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Dragon Age III: InquisitionFollow

#452 Dec 14 2014 at 9:58 PM Rating: Excellent
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idiggory wrote:
I haven't crafted at all, beyond parts for Varric, really. I should probably pay some more attention to that.

You probably should. I mean, you don't have to (obviously), but it's the primary way of adjusting your characters' stats. +9 Constitution on your sword, +15% Cold Resistance arms for your leather coat, yadda yadda. Plus you'll occasionally find a unique item with a useful effect or a slight bump from your stuff but in general crafted gear > looted gear.

I blew most of my power points to open Emprise du Lion at level 10. Yay infinite Tier 3 leather for my rogue! Smiley: laugh Plus the little bit of Dawnstone and Everite you can scavenge without fighting the camp full of lvl 16 Red Templars. And all the Bloodstone you can carry.

Edited, Dec 14th 2014 10:00pm by Jophiel
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#453 Dec 15 2014 at 5:27 AM Rating: Excellent
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Here's a list of the agents in the game and how to get them: http://dragonage3.wiki.fextralife.com/War+Council
#454 Dec 15 2014 at 10:48 AM Rating: Excellent
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Blackwall's never going to get into my dwarf panties if he keeps rambling on about loyalty and duty and stuff.
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#455 Dec 15 2014 at 11:02 AM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
Blackwall's never going to get into my dwarf panties if he keeps rambling on about loyalty and duty and stuff.

Dwarves wear panties?
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#456 Dec 15 2014 at 11:29 AM Rating: Excellent
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Mine does because she's not cheap Smiley: disappointed
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#457 Dec 15 2014 at 11:37 AM Rating: Good
They are probably made of stone. Or maybe Paragon's Luster.
#458 Dec 15 2014 at 6:05 PM Rating: Good
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Shojindo wrote:
They are probably made of stone. Or maybe Paragon's Luster.

FTFY

I'm not sure why people don't like the tactical camera. Maybe the controls suck on consoles? It's invaluable for the higher difficulty levels where a stray mob can WFTPwn your mages/rogues.
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#459 Dec 15 2014 at 6:45 PM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
idiggory wrote:
I haven't crafted at all, beyond parts for Varric, really. I should probably pay some more attention to that.

You probably should. I mean, you don't have to (obviously), but it's the primary way of adjusting your characters' stats. +9 Constitution on your sword, +15% Cold Resistance arms for your leather coat, yadda yadda. Plus you'll occasionally find a unique item with a useful effect or a slight bump from your stuff but in general crafted gear > looted gear.


I don't have anywhere even remotely close to enough patience to monitor all of that for my main character, let alone for the seven characters I regularly use.

Plus, my schematics never seem strong enough to warrant using compared to the purple stuff I find, when I go by defense and dps.
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#460 Dec 15 2014 at 9:32 PM Rating: Good
Just did Blackwall's personal quest for the first time since he got mad and bailed on me for killing a certain person at the prom in my first run. That was a pretty cool quest. Did not see that one coming. Old beardy is alright I decided.

To Dig's point, I mostly just craft for my character and give the other stuff to my party. Oh another funny thing from tonight. I found the healing mist grenade recipe... Did not have that my entire first run. Oo
#461 Dec 15 2014 at 11:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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idiggory wrote:
I don't have anywhere even remotely close to enough patience to monitor all of that for my main character, let alone for the seven characters I regularly use.

Your choice of course, but if you're upset that you can't raise your strength on your Arcane Warrior... this is exactly how you do it in DA:I. Want higher strength on your Knight enchanter? You give them armor or weapons with a +STR attribute. You craft with tier 3 Rare materials so any class can use it and give your mage some plate armor. Crafted gear is how you juggle stats in DA:I instead of picking them out per level and saying "Guess I'll waste more points on Cunning for my Warrior so I can get the dialogue options..."
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#462 Dec 15 2014 at 11:18 PM Rating: Good
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Crafted gear in DA:I is OP. It's better than 99.5% of the stuff you find barring a few late-game purple items. I enjoy crafting new gear for my whole party (Herald plus 3 typical companions - **** the guys sitting back at camp), even though farming the materials can be a pain (see: Tier 3 leather with ranged defense).

That said, I find the fact that all RPG games now have some element of a crafting system to be fairly annoying. This particular game does a good job of making the crafting system both deep and rewarding while also not requiring that you use it to complete the game, but in most games it's just a marketing point shoe-horned in to appeal to the MMO/Minecraft enthusiasts. And in some cases, especially when materials can be farmed in areas you've already cleared, it severely diminishes the incentive to explore.

