Often considered the black sheep of theDragon Agefranchise,Dragon Age 2is still an excellent RPG with many interesting ideas. BioWare’s most unique RPG places players in the shoes of Hawke, a refugee who arrives in the city of Kirkwall and, over the course of a decade, becomes the city’s Champion.Dragon Age 2is also very mod-friendly, with a diverse range of mods available to install.
UnlikemoddingDragon Age: Origins, where mods are essential for the best possible experience, mods are slightly less important forDragon Age 2. The game has aged far better than its predecessor and its graphics and combat still hold up well enough compared to modern standards. However, there are still many great mods, and the best and most essential mods forDragon Age 2are highly recommended.
7 Must-Have Mods For Dragon Age: Inquisition (& How To Install Them)
While less mod-friendly than other games, Dragon Age Inquisition still has excellent mods, from quality-of-life tweaks to immersion-boosting addons.
Create And Import A Custom Dragon Age: Origins Save File
NexusMods Link
NexusMods - A Gibbed Dragon Age Save Generator For Dragon Age 2
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How To Install
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Unlike BioWare’sMass Effectseries, where players can import saves between games to play as the same character, theDragon Agegames all feature different playable protagonists.
However, anyoneplaying theDragon Agegames in orderwill find that saves can still be imported betweenDragon Age: Origins,Dragon Age 2,andDragon Age: Inquisition. Specifically, players can import their saves forDragon Age: OriginsintoDragon Age 2,so familiar faces and new encounters referencing the first game will appear.
Dragon Age: Inquisitiondoesn’t feature direct save imports. Instead, players can use the Dragon Age Keep website, which allows them to see their customDragon Age: OriginsandDragon Age 2heroes and set major and minor plot decisions to create a custom world state. Importing a custom world state is one of thebest things beginners can do inDragon Age: Inquisition.
However, time appears to be short before the release ofDragon Age: The Veilguard,and some players may not have the time to play through the entire series.TheGibbed Dragon Age Save Generator For Dragon Age 2allows players to create a custom save for the first game from scratch, with options to set major and minor plot decisions for the base game, theAwakeningexpansion, and other DLC packs.
This is essentially a valuable time-saving tool.Dragon Age 2does allow players to choose from a limited number of premade default world histories. However, using these loses a valuable sense of continuity from the first game, and importing a save is far better for immersion overall.
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Drag and drop mod files into the override folder
While exploring Kirkwall, Hawke starts picking up junk items that serve no real purpose. These items can be sold to Kirkwall’s merchants, but usually only for a handful of coppers.
Unfortunately, junk items are incredibly common and can quickly take up valuable space in Hawke’s inventory. Hawke’s inventory can be filled quickly with all the weapons and gear players can obtain from DLC item packs.
This basic mod drastically increases the value of junk items. This makes selling them much more worthwhile andallows Hawke to earn significant amounts of gold, silver, and coppersto spend on valuable items from merchants. Junk items are still junk in the sense that they don’t do anything, but players now earn significantly more from selling them.
As a bonus, there are different versions of the mod, ranging from a simple 10x value multiplier option to a 100x value option, which will have Hawke making a ridiculous amount of money. One of theharsh realities of replayingDragon Ageis having to endure some ofDragon Age 2’sworst aspects, but this mod makes the concept of junk items more bearable.
Users on the NexusMods forums appear to recommend the 50x value multiplier option for the best balance.
Unfortunately, inventory space limitations can be infuriating in many games, andDragon Age 2is no exception. Over the course of the game, Hawke canincrease their inventory space from 50 slots to 100 by purchasing backpacksfrom merchants. However, as mentioned above, the inventory can fill up fast thanks to junk and DLC items, and players may end up spending most of the game suffering from a consistent lack of inventory space.
Given that inventory management is not a core aspect of theDragon Age 2experience, the best approach is to increase Hawke’s inventory to a more reasonable size.Backpack Mod - Inventory Increaseaddresses this by making two additional backpacks available, increasing the maximum inventory size to 120 slots - the maximum allowed by the game.
