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Enkida

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    I did it! ~280 mods and DAO is running! \o/

    in Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Enkida

    XI. Integrated Quests

     

    I'm not redacting this section because I think people could use reviews of these quests. Many of them are huge downloads and if you want to save yourself the effort of knowing whether or not to make a commitment to that amount of effort, a review can be helpful. All of these are available on the DAO Nexus; use the search feature to find them by title.

     

     

    Alley of Murders

     

    Ancient Elven Ruins

     

    Hilltop Under Siege

     

    Infested Grounds

     

    King Calenhad's Tomb

     

    King Calenhad's Tomb Patch

     

    Pints and Quarts Tavern

     

    Spiders and Knives

     

    Swamp Tower Adventure

     

    Tombs of the Undead

     

    Tranquil Sophia

     

    Temple of Vulak

    Note that this one claims to add a lot of items to the game. They will 99.9 probability be unbalanced, not have the female proportion fixes applied to them, and cause a ton of Item ID conflicts. My grain of salt: I'd probably skip the rewards / destroy any items found in the quest to keep the rest of the game balanced. It's what I've been doing with all of the other quest mods I've tried out so far.

     

    NOTICABLE NOT ON THE LIST: Angelic - Vendetta - this conflcts with Tranquil Sophia and... Beat the Hell out of Howe I think? Or any other Howe in the dungeons dialogue changing mod (Alistair's Proposal has a standalone one, I think).

     

    I ended up editing out a few of the bigger mods here, as they were also messing with the Party Picker screen as well as causing area ID messages to pop up every time I entered a new area. I don't know that the mods themselves were causing the problem, but the mods *in this build* were not playing nicely together, and the bits that I did play weren't lore-friendly enough for me to keep them in. They did look very well done, but I'd suggest anyone wanting to play them do so on a "clean" install - bugfixes only, and none of this other mega-install stuff.

     

    Eleanor-CHWAER CYDIWR

    - make sure you get the ELEANOR version, I think the Allison version will conflict with Hawke Family in Lothring. Unless you want to play with Bethany I guess. This quest works best with a female warden.

     

    Isle of Broken Dreams

     

    Isabella DA2 Headmorph (Isle of Broken Dreams)

    Might be a fun adventure, but places Morrigan in a lesbian relationship with Isabela from what I gather, which is again, lore-breaking for me. I believe the writer for this mod specifically said he included it as a satiric commentary on Morrigan's atttuitude, so YMMV.

     

    Scroll of Eternal Truth
    This is another integrated quest mod that adds cutscenes to the vanilla game cutscenes, and then allows you to "interrupt" your Warden Origins game to play a separate but concurrent adventure featuring Tallis. A couple of warnings: the first cutscene will feature full nudity no matter what (or if any at all) body mods you have installed. It also features an interpretation of Cassandra that might be lore-breaking to those who've played DA:I. Will review more as I play through it.

     

    Scroll of Eternal Truth addons

     

    Search for the Cure - Corvus and Kiera

    - installing this with all the other stuff will give you the black screen on the left side of the character creator. Simply disable it before creating your character, and enable it afterwards, should work then (I think, it's a quest that starts after the Epilogue is over). I suspect that this mod, which is apparently still in beta, was the cause of most of the technical problems with the other mods in my 280-ish build.

     

    Search for Kiera - Corvus and Kiera Sequel

     

    Sentinels of Sylaise

    This quest seems pretty well done; it starts right off in the Korcari wilds, and the initial dialogue with the NPC companion who joins you, Aberfas, is a joy, even if lore-nitpickers might disagree with the interpretation of the Dragon Age elven pantheon. The computer voiceovers are fine, and the initial part of the quest is a simple logic puzzle run with enemies.

     

    I do have some criticisms of this mod: the equipment and enemies you run into here are completely unbalanced for a (mostly) vanilla game. You have to play the first part of this quest BEFORE the Joining. That means my character, doing everything possible, was a level 4 rogue archer in Chasind armour at the time. Your quest companion who joins you is a level 25 all-specialities enabled Mage. You can get tier 7 equipment and accessories in the very first chest you find in the dungeon, and later on, access to a merchant who is selling multiple high-end pieces of armour and weapons (like Effort, Fang, Wade's Superior Dragonbone Plate, etc) for at most 30 silver pieces. By the end of the first dungeon my character was a level 6 with end-game equipment in her inventory - and that was still avoiding all but the initial loot in the 1st chest. Also, the dialogue degraded by the end of the puzzle part of the first quest - you're a bit railroaded into responses that force you into a romance (or almost-romance) option with often 1 or 2 choices at the most to advance the scenes.

