Quote Originally Posted by Monk View Post
Jeeze what kept you guys?
Lots of side questing? I'm not sure how you beat the game so fast.
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If you didn't, I'd advise finding Hybris- he's a pretty fun fight if you notch the difficulty down to normal. Plus he gives you one of the sicker one-handed swords in the game. He wasn't part of any major quest, so its not hard to miss him.


I'm playing the game through a second time now as a pure Entropy mage, which is crowd control and debuffs (where before I was full elemental, AOE and control). The game is... surprisingly a lot easier. Taking Creation as a secondary tree so i am full on support for my team as well as some nasty status afflictions. It still doesn't help with some fights though. Mainly due to poor balance choices in the encounters. I'm of the opinion that the combat is a great improvement over the first, but just like the first, Bioware didn't bother to tune certain aspects of it to avoid random spikes in difficulty. A shame really, because it seems like combat was the main focus this time around.
Hmm. I pretty much skipped out on entropy. My only real experience with it(I think) was the occasional Arcane Horror ending my party with(I think) a death cloud. I'd gone full blood mage, a decent chunk of Force, and the full lightning/rock tree, with my only other dabbling being snagging upgraded heal. Blood magic gets pretty strong later game, if only for all the bonuses you can get for your health regeneration and health to mana ratio for blood casting. Final fight, I pretty much kept casting forever and with impunity as long as Aveline kept aggro. As long as I tempered my nuking, I could cast for just about forever.

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I supported the Magi and had to fight Orsino first, who turned to Blood Magic to save himself at the end. It was your standard tank+spank until phase 2 where he'd pick a party member and go after them, and then it was a game of keep away. Phase 3, his head jumps off his body and summons tons of additional mobs to fight while running wild on your party. COntroling phase 3 is very very hard. If you kill his head he rejoins together for another go and its just a game of keep away again. Fun, but LONG. Had to take 20 min to kill him.

Then I had to fight Meridith who was possessed by the artifact. A really easy fight mainly because I had built my team for mass AoE. When she summons additional just spam your aoe and kite around until Cone of Cold's up. Then blast 'em. She was the final boss for me, but I preferred the Orsino fight to be honest. It had a much bigger "Ah crap" feel to it.

The reason I suggested people have a back-up mage is.. well, I had to kill Anders for what he did. That was seriously a non-bro thing to do. Not cool at all, Anders.
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I had a pretty much identical route. The only difference was keeping Anders with me. Not sure if that was what ultimately scared Fenris off or not. I figured at that point, what's done is done. War's a gonna happen regardless of him being alive, so let's keep every healthy mage we can. Plus, I was just that impressed. I mean, did you see that explosion?

I didn't find the fights unreasonably difficult. Perhaps because I got that +5/6/7 to all stats rune into all of my companion's and mine's armor. That, and those statues in particular took ages to get moving, with the exception of the last two that dropped down and started firebreathing everything in sight. Orsino was an interesting fight, but probably one stage longer than necessary. Not super difficult assuming you've got a proper party arrangement, just long. Heck, the three rage demons waiting for you() outside of where you fight Orsino was a harder fight than either boss, if for no other reason than the usual mass-assassin spamming issues. Probably doing a non-mage playthrough just to explore the other possibilities.