Exploits (Dragon Age II)

An exploit is a vulnerability that can be triggered within a game that allows the player to use a bug to give the player an unintended advantage. Some of these bugs get patched, so the patch version where they occur is noted where it is relevant.

Unlimited Gold and XP
1. The first step of this glitch/exploit is to choose one of the “Find and Deliver” side quests. 2. Go and retrieve the item you’re supposed to be collecting. 3. Return to the quest-giver with the item you collected. 4. Draw your weapon. 5. Initiate dialogue with the quest-giver immediately after sheathing your weapon, before he or she is finished speaking. Each time you press the action button you will receive the money and experience again. This can be repeated as many times as you like. 6. Amount of Money appears to have no upper limit. Level Cap is 50. Be warned though, that you most likely won't find suiting equipment apart from Fadeshear and enemies will scale up according to your level. So basically you hit harder, but so do your enemies, but you don't have anything proper to hit them with. Two-Handed weapon found by me lvl 50 warrior has 45 dmg, armor 395 pts, besrt staff found so far 52 dmg and none of the above is equipped with runeslots. Only the beforementioned Fadeshear remains trustworthy and deals 68 dmg.

This does not work for the PC Version as there is no "Action Button".

The exploit stops if you move your character, and can be used with any Find and Deliver sidequest.

There is a new patch that fixes this. So you cannot use this exploit. Xbox confirmed. Playstation confirmed. You can delete new patches to Dragon Age 2 through Xbox dashboard. But you'll be prompted to download the patch again when you restart the CD and if you choose to not re-download the patch, then you won't be able to sign into Xbox live, and thus not be able to use DLC. A way around this is that you delete the patch and start a new game. To delete patches you click Y on the memory screen in Xbox dashboard. Play through the quest "The Destruction of Lothering". Then once you are able to control yourself in Hightown do the easiest find and deliver quest, which is "A Paragon's Toe". Find the item in the Blooming Rose, then deliver it to a dwarf in Lowtown. After you've used the exploit to upgrade/max out, then save your game, exit out of the CD, then restart and choose to download the patch. You'll be at level 50, with lots of money, and talented out, and be able to play DLC!

Extra Talent/Ability Points
After using the "Unlimited Gold and XP" exploit, when you level up your character, if you press auto level up a few times, you'll automatically be given more talents than you could have if you manually leveled up. You could have an extra ability tree full. This could also work for companions. After pressing auto level a few times, you'll still have the option to choose talents too. For a mage and rogue this will work, but it won't work for a warrior, because you won't be able to exit the level up talent/ability tree screen since you'll have a talent to spend, but nowhere to spend it. Xbox confirmed. This may only work if you spend little or no talents before using the exploit.

EDIT: This has been patched

Item and Money Duplication
It is possible to repeat the item and money exploit from Origins. It is simply more time consuming, as buying and selling are in two completely different menus. One must also press the "Sell All Junk" and "Sell" buttons in quicker succession than in Origins. One must press "Sell All Junk", and quickly before the item is sold, press "sell", while releasing "Sell All" immediately after pressing "sell", all in an instant.

Sample:

1. Press Y

2. Still pressing Y, Press A

3. Release Y, still pressing A.

All must be done in an instant, meaning at one point both buttons are pressed, but it is not as simple as pressing both at the same time.

As in origins, basic items cannot be duplicated, but can be sold twice. "Stackable" items can be duplicated in this manner, as long as one of the item remains in the seller's buyback window.

Take care with what you sell; unlike in Origins, the merchants do not keep items you labeled junk after the dialogue is closed.

Ability points exploit
If you are a rogue, every time that you load your game if you haven't unlocked the stealth skill, it will be unlocked.So if every time you drink a maker's sigh you save and then load you will have an extra point.

More details here(works not only with stealth, and sometimes you can get manu points)

(works with all classes, ps3 confirmed)

EDIT: Patched on xbox 360

Infinite Rivalry for Sebastian and/or Aveline
In Act 2, you can get infinite Rivalry with Sebastian and Aveline in a conversation with Grand Cleric Elthina. Engage in a dialogue with her and choose the option "You're Useless" and you will get and  and then the conversation will end. This can usually be repeated for an infinite amount of rivalry. (Note: On PS3, Sebastian will continually give rivalry, whereas Aveline will only give it once. This is also true on the Xbox 360.)

