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[Archmage Silver]

Dragon Age: Origins Patches - Download

Patch 1.05 has been released:

Patch Details:

General Fixes

DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT

• Downloadable content will properly authenticate once installed.

PERFORMANCE

• Fixed an issue where some users with DirectX10-era video cards were experiencing significant lag within menus and interfaces as well as sudden spikes in area load times.

Dragon Age: Ultimate Edition Fixes

INSTALLATION

• The Ultimate Edition installer for the EA Download Manager (EADM) version of the game was placing the CD-Key in the wrong location in the Windows registry. EADM has been replaced with EA's Origin system and this error has been corrected in the new Origin installer. For those who purchased and installed the Ultimate Edition via EADM, the Patch 1.05 installer will copy that CD-Key into the correct Windows registry location.

Patch Details:

Note on Installing Awakening to a version of DA:O already patched to 1.04 [PC only]
If you install the 1.04 patch prior to installing Awakening, you must run the 1.04 patch installer again after the Awakening install is complete.

There are Awakening specific resources and other assets that will not be patched in properly unless the 1.04 installer detects that Awakening is present and as such will not install those additional resources. In addition, the pre-1.04 installer that comes with Awakening may revert some 1.04 files back - this would result in a game that is apparently missing many of the fixes included with 1.04, while the game config tool still reports it as the 1.04 version.

In short, if you plan to re-install DAO and Awakening at some point in the future, we recommend installing DAO, then Awakening, then latest patch. If you plan to add Awakening to your DAO install, we recommend installing Awakening, then always re-apply the latest patch.

General Fixes

ACHIEVEMENTS

• On the PC, sometimes an achievement image and message would not display properly. This has been fixed.

DOWNLOADABLE CONTENT

• Fixed some authorization issues with downloadable content
  
• Blood talents from the Grey Warden Base premium downloadable content now work properly in other modules.
  
• Installing new downloadable content no longer leaves the Other Campaigns selection grayed-out.

GAMEPLAY

• Multiple transitions in and out of Fade areas were multiplying the number of visual effects running, which slowed down gameplay. This no longer occurs.
  
• Fixed pick-pocketing. Characters were successfully stealing, but not receiving any items.

USER INTERFACE

• Floating numbers no longer appear over the player's head.
  
• Damage statistics are now being updated properly on the Inventory screen when weapons are unequipped.
  
• Names with accents and special characters now show up correctly in the "Story So Far" load hints.
  
• Switching between Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening no longer resets options to default settings.
  
• Selling too many items to the same merchant no longer corrupts the save files.
  
• Screenshots were being uploaded automatically on the PC by default on new installations. This no longer happens.

IMPORTING CHARACTERS

• Importing a character to a new module from a save game that did not have the hero in the party caused the game to crash. This is fixed.
  
• Imported characters to Dragon Age: Awakening now start the game with equipment and clothing on.

PERFORMANCE

• A number of memory leaks have been fixed, which will reduce the frequency of crashes.
  
• Audio drivers have been updated to fix a number of audio-related crashes.

SOCIAL SITE

• Fixed a number of issues with portraits not being uploaded correctly to the BioWare social site.

Dragon Age: Origins Fixes

GAMEPLAY

• Fixed an issue with the wrong characters appearing in Morrigan's ritual.
  
• Players who rescued their party members in the Fade of the Broken Circle plot are no longer forced to fight the sloth demon alone.
  
• It is no longer possible for the player to get blocked during gameplay by pursuing both candidates' quests in the Orzammar plot line.

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening Fixes

GAMEPLAY

• Fixed a variety of bugs related to party members' approval and personal quests not triggering.
  
• Lillith will now only thank the player once at Vigil's Keep after being rescued.
  
• During the Assault on Amaranthine, a bug would occasionally make some enemies invincible, which impeded game progress. This no longer happens.
  
• Players may now receive notes of appreciation from former love interests.
  
• Masterpiece and paragon silverite runes are now weapon runes instead of armor runes.
  
• The masterpiece slow rune is now available for purchase from merchant stores.

