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

[Enkida]

redacted

Edited May 23, 2017 by Enkida

[Enkida]

redacted

Edited May 23, 2017 by Enkida

[Enkida]

redacted

Edited May 23, 2017 by Enkida

[Enkida]

redacted

Edited May 23, 2017 by Enkida

[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.

Edited May 23, 2017 by Enkida

[Enkida]

redacted

Edited May 23, 2017 by Enkida

[Enkida]

and that's it. I have to go back in and edit these posts as I discover stuff / remember important tweaks to certain mods, but... in theory these all will work together with a few tweaks. I had another section for standalone modules planned, but I ran out of steam, LOL. Hope this gives some of you some ideas for your own modding experience. :)

[Enkida]

Made some minor updates to section XII after playing through a bit more. The big, complicated quest mods don't play nicely with an install this finicky, so I removed most of them. I kept in one because of the Isabella headmorph, but it may also go if I keep on getting area ID popups in my game, as they really break immersion for me.

[Enkida]

Added in mod links through section VI - Combat. By the way, for anyone browsing this list, I am open to suggestions if you know of obscure, lore-friendly, doesn't break your game by being overpowered mods.

 

By the way, I know about Alistair's / Warden Funeral, as an aside, but chose not to install them because I used to work at Blockbuster Video while the movie Titanic was A Thing. Sorry, Titanic theme song. Once you've lived through your teenage years having to listen to that song on loop for the entire workday, those mods just can't happen anymore. XD

 

Update: found a bug with Armor of the Sten not showing properly. Probably a conflicting item ID issue. I don't know how to resolve those however, hrm. It may be cut, especially if the Kossith Add-On works without problems.

 

Actually, of relevance: how to fix item ID conflicts

Edited May 10, 2017 by Enkida

[Enkida]

just a few more notes and weedings out as I bugfix and test this build. DracoAngel's Mages of Ferelden has to be the "alternate" version, or there'll be some kind of outfit conflict that renders Irvine's body invisible. Also took out Chantry of Ferelden because of the jarring skin tone mismatch on the hands, and added in a DA:I Chantry Robes retexture instead. Plus small compatibility notes here and there.

Â

Update: haven't had a lot of time to work on this. currently this setup has 1 small bug (zathrien is missing his hair) and 1 game breaking one (main party camp won't load). After sorting my mods I think the problem is in the bugfix section, not the romances section. The bughunt continues....

Edited May 16, 2017 by Enkida