Dragon Age Origins First Playthrough - Essential Mods?

Mayh3M · 18 May 2015 at 18:20

DA Inquisition was the first DA game I played and I really enjoyed it.

Hearing DA Origins is also great, perhaps even better in many ways, I just bought the Ultimate version on Steam.

I wanted to know which mods are essential for a first playthrough? I'm looking for graphical enhancements and ENBs etc. rather than changes to game play or lore, although if there's any obvious improvements to game play then I'l go with them.

Muzza1875 · 18 May 2015 at 18:46

Something like I'm interested in getting involved in.
Dao is my favourite game so would love to try out some mods.

Was playing inquisition other day...Can't get into it

Pighardia · 18 May 2015 at 19:29

First off, DAOmodmanager is excellent, so it would be best to familiarize yourself with it. And alternative is DAmodder.

Then there aren't really many mods I would consider essential, just these-

Extra dog slot - Allows you to use your pet as an additional party member instead of taking up a spot.
Dragon Age Redesigned - READ THE INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS! Improves the look of characters.
Morrigan Restoration patch - restores some cut dialogue from Morrigan
Improved atmosphere - improves NPCs
JB3 textures - really good texture pack

Don't use an ENB, use a sweetfx profile instead

Other than those, there are mods that add armours and such, but you are best off searching nexus yourself for those. There are also lots of mods that do things like changing armour so that it is the same as found in DA2 or Inquisition which are quite good: again, this is all personal preference though. Go to Dragon Age nexus and go through the top armour/weapon mods etc.

Enjoy the game. It is a different league to Inquisition!

Jonny2284 · 18 May 2015 at 19:35

Pighardia pretty much hit my list. There's another one I'd add on but I can't in good conscience recommend it for a first run through, you need to play it, realise how bad the offending section is and then install said mod if you ever play again.

JulioH · 18 May 2015 at 19:40

I only really used FtG UI Mod, because with my poor eyesight the small text was hard to read at times especially the codex, books, journal etc.

Pighardia · 18 May 2015 at 19:41

Jonny2284 said:
There's another one I'd add on but I can't in good conscience recommend it for a first run through,

Indeed...I've used it on every playthrough since my first!

Matmulder · 18 May 2015 at 20:25

As well as the "unmentioned" the only other mod I used was the one to re-roll Morrigan as a different class - her shapeshifter abilities are useless, and she's otherwise a very interesting character to have.

Mayh3M · 18 May 2015 at 21:18

Pighardia said:
First off, DAOmodmanager is excellent, so it would be best to familiarize yourself with it. And alternative is DAmodder.

Then there aren't really many mods I would consider essential, just these-

Extra dog slot - Allows you to use your pet as an additional party member instead of taking up a spot.
Dragon Age Redesigned - READ THE INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS! Improves the look of characters.
Morrigan Restoration patch - restores some cut dialogue from Morrigan
Improved atmosphere - improves NPCs
JB3 textures - really good texture pack

Don't use an ENB, use a sweetfx profile instead

Other than those, there are mods that add armours and such, but you are best off searching nexus yourself for those. There are also lots of mods that do things like changing armour so that it is the same as found in DA2 or Inquisition which are quite good: again, this is all personal preference though. Go to Dragon Age nexus and go through the top armour/weapon mods etc.

Enjoy the game. It is a different league to Inquisition!

Thank you very much. I'm curious what this other mod is that you guys seem to be unable to play without?

Also can you recommend me a specific SweetFX preset/profile? Looking for something natural not crazy.

Edit: Found Dragon Age - Lighting Enhanced which includes a neutral preset with SweetFX only.

tbh · 18 May 2015 at 21:44

Pighardia said:
Extra dog slot - Allows you to use your pet as an additional party member instead of taking up a spot.

I love this mod!

Dog is fun to have in the party, but it's difficult to justify keeping him once there are "better" options; this mod really gives you the best of both worlds, although you might want to play on a higher difficulty level to compensate for your extra damage potential.

Jonny2284 said:
There's another one I'd add on but I can't in good conscience recommend it for a first run through, you need to play it, realise how bad the offending section is and then install said mod if you ever play again.

Does it rhyme with "flip the spade", perchance?