Needless to say I take my sweet time lol. Plus on hard, you gotta be a tad bit more careful. The queen spider was a cotdamn nightmare.

As for alistair, Ive had him on the shield branc the entire time...and it's been maxed out. It's the only option that makes sense for a tank IMO. The last part of the mission when you have to use ogreth was more of a pain in the ass than it needed to be for me because I accidentally selected my own character instead of alistair which meant no real tank.

I'm about to start the gray warden mountain hideout downloadable content.