The Attack at Nightfall

The Warden has begun the battle for Redcliffe Village against the undead from Castle Redcliffe. This is an optional part of the Arl of Redcliffe quest (only available if A Village Under Siege was completed).

Walkthrough
The quest consists of two phases:


 * Defense of the Windmill: The Warden starts at the windmill along with the Knights, Ser Perth, Dwyn and Berwick, assuming you have recruited all of them. If you have collected the oil barrels at the General Store, the knights will also light them here. If you have Zevran in your party and have told Ser Perth to put out the oil, he will issue a very wise warning about it. Finding the oil does not automatically force you to ask Ser Perth to use it, you can mention it, but also avoid it. The knights (and melee party members) do sometimes become very aggressive and run into the fire to attack the undead. Though the fire does not harm you at Casual difficult, It only may inflict damage(Fire damage) on your allies(as well the Warden) if you're playing in Moderate, Hard or Nightmare difficult.


 * Defense of the Chantry: A militiaman will inform you the undead have crossed the lake and are attacking the Chantry. The Warden will go down to the chantry and fight off the remaining undead. Murdock, Tomas, and the other militiamen will be fighting the undead, as well as Lloyd if he was recruited.

Also, Ser Perth, his knights, the militiamen in front of the chantry, Murdock, Lloyd, Berwick and Dwyn (if any of these 3 were optionally recruited to defend the village) can be slain by repeated applications of AOE spells (Shock, Blizzard)for decent xp. Furthermore, if you convinced Owen the blacksmith to do the repairs for the militia, every fallen militiamen will drop a full suit of Studded Leather. You must go around looting during the battle, because none of the corpses remain after the screen change. If Ser Perth, his knights and all the militiamen are looted, you can make approximately 10-18 gold in selling their equipment. s

Tactics
If handled well, this can be an easy battle, just make sure you have taken care to regularly monitor your companions tactics slots to keep anyone from dying. Some other tips that will help you succeed are:
 * 1)  In the first phase you can keep the knights from running into the fire by having your party's tank stand near the cliff to the right of the fire and Taunt/Threat. This will draw the undead through the fire and away from the knights.
 * 2) Set your group on defensive or a different action than "Default," or manage their targets closely. Otherwise, your party members may end up walking through the fire to attack the undead in the first phase, or running past the barricades alone in the second phase, where the allied militia archers can't help them.
 * 3)  Make good use of Area of Effect attacks on the undead before they reach your group, particularly any that cause knockdown or slow effects (such as fireball or earthquake). Remember that when playing on Easy (and Normal on the console) there is no friendly fire damage, although freeze/stun effects do still affect allies. Suggestions include Inferno, Blizzard, Tempest, Captivating Song, Mind Blast, and Earthquake. It is worth mentioning that the undead are especially vulnerable against fire, but resistant against cold attacks.
 * 4)  If all the militia in the second phase have died, pull the undead up the hill to the first location so that the knights can help you.
 * 5)  Try to have at least one mage in the group with the heal spell, or preferably two if you can manage it. Pause combat every so often and mouse over your NPC allies (or press Tab) to see how much health they have. Making sure your NPC allies are healed up not only can keep you from being overwhelmed, but helps tremendously with keeping them all alive for the bonus item. Use poultices to keep your own characters up so that the heals can be saved for NPCs. You may also want to set a tactics slot on your PCs to "self: HP < (less than) 50% = Use: Health Poultice."
 * 6)  Focus fire on any undead that are attacking archers, mages, or other low-armor targets. Heal these targets first as well since Murdock and Tomas have reasonable armor and HP.
 * 7)  If you are having difficulty with the battle, you may choose to set the game to "easy" for the duration of it.
 * 8)  If you convinced the Inkeeper Lloyd to join you in the battle, make sure to heal him first as he is away from the group and does not have great armor (unless you want him to perish). If he dies, the new bartender, Bella, doesn't keep much stock at the tavern but what she does have is free.
 * 9)  If you have Shale and have her upgraded to Stone Aura, just put her in the center near the fire (2nd part of fight) and activate Stone Aura... then breeze through the fight. She kept everyone else's attack/defense up and the undead's down. I finished the fight (on Nightmare level) with 4-5 militia men still alive. It also helps to have a mage with Force Field, just keep it on Shale.
 * 10)  Another very good tactic is to have an archer capable of using Scattershot. This is especially useful in the lower area of the village as unlike the windmill there are so many different directions the undead can use to reach the militia. This will delay them long enough to allow your group to do some damage to them before they wake and rush past you towards the militia and other Redcliffe fighters.
 * 11)  For lower level characters who may lack some of the higher tier abilities but still wish to keep all (or the majority) of the NPC allies alive, a good tactic is to set up a party with predominantly tanking characters, and set tactics into using knockdown or stunning moves (shield bash, pommel strike, overpower, shield pummel) on 'nearest visible' enemies. This is most useful in the second half of the combat, where your tanking characters can rush around the battlefield, knocking down or stunning corpses and letting the militia men mop up. Also, have a warrior tag Lloyd if you want him to survive. Despite his bulk, he'll rush off somewhere quite quickly and dies easily when surrounded.
 * 12)  If you have a mage capable of casting earthquake, have him/her place the spell around where the oil fires will be lit as the corpses are coming down the hill during the windmill attack. They will be immobilised in that area for sometime, taking continuous fire and earth damage, meaning many will die immediately in the first wave or get through with severely reduced health.
 * 13) Another tactic, successfully kept all the militia  alive, also in Nightmare level, is to have one micromanaged spirit healer and three automated tanks. The tanks aoutomated to taunt in "self: any" (also Threaten and like) and to use Health Poultice if too much injured, while the spirit healer is standing by the fire, not attacking (for not drawing attention) but using cleansing aura. The healer might need to use once or twice during the battle Lyrium Potion\Dark Sustenance to keep the aura active.

