Dragon Age Origins First Playthrough - Essential Mods?

[Mayh3M]

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.

 

[Mayh3M]

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.