DA2 Item Mods

[darkrose]

Since scarylady linked to the cool armor for Fenris, I did some poking around to see what's new on the Nexus.

A lot of the available mods are intended to change the looks of the NPC's in ways that make Darkrose grumpy (lightening Isabela's skin tone; making Aveline's features less strong and distinctive). The lack of a toolset makes creating all new items like the fantastic Phoenix Armory and the Wings of Velvet robes difficult, but there are a few nice item mods out there:

Sunnie's item packs tweak the stats of existing objects in game, and most notably, adjust them so that they evolve as the character levels. Her modded evolving Staff of Parlathan is the only staff I used for Julian, my mage Hawke. I also like the idea of Aveline keeping her original sword and Wesley's shield through Act 1. The one caveat is that the evolving items can be a bit unbalancing, especially at early levels.

Sunnie's Item Packs 1-5
Sunnie's Item Pack 6
Sunnie's Item Pack 7

This mod is also quite useful: it replaces all of the dress-style mage robe models with the jacket/pants combo that doesn't scream "I AM A MAGE!" There do appear to be some issues, and it's definitely a work in progress, but the idea is a good one.

ETA: One of the big issues that caused me to uninstall this mod is that it changes ALL the robes for ALL characters--including NPC's. Karl in the Robes of the Notorious Pirate just doesn't work for me.

The Apostate's Wardrobe

This mod adds additional runes. I haven't actually used it, so I have no idea how it affects game balance, but it was done by a modder whose work I've liked in both Origins and DA2.

Rune Expansion Pack

Comments

[elysium_fic]

Let's see. What all do I have installed?

Chargen Revamp.
Being able to have iconic-Hawke's hair in an editable preset is nice, but even nicer is the fact that it seems to include a whole bunch more skin textures than the default character creator. This means that there is FINALLY an in-between from the #2 "too young" skin texture and the #3 "too old" skin texture of the default character creator.

In the default, I couldn't create a character who actually looked older than Carver without making him look TOO old (in my mind, Hawke is mid-20s). Example:



With ChargenRevamp, there are more options, so I can get something like this:



Natural Skin
Better looking skin tones, especially the darker ones, and also comes with appropriate corresponding skin tones for the family.

Natural Hair
Pineappletree's Vibrant Colors is a great mod, but I'm pretty prosaic. I want a fuller selection of hair tones, but I don't need my character to have red eyes and lavender skin and bubblegum pink hair. I wish PT would release a "boring old farts" version with the "realistic" colors only, because I miss the wider selection of eye colors, but not enough to make wading through the outrageous ones worth it.

I do have the PT's Vibrant Hair and Vibrant Eyes mods, which are hair and eye textures, rather than colors, giving them a nice glow.

DA2 NPC Hands
Non-skeletal hands for Bethany, Isabela and Merrill, yay! Unfortunately, the Isabela version isn't compatible with the Isabela Pants mod. Hopefully, those two will get together and combine their mods, because golly, it's a dilemma having to choose between them. I'm also hoping he will come out with a fix for Aveline's hands, which you see in the Blightlands sequence in a couple important cutscenes.

Retexture of Anders' first outfit
Makes the bolero jacket blue. No real reason, except I like it. I wish it were a slightly dingier blue, though, to keep in line with the whole refugee-living-rough thing.

Gifts for Anders
Replaces a couple unimpressive DLC items with Anders-specific amulet and ring that are added to your inventory after you give him the gifts in Acts 2 and 3.

Heal and Potion Cooldown
Because the refresh on those is just ridiculous.

1 Second Dog Summon
The fact that my dog disappears every time I change zones doesn't mean I am left without the dog for thirty seconds if I zone into the middle of a fight.

Hide Weapons
One thing that annoys me is that when you reach Hightown, you get a "finery" outfit so that you can wear your "at home" clothes out and about if you want. But you still have your weapons showing, when you're in plain clothes? Really? And if you un-equip your weapons, a default weapon shows up anyway. This gets rid of that, though it makes the party picker window weird, with Aveline and Anders leaning on weapons that aren't there. This says nothing of the mages walking around with bigass staves on their backs.

DA2 Level 50
The game actually allows you to go up to level 50, but a typical playthrough generally only gets you to level 26-27 if you do all the quests. This mod reduces the amount of XP needed between levels to take you closer to the level cap, giving you more skill and attribute points to play with. It also gives you 30 tactics slots at level 30, 40 slots at level 40, and 50 slots at level 45. Also you get a third specialization point at level 21. I use the standard version, which gives you the normal 3 attribute and 1 talent point per level. The non-standard versions seem OP to me.

Finery
The first time I saw the smoking jacket for the at-home clothing, I wondered when my m!Hawke had been secretly replaced by Hugh Hefner. So I use the Noble 3 Male clothing.

No Gibbing
Gets rid of all the body explosion effects. Yes, and I play with persistent gore turned off, too.

Rune Expansion Pack
When playing a rogue, it's worth it for the "evade traps" runes alone. I hate having to break up my bonus-giving armor sets to equip boots that enable me to detect traps BEFORE I've actually stepped on them.

Cheaper Sustainables
The mana/stamina cost of some sustainables is just absurd. 40% for Panacea? Seriously? This mod reduces the cost of sustainable talents to a flat 10%, so I can have 2-3 sustainables running on a character without depleting 60-80% of my mana/stamina pool.

[darkrose]

Pineappletree's hair mod for DA2 doesn't have any weird hair colors. What it does is make it look more like real-people hair. It also has the effect of making hair really, really shiny, but overall, I like the effect.

[aithne]

oooh! It's like everyone is suddenly conditioning their hair. :)

[elysium_fic]

I knew the Vibrant Hair one doesn't have colors, that it's just a texture. I have that one. I had thought that PT's Vibrant Colors had hair colors in it, though.

It does still have the "unusual" eye and skin tones, though.

[elysium_fic]

Also, I've gotten tired of juggling jewelry. I hate it when you find a trinket with just the right stats for one of your NPCs, but ten levels later, it's too weak, but you can't find another with all the stats you loved about the first one.

So last night I went through and edited every amulet, ring and belt I could find to be evolving (I may have missed some, if the files didn't have "amu" "rng" or "blt" in the filename.) I'm in the process of testing it to see if it works. If I does, I can stop having to hoard the ENDLESS quantities of jewelry that drop and then go through them all when my bags are getting too full to see what is an upgrade and what can be sold.

[scarylady]

If you get that into a functional mod, I wouldn't mind a copy please.

[elysium_fic]

So far it seems to be working. The downsides are that,

1) Like I said, if the .uti file for the object has a name that doesn't seem to indicate it's jewelry, I probably missed it, and

2) I can't so jewelry from the DLC packs like this, so anything you buy in the Black Emporium or from the Signature Edition special items won't be evolving.

HOWEVER, once you have purchased those items from the Emporium or retrieved them from the Signature Edition chest in Gamlen's house, you can edit your savegame to make them evolving. (If those instructions are unclear, I can attempt to write a layman's tutorial that's more specific for that process.)

[scarylady]

I use several of the ones you guys mentioned, plus another fantastic one, which I found yesterday and already have unreasonable amounts of love for.

http://www.dragonagenexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=2572

It stops female Hawkes from running like a girl by changing them over to the male run animation.

[elysium_fic]

Okay, I may have to play a female mage, just to wear this robe.