Bugs

 * Due to pathing issues some enemies may get stuck causing the quest to not end. Solutions are to make your way to the docks where a single enemy should be or to go towards the Chantry door, which should end the quest. Enemies that refuse to walk down the hill during the Defense of the Windmill stage can be lured down by shooting them with a bow and arrow.


 * If all else fails, use the console command: runscript zz_arl_debug, this will bring up a menu allowing you to skip to after the battle.


 * Players may encounter a bug near the end of the attack. After fighting several waves at the beginning of the attack near the windmill, a soldier will arrive triggering a short cut scene and warn the Warden that more enemies are now attacking the Chantry. If autosave is enabled, the game should initiate an autosave immediately after this occurs. After following the soldier downhill and defending the Chantry against several more waves of enemies, the enemies will stop attacking the Chantry and resume attacking the windmill uphill (this time there is no cutscene or any sort of warning to inform the player that the windmill is being attacked again other than the fact that enemies have stopped attacking the Chantry). If the player runs back uphill toward the windmill, the game should initiate another autosave shortly after the player crosses the bridge near the waterfall. The bug can occur at this point because sometimes the game does not intiate the second autosave. If this happens, the enemies will continue attacking in waves until they just stop coming to both the windmill and the Chantry, which normally would cause the stage to end soon afterward, only it does not, the music loop keeps playing as if the battle has not yet ended and the player becomes stuck in the level with nowhere to go and nothing to do. There are no visible enemies to speak of, stuck or otherwise, and approaching the door to the Chantry does not remedy this. Loading the last autosave and fighting through the battle again is the only known way to fix this bug. This has occurred on Xbox 360 versions of Dragon Age: Origins, with the latest updates and no DLC attached.

Sometimes it will seem as if there are no more enemies but the gameplay will not continue ( the malitia will not inform you the town is being attacked) and even if you try to walk around or start it back up everyone will act as if there are more enemies coming down the windmill. There is no fix for this except to reload your last save and try again.

Rewards
(if Lloyd was convinced to help and he managed to survive the night) (if none of the villagers fell during the battle, given by Bann Teagan, Arl Eamon's Brother.)