IMPORTING CHARACTERS

• Imported rogue characters now properly detect traps.
  
• The message, "Legacy tattoo asset do not use!" no longer appears on the face of some imported characters.

Patch Details:

You do not need to download patches prior to Patch 1.03. Downloading Patch 1.03 contains all previous patches. Downloading Patch 1.03 will provide you with all patch data available.

• Various changes have been made to code and resources to support the Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening expansion pack. Most of these changes do not affect Origins itself.
  
• Some players were experiencing increasingly long load times. A major cause of this problem has been fixed.
  
• At higher levels, non-player characters now receive a bonus to armor penetration. This mitigates an unintentional imbalance with well-armored high-level characters, since armor penetration previously did not scale as aggressively as armor itself did.
  
• Elite-rank enemies (lieutenants) can no longer be shattered. This preserves the intended tactical design of many combat encounters.
  
• Portraits for summoned creatures (like a ranger's wolf) were displaying improperly while in the party camp. This no longer occurs.

Patch Details:

• fixed the "Rally bug" introduced in 1.02 where going through area transitions caused the Rally bonus to keep stacking
  
• fixed errors in Russian 1.02 patch notes
  
• fixed GDF file for Windows 7

Patch Details:

Many of the fixes affecting balance, gameplay, or plot scripting are already included in the Xbox 360 and PlayStation®3 versions of Dragon Age: Origins.

You do not need to download patches prior to Patch 1.02. Downloading Patch 1.02 contains all previous patches. Downloading Patch 1.02 will provide you with all patch data available.

Balance

• Daggers now apply 0.5 points of damage per additional point in dexterity and 0.5 points of damage per additional point in strength, as originally intended. This increases dagger damage for high-dexterity characters.
  
• During combat, mana or stamina reserves now correctly regenerate more quickly when reserves are low. This allows players to occasionally use an talent or spell in the later stages of lengthy fights.
  
• When exploring, mana and stamina now regenerate more quickly at higher character levels. This reduces downtime between fights.
  
• The spells Force Field, Crushing Prison, Cone of Cold, and Blizzard now have shorter durations and/or longer cooldowns. This ensures that combatants can no longer stun-lock each other by repeatedly casting the same spell.
  
• The cooldowns for several low-level sustained abilities are now shorter. This ensures that players are not penalized for accidentally deactivating them.
  
• Certain battles were not scaling properly, resulting in excessively difficult fights. They now scale as intended.
  
• Enemy corpses now drop health poultices and money more appropriately, resulting in less clutter in the player's inventory.

Gameplay

• In rare cases, enemy corpses were selectable when they contained no loot. This no longer occurs.
  
• Party members whose combat tactics were set to defensive behavior no longer stop attacking after using a spell or talent.
  
• In rare cases, combat tactics conditions could fail to determine whether a character had enough mana or stamina to use an ability. This no longer occurs.
  
• The Rally talent no longer repeats its audio effect if it is active during certain conversations.
  
• The Rally talent no longer deactivates upon area transitions or conversations.
  
• The Shimmering Shield spell now deactivates when the character is out of mana.

Plot *Spoiler Warning*

• Promotional downloadable content items now remain in the player's inventory when standard items are removed at the end of the dwarf noble origin.
  
• Repeatedly talking to Duncan after gathering the vials in the Korcari Wilds but not the treaties no longer provides duplicate experience.
  
• Leliana's personal plot can now be completed if the player substantially increased her approval (through gifts) before talking to her.
  
• During the siege of Redcliffe, enemies are no longer able to spawn in locations that would break the plot.
  
• Bann Teagan no longer disappears when he is supposed to be accessible during Urn of Sacred Ashes.

PC Specific

• Controlling a summoned creature (like a ranger's pets) during certain special area transitions no longer results in odd behavior.
  
• Creating a character in a custom module did not create a folder for saves. This could result in corruption of main campaign saves. This no longer occurs.
  
• In some cases, the class icon was set incorrectly for characters imported from the downloadable Character Creator. This no longer occurs.
  