     

    It's definitely worth taking a look at, as technically the quest is very well done, although the lack of branching dialogue / branching dialogue that all leads to the same result anyway is a definite jarring contrast to the vanilla game options. I'll update my review on this as the quest plays out; it's not a one-shot dungeon, which is pretty impressive IMO.

    I did it! ~280 mods and DAO is running! \o/

    in Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Enkida

    II. Awakening Bugfixes

     

    - this entire section will probably be nuked once Qwinn finishes his v3.0 fixpack. For now, here's what I used:

     

     

    - tbc, but you can find all the info / links under the thread in ModTalk labelled "where did all the bugfixes go"

     

    One huge caveat about Awakening mods - including the bugfixes - on an installation this huge: don't install them. I mean, prepare them, but don't actually enable the DAZIPS or override files you make in your game until you're *actually ready to play Awakening*. Some of the Awakening specific mods break things in the Origin game, and some of the Origin mods break things in Awakening. To keep it simple, just rename any mod dealing with Awakenings to have a _AW_[mod name] before it, whether it's a dazip or override file, and then you can keep things sorted easily and enable what you need to for whatever game you're playing in that moment.

    I did it! ~280 mods and DAO is running! \o/

    in Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Enkida

    I. Origins Bugfixes

    - this entire section will probably be nuked once Qwinn finishes his v3.0 fixpack. For now, here's what I used:

     

     

    - tbc, but you can find all the info / links under the thread in ModTalk labelled "where did all the bugfixes go"

     

    NB: I found that using AA - Addtional Adjustments caused a gamebreaking bug on loading the main camp module; I'm not sure what exactly it conflicted with, but it was the cause of many a CTD on camp load.

    What happened to all the bugfixes?

    in Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Enkida

    Hah, we'll see. I have one more major bug to weed out, and weeding out the [censored] mess that is the Character Creator with all of the [censored] mod requirements that never [censored] work together is a beast of a different nature.

     

    Anyway, there is a point to this: currently testing a workaround to having Mabari Madness and faster anything:

    http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/2577

     

    This one is modular, with combat and runspeed separated into two different files. Also, I notice on the readme that claw weapons are not included. So there is a chance that you can still achieve faster limited something with one or both segments of that mod instead. Will update when I know if it works.

     

     

    EDIT: indeedily do. The mod above will allow you to have faster combat, however, you cannot have faster runspeed as this is what's breaking Mabari Madness. enjoooooooy

    What happened to all the bugfixes?

    in Discussion

    Posted

    I can only agree with that sentiment. And beg you to someday finish your modding guide. I'm thinking of throwing up my own notes when I'm done bug nuking my own 280 mod install, but it's heavily based on yours for one, and I've tweaked so many things to make them compatible that I don't even have the energy anymore to explain why I did what to what mod for myself, let alone other people. -___- Please never stop blathering about Dragon Age, though, I love it. And your sense of humour as per how you name all that stuff you make, makes me LOL :)

     

     

    ONTO SOMETHING RELEVANT: I uncovered an incompatibility bug in my list, in case anyone is interested in that. Lemming's Total Speed Increase will implode RL's Mabari Madness. I mentioned it on RL's mod page, but in essence, I believe they both edit the same files, so MM must be increasing dog speed. It's a pity, they're both hammer mods, but you can't use them together. :-(

    Request: More Covered Female Chasind Robe compatible with tmp7704's proportion fixes + FHawke & Aveline?

    in Mod Ideas

    Posted

    I never get their names right because I hated playing DA2 so much, LOL. (Couldn't mod it on a console) Well, I didn't hate the game entirely, but

     

    A) Why did female hawke walk that way. my hips hurt just looking at her

    B) Why couldn't you romance Aveline or Varric, the only sane characters in the whole shebang. Well we know about Varric (now), but at the time, DAAAAMNNN

     

    ... it would still be nice to see Aveline at Ostagar :)

    Request: Human Noble Clothing texture REPLACER (as in, on NPCs)

    in Mod Ideas

    Posted

    I've been searching around and I've not found any sort of general noble clothing replacer for Dragon Age besides a very NSFW one containing mini skirts, nipple clamps and body piercings. I know it can be done, since it IS done on said mod, which is hosted on the Nexus and apparently pretty popular.

