The v1.04 patch for Dragon Age: Origins and Awakening is going through QA as I type this, but BioWare’s Victor Wachter has given us an early look at the full patch notes. If you were holding off on buying Awakening until the major issues were dealt with, you should look at the information below the notes…
This week, we present the full contents of the 1.04 update. Along with the release notes, we have also included a few issues that we were not able to fix and workarounds for them.
We also wanted to update you on the status of the patch as it makes its way through the QA process. This week, the patch passed EA certification and has been sent to Microsoft and Sony for their certification. This process generally takes a couple of weeks. When we get closer to getting certification, we will be able to determine a release date.
General Fixes
‘¢ Daggers will now properly assign the dexterity-based damage bonus
‘¢ Achievement images and messages will now display properly.
‘¢ Resolved some authorization issues with downloadable content.
‘¢ Blood talents from the Grey Warden Base premium downloadable content will now work properly in Awakening.
‘¢ Fixed an issue where installing new downloadable content would occasionally leave the “Other Campaigns” selection greyed-out without a restart of the game.
‘¢ Multiple transitions in and out of Fade areas will no longer multiply the number of visual effects running and slow down gameplay.
‘¢ Floating numbers no longer appears over players’ heads.
‘¢ Damage statistics will now be updated properly on the Inventory screen when weapons were unequipped.
‘¢ Importing a character to a new module from a savegame that did not have the hero in the party caused the game to crash.
‘¢ If a character is imported into Dragon Age: Awakening and is stripped of their incompatible gear from DLC, they will be equipped with default equipment.
‘¢ Names with accents and special characters will now show up correctly in the Story So Far load hints.
‘¢ Switching between Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age: Awakening will no longer reset options to default settings.
‘¢ Fixed a number of memory leaks that were increasing the number of crashes
‘¢ Audio drivers were causing a number of audio-related crashes. As such, audio drivers have been updated.
‘¢ Fixed issues that were preventing portraits from being uploaded to the BioWare social site.
‘¢ Game saves on Xbox 360 were being corrupted if you sold too many items to the same merchant. Saves will no longer be corrupted if you do this.
‘¢ Screenshots are no longer automatically uploaded on the PC by default on new installations.
‘¢ Fixed pick-pocketing. Characters were successfully stealing, but not receiving any items.
Dragon Age: Origins Fixes
‘¢ Fixed an issue that would cause incorrect characters to occasionally appear in Morrigan’s ritual.
‘¢ Players who rescued their party members in the Fade of the Broken Circle plot were still forced to fight the sloth demon alone. This has been resolved.
‘¢ It is no longer possible for the player to get blocked during gameplay by pursuing both candidates’ quests in the Orzammar plot line.
Dragon Age: Awakening Fixes
‘¢ A variety of bugs were preventing personal quests from triggering and causing issues with party member approval have been fixed.
‘¢ Lillith will no longer repeatedly thank the player at Vigil’s Keep after being rescued.
‘¢ During the Assault on Amaranthine, a bug would occasionally make some enemies invincible, which impeded game progress. This no longer happens.
‘¢ Imported rogue characters will now properly detect traps.
‘¢ The message, “Legacy tattoo asset do not use!” will no longer appear on the faces of imported characters.
‘¢ Masterpiece and paragon silverite runes are now weapon runes instead of armor runes.
‘¢ The masterpiece slow rune is now available for purchase from merchant stores.
‘¢ Players may now receive notes of appreciation from their Origins love interests.
Known Issues
While we have fixed the party member approval/personal quest issues, it is important to note that players may not experience the results of this fix until starting a new game.
Because of the nature of the bug and the fix implemented, while it is possible that it will still affect party members that are not yet in the player’s group, in general existing game saves may still not see proper approval results.
(Awakening) Silverite Mine Issues
Some players have experienced a situation where it is possible to enter the Silverite Mine in the Wending Wood early by picking the lock to the door (despite the lock initially appearing to be impossible to pick) prior to completing the quest with Velanna. Due to technical limitations, we will be unable to patch this issue and as such we wish to communicate to players to avoid this situation.
Entering the Silverite Mine early may result in loss of some inventory as well as broken plot flags due to prior quests not being completed properly. Normally, the door will unlock after fully resolving the encounter with Velanna and the player should not attempt to enter the Silverite Mine before then.
(Origins) Arl of Denerim’s Estate, Basement (immediately post-Riordan rescue) Issues
Some characters that have an area-of-effect aura, such as Miasma, enabled may cause the guards on the other side of the door in the basement of the Arl of Denerim’s estate to attack the party prior to the party having had their encounter with them.
Due to technical limitations similar to the Silverite Mine issues, we will also be unable to patch this issue. Unfortunately, if this happens then the player’s party is stuck in a state where they are unable to remove the guard’s disguise they had earlier donned.
The only way to fix this issue after it has occurred is to re-load an earlier save and ensure that any area-of-effect auras are disabled prior to getting the party too close to the door. Normally, upon opening the door the party will have an encounter with the guards where the disguises will be dropped and the party’s equipment will be restored. So immediately after rescuing Riordan and taking the stairs to the basement, ensure that the party disables any aggressive area-of-effect auras and refrains from casting any area-of-effect spells prior to opening the door in the basement so the guard cutscene triggers properly. It’s safe to resume those effects after the guard encounter.
(Awakening) Armor sets: Sentinel Armor & Vigilance Sword (Xbox 360 and PS3), Blackblade Armor (All platforms)
Unfortunately, we are unable to fix the issues concerning these armor sets and the Vigilance Sword. Due to various limitations surrounding what we can and cannot patch concerning DLC content, very strict limits in the size of console title updates, and the state of some of the assets we attempted to implement, we regret to inform you that these items will not be fixed at this time.
There is a workaround for the appearance of the Sentinel Armor and the Vigilance Sword on consoles, and that is to not have the Soldier’s Peak/Grey Warden Base DLC installed. We realize this is not by any means an ideal solution, but regrettably we will be unable to fix this properly and for that we apologize.
Note concerning Silverite Mine, Arl of Denerim’s Estate, and Item issues: Please accept our apologies. While we wish we could have fixed these issues to the community’s satisfaction, we are unable to do so at this time. As indicated, we realize that none of these workarounds are ideal in any way but regrettably have no other course of action as we have very strict limitations with what we are able and not able to patch, on consoles especially. We have taken into account the root issues related to the implementation of these areas/pieces and will carry it forward in an effort to avoid things like this happening in the future.
Note on Installing Awakening to a version of DA:O already patched to 1.04 [PC only]
If you install the 1.04 patch prior to installing Awakening, you must run the 1.04 patch installer again after the Awakening install is complete.
There are Awakening specific resources and other assets that will not be patched in properly unless the 1.04 installer detects that Awakening is present and as such will not install those additional resources. In addition, the pre-1.04 installer that comes with Awakening may revert some 1.04 files back – this would result in a game that is apparently missing many of the fixes included with 1.04, while the game config tool still reports it as the 1.04 version.
In short, if you plan to re-install DAO and Awakening at some point in the future, we recommend installing DAO, then Awakening, then latest patch. If you plan to add Awakening to your DAO install, we recommend installing Awakening, then always re-apply the latest patch.
“…these items will not be fixed at this time.” Seriously? The biggest issue with Awakening (loss of items in the Silverite Mines) isn’t going to be patched?
