Dragon Age 2

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Xavhiann

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Xavhiann

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About this mod

What I´ve learned and how you can do it.

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This is meant for people interested in modding Dragon Age II. With the files provided, the tutorial included and the application known as GDApp, you´ll be able to change difficulty settings, player and companion abilities and alter anything to do with leveling.

I know it may seem daunting, but it really is quite simple. If you are interested in this, proceed. Otherwise, I won´t waste any more of your time. I´ll make it brief and simple, regardless, this will be nothing more than a starting point and a few pointers to help you along the way.


It will be broken up into three segments: difficulty, leveling and abilities.



Difficulty

Creatureranks and Difficulty are your main difficulty files.

Creatureranks.gda alters the relative health and damage values according to rank. Difficulty.gda alters health and damage values across all ranks. The combination of these two factors is what makes the game easier or more difficult.

Actually, there´s a few columns for each apart from health and damage, but you might want to start there. There´s one that controls how often enemies use abilities, another that controls how much health they gain from health potions, another that specifies how much force they put into an attack, etc., etc., etc. But, for the time being, I suggest keeping it simple.



Levelling:

Exptable.gda is the only relevant file as well as the easiest one to read.
On one column you have the amount of xp required to reach a given level, on another the number of specialization points you´ll get, and on two others the number of ability points and attribute points you´ll receive. Alter at your convenience.



Abilities:

Abi_base.gda is the main file. Persistent.gda deals with sustained effects and AoE radii. Passive_abilities.gda relates to passive bonuses, as indicated by the properties.gda

Abi_base.gda - This is probably the most daunting and intricate looking one. For all intents and purposes, the first couple of dozen columns are irrelevant. With the exception of cooldown, cost, level and point requirements, the only ones you´ll use are the ones entitled float. These specify damage, physical/elemental force, effect duration, chance to affect, CCC chance and multiplier, etc., etc., etc.

These are largely self-evident. If you look at an ability´s tooltip in-game, you can almost always go back and figure out what each column refers to, what each value does, and tweak it as you see fit.



That is all I´ll mention for now. It is not my intent to give a detailed explanation, as I feel that would be off-putting for most folk. With the little I have mentioned, however, you can do an awful lot.

My final advice, then, will be this: always back up your mods before changing anything. If there´s one thing I´ve learned about Dragon Age II is that it is very sensitive and it does not like change. If anything is out of place with the abi_base, persistent or passive_abilities, for instance, all in-game upgrades will be rendered useless. That means that even if you´ve upgrades Pommel Strike, for instance, it won´t register, and all CCCs will stop working. That´s your tell-tale sign, and you can always see it in the tooltip of any upgraded ability you may have.

If you have a back-up, you can always replace the broken mod with the old, working version.
No harm, no foul, no fuss.

Happy modding!