I came across this challenge just now on level 25. I'd even changed my gear and party for maximum fire and demon-slaying damage but I still had to put the difficulty down a notch. Absolute pisstake.
Dragon Age Inquisition
- Thread starter Vintage Paw
- Start date
I came across this challenge just now on level 25. I'd even changed my gear and party for maximum fire and demon-slaying damage but I still had to put the difficulty down a notch. Absolute pisstake.
Pseudopsycho
I ate all your bees
GOTY edition in the Origin Sale £15! 30+Gb Downloaded and now I'm just waiting waiting for playday payday to finally buy a new GFX card!
Pseudopsycho
I ate all your bees
GTX970 Strix 4gb Card bought and installed...
So as usual about a year or so late to the party but started playing last night with a Qunari Mage lass, who my missus says looks like the woman who presents CBB so we named her Emillis. Would have have managed to leave Haven if I didn't have to spend a couple of hours trying to get Origin, Dragon Age Keep and the actual bloody game talking to each other. Had to do a re-install of Origin for it to work but it's worth it.
Had everything ramped to Ultra and it was gorgeous but quite laggy on my system so will have to have a play with settings later, any tips for boosting performance whilst keeping texture and lighting good?.
Sorry for some of the Noob questions but didn't want to read much of the thread for fear of spoilers...
Taking a bit of getting used to the KB&M controls but it's similar to Skyrim so will get there eventually. Also the levelling system is different which is a bit confusing, likewise armour doesn't tell you penalties to fatigue etc - can I really have a mage running around happily in heavy armour? Can you set tactical cam as default so it plays more like DAO/2?
Haven't even scratched the surface but loving some of the little touches such as when I went into the Chantry basement I hit my head on a hanging censer and there was a nice satisfying clang from my horns! Also nice to meet some old friends right from the get go too.
So as usual about a year or so late to the party but started playing last night with a Qunari Mage lass, who my missus says looks like the woman who presents CBB so we named her Emillis. Would have have managed to leave Haven if I didn't have to spend a couple of hours trying to get Origin, Dragon Age Keep and the actual bloody game talking to each other. Had to do a re-install of Origin for it to work but it's worth it.
Had everything ramped to Ultra and it was gorgeous but quite laggy on my system so will have to have a play with settings later, any tips for boosting performance whilst keeping texture and lighting good?.
Sorry for some of the Noob questions but didn't want to read much of the thread for fear of spoilers...
Taking a bit of getting used to the KB&M controls but it's similar to Skyrim so will get there eventually. Also the levelling system is different which is a bit confusing, likewise armour doesn't tell you penalties to fatigue etc - can I really have a mage running around happily in heavy armour? Can you set tactical cam as default so it plays more like DAO/2?
Haven't even scratched the surface but loving some of the little touches such as when I went into the Chantry basement I hit my head on a hanging censer and there was a nice satisfying clang from my horns! Also nice to meet some old friends right from the get go too.
I think some mages can't equip heavy armour?, rouges can equip medium armour and warriors heavy armour. (edited to add that : It seems that this is not universal across races)
You also need to upgrade them with legs and arms etc etc as and when you find them or craft them.. Keep a look out for 'heavy legs' as I think they are quite rare in the game, I seem to remember Cassandra having to wait ages before I could find some for her.
I'm not sure about tactical cam always on or KB&M as I play on the PS4
I can't wait to replay this game but have to forget most of it first, as generally I can't replay games due to repetition etc.
You also need to upgrade them with legs and arms etc etc as and when you find them or craft them.. Keep a look out for 'heavy legs' as I think they are quite rare in the game, I seem to remember Cassandra having to wait ages before I could find some for her.
I'm not sure about tactical cam always on or KB&M as I play on the PS4
I can't wait to replay this game but have to forget most of it first, as generally I can't replay games due to repetition etc.
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Pseudopsycho
I ate all your bees
That's interesting as my mage appears to be able to equip all armour types - maybe because she's Qunari? I was quite annoyed that you can't have dual weapon warriors as my usual first run through would be a sarcastically named D-W Dwarf - Stroppy was my Warden
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
sounds like a stephen fry book, perhaps a sequel to 'moab was my washpot'Stroppy was my Warden
Really? ok ignore my post
my character was an elf.. maybe that's why..
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
Pseudopsycho If you got the dlc armour packs (spoils of the avaar and spoils of the qunari) then you will have a bunch of light/medium/heavy armours dumped in your inventory as soon as you reach haven proper. You can equip any of those, but otherwise apart from that armours are class restricted unless you download a mod that unrestricts them. There are some armours that are also race restricted. Humans have more unique armours than others, qunari have the least (something that the spoils dlcs sought to make up for).
