Epic dungeons

I officially love Dragon Age. The elven ruins were already impressive, in size, depth, detail, and story. After a long period of games with disappointingly short dungeon runs (though modders did much to rectify those), it was refreshing to have such an in-depth experience in the vanilla game. But I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I went to the Circle Tower. You know a place is huge when you can't finish it in one sitting, even on a weekend! Not only was it large in scale, but it introduced numerous new and very fun gameplay mechanics, challenging fights, and another puzzle! Another challenge was getting acquainted with a new party member that I picked up at that location, and how she worked into the party dynamics.

I went there mainly because I was constantly running low on mana potions. Vendors only sell a couple, and very rarely do any sell lyrium dust with which to brew my own, so I went to the obvious place to hopefully pick up some more. I was not disappointed. You can get an unlimited supply of lyrium dust there, so I bought up 3 full stacks of 99, and went back to camp and stocked up on about 100 lesser and normal strength mana potions. And it's a bloody good thing I did, too, because as I said before, that dungeon was unimaginably massive, and I would have been seriously crippled in the many boss fights there if I didn't happen to have an ample supply of potions on me (as well as health poultices). In fact, I might have hated the dungeon if I weren't adequately prepared. But as it stands, it was an extremely positive experience, and I hope there's another on that scale yet to come!

The same vendor at the Circle Tower also sells some very nice gear, if you can afford it. I bought a new mage hood there, though I already had the best mage robes I could afford from the Wonders of Thedas in Denerim (Tevinter Mage Robes, pictured above, with +5 spellpower, +4% spell resistance, and +1 mana regeneration in combat. Nice looking, too, and not really robes at all). When I've saved up enough, there's an even better outfit yet to buy there.