Dragon Age: Mage

I just started a Mage on Nightmare and I was wondering what spells I should get as an Arcane Warrior. I've read up on it a little bit but a lot of it is confusing.

Idunno I always go for heal and cold/frost talents initially; cone of cold is simply to valuable. I'd play without party members, but I like their input. I just initiate combat, cast blizzard, then tempest, then cone of cold on any that get too close.

this was on normal, though

for arcane warrior, anything that buffs your defenses

it really depends on your playing style and party configuration.

I myself wouldn't use arcane warrior to melee; Sten, Oghren, Leliana and such will do it much better and effortlessly. my arcane warrior dies harder because of the defense bonus, and still primarily relies on magic. in the final battle, when in a distance, he stood toe to toe with Archdemon, and ally's job is to get those bugging darkspawns off his back.

primal cold tree is certainly a must, and spells that can immobilize enemies are always good.

my personal favoirte though is the HP eroding spells: walking bombs, stinging swarm, and curse of mortality; they are great for eating away high HP baddies, and when walking bomb explores, what a sight!

also, stonefist-earthquake-petrify is a poweful line as well.

now I'm on my second playthrough, a Dalish rogue on nightmare and it's going fine; mage on that difficulty should be even easier.

You can either play an arcane warrior as a durable spellcaster, in which case you'll only really need to take combat magic to equip heavy armor, or as a high defense auto-attacker that casts the occasional crowd control or debuff spell.

For the latter, you'll want spells that add to your defense and armor, and debuffs and crowd control mostly. A weapon enhancement is a good idea as well. Be aware that some spells CANNOT be cast with a weapon equipped, so your character will have to sheath it first, putting a bit of a delay on some spells. Your fatigue will be quite high as well, so a lot of people go blood mage as their second specialization to use health instead of mana for your spells.

For your party, try using either two champion spec'd warriors (rally stacks, so with two you get +20 atk and def for everyone), Leilana for song of courage (more def, atk, and some crit chance), and pick up heal and glyph of warding on your character (another +30 def, so you're looking at around +60 defense for EVERYONE just from these buffs), or drop one of the warriors and pick up Wynne, that way you can have her worry about heals and the glyph. A good strategy if you're a blood mage as well is to have Leilana take the ranger specialization, that way you can drain health from her pet and use it as a battery.

Yeah...I downloaded Warden's Keep but it doesn't work...When I try to get the quest from him he just says "Here...I'll put it on your map" and then I still didn't get the quest, he still has the big ! over his head...and I can get the quest from him a thousand times a day and it still won't give it to me. I got the quest from Felix for the stone golem and it took Sulcher's Pass off my map but didn't give me the town to go to the Golem place...something isn't right and I'll probably have to restart...going to make me mad.