So, Christmas has came and went, and now the new year is coming into full swing. Which probably means two things:

• You probably got Dragon Age: Inquisition for Christmas
• Your New Year's resolution is to lose weight, or get laid.

Well, sorry mate. But you gotta cut that weight loss shit out, we have a problem.

I've been enjoying our new Dungeon Crawling multiplayer section of 2014's Game of the Year with some close friends over the last week or two (after that lizard hacker group nonsense). And I've noticed that many groups aren't quite living up to their full potential.

In this guide, I plan to give you guys the run down of how the Multiplayer missions work, The 'ideal' group structure, and give my recommendations on how to build those classes. As well as the recommended play styles. So, with that, let's get to brass tacks.

How this works

So, You've dropped into the Tevinter Ruins with three other guys (Is that a guy? It looks like a man, damned Elves) and you have literally no idea what's going on, except that there's demons just begging for an axe to the face. That's all well and good, but there's more to it than just wrecking house and looting broken jars.  There are several missions/events that take place in each of the five Zones throughout the instance:

• Defeat all enemies - Speaks for itself. Hop to, ya barbarian.
• Protect dudeman - Mop up the enemy, get your escort to the door. (Tanks come in handy here. Don't get your hopes up for any support from dudeman)
• Recover >the thing< - A bit tricky on higher difficulties, It's a race against the clock to get to the pile of Heirlooms/Weapons/boxes of pies for Sera, before they burn to ashes.
• The Zone 5 Boogie - Place the banner, rally your party. Prepare for the greatest fight of your life.

These events aren't mandatory except for the last one, and the first one. You have to kill everything to progress to the next zone. Protecting the guy, and recovering the pile of stuff is completely optional, but you miss out on a huge chunk of gold. Which sucks.

There are also many doors located throughout the instance that correspond with each class and can only be unlocked by said class. When in a group most of my friends usually just refer to them as "name of class" door, and that usually serves the purpose of alerting each other and the rest of the party to its presence. Within these doors are glowing jars to break for gold, and a box that includes either an Item or a hefty sum of gold (the amount differs with difficulty). When you open the box one of two things can happen.

• You get things. Yay!
• A Lich somewhere in Thedas gets pissy and sends something to eat your faces off.

When this happens, you just have to kill the summoned enemy(s) in order to open the box to get your loot.

How to make a party that rocks

So, you've progressed through this dungeon and noticed that everyone is a mage. By the time you reach Zone 5, you've passed up every rogue, and warrior door in Thedas, and have used all two of your health potions in order to get here. You place your banner at the far end of the room, and within thirty seconds, your entire group is mauled to death by a Demon Commander. That's because you have a party full of mages, and you guys weren't set up properly.

Let's go over our recommended party make-up; and yes, it is based on the Holy Trinity.

[tabs tab1="Tank" tab2="Damage" tab3="Support"]
[tab]Tanks are almost damn near necessary for the group to succeed. Which means they are my favorite role to fill.

If you haven't got a short bit of Dwarven meat in front of your mages and archers your marshmallows are gonna get roasted. Right now, we have two viable 'tanky' classes. The first being the Legionnaire, and the second being the Templar.

The Legionnaire is the more preferred of the two (personally). They have a shout that taunts EVERY  enemy nearby and gives them guard based on how many enemies were taunted, another skill that helps a ton is the Walking Fortress skill, that lets you become invulnerable to all forms of damage for a short time. The shout alone gives them the title of Most Effective Tank.

The Templar, on the other hand, is more akin to a Support tank. They Buff the party (Holy shit, do they buff the party), and they only have a single target taunt skill - useful for grabbing the attention of the boss.

Build to Taunt, and to survive.

Legionnaire: War cry, Walking Fortress, Payback Strike, and Shield wall are the recommended activated skills. Biggest Threat, Cutting Words, and Turn the Bolt are recommended Passives.

Templar: Shield Wall, Unbowed, Line in the Sand/Bodyguard (play style difference), and Blessed Blades are Recommended Activated skills, and Champions of the Just, Mage Slayer, Trust the Steel, and Biggest Threat are the recommended Passives.[/tab]
[tab]You damage dealers are insane. You bring so much more to the party than just your capability for destruction. In our group, we run two fantastic damage dealers - An Archer (soon to be Assassin), and a Reaver. The Archer provides us with a Damage dealer that can do damage and keep away from the fight, as well as target any enemy outside of the Tank's scope of attack. Our Reaver, crazy bastard that he is, usually just sticks beside of the tank and murders anything that touches him. A good party will have two damage dealers. A fantastic party will have a ranged and a Melee.

Build your class with as much damage output and defensive capability that you can. The perk that prevents flanking is absolutely amazing when dealing with Rogues.

Top Recommendations for Damage dealers: Assassin, Reaver, and Katari for Melee, and Hunter, Elementalist, and Arcane Warrior(still a ranged class!) for your ranged damage.

"Smash Hard, and Smash True" - Shaemus the Reaver, when asked how to play a Damage class.[/tab]
[tab]Support; arguably the MOST important part of the group and the most difficult to play correctly. You help keep us up, you do damage, and sometimes you tell funny jokes.

