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Brecilian Forest | The Camp | Circle Tower | Denerim | The Final Battle | Haven | Landsmeet | Lothering | Orzammar | Ostagar | Redcliffe | Ruined Temple Areas available as Downloadable Content: Honnleath | Return to Ostagar | Warden's Keep |
Alistair | Leliana | Loghain | The Mabari War Hound | Morrigan | Oghren | Sten | Wynne | Zevran Available as Downloadable Content: Shale Sample Characters created for this walkthrough Aldarion | Zarathos |
Zarathos - a sample development guide
Zarathos, a Human Arcane Warrior and Blood Mage
Strength: 11
Dexterity: 11
Willpower: 14
Magic: 21
Cunning: 12
Constitution: 10
First Level: Rock Armor, Heal
As an Arcane Warrior, my evil protagonist will have to settle for medium-level armor to strike a balance between protection and avoiding the rapid fatigue that can set in with wearing heavier armors. A key point behind Rock Armor is to enhance the armor rating beyond what medium-level armors will provide. Heal opens up a branch that a Blood Mage will sometimes finds useful. It also lessens reliance on Health Poultices.
Second Level: Stone First
A single target offensive spell that can knock down its victim. The real point is to pull of the Shatter spell combo. If Morrigan freezes an enemy in place with her cold spells, Zarathos can kill the enemy outright with a Stone Fist that shatters the frozen enemy.
Third Level: Earthquake
A long distance crowd-control spell. The idea is to keep a crowd of enemies in place at a distance. This will buy time for Morrigan to fire off something like Blizzard, or the Storm of the Century combo.
Fourth Level: Glyph of Paralysis
A nifty little spell that you can plant at the feet of an enemy to hold him in place. It also forms part of a potent spell combo.
Fifth Level: Glyph of Warding, Glyph of Repulsion
Glyph of Warding tips the odds of combat in your party's favour. Simply plant it in the thick of things so to speak. Glyph of Repulsion forms the other half of a spell combo. This is a useful defensive spell, since it can consistently push enemies back if your spellpower is high enough. And then, when you're ready for it, you can put a Glyph of Paralysis right on top it. This results in an explosion of energy that will paralyze everyone within a certain radius of the explosion.
Sixth Level: Petrify
A handy spell for freezing even a boss-enemy in place for a significant amount of time.
Seventh Level: Flameblast
Now its time to acquire some offensive power for when its needed.
Eighth Level: Flaming Weapons
Useful if you want to charge everyone's weapons with fire damage. Its also on the way to the offensive fire spells.
Ninth Level: Combat Magic, Fireball
At about this time, I unlock the Arcane Warrior specialization for Zarathos and begin to acquire its powers. I also buy a Tome of Arcane Technique for him so that he can get a very useful area-of-effect damaging spell. This can be useful in tandom with crowd control spells like Glyph of Repulsion and Earthquake. Simply hold them in place with crowd control, then fire away with Fireball.
Tenth Level: Inferno
A highly damaging spell that torches the opposition well after the intial casting. Works best in conjunction with crowd-control spells, otherwise there's the risk the foes will simply run up and then gang up on the caster.
Eleventh Level: Glyph of Neutralization
This sometimes comes in handy against Wizards, a guaranteed stopper.
Twelvth Level: Aura of Might
Further developing my Arcane Warrior talents and also augmenting Combat Magic along the way.
Thirteenth Level: Rejuvenate
Further developing the Creation tree, with a view towards obtaining Regeneration.
Fourteenth Level: Blood Magic
The necessary ability to have in place and active if you want to use any of the other abilities from the Blood Magic tree. The major drawback is that using Blood Magic uses health instead of mana to fuel the spells, and healing spells are significantly diminished in effectiveness as applied to a Blood Mage. There are two ways to overcome this. One is that regeneration spells don't take the hit on effectiveness that healing spells do. And indeed, I make a point of equipping Zarathos with regenerative spells. The second is that if you plan on using Blood Magic spells in a short burst or sequence, this can be shut off quickly as a follow up to a healing spells. Keep in mind that once you go this route, Blood Magic has a significant cooling down period before you can activate it again.
Fifteenth Level: Blood Sacrifice, Blood Wound
I purchased another Tome of Arcane Technique to get what makes the Blood Mage specialization worthwhile to begin with, Blood Wound. Blood Wound basically works like an area-of-effect version of Spirit Prison. This is great in two situations. One, if a horde is about to break through any crowd-control that you've set up and swarm you, uncork this to stop the dam. It's party friendly. Second, if there's a group of mages and archers that you'd simply like to keep under wraps while you take out the melee enemies, let loose with this.
Sixteenth Level: Shimmering Shield
This is a top-notch defensive spell that allows the Arcane Warrior to tank it, and survive intense combats, with the best of them. It drains mana rapidly, so if you are planning on using it on a prolonged basis for certain fights, have some Lyrium potions in tow.
Seventeenth Level: Blood Dominate
Nifty spell that puts a chance of two evils to a single opponent, either fight for you, or take heavy damage otherwise.
Eighteenth Level: Regeneration
Another handy way to recoup a party member's health, and can be used while Zarathos is using Blood Magic without a penalty.
Nineteenth Level: Spell Wisp
More a stepping stone to Grease, which enables the Grease Fire combo.
Twentienth Level: Grease, Spell Bloom
Now I have the option of using the Grease Fire combo. At this point I also got an extra talent for completing the Landsmeet, so I may as well round out this talent tree.
