Dragon Age: Inquisition Multiplayer – 11 Pro Tips Everyone Should Know
Ok guys, I’ve been playing Dragon Age: Inquisition multiplayer for the last week and I have to say that it has a steeper learning curve than your average multiplayer game. So, here are some things I’ve learned while battling my way through to unlocking all the characters. I hope these tips help some of you who are spending the holidays gaming your faces off :)
11. Start on Routine with your Level 1 character.
Even if you think you have the maddest skillz ever to grace a multiplayer game, the leap from Routine to Threatening is too much for your Level 1 character not to be a complete mooch on the rest of the team. Have the common courtesy to at least level up to Level 4 or 5 before joining a random Threatening match!
10. If you’re farming for gold, play on Threatening.
You get about 55 gold in each treasure chest on Threatening vs. 30 gold on Routine and 70 gold on Perilous. From a time to reward ratio, Threatening tends to give you the best return.
9. The tankiest tank is actually a mage.
If your favorite play style is to hack and slash at enemies while being able to take a lot of damage, you’ll be surprised to know that the best class for that is actually a Mage and not a Warrior. The Arcane Warrior (mage) is easily the best tank in multiplayer. Not only is it super survivable, generating shield and armor with each hit, it also does massive damage.
8. Unlock as many doors as you can.
The ONLY way you are awarded items in matches is to unlock doors and open the chests inside the locked rooms. If you’re hoping to get some loot, you better unlock those doors!
7. Prestige/promote your characters often.
All your characters will get a +1 bonus to a certain characteristic when you promote one character. +1 of any characteristic gives you a +0.5% boost on the related stat. You’ll also get access to craft better (and cooler looking) armors for the class you prestiged.
6. Rarity doesn’t mean diddly squat.
Just because you get a Blue (rare) or Purple (ultra rare) weapon, doesn’t mean it’s better than your common weapons. The only thing that matters is Damage Per Second (DPS) and that is increased by your weapon’s level, not your weapon’s rarity. Of course, if you get a Purple Level 20 item, it will be amaze-balls :)
5. Don’t spec skill points into more than 4 powers.
There are only 4 slots you can assign active powers to, so no point in wasting valuable skill points on more than 4 powers. I wish I’d known that when I first started playing!
4. Break down all the weapons in your inventory except the best of each type.
You’ll need the materials to craft armor to unlock new characters. Because weapons can be shared across all your characters, there’s no point in hoarding less powerful items.
3. Feel free to buy medium loot chests.
A large chest with 10 items costs 1200 gold while a medium chest with 6 items costs 750. Do the math – the per item cost for large vs. medium is 120 vs. 125 gold. That means only a measly 5 gold difference between the two chests – unless you’re going to redeem hundreds of chests in one go, you won’t even notice the cost savings. You’ll probably want medium chests for more instant gratification, so go for it!
2. The grind from Level 16 to Level 20 is real.
Once you get to Level 16, it starts to take quite a few games to level up to max (20). Play on Perilous mode if you want to level up quickly. Perilous grants you a ton of XP – if you only do 4/5 rounds on Perilous, you’ll get about 1.5 as much XP as if you make it through all 5 rounds on Threatening (6000 XP vs. 4000). If you complete all 5 rounds on Perilous, you’ll get around 10,000 XP.
1. Change your banner!
No one wants to look at an empty black name banner! :P Navigate to the “Prestige” box, then to “Challenges”, select a category (e.g. Agent), and scroll through your completed challenges. Once a box is highlighted, scroll left or right to see each “star’ you’ve earned. Some stars come with badges and banners – hit A to select the one you want and equip it to show off in multiplayer lobbies!
Bonus Tip
Ok, I know I said 11 pro tips, but here’s one last one that has been pretty relevant to me since the Destruction DLC was released this week. Sometimes (a lot of the times) you’ll encounter the bug where you’ve killed all the enemies on the map but you still can’t proceed onto the next level. When you try to the open the door, you’ll get the “Defeat all hostile enemies to proceed” message, even though you killed EVERYTHING. The ONLY way to “fix” this is for the leader to back out of the game – then you’ll restart the level and everyone retains their XP/loot except the leader.
My theory that I’ve tested is that the new creatures added in the Destruction DLC will not drop a key to the next level. Because the last enemy killed is the one that drops a key, the last enemy you kill better be an enemy and not a creature. Otherwise, you’re stuck forever.
Yes, this sucks. No, there isn’t a better fix. Hopefully Bioware will patch this glitch soon!
I hope this list helps your Dragon Age: Inquisition multiplayer missions! Let me know if comments if you have some other tips to add!
