Best Mods?
 

So whats the best mods for DAO? It will propably take me many hours to find the good stuff so all suggestions are welcome.

http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/top/

Quote from there :

The question is, as well, who is "endorsing" these mods - what kind of playing styles and tastes do these players have ?

And … do they fit with others' playing styles and tastes ?

This is a thing I can't see there.

I'd wish there'd be categories for Mods …

There ARE categories.

Personally I used only a few small one. Throwing bombs farer, fast pickpocket cooldown time, etc.
There are a few extra quests and even a small adventure game. Haven't been there a while, but defenetly worth to look around.

I've found them, finally … Didn't see them through the above link, though …

http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/categories.php

I haven't seen any mod worthy to be honest. Most of them are "body enchancement" mods, if you catch my drift…

Only one I really liked was remade version of BG2 using DA mod tool :p

When I played the game first time there were mods like high resolution textures (enviroment) and gamefixes.

I believe Purpleblob is correct. I haven't seen very much beyond…uh…"cosmetic" mods.

As far as "must-haves" go, I would recommend Skip the Fade, Improved Atmosphere, Personal Annoyance Remover (removes slightly annoying, super-bright visual effects from status buffs and weapon enchantments), Circles Be Gone, 25 Tactics Slots (unless you consider that cheating - I personally don't, as it effects absolutely nothing balance wise), and Arcane Warrior Fix (prevents Arcane Warriors from foolishly sheathing their weapons when they cast a spell).

I recommend Dragon Age revised it alters the look of every character in the game even the expansion. There is also a weapon and armor retexture mod for the game.
Sadly there is not to many new adventure mods like neverwinter.

I don't play DA with mods at all. It's simply not a game that requires mods, thanks to half a decade of development time. The few technical issues I've encountered usually aren't fixed with mods, but with workarounds (for example losing the gear of the main character in Awakening).

This mod does a lot of changes which go far beyond "improving atmosphere" though.
To install only the atmosphere part, I´d recommend using just 1.1, 2.1, 2.4 and 2.5 folders and I´d take the cam100ar_camp_plains.are file out of the 2.1 folder since it moves some companions in too dark areas of the camp.

Other mods worth looking into are Detailed Tooltips which makes talent/skill descriptions a lot less obfuscate (it doesn´t cover the expansion and I´m not sure if it reflects changes made in later patches) and people who find some fonts too small or play the game with subtitles may find useful the FtG UI Mod (makes fonts and some UI elements like journal or inventory bigger, allows for subtitles displayed in lower half of the screen and makes browsing the codex easier).

Besides these I used only the already mentioned Circles Be Gone since it gives combat a bit more cleaner look.
Annoyance Remover has issues and I´m pretty sure it´s incombatible with the latest patch.

Yeah, pretty much.

Thanks for mentioning what you said about Improved Atmosphere; I forgot to mention that myself. So yes, the "basic" install is all one would need - the folders that, for example, add animations to NPC's and makes the world feel a bit more alive.

What sort of problems exist for Annoyance Remover? I've used it myself, and I never ran into any issues.

I had to laugh when I read this. The mods released put Bioware to shame. Its the same with Bethesda when modders can make your game look better than the developers. The original armor and textures are bland.

chalk me in the category for all Dragon Age mods are a joke category. there are a few worthwhile ones that fix some issues with the DLC but other than that its not a MOD enhanced game which seems a shame considering you would think an editor would make for some cool questing mods…alas

Yes, it is a shame that the DA modding community does not match the level of passion, ambition, and maturity of other mod communities. With the editor in place, a small but dedicated mod team could make something truly special; it's happened for other games. Alas, the mod community is more concerned with making the perfect "Morrigan Nude Mod" instead.

Unfortunately the mod developers dont like the toolset. Its the same with NWN2.
There are some mods to play but not many.

That would probably mean something if I cared about looks. I only use mods when they fix/enhance gameplay or quest related things. In other words: They're useful in Oblivion, but not in Gothic, Dragon Age and so on.

I require a bare minimum in terms of appearance/interface (hotkeys etc). As long as a game is beyond that bare minimum, I honestly don't care. As of now, that minimum is Might and Magic 6 - I just can't play MM5, but 6 and beyond is great.

