No, I haven't been to any of the places you mentioned. I went to Lake Galenhad Docks and from there to the mage tower. I'm going to the 4th level tomorrow. There are many side quests and all are hard to trigger and complete because it means going over each room with a fine tooth comb for "hidden" clues. These only show up when you mouse over them. They aren't glowing like the normal loot items and most clues are very small. Come join me when you feel like straining your eyes.

I don't understand specialization. I have a 1 available when I reach level 8, but if I try to use it by clicking on a choice, Champion, etc, nothing is active. When can I use it?

Which choice would be best for a dual weapon warrior?

Later...I did some searching and I guess I have to talk to party members or buy a book. It certainly is not explained in the manual. I would still like to know the best choice.

Pokey, even after reaching level 7, before you can choose a specialization, you need to unlock it.

Some specializations are unlocked by plot developments. Others can be unlocked by reading books--a few such books are available from vendors.

I recommend talking to your companions in camp fairly frequently, as some of them will be willing to teach you their specializations once you know them well enough.

You will not be able to unlock all specializations in one playthrough. However, once you've unlocked a specialization, it should be available for all your subsequent playthroughs. That actually leaves the game open to exploits: if you save the game, purchase a spec book, and read it to unlock a specialization, then reload the game, you'll still have your gold AND the new specialization.

As for which spec to choose for a warrior...well...they're all pretty decent, and you won't get all of them on your first playthrough anyway. So just choose what's available and see what happens.

I'm in the same position as Pokey. I'm on level 7 going on 8. I am a rogue and want to specialize in Ranger. I haven't come across any books about it and so far no companion has volunteered to teach me in it. I've exhausted all conversation possibilities with each so far. I'm at various degrees of "neutral" with each of them.

Ranger is one of the easier unlocks:

Thank you, Demosthenes! When I'm back at camp I'll try that. Right now I'm still making my way through the Fade for the mages.

Interestingly, I also chose dual-wielding, pokey, so we both have Dalish Warrior dual-wielders. I wouldn't say any of the warrior specialisations really make a difference regarding the fact that you are a dual-wielder, though. (I've tried them all out)

Yes, the specialisations have to be "unlocked" before any of your party members can use them.

Pokey, I would advise that you not be in too much of a hurry to simply unlock the first specialization that comes your way. You will be able to buy the Warden spec from the dwarf in your camp, and also theoretically be able to learn it from Alistair, but I suspect his disposition towards you must be high, since he refused to teach it to me at an early stage of the game. Warden is basically only useful against magic-users, though, so it depends on exactly where you are in the game, and what you plan to do in the immediate future.

A nice specialisation, though, is the Champion, which you automatically get after you finish the Redcliffe questline in a certain manner. It has some nice buffing abilities that boosts your entire party.

I was a bit overhasty to take a specialisation, and was then rather sorry later that I took Warden, since Alistair already has it, but it is a useful specialisation against mages, and therefore also useful to have if you don't plan on having Alistair in your party all the time.
I gave Alistair the Champion spec, and I took Reaver as my later specialisation, but you have to do evil stuff to get it.
You can buy the Berserker specialisation from a trader in Denerim.

Thanks, Moondancer for the good advice. I was leaning toward Champion, but will wait till I do Redcliff, which will be next after the Brecilian forest. I could use some help against the mages so will check out Warden and not be in a hurry to choose.

Is there a way to unload items from your inventory? When I was locked in the mage tower I was greeted with the message "inventory full". I couldn't go to a merchant at that point in the quest. The only option I had was to destroy items already in the inventory in order to make way for the new stuff. That created a dilemna as no values are listed on items and I could only guess at what is worth more. Also, can you return to an area after you have completed all quests in order to pick up stuff you left in containers? I still haven't left the mage tower in case I lose this option.

Sadly one can only destroy goodies, and not put them down. I had also found this a waste. I presume you do know about the extra backpacks you can buy from vendors, and about the camp chest mod, and I presume you do know that you can trade with the quartermaster on the ground floor of the mage's tower? I almost think he also sells a backpack.

One can return to many areas; - not sure about the entire tower, but I've been back at least to trade with the quartermaster, after finishing with the "liberation" of the Tower, and leaving.

EDIT: I've checked, and it does seem as if one can safely leave the Mage's tower and return again to pick up whatever loot you've missed.

Also, you can examine items to determine their value:

Find the item in your inventory, hover the mouse cursor over it and hold down the left mouse button (as you would for selling or dropping it) but select the eye cursor instead. In addition to a description, examining the item will also give you a base gold value.

Of course, you won't be able to sell the item for that much, as vendors only give a small percentage of the value of an item. But you CAN compare item values pretty easily that way.