Under certain circumstances, you will not be able to talk to Grand Cleric Elthina again. You will get another chance in the main questline for Act 2 anytime after talking to Orwald the Braggart during Offered and Lost. This can also be done immediately after recruiting Sebastian when you finish Repentance. Under other circumstances, the choice "You're Uselss" is gone and is replaced by saying "Nothing". To work around this, simply follow this line of dialogue choices to get it to appear: "Investigate" > " How do we handle the Qunari?" > "You're Useless."

Infinite Armor
WARNING: this glitch has severe bugs, such as not being able to go into the deep roads,when bartrand tells you to choose your team, you will not be sent to the team selection screen, you will just loop the conversations, again and again save before you do this glitch and do not do it before the deep roads expedition, (add any other points this glitch will halt game progression)

Whenever a shield is removed from a character, the armor bonus added by that shield is never removed. So if you put a shield on and then take it off and then put it on again, you will have gained double the armor. You can keep doing this for an infinite amount of armor (whatever the maximum amount is) easily reaching 100% physical damage resist against any enemy attack. This happens on any warrior that equips any shield. This is useful for two-handed warriors as well and sword and shield users.

Preorder Items Without Preorder
I just wanted to report that somehow I unlocked all of the preorder items in my PS3 copy of Dragon Age 2, even though I did not preorder the game. I'm not sure how I did it, but I will list the events that led up to it. Maybe other people will have similar experiences and we can figure out how it was done.

I purchased Dragon Age II last week at GameStop and my fiancee started up a game by importing her save from Witch Hunt. We played for several days. Yesterday, we finally went on to the Playstation Network and entered the code to download The Black Emporium (the code to do so came with the new copy of the game). She continued to play. I then went online and registered for the newsletter twice so I could get the two unlockable items for that (one was a belt, the other was the staff). I then registered my PS3 copy of Dragon Age 2 on the Bioware site for access to more items. My fiancee was playing the game while I was doing this, and was linked to my PS3 account. I then went to facebook and started a game of Dragon Age Legends. After the castle tutorial it unlocked the first DA:Legends item. I linked my game with my Bioware account. I little animated guy appeared on the screen, lugging a giant sack, indicating that the item was being unlocked in my copy of Dragon Age 2. i continued to play for several minutes(while my fiancee continued to play DA2 on the PS3.) And the animation of the guy with the sack wouldn't go away. I asked my fiancee to save and quit the game back to the PS3 dashboard to see if it would get the animation to go away, but it didn't. I finally just exited the website. I went back to the Bioware site online to view my unlockables to see if the DA:Legends item was unlocked or not, and it indicated it was. It was at that time I noticed that all the pre-order items were unlocked as well somehow. I had her check the Extras menu in the game, and they were listed there as well. When she went in to the game, they were available in her chest at her estate (Act 2). Not sure what happened, but I wanted to report it. I should note that the Dead Space Armor and the Razor item are still not unlocked, nor are the other 4 DA: Legends items.

Infinite Attribute Points
Hawke:

You need to be in Act 3 and should be able to craft the Rune of Valiance. Only tested on Hawke and on the PC version.

Get a Helmet and an Armor with at least 1 rune slot each. Craft one Rune of Valiance on the Helmet and one on the Armor. Make sure that the amount of attributes added on each item is different (for example, +7 on the armor and +5 on the helmet). Usually this happens when one of the items is significantly higher quality than the other.

Equip both items. Now remove the armor first (assuming it has the largest attribute bonus), then the helmet. Not all the attributes bonus will have been removed and will now be permanently added to Hawke. Equip both items again and repeat at will until you reach the attribute cap limit which should be 100.

This was discovered using a Rogue Hawke with the Arms of the Champion (Rogue) armor and the Cap of Kings helmet.