     

    Nipple clamps aside, I really would just like to see a noble clothing replacer that doesn't make it look like the NPCs are wearing reflective saran wrap. It'd be nice if they were any one of the dozens of great noble clothing retextures that already exist out there, but no one seems to have ever made a total replacer mod. I know that someone more saavy with using the toolset could probably just open that up and replace the default robes with new ones by renaming the files or something, but I am definitely not a saavy toolset user. I can't even get the toolset properly installed on my machine, for that matter.

     

    I and I bet a lot of other people would really love it if there was just a generic default texture replacer out there, even if just to take the shine down on the existing clothing. Well, a better one than the single lonely BDSM mod that does exist, that is.

    I did it! ~280 mods and DAO is running! \o/

    in Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Thandal

    I really don't have anything else to say except that, but the only people who might even remotely care will be reading a Dragon Age forum, so there you go ;-)

    So far the only major bug I've noticed is that I couldn't get most of the Models of Ferelden selected chargen headmorphs to work despite downloading the prerequisite texture files. But I'm not going to complain, since at least three of them do and you only need one to play a game :-)

    *sits back and enjoys the fruit of my modding labor*

    ... and let me just say I don't know how I ever played this game without the light armor has pants + unisex armor mods. No more anatomically strange women collarbones and hands freaking me out! And no more painted shadows on crotches! *happy dance*

    Request: More Covered Female Chasind Robe compatible with tmp7704's proportion fixes + FHawke & Aveline?

    in Mod Ideas

    Posted · Edited by Enkida

    This is such a great mod (Chasind robe retexture, makes it less revealing by adding black panels):

    http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4215/?

     

    But no one knows if it's compatible with tmp7704's female proportion fixes. Would anyone be willing to make it so?

     

     

    Additionally, this is an intriguing mod (Add Female Hawke to Ostagar, add Avaline and Westley to Lothring):

     

    http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/3431/?

     

    However, it places Hawke as the "nurse" at Ostagar (which makes no sense to me). Someone on the discussion page made the excellent suggestion that the silent woman Davith is trying to flirt with would be a perfect replacement for F!Hawke instead, and I would agree. If anyone's willing to make that, I'd be really happy :smile:

     

    Also, this mod has a small add-on, Avaline and Westley in Lothring's Chantry. It's kind of suspect, however, because the author just replaced the models for the default male and female children in the Chantry with morphs / meshes for Avaline and Westley (if I'm seeing that right). That has so much potential for bugs, that it clearly shows on the discussion page. If anyone would be willing to make a version of Avaline and Westley that *didn't* nuke the Lothring Chapel Children files instead, that would be nice too :smile:

     

    Actually someone pointed out that Avaline's voice actress is used in Ostagar, one of the female soldiers listening to the priestess giving the Chant where you find Ser Jory. That would be a good spot to replace her instead of Lothring. No idea about Westley though!

    Qwinn´s Ultimate DAO Fixpack v3 (no longer beta!)

    in Discussion

    Posted

    Heya!

     

    I agree with you, "Just another fixpack" should have been called "just another tweak pack" and is probably safe for most people to skip ;)

     

    As for the Dwarf - I'm not sure if it's in the Proving, or the Main Game Orzammar run (I haven't replayed yet, it's been 6 years since I did and I'm still installing mods ATM), however her name is Myaja, and there's some text in the game where the Warden is told to "watch out for her hammer!" I believe, but she doesn't actually wield a hammer at all. That may fall into the realm of tweak rather than bugfix but now that you know her name you can check it out for yourself :)

     

    again thank you for the hard work :)

    Mod to enhance armors and faces textures?

    in Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Enkida

    I may come in and add links to these later on if I have some time, but nexus searching or google searching these exact names + dragon age origins should get you to them safely. The vanilla improvements that I've found (that will not leave you a havering mess to install because of the need to hunt down additional assets) are here. Note they're not necessarily the best, they're just in my opinion the easiest to install and least buggy for the lay non-modder gamer. They also stick most closely to vanilla Dragon Age and/or the Dragon Age universe lore.

     

    ENVIRONMENT

    Mesh Lightmap Fixes
    Unified Ferelden Architecture

    Theta HD Texture

    Hazy Sun

     

    * HDR Textures - I put this in tentatively because it retextures everything, but is a pain in the butt to download / install, some of the files are corrupted, the file download names may be corrupted, and you need to delete quite a lot of textures from it too, or your game will not always look "better." See the Nexus discussion page on that mod if you use it. If you use any other texture improvements, let them all overwrite whatever you find in here.

