Dragon Age 2

About this mod

Evolving Blood Mage Gear converts a few of the unique mage clothing and accessories in the game into gear that scale with your level and makes them more useful to blood mages.

Permissions and credits
Changelogs
Evolving Blood Mage Gear




Description

This mod was created as a companion to my Evolving Blood Mage Staves mod. Personally I like finding ways to maximize my spirit damage in Nightmare mode with my Blood Mage and usually use generic gear from merchants with the +% spirit damage bonus. This mod adds these bonuses in addition to making a few other improvements like level scaling to make the unique gear more useful and will hopefully eliminate the need to stalk merchants just to get these types of damage boosting gear.

Here's a list of the specific unique gear that this mod currently affects, for more details see the uploaded pictures:



This mod DOES a few things:

  • It sets all of the unique gear listed above to scale with the player's level
  • It adds the "+X% spirit damage" property to the unique gear that didn't have them by following the same formula used by leveled generic gear sold by merchants with the exception of the Ring of the Ferryman and Merrill's accessories
  • It adds the "Blood magic: Each point of health provides X additional mana" property to any of the gear that didn't have it before for convenience
  • It adds the "Enemies drop better equipment" property to all of the gear since it can be difficult to make money in this game
  • It adds rune slots for more customizability of the mage clothing that didn't have them before. As a rule of thumb, robes get a maximum of 2 rune slots while boots, gloves and helmets get only 1 rune slot.
  • It edits the inventory icons for the gear to make them look more unique
  • It edits the material types for a few of the gear like The Void "Set" (material type don't impact the gear's appearance or strength, this is purely thematic)


This mod DOES NOT:

  • Add brand new gear to the game
  • Remove any of the default item properties from the mage gear with the exception of the Robes of the Void which had its "+X electricity resistance" property swapped with "+X spirit resistance" instead
  • Edit the meshes and/or textures of the mage gear
  • Edit every unique mage gear in the game
  • Make ridiculously overpowered versions of the vanilla mage gear


Requirements

First of all, you don't have to be a blood mage to benefit from this mod, anyone who uses talents or spells with spirit based damage will be able to reap the benefits from the gear. Those who use the spirit damage staves from my Evolving Elemental Staves mod will also benefit from this mod. Folks who simply want to get more accessories with the "Enemies drop better equipment" property will also find this mod and my other mods useful. The mod will require any DLCs and/or Bonus Item Packs that the gear belonged to as this mod doesn't package any of their custom meshes or textures. The mod also doesn't have the out-of-the-box means to deliver them to the player like the official Item Packs.

For certain gear like the Vestments of Sacrifice, you will need to have the proper world state or have an imported Dragon Age Origin/Awakening save which meets the unique robes' requirements. Alternatively, you can try to use Waddi to get it but I have not confirmed if you can do that yet.


Installation

After extracting the mod's zip file you will discover that each unique gear is packaged as an ERF file. You can pick and choose which ones you would like to use in your game, copy and paste the ERF file(s) for whichever gear(s) that you decide to use into the override folder, which is typically found in the following directory:

C:\Users\"User X"\Documents\BioWare\Dragon Age 2\packages\core\override


Mid Game Installation

If you have already received any of the gear in your current playthrough but would like to try the mod, then you will need a tool like Waddi to "summon" the modded version to you. If you don't do this then your gear will still have the vanilla stats despite having the mod properly installed. Once you get the modded version, then you can discard the vanilla version of the gear.

Unfortunately you can only receive the modded versions of the Deep Green ring and Pendant of the Morning Frost amulet if you never obtained a prior version of them before, even Waddi is unable to summon modded versions of those items to you.


Updating

You will need a tool like Waddi to summon the updated version of the gear to you. Once successfully doing so, you can then discard the outdated version of the gear that you have in your possession.


Uninstallation

If you decide to remove the mod, you will need to delete the ERF file(s) from your override folder and use a tool like Waddi to resummon the vanilla version of the gear, at which point you can then discard the modded version of the gear.


Mod Compatibility

You can use other mods that edit the meshes and textures of the gear alongside this mod as long as you allow them to load before this mod or load my mod last. What do I mean by that? The game loads ERF files in your override alphabetically (or from the top of the list to the bottom). Knowing this, you can rename the ERF file name for this mod to ensure it gets loaded last which will allow it to overwrite any possible stat edits done by mods higher up on the ERF list. For instance, adding a "Z" at the start of the ERF file name will likely ensure that this mod overwrites any stat changes done by any of your installed mesh/texture replacers.

However, if you decide to store each of your ERF files within their own folders instead of directly dropping them into the override folder then you may need to rename the folders instead of the actual ERF files to ensure this mod gets loaded last. In any case, you may need to experiment with a combination of either or even both methods as everyone's set up is different.


Recommended Mods

Here's a few more mods that I recommend, you don't need any of them for this mod to work but I do strongly recommend Waddi as it can be used to quickly confirm beforehand whether or not you have installed the mod correctly or to ensure that there isn't any mod conflicts:



Shout-out to Ninja Flips and AreleX for inspiring me to play my blood mage and making their awesome Dragon Age content.