Dragon Age: Origins - Tactics - Magic Tactics
Entropy Magic - Dragon Age: Origins Tactics
Entropy magic is a school filled with debuffs. The use of successive spells can create massive damage to the enemy, who will be helpless to resist the effects of subsequent attacks.
The most common of these tactics is the Nightmare combination. This involves putting the target to sleep, before inflicting the horror spell on them. The horror spell can not be resisted when the target it asleep, and they will take additional damage.
- Enemy: Any -> Cast Sleep
- Enemy: Sleeping -> Cast Horror
Another popular tactic is the Entropic Death combination. This involves placing a death hex on an enemy, then casting a death cloud. This causes massive damage to the target, almost certainly causing instant death. Unfortunately, powerful enemies such as those of elite and higher may not be effected by the combination, instead taking normal damage from the Death Cloud
- Enemy: Any -> Cast Death Hex
- Enemy: Any -> Cast Death Cloud
Primal Magic Tactics
Primal mages have the advantage of being able to combine the four elements in their tactics.
The most powerful of these combinations is the Shatter combination, which causes instant death to lower level enemies. It involves freezing the foe using a spell such as Cone of Cold or Petrify before hitting them with a Stonefist attack. The downside to this combination is that there is no “frozen” status in the tactics set up. Instead, use “paralyzed”. This will unfortunately mean that the Stonefit attack may be accidentally directed toward the wrong enemy, but this risk must be taken.
- Enemy: Any -> Cast Petrify/Cone of Cold
- Enemy: Paralyzed -> Stonefist
Primal spells can also be combined with Creation spells to cause the Grease Fire combination. This involves using Grease on a foe, before setting them on fire. This causes damage for 20 seconds. Care must be taken with this spell, as friendly fire is possible.
- Enemy: Any -> Grease
- Enemy: Any -> Flame Blast/Inferno/Fireball
If you’re still stuck with getting your mage up to scratch, check out BrightHub’s Guide to Mage Spells.
Spirit Magic Tactics
Spirit Magic is not as geared towards creating devastating tactics as the other schools of magic are. However, spells such as Spell Might can be used in combination with all magic, giving a boost to spellpower at the expensive of mana and mana regeneration.
One of the best ways to pair up Spirit Magic in a combination is the Advanced Reanimation combo, which uses Spell Might to resurrect a skeleton at 90% of the user’s level, as well as giving it extra bonuses such as a magical weapon and extra abilities.
- Self -> Spell Might
- Animate Dead
A devastating (and dangerous) combination to use is the Perfect Storm combo. Once again involving spell might, the spell combines the effects of blizzard and tempest to create a massive storm that will cause huge damage, both to enemies and allies. Note that tempest and blizzard may be cast by different mages. As long as the mage casting second is the one with Spell Might activated, the combination will still be successful.
- Self -> Spell Might
- Enemy: Any -> Blizzard
- Enemy: Any -> Tempest
This post is part of the series: Dragon Age: Origins Tactics
The use of tactics in Dragon Age Origins is important in completing the game. Without effective assistance from the NPCs in a player’s party, they will most certainly be defeated, especially in the later stages of the game.