Dragon Age: Origins

I'll try to make this short, but I can't promise anything hehe.

Tips for Nightmare Difficulty:

This really isn't that difficult if you have your AI set up correctly and/or you use the radial menu, you have a healer, a hex mage and a good tank. I used Leliana with ranged attack as my fourth character. Your healer doesn't even have to be a Spirit Healer, though Group Heal is nice to use right after a regular Heal if your tank gets low on health. If you just have Regenerate and Heal, you're golden. My characters were Lv13-14 and I had 3-5 levels of level up points to distribute, so it's really not that bad of a fight... I don't use the Level Up function until I have to so I don't get caught in a part of the game I cannot get through with certain abilities. Plus I was waiting on getting my second specialization for every member and I wanted to flood those specializations immediately. I don't even have any big-damage ability chains to help out here. If you do, by all means, use them.

First, set up the battlefield before you hit the Gong. Put your entire party on HOLD and position them individually. Set up all your sustained spells and get ready. I'm going to list my set up to give you sort of an idea how I did it. It's likely our party make up is not identical, so bear in mind you'll likely need to make some adjustments. The tank is the main focus of your positioning because it's crucial to keep High Dragon's abilities away from your other party members and make it so only the tank gets hit.

Tank:

As you look towards where High Dragon lands, place the tank to the left side of where High Dragon lands and get ready to Taunt. High Dragon can toss your tank around like a wet noodle, so putting him here keeps the cliff at your back and High Dragon can't throw you around and away from your party members or out of your healer's range. If your tank moves anywhere, it will be towards the Ruin Entrance which is fine because your other party members can still target High Dragon and the healer can heal the tank from the ledge above.

Threaten helps out a lot with threat as well, so activate it from the sustained spells menu on your radial menu if you have it. You should have this if you have a tank and if you have Threaten, then you have Precise Striking which will help with damage and threat as well because your tank hits more often and has a better chance to land crits: Less misses + more crits = more threat. Again, activate it if you have it.

Set up the tanks AI to use Shield Defense if their health drops below 50%. The reason to wait is because Shield Defense nerfs Attack and we don't want that unless we have to. Every once in a while, you should swap to your tank and Taunt again.

Use health items to help your healer out when you get lowe on health.

Also, any further into the ability string of the abilities I mentioned above will just make your fight easier. I am just trying to get you through with the bare minimum.

The rest of the party:

Your other three party members (if ranged) need to stay on the ledge where the Gong is to keep them out of the High Dragons AoE and cone abilities range. They can spam spells and ranged attacks from this ledge.

If one is melee and not ranged, try to keep them attacking from the side of High Dragon because it has a Tail Swipe ability (dunno the actual name) if you're behind it and it will knock you down and a good distance away from the fight. I never got hit with it from the side in 5 fights, but it could happen I suppose.

Hex Mage:

The hex spells from the Entropy school helps a lot here. Be sure to save your Misdirection Hex for when your tank ends up in the mouth of High Dragon or if your healer is low on mana and needs to drink a Lyrium Potion (or the mana Blood Magic spell you get from DLC). This will help alleviate some of the damage.

Alternate your Affliction Hex and Vulnerability Hex (this helps Drain as well if you find your self needing to heal after using the mana Blood Magic spell). Once you land one of your Hexes, spam your elemental spells (Lightning, Fire, Winter's Grasp, etc.). Those hexes lower the resistances of such spells and causes them to do more damage. It helps elemental based weapon enchantments and spells like Frost Weapon and Burning Weapon as well.

Healer Mage:

Not much to say here, keep Regenerate on your tank at all times. Don't wait for health to get low before using Heal. Use offensive spells to help with damage when you can, ESPECIALLY after a hex. If you're a Spirit Healer, then don't be afraid to use Group Heal immediately after Heal even if your other party members have full health (they should take very little damage if any).

Ranged/Melee member:

Leliana with the archery abilities would help a lot here. Ranger Spec, even better. I went the rogue route with her, so my ranged abilities are still default and they offer nothing to this fight. She is a decent archer with Marjolianne's bow (I know that spelled wrong, sorry). If you have elemental arrows (e.g., Ice Arrows), use them and your hexes will help those too.