I have to agree with curious and Maylander here. I don't find any of those mods impressive, and DA:O doesn't really need any mods to begin with. Just my opinion.

The reason why the community isn't as good is because nearly all the serious modders realized how poor the DA modding tools were and went back to much more mod-friendly games, like Oblivion.

Have you tried to use the DA Toolset? It's ridiculously unintuitive and cumbersome. I believe even the BioWare dev's struggle with it but they've used it for so many years (since NWN1 basically) that they make it workable.

So I blame BioWare for the state of DA modding. For one thing, they didn't even release all the game assets for modders, even though they said they would. This makes many mods not work correctly for users of DLC and the expansion. I asked BioWare many times to fix this but they kept putting me off…jerks.

So if they don't care enough to take a few hours to release assets, then why should I waste my time on their annoying Toolset?

And moreover, BioWare doesn't need mods to extend the life of their games. Their goal is to push out games ASAP, so in a sense mods just get in the way of their latest and greatest.

Juxtapose this with Bethesda, who takes years between each Elder Scrolls. Beth really supports modding because they want the lives of the games extended so when a new Elder Scrolls comes out people will still be playing and loving the old in anticipation of the new.

Compare the time lines. Morrowind 2002, Oblivion 2006, Skyrim 2011. Dragon Age Nov 2009, Awakening March 2010, DA2 March 2011.

This is why Bethesda has tremendous respect from modders and why BioWare is daily becoming more and more a byword among those in the know. End rant. :)

PS: If a dev doesn't want to focus on modding, then so be it. That's their choice. But the problem is when a dev claims they'll support modding but actually doesn't. That's when people get really frustrated.

And this is exactly what BioWare did with DA1…empty statements, broken promises, and tons of time wasted creating a totally cumbersome "social network" website that nobody wanted since dragonagenexus.com is infinitely better. Instead of creating a broken site to host mods (to this day they incorrectly require .z7 archives instead of .7z archives to be uploaded, the idiots!), they should have fixed the major Toolset errors and released all the games' assets!

Double standards must be nice to have when it only works with oblivion. Of course:smug:

Could it be that the modding tools require a relatively high standard of modding capability ?

I think I remember a statement by Obsidian saying that they made the NWN2 modding tools relatively complex ? difficult ? … because they wanted to have a relatively high tandard in Mods. Or … "better" Mods, so to say ?

The more complex modding tools are, the less rather inexperienced modders can use them, I guess …

Double standards? In what way? Oblivion is in dire need of modding to fix things like the level scaling. I still don't use mods to spice up the looks of Oblivion, simply because that's not an aspect I care about. I don't even fix the interface.

The only mod I use for DA is the increased inventory size.

Maximum tactic slots - Start the game with 25 or 30 tactics slot. Seems silly to me to have to use stat points on that.

Storage chest in camp - For those who didn't buy Warden's keep

One mod removed that stupid NPC that advertises the Warden's keep quest from the game entirely (Scummy, Bio/EA. Scummy.)

And I might have to install the no helmets mod, seeing how stupid my helmet looks on my mage.

Pickpocket cooldown is a good one.

And there's also a mod which actually tells you what item you're given, instead of "Item Received"

It's unclear whether the OP is interested in "content mods" (i.e. not just graphical and UI fixes), but if so it might be worth mentioning the ECCP-related projects. I didn't know about them until recently (and consequently haven't had time to look into it much), but the so-called Extended Community Canon Project apparently attempts to flesh out the game world with additional (interconnected and compatible) story/quest content without straying too far from the source material. Examples of major mods include Dark Times, Alley of Murder, Bloodworks, Ser Gilmore Recruitable NPC, Alistair's Royal Wedding (yes, indeed…) and the upcoming Apostate Mage Origin story. Might be work checking out…

Basic wiki description of ECCP and associated mods:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Da…_Canon_project

ECCP Project Page:
http://social.bioware.com/group/2171/

Extensive ECCP-related mod discussion on the Dragon Age podcast (episode 27):
http://dragonagepodcast.com/podcast