The best Dragon Age: Origins mods

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(Image credit: EA)

Leliana from Dragon Age: Origins, her face covered in blood

Dragon Age at 15(Image credit: BioWare)All this week we’re looking back on the best of the Dragon Age series, to celebrate its 15th anniversary. We’ve got loads of greatDragon Age opinions and retrospectives, and we’ll be adding more to the list in the days to come.

Dragon Age at 15

(Image credit: BioWare)All this week we’re looking back on the best of the Dragon Age series, to celebrate its 15th anniversary. We’ve got loads of greatDragon Age opinions and retrospectives, and we’ll be adding more to the list in the days to come.

(Image credit: BioWare)

Morrigan, the Witch of the Wilds in the Dragon Age serries, shown wielding magic in front of a Darkspawn.

All this week we’re looking back on the best of the Dragon Age series, to celebrate its 15th anniversary. We’ve got loads of greatDragon Age opinions and retrospectives, and we’ll be adding more to the list in the days to come.

If you want to go back to the original Dragon Age today, you’ll need some help. Origins was made in the Eclipse engine, which had some long-standing bugs that never got patched and giventhere are “maybe 20 people left at BioWare” who understand how it works,aren’t likely to ever be officially fixed. Unofficially, they’ve already been solved and all it takes is a dive into the PC Gaming wiki and Nexus Mods to sort them out.

Next up is thePerformance and Memory Leak Fix. Take the d3d9.dll and dxvk.conf files out of the archive and put them in the “bin_ship” directory of your Dragon Age: Origins install. With that done, you’ll have the game in a much more playable state—one that won’t melt your laptop—and you’ll be ready to install some mods for fun instead of just to make the game run properly.

How to install Dragon Age: Origins mods

Almost every mod for Dragon Age: Origins comes in one of two formats. Some you can paste into the “BioWare\Dragon Age\packages\core\override” subdirectory of your documents folder, and will work automatically the next time you launch the game. Others will be dazip files, which take a bit more effort to get working.

To install dazip mods, find daupdater.exe in the “bin_ship” directory of your Dragon Age install. It’ll probably be in “Program Files\EA Games\Dragon Age”. When you run daupdater.exe it’ll open a window you can drag and drop your dazip mods into. Then highlight them and click on “Install selected”.

Next time you launch Dragon Age: Origins, go into the DLC section of the menu. Your dazip mods will appear here next to whatever official DLC you have. Make sure they’ve got a green tick in the box next to them, and they’ll be activated. With all that out of the way, here are the best Dragon Age: Origins mods.

Dain’s Fixes

(Image credit: EA)

Leliana, covered in blood and glowing

Does it bother you that ugly animations for buffs like the angry red tears flowing down threatening warriors or the glowing fire of burning weapons remain on even in cutscenes? Or that rogues drop out of stealth the moment they steal things? Or that you have to loot everyone manually after every fight? Or how slowly you have to jog around outside of combat?

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Qwinn’s Ultimate DAO Fixpack

FtG UI Mod—More Readable Fonts and UI

“Follow the Gourd” is a modder who has done the vital work of boosting the size of Origins' UI so you won’t be squinting at your screen to read the text on a modern-sized monitor. Subtitles, codex entries, tooltips, and the inventory can all be resized to your liking, and the subtitles moved to the bottom of the screen if that’s where you prefer them.

Extra Dog Slot

(Image credit: EA)

A mabari warhound

The mabari warhound is a Grey Warden’s best friend, with their snappy jaws, pointy ears, and muscled chest. They’re fantastic, happy partners, and essential tanks for mages and ranged fighters. Still, it’s easy to let your canine companion get left behind in favor of more useful companions who can carry inventory, equip items, and, you know, talk.

With the Extra Dog Slot mod, your dog joins you as a permanent fifth party member. Adding a bloodthirsty mabari warhound isn’t the most balance-friendly addition to the Dragon Age combat system, but have you seen those big, sad eyes? You can’t leave him behind. Who’s a good hound?

Character Respecialization

A dark raven appears on a fencepost. A sour elixir full of evil portent is strapped to its leg. Drink it, and… respec your skills and attribute points at any time! Well, that was unexpected.

As strategies shift in Dragon Age, it’s great to be able to rebuild a team to better support each other. The Character Respecialization mod pulls this off in a (mostly) lore-friendly way, and can be used at any time. After installation, find the dark-but-slightly-stupid-looking raven perched in most of Ferelden’s major cities.

