Morrigan to leave with us so she could help. Morrigan suggested going to the nearby town of Lothering. At lothering there were a ton of refugees and bandits at the bridge who were demanding a "toll". After we threatened them and demanded they leave they left. We offered assistance were we can and found out that Loghain had made himself regent and put a bounty on all Grey Wardens. At the inn we met a lay sister named Leliana who came to ease the tension between us and some Loghian's men. We killed Loghain's men and Leliana after introducing herself offered to join. We recruited her and left the tavern. We then came across a strange humanoid being locked in a cage. He said his name was Sten and that he was a Qunari. He told us why he had been locked up and the Warden offered him a chance to join them if they were able to get him freed. We asked the mother superior if she would free Sten into our custody and after swearing oath were we given permission. We freed Sten and he agreed to join us. WHen leaving Lothering there were some darkspawn harassing two dwarves. We killed them and the two dwarves thanked us.

Let's continue with the You will die playthrough. 

kill the dog - done


kill the soldier - done


Becoming a Grey Warden


Orge has a new stuffed toy to play with


kill sten - failed, but I did leave him in the cage


I will say some of the dialogue is hilarious when talking to characters when being rude. I have to be careful not to go overboard with Leliana causing her to leave denying me killing her. The same with Wynne.

Think this playthrough has hit turning the first corner of the early grind, though I was really scatterbrained and was forgetting some fairly basic information which took me awhile and led to some unfortunate circumstances.

It is a bit of a surprise and after so many playthroughs and hours in it I might actually be growing to use the tac cam a bit more then normal for me because, again it occured to me, that I can't order my companions to attack individual targets in this game using the D-pad. Sure the AI is generally pretty competent in this game that they can be fire and forget but it does lead to some scenarios and well if its the only way to give orders might as well do it. Still I doubt I will use it as much as they were advertising it could be used way back because its just not practical or very good still...but something to keep in mind. Today's example was once more getting my butt kicked by Templars and they were actually using smart tactics. Don't know how exactly but they were able to isolate Kara and Blackwall from Sera and Vivienne. Or at least Vivi and the rest of us with their shields and what not. This forced me to go to the tac cam to assess the situation and try and get things under control. Couldn't find Sera so I had her and Vivi go after the group that was near Vivi while me and Blackwall focussed on the three near us. I do hope that the tac cam when you have them use basic attacks they don't KEEP using basic attacks and still use their assigned tactics. That would be annoying if that ends up being the case and would put us right back to square one. On the bright side though this is one of the first encounters with elite Templars that I was able to hold on and win, still took me six health pots to do so, but I held up well enough to win and wipe them. Bad side though I decided to push towards the rift I was going towards and it did not go well at all. Despite being the same level and despite me being able to hold such fights before without using pots...for some reason it did not behave like it normally did. Demons kept on going after Kara despite me stealthing her to try and disrupt the rift which of course interrupted the disruption and then slowly one party member after another went down, Kara went down third, which just left Sera and she is not specced into Stealth...naturally round two against the rift after going back to the Crossroads to heal and resupply things went perfect and no health pots used, no fuss.

THink this is what inspired a few things for me when I decided to back to Haven and short version Kara, Cass, and Sera have new weapons. Was even tempted to give Cassandra a new quote but decided to hold off it for better crafting mats. But I am glad I held off A for the new matts but B she has that really nice coat thing now as a piece of found loot I found in the world so when I do get what I want I am going to craft the elite tier 3 version of that. Which I really do appreciate what BioWare did with the Golden Nug giving us access to a lot of tier 3 and 4 schematics. Even with inferior mats me and Sera now have level 20 ish bows and forget what Cassandra is at. I don't know if I have pushed crafting this hard this early before either, probably have, we will have to see. But its still a nice QoL improvement and really I think this would make a great NG+ mode for future RPGs. Levelling your character can be really fun but having your matts able to go across save files is *chefs kiss*. For future reference though and per usual for upgrades it will just have to depend on the available mats, the available FTMs that match what I want to do with each character, and which character might be lagging behind in gear level with an eye towards upgrading my preffered 'A team' first. Also though went to Aden's apothocary finally to finally give my people their extra potions and decided to give Kara the mighty offensive one first instead of Antivan Fire. But I was shocked to discover that I had already picked up 141 Elfroot so far...which gave me enough actually to put two upgrades, I think, into the regeneration potion.

