Dragon Age: Origins PC Patch 1.01 Released, Cuts Players Some Slack

im an experienced baldurs gate and dnd player and i found this game balls hard

using two warriors, a rogue and a mage, my party would die often, and it was constantly causing me to use all of my health poultices, which admittedly i never got around to figuring out how to make potions or dont have any healing spells yet... and you cant buy as many poultices as you want

if i just had more access to healing i would be able to live fairly easilly but with the limited potions available i couldnt use them all the time

I wish they would release two patches, one with JUST the bugfixes and the other with bugfixes and difficulty fixes. I rather liked the high difficulty it originally had, and I'm not a fan of Bioware making this choice for me.

Huh, I'm surprised they did anything about this. I mean I too was having a lot of trouble near the very beginning of the game--mainly in the Korcari Wilds where you get ambushed--but as soon as I starting tweaking the tactics and looking at the battlefield strategically the difficulty went away for the most part and what remained I actually very much enjoyed as a challenge.

Oh well, I guess I could still get the same enjoyment from hard mode.

First off: I love this game. Hurray for PC RPGs!

Secondly I didn't have any trouble until I ran into that first Ogre. I had been using light tactics up until then. But this was the first fight that made me pull out all the stops and still cause me to wipe and reload a few times before I got it.

You really need to tweak your party member's AI for this one. I had my warrior draw aggro with taunts, and then run in circles while the other party member's went ranged on him. I felt like it was kinda cheap, but I didn't figure out how to win any other way.

I started my game on nightmare and overall it feels right, as in its difficulty is similar to the RPGs I played when I was younger. The main difference with DO:A, is that after a battle, if any of my party members has died, they'll simply stand back up and any health lost during the fight -- unless they've been injured in a particular way -- starts to regenerate rapidly. This really makes the game somewhat easy.

I understand that some characters are important to the cut-scenes, but I honestly would have preferred if I were required to "always" have to use a potion or a spell, or visit a shop in order to rejuvenate or heal my party member(s). I do like that my characters can have torn-limbs and so on, which do effect how they heal or fight, etc., so that's a definite plus. I'm not saying I like that it happened, but that it adds more to my experience with this game.

Anyways, as I level, the game is getting more manageable, where as I'm not dying unless I do something recklessly, so overall it plays normal based on my experience. This game is a welcome change for the better with most games now days always wanting to hold my hand and give me silly little trophies everytime I do something...

Does anyone has new information on the Trojan warning with Avira AntiVir and the patch.

I always (like many others) getting this: The data '..\DragonAge1.01a.exe'
contains a virus or unwanted programm 'TR/Crypt.ZPACK.Gen2' [trojan].

Thx

Just a friendly warning- my game no longer starts after installing this patch.

I don't understand why some reviews are knocking the PC graphics. I don't remember any complaints about the Witcher's graphics and they used Bioware's older Aurora engine.

Anyone know if Mass Effect 2 is using this new engine or is it using UE3 again?

I started in Hard Mode anyway. I've been making a point to do either the toughest or second toughest levels on everything for the last year. On Xbox, I automatically default to the highest level of difficulty available on the first playthrough. I mean, we're gamers, right? How else can we keep sharp? I don't play games to watch a movie with occasional buttons being clicked. I want some sort of challenge.

So far, Hard mode is pretty easy. Any opinion out there on the "nightmare" mode or whatever it's called?

So the reviews for this game are very, very good. Should I pick it up if I'm a big fan of past BIoware stuff?

I getting up to speed on Baldur's Gate using TUTU (Allows you to play Baldur's 1 in Baldur's 2 engine!), haven't played it in years - was surprised by how hard it was - obviously been softened up by modern console conversion PC games!

In any event, even on 'Normal' in Baldur's Gate you really need to use tactics! Morrowind gives you an easy 'rats in a house' quest to get started - Oblivion is easy for most of the game without mods, BG gives you some spiders in a house that are really tough! Spit poison and really try to get at your Mage and Bowmen!!!!

I usually dont play this kind of games, but since i loved mass effect i became interested on this game and i bought it. I really like it, but seriously i got some troubles whit normal difficult and that impressed me because i play most of my games on hard (i never got stuck but only a few battles was easy)

I also thought "maybe its because i have never been played a game like this", but looks like i wasn't the only one whit this problem

Will there be a demo at some point? I doubt it.

I remember playing the hardest mode in Baldur's Gate, where your party members could die, aoe spells also affected your party, and where every decision you made was important. Is there something like this in Dragon Age?

Normal tended to kill your folks if you just sent them charging in, that's all. I think people who don't lean to heavy on tactics management must have been complaining since they felt they were better than "easy" yet were unwilling to press pause every now and then to manage things.

The only real difficulty I noticed was issues on armor and defense. When someone wearing full plate goes down like a sack of bricks during some fights on normal with buffs and healing, yeah, there may be a minor issue there.

Other than that, I'm surprised they had to adjust difficulty that dramatically.

hrm I though the difficulty was just fine (so far anyway 4h played) .. should I crank it to hard after that?

"Fixed video issues when running on a very wide screen display, including ATI Eyefinity displays"

that's 6 screens. you could have a character on it's own screen.