Equal Love

(Image credit: EA)

Alistair

Equal Love erases gender restrictions on companion interactions, so you can flirt, kiss, and get freaky with any companion you’d like to, regardless of your player-character gender. Best of all, the new genderless rules carry over into the storyline’s conclusions, so now male player-characters can [spoiler] with [spoiler], provided he chooses the [spoiler] ending.

Madd Gift Guide

Interpersonal politics, as we all know, begin and end with the giving of gifts. In vanilla Dragon Age though, finding a special “gift” item only leads to a bunch of hassle as you try to figure out who is supposed to receive it. With the Madd Gift Guide, the item descriptions of gifts suggest which of your companions would enjoy them, saving a lot of trial and error. For anyone trying to win the Most Popular Grey Warden contest, this is a simple but essential mod.

You can get agift guide for the Awakening expansiontoo.

Forced Deathblows

(Image credit: EA)

Leliana cuts off a guard’s head

Every once in a while, a melee fighter will kill an opponent with a combo of brutal finishing moves straight out of Game of Thrones. These are supposed to be a rare treat, but if you’re the kind of person who rejects the idea cookies are a sometimes food, Forced Deathblows can dial up the carnage. A variable setting makes the special kill animations happen slightly more regularly, most of the time, or for every single melee kill. The highest setting is recommended for the folks who played Sniper Elite with the X-ray gore animations turned all the way up, as it leads to the same amount of repetitive, gratuitous spleen-smashing.

No Helmet Hack

(Image credit: EA)

Dragon Age: Origins characters wearing helmets

From Mass Effect 2 on, BioWare’s games featured a simple checkbox that made helmets invisible so you could see your characters' beloved faces at all times, even when they were strapped into a thousand pounds of high-tech armor. Back in the Bad Old Days, helmets would only go away in dialogue scenes. The rest of the time, you’d have to see them running around in a daft wizard hat or leather bonce protector. Enter No Helmet Hack, a simple little mod that gives each character a weightless, valueless book to read. Using it toggles their helmet visibility on or off. Beautiful, simple, and efficient.

Ser Gilmore Companion NPC – Fully Voiced

Ser Gilmore gives you kaddis for the dog - YouTubeWatch On

Ser Gilmore gives you kaddis for the dog - YouTube

The Human Nobles among you may remember Ser Gilmore as your well-intentioned, but only briefly relevant, childhood friend. Originally thought to be the next Grey Warden recruit, Ser Gilmore instead sacrifices his life to give you and your mother time to escape your burning castle.

Thanks to the retconning of this mod, however, Ser Gilmore is back. Even better, he’s ready to join your quest and features full voice acting. The voice acting isn’t half bad, and it’s remarkable how well he fits in with the other companions. After installing this mod, you can recruit your miraculously alive childhood chum near the Lothering chantry.

Baldur’s Gate 2 Redux

Alley of Murders

Alley of Murders is an add-on campaign that introduces a serial killer in the grungier areas of Denerim. The local constabulary aren’t having any luck solving the case, so it’s up to the Grey Wardens to step in. This mod is fully voice-acted (to varying degrees of success) and should take about half an hour to wrap up.

The Shattered War

The Shattered War Trailer - YouTubeWatch On

The Shattered War Trailer - YouTube

Alley of Murders was the first fully voice acted Dragon Age: Origins mod, and an impressive proof of concept. The Shattered War is the real deal, a standalone expansion of near-professional quality with more than 3,600 lines of recorded dialogue. Set after the events of the game, it casts you as a member of a military expedition sent to investigate a darkspawn threat in the Frostback Mountains, and should give you around 10 hours of bonus adventuring.

Shortcut Through the Deep Roads

(Image credit: EA)

An armored dwarf, underground

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How to install Dragon Age: Origins mods#

Dain’s Fixes#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

Qwinn’s Ultimate DAO Fixpack#

FtG UI Mod—More Readable Fonts and UI#

Extra Dog Slot#

Character Respecialization#

Equal Love#

Madd Gift Guide#

Forced Deathblows#

No Helmet Hack#

Ser Gilmore Companion NPC – Fully Voiced#

Baldur’s Gate 2 Redux#

Alley of Murders#

The Shattered War#

Shortcut Through the Deep Roads#

How to install Dragon Age: Origins mods

Dain’s Fixes

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals

Qwinn’s Ultimate DAO Fixpack

FtG UI Mod—More Readable Fonts and UI

Extra Dog Slot

Character Respecialization

Equal Love

Madd Gift Guide

Forced Deathblows

No Helmet Hack

Ser Gilmore Companion NPC – Fully Voiced

Baldur’s Gate 2 Redux

Alley of Murders

The Shattered War

Shortcut Through the Deep Roads