Dragon Age: Origins Walkthrough - Taking Redcliffe Castle

Dragon Age: Origins Walkthrough - Taking Redcliffe Castle
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Entering the Castle

When you’re ready, you can talk to Bann Teagan by the windmill. He’ll tell you about the secret passage and get you ready to leave when the arlessa comes along. It seems that Isolode managed to get out and come for help. Something weird is going on and there’s a mage involved. So we’ve got our hands full. Ask your questions and accept the signet ring. Then just go into the windmill and use the secret passage in the hay to get into the castle.

As soon as you enter the basement, you should see three undead scraping against the jail cell down here. Just charge forward and cut them down. They shouldn’t be a threat. Talk to the man inside the cell to find the mage, Jowan. If you did the Mage origin story, then you should already know him. If not, then ask your questions to find out that this blood mage admits to the poisoning, but not the undead plague.

You have a bit of a decision to make for what to do with him. You can kill him, free him, or let him be. For now, I suggest that you just let him be. You don’t have to make a decision now. Keeping him alive is necessary for one of the three paths to curing the castle’s plague and he is also necessary if you want to learn the Blood Mage specialization. If you really want to decide now, killing him will get a bit of approval from Sten but will anger Leliana, Morrigan, and Alistair. You’ll get another chance to kill him if you really want to execute him.

Advance out and approach the stairs. Doing so will spawn five corpses throughout the little dungeon. Just stay close together and cut them down. You should be fine with this one, too.

Clearing the Basement

Before we get too far into this, let’s do a few basic tips. For this battle, a balanced team should have no trouble. My warden and Sten could both hack their way through most of the groups while Leliana did backstabs. Morrigan’s Mind Blast along with her general magic will work wonders on keeping the enemy stunned and hurt.

Dragon Age: Origins - Redcliffe Castle Basement

Go upstairs and walk down the hallway first. Don’t go into the room next to the start, since that will trigger a big fight. We might as well hit the two groups separately. Go down the hall and hit the corpses in the hallway. There’s not a trick to this- just take them out. You’ll probably trigger the next group of corpses in the next room. Grind through them too.

Cut back and go into the big room that we passed. There are about five shades inside this room. They’re a little tough, but we should still be able to take them out. They’ll die just like the corpses if you keep your wits about you. Check the book on the podium to get a new codex entry.

Head back out to the hallway. There’s a locked armory here, if your rogue can pick the lock, then you can get a little loot. Go down the next part of the hallway when you’re ready and open the door. You’ll activate a whole bunch of walking corpses and special devouring corpses. These guys are a little tougher, so focus on them if they show up. If you’re healed up, then you can use the doorway as a bit of a choke point.

Once this group is down, you can go a bit further. There are six Mabari hounds in the side room to the left, along with a charred body and some loot. These guys are pretty tough, since they know how to use overwhelm. This will immobilize and probably kill whoever they grab. If you’re having trouble with this part, you might want to skip it and hit it later.

The next hallway has a few rooms down the sides. You can kill the three corpses in the first room on the left. The next two sets are a little out of your hands, though. If you hit the fire trap just past the first room, the two other rooms should dump out their groups of corpses. The trap itself should barely scratch a warrior. The corpses are a little tough, but you should be able to beat it after a shot or two. The tactics are still the same.

The important room is at the back left corner. There’s a small room with a closed door. Open it up to find Valena, the blacksmith’s daughter. It turns out that she is alive. She’ll make a run for it.

The Path to the Courtyard

The door to the main hall is locked, so our only way out is through the next dining area. There’s another big group of walking corpses and there should be a devouring corpse here too. The fight is just like the ones before it. Just make sure that Morrigan keeps them stunned while you slash your way through them.

Go down the stairs to the back to reach the cellar. There’s not much down here besides some loot, so get what you want and then head up the stairs to the courtyard.

The Courtyard

The courtyard is probably the biggest challenge you’ll have for a bit. There are four skeleton archers on the top of the steps. There are five corpses across the courtyard. There’s also a revenant commanding them. This guy is tough, especially if this is your first stop.

Dragon Age: Origins - Redcliffe - The Revenant

I had to set the difficulty to easy and give it a few tries. There’s no shame in that. It seems like my big problem is that I didn’t have Morrigan built well and I didn’t have a healer on board. So I took the easy way out. Here’s the exact way I handled it: I charged straight across the yard to lead my party over. The revenant locked onto my character (sword and shield warrior) and I then ordered him up the steps to harass the archers. This led the revenant away from my group a bit while also taking out a few archers. Sten and Morrigan teamed up to grind through the five really fast and I sent Leliana up to backstab the revenant. I used up two lesser health poultices and one greater poultice to heal my main character. Once the other undead are down, it’s not too hard to overpower the revenant. He can swing in a circle though, so be ready for everyone to take some damage.

The Throne Room

Once he’s down, move into the castle and step forward until you get the cutscene. It looks like we found Conner. Talk to him for a bit until he orders his men forward to attack you. This one is a cake walk compared to the revenant, so you shouldn’t have any trouble. Just have one warrior focus on Bann Teagan while the other chips away at the guards. Once they’re down, you just have to charge the archers to cut right through them.

Dragon Age: Origins - Redcliffe - Bann Teagan in the Throne Room

Talk to Isolode and Teagan after the battle to figure things out. Conner’s possessed and we have to make a bit of a decision. That’s for the next part of the walkthrough though. For now, just say you want to seek out the Mages or ask for more time. You can also just say you’re going to kill Conner, I guess. You should be able to talk to them and change your mind.

There’s just one more thing we need to do. Once we take care of the demon, the castle will be reset. This means that we’ll lose access to some decent loot. Head out and down the little hallway with the access point to the second floor. Don’t go up just yet and don’t open the door. Go to the open door at the end and approach the desk. This should cause the suits of armor to come to life. If you had opened the door, then you’d be fighting the suits of armor and some corpses. The suits aren’t much worse than the guards, so just stick together and cut them down.

Go ahead and check the desk. You should find Alistair’s Mother’s Amulet. This is a good gift for Alistair and we can hand this over later if he’s not in the party.

Once you’ve healed up, open the door to find four shambling corpses and the possessed chamberlain. This isn’t a tough fight and they’re bottlenecked together, so cut them down. The chamberlain has a key to the Castle Redcliffe vault, so take that and go ahead upstairs if you want. The corpses on the ground are just playing opossum, so move forward and be ready to attack them when they rise up. Nothing new, but be careful since there are a lot of them.

You can open the vault up for a good bow and some decent armor. It’s worth a little trip. Conner’s also up here. Even if you see him, you should be able to talk your way out of the fight, since the demon isn’t possessing him at the moment.

This post is part of the series: Dragon Age: Origins - Redcliffe

Redcliffe will be one long battle for you wardens. You’ll have to defend against a siege of undead, storm the castle, and then deal with the desire demon causing all of the trouble. If you need any help with the Redcliffe side quests or main quest, then just look here.

  1. Dragon Age: Origins - Redcliffe - Preparing the Village
  2. Dragon Age: Origins Walkthrough - Redcliffe - The Attack at Nightfall
  3. Dragon Age: Origins Walkthrough - Redcliffe - Odds and Ends
  4. Dragon Age: Origins Walkthrough - Redcliffe - Taking the Castle
  5. Guide to Dragon Age: Origins Quest: “Redcliffe - Conner’s Demon”