     

    Note JB3 textures is very popular, but not on my list. Besides the permissions thing, it's really unoptimized. Also, "upgrading" texture quality by liberal use of your sharpening tool /bump mapping is not necessarily a visual improvement. If you have a roaring good computer you might not care and can still grab these, though.

     

    CHARACTERS / NPCS

    SJC's Vanilla Face Textures + Dark Skin Patch - default skin texture replacer

     

    Eyebrows Plus - default eyebrow replacer

     

    Lord Spartan Full Stubble - default stubble replacer; conflicts with the eyebrow replacer though

     

    Pretty Faces Preset Heads - covers every race, every gender, but can look a little same-y. Arguably better than vanilla though.

     

    Cute Dwarf Presets - let these overwrite the dwarf Pretty Faces presets they conflict with

     

    Natalie Portman - er, what it says on the tin, if you want that. Let this morph overwrite the Pretty Faces human head morph it conflicts with

     

    Dracomies Tranquil Brand (part of the Mages of Ferelden, under optional I think) - adds the DA2 tranquil brand texture to DAO and the files to replace the NPCs who use them

     

    Dragon Age Redesigned - includes your joinable companions, Awakenings, and Leliana's Song - use the Lore version. I think you do need to download one or two additional assets to make this work, see the description of the mod.

     

    Qunari Update + Sten of the Beresaad

     

    HighRez Shale Retexture (Lightweight) + Resized Shale

    Shale is an FPS killer, so it might be worth your time to investigate ways to optimize her, like removing her VFX using Lemming's Refined Restriction and VFX removal. But if you don't want to get rid of ALL VFX in the game, you have to tweak that mod to only use files with the name "shale" in them.

     

    Mabari Madness - rolls almost all of the Mabari graphical updates into one convenient place. You have to choose what you want to use though.

     

    There's a ton of other individual character head morphs that are all a matter of personal taste, so I would encourage you to search by character name on the Nexus if you don't like the prepackaged defaults in DAR. I highly recommend Justice for Justice as it makes a significant lore-friendly change to that character and doesn't require any additional asset hunting, Healthier Loghain as it doesn't change his appearance, just removes his purple eye bags, and Cullen by Xonan as it's the only mod I know of that comes close to making Cullen look like he does in DA:I without giving you a headache to install.

     

    ARMOR

    Pants - Light Armor Retex - gives the men (and women if you use a unisex mod) in leather armor pants - actually this one's a bit harder to find as I remember it was only available on a Russian site. It's a nice mod though. :sad:

     

    More Covered Female Chasind Robes + Chasind Robes Retexture (chest covered) - makes female and male versions of the Chasind Robe cover more (and arguably look better too). You can take one or both versions as you like.

     

    Dall's Chainmail - a chainmail retex that comes in several varieties

     

    There's quite a few mage robe retextures that are also pretty good; I don't use most of them, but I remember there's one called "no boob patch mage robes" or something similar, as well as Tommy I.'s "Mages of Ferelden" which just gives them ranks by color or something - they stay true to the vanilla DAO mage robe style.

     

    WEAPONS

    Bow Replacer - makes the bow meshes slimmer, which automatically makes all bows look better

     

    Slim Dalish Daggers - part of the Phoenix Armoury suite, it can stand alone and makes Dalish dagger meshes look better

     

    Shield Scale Mod - changes the default size of shields

     

    There's also a weapon resizing mod on the Bioware Social Network by tmp7704 but I don't use it because I think it causes clipping issues

     

    "BAD" GUYS

    Blighted Darkspawn - warning, changes Ogres to a sickly green, so you may want to add

    Ogre HD Retexture - put these files in a folder called "toolsetexport" and then stick them into the Blighted Darkspawn to fix the green ogres, I think. Will be testing this shortly in my own game.

     

    Lady of the Forest HD Retexture - there are a couple of these, the only two I've found still on the Nexus are one that makes her more nude, and one that make her more "woodsy" (not covered, just more branches / leaves etc) though.

     

    Hi-Rez Demon Textures - you may want to also overwrite the files in here with

    Pride Demon Retexture - which makes Pride Demons look like they do in DA:I

     

    OTHER

    Female Proportions fixes - especially the dwarf one. Also fixes the armours if you take the optional downloads.

