Dragon Age: Inquistion

2014-12-22 10:27:47 am

twitch.tv/letterswords

Have you found a good place to get the masterwork consistently? Also, couldnt we just put it in like sera's gear or something?

DashingSplash

Edit history:

DashingSplash: 2014-12-22 11:26:33 am

2014-12-22 11:26:05 am

As far as I know you'll have to kill plenty of Fennecs (25% movement speed), or Stalkers (50% movement speed ?) in order to get them. There are some other ones that drops them, but don't have it in my head atm.

And, we could do that for Sera since we would need Skyhold anyway.

letterswords

2014-12-22 01:21:36 pm

twitch.tv/letterswords

Also, what are you doing that is allowing you to miss out on the -10 mage approval at the winter palace? I get a pop up about it almost immediately after the first conversation with the Duke even if I walk towards the woman who lost her ring afterwards.

letterswords

2014-12-23 10:42:54 pm

twitch.tv/letterswords

So i sort of finished a run (not really--didn't kill corypheus). I definitely made a lot of mistakes and should definitely be able to get like a 3:40 or so. I apparently did something wrong in terms of dialogue and lost cole when i got back from the warden altar thing in the western approach, and on top of that I must've accidentally used sera's focus or something because she only had one bar when i got to corypheus. either way, i basically couldn't reasonably beat corypheus without bashing my head against the wall, so i stopped there, and i couldn't actually figure out whether or not it would be worth doing the sidequest for cole so we can bring him along as a result. I also seemed to be having some weird glitch or something with thousand cuts, because often i would use and and it would play the sound like the animation was happening, but i wouldn't do any damage other than the final hit on it (this happened quite a few times).

DashingSplash

Edit history:

DashingSplash: 2014-12-25 03:07:50 am

2014-12-25 03:06:32 am

I've watched like 1/3rd of your run, and what I can say is that I'm not sure what got Cole to leave. The only difference we made was that I "leashed" the Templars, while you accepted them as equal partners; I know, Cole wasn't in the party at the time, but it might still have affected his approval rating in the end. Good thing to do, is probably to "look for Cole" the first thing you do once you get to Skyhold (atleast, that's what I did). Then again, I'm pretty sure that this run doesn't require Cole at all, but will it be faster to skip Cole and go for Solas, for example? We can skip the Grand Duchess Florianne de Chalons fight, and the only fight we really need Cole's Mark of Death is in the Temple of Mythal boss fight; which we can do without Cole anyway as far as I can tell. Also, check my Winter Palace out and see if you can find a part that I might have gained some approval from Cole that you didn't.

The Mark of Death doesn't do much in the final fight with Corypheus and his dragon, as the skip I found doesn't seem to work without Hidden Blades on Sera's daggers. It can also help in the Fade boss fight, but as far as I can tell, just using Sera's combo-wombo, and controlling Vivienne makes that fight go just as quick since the boss seem to be unable to take more than a certain amount of damage if you don't manage to time it correctly.

Sera will lose focus down to tier 1 focus if she dies. So, you'll have to keep her alive all the time to keep the tier 3 focus for her; as far as I can tell, she did seem to die a few times. Also, if you wait too long after using Flask of Flames and use Thousand Cuts it will deplete it, and sometimes it can actually deplete to tier 1 focus (a bit weird sometimes). Why her Thousand Cuts doesn't work might be because you have the enemy highlighted, but still stand so far away from that particular enemy. What you can do is open up tactical menu, tell Sera to attack the enemy (while standing really close to that particular enemy) and fire of the combo-wombo without really targeting it. Try a few methods out, as it seems to not have worked for me when I was too far from the enemy.

Also, it might be good to go through different parts of this run by themself, as you seem to struggle with what you should do in the run. I also noticed that you didn't do the Adamant Fortress skip (through the bars).

Merry Christmas!

