no, almost all the best gear i've seen has been on vendors in various cities

DW rogue/sheild tank/spirit healer/ any mage is a pretty rowdy group. i've been enjoying my way through on hard without to many troubles, esp once both your mages have force field - every fight should be a breeze. You have to change some things around though like the tactics of each party member you use... the default settings are absolutely terrible

one script i'd recommend to make for your mages

Ally health <10% = cast forcefield

you can also script your healing mage basically so much that you almost never need to micro her except to pop the odd potion, maybe move her in range of your group for aoe pulse heals, or drop a group heal which i haven't really found a good way to script

oh also I'd recommend one ranger talent - pin shot, i have had to use my bow a whole bunch, during solo fights mostly, but also when you get snared or some such CC, and can only stand and shoot for a few 'rounds' of combat

I love this game.

I'm playing tri-mage (just finished the mage tower and heading to redcliffe).

Any hints on how to deal with the Redcliffe event as tri-mage? Everyone seems to want to run in the way of my fireballs and blizzards.

Should I get Shale on this run through or stick with Alestair?

Either one can Tank just fine so its up to you which is more fun. Allistar is a lot more customizable since Shale has no armor or skills.

3 Mages will pretty much insure you never have any problems with the game

I'm thinking about playing a no mage challenge game on hard, well I think there might be some small part of the game where you have to play with morrigan but other than that, no mages. Dunno if the game is even possible to beat without mages.

Doable on hard, there are people solo'ing Nightmare. You're never forced story wise to use a mage except for 2 minutes with Morrigan. 1 fight if you're a non human-noble

Jesus how do you even solo the huge mob packs on nightmare with a solo warrior or rogue

my guess is they solo with a mage

the thread I heard was a Rogue. Lots of kiting, stealthing, and very careful half pulls

People really love to challenge themselves huh... seems like such a waste of time

when soloing with my rogue, i was constantly kiting/waiting for dirty fighting cooldown, use it, get a few melees off, then back to bow/kite

did that in the fade part (before you get a good form)
and for the arena thing in the dwarf town...

i could see being able to do it for most of the game... but how could you possibly solo boss fights.... i guess it's doable but you'd have to use tons of health potions

come to think of it my rogue is a better tank the alistar, and quite few fights have ended up with my rogue soloing 3-4 enemies at the end

it would probably be easiest to solo the game as an arcane warrior

thats the other option imo. Be an arcane warrior/blood mage, Some boss fights would just involve kiting and using the RLASG strategy. But any caster boss, with adds would be brutal

Blood mages with heals are insanely good if you alternate forms quickly.

My blood mage has 2 rows of Entropy (Waking Nightmare, and the AoE cloud thingy)....

Slap on a regen, cast the blood mage HP for mana spell thingy, cast sleep, cast Waking Nightmare, choose one target to Horror (does tons of damage) then finish with the AoE dark cloud thing. If your health/regen are fine you can do the Blood Mage blood boil (have to be in blood mage form), if you're not get out of Blood mage form, heal up, regen again, get back into form and boil blood. You can take out lots and lots of dudes this way.

Blood boil is amazing. Because of it's huge radius and no friendly fire. I usually have my tank initiate the pull to draw ranged attacks and sit just ahead of my mage as he blood boils then infernos the area. That generally takes out 90% of the pack if they're grouped up at all.

Started the game on hard, am in that first town after Ostregor.

I have been micromanaging the fights so far. Would like to use tactics but too lazy to set it up.

This difficulty works pretty well for me. I died three or four times on the ogre (I was being really chintzy with healing salves though).

Any thoughts on the dog as a party member? Right now I'm doing PC mage, Morrigan, Leiliana, and Alistair...works alright but Leiliana goes down fast (zing!)...should I be maneuvering her to do backstabbing or something

speaking of bloodmages, I think theres a bug with blood control. it does no damage if they resist afaik.

branka & golems were by farrr my hardest challenge yet. (even though all my warrior equip was on sten so my tank sucked)

Assuming you're not playing a mage, how tough do you think it would be to make it through the game without Wynne? I actually did Redcliffe before the Mage's circle, so had to give Morrigan Heal and use a lot of pull tactics. The game became exponentially easier once I'd picked up Wynne, but still challenging.

I'm playing Nightmare as a Rogue with only Morrigan

so which origins story do you like the most?
so far it's city elf for me, haven't played dalish and dwarf, yet.

they're all pretty good. I love how each one tells the other side of story you deal with in game.

I liked the caste less dwarf one even though I hate dwarves

is there a way to check out how the different endgame armors look?

unpossible

I'm beating Nightmare without her

there is nooo way you can win the branka/carilin fight on nightmare with less than 4 characters.

If someone did it I want a video.

You can shatter all the adds fairly quickly.

Cone of cold + Pinpoint strike