Bonus-bonus Tip: Please, please, pretty please DO NOT buy chests between two games while lingering in my lobby. Save the money to the end when you open like 5 or 6 together so the other 3 people will not have to wait like 15 minutes for you plus you will feel super rich opening 6 chests at a time trust me! XD
I am OK waiting for you to assign your hard earned skill point but please do not start a new crafting session either while sitting in a lobby.
Sounds like basic courtesy but surprisingly large number of guys tend to forget about this. XD
Hahaha so true! I get really impatient with waiting for people to do their business :)
Random advice: Open doors after clearing the level. Chest bosses are a great way to party wipe after key fails.
Thanks, I was doing most of these, but the most useful one were the math breakdowns (gold grinding or xp grinding), and I had no clue prestige-ing gave you better drops/crafts for the class. Gonna go play a few games now xD
Total noobs. Just get good gear and run Perilous. My group runs perilous better than a semi-competent Threatening PUG group. It’s not hard to understand which classes excel. Always have someone with barrier and one of the 4 always plays a arcane warrior. But barrier will suffice if they are good at placing it. Most of the time we always have at least someone under level 12. and yes we can even two man it with 2 level ones. which gives 9 levels to those level 1 characters. on Perilous is maybe takes 5 runs *under 1 hr* to level to 20.
“Just get good gear and run Perilous” – I think that is way easier said than done. The RNG gods have seen fit to give me shitty weapons pretty consistently and I’ve bought hundreds of chests. :(
Also, perilous requires good team coordination and team spirit. I have seen all-purple, all-high-level teams suck miserably because everyone was fighting in Rambo-mode – all man for himself… XD
I am also having hard time imagining the two-person teams dragging 2 level 1 guys doing well on perilous but maybe I am just a “total noob”, too… XD
Anyways, it is good to see that Girl’s blog attracts enlightened superplayers such as KougaGennosuke and we can also bathe in his glory when he talks to us so graciously… XD
Every chest u buy, the reward correlates to whatever difficulty you just finished(I think) beat a threatening or perilous game and I bet u will get 5x – 10x better gear
Post a video of you running perilous with two level 1 characters. I would absolutely love to see it.
The funniest part about your argument is the Arcane Warrior part. My team runs circles around Perilous and we never once use the arcane warrior. He is a major noob class himself. Access to both melee and ranged magic? A bit too overpowered in my opinion. He literally has no major weakness yet how come I have outranked every single other class by just using a Legionnaire? My Perilous team consists of Legionnaire, Archer, Keeper, Elementalist/Necromancer/Reaver/Hunter. If you seriously still play Arcane Warrior after all this time of being able to realize that other classes take skill then you sir… are a noob.
Well said – also, there is no way in hell any level 1 can solo Perilous, especially not AW. You don’t get his barrier gen power until Level 2 at the earliest, sooooo …
And its not dps that matters its the actual weapon dmg…..
DPS is what matters on higher levels. It doesn’t matter if you can one hit 300 damage, if you can only do that once per second vs someone who can do 5 x 100 dmg shots in one second, that’s not as good …
Hehehe…. Do not even try to argue with Girl, she is a math-head and is extremely accurate and frustratingly correct with her calculations. >D Just check the math she did for Mass Effect Multiplayer in various occasions. XD
Are you sure you get new armors from promoting the same character multiple times? I haven’t noticed it and can’t find anything about it anywhere…
New armors are gain after crafting first armor then chest also can give armors but mostly 1250 chest.
Just to add to the armor topic here for the archives’ shake: as of today (1/17/2013) there are 3 sets of armor for all characters all 3 have 2 variants basic and enhanced (and 3 different appearance kinds for the enhanced versions). The enhanced variants can only be built if you have already built at least 1 of the basic versions. There are two exceptions to this rule the Katari and the Necromancer. Their 1st and 2nd armor sets were lookalikes so they got a 4th set which you can build after you have built the 3rd (Inquisition Commander set).
The Inquisition Commander armor sets and the new Katari/Necro sets came out with the Destruction expansion.
Most likely new armor types will appear as new content is released.
The difference between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th set (for the Katari & Necro) are purely cosmetical, their armor values, upgradeability and base stats are the same.
I am starting to get bored by DAMP, Robine what do we play next? XD
Your math is actually off on the chests. The medium chest contains 3 items and 3 potions and the large contains 5 items and 5 potions, potions should not factor into the cost because you will end up with more than you can really stand. As such, you need to compare cost vs. actual items. In this instance, it’s 750g for 3 items vs. 1200 for 5 items. It becomes a bit more clear when you see it this way as it’s 250g per item from Medium and 240G per item from a large chest, so large chest wins out in the gold/item catagory.
The math isn’t off, it’s the same, only you’re halving the items hence doubling the cost per item (120 v. 125 was mine and yours is 240 v. 250). Even ignoring the potions, I don’t consider a 10 gold difference substantial enough to only buy large chests, given that you would have to redeem a whole lot of chests at once to notice the difference.