Case in point: one of my favorite RPGs of all time is Morrowind, and one of the reasons I like it better than the two subsequent Elder Scrolls titles was the feeling of accomplishment you got when you found that full set of Dwarven armor at the bottom of those Dwemer ruins in the middle of nowhere, or when you killed a Big Bad in a dungeon somewhere and got his Enchanted Axe of Badassery. In Skyrim, you can just buy some raw materials and craft essentially the best armor in the game without ever setting foot inside a dungeon; it only requires repetition and patience. At a certain point, you might as well just be killing 10 A Large Rat or obtaining 5 Symbol of Lord ******* from a camp of kobolds and turning it in to Random Farmer 3047 for a spare set of Mage gloves he had collecting dust on a shelf for some reason.

DA:O and DA2 didn't have crafting systems, but their problem was that 90% of the metric ass-tons of gear that you found was immediately sold for coin, but not before comparing each and every piece to stuff you were already wearing to see if it had an additional +1% fart resistance. Gear upgrades should be both impactful and infrequent enough to be seen as a reward, not a chore.

Edit: Fart is a filtered word, because we're all five-year-olds and deserve to be treated as such, apparently.

Edited, Dec 15th 2014 11:22pm by Demea
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#463 Dec 15 2014 at 11:51 PM Rating: Good
I definitely could live without crafting or gathering in my RPG games. It does devalue drops when it's above and beyond them. Also who wants to come home after a hard days work IRL and play work simulator 2.something.

If it's there and it's better than drops I can't lay off it though even if I don't really enjoy it.Smiley: glare
#464 Dec 16 2014 at 12:03 AM Rating: Excellent
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I think the crafting in DA:I is well done. As opposed to games like Far Cry 3/4 with the whole "Collect four pig skins to make a belt for +2 syringes" thing which seems out of place and illogical (four pig skins? really?) or Fallout New Vegas where you can dump 80 points into Survival just to make armor worse than the stuff you get in the course of playing the game, and not any earlier either since you had to earn 80 points of Survival first.

But I think in DA:I it works well. Materials are easy to get for your level and the rewards are substantial enough to deal with it. I like that different materials can produce different colors and different effects. With the Masterwork options and runes, I feel like I made something pretty awesome when my Inquisitor is wielding a glowing mace, blasting away demons with Cleansing and proc'ing Walking Fortress. At the same time, the fact that you can't craft accessories still leaves room for "Killed a dragon, yay purple belt!"

Like others here, I tend to craft mainly for myself but I'll make sure my favored companions at least have the right Tier gear. I might not spend a bunch of time deliberating Dawnstone over Everite but I'll bang out some armor with whatever best materials I have the most of are and at least make sure their DPS and Armor are up to par. This time around, Blackwall is my main exception where I'm trying to keep him in gear with +Defense stats for better tanking and keeping my dagger-rogue safe.

Edited, Dec 16th 2014 12:07am by Jophiel
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#465 Dec 16 2014 at 12:31 PM Rating: Good
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Jophiel wrote:
idiggory wrote:
I don't have anywhere even remotely close to enough patience to monitor all of that for my main character, let alone for the seven characters I regularly use.

Your choice of course, but if you're upset that you can't raise your strength on your Arcane Warrior... this is exactly how you do it in DA:I. Want higher strength on your Knight enchanter? You give them armor or weapons with a +STR attribute. You craft with tier 3 Rare materials so any class can use it and give your mage some plate armor. Crafted gear is how you juggle stats in DA:I instead of picking them out per level and saying "Guess I'll waste more points on Cunning for my Warrior so I can get the dialogue options..."


I don't really feel like a hypocrite for being annoyed at not being able to choose my stat increases and being uninterested in crafting, because that's a big leap in effort.

Plus, my experiences with the crafting system aren't to its credit. I find it to be just laggy enough that it's irritating, and the menu is kind of annoyingly unclear (in ways that makes me think it was designed a little too much with consoles in mind).

I actually know the exact moment I checked out on crafting - I purchased a new schematic for Bianca, crafted the new part with better materials, and it lowered Bianca's weapon DPS because the first part had dps and the new one didn't (and that wasn't an option, which makes me wonder why anyone would ever use that new part). Right then and there, I decided that playing the schematic game was way more effort than I was willing to put in. I'll still do it for Bianca's upgrades, but ONLY for Bianca's upgrades. And that's only because I have no other choice.
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#466 Dec 16 2014 at 12:49 PM Rating: Excellent
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I'm not going to call you a hypocrite, I'm just saying that if you want control over stats then that's the system for it. If you find it too much trouble versus your desire to control stats then that's how you choose to play the game. You can win the game (on normal anyway) with nothing but looted gear so the ball is completely in your court.