• The options menu now includes a setting to automatically download previously purchased content that is not currently installed.
  
• After installing new downloadable content, the game now always reminds the user to restart the game.
  
• The icons for some promotional downloadable content items were missing. They now appear correctly.
  
• The screenshot upload GUI would stop working from time to time on the client. There was a memory override that was fixed. It is a client fix. It doesn't affect the other problems we have seen on the server.

Patch Details:

• fixed an issue with Dragon Age and Windows Game Explorer
  
• updated Visual C runtime libraries

Patch Details:

• fixed potential corruption of character statistics
  
• fixed portrait appearance sliders when importing a character from the downloadable Character Creator
  
• fixed import for preset face settings from the downloadable Character Creator
  
• made Easy difficulty easier
  
• slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty
  
• fixed video issues when running on a very wide screen display, including ATI Eyefinity displays

Edited by Archmage Silver, 03 March 2012 - 09:51 PM.
pinned

[Eleima]

That's good news!! The buggy portrait sliders in particular were a pain. Thanks for the heads up.

[Archmage Silver]

Yeah, seems like they managed to include a genuine fix in the first patch.

[berelinde]

Well, I couldn't resist. I had to try it. And I was playing it for a while, and thought, why not install the patch? So I exited from the game, installed the patch, and now I can't start the game. Clicking on anything else (config, etc.) works, but click on play, nothing.

After the lengthy installation process, I hate uninstalling an reinstalling, but it seems I have choice. This applies suction.

Edited by berelinde, 06 November 2009 - 12:24 PM.

[berelinde]

After 3 tries, it's the same thing. I'm reinstalling the game, but I'm *not* installing this patch.

[Archmage Silver]

Mine works just fine, but here's something I came across on the RPGWatch boards:

This patch might have a conflict with your installed Visual C++ 2005 redist package. Mine did, resulting in the "play" button not working and the actual executable throwing a "side-by-side" configuration error when you view the event log.

If that happens to you, (per the Dragon Age forums) install the x86 version from the link below. Yes it worked for me:
http://www.microsoft...?displaylang=en

[Vicen]

Works supreme for me! But really making Easy lvl diff easier? I put it on easy for the first few battles just to see how combat was like and it was allready too easy...so normal now for me and once I master it I work my way up the diff!

[berelinde]

Mine works just fine, but here's something I came across on the RPGWatch boards:

This patch might have a conflict with your installed Visual C++ 2005 redist package. Mine did, resulting in the "play" button not working and the actual executable throwing a "side-by-side" configuration error when you view the event log.

If that happens to you, (per the Dragon Age forums) install the x86 version from the link below. Yes it worked for me:
http://www.microsoft...?displaylang=en

Yep, that's exactly what happened. I'm not really sure if I'm going to bother, though. I didn't use the character generator, and I'm finding the "easy" setting a little too easy, at present.

[Kulyok]

I don't have a Visual C package, but I had this problem. I just restored my backuped(before-installing-the-patch) daorigins.exe. Worked like a charm. Patch probably isn't working, but at least the game is.

[WeeRLegion]

I'm really hoping they'll do some difficulty level tweaking for the next patch.

[rant]
Normal seems to for the most part offer plenty enough challenge, with battles that you can usually 'run-and-gun' through as long as you can think on your feet and can be bothered with the cat-herding that is the compromise between using tactics + AI and micromanaging.
But lately I've been running into a few too many brickwall-bosses; it's like they're from another universe, with the kind of alien amounts of damage they can take. xP
Some are still interesting, but others boil down into dull slugfests that'll only test your patience and the depths of your healing-reserves.

...
And I couldn't disagree more with the idea of 'turn down the difficulty for the fight (gets passed around on the official forums a lot). Sure, I'll do it to get ahead, done it once thus far, but if the point of a difficulty setting were for me to personally adjust each and every encounter to my own level, they should just have put a damn slider on side of the screen.[/rant]

It's still a great game, mind it, but the difficulty level does feel a little jumpy.

