Comparing AoC to Dragon Age Inquisition

I wrote this in early 2015 and never posted it.  With a 4th Dragon Age game being talked about, might as well throw this into the internet ether.

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Robert E. Howard's Hyboria is my favorite fantasy world.  It's a great mix of grim realism, fantastic places, heroes, dark magic, and voluptuous women.  As this is going on an AoC blog, I don't need to further detail what makes this Hyboria so engaging besides its most famous residents.

My second favorite is BioWare's Thedas, the setting of their Dragon Age games.

Thedas is a dark fantasy that has dwarves hiding from their world in their underground kingdoms, elves enslaved and suppressed in ghettos throughout the land under the leadership of a powerful Theocracy.  Mages imprisoned in towers, the world afraid of their powers and guarded by specially trained Templar warriors to strike them down if needed. And then there's the darkspawn, more or less mindless creatures that come up from the crumbling ruins of ancient dwarven cities and destroy everything in their path.  Even the realm's protectors, the Grey Wardens, carry dark secrets.

The third Dragon Age game, Inquisition, came out in December 2014 to mostly positive reviews.  While comparing an MMO to a single player game is challenging as they are very different animals, the games do share some similarities.

Graphics: DAI, being a newer game looks better.  This is most clearly noticed with the waves of the Storm Coast swelling onto the shore (they don't crash) and the foliage of areas like the Hinterlands, where the wildflowers are of many various colors.  The sky and clouds are beautiful and when it rains, you almost feel bad for your avatar and his/her companions as they slog through the muddy roads and climb water soaked rocky hills.

There's clipping around some armors (including one of the crafted ones that's meant for your protagonist) and things often appear too shiny for such a drab world.

Visual Style: The visual style of Thedas is partially low fantasy, and partially refined Baroque depending on the area.  The wooden shields covered with skin, leather and chain armor.  Some of the weapons start to cross into the realm of fantasy where they are impractical, particularly the mage's staves, which go to great lengths to say 'I'm powerful and have no fashion sense.'

Certain armors are meant for certain characters and much is fairly impractical as armor.  The women aren't unnecessarily clad, like AoC, but cleavage flaunting tops don't make much sense for armor, even for a mage, unless she's using her boobs to mesmerize her opponents.  I should note, I never found that spell in the game.

Characters: As a single player game, DAI has an interesting mix of characters for you to meet and interact with as the game progresses.  Not all of these people are good people and you have to choose what you'd like to believe.  Everyone's motivations are different and there's a lot of worldly politics, affectionately called 'The Game' at play, much like R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice stories.

I've enjoyed how Thedas dwarves aren't the stereotypical gruff, beards, big axes, and beer dwarves of most high fantasy.  One of the main companions is a sarcastic, beardless, crossbow toting dwarf who's occupation, besides rogue, is author of popular serials. He refers to one of your allies, an Orlesian (think Baroque era French) scribe alternately as "Scribbles" and "Ruffles" for carrying a note pad and her puffy blouse.

One of the things I enjoyed most in the Dragon Age games is the party banter as you walk around.  The people traveling with you don't always get along and are often quite happy to vocalize it.  Most of it is playful banter between characters, who can even have their own relationships.

The main villain wasn't as fleshed out as you'd hope but was always vexing as his influence stretched across all the areas you traveled.

Story: A story in a single player game is critical while in an MMO, it just guides you to the next quest hub.  In this regard, DAI felt a little like AoC.  There was a large over-arching story arc but as you went through an area, you'd pick up a lot of side quests.  Then I got distracted by those until I forgot the one reason I was stomping around the Western Approach.

Like all Dragon Age games, there are some tough choices to make, but not as many as in previous games.  But, unlike previous games, there are sometimes no way out of choosing between two bad outcomes.

It is an epic tale that has you go from prisoner to leader of a large and diverse army.  You'll make allies and you'll make enemies.  Part of this leadership becomes sending your allies to do various quests (you send them off, and after a time you get the result/reward).  These can open new areas of maps, gather resources, gain influence, or even grant equipment.