I had no problem with the crafting system -- you pick some materials and it tells you exactly what the resulting equipment will be and then you go with it if you like what you see. Admittedly this means that if you're planning on replacing gear, it's helpful to know the stats of what you're replacing when you're making the new gear. But most crafting materials are cheap 'n easy for their intended level anyway so if I blow some Bloodstone unnecessarily it'd barely an inconvenience.

That's my experience anyway. I'm not trying to force anyone to "like" the game or say you're wrong if you don't like the system.
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#467 Dec 16 2014 at 1:59 PM Rating: Excellent
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Shojindo wrote:
Just did Blackwall's personal quest for the first time since he got mad and bailed on me for killing a certain person at the prom in my first run. That was a pretty cool quest. Did not see that one coming. Old beardy is alright I decided.


I had the exact opposite reaction Smiley: laugh Pretty much the only reason I kept him around after his personal quest was because he was my party's tank. I vowed to never use him again in future runs! I also felt like the quest ended with little resolution. After the judgment I expected to have a personal heart-to-heart or something. But... no. No new conversation topics. Nothing. The only changes after were him getting a crush on Josephine, and some of the party banter. And the crush might have even been before the quest...
#468 Dec 16 2014 at 2:27 PM Rating: Excellent
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That's odd. I could have sworn I had new dialogue last game after that whole plot stretch. We'll see about this time and if my romancing him changes anything.

Also, I feel creepy as all hell romancing this dude when I'm the height of 4th grader. Not to mention a different species. It could be worse I guess; I understand that Cole can be romanced and there's nothing in-game that I want to see less than Cole's clammy-ass lo--- actually, just "Cole's clammy ass" describes perfectly what I don't want to see. That dude looks... moist.
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#469 Dec 16 2014 at 2:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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Someone elsewhere had linked to this column about Dragon Age: Inquisition, crafting and RPGs. It seemed to fit into what we were talking about here so I'm passing it along. I disagreed with much of it and am copy & pasting my response below.

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Interesting, but I disagreed with most of it.

DeBoer laments "picking up junk to craft other junk" but the items you craft in DA:I aren't junk -- they're usually the best items you'll have. He mentions "living the life of a cobbler" but crafting in DA:I is really quite simple. Finally, he out-and-out admits that he's barely looked at the system so it's hard to take him seriously anyway. He's "baffled by the complexity of the crafting system"? Seriously? Picking two or three materials and hitting "Craft" with the screen saying exactly what they'll produce is "baffling"? Ok, dude. I don't think computer games should be your thing.

Meanwhile, RA Salvatore laments crafted gear that exceeds looted gear and reminiscences about Everquest. It's wrong (in my mind) to draw comparisons between crafting/looting in an MMORPG and doing so in a single player RPG. In an MMORPG, the items you'll acquire are the entire point of killing a raid level monster. Therefore, the monster must have gear worthy of your time. In a single player RPG, the point of killing a "boss" is to advance the story. It doesn't need to drop the Ultimate Blade of Slaying because your motivation is supposed to be stopping it from eating all the villagers' children. So saying that crafting in DA:I is "bad" because RA Salvatore likes getting loot in Everquest completely misses the mark.

Finally, Breault talks about the game's "busy work" which makes me wonder if he ever played Origins. A fetch quest to find a book in DA:I is "busywork" but a fetch quest to find a book in Origins is scintillating world building. Getting a potion for someone in DA:I is lame, but finding some wooden sticks for an elf in Origins is immersive. Ooooooh-kay, then.

Of course, everyone's entitled to their opinions. I like the crafting in DA:I. Materials are abundant enough that it doesn't feel like a chore, I like how different materials can change the look & how you can name your items (which makes me feel like I really 'made' something) and I like how it offers some customization to your characters. It makes me feel much more invested than something like "Four pig hides to hold another four syringes" from Far Cry 3.

As for the "busywork" quests, my main complaint about them is their effect on the leveling. Do every one you come across (even without actively seeking them all out) and you'll soon find yourself at level 12 while the plot is still in level 5-8 areas. I like having set level areas (versus "level 25 cows in the starting town since you're level 25") but feel they could have worked the progression curve a bit smoother.