I've watched like 1/3rd of your run, and what I can say is that I'm not sure what got Cole to leave. The only difference we made was that I "leashed" the Templars, while you accepted them as equal partners; I know, Cole wasn't in the party at the time, but it might still have affected his approval rating in the end. Good thing to do, is probably to "look for Cole" the first thing you do once you get to Skyhold (atleast, that's what I did). Then again, I'm pretty sure that this run doesn't require Cole at all, but will it be faster to skip Cole and go for Solas, for example? We can skip the Grand Duchess Florianne de Chalons fight, and the only fight we really need Cole's Mark of Death is in the Temple of Mythal boss fight; which we can do without Cole anyway as far as I can tell. Also, check my Winter Palace out and see if you can find a part that I might have gained some approval from Cole that you didn't.

The Mark of Death doesn't do much in the final fight with Corypheus and his dragon, as the skip I found doesn't seem to work without Hidden Blades on Sera's daggers. It can also help in the Fade boss fight, but as far as I can tell, just using Sera's combo-wombo, and controlling Vivienne makes that fight go just as quick since the boss seem to be unable to take more than a certain amount of damage if you don't manage to time it correctly.

Sera will lose focus down to tier 1 focus if she dies. So, you'll have to keep her alive all the time to keep the tier 3 focus for her; as far as I can tell, she did seem to die a few times. Also, if you wait too long after using Flask of Flames and use Thousand Cuts it will deplete it, and sometimes it can actually deplete to tier 1 focus (a bit weird sometimes). Why her Thousand Cuts doesn't work might be because you have the enemy highlighted, but still stand so far away from that particular enemy. What you can do is open up tactical menu, tell Sera to attack the enemy (while standing really close to that particular enemy) and fire of the combo-wombo without really targeting it. Try a few methods out, as it seems to not have worked for me when I was too far from the enemy.

Also, it might be good to go through different parts of this run by themself, as you seem to struggle with what you should do in the run. I also noticed that you didn't do the Adamant Fortress skip (through the bars).

Merry Christmas!

letterswords

2014-12-25 09:40:19 am

twitch.tv/letterswords

Ah, that's rather unfortunate about the sera dying thing. I'll also have to find a way to get thousand cuts to work, hopefully your suggestion works for me. Didn't even know about the adamant fortress skip so ill have to check that out. But yeah hopefully i can get another run in soon. I did a bunch of the clips slow because i kept failing them, wasted a bunch of time trying to reload saves to get cole back, and screwed up some of the crafting, so i think 3:50 range should hopefully happen next run. I really wish we could find some way around the duping for requisitions part of the run since its so boring but im pretty certain everything else would be slower.

And also, Merry Christmas to you too.

DashingSplash

Edit history:

DashingSplash: 2014-12-25 04:09:46 pm

2014-12-25 02:53:56 pm

So, I've cleaned up unnecessary stuff on the computer and defragged it; now it loads Crestwood in 1 minute, instead of 5 minutes. Happy times~ Hopefully, this will probably end up giving the run 10 minutes of loading screens instead of 50, and I assume an SSD would take it down to around 2 minutes? That would be something. öwö

DashingSplash

2014-12-25 04:55:11 pm

http://www.twitch.tv/dashingsplash/c/5751178

letterswords

2014-12-25 09:11:51 pm

twitch.tv/letterswords

Sounds nice about the loads, I definitely could tell that my loads were going way faster than yours during my attempt. Cool clip, too bad you couldn't replicate it. Do you eventually fall into a void if you keep walking around under the map there?

letterswords

2014-12-26 08:41:13 pm

twitch.tv/letterswords

So I was thinking a bit about how we could improve our gear (if at all) that we craft, and I figured out a couple things: there still isn't great information out there about what guaranteed fade-touched material drops are out there, but nothing I can find so far suggests there is a guaranteed fade-touched material drop for anything with hidden blades (although the red templars in emprise du lion apparently have a chance to drop one). However, we could pick up two different kinds of runes that may be useful. One, the demon-slaying rune can be bought from bonny sims in skyhold, but it requires dragon blood to craft, which I don't think we would get at any point. There is also the corrupting rune which we automatically get when we recruit dagna that requires red lyrium (which we can from red templar horrors and is dupable) and increases damage against humans and beasts (so at least somewhat useful in the temple of mythal, against grey wardens, and in part of the winter palace). No idea which kind of rune if any would affect corypheus of the ones that increase damage against certain enemies only.