You can use a gamepad if you'd prefer. Menus and general running around are a lot, lot better with a gamepad, but I pause a heck of a lot to assign commands and gamepad is abysmal for that, so I stick with kb&m. Anecdotal evidence suggests the majority of people who tried switching to a gamepad never looked back (I'm the minority).
Quality settings: absolutely keep meshes and textures and shaders at ultra. Everything else is up to you. I recommend dropping the one that controls cut-scene blur (one of the places it can crash if your system is overtaxed is during some cutscenes). You can lower water without much difference, drop spell effects by one (any more you might start seeing a problem). Tessellation need be on no more than high unless you really care about your rocks being as round as possible, it's resource intensive. Vegetation reduces the density and I think the draw distance and can give you back quite a few frames, particularly when you go to the area you're going to next and others like it. Can't remember what it's called, but there's one that controls the level of terrain detail, mostly in terms of draw distance but also in terms of how many extra little bits of detail will be lying around I think. You can drop that one a bit.
SSAO and Shadows are huge performance-sinks. Set it to SSAO, not HBAO or HBAO Full. With your card you should have no problem with SSAO. Shadows can go down to high instead of ultra - they're a bit softer but I think that's more realistic anyway, and draw distance isn't quite as far but I doubt you'll notice.
Use post-process AA instead of MSAA. Image quality won't be as good but you'll gain frames. Best option is using ReShade or SweetFX so you can add SMAA, which is pp AA (and therefore very lightweight) but one of the best you can get. If you're happy with the in-game version though don't worry about it.
Cutscenes are locked to 30 fps and have been notoriously choppy and shit since release. Don't be alarmed if you get lags and stutters during them. It's quite normal, unfortunately. Optimisation is utter shit, loading and menu screens can take up to 100% of your CPU (rumoured to be because of Denuvo drm, which makes multiple calls for verification per second or something, idk).
I crash occasionally in some menus (potion equip being the main culprit), but only when using kb&m (the menu design is different for gamepad) - save a lot. You can only have 250 saves, so delete what you don't want once you're sure you don't need it (or be sensible like me and back them up). Try to do a fresh save each time rather than relying on quicksaves or saving over old ones.
Ask away with anything else, and enjoy - you're in for quite the ride (definitely get the DLC - in particular Trespasser is mandatory, and I'd never usually say that about any DLC but in this case it just is. And watch the credits.).
You can use a gamepad if you'd prefer. Menus and general running around are a lot, lot better with a gamepad, but I pause a heck of a lot to assign commands and gamepad is abysmal for that, so I stick with kb&m. Anecdotal evidence suggests the majority of people who tried switching to a gamepad never looked back (I'm the minority).
Quality settings: absolutely keep meshes and textures and shaders at ultra. Everything else is up to you. I recommend dropping the one that controls cut-scene blur (one of the places it can crash if your system is overtaxed is during some cutscenes). You can lower water without much difference, drop spell effects by one (any more you might start seeing a problem). Tessellation need be on no more than high unless you really care about your rocks being as round as possible, it's resource intensive. Vegetation reduces the density and I think the draw distance and can give you back quite a few frames, particularly when you go to the area you're going to next and others like it. Can't remember what it's called, but there's one that controls the level of terrain detail, mostly in terms of draw distance but also in terms of how many extra little bits of detail will be lying around I think. You can drop that one a bit.
SSAO and Shadows are huge performance-sinks. Set it to SSAO, not HBAO or HBAO Full. With your card you should have no problem with SSAO. Shadows can go down to high instead of ultra - they're a bit softer but I think that's more realistic anyway, and draw distance isn't quite as far but I doubt you'll notice.
Use post-process AA instead of MSAA. Image quality won't be as good but you'll gain frames. Best option is using ReShade or SweetFX so you can add SMAA, which is pp AA (and therefore very lightweight) but one of the best you can get. If you're happy with the in-game version though don't worry about it.
Cutscenes are locked to 30 fps and have been notoriously choppy and shit since release. Don't be alarmed if you get lags and stutters during them. It's quite normal, unfortunately. Optimisation is utter shit, loading and menu screens can take up to 100% of your CPU (rumoured to be because of Denuvo drm, which makes multiple calls for verification per second or something, idk).
I crash occasionally in some menus (potion equip being the main culprit), but only when using kb&m (the menu design is different for gamepad) - save a lot. You can only have 250 saves, so delete what you don't want once you're sure you don't need it (or be sensible like me and back them up). Try to do a fresh save each time rather than relying on quicksaves or saving over old ones.
Ask away with anything else, and enjoy - you're in for quite the ride (definitely get the DLC - in particular Trespasser is mandatory, and I'd never usually say that about any DLC but in this case it just is. And watch the credits.).
