There should also be a way to turn friendly fire for all difficulty level.

That's how I play as well. I mostly let them do their own thing but in particular fights I hop around from character to character to set them up what I want them to do. I don't know if you've done the quest given by the magistrate in Hightown so I'll put spoilers:

*Spoilers*



I had a bit of trouble in the room with a bunch of normal spiders, a corrupted spider, I think a venomous spider and an arcane horror. It took me about three tries even on normal to get it since I wasn't jumping around between characters enough and watching their health. I finally got it on the third try though.

Give it a few more tries?

*SPOILERS*

I just spent an hour trying to kill the Templars in Ander's quest on Nightmare. Managed to kill everything except the idiotic Templar Hunter, not to mention the bastard popped 4 pots before dying. Probably spent 15 mins kiting the Hunter and LTA and killing them to attrition with my sole Mage and Merril and the invincible Anders.

Yeah this is another example of skip the chaff fight. The 'another wave' is triggered by killing 2 or 3 chaffs. Ignore em or incapacitate them.

With everyone set to attack the Lieutenant from the get-go, he only drank one pot before he was hosed (hooray for flanking damage) then I slaughtered everyone BUT the hunter, and finally turned on him. Didn't lose anyone (we're all level 6).

Having pottered about town buying potions myself, It's incredibly frustrating to watch lieutenants (especially assassins) chug 2-3gp worth of pots and then drop a couple of silver as loot.

Fenris' fights were harder than the Templar fight (to me). The whole Lowtown at night area is murder unless you set your own ambushes. And his actual recruitment mission in Hightown, goddam rage-demon-assassin-lieutenants.

People who don't complain about the targeting camera for AoE's isn't using them right. This needs better targeting soooooooooooooo badly. Bad enough they 'forgot' to include the AoE targeting camera in the PC version, but they INCLUDED fuckin' snap-to-target. Double whammy amounts of stupid. Try targeting spells with precision to avoid friendly fire, in narrow, indoor corridors.

GIVE ME AoE Targeting. Right now. I don't care about other bugs gimme that...

I've been using 5 as a limit... if I die 5 times I lower the difficulty to normal until the fight is over. I have only had to do it three times: the Qunari leader in their cave out at the waterfront country, the two captains and their posse at the docks and finally the templars after Anders.

** SPOILERS **

The Templar fights were the hardest for me thus far, many reloads. I did the Docks one too. I managed to kill all the mobs including the Abomination for that Abomination fight, and for some reason the Capt fights alongside it who also happens to be a Rogue. He killed all my party members. So I was left with him and Aveline this time. Aveline with Shield Defense went solo with him. Had to chug 2 pots, the Elfroot pots had much faster CD times. Aveline nearly died, pretty sure she had only 10hp left, then Shield Bash came up, bang!, the Capt died.

Chain Lightning is sexy beyond reason. Pretty good at zapping enemies and doing good dmg without any fear of FF.

Ah yes, the AE. I tried using them, Firestorm and Tempest. The bloody cursor thing kept locking into some of the mobs which were near my companions. WTB Iso view!

Is it safe to say that a lot of the random crap we pick up from fights is just vendor trash, or is some of it used to craft things? I've basically been selling all of it to try and get the money needed to fund the expedition but I also wasn't sure if I should be hording some of it and taking it to craftsmen...

Pretty much all of it is vendor trash. As only Hawke can upgrade his armor I find even the storage chest pointless other than for storing the promo items till I can use them.

I'm a little bit more stubborn. So I spend more time trying and trying until I finally win unless I'm totally frustated and give up. So far no game has me trying more than Demogorgon in Baldur's Gate 2, I took like 2 days for that. And not to mention spending a weeks trying to down a boss in WoW. So I guess I'm pretty used to wiping continuously. :D

Okay, thank you much. :) I haven't really messed around with the recipes or anything yet (I guess I was just so used to being able to craft pots and stuff ourselves from DAO, or just looting them as I go) so I wasn't sure if I should actually hold on to this stuff or not.

I too just dumped all the promo stuff that my rogue Hawke can't use into the storage chest at Gamlen's. I think I ended up giving Might of the Sten to Fenris before starting his quest but aside from that everything else will stay in the chest.

It would seem they 'forgot' to include quite a few things ;)

Holy smokes I just came from the Bioware forums and about half the people are shredding the game naming it "Mass Age 2"

I guess my hopes of Baulder's Gate 2/Dragon Age 2 aren't going to come true this time around.

Exactly, it gets really repetitve, even though it's challenging to kill them all. Harder doesn't mean more tactical.
Looking forward to Ancient Rock Wraith. At least they cloned a WoW raid boss encounter for that.

Yep, i'm getting that much from the feedback.

Good luck with that one, let us know how it went ;)