Combat: How engaging the combat is can be as an important part of a game as it's story and immersion.  Here DAI fails horribly compared to AoC.  Each character can have a maximum of 8 abilities plus up to 3 potions/grenades.  You can switch between your character and their three companions during combat and, like Dragon Age Origins, can pause combat to issue commands.  While doing that gives you utmost control, it also slows the game down.

Most of combat is clicking away like mad waiting for your cool downs to expire.  I played through as a tank, and would have to keep one or two combos for breaking guard (an auxiliary health bar) available until needed, meaning that besides my two charge abilities, and special main character ability, I had 3 abilities to cycle between.  In AoC terms, it's like fighting mobs using 70% white hits.

One interesting change to most games was DAI's approach to healing.  There, basically, isn't any.  Your party carries some health potions (8 and can go up to 12, if I recall correctly) and then you can craft some different ones (regeneration, or an AOE healing grenade).  After that, your best defense is to use abilities to grant secondary health bars like mage's Barrier spell and soldier's guard abilities.  These secondary (and tertiary if you can get both up) health bars take damage first before your health drops.

Outside of a few boss fights, there's not a lot of really challenging battles besides the High Dragons.  There's 10 dragons sprinkled throughout the world and chances are, the first time you engage one, you're going to get rocked pretty bad.  But once you are powerful enough, you can plow through them without breaking a sweat.  The first one you take down will feel like an accomplishment.

Cities: In AoC you can build a guild city through a lot of grinding.  In DAI you get to upgrade a big keep and make some cosmetic changes to areas through resources gathered.  You can also change your bed, windows, and decorations (because these are important in a RPG).

Game Length: People are saying DAI is about 150 hours to play through.  I finished the main quest and most side quests (like 99%) in about 100-110 hours (stupid dragons).  Part of the "ease" for me, may have been from playing more challenging games like AoC and getting concepts like moving in combat easier.

AoC, if using double XP potions, takes about 100 hours to get from the beaches of Tortage to level 80, so pretty equivalent to "see the world".

Glitches: Does DAI have some game-breaking glitches? Oh yeah!  At one point, after leaving one Zone, if you return, you can't leave again.  Ever, essentially ending your game (until you revert your save game).  There's visual glitches, lag spikes (in a single player game!), and broken abilities.  It should make any AoC player feel at home.

Music: DAI has some rousing epic scores.  But almost too many.  There were more climaxes than your average porno film.  While amazing to listen to, it sometimes felt like too much.  AoC's soundtrack, in contrast, had better atmospheric music with only a few epic hero tracks.

The special edition of the DAI game came with the digital soundtrack. In listening to it, I realized that they took a few songs, rearranged them, and gave them different titles.  For example, the songs Val Royeaux and the Orleasian Theme are exactly the same outside of some subtle arrangement details.  That, my friends, is mailing it in hard. Adding the second violins doesn't make something a new song, that's called a new arrangement.  Ask Vanilla Ice if a subtle tweak to a song turns it into a different one.

Nudity/Sex: DAI has the opportunity for the protagonist to have a romantic relationship with one of their companions.  If you're playing a game for 50+ hours just to see some boobs, I suggest logging in to AoC, make a female toon and run topless through Tortage.  And, being a BioWare game, there's options for same sex relations.  The cinematics for the romances are tastefully done but definitely adult themed (think an R-rated movie or Cinemax on a Saturday night).

Miscellaneous: It had some annoyances (including 'find all of me quests' like shards (think datacrons from SWTOR), mosaics (never completed one), alcohol of Thedas (that either), all landmarks in a zone (found all in most of the zones), etc...

Overall: DAI is a game that was fun to play through and a game, much like Origins, I'll play through again, to see how different options affect the outcome.  I'd read that there are 40 different endings. Will it replace AoC as my go-to game?  No.  The combat isn't engaging enough to entice me to play again and again (for reference, I have 10 80's and the first 3 didn't have double XP potions).  But every once in a while, I need to step away from Hyboria, but only so I can be grateful for what it provides when I come back.  As expansions have been released I haven't had the interest to go check them out.

Achievements I'd Like to Eventually See

Update 4.5 brought Age of Conan into 2009 with Achievements.  The Blonde Myth of Aquilonia has a nice write up of the implementation and why it's good for AoC. I agree on both of his main points that this is good for veterans (and new players) while also acknowledging that this won't propel Age of Conan into the WoW-sphere in terms of  game population.