     

    Improved Underwear - works with the Female Proportion Fixes, if you're not using a total body replacer

    There's also an Underwear - pants mod for men, if you're not using a total body replacer

     

    Select Portraits Improved - improves the default portrait icons / adds colored backgrounds to joinable NPCs like Jowan

     

    The Icon Project - improves weapon/armor icons in your inventory

     

    DA Gore Adjustment - changes the gore to not cover the face and teeth; comes in a few different how bloody do you like it varieites. There's also one on the Nexus to make default gore MORE gory than ever before, if you like that instead.

     

    Combat Animations - not a texture improvement per se, but still a graphic one

     

    WTF Lyrium Dust - changes lyrium dust icons from red to blue. Not on the Nexus.

     

    hope that helps!

    What happened to all the bugfixes?

    in Discussion

    Posted

     

    Kinlochhold AKA theskymoves here... Ordinarily I wouldn't say anything here, but since you've denigrated my effort as it compares to another mod, I feel compelled to speak up.

     

    Can I just engage in a bit of fangirl squeeing here? I'm going to do that. You may want an umbrella, I am sure my spittle is going to fly.

     

    OMG OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH YOU'RE LIKE THE ONLY PERSON WHO HAS EVER BOTHERED TO RECORD AN ALMOST STEP BY STEP WELL INFORMED GUIDE ON THE STICKY MORASS THAT IS THE DRAGON AGE MODDING EXPERIENCE IN ANY YEAR BEFORE 2011 FOR THAT ALONE YOU SHOULD RECEIVE SOME KIND OF SAINTHOOD BUT FORGET THAT YOU'RE LIKE THE ONLY OTHER PERSON WHO CARES THAT THE LYRIUM IS RED. THE LYRIUM IS RED, MAN. NO WONDER WE'RE ALL SEEING CONNER WITH ELF EARS IN THE EPILOGUE AND THAT GENITIVI AND OSWYN'S FACES ARE ALL MESSED UP BECAUSE WE'VE ALL BEEN TAKING THE FERELDEN EQUIVALENT OF CRYSTAL METH FOR THE ENTIRE FREAKIN' GAME AND NOBODY CARES EXCEPT YOU SO THANK YOU FOR PICKING THE NITS BECAUSE DAAAAAAMN. WHO CARES ABOUT THE POWER OF BLOOD FIXES WHEN YOUR PARTY IS INGESTING RED LYRIUM I MEAN COME ON BIOWARE YOU'RE BEING ALMOST AS BAD AS EA CUSTOMER SUPPORT HERE

     

    All right, *coughs* now that I've arguably recovered my dignity,

     

     

    I don't believe the adult human Boss Shade (ntb330cr_shade.utc) altered by the Ghost Elves mod was intended to be interpreted as the boy's mother. (Likewise, I quibble with the information on the DA Wiki conflating that particular NPC with the boy's mother.)

     

    IMO, the boy's mother is clearly intended to be the Ghostly Elf (ntb330cr_ghostly_elf.utc) encountered in closer proximity to the Ghostly Elf Boy; that female NPC is an elf - with vallaslin and character notes similar to those for the boy

     

    You're probably right about that; the only reason I'm looking at bug fixes this intensely is because I'm doing my first re-installation of DAO since 2011 on a "new" computer (and that concurrently to at least 3 other games, two of which are from Bethesda, which should tell you something about the amount of mods I'm juggling in my brain right now). I really don't remember what exactly happens in the game too well and will happily take your word for it and edit my post to reflect that. Strangely enough, I *do* remember that the boy had human ears in the vanilla game, so obviously it was a visual bug big enough to warrant my attention even after six years.

     

    I will add the caveat - Ferelden Elves 2.1 (the expansion of tmp7704's elf update) and ... something else, I can't remember what, also seem to restore the ghost elf boy's ears too. I have no idea if they do anything different from one another, although I would assume sight-unseen that the Ferelden Elves one uses tmp7704's elf head morphs to get the job done, in the case that they made those compatible for children as well. I'm not sure if yours does that or not, and in any regard, that's a matter of personal aesthetic taste on the part of the users I guess, not a bug-fix.

     

    And, I also wanted to emphasize again, I highly recommend almost all of the other visual graphic tweaks and fixes on theskymoves' site to anyone else looking to mod their game. I know they seem really miniscule, but when you add them all together - and there's quite a lot of them - they make quite a visual impact on your game. And while most bugfixes work behind the scenes, the graphic ones are the ones that you notice the most, because they're the ones you see.

     

    cheers! let me go wipe my mouth of the drool now

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