DashingSplash

Edit history:

DashingSplash: 2014-12-27 09:08:11 am

2014-12-27 08:26:52 am

Since we ain't going the Mage quest route we can't get Red Lyrium from the Haven raid (is it even possible with Mage quest route?). In the end, the rune will not be beneficial for us, and as far as I can see the only upgrades is getting better fade-touched materials; which, takes time. I tried the Temple of Mythal, and corypheus without Cole, and went with Solas instead. This is possible, if one does the fights correctly: http://www.twitch.tv/dashingsplash/c/5759103 As you can see, I had some problem in the beginning, but found som rather decent ways to defeat those bosses.

The Temple of Mythal boss:
Use Mark of the Rift on enemy group
Move all your characters to the opposite side of the stairs to avoid elven enemy
Don't use combo-wombo until after she has summoned the first Rage Demon
Keep Sera alive until next combo-wombo

Corypheus:
Move all party members forward to avoid meteor
Use Sera's combo-wombo
Use Dispel on shield (before/after first teleport)
Use combo-wombo on Coryph at the dragon plateu
Load the autosave that spawns once you face the dragon (this should make the combo-wombo available at once)
Use combo-wombo
Keep Sera alive until her next combo-wombo, but don't use it until you've used Vivienne to take off all the armor
Use combo-wombo
Proceed to Coryph
Use combo-wombo, and directly after use the Thousand Cuts
Done

Since we ain't going the Mage quest route we can't get Red Lyrium from the Haven raid (is it even possible with Mage quest route?). In the end, the rune will not be beneficial for us, and as far as I can see the only upgrades is getting better fade-touched materials; which, takes time. I tried the Temple of Mythal, and corypheus without Cole, and went with Solas instead. This is possible, if one does the fights correctly: http://www.twitch.tv/dashingsplash/c/5759103 As you can see, I had some problem in the beginning, but found som rather decent ways to defeat those bosses.

The Temple of Mythal boss:
Use Mark of the Rift on enemy group
Move all your characters to the opposite side of the stairs to avoid elven enemy
Don't use combo-wombo until after she has summoned the first Rage Demon
Keep Sera alive until next combo-wombo

Corypheus:
Move all party members forward to avoid meteor
Use Sera's combo-wombo
Use Dispel on shield (before/after first teleport)
Use combo-wombo on Coryph at the dragon plateu
Load the autosave that spawns once you face the dragon (this should make the combo-wombo available at once)
Use combo-wombo
Keep Sera alive until her next combo-wombo, but don't use it until you've used Vivienne to take off all the armor
Use combo-wombo
Proceed to Coryph
Use combo-wombo, and directly after use the Thousand Cuts
Done

DashingSplash

2014-12-27 09:08:43 am

I'll probably do a run in a few hours; just though I would let ya know. (:

letterswords

2014-12-27 09:12:16 am

twitch.tv/letterswords

I'm not sure what you're trying to get at as far as the rune thing. We definitely get some red lyrium by siding with the templars because there are some red templar horrors we need to kill when we are at the part where we have to go save templar guys. Do you think it would take too long to dupe the lyrium relative to how much time it saves?

Also, you said you did stuff with solas instead of cole, but did it feel faster? I guess since we have to go out of our way to get cole into the final fight then it should be.

DashingSplash

2014-12-27 09:29:09 am

Oh yea, my bad. My sentence structure was awful.