The role of support is to naturally put bubbles on the party, make sure that they stand in the shit they are supposed to be standing in (Templar feels), and making sure the tank knows what he's doing. As support you can't be about putting up those big numbers. Take that idea and throw it out of the window, we're not going to need it. Party Survival and optimization is your goal. Making sure everyone else is doing what they need to be doing is your job, and being able to throw up barriers on your buddies from halfway across the room is your forte. That doesn't mean that you can't deal damage too, I know supports that completely wreck face when they need to, they just know when to open fire, and when to yell at the tank for being an idiot (The marshmallows are roasting!).

That being said, your recommended support classes are: Templar, and Keeper.

Build to protect, augment, and Deal damage. You're the Jack-of-all-Trades of the Group.

Templar: Blessed Blades, Spell Purge, Horn of Valor, and Bodyguard/Line in the Sand are your Recommended Activated Skills, and There is no Darkness, The Last Sacrifice, and Lights in the Shadow (Second tier of Blessed Blades) are your recommended passives.

Keeper: Barrier, Fade Cloak, Chain Lightning, and Veil Strike are your recommended activated abilities, and Punching Down (tier two on Veil Strike), Disturbance of Spirit, and The entire tree down to Strength of Spirits are your recommended passives.[/tab]
[/tabs]

How to play your role

So, we have the right party, but we need the know-how to come out on top. So, instead of giving you the usual, Do this, this and this horseshit, I'll give you an example of what our party is going to look like in combat.

Party: Legionnaire, Reaver, Archer, Keeper

Scenario: Zone 5 final battle, Hardest difficulty.

So far, the party has managed to keep all of their health potions, and have reached the final zone. The Reaver heads out to place down the banner as the rest of the party remains in the initial room the Zone started in. The banner is placed and the Reaver high tails it back into the room with an army of demons behind him. As he slips through the door, the Legionnaire runs into the doorway and uses War Cry to build Guard and taunt the enemies onto him. The Reaver joins in the fray after the Tank has grabbed aggro on the first wave of enemies. The Keeper instructs the Archer to move closer to the two meat heads and does the same for himself. He casts Barrier on everyone just in time as the Boss explodes from the ground in front of them and moves for the archer.

The Legionnaire then uses his Walking Fortress skill and then uses Shield wall to build Guard after the demons ate it off. The Archer and Keeper move back into the room while targeting the Ranged attackers outside. The Reaver is too busy yelling at his roomate to notice what's going on and gets nuked by the ranged attackers. The barriers have run out now, and the Keeper waits on a recharge as he drops a Barrier on He and the Legionnaire. The Legionnaire taunts one more time and moves out into the courtyard to help pick off the ranged attackers, Boss in tow. The Keeper picks up the Reaver, and Casts Veil Strike to Knock down the enemies around the Tank. This entire time the Archer has been working on whittling down the Boss's health.

The Demon performs a scream attack that panics the Legionnaire that leaves him immobilized until he uses Payback Strike to break out of it. The Party takes note of the Area of Effect ring the Demon places on the ground before he screams and formulates a plan: Get out of there when that happens, except for the tank, who can break Panic. The Boss disappears and the Tank uses a Rock Armor potion and runs out into the courtyard to pick up the rest of the enemies still walking around, as the Archer and Reaver make the rounds on the Ranged attackers, while the Keeper auto attacks at range, while keeping an eye out for the Black smoke on one of the players that signifies where the Demon Commander will appear. He notices a very small cloud of dark magic on the Legionnaire and casts Barrier just as the Boss explodes from the ground, knocking the Dwarf down. The Archer then turns his attention to the Boss and the Reaver finishes off the remaining enemies in the map. The battle continues with the Boss disappearing and Reappearing across the Map and the Reaver coming back into the fray to finish up the fight.

This is 'usually' how most of our fights go. Sometimes things happen and we have to compensate for a dead party member or an abundance of ranged attackers.

In Closing

Just keep in mind, this is our site's recommended party make-up. I have seen a Party full of Arcane Warriors (because they're broken) blow through a dungeon without a hitch. So, instead of using this as a 'How To' use it as a guideline basis on how to augment your own playing style to benefit the group at large. Utilize all of the tools at your disposal, and COMMUNICATE. Communication is key, let the party know what's going on.

Know your role, and know it well. Only you know what you are entirely capable of, and how you play, so tell your party about it. Let them know that you're gonna run in and taunt an entire group of guys, so they don't have to scramble to save your ass. Read your abilities, and their descriptions, knowledge is power, and you will always need that power in this game.

Lastly, here are some rough guidelines to follow in multiplayer:

• Listen to the tank, Listen to the Damage, Listen to the Support.
• Be aware of Everything! You'd be amazed at what small details can tell you what an enemy is about to do.
• This is a Team effort, if you play this like Call of Duty, you're gonna get your ass kicked and your teammates killed, and you'll be removed from the group.
• Kill the Golden Nugs that pop up from time to time. They give so much gold it makes my mouth water.
• Promote your classes when you can, those stat bonuses add up!
• Remember to buy Potions when you're out. Our Reaver went five games without a single health potion.
• Have fun with it!

That's that! Now with the skills you have learned from this page, you might very well end up meeting that resolution of getting laid this year!

If you want to join the Slashskill guys in Dragon Age Multiplayer let us know!

Ort (writer of this article) - PSN: "orttheblacksmith"