Pseudopsycho
I ate all your bees
Massive thanks, VP. I had a play with the settings yesterday and got a it running in a playable way without (to my untrained eye) much discernible difference but I'm definitely going to try your advice. I did wonder about stutter in the cutscenes and the loading times seem ridiculous, almost back to wandering off to make a cup of tea on first time start up!
Emillis is now a Level 4 mage running around in circles in the hinterlands now generating influence and power(?), met some rage demons at twice my level and have started dying! Feels very Skyrim in so much as I'll probably clock 150+hrs before getting anywhere near the end! I got the GOTY edition which has all the DLC so in it for the long haul.
Emillis is now a Level 4 mage running around in circles in the hinterlands now generating influence and power(?), met some rage demons at twice my level and have started dying! Feels very Skyrim in so much as I'll probably clock 150+hrs before getting anywhere near the end! I got the GOTY edition which has all the DLC so in it for the long haul.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
Power opens up new things to do and places to go on the war table map, and is needed to access all of the main story beats. You'll get more than enough for them, but will likely have to do quite a few side quests to open all the extra map areas up. That said, by the end of the game I had over 200 power saved up and nothing to spend it on...
Influence fills up a meter that, when it reaches the next level, gives you a point to spend on a perk from one of your advisers or a general inquisition thing - which do little things like let you carry more potions, give you money off at merchants, increase your inventory, let you pick the hardest locks, give you more xp, etc. I recommend taking all the ones relating to various histories first, I think there's one in each of the lines: mage history, politics, orlesian history, and something else can't remember... it gives you more xp at certain points but it also opens up new options for dialogue. Then the ones to open locks and increase potions and inventory would be my next must-haves, since because you'll probably be crafting most of your gear you'll not need to worry about merchant prices or getting rare stocks of stuff. You'll eventually get the chance to buy influence (just like the real world lol), but don't go near 20... it caps out at that and when it does you get an annoying fucking influence level up sound every time you close your inventory or load an area.
Influence fills up a meter that, when it reaches the next level, gives you a point to spend on a perk from one of your advisers or a general inquisition thing - which do little things like let you carry more potions, give you money off at merchants, increase your inventory, let you pick the hardest locks, give you more xp, etc. I recommend taking all the ones relating to various histories first, I think there's one in each of the lines: mage history, politics, orlesian history, and something else can't remember... it gives you more xp at certain points but it also opens up new options for dialogue. Then the ones to open locks and increase potions and inventory would be my next must-haves, since because you'll probably be crafting most of your gear you'll not need to worry about merchant prices or getting rare stocks of stuff. You'll eventually get the chance to buy influence (just like the real world lol), but don't go near 20... it caps out at that and when it does you get an annoying fucking influence level up sound every time you close your inventory or load an area.
Pseudopsycho
I ate all your bees
So I'm now 10, still running around Ferelden and loving it.
Thanks to Vintage Paw 's advice I'm running a playable average fps of 20-30 with "fade-touched" textures, ultra mesh & shaders and high for pretty much everything else and it seems fairly stable, some stuttery dips to sub 10fps but this appears to be random and without an obvious cause.
However when I check the GFX tweak monitor it shows I'm only ever using half my VRAM and half the GPU processing power and it barely warms uip enough to get the fans running on the card. The clock speeds are at max though. Does anyone know what could be causing this and/or how to max the cards performance - I've got an overclocking feature but I would have thought that would be used if the card was at full capacity?
Thanks to Vintage Paw 's advice I'm running a playable average fps of 20-30 with "fade-touched" textures, ultra mesh & shaders and high for pretty much everything else and it seems fairly stable, some stuttery dips to sub 10fps but this appears to be random and without an obvious cause.
However when I check the GFX tweak monitor it shows I'm only ever using half my VRAM and half the GPU processing power and it barely warms uip enough to get the fans running on the card. The clock speeds are at max though. Does anyone know what could be causing this and/or how to max the cards performance - I've got an overclocking feature but I would have thought that would be used if the card was at full capacity?
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
Fade touched textures look no different to normal textures, they are the same ones but they are streamed differently and therefore take up a good deal more oomf to run them. You can quite happily go down to ultra textures, you won't notice a single difference other than probably having better performance.
I don't know what might be causing it to only use half your available power. This game has always tested my hardware to the max, certainly on my laptop the fans would be running like a jet engine (but then they often do that when I'm just browsing the internet lol). With everything on ultra/fade-touched at 1440p on my new PC I get 50-60fps with a 980Ti Classified, which is less than I was expecting tbh, but the game really seems quite badly optimised. I don't know if it's only using half my gpu capability, I've never looked at stuff like that (any recs for programs that could show me decent stats for that stuff?).