Level 5 for threatening?
Please change that, no one wants an everwiping noob in their lobby whose revive costs you your life in the end.
I even got kicked as a level 13 pr0 protection keeper because i was “too low”.
The game’s Meta feels suiting to me. Starting threatening around 9ish is more than soon enough.
Haha, it depends on the character and your equipment – Arcane Warrior can work for threatening at level 4 and above (seriously!). Reaver can also handle threatening at level 5. Whoever kicked you as a level 13 Keeper is clearly not very good at the game, because Keeper is extremely viable at low levels! If I play as anything else, I tend to join Threatening around level 7-9 :)
Thanks for this article and your others on DA:I. At first I thought I was doing something critically wrong in MP, but after reading this and playing a bit more, I found that DA:I MP shouldn’t be intimidating. People simply kick for little/no reason and they generally judge based on first appearances. I was kicked or had votes placed against me a lot early on, but now I anticipate it, and I either counter or avoid it when playing low level characters. Don’t take it personally… go carry people who are nice, instead. Leave the idiots to rush, bicker, and wipe among themselves… despite their max-level & OP characters.
A perfect example from a few hours ago: Some guy refused to start a threatening game with my level 8 archer, despite a balanced party composition at or above recommended levels. I’ve promoted my archer 2x, he has an epic lvl 21 bow with grip and an epic rune, enchants on all crafted gear/etc. My gear isn’t apparent at first, but my profile should show at a glance that I have sufficient experience to join a game at the recommended level. Everyone else had been ready for about 15 seconds, but this one guy held out (I feared I knew why), and then yep, he puts a vote to kick me… and waits… and we all wait.
When it was clear that the others weren’t jumping on the bandwagon to kick me (thanks guys), I cycled through all of my characters to show this guy that I wasn’t a noob, and then I courteously hit the ready button again. The guy relented and let us start the game. The same guy, a level 13 arcane warrior of all classes, proceeded to fall 2x in the first round. I revived him once, then he left the game after falling again – probably either in shame, or somehow blaming me for his failure. My archer finished with 50 kills and kept the back lines clear through the entire game.
TL;DR; If you don’t want to be viewed as kick-fodder by the judgmental, zerg-mentality types who will probably get you killed in the end anyway, then I think 8+ is the minimum for joining a public threatening game. Even though the game itself says levels 8-16, people will kick you for not being higher than even the recommended level. Personally, I don’t care, so long as you can play and work with others. Threatening is not that hard if played competently.
XD Just let it go. It is like in real life, there are lots of guys with lots of different personalities some of them passing snap judgments quite easily and as I see the host of the actual game often feels himself above all others as he has the “Leader” title… XD After enough playing you will have the gear and the experience to start anytime any difficulty with almost any character and some random faces will join on you anyways – party composition and balance will not matter too much…
Try to gather some friends and play with them. People who now you will not be pissed of if you go tits up in the first corridor of the elven ruins… XD
If you are playing on PC you can always tag along with me (ArnieOrigin is my account name) without any fear of being kicked albeit now I am mostly just doing damn uninspiring solo Regular runs to get all the weapon achievements done and I am feeling less and less intrigued by the game.
I think it would need a new play mode like team survival, maybe possibility for some larger parties, etc. as I see an extremely rapid decline in active player numbers day after day and I am not sure that new gear and more loot will solve this.
Do u get to keep any unused spec points after u promote a character?
No sadly not :(
Cool article the pictures are entertaining, I just bought DA 2 days ago and luckily met some friendly players who would probably know the answer to the question I’m about to ask but I’m here now and there may be more people who come to this post wondering the same. Promotion characters (I just earned my keeper cred, I hate the thought of going back to lvl 1 :( ) but I just hit 19 and was wondering do you keep your skills? And is there a limit to how many times you can promote?
There’s no limit to how many times you promote but no you do not keep your skills when you promote, you start back at square one with an empty skill tree, sadly
Hello! I Got Question abot character promotion.. How to do it?
I got 20 lvl reaver and 20 lvl Templar..
You just gotta believe hard enough
If you’re on xbox, press Y on the character screen and you’ll see the option to promote every time you hover over a character!
Why not only go for small chests? OK, cost per item is 270, but at least no real$ is spend as you need platinum for med/large, or is there a limit as to what quality can drop in what chest?
Uh.you don’t need plat for med/large..
Sooo… most these tips are anything but pro and wrong. The ones that are actually right are no brainers. But of all of them, the ones that proves your a noob more than anything are “tips” (if they can be considered such) are numbers 11, 6, and 1. Theyre almost laughable.
Great tip about the arcane warrior. I had no idea. Have been using a Legionnaire as my tank. Will definitely give it a try as soon as I can craft the gear for it.