There are two different versions of this mod to make things better for players.The first makes the extra backpacks available for purchase in Act 2 and Act 3 for a more balanced option. The second places all seven extra backpacks on the body of a refugee in the prologue, where they can be claimed for free immediately. This allows players to start the game with a fully upgraded inventory for convenience.
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Installing runes is one of the best ways to improve weapons and gear inDragon Age 2. By visiting Sandal in Hightown,players can enchant their weapons and armor with runes to give them unique bonus effects. Unfortunately, most runes are fairly basic and usually add extra elemental damage or damage resistances. These are still useful to have, but not particularly exciting.
TheRune Expansion Packmod adds 24 new runes to the gameand fully integrates them, so they can be bought from merchants, earned by completing quests, and even looted from major enemies. In contrast to the runes available in the base game, the new runes have a wide variety of interesting effects, including the ability to reflect melee damage, improvements to blood magic, bonus damage to certain enemy types, and even a chance to stun.
Players can also enchant armor and weapons given toDragon Age 2’sdifferent companions. This can add tactical depth to combat, as some runes added by this mod increase and decrease threat draw, allowing players to draw enemies toward tougher tank companions and away from weaker spellcasters and damage dealers.
This mod makes enchantment much more valuable and shores up an otherwise bare-bones gameplay mechanic.
Mage is thebest class to play inDragon Age 2as a Mage Hawke is more closely connected with characters and events that unfold, enhancingDragon Age 2’sstorytelling ability. Compared toDragon Age: Origins, Mage combat is also faster and more fluid, with the second game tradingOrigins’massive book of spells with a smaller number of compact ability trees.
However, certain elements of Mage gameplay are slightly lacking: Mages fold much quicker when attacked, and their single-target damage is fairly low compared to other classes.
TheBetter Mages - Better Spellsmod addresses these issues by making several tweaks to spellcasting.Several presets are available for players to choose from.Most presets offer reduced mana costs for casting and cooldowns, and some increase overall spell damage significantly. All of the presets also tweak the skill trees and spell upgrades, so spell lines have more synergy, and players get more freedom when it comes to unlocking new abilities.
The mod author notes that Better Mages—Better Spells works best on Hard and Nightmare difficulties;it can still be used on lower difficulties, but players may find that their Hawke can easily clear most fights.
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Chargen RevampreworksDragon Age 2’scharacter creator, adding extra face presets, hairstyles, and other options for customization. While the unmodded character creator is perfectly serviceable, it lacks the extra features that character creators tend to feature in more modern RPGs. As such, this mod provides some extra customization to help improve the character creation process.
Apart from additional customization options,Chargen Revampalso features some interesting features.This includes the ability to modify Hawke’s default appearance, which the original character creator notably didn’t include.Opinions vary on how good custom Hawke appearances can be, so players now have the option to tweak Hawke’s default look.
Using this mod will reset Hawke’s family’s appearance to its default state. In unmodded playthroughs, Hawke’s siblings and mother’s appearance would change to match a custom Hawke’s skin tone and facial structure.
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Dragon Age 2already features an optional high-resolution texture pack that can be downloaded with the game. However, most modern PCs are more than capable of usingDragon Age 2 Ultimate HD. This ambitious modaims to swap every texture in the game with even more high-resolution replacements. This offers an immediate and noticeable upgrade to game graphics, with more sharply defined materials on interiors and exteriors and altered colors.
Like many other mods on this list,Dragon Age 2 Ultimate HDhas different versions players can choose from:
The ultra version requires a Large Address Aware patch, so theDragon Age 2application can use up to 4GB of RAM at once.
These are just some of the best mods available forDragon Age 2.However, many other excellent choices include mods that add new items or skin tones, eye colors, and tattoos. Players are encouraged to explore NexusMods to see if any other mods fit their tastes.
Source:A Gibbed Dragon Age Save Generator For Dragon Age 2,Backpack Mod - Inventory Increase,Better Mages - Better Spells,Chargen Revamp,Dragon Age 2 Ultimate HD,Rune Expansion Pack,Valuable Junk
