Dragon Age: Origins - Redcliffe - Preparing the Village

As a quick note, I did this right after Lothering and feel that it might have been a mistake. There's no companion to pick up here and I didn't have a healer yet. I get the feeling it would have been a bit easier if I would have had Wynne with me. Regardless, I made it through and only had to flip it from normal to easy at the end. I'll note the change.

I did this entire area with my warden (pretty much Alistair), Morrigan, Leliana, and Sten.

We have a few things that we can do to help the town get ready for the assault. There are two quick quests for Mayor Murdock and one quest for Ser Perth. There’s also a lot of little things to give you an edge.

There are two things we can do to help Murdock:

Help Owen

First things first, the militia need to have some weapons and armor. In order for them to get their equipment, you need to convince Owen to start up his forge again. This won’t be that easy, though.

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The blacksmith is marked on your map. He’s just behind Murdock. Approach the locked door and try to open it to trigger an exchange with Owen. You should be able to talk your way inside.

The easiest way to handle this one is to just promise him that you’ll look for his daughter in the castle once you turn back the invasion. The problem with this is that Morrigan dislikes you giving more “false” hope and Sten assumes it is an empty promise. We actually will find her later, but that’s another quest. If you make a promise to raid the castle, he’ll fire up the forge. This is the only way to get him to do it.

You can also kill him right now and get into his stash with a key. You could also just pickpocket it or stumble across the stash, so it seems a little pointless to me.

You can also just leave and tell Murdock that you can’t change his mind.

If you get him to fire up the forge, the militia should have better armor and weapons in the battle.

Draft Dwyn

Murdock really wants a veteran soldier on the field that night. Dwyn is such a soldier, but he refuses to join the fight. Go over to his house. It’s just past Murdock on the little dock area over the lake. Head on inside and talk to Dwyn and his two thugs.

He doesn’t want to fight, so you have to convince him. You can just hire him for 100 silvers. If your persuasion works he’ll go down to 50 silvers. Although if your persuasion is good, then you could probably just convince him without paying him.

You can also use intimidation to get him to join the fight, but he’ll attack you if it fails. I passed it with 2 points in Coerce though. If he agrees to join the fight, you can go back out and report it to Murdock.

You can also just kill him. If you kill him, you can just tell Murdock that he wouldn’t come around.

Ser Perth is actually just about ready to go. He’s commanding the knights, so they are already equipped well. They just want a blessing from Mother

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The problem is that Mother Hannah is perceptive enough to know that they want a much more realistic and practical version of the Maker’s protection. All she can do is say a few words (you personally can get a blessing if you just want one). You can just go back and explain this to Ser Perth. He’ll agree and understand.

You can also persuade or intimidate Mother Hannah into giving them some fake trinkets and saying that they will grant them the Maker’s protection. Morrigan will approve of your actions but Leliana will be understandably upset. This doesn’t seem to have an effect on the overall battle though.

There's a lot of little things to do. You should try and help Kaitlyn with her missing brother since that quest will allow you to get a really good early sword for the battle. I used it the whole time. That's a full side quest though, so you can get the full rundown there.

These odds and ends are specific for the battle.

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A Little Oil

There’s another building that acts as the General Storehouse for the village. It’s right next to Dwyn’s house on the lake. If you go inside, you can examine the barrels on the wall and see that they’re full of lamp oil. That should be useful. If you tell Ser Perth about it, he’ll have his men use them to set up a flame wall along their barricade for the battle. The fire will do a little damage to the enemy when they walk through it.

The Tavern

The tavern has several interesting opportunities. You can talk to the men and try to get them some ale to raise morale a bit. More importantly, you can talk to Lloyd. It seems that he’s just going to cower in his cellar for the battle. You can intimidate him into joining the battle fairly easily. Sten will approve of the action and no one should disapprove. The best help is that Bella will assume management of the inn in the meantime and she’ll give everything away. All of the potions and goods inside the store inventory are now free. You can’t sell anything though. It’s pretty cool.

If Lloyd survives the fight, he’ll resume control of the store and give you a ring. If not, Bella will keep running a bare bones store with free wares.

If you talk to Bella, she should also point out an odd elf sitting in the corner. He’s called Berwick. If you talk to him, you can persuade or intimidate him into giving up his true reason for being in town. It seems like Arl Howe (we know him from the human noble start) hired him as a spy on Arl Eamon. Ask for proof and you’ll get his official letter. You can also demand that he get his redemption by joining the fight. Sten will approve of this.

When you’re ready, you just have to tell either Murdock or Ser Perth that you’re ready and confirm that you’ll take your position for sunset.