Totally forget about that part of the Templar quest. But, I don't think that the fighting would be much faster unless it would somehow benefit Sera's combo-wombo against bosses; in the end, that's the only thing that we really use when it comes to damage output. But!, I'm not sure it would save as much time as it takes to dupe it...I highly doubt it actually. ö-ö

There is not much difference from using Solas instead of Cole tbh in terms of combat. We do, however, save about 5-10 minutes overall skipping Cole entirely. But, we would have to approach the bosses slightly differently; which, we lose about 1 minute from -- tops.

letterswords

Edit history:

letterswords: 2014-12-27 10:01:15 am

letterswords: 2014-12-27 10:00:43 am

2014-12-27 10:00:23 am

twitch.tv/letterswords

To be fair, we only need 6 lyrium per rune, which works out to 30 total (2 dagger runes and 3 staff runes, assuming using solas. we also might not need to give runes to everyone). Sounds good on the skipping cole though, I think I'm also going to try and do a run sometime tonight. It may make a big difference, or maybe not. I'll probably test it anyways in my run later today, it certainly won't waste that much time to do, and it'll either make no difference or make some fights a little faster. It should work out to around a 15-16% damage increase on sera (daggers do 129 base damage, and rune is +20 versus relevant enemies, so 149/129), and 89/69=29% on people with staves, all of course on human enemies only.

DashingSplash

2014-12-27 05:03:01 pm

Finished the run with a time of 3:43:23. Going to time the loading screens tomorrow, and see what the final time is.

letterswords

Edit history:

letterswords: 2014-12-27 10:01:43 pm

2014-12-27 10:01:11 pm

twitch.tv/letterswords

3:47:20 (http://www.twitch.tv/letterswords/c/5762831). Lost 15 minutes (literally) on the plaidweave split because i did exactly what you told me not to do (go to the keep, but this time i did it because i thought i screwed something up when the guys we are supposed to kill didn't spawn right away when i quickloaded). I eventually went back to where that patrolling group spawns and spent a bunch of time reloading before finally getting some plaidweave. Biggest other mistakes were some bad movement and such on the out of bounds in arbor wilds and accidentally using up my focus on the dragon part of the corypheus fight and having to reload. Definitely think somewhere in the 3:20s is possible with the loads i have. I probably won't time out loads since this run will be so easily improvable.

DashingSplash

2014-12-28 03:29:10 am

Oh, you got a run going. That's good. Although, too bad about the plaidweave split, and dragon fight. ):

Yea, I just timed the loading screens and I had 34:46 minutes of loading screens; a bit better, but still quite bad. So, my run was a 3:08:37. Getting closer and closer to sub 3 hours, if that's possible, as most of the time I lost was probably not 8 minutes and 37 seconds. Perhaps a nice skip in the Fade and the Templar quest will do it? (:

http://www.twitch.tv/dashingsplash/c/5764222

letterswords

2014-12-28 10:46:12 am

twitch.tv/letterswords

Thought of a small route change that could save a litttle time, but it depends on how much influence we get if any from the western approach quest. We could get enough power to go to emprise du lion, capture keep, craft weapons, etc. then get the last influence we need to hit 6 from western approach and potentially cut out a couple requisitions. Depends how much influence we get and how much slower the fight there is compared to doing it later when we'd have full focus bar on sera. Worth checking out I guess.

letterswords

Edit history:

letterswords: 2014-12-30 12:25:55 pm

letterswords: 2014-12-30 12:24:58 pm

2014-12-28 01:19:38 pm

twitch.tv/letterswords

Also, one other idea to test (although I think it is unlikely to be faster): skipping emprise du lion altogether. Instead, we do the original grind to level 6 influence (possibly throwing western approach in there, but not necessarily). Then we use farris to get a bunch of power and influence and get the perks for mage and rogue schematics which IIRC give us tier 2 masterwork schematics (so definitely worse, but still can insert the fade-touched stuff). We can then unlock emprise du lion solely for access to the missions that give us tier 3 materials (we can get both cloth and metal this way). We'd be sacrificing a lot of dps solely for the sake of cutting out the need to capture suledin keep and reduce the duping (since we wouldn't need to dupe a bunch to get gold for schematics), which is why i think it won't be faster, but there is the distinct possibility that despite slower fights we end up faster overall. Thought I would mention it even if it doesn't end up being faster.