Edited by WeeRLegion, 08 November 2009 - 02:25 AM.

[Kulyok]

Oh, I find easy setting difficult. Actually, that necromancer team in elven forest wiped almost all my party - Morrigan was the one who saved the day. And running solo in the Raw Fade wasn't all that sweet - wasted nearly all healing balms.

[berelinde]

I'm running with a warrior PC, since I'm not really good at running spellcasters. I had Wynne do the solo Fade run. With her staff and her healing abilities, I didn't go through that many healing balms, which is good, because I had precious few left after accidentally loosing the revenant on my party in Mage's Circle.

The solo Fade part, where you met Niall, was probably one of my favorite parts of the game so far, though, at least in terms of combat. Didn't go through a single healing balm, even for the whole-party boss fight. I so wish my PC had the ability to change into a stone golem at whim all the time, and spirit form could take out the mages in one shot. The Templar Nightmare had me hopelessly lost, though, until some kind soul came to my rescue. Who knows? Maybe next time, I'll run a mage and buddy up with Morrigan so she'll teach me shape-shifting.

At first, I found "easy" too easy. Now, I'm finding it about right, except that some of the boss fights make me try tactics. I'm no tactician. Only died twice, so far, so I guess that isn't too bad. I'm learning to keep one character armed with a bow and decent arrows to take out archers and mages.

[WeeRLegion]

Ah, but since main character death here doesn't mean instant reload, running with a mage main would actually be about the same as running a party with a mage in it.
Hm. I'm usually a little averse to playing the more death-prone classes too, but I think I'll have to try a double mage party for my next run, there's just so many sweet spells I want to try out. xD

[Vicen]

Yes im trying a mage now I dont think it will be too bad! But I always choose melee chars first in games I play to get a feel for them

Edited by Vicen, 10 November 2009 - 02:21 PM.

[Grunker]

Yes im trying a mage now I dont think it will be too bad! But I always choose melee chars first in games I play to get a feel for them

Mages are the surpreme kings of this game without a doubt. They take names like no other... As a warning, for those who like difficulty: Avoid the Arcane Warrior specialization. It's basically as effective as the warrior class with all the benefits of a mage sprinkled onto it.

[Eleima]

Oooooh! Thanks for the tips, Grunker! I'll keep those in mind when I start my second playthrough with my little elven mage girl. I almost can't wait! But, like Vicen, I always go melee the first time around to get a feel of the game.

Back on topic, does anyone have any problems with screenshots in game? I'm referring to the ones that match your achievements or your saved games. All I'm getting is a gray screen in the box where the screenshot is supposed to show up. I have no idea if the condition predates my installing the patch. It's not game breaking, it's just kinda silly to have such a polished game with a big fat grayish blob where the picture of your saved game is supposed to be.

[Archmage Silver]

I haven't had any issues with my screenshots so far. I had a grey box instead of an icon for one DLC item in the DLC activation menu once, so I think it's related to the game not loading certain assets correctly. It seems to be fairly random from my observations.

[Archmage Silver]

Otherwise the same, except for the last two changes:

Dragon Age: Origins 1.01b

Patch details:

• fixed potential corruption of character statistics
  
• fixed portrait appearance sliders when importing a character from the downloadable Character Creator
  
• fixed import for preset face settings from the downloadable Character Creator
  
• made Easy difficulty easier
  
• slightly increased attack, defense, and damage scores for all party members at Normal difficulty
  
• fixed video issues when running on a very wide screen display, including ATI Eyefinity displays
  
• fixed an issue with Dragon Age and Windows Game Explorer
  
• updated Visual C runtime libraries

Edited by Archmage Silver, 09 March 2010 - 11:12 AM.

[WeeRLegion]

WHEE! A patch!
Wait, no, it's the same. Oh well, dunno what those last two points will achieve, but eh, hope it's something. .p

[Archmage Silver]

The last two bits are apparently only designed for folks who had trouble starting DA after applying the first version of the patch. Maybe this would be of some interest to berelinde at least (few posts up)?