Dragon Age: Origins #0 - Too Many Mods
Nov. 2nd, 2018 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrasteSo. To the probable surprise of everyone who knows me, it has been eighteen months since I opened a Dragon Age game of any kind. (Well, seventeen months and nineteen days. Not that anyone has been counting or anything.) This is easily the longest I have gone without visiting Thedas since Origins was first released in 2009.
I was planning to save my next whole trilogy run for next year, but for various reasons I don't want to play the two RPGs I was going to use to keep myself occupied right now. (I want to wait for the rest of the Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire DLC and patching to be done before I go back to it, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker is just too buggy to play right now and looks like it's going to take weeks or months to fix.) So with sixty days left in the year, I decided to start a bit early. I was thinking about doing a recoding of this run, but thinking it over, I'd rather save it for a different world state I plan to make some time in the future and document this one via text.
Of course, before I did that I had to download and reinstall everything - fortunately Origin remembers that I own all the DLC and Awakening, although it took a bit of poking to recall that I have all the achievements. (Those were some nasty moments. I am not doing all of those again, but I love having all my little badges unlocked.) And then I had to install a bunch of mods.
I'm not that interested in the many cosmetic improvements for this run - I didn't envision my Warden needing extra eyebrows or hair colours and I mostly want to enjoy the game the way it was in 2009 even if lots of the NPCs look vaguely like potatoes. And I've never been enamoured of all the overpowered/skimpy/overpowered AND skimpy armour the mod community has created over the years, not that there's anything wrong with that sort of thing if you like it. But there are definitely improvements to be made ...
1. DAO Mod Manager: A tool that makes everything below waaaaay easier to install and manage.
2. Advanced Party: Lets you choosing starting abilities, talents and skills for everyone instead of having them assigned by the AI.
3. Advanced Tactics: Makes the already good Tactics system even better by adding more options. I could play with this all day long.
4. Crossbow Tweak: Makes crossbows slower and more difficult to equip but also more powerful and therefore actually useable as a main weapon throughout the game. An absolute must for this run since I'm playing a dwarven archer and everyone knows dwarven archers use crossbows.
5. DA2 Isabela and Flemeth to DOA: What it says on the tin. (I don't mind so much about Flemeth what with the shapeshifting, but Isabela is completely wrong in DAO.)
6. Dialogue Tweaks: Fixes various dialogue bugs and restores some options.
7. Extra Dog Slot: as far as I'm concerned this is the greatest Dragon Age: Origins mod ever made. Lets you take your Mabari everywhere instead of giving up a humanoid companion. (This can unbalance the game, but since I always play on Nightmare these days it never feels too easy to me.)
8. Grey Wardens of Ferelden: Gives all the Origins Wardens (including the PC once they join) proper Warden armour like they wear in the rest of the series.
9. Morrigan Restoration Patch: Fixes various Morrigan dialogue bugs and restores some cut content.
10. Natural Bodies: Origins is the only game I have ever installed a nude mod for and probably the only game where I ever will. I just can't take the sex scenes with underwear. (An important note: the mod applies to ALL people in underwear in the entire game. Make sure the penis toggle is in an appropriate position at all times unless you want the prisoner at Ostagar to be really happy to see you.)
11. Plus Healing Received Fix: Fixes a bug where items that add healing don't do anything.
12. Unobtainable Item Fix: There are a bunch of items in the game code that aren't available anywhere in the game - unless you install this great mod.
... and that's not even including the bug fixes I will have to add when I get to Awakening.
Next time: character creation! Actual gameplay! So many dwarves!
I was planning to save my next whole trilogy run for next year, but for various reasons I don't want to play the two RPGs I was going to use to keep myself occupied right now. (I want to wait for the rest of the Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire DLC and patching to be done before I go back to it, and Pathfinder: Kingmaker is just too buggy to play right now and looks like it's going to take weeks or months to fix.) So with sixty days left in the year, I decided to start a bit early. I was thinking about doing a recoding of this run, but thinking it over, I'd rather save it for a different world state I plan to make some time in the future and document this one via text.
Of course, before I did that I had to download and reinstall everything - fortunately Origin remembers that I own all the DLC and Awakening, although it took a bit of poking to recall that I have all the achievements. (Those were some nasty moments. I am not doing all of those again, but I love having all my little badges unlocked.) And then I had to install a bunch of mods.
I'm not that interested in the many cosmetic improvements for this run - I didn't envision my Warden needing extra eyebrows or hair colours and I mostly want to enjoy the game the way it was in 2009 even if lots of the NPCs look vaguely like potatoes. And I've never been enamoured of all the overpowered/skimpy/overpowered AND skimpy armour the mod community has created over the years, not that there's anything wrong with that sort of thing if you like it. But there are definitely improvements to be made ...
1. DAO Mod Manager: A tool that makes everything below waaaaay easier to install and manage.
2. Advanced Party: Lets you choosing starting abilities, talents and skills for everyone instead of having them assigned by the AI.
3. Advanced Tactics: Makes the already good Tactics system even better by adding more options. I could play with this all day long.
4. Crossbow Tweak: Makes crossbows slower and more difficult to equip but also more powerful and therefore actually useable as a main weapon throughout the game. An absolute must for this run since I'm playing a dwarven archer and everyone knows dwarven archers use crossbows.
5. DA2 Isabela and Flemeth to DOA: What it says on the tin. (I don't mind so much about Flemeth what with the shapeshifting, but Isabela is completely wrong in DAO.)
6. Dialogue Tweaks: Fixes various dialogue bugs and restores some options.
7. Extra Dog Slot: as far as I'm concerned this is the greatest Dragon Age: Origins mod ever made. Lets you take your Mabari everywhere instead of giving up a humanoid companion. (This can unbalance the game, but since I always play on Nightmare these days it never feels too easy to me.)
8. Grey Wardens of Ferelden: Gives all the Origins Wardens (including the PC once they join) proper Warden armour like they wear in the rest of the series.
9. Morrigan Restoration Patch: Fixes various Morrigan dialogue bugs and restores some cut content.
10. Natural Bodies: Origins is the only game I have ever installed a nude mod for and probably the only game where I ever will. I just can't take the sex scenes with underwear. (An important note: the mod applies to ALL people in underwear in the entire game. Make sure the penis toggle is in an appropriate position at all times unless you want the prisoner at Ostagar to be really happy to see you.)
11. Plus Healing Received Fix: Fixes a bug where items that add healing don't do anything.
12. Unobtainable Item Fix: There are a bunch of items in the game code that aren't available anywhere in the game - unless you install this great mod.
... and that's not even including the bug fixes I will have to add when I get to Awakening.
Next time: character creation! Actual gameplay! So many dwarves!