This post is to list ideas for future Achievements that I think would be good to implement.  As I've had about 6 hours on the new system so far, some of these may already be in the game but hidden from view or something I missed as I had my barbarian binge drinking in Tortage like a college student on spring break.

Solo Farming Rares

Someone on the forums had said farming solo instances like Refuge of the Apostate, Isle of the Iron Statues, Forgotten City (Unchained), and Dead Man's Hand (Unchained) for rares was full retard.  I respectfully disagree.  Doing Nightmare Bubbles would be full retard.  Solo farming for rares is just partial retard and everybody knows you never go full retard.  And having done it to get the Children of Yag shield, the Hyrkanian Chest and necklace (on different toons), it is also very tedious.

When I wrote the guide to Dead Man's Hand's main quest line, I ran the instance 18 times to get an idea of how much gold, Esteem Tokens, etc. would be gained.  Dead Man's Hand, while fun, is the most time consuming of these solo instances but each one, if completing the quests in them, takes around 25-40 minutes (although I know people can do them faster if just going for the rares).

So You Want To Be a Guild Leader?

There's much more to being a guild leader than been the head of a bunch of merry men (and women).  Even if you've been a guild leader in other games, you may be better off learning a little bit about AoC before starting up a new guild or taking over an older guild.  This guide (on the native blog site) has a lot of links back to the forums, resource sites, and other blogs, hopefully providing a useful resource for new guild leaders.

Here's some things to think about as you ponder starting a guild.

"Secrets" of Tortage

Most people have gone through Tortage a few times.  Including characters I've deleted, I'm guessing I have run around the Barachan Isle more than twenty times (including a few times to make notes for guides and such).  Despite its familiarity, it's still one of my favorite places in the game.  Partly due to characters you interact with and partially because the area was so detailed and full of interesting quests.

This post is going to focus on a few special quests.  Special because it requires the completion of another quest before it becomes available, its reward is a blue item, or both.  There's also a few Night bosses sprinkled about White Sands Island, the Volcano, and the Underhalls.

What is Daggamalt?

Old Photo: it's now nerfed to 405 and 68/s.

Taking a mild break from making simple walkthroughs, I thought it'd be fun to look at one of the health potions we all use without thinking.

What is Daggamalt?  We know it to be the level 60 healing potion that everyone knows, loves, and wishes was more potent (which then begot us Potent Daggamalt).  The beer nerd and amateur home brewer in me wanted to look into whether it would be possible to make Daggamalt.

Faction Walkthrough: Hand of Glory (Turan)

One of the only good things to come out of the 2011 Conan movie was the Savage Coast of Turan adventure pack.  This provided another level 50-55 leveling area, two solo instances, a group instance, and a Tier 3.5 Raid that almost nobody did due to difficulty for the rewards given (I think that's changed recently).

This walk through will provide a basic guide to joining the Hand of Glory, advancing in the ranks, and listing the quests available.  It also contains some story spoilers.  This chain has some fun dialog and many of the characters you meet have some fun non-game advancing lines that are worth a read if you're lore hound and enjoy tie-ins, even if its from a relatively bad movie.

Walkthrough for The Weakling, The Warrior, and The Wanton (Unchained)

Dreary place

Outside of raiding and PvPing, one of the best ways to get better gear is by gathering Rare Trophies that can be traded in (with gold) for purple gear.  One of the easiest Unchained instances to gather rares is Dead Man's Hand.  It generally takes longer than Island of Iron Statues and Refuge of the Apostate but is easier than both and significantly easier to access than the latter.

All a player needs to access this (and Island of the Iron Statues) is the Turan Adventure pack (which costs 1300 Funcom points or 6300 for the Jewels of Turan version which has several additional features including the Sand Demon combat pet).

To start the quest, talk to Artus in Ardashir.  The first time this quest is run, there's some extra steps (that I won't cover here) that set up the story for the recurring section.  After the first run through, the island only has four recurring quests.  Despite not paying much in silver (four to six silver, compared to 10 to 12 for Khitai quests), these are fairly easy to complete and in your general path through the island.  The fourth quest is available on the island but since completing it takes you off the beaten path, it's not covered here although it is pretty straight forward.