Dragon Age – Mods

Posted by Fricka on March 16, 2010

*Edit – I imagine if you stumbled here looking for information on Dragon Age: Origins you are probably disappointed that there’s really not a lot of information to be found here. My apologies! Since this page gets a ridiculous amount of hits because it mentions Dragon Age, I thought I’d let you know that if you are interested in hearing me ramble about Dragon Age, visit my Tumblr page: fricka.tumblr.com Also, I’ve since figured out how to make mods/overrides and hopefully I’ll start releasing a few of them soon*

I thought I’d list the mods I’ve used that I found quite nice. As always, make sure to backup your game before installing or using any of these.. just to be on the safe side. Some of them add content to the game and some of them are fairly simple overrides. Hopefully you’ll enjoy them as I did. I know some people bemoan the use of addons and mods, but meh, it’s a single player game, do what you will and make of your game time what you’d like. :D Another quick note, back up your game before installing any of these!

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Edit: I’ve tested importing my mage into Awakenings, who had been modded with all of these save the Leliana set, and I’ve only had some slight weirdness with items modded with Winter Forge. I didn’t bring in any created items, but the existing gear I changed with Winter Forge appears to have forgotten what material it’s supposed to made of. It wasn’t a huge issue for me, but there you have it. Your mileage, as always, may vary however.

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More Hairstyles – This mod adds several new hairstyles to choose from to the game

Pineappletree’s Vibrant Colors – This mod gives you tons more hair and eye color options to choose from

Wings of Velvet – This addon gives you access to a custom set of mage armor including robes/boots/gloves/helm, weapons and accessories. I didn’t care about the stats all that much, but the robe was stunning, so I had to have it

Leliana Item Set – This addon adds a set of armor and weaponry to Bodhan’s camp store. It’s restricted to Human Females so keep that in mind before you download it. I used this particular set on Leliana and my own Human Rogue. Again, it was more a vanity thing for me as I found the armor quite appealing in it’s look.

Character Respecialization – This mod allows you to respec your character as well as those in your party in Origins. Totally worth it if you may have regretted some spell or specialization choices you made early on.

Winterforge – This addon is very complex and really should only be used if you want the ability to micomanage the look and stats of your gear and weapons. This mod gives you ability to refashion and modify exisiting armor & weaponry as well as create new items from scratch. It’s quite an amazing mod. The creator added a whole new crafting skill to the game as well a quest to go along with it. You can choose to use it or override that to get immediate full access to the abilities it has. I used it almost entirely to refashion gear. For example, Wynne was wearing Tevinter Robes which, well, didn’t suit her in my opinion. I really wanted her in traditional mage robes, so using Winter Forge I was able to transfer the stats of the Tevinter Robes into a dark colored robe for her. I even took her Libertarian’s Cowl and changed it’s model as well as the color of the fabric to match her robe. Another thing I did was to take Alistair’s boring templar looking Bergen’s Honor helm and threw those stats into a Juggernaut looking helm which matched his armor. I also changed the color of his shield so he would match also. Overall, amazing mod for those who really want a way to get your gear looking exactly as you want it to.

So there you have it, below are some screenshots where you can see all of the mods in action. :D

Dragon Age – Epilogue

Posted by Fricka on March 13, 2010

I finally finished Dragon Age: Origins today and wow, what a rush. I may be terribly easy to entertain but that game hooked me from moment one and never let me go. I’m almost a little embarrassed to admit, but I really found myself emotionally involved in the game, I cared about my companions and worried over choices I had made… that’s quite remarkable for a video game I’d say. I found it immensely satisfying. I ended up shelving my Human Noble Rogue in favor of my Human Mage because I’m just a Mage at heart I think. I’ve always been drawn to casters and I couldn’t resist the allure of playing one all the way through. Though I absolutely will finish the game out on my Rogue as well as she will likely make vastly different choices than my Mage did and I will be very interested to see the results of her actions. At any rate, I managed to get a relatively happy ending… sort of. If you’ve played, I’m sure you know what I mean. Having played a female character, I found the choices that I had to make were much more difficult than the choices my husband made on his male character. I have to maintain DA doesn’t exactly cater to gamers of the female persuasion, but still, I highly recommend giving it a try, it’s just that amazing. I’m already planning to buy the expansion pack as soon as it comes out on Tuesday!

Here’s some parting screenshots I took today!

Dragon Age continued…

Posted by Fricka on February 10, 2010

So I’ve still been playing Dragon Age… I honestly don’t feel like doing anything else but that when I get a chance. I’ve grown increasingly bored and burnt out on my other pursuits, namely SL and WoW so I’ve really enjoyed escaping into Dragon Age. I’m an admitted alt-a-holic so I still haven’t even come close to finishing the game because I keep rolling new toons to play through different class/specialization/spec combos to find one I’ll be happy to take to end game. I ended up rerolling my rogue completely. I grew increasingly annoyed at her hairdo (it was stiff and odd during cutscenes and battle) and the terrible patchwork spec I’d chosen that I thought it would be less painful to just remake her from scratch. I’m much happier this time around. I was able to correct a few other little mistakes I’d been unhappy with as well, I made sure not to sell the Chasind Robes this time and to kill the Desire Demon in the Circle Tower for the Templar Armor. So now my rogue and Alistair can look ever so stylish while battling Darkspawn. I love taking screenshots during battle even though it has more than once led to my team’s demise lol. But dang it, it was worth it. Click through to see them larger.

12/365 (or I just started playing Dragon Age)

Posted by Fricka on January 28, 2010

So I finally am getting to play Dragon Age! My husband bought it for me for Christmas but unfortunately we didn’t really look at the specs and found it wouldn’t run at all on my old machine. So it sat. So lonely and abandoned. It was sad to see that pretty case sitting on my desk.. just begging to be played. Luckily, it didn’t sit for long, it plays great on my new computer and I’m so glad because it’s such a fun game. It’s been a while since I played a single player RPG type game and it’s kinda nice to not have to mess with other people for a change lol. I love the game so far, it really immerses you into the story and the voice acting is great. If I could complain about one thing it’s that I didn’t feel there were *enough* options in the character creation screen so I ended up with a rather boring looking character. I had hoped for some more options like piercings or more hair colors. But I’m a total girl when it comes to such things and I miss them when they aren’t there. Also, the helms in this game are ugly. I’d love to see a hide helm option so I didn’t have to keep taking them off between fights because I really, really can’t stand to see it on me. I went with rogue mostly because I wanted to play through the Human Noble start quests after seeing them briefly at my sister’s house. I would have preferred mage but you can’t be a noble if you choose mage. Maybe next time I play through I’ll choose an elven mage to change it up. Though really it doesn’t matter as you get to control a full party of different classes so I can play several different class types. If I can figure out why I only get maybe 1 out of every 10 screenshots I take I’ll post more as I progress!

My Human Rogue