 * edit* Confirmed on Xbox 360. Only caveat is that when reequipping the armor, be sure to reequip the BETTER piece first, so in the above example, remove the armor then the helmet, then reequip the armor and then reequip the helmet, you'll find that the stat difference remains permanently on Hawke.*CONFIRMED* but you must also remove other attribute increasing items you have on otherwise it will not work *360*


 * edit* Latest XBOX360 update not only fixes this, but rolls back any increases.

Aveline:

This exploit can be quite expensive. You need to have a shield with a slot and have at least 1 character armor enchant slot available. Also you will need many Rune of Valiances and any armor enchant runes. First enchant both the shield and the character armor with with a Rune of Valiance each. Go to another area and equip the shield. Then return back to the enchant station. Replace the Rune of Valiance on the armor with another defense rune. Leave to another area and unequip the shield. You should now have bonus attributes on your character. Also make sure that they do not have any attribute boosting items on them. Attribute caps are at 100.

Freebie Ability Point Exploit (No Maker's Sigh)

 * Tested (1.03) on PC and does work with Maker's Sigh

This exploit was discovered by accident on the PC version.

Firstly, plan out your DESIRED abilities and your EXPLOIT abilities. This exploit uses the quickbar at the bottom of your screen to allocate phantom abilities that do not register as "Confirmed" or "Earned" within your ability talent trees. So, your DESIRED abilities should be upgrades, passive abilities, and activated/sustained abilities that function as part of the tree that unlocks other abilities. Your EXPLOIT abilities must be only activated and sustained abilities; they cannot be upgrades or passive abilities. Exploit abilities are also best used when they are the ending or solo ability in a talent-tree branch. For instance, Rock Armor stands alone in its branch, as does Elemental Weapons.

The following steps will help you achieve a few freebie abilities:

1) Make sure you have at least two free spaces in the 1-0 ability quickbar

2) During level-up, choose attributes normally and click "Confirm"

3) During level-up, choose your DESIRED ability and your EXPLOIT abilities. Note that EXPLOIT abilities should not be part of a tree containing DESIRED abilities. For this reason, you may wish to wait to use this exploit until you are at least level 14 so that most of the abilities are unlocked, and you have also been able to plan which abilities you need to have legitimately chosen versus which ones you can use as EXPLOIT freebies.

4) Click the talent tree containing an EXPLOIT ability.

5) Click the EXPLOIT ability and then click "Back"

6) The EXPLOIT ability will still be in your quickbar until you choose another ability... but not if you move the EXPLOIT ability to a new slot! You can even move the EXPLOIT ability to an un-numbered slot to the right.

7) Click on a talent tree and select another EXPLOIT ability. Repeat steps 5&6 until you are satisfied.

8) Click a talent tree and your DESIRED ability. Then click "Confirm" as usual.

Please note that you MUST select the EXPLOIT ability, click "Back" and THEN move its position in the quickbar. If you move the EXPLOIT ability before returning to the "all talent trees" screen, this trick will not work. And remember, if you use an ability as an EXPLOIT freebie, but want something on its tree later, you will eventually have to "earn" that ability legitimately. But temporarily owning abilities you plan to assign later anyway might help you out in the beginning parts of the game. Your choice.

Abilities obtained with this exploit have no cooldown (PC v1.02).

Sustained abilities of the same tree at the same time (rogue and warrior)(Xbox 360 so far)
This is somthng I discovered recently, the irony is that I played DA2 many times and always used it but never noticed, let's explain the example of the warrior:

-taking the tree of Vanguard the two sustained abilities of Control and Might, read the discription and both say that ONLY ONE can be used at a single time, but they can be activated one after the other. They should "blink" almost at the same time one after the other.

The case of the rogue works with the tree of Specialist. You can also activate three at the same time as well. Works for companions too.

NOTE: Some times this glitch is deactivated, I don't know the reason but a quick reload can fix it.

It would be nice if someone can check this and comfirm this.

EDIT: Tested on the 360 using Aveline's Vanguard tree and Varric's Specialist tree. Have yet to test this using a warrior or rogue Hawke.

EDIT: Patched on Xbox 360