Crafting Guide to Poisons for Dragon Age: Origins

Poison-making is one of the crafting skills available to your characters in the Dragon Age: Origins role playing game. With this skill, you can put together a wide variety of deadly mixtures that do extra damage to your enemies. If you’re willing to invest the points in building up this skill and then seeking out the right ingredients, you can have an array of potions just as deadly as a mage’s spellbook. In this article, I’ll discuss what all you can make with the basic Poison-Making skill as well as the Improved Poison-Making skill. The best part of the Improved skill is the ability to make bombs that you can throw at the enemy to cause massive damage.

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Deathroot Extract

• Recipe: 1 Deathroot, 1 Flask

In addition to doing an extra point of nature damage, this poison offers a 10% chance of stunning the target. If the target is stunned, the effects last for three seconds. It may not seem like a long time, but it makes a big difference.

Venom

• Recipe: 1 Toxin Extract, 1 Flask

This poison also does a point of nature damage, but it also offers a 10% chancing of slowing your opponent’s movement rate for eleven seconds. This limits their number of attacks and how far they can move, so it’s great to use against most anything.

You have to be at least level 4 before you can learn this skill, but it opens up a lot more poisons for you to make and use. The most important part of this skill is the added ability to make poison grenades that you can throw at your enemies from afar and do area damage.

Concentrated Deathroot Extract

• Recipe: 2 Deathroot, 1 Distillation Agent, 1 Flask

This is a stronger version of the original Deathroot Extract from the first tier, only this one does two points of nature damage and has a 15% chance to stun your target for four seconds instead of three.

Concentrated Venom

• Recipe: 2 Toxin Extract, 1 Distillation Agent, 1 Flask

This is a beefed up version of the original Venom that does two points of nature damage and gives you a 15% chance of slowing your opponent’s movement for 12 seconds. This leaves them especially vulnerable to ranged attacks while your melee fighters keep their distance and dance around the slowed opponent.

Crow Poison

• Recipe: 2 Toxin Extract, 2 Deathroot, 1 Distillation Agent, 1 Flask

Crow Poison is like a combination Deathroot Extract and Venom. It does four points of nature damage and provides a 10% chance to stun your target for six seconds. You can get in a lot of free hits in six seconds.

On the next page, we'll cover all the grenades you can make with this skill!

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• Recipe: 1 Lifestone, 1 Corrupter Agent, 1 Flask

This recipe lets you make an acid bomb that you can throw at your opponents. The area of effect is typically about the size to cover three enemies standing shoulder to shoulder, so if you are lucky you can hit a bunch at once. The acid stays in effect for a short while so you can also throw it in a doorway and wait for the foolish monsters to run through. It’ll help weaken them before they get to you. The Acid Flask is a pretty commonly found one in the game and I pick them off the bodies of killed monsters all the time.

Fire Bomb

• Recipe: 1 Fire Crystal, 1 Corrupter Agent, 1 Flask

I don’t remember ever having found one of these on any bodies after a fight, and it’s probably because they’d get used pretty quickly at the start of a battle. These nasty things create a fireball that can do up to 80 points of damage to all it hits, so it is great when fighting a group of enemies. If you get a chance to buy some of these, definitely pick them up because they are very helpful.

Freeze Bomb

• Recipe: 1 Frostrock, 1 Corrupter Agent, 1 Flask

This is the exact opposite of the Fire Bomb in that it also does 80 damage, but with cold instead of fire. It can also hurt you or your party, and the area of effect is about the same. There are some creatures you will encounter in the game that are immune to fire damage, so that’s where the freeze bomb comes into effect. It’s also quite useful for large groups of enemies. The effect is instant, so be careful how you aim when you throw the bomb so that you don’t waste it.

Shock Bomb

• Recipe: 1 Frozen Lightning, 1 Corrupter Agent, 1 Flask

The shock bomb is another great one because it does 80 points of damage via an electrical blast. One added benefit of this bomb is that while some creatures are immune or resistance to heat and cold damage, they are more likely to be vulnerable to electrical damage.

Soulrot Bomb

• Recipe: 1 Spirit Shard, 1 Corrupter Agent, 1 Flask

The soulrot bomb does 80 points of spirit damage to those in the area of effect. I’ve found these bombs to be fairly common when it comes to looting dead enemies, but that doesn’t make them any less valuable. Personally, I’ve found the fire, freeze, and shock bombs to be more effective in combat.

Be very careful when using any of these grenades in the game, because you can hurt your own party members as well as yourself. Be sure that when you throw the bomb, you are placing it far enough away that nobody gets hurt. If you have to put one of your own people in the line of fire, at least make sure they can resist some of the effects of the particular bomb you choose. When targeting, it often works best to throw it from afar and target the ground rather than a specific person. Also watch out for moving targets because you could aim for where they are standing and they may all move out of the way by the time the grenade goes off, and then you’ve wasted it for nothing.