EDIT: Definitely seems possible that the schematics method isn't completely horrible; we go down to 91 dps instead of 112 in the staves and 264 from 321 on daggers, so about 80% of our previous dps. We do lose access to the grips/blades (we only get a single staff grip. no staff blade or dagger grip) by this method, although if it seems really necessary we can grab a grip and a blade when we are in val royeaux. The corrupting runes would alleviate some of the damage loss as they wouldn't scale down at all, but it would probably be noticable in at least the demon boss in the fade and the corypheus fight.

Also, one other idea to test (although I think it is unlikely to be faster): skipping emprise du lion altogether. Instead, we do the original grind to level 6 influence (possibly throwing western approach in there, but not necessarily). Then we use farris to get a bunch of power and influence and get the perks for mage and rogue schematics which IIRC give us tier 2 masterwork schematics (so definitely worse, but still can insert the fade-touched stuff).  We can then unlock emprise du lion solely for access to the missions that give us tier 3 materials (we can get both cloth and metal this way). We'd be sacrificing a lot of dps solely for the sake of cutting out the need to capture suledin keep and reduce the duping (since we wouldn't need to dupe a bunch to get gold for schematics), which is why i think it won't be faster, but there is the distinct possibility that despite slower fights we end up faster overall. Thought I would mention it even if it doesn't end up being faster.

EDIT: Definitely seems possible that the schematics method isn't completely horrible; we go down to 91 dps instead of 112 in the staves and 264 from 321 on daggers, so about 80% of our previous dps. We do lose access to the grips/blades (we only get a single staff grip. no staff blade or dagger grip) by this method, although if it seems really necessary we can grab a grip and a blade when we are in val royeaux. The corrupting runes would alleviate some of the damage loss as they wouldn't scale down at all, but it would probably be noticable in at least the demon boss in the fade and the corypheus fight.

DashingSplash

2014-12-30 01:45:59 pm

Those both seems like good ways to save some extra time; however, you need to capture Suledin Keep to get access to the tier 3 cloth operation. Plaidweave should work though, right? What metal would we use though to get 91 dps? Is Obsidian enough for that? In the end, we would have to try Fade, ToM, and Corypheus out with T2 weapons and see what happens as they will be the hardest parts.

Btw, nice run! Got quite the nice time aswell, didn't you? But, how much of it was loading screens?

letterswords

Edit history:

letterswords: 2014-12-30 02:25:43 pm

letterswords: 2014-12-30 02:23:39 pm

letterswords: 2014-12-30 02:22:52 pm

letterswords: 2014-12-30 02:19:37 pm

2014-12-30 02:19:02 pm

twitch.tv/letterswords

Any tier 3 metal should work to get 91 dps. However, it appears i read wrong and none of the repeatable war table missions give tier 3 metals, only tier 2 (which gives 79 dps in staves and 237 in daggers). we could hop into emprise du lion solely to grab some tier 3 metal and then leave maybe? If this page is accurate (http://dragonage3.wiki.fextralife.com/Crafting) then we could also find either everite or stormheart (both are tier 3 metals) somewhere in crestwood as well.

As for my run yesterday (if that's the one you are talking about) it was actually pretty bad, my loads are just quite a bit faster than yours (my guess is your run is actually faster). It was pretty good through Western Approach (maybe 2-3 mins lost other than to Plaidweave RNG) but then I had a crash on Adamant Fortress, poor boss fight in the Fade, hit a death plane on Temple of Mythal and got teleported back to the beginning of the OOB, followed shortly thereafter by a second crash. Then i had sera die against the dragon on corypheus fight and had to reload. So I won't time out loads until my next PB probably.

