Dragon Age: Origins

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drdrummie

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drdrummie

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About this mod

This is the release version of Kivito's YADAM - an action-adventure add-on for the main campaign.

The Grey Warden is summoned to an uncharted area occupied by the Frostback Legion, a mercenary army causing tensions with the locals. To explore and investigate, the GW must join them, but it won't be an easy task.

Permissions and credits
After 10 years of development, including 5+ years in beta, I have decided to release the full version of Kivito's YADAM. This republishing comes with significant changes (IMHO), bringing the mod closer to my original vision.

In brief:
You, as a Grey Warden, are summoned to Lake Brtonigla, an uncharted region in the Frostback Mountains. The area is occupied by the Frostback Legion, a mercenary army with unclear motives and tensions with the locals. To explore and uncover the truth, you must conceal your identity and join the Legion, but it won't be an easy task.

Differences from published beta 0.95:
- 90% of all texts (conversations, plots, codex) are re-written, grammar is fixed, now is more in style of Dragon Age;
- Now story, descriptions and dialogues have more sense and perhaps overall setting is better explained
- Fully voiced over with artificial voices, but there are like 15 different voices including their variations added, some are better, some are worse
- I have striped out most of my bad jokes
- I have fixed dog stage in conversations
- Fixed some bugs that I was aware of 
- I removed all of (unpublished) second part with new spells and stuff; that will hopefully get into other mod I started working on

I have tested the mod on 3 different machines (old laptop w11 intel i5, mid range older pc w10 ryzen2700x and high end gaming pc w11 ryzen7700), seems to work fine except for high end pc with win 11 where I had some strange behavior with textures and game was shutting down on max settings, unusually higher temps on processor that I was expecting, you could not load the game again, but after restart or cleaning prefetch data with ccleaner it was working normally again.. I guess if game starts to behave strangely you should save and restart the game, F5 is your friend.

Features:
- 3 possible starts (party camp after epilogue, Orzammar slums and Haven village dock while playing main campaign)
- more then 15 quests (including job boards)
- codex stuff
- lot of exploration
- choice and consequences (not affecting main campaign story)
- "puzzle", hidden chamber, keys, explosives, slapping, questionable humor
- interconnected quests - talking with some npc's helps you with plots and stuff
- split in "chapters": you need first to do some quests to join the army, then army quests to enter the fort, then fort quests with the escape part, then search for legendary city and deal with the bad guys at the end
- I would guess like 4+ hrs of play time

Installation:
- If you have beta version installed I guess it is best to uninstall it with damodder and reinstall new version
- If you have beta version installed I believe it is best to remove "env_yadam" folder from "core\override\" folder, I'm not sure if the new installation will overwrite it but content of "env_yadam" folder is same as from beta
- I've used HD textures mod for carts, wagons, tents from Theta HD project by Rennn, you can delete folder if you already have a copy
- You will need to load some clean save to start it again

I guess best "time" to experience this mod is when you are higher level around Landsmeet or little before. You could load save and go from there.
This mod does not modify core game resources but it does add some animations and abilities (like Telekinetic Explosive, Scroll of Boshkarin).

Some hints:
- Try to save Gorkmaz in caves before going to Zorhan, it will give you best dialogue options for solving everything peacefully
- To exit the fort area (if you started it from Haven or Camp) you need to help Ceki, Dennis can let you out once and you can't go back if not solved Zorhan peacefully and / or Mihael quest
- If Ceki "waits" you on the other side he will not be available if you return to the fort around the lake
- To enter fort area (if you started from Orzammar) save Mihael in caves, or solve peacefully Zorhan then 2 soldiers can let you through the gate
- To join the legion solve Ceki, Chef and Mihael quests
- To enter Inner Fort solve army quests, if you stuck on murders quest you have one body in Outer Fort to examine
- You can bypass murders quest if you report package to Bruce (but why?)
- You should search the bodies for explosive to escape the caves after entering Inner Fort
- There are multiple paths to the legendary city
- You can hire Kivito to help you defeat the legion when time comes 
- TAB is your friend
- Plot helpers are shown for most off stuff, sometimes they are not turned off until quest actually completes or gets to the next stage

This mod is finished with help of AI tools like chatGPT and Bing, I'm not a native English speaker and I'm not capable to express myself on English in more variety, so I have used AI tools to help me re-write and fix texts for this release. 

Even more information you can find on beta mod site.

My blog and (kind of) tutorials: https://datoolsetblog.wordpress.com/