Defence of Redcliffe (The attack at Nightfall)

[ositodefelpa]

How on earth do you defend everyone (to get the helm of the red) on Nightmare level? I've just done it on normal level, and there was no way I could kill the mobs at the same time as defending everyone else.

[Sawyer95]

i find people and move some squad members down there while in scout mode

[FEZ. TF7]

If i remember correctly i'm pretty sure you can heal Murdoc and the troops with your mage providing you have any heal spells then your party can chug health poultices if they need healing

it's been a while since i last played the game so i'm not 100% but i think you can use the above method

[biogoo]

Morrigan with cone of cold and heal will do a lot of work. Use mindblast a lot as well. Focus enemies from range one by one starting with the low health ones. Use taunt and run around with your tank to reduce the incoming damage if you cant crowd control otherwise. Leliana can stun in melee range as well.
As long as the militia survives the first few waves, you are good to go, as they will help with dealing damage a lot.

[Ilja]

Mage tactic

Two mages can do the trick. Enhance your tank characters weapon with fire (Telekinetic Weapons will also do the trick) and concentrate on healing militia. Knock out most dangerous enemies with spells, so they do not finish militia members, before you have time to heal them. Make sure that your tank character generates as much threat than possible. Use both Threaten and Taunt to force enemies concentrate to him/her.

If your main character is a Spirit Healer, then keeping the Cleansing Aura active during the battle will help a lot. Of course this means waiting until level 14, before the spell is available. I do not recommend letting Wynne doing that, because spell seems to draw some amount of unwanted attention from enemies, despite that I do not find any mention of threat from wiki. Main character as a mage is usually more robust and better equipped to handle him/herself than Wynne.

Warrior tactic

As above. Make sure that your and who ever may fight at your site is generating a lot of threat. This requires more micromanaging than above, because you will have to occasionally pause and check the state of the militia and then heal them with your mage. Use warrior skills to knock down and stun most dangerous enemies. Don't waste your single mage's spells for that, or he/she will be out of willpower soon.

Rogue tactic

Use your tank and mage as above. Backstab often, use talents that stun. Keep an eye out for entrances to battlefield and toss grenades to damage and hinder enemies, before they get in to the field.

Conclusion

You can do all of these at once, if your party lets you do so. For example, use Wynne to heal, Alistair to tank, Leliana to toss grenades to exist and do what ever your character does best to support the other similar character class in your team.

Edit

I forgot to mention 2 things that may help you further.

This is one battle where Dog shines. His Dread Howl is very useful and it saves your mages from wasting their willpower to stun enemies.

Using Cold Iron runes will increase the damage you do to undead. Your main tank and backstabbing rogue will both benefit from those greatly.

[ositodefelpa]

Very Interesting summary, IIja. Unfortunately, it all came to naught. I just played this mission again, as I decided to restart my playthrough, but the first militia died before I even got in range. So I guess, at best, this is a save/reload luck based mission.

[Ilja]

Originally posted by ositodefelpa:

Very Interesting summary, IIja. Unfortunately, it all came to naught. I just played this mission again, as I decided to restart my playthrough, but the first militia died before I even got in range. So I guess, at best, this is a save/reload luck based mission.

Yeah. In my game, Wynne was the first one to run in to battle. Used her to cast Heal spell over most beaten militia member.

By the way, I may have misspoke above. I said that Cleansing Aura would attract attention. It seems that it was either an old news or a bug in my old game game. Now that I am playing the game again, I don't see Cleansing Aura gathering threat against my mage.

[biogoo]

Originally posted by ositodefelpa:

Very Interesting summary, IIja. Unfortunately, it all came to naught. I just played this mission again, as I decided to restart my playthrough, but the first militia died before I even got in range. So I guess, at best, this is a save/reload luck based mission.

If you do all you can to strenghten the defenses (mainly recruit the dwarfs party), you dont really need a healer upstairs, he can already wait downstairs to reduce the chance of this happening (or just send him there in the middle of the fight). I am doing Redcliffe before the circle of magi and it is possible.
What class/weapon style/party are you playing with? Do you have any DLC and possibly already finished the individual ones like lelianas song etc (for the bonus in-game items)?

[ositodefelpa]

Yeah, I could survive upstairs without a healer. In fact, I did manage to survive the mission without losing anyone apart from that one guy who died before I arrived.

I must admit, it hadn't occurred to me that I could send someone down early. I had assumed that if I did that, it might either (1) break the scripting and prevent the lower mission from starting; or (2) it would start the lower battle as soon as the healer arrived. Interesting to hear that sending someone down early would work.

[Ilja]

Originally posted by ositodefelpa:

Yeah, I could survive upstairs without a healer. In fact, I did manage to survive the mission without losing anyone apart from that one guy who died before I arrived.

I must admit, it hadn't occurred to me that I could send someone down early. I had assumed that if I did that, it might either (1) break the scripting and prevent the lower mission from starting; or (2) it would start the lower battle as soon as the healer arrived. Interesting to hear that sending someone down early would work.

You can send them down, before messenger comes up, but I took Wynne as controlled character, running immediately past him and started healing members of militia, before rest of the crew got down. :)