Ending Comments:

This is a fairly long fight if you have to whittle away at High Dragon's health little by little like I did. Expect at least a 7-10 minute fight. Don't give up! If one thing doesn't work, try something else. Make sure your characters stay put by using using the HOLD function. Keep all threat on your tan, keep your tank healed and *DING!* Dragonslayer.

Good luck and hope this helps and sorry for the length...

I killed the Dragon with Morrigan by herself.
Look at this video to know how.
It's really simple, just takes forever! :D
Keep healing, keep moving, use drain life a lot! Be sure to have a few potions at least.

First of all let me say this is a well earned achievement.

Now then my advice is for someone:
- who doesnt have shale
- who is warrior class with heavy armor
- who is the last member alive of his group
- who specializes in melee, but 2 handed vs 1 handed
- who has less than five healings

Basically as you can tell from my above comments, i did not have the dlc so i did not have shale, I was a warrior class and preferred melee, and well my party was absolutely worthless.

The key here though is if you go the route of two handed melee, you have to build up your dexterity so you can eventually use the skill two normal one handed weapons in both hands, vs one normal and one dagger. Now let me tell you this skill is absolutely worthless in this battle. You can basically complete forget about up close melee even heavily armored because the dragon is too fast, he can whip around so fast you dont have time to hit him, his tail knocks you back, and if you face him head on there is the chance of the dragon grabbing you in the mouth, this is basically an instant kill.

Additionally, most of your party is ultimately useless because the dragon moves around by flying to often and easily gets to your other party members. There is no truly safe area to place your characters, near the gong or otherwise.

So basically you are screwed, right? No luckily enough building dextrity allows even you melee warrior to use fairly decent bows. Thats the first step of the tactic. Note make sure to have several hundred arrows because while you can use the bow, your damage is weak so dont run the risk of running out of arrows. If you were like me and never bothered with bows, you can get arrows and some bows at the stores. Id say around 150-200 arrows is more than enough.

Now the actual battle, just let your party do whatever while they are alive, you can just run around and do whatever until most of your characters are dead, if lucky they should be able to take away close to half of the high dragons life.

Now step 2 : If you have the store of arrows, you can now actually beat the dragon without ever taking another hit. First run behind the rock to the right of the gong (facing towards andrases tomb), you can get off a hit, but almost immediately the dragon takes off and will and where you are. Simply run down the to your right, and hide behind the little bump of a rock just behind the small crevacie/cliff face of where you were. The dragon will then adjust and fly to where you are, but run back to the original spot. Basically you have enough to time to pluck off one arrow which will do around 23 damage, or 56 if you score a critical. So basically its a battle of will and just continue running from the spot to spot plucking one arrow at each time. As long as you shot off only one arrow you have more than enough time to avoid the dragon and get back to the other spot. Ill admit it takes a long ass time, but at this point in the game you do not have the advantage to learn ranged attacks to make the battle easier. And although the battle is long, if you dont run out of arrows the dragon will go down within 15 minutes or so, for an rpg player a battle of this length is not to long.

There is only one caution, if you are out of place by a little bit, the dragon can use its wings to knock you down and pull you closer. Luckily, if you are on top, the edge of the cliff/crevasse prevents you from going any further, but you might get hit with a little fire. If you are on the bottom part even easier, the dragon pulls you against the cliff face and shots fire over the top of you. In any case if this happens i suggest not trying to adjust and get a shot off, and rather just running to the next place, you wont get killed if you get hit with some fire even with low fire resistance but there is no need to risk anything.

Eventually after rope a doping the dragon like this for around 7-15 mins it goes down, and at level 18, you gain about 222 xp , the dragon scale and i think one other unique, and mainly the achievement.

Note: when the dragon looks like it has a couple of hits left, you can risk switching to your normal weapons and try to get off a few melee hits, however this runs high risk, especially if you die and lose a lot of time. I thought about this, but scrapped the idea and just continued shooting arrows.

Like I said its not pretty but its basically full proof, and allows you to get around playing as a warrior.

