Part 61: Butts goes down

Butts goes down

The Descent DLC. People complained that they wanted to go to the Deep Roads. They said they wanted a long dungeon crawl. Well, they got it. Descent hearkens back to Origins and a bit of DA2. It's a straight-up dungeon full of monsters. Unlike Hakkon there's no recommended level and it will scale to you. However there are a metric shitton of enemies so bring good gear and lots of potions. And make sure you have enough herbs to craft more as you'll probably be refilling at every camp.

The story is that there have been a rash of bad earthquakes and they are fucking up the lyrium mines. Lyrium is a precious commodity and we use our fair share. Plus Orzammar asked us for help directly and we're cool like that. In addition to the temblors the Deep Roads are now overrun with Darkspawn (well, moreso than usual). It's up to us to find out the cause of the earthquakes and slaughter not-zombies along the way. We meet a Shaper and find out the quakes may be not so random. Also apparently Solid Snake needed some work while they were making MGSV so he got some work with us.

There are some good reasons to come here early - namely the T4 schematics and the ability to buy assloads of dragon mats. You'll want at least one tank and there's an upcoming section where having two isn't a bad idea. Mage to flavor. Also you'll want some level of Cleansing Rune for bonus damage. There's not a lot of reason to have them equipped elsewhere in the game so it's nice to see them getting some action.

Descent is incredibly combat-heavy compared to other areas in the game. And they also reintroduced varied Darkspawn. All of our old friends from Origins have returned, including Genlocks and Ogres, made prettier by the new engine and capabilities of modern hardware. It's basically one long fight from the minute you enter until we establish our first camp, and the rest of the DLC is similar. In some areas enemies will spawn continuously until you defeat the boss, which can get really hairy since they're such gigantic sacks of HP. I had a full party wipe at level 27 which hasn't happened at all in this game (except on purpose). Nightmare will probably give you shitfits, have fun!