Dragon Age II Guide Essentials Extra help for Act 3
Final Battle
- Fighting Meredith is much easier if you focus on survival first. With non-party companions and other allies offering assistance, your priority should be to keep health, mana and stamina gauges topped up at all times. If Meredith takes a particular interest in a weaker mage or rogue, try using manual control to move them out of her path.
- Once again, this is a multi-stage battle. After you deplete her health gauge to a set level, Meredith will bring a Gate Guardian to life. The Gate Guardian employs a nasty spinning attack that hits all opponents within a circular radius, though its movement speed is ponderous. To give your party a little respite, try pulling all melee and ranged fighters back to a safe distance, order everyone to hold position, then wear down its health gauge from range.
- After the subsequent bout with Meredith, she will summon a second Gate Guardian; this one is slightly more resilient than the first. Complicating matters greatly, you will face the smaller and weaker Slave Statues. These are also slow-moving (occasional charges notwithstanding), so the major challenge here is exercising effective crowd control.
- In the penultimate part of the battle, Meredith rejoins the fray while the seemingly never-ending Slave Statues continue their assault. Use your party’s AoE attacks to keep these under control. Ensure that your weaker ranged fighters maintain a safe distance from the main fracas as the knight-commander now employs a new Energy Burst attack.
- Diminished yet still unbowed, Meredith’s next trick is to reanimate both Gate Guardians in a new form. These scuttling monstrosities use short-range flame attacks and fireballs with a homing capacity. This is a dangerous point in the fight, as both may target mages who have managed to stay out of harm’s way so far. Focus your attention on one at a time and the immediate peril should subside when the first falls.
- With this last gambit successfully dismissed, just wear down the final slivers of Meredith’s health gauge. With each successive monologue, her demise grows ever closer.