Dragon Age Inquisition - A Little Guide

 I wrote this for a family member a couple of years ago and forgot completely about it. I just forwarded it to another new Inquistor so might as well post it as well. 

 I thought I would send you some tips for playing Dragon Age. Some of these aren’t relevant until later in the game but helpful to know.

Levelling:

Your companions are never more than one level behind you. As I mentioned killings enemies 4 levels or more below you no longer grants XP. The game automatically raises base health rating and any attributes relevant to character class as you level. If you look at the attributes tab in the character menu you’ll see that there is a ton of them. These stats can only be directly affected through passive abilities and equipment attributes. I will get to the stupidly complicated crafting system later.

The inquisition levels too through power and influence. Influence is harder to raise than power. Requisition quests help but they consume resources so it’s a trade off.

Abilities:

Equip all mages with barrier (Spirit category) and set them to prioritize it in the Tactics tab. All party members within 4 metres or something like that gain a temporary blue protective barrier bar that protects against damage. Warriors have abilities that generate guard. You may have seen that grey bar above the health bar. You cannot be damaged while guard is active but getting hit will chip away at your guard. Any ability, accessory or equipment that boosts guard or damages enemy guard is good for warriors. To defend against status effects you can use accessories, potions, equipment stats or dispel magic.

Some active abilities can combine for extra damage. You can check this out in the ability description. Look for stun, freeze, paralyze or sleep effects. One party member sets up the combo with one of these and another one uses a detonator ability. For example, your mage freezes an enemy with an ice attack so you attack with Mighty Blow and the enemy shatters. Later in the game you’ll get something new to manage called focus and combos are helpful with that. Setting the whole party up with these abilities increases the chances of combo attacks.

Tactics and Behaviours:

You can set up which abilities are used most or not at all. Since health potions are shared between the party you definitely need to limit how many they can consume. Leave a couple for yourself. I think the defaults are fine but you can adjust how low their mana or health gets before they stop taking potions or using abilities. If you want a party member to be aggressive set them to follow themselves and they’ll attack any enemy in range. I liked to set ranged characters like mages and rogues to defence but Vivienne is an exception. She likes to get in there and kick ass. I swear they do what ever they like anyway but you can try to keep them alive or defend you at least. Remember if you switch to a party member while in combat your character will follow her own set behaviours too.

If a battle gets too tough don’t hesitate to use tactical camera to pause the action. It is very annoying to get used to but it’s good sometimes just to calm down and assess enemies and the situation. You can only issue one command per party member but you can reposition them or get them to target an enemy. You can also advance time by holding R2 on the PS4.

Potions:

Try to use regeneration potions ahead of health potions. Companions can carry their own and they are not shared. It will take a while to acquire all the recipes and ingredients for all the potions. You can revive a fallen companion by standing over them and holding X  (A on Xbox) but they will need health right away.

War Table Perks:

This is what influence gets you. The knowledge perks open dialogue and grant XP bonuses so get those. More Healing Potions (Forces) adds 4 healing potions. Deft Hands Fine Tools (Secrets) is a must to open master locks. If you need more inventory room you can get Antivan Tailoring (Inquisition). Tempered Glass Flasks (Inquisition) adds another potion slot. Recruited agents count as points towards any associated category point perquisites. As for the rest pick whatever you like. I rarely used mounts so I didn’t bother with those. Be warned that there is a limit to how many perks you can acquire.

Crafting:

I know I said it was stupid earlier but if you really enjoy micromanaging it is actually excellent. Naturally later in the game I became obsessed. It’s not really worth worrying about at the stage you are at. It costs too many resources and the equipment you loot is likely to be better anyway.

After a while you start accumulating upgrades, rare materials and high tier schematics so I’ll give you a run down.

To create armour and weapons you need schematics. These are (usually) specific to class and sometimes race and come in 3 tiers. The higher the tier the more material slots are available and the more material is required. The number of slots is also dependent on the item type.  Supposedly it is better to use low tier material with a high tier schematic than the other way around so guides usually advise waiting for better schematics.

There are 4 types of slots. Primary determines armour or weapon rating, utility boosts character attributes, offence boosts damage attributes or status effects and defence boosts defensive attributes and resistances. Some schematics allow arm and leg upgrades for armour or upgrades for weapons and staves,  some don’t. You can also make helmets and upgrades. The armour upgrades only need to match class. Any light armour upgrade will work with light armour. This does affect the style however. Materials affect the colour. Oh yeah. Every companion has their own style. Lol. As annoying as Sera is I think she’s my favourite to dress up.

On top of all this there are masterwork schematics with masterwork slots that require fade touched materials dropped by you guessed it creatures from the fade and they are special. The  really good ones are rare of course. Good luck deciding on those.

I believe all weapons and armour have slots for runes and sigils. These are what passes for enchantments but there is a catch. You cannot remove a rune without destroying it. Materials for creating runes are kind of rare so you need to be careful about that. Sigils like regular upgrades can be swapped in and out but always come with a negative attribute that somewhat diminishes whatever powerful attribute they convey so screw those.

Ok so now that we can look at the screen and sort of understand what we are looking at we need to consider materials. OMG. There are 3 types of materials: cloth, leather and metal. They also come in tiers. Every material has unique base stats for rating, utility, offence and defence and a unique appearance. How this plays out depends on the schematic and what slot it’s used in.

It is best I use an example. I would like some resistance to cold damage. Bear skin is good for that. It is a tier 2 material so it would only create a medium armour rating in a primary slot. Plus it is a dull brown. I want to use it in the defensive slot though. I have the Sturdy Vanguard Coat schematic. It is a heavy armour any race of warrior can wear. It has 2 defence slots. One requires 4 pieces of cloth and the other 4 pieces of leather. The primary slot requires 13 pieces of metal and there is also a masterwork slot. You can look through your materials list to see what works best but right now we’ll focus on the leather. Bear hide reports it provides +3% to cold resistance in defensive slots. We need 4 so our newly created armour will boost our attribute to 3 x 4 or 12% cold resistance. The cloth works the same way for whatever attribute it affects. This isn’t great but this schematic does allow for arm and leg upgrades. So if you have schematics for a heavy helmet and/or armour upgrades with defensive slots requiring leather you can make those too. The effect is cumulative so you can put together a specialized armour set with high cold resistance stats. If you are really lucky you have all these things in your inventory already but yeah more likely you have to hunt down merchants.

Obviously I am working off the wiki here because even if you have the game installed you are helpless without it. It is entirely negligent for Bioware to make a system this complicated and not provide in game help. I wanted bad ass dragon fighting armour and I persisted. Needless to say save before you craft anything. It is really really easy to get confused and spend scarce resources on something you don’t intend. What do you mean that schematic is only for humans! And stuff like that.

Right now do not think about this. Run around and have fun. If you pick up something that might be useful for fighting fire breathing dragons just hang on to it. Come back and read this again later if you need to. Progress a little further and Bioware will address some of your inventory and style woes.

Buying and Selling:

Different merchants sell different stuff. Usually you loot good enough stuff you don’t need to buy equipment but do learn what merchant sells what ingredient for potions. You may already know this but you can transfer unwanted items into the Valuables section so you don’t sell anything accidentally. Schematics, crafting materials and recipes do not count towards your inventory limit.


Oh yeah. Save, save, save. Lol.