Any tier 3 metal should work to get 91 dps. However, it appears i read wrong and none of the repeatable war table missions give tier 3 metals, only tier 2 (which gives 79 dps in staves and 237 in daggers). we could hop into emprise du lion solely to grab some tier 3 metal and then leave maybe?  If this page is accurate (http://dragonage3.wiki.fextralife.com/Crafting) then we could also find either everite or stormheart (both are tier 3 metals) somewhere in crestwood as well.

As for my run yesterday (if that's the one you are talking about) it was actually pretty bad, my loads are just quite a bit faster than yours (my guess is your run is actually faster). It was pretty good through Western Approach (maybe 2-3 mins lost other than to Plaidweave RNG) but then I had a crash on Adamant Fortress, poor boss fight in the Fade, hit a death plane on Temple of Mythal and got teleported back to the beginning of the OOB, followed shortly thereafter by a second crash. Then i had sera die against the dragon on corypheus fight and had to reload. So I won't time out loads until my next PB probably.

zero shift

2014-12-31 10:37:44 pm

Wow, haven't been playing long and already OOB.

How do loading zones work in this? I found some other areas and weird stuff in the starting area but nothing loads. The game seems very glitchy and I'm sure there's many more OOB like this.

What is that area with stairs carved into a small rock mountain surrounded by pools of green water?

DashingSplash

2015-01-01 03:06:17 am

Quote from zero shift:

Wow, haven't been playing long and already OOB.

How do loading zones work in this? I found some other areas and weird stuff in the starting area but nothing loads. The game seems very glitchy and I'm sure there's many more OOB like this.

What is that area with stairs carved into a small rock mountain surrounded by pools of green water?

The stairs surrounded by green water is actually the area in where you create your character. That area, and Frostback Mountains seems to be in roughly the same area; which, is why it is possible to do that.

Spoilers:

There are a few out of bounds:

Frostback Mountains
Crestwood
Arbor Wilds

The only one we actually use is the Arbor Wilds one, but I'm sure there are a few more that could be useful. As I've seen, the loading zones "spawn" when a certain criteria has been met (sometimes not e.g. the cutscene skip in the Fade) and I've sadly no idea how to trigger these criterias without doing the actual quests. There are two potential skips that we'll be trying a bit more on and those are probably the Fade and during the Templar quest.

Letterswords, I was thinking about perhaps trying to close the game when the "musical" starts and see if we can skip the cutscene of getting to Skyhold. You think that would work/be worth it/be something we should do if it works?

[quote="zero shift"]Wow, haven't been playing long and already OOB.

How do loading zones work in this? I found some other areas and weird stuff in the starting area but nothing loads. The game seems very glitchy and I'm sure there's many more OOB like this.

What is that area with stairs carved into a small rock mountain surrounded by pools of green water?

[/quote]

The stairs surrounded by green water is actually the area in where you create your character. That area, and Frostback Mountains seems to be in roughly the same area; which, is why it is possible to do that.

Spoilers:

[hidden]There are a few out of bounds:

Frostback Mountains
Crestwood
Arbor Wilds

The only one we actually use is the Arbor Wilds one, but I'm sure there are a few more that could be useful. As I've seen, the loading zones "spawn" when a certain criteria has been met (sometimes not e.g. the cutscene skip in the Fade) and I've sadly no idea how to trigger these criterias without doing the actual quests. There are two potential skips that we'll be trying a bit more on and those are probably the Fade and during the Templar quest.[/hidden]

Letterswords, I was thinking about perhaps trying to close the game when the "musical" starts and see if we can skip the cutscene of getting to Skyhold. You think that would work/be worth it/be something we should do if it works?

letterswords

2015-01-01 09:21:19 am

twitch.tv/letterswords

If that does actually result in skipping the cutscene and putting us in skyhold, then yeah we probably should do that. My guess is that the last autosave we get until we gain control in skyhold is during the last "section" of the wandering around in the snow part, so it won't do anything. Worth testing to be sure though.