Thanks, Demosthenes. I didn't realize about the price comparison. You can't access the quartermaster of the mage tower during the main mage quest because you get locked into the tower. You can access him before and after. Fortunately I didn't destroy that much. I'm trying very hard to save for the Archery skill book back at camp but I still don't have enough money. Spent a lot of it on another backpack. There are so many nice items in the merchants' inventory I don't think I'll ever have enough money. Other than that, I really enjoyed the mage quest. It was a very long quest but I really like the opportunity to:

Hey all, I have a question.

After purchasing Call of Duty: MW2 and Assassin's Creed 2, this is the last game left on my yearly wish list! I still have a couple of questions about it, however, before I go and purchase it.

First off, is this game party-based or more focused to a single character? I mean this in every way, in the exploration, the combat, and character development? I really don't want to have to worry about the rest of my party's stats when one character in a BioWare game has an encyclopedia of details that you can customize. In combat, I find party combat (especially non-turn based) to be kind of a turn off, due to the fact you usually have to pause the game and switch characters a lot to succeed in some of the more intricate battles. But if it gives the option for a lot of AI control of your party, I'd prefer that greatly.


Second, is it possible to reach a scenario in this game in which you MUST start over because of some mistake you made in the past during character development or gear choices?

DA is heavily dependent on party management--at least, it is at "normal" difficulty and above. You do have to pause the game fairly frequently in order to issue commands to your party members.

You can assign a list of "tactics" to each party member that they will automatically follow. Unfortunately, the tactics available are too limited to make your companions any more intelligent than a brick.

For example, my healer has a healing spell which restores some HP to a single ally. She also has another spell which restores some HP to ALL party members.

I can easily create a tactic which says "if a party member's health drops below 50%, heal them." However, I CANNOT say "If the health of 2 or more party members drops below 50%, cast Heal All." Nor can I combine multiple requirements, as in "If a party member is stunned AND their health is below 75%, cast regeneration on them."

There are other limitations, too: if you assign too many spells to a tactics list, your healer will happily wear herself down to 0 MP after a few seconds of casting useless buffs. You can probably mitigate this problem a bit by creating multiple tactics profiles, and creating tactics in each profile that switch to other profiles when your healer's magic drops below X%...but I haven't bothered because I'd have to spend half an hour editing tactics lists every time any of my characters leveled.

Worse still, your characters only start off with 4 tactics slots. If you want to allow them a list with more than 4 tactics, you need to level them first.

The net result of this is that (depending on how many tactics you assign them) automated characters will either wander around like drunken loons, running straight into bunches of enemeies while swinging a big stick and yelling out warcries...or they'll cast 7 spells, 5 buffs, and then cast a cone of cold that freezes your entire party solid while the enemies chip away at you, and then stand around waiting for their mana to recharge.

Apparently "easy" difficulty eliminates friendly fire, which would make tactics a little more viable, but as it stands they're essentially useless. So yes, you'll have to do a lot of party management during battles, assuming you don't want everyone to die.

You can set characters to auto-level if you wish, if you don't want to manage their stats and skills--but again, the AI is rather stupid in the way it assigns skills. It generally favors combat-related skills, which means (for instance) that your rogue may end up pretty strong, but unable to pick locks or detect traps. Fr some reason you can't choose to auto-level stats without also auto-leveling skills and spells. Once again, managing things yourself is probably better.

There aren't any "game-breaking" points where you'll be unable to continue. If you fail to properly level your characters, they may up weak versus the enemies they need to fight. However, unless you (for example) give your mage 50 points of strength, even pretty major leveling mistakes should be fixable by changing the difficulty, which can be done on the fly if necessary.

Similarly, none of the gear in the game is "special" enough to be truly unique. Even if you accidentally sell off the best armor in the game, there are a few other similar armors available that should work just fine.

The biggest problem I've seen is how hard it can be to find a character with decent lock-picking, trap-detecting, or other ancillary skills. That problem is compounded by the fact that new characters enter your party pre-leveled to your current level, so if you pick someone up at level 15, they'll already have most of their skill points assigned for you...usually not in a very intelligent manner. Additionally, your main character is the only one who can develop their persuasion skills. However, the worst effect any of this has is that you'll have to come back latter to open certain chests, or maybe that you'll get hit by every trap in every room for three-quarters of the game.

Thank you Demosthenes. I think I might try the game anyway, regardless of the combat. I've heard too many good things about it to let that kill my enthusiasm.

However, I was happy to hear about the non-game breaking character development. In JRPG's (been playing a lot of those lately) it's entirely possible for you to need to restart the whole game due to the fact that you screwed up.