And with all this crafting done I had my first 1000 + damage shots. One of them even was a non crit ability attack. Highest damage I saw was 1653...against a Ram but I every since my earliest playthroughs I always take doing 1000+ damage as a *good* thing. Oh and I almost forgot to something amazing happened which I don't think I have ever seen. So the Giant and Dragon were doing battle on the beach of the Storm Coast and I know, I think, that the Giant can be killed by the Dragon and what not. But I was looking at them and wondering if it was even worth it trying to cheat the system or if I should push in and fight the Giant on my own or if I should just get close enough to drive him off and retreat...but as I was deciding the Dragon killed the giant and I got the experience! But then damndest thing Vinsomer turned and fired on me. Didn't hit but yipes. Then it flew off.

The scatter braindery came from me wasting time dealing with the Blades of Hessarian. Basically I forgot how to go about creating the Crest of Mercy. I forgot it was a requisition and not a crafting one. So I bounced back and forth between Haven like three times before I figured it out. Then what was even worse is I forgot to put it on on the approach to the Blades camp so I had to wipe out the door guards. Fortunatley I just put it on and that still counted enough so the Blades are on the Inquisition's side.

RP wise I really do like playing Kara as being so uncertain about everything. She's like "I don't want to be a leader" and she isn't at this point. When she gets to becoming Inquisitor then she will make decisions, she even told Bull so.

Yep seems that I have officially hit the turn around point for this PT part 1...

Went back through the Hinterlands to continue clearing out things throughout the Crossroads region with the Templars and the Witchwood apostates and it went...pretty well. Hardly an issue at all and the big fight against the APostates only resulted in like 1 HP used up. Still had some trouble with the Templars in that room off the side of the West Road where I Bull got knocked down a couple of times and that got me down to two health potions. Also Solas's Revive spell continues to work out nicely. Hmm. The Templar Encampent Similarly resulted in little drama. Then went up to sweep through the east road. and the mercenary encampment.

With that off to visit the Rebel Mages and I was reflecting on recently bit of a nice RPing situation here as I was going through. Like I always try and sort of play my characters where they pretty much take opposite choices from the other but they then have to justify it internally. I didn't want to play someone unsympathetic to the mages but then someone who goes to 'side' with the Templars. Of course disbanding the Templars also justifies it from a meta standpoint however...just more ways that Kara gets there. Gets to Redcliffe and finds A. weird time magic going on. B. the Tevinters have arrived. And C. a room full of Tranquil skulls that are also clearly being used for a magic ritual. Supplementing this decision though was polling some of the mages on their opinion to Tevinter, and finding out it wasn't quite universal, and a lot of discomfort. Of course she isn't going to rush into anything so justifies me going around trapsing around the Storm Coast a bit before going off to get the Tempalars...

Back in Haven more crafting. Cassandra still does not have a new coat and it occurs to me before deciding I should I guess see if I can't double check its upgrade slots...so Varric does have better limbs for Bianca. Not something I maybe should do but on the theme from last time I feel that Varric often gets easily left behind in terms of power levels so this lets him stay at least a bit relevant. 89 damage is nothing compared to Kara or Sera's bows but still good...well better.

So yeah running up to getting the Templars in the next little bit and I feel like its interesting how this is coming together given when I typically try and do main quests in games with a lot of side quests especially. Don't always manage it. But, I think I am reletively pleased with the progress I have made in I think pretty much my first week. Of course already dropped 10 hours into the game so far it does beg the question for me...well normally how I play this would've been a bit longer. So it seems I am taking a bit to make that progress in universe. Granted I think I am taking my time to pick the Elfroot and gather resources to. WE will jsut have to see.

Yeah Iplan t oge ttha tperk fo rmy Inquisitor I jus tdon' tkno wwhen yet. I managed to get t oSkyhold yestreda ybut I onl yreally got round t odoin gtasks I didn't quie tfinish while in Haven. But my plan is t ostar topening up th emaps and work on some of the stuff inthem toda yan dmaybe unlockin my specialization.

What time is it? It's time for more death. Let the killing begin

Redcliffe village - dead


Well well. It's Jerk Jowan. I will deal with you later crap for brains


Isolde is now dead


Made a deal with a demon. I did this because I figured not only kill Isolde, but to have the demon seek out the kid in the future


At last the moment has come. The death of Jerk Jowan.


I met a so-called assassin trying to kill me. What a joke. The wannabe assassin is now dead

Yea hI plan t otr y an d ge tthroug hOrigins again afte rm yfirs tVeilguard run.

At default of installing DAO, I made a Elven mage in DAI. Her name is Ariel, I still need to decide her build, lol. I got the 4 power points to go to Val Royaux, but I'm wondering if I should keep helping the refugees before going or not.