Now one other note, i honestly dont use bows at all, so i cant tell you whether there is a bow with low enough dexterity, the strategy of not getting hits works for any massively heavy armor wearing warrior, so even if you dont have high dexterity you might luck out and find a bow with a low enough requirement to use. Additionally some vendors sell tomes which allow you one free skill point, there are enough i believe for 5 or 6, so like i said maybe you can find a weaker bow. Remember though if use this weaker bow it might take even longer so take more arrows, but eventually the dragon goes down.

And one last note, personally I dont think the dragon plate armor you get from the scale is that much better than Juggernaut armor, so if you dont want the achievement Id skip the battle, I dont think the reward is that great.

If you have the stone prisoner dlc go grab shale and whenever he lvls put it in constitution then go buy some fire resistant crystals if you dont have it get little mr doggy (he somehow survives) and a healer (i recommend wynn morrigan grabs aggro often) then just keep healer away and your party will do the work

I did something similar to lunchbox, not trying to slay the dragon until I was level 18 or 19. I also did Shale's Companion quest, and thus received the nature crystal armor, which makes Shale a pretty ridiculous tank. I had Shale tank the thing, with Wynne as a healer who I had casting Group Heal any time one person dropped below 25 percent. I also set her to take lyrium potions any time she was low on magic. My character was a two-handed weapon warrior/berserker so I was using all kinds of buffs to do the majority of the damage. The other character was Zevran, who really didn't do much because you can't backstab the dragon.
Anyway, basically the best thing to do (for any hard boss in the game, really) is to use Shale as a tank with the Flawless Nature Crystal armor. She will rarely even drop below half health on Normal difficulty.

Here is a noob guide, this is roughly what i did on my first playthrough:
Main character as Mage attacker using Wintersbreath Staff so that each basic attack does massive damage to the dragon, it is also worth using trinkets that boost cold damage. If you can also use the Frost weapons spell.
Alistair as tank, using Juggernaut armour set to add resistance to fire, along with the Portable Bulwark sheild you can get from Bodhan on the cheap to improve hsi defence. In terms of trinkets i used ring of ages, andruils blessing (belt), the spellward, and one that boosted cold damage for my frost weapons spell (i hadn't been to Orzammar to get the Lifegiver at the time). However if it is your first playthrough and lack the funds to get all the above trinkets then just use whatever you see fit, i recommend anything that improves fire resistance/armour or anything that improves cold damage. Get Alistair to activate the Threaten ability before the fight as we need him to occupy the dragon.
Leliana as a ranger is extremely useful here because that way it is only Alistair in the danger zone, equip her with ice arrows if you can, and Wade's superior dragonskin armour is a must to protect her form any possible attacks. Also, make sure her tactics is set on 'Ranger' so that she wont go charging in like a Leeroy Jenkins wannabe.
Wynne is incredibly useful in this fight as she will automatically heal anyone with low health (mostly this will be Alistair), Wynne is not really a damage dealer so just scrape together what you can for her, i recommend giving her the first cold attack (i forget what its called) whether you intend to use her against the High Dragon or not as she will require some form of offence throughout the game.
*Note: it is worth having your character as a spirit healer, because although Wynne is a very high level Spirit Healer she does not always heal the AI's when necessary.
*Note: This is only one setup out of many successful possible combinations, and is fairly slapdash due to it being the setup i used on my first playthrough. I posted this purely for the use of Newbies.
Good Luck.

you can easily get this by yourself. you need wades superior drakescale armor which will give you 75 fire resistence
then any type of long bow (i used mages eye dragon bone).
and alot of health poultices depending on your defensive stats( i used about 15) when you are at the gong there is ring of pillars with some chests in it to the right. ring the gong and go to the middle of the circle the dragon will follow after a little. once it is in the circle walk out to the entrance and there should be a pillar. stand so it is between you and the dragon. then attck it with the bow. when you attack it it should position you so part of your body is behind the pillar. this will prevent the dragon from meleeing you and the thing where it flaps its wings and bring you towards it so all you have to worry about is the fire attcks which shouldnt do much dammage if you have the drakescale armor.

the same thing can be used to kill flemeth all you have to do is go where you first come into the area and you should be across the water and beside a white statue.

by the way it will a take a while it took me about 10 minutes