Battling my inner (and in-game) pride demons

After a few uneventful battles where I felt like I was finally getting to grips with this two-handed fighter business, Shawty and co. arrived at the breach. After realising that there is actually a path down to the rift rather than just jumping off the ledge and sacrificing some HP as I had done in previous games (I have no defence for my actions here, I just thought “well there it is” and went for it) a Pride Demon stepped through the rift and I launched into the routine I had become accustomed to in my battles all the way up there. After a long struggle of having the last character standing running around to revive everyone only to have them die instantly again I gave up and succumbed to the ‘Your Journey Ends’ page. I had never died in this part of the game before and I was pissed off.

I came back to that battle with a vengeance and made a lot more use of the tactics screen, this time paying more attention to where Solas and Varric were, I feel bad for such a novice mistake but as a fighter I had begun to feel so over-powered I forgot to use everyone else to the best of their abilities.

Shawty killed the demon and sealed the rift, Cassandra no longer believed I was to blame for destroying the conclave, the Inquisition was re-established and Shawty became the Herald of Andraste, a title she decided she rather liked and told everyone that asked, “yeah, I was sent by the maker, praise me”, I thought I was being a bit pompous but Cassandra actually approved so now I’m considering us on good terms.

I smugly arrived in The Hinterlands where I went to sort out the templars and rebel mages battling in the valley, and well… Prepare yourself for some ranting. I got absolutely annihilated by a mage. ONE MAGE. I got rid of everyone around him and it was just him left there in the valley throwing spell after spell at me and teleporting away whenever I made any headway on breaking down his shield. I simply couldn’t break it down fast enough, it regenerated too quickly to the point that he managed to kill off Shawty, Cassandra and Varric. I had Solas run away to safety in shame, I am blaming all of this on him, Mr “Master-of-the-fade-I-camp-in-ruins-and-walk-in-the-Fade-alone”, that’s great Solas, but can you teleport? NO YOU FUCKING CAN’T. Is your shield as awesome as this guys’? NO. So don’t give me your wise, elven bull.

I am also pretty annoyed because I am quite sure that as a mage you can’t get that power anyway which is a bit disappointing, there are similar spells like Fade Step but it doesn’t look like that, if I’m wrong and you know what the spell is do let me know!

I did look into this a bit and there are a lot of people saying that the Walk Softly trial is annoying because you will occasionally come across a seemingly normal enemy who is horribly overpowered, then you’ll come to a boss battle which will be a piece of cake. I’ll leave this on a bit longer though and see how it goes.

Luckily The Hinterlands, while horribly tedious after a while, has seemingly endless side quests that Shawty could make a start on to level up a bit, I am not sure how much this will help as the mage will still be Shawty’s level later thanks to my custom setting, but I assume it will be easier…

Side note: No sign of any bears yet to try out the Grizzly End Trial