I don't know what might be causing it to only use half your available power. This game has always tested my hardware to the max, certainly on my laptop the fans would be running like a jet engine (but then they often do that when I'm just browsing the internet lol). With everything on ultra/fade-touched at 1440p on my new PC I get 50-60fps with a 980Ti Classified, which is less than I was expecting tbh, but the game really seems quite badly optimised. I don't know if it's only using half my gpu capability, I've never looked at stuff like that (any recs for programs that could show me decent stats for that stuff?).
Pseudopsycho
I ate all your bees
Right having had some time to play with my hardware (fnar) on the weekend it looks like the fancy pants cooler I bought when I built the system was never working and had finally borked. I dug out the stock cpu heatsink and fan and now my computer is quiet and the CPU is now longer hot enough to boil a kettle! As an immeadiate effect my frame rate has shot up to a stable 60fps (almost limited?) on ultra textures and it looks like I could happily nudge most, if not all settings to Ultra. This is going into game without turning on the tweaks and shutting windows processes off too.
Vintage Paw Have you been into your BIOS and checked that your CPU is not too hot; my rig had "thermal throttling" and "over temp" protection - so whilst I had not been pushing the system on older games I just thought it was a bit noisy
. The difference in game is remarkable (Crysis 3 now runs smooth as silk on high spec) but not significantly different in Windows - again another reason I never really noticed I suppose.
My rig is i5-3570, 16gb ram, GTX970Ti Strix which is lower than your spec by quite an amount so you should be getting superior performance I would have thought.
It's lucky I wanted a shiny new graphics card when I did as my rig could have been damaged beyond repair and a new MB/processor/Ram combo would have cost a lot more than my GTX!
Looking at the GPU tweak my GFX card is now using all it's processing power, the fans are kicking in and hitting 20-30% but the game is still using only 2gb VRam.
But back to the important bits; about to hit level 12 and after 30 odd hours of faffing have done the mire and finishing off the storm coast
Vintage Paw Have you been into your BIOS and checked that your CPU is not too hot; my rig had "thermal throttling" and "over temp" protection - so whilst I had not been pushing the system on older games I just thought it was a bit noisy
. The difference in game is remarkable (Crysis 3 now runs smooth as silk on high spec) but not significantly different in Windows - again another reason I never really noticed I suppose. My rig is i5-3570, 16gb ram, GTX970Ti Strix which is lower than your spec by quite an amount so you should be getting superior performance I would have thought.
It's lucky I wanted a shiny new graphics card when I did as my rig could have been damaged beyond repair and a new MB/processor/Ram combo would have cost a lot more than my GTX!
Looking at the GPU tweak my GFX card is now using all it's processing power, the fans are kicking in and hitting 20-30% but the game is still using only 2gb VRam.
But back to the important bits; about to hit level 12 and after 30 odd hours of faffing have done the mire and finishing off the storm coast
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
It's being made currently, is my understanding. The writers have been giving hints that they were writing for quite some time. I believe there was something or another a week or two ago more concrete. I haven't looked into it, tbh. I wouldn't expect it until early/late 2019 personally, but I could be wrong.
cybershot
Well-Known Member
I'll be starting playing this next week probably. Have followed a video from PC Gamer to do my Dragon Age Keep thingy.
Don't want to read the existing pages because, no doubt spoilers due to the age of the game.
However, any guidance/tips on what races & classes to start the game as, taking into account I'm stuck with it once I make the choice.
Don't want to read the existing pages because, no doubt spoilers due to the age of the game.
However, any guidance/tips on what races & classes to start the game as, taking into account I'm stuck with it once I make the choice.
Epona
Sonic: 1 Nov 2006 - 8 Jan 2022
This is currently on sale £6.99 on Steam, GOTY edition with all the DLC. I am assuming given the length of this thread that it is worth that?
I have £4.89 that has apparently been floating about forgotten in my Steam wallet for a couple of years, so technically I'd only be splashing out the princely sum of £1.10, which seems like a bargain for any game.
I have £4.89 that has apparently been floating about forgotten in my Steam wallet for a couple of years, so technically I'd only be splashing out the princely sum of £1.10, which seems like a bargain for any game.
furluxor
snake with a claw
Here's an opinion: it's better than Dragon Age 2 but not as good as Dragon Age 1. If you like RPGs with character development / interactions and well developed lore, you might love this. The gameplay is strategic and with pauses to think - works for anxious types like myself. The open world comes with the downsides of too many fetch quests and repetitive environments. The landscapes are beautiful and you can faff around decorating your castle, changing outfits and forging weapons.
For that price it's a good bet, because if it pays off this will provide many hours of gameplay - it's a long game. My partner is now replaying it for the third time. It's also a good primer for when the next Dragon Age comes out in 2023 (hopefully). But if you can get the first game in the series, I'd get that instead.
Epona
Sonic: 1 Nov 2006 - 8 Jan 2022
Thanks! I did buy it in the end, thought it's bound to be worth it. I preferred Origins over II.