But here's the thing about the side quests: They're all optional. Don't want to do them? Hate fetching five herbs or delivering a letter? Then skip them. You'll still finish the game. They offer rewards if you want to put the time in: some gold, some influence, maybe a new contact but they're in no way mandatory. Relating back to my previous comments about levels, you're not even expected to do them all. If you're trying to "clear" the Hinterlands, you're doing it wrong. My first game, I skipped clearing a fortress full of Red Templars -- I still won. I skipped the shard collection -- still won. Ignored almost all of several geographic areas... yup, still won. This time around, I'm doing those things instead and stuff I'm skipping still won't keep me from winning. So why complain about it? The idea is that it's a big world full of things you can do, not that you have to do everything in the world.
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#470 Dec 16 2014 at 3:00 PM Rating: Excellent
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I both like and dislike the crafting system in game. On the good side, there's a nice variety of things in it. On the bad side, DA:I crafting is one of those systems where there is a "right path" through it.

Unlock Val Royeaux, buy T2 patterns, make a starter set with T1 mats.
Unlock Forbbiden Oasis, farm T2 mats, make an intermediate set with T2 mats.
(Progress through story and) Unlock Emprise du Leon and Hissing Wastes, farm T3 mats, make an intermediate set with T3 mats. (Or final set, when it comes to non-fire Mage staves, depending on what you want.)
Go slaughter dragons, make your T4 final set as you go kill them off one by one.

I'm sure it can be refined even more, but that's more or less the gist of what to do.
#471 Dec 16 2014 at 4:15 PM Rating: Good
I had read that article and some of it was some of the sentiment I was referring to.

Prime example: Deep Cave Mushrooms. I have never used them for anything. I could look up what they are good for, but I always assumed some potion or grenade along the way might need them. Ended up with 100 of the things my first play through and finally forced my OCD to ignore picking them up. Whatever they were for I did not need it as my power relative to the game was fine.

I'm playing around with the crafting and the potion/grenade upgrade thing more this time around just because I'm not in a hurry to find out what happens in the story. I already know, so that is freeing me up to experiment more. The system itself is not bad compared to some overall. Just a bit tedious at times with all the picking, mining, and looting of brown sacks. I also wish it was easier to tell what teir a schematic is in the store before you buy it. Maybe I am missing something obvious there.

As for Far Cry 3, I actually kind of liked the crafting in that. Sure it's silly and nonsensical to think it takes 4 pigs to make a t2 wallet to hold 12 more dollars. But as far as the idea of survivor man foraging the wilderness for exotic animal parts to kit out his weapon harness and the like it was kind of fun. Also because hunting, and the amounts you need are really not as tedious.
#472 Dec 16 2014 at 4:35 PM Rating: Good
FInally beat Far Cry 4 (It was more fun than 3, but mostly more of the same), so I've started DA III. Still hating the load times, but otherwise it seems fun. For some reason I find the human characters in Dragon Age creepier than their Mass Effect counterparts. Hoping the whole rubbing genitals together thing that happens in all of Bioware's RPGs is less creepy than in DA I or II & I imagine I'll find out shortly.
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#473 Dec 16 2014 at 4:58 PM Rating: Excellent
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Unless you romance Josephine, the friggin' nun Smiley: mad
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#474 Dec 16 2014 at 5:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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Shojindo wrote:
...and finally forced my OCD to ignore picking them up.

Not picking on you specifically because I see some variant of this all the time (why people try to "complete" the Hinterlands or feel compelled to find every shard, etc).

A game giving you a ton of content is NOT a flaw just because you (general "you") feel compelled to try and complete it all in a single playthrough. A game giving a hundred resource nodes so normal people don't have to trudge 100 miles between chunks of iron ore isn't a game flaw just because you (general "you") feel compelled to pick up every single rock, pick every flower, and kill every fennec (you monster). A game giving a ton of optional content is a GOOD thing. A game giving ample crafting resources is GOOD. Stop picking up every rusty dagger and delivering every letter and, if you can't, stop blaming the game for it.

Edited, Dec 16th 2014 5:04pm by Jophiel
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#475 Dec 16 2014 at 5:58 PM Rating: Good
Yes but there are some things I do need large supplies of. I did not bother to upgrade the keep last time. It's pointless but I'm doing it this time. I concede your point that an abundance of resources is a good thing. However I think their is some happy medium between how much you need of any given thing, how available it is, and the amounts it takes to craft certain items.

It's simply skewed a bit one way.

This is the part where I add the caveat that I am still enjoying the game. Enjoyed it a lot overall, and am even having more fun my second run. The debate is merely an academic one about the nature of crafting in games in general and of course my preferences.

* oh an I am still finding new cool things. I just found a haunted mansion in a corner of Emerald Graves I missed last time. Spooky times were had by all.

Edited, Dec 16th 2014 3:59pm by Shojindo
#476 Dec 16 2014 at 8:20 PM Rating: Excellent
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I'm annoyed that the soundtrack just has the orchestral tracks (and that "Dawn will Come" song) and not any of the bar songs. Which I'd be infinitely more interested in listening at my leisure.
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