Desperate Haven – Dragon Age: Origins Quest

This guide will walk you through the “Desperate Haven” quest in Dragon Age: Origins. We will go through all the steps to complete this mission.

Background

You can receive this quest from the chanter’s boards in Redcliffe or the Denerim Market District. The Redcliffe board will only appear after you’ve saved the village from undead attacks.

Desperate Haven

For this quest you’ll need to travel to the location named “Refugees” on the world map, and check to see if any refugees survived a darkspawn attack. When you get there you’ll find six refugees still alive — but they’ll be in a heated battle with a group of darkspawn, including a “red” hurlock emissary. You won’t need to worry about protecting the refugees — nothing in the quest will change if they survive or not — so just focus on the darkspawn.

The battle can be tough. The emissary is a nasty spellcaster, but you can’t just make a beeline to him or else you’ll get overwhelmed by all of the other darkspawn in the area. So try to survive as best you can, and then focus on the emissary once you’ve whittled down the darkspawn numbers to a manageable level.

After the battle, you won’t find anything interesting to loot (although the emissary might have a good gem or a decent amount of money on him), and the surviving refugees (if any) won’t have much to say. But when you return to any of the chanter’s board representatives (in Lothering, Redcliffe, or the Denerim Market District), you’ll receive 2 sovereigns and 175 xp.