here is a list of the mods that i use in my personal playthroughs of dragon age 2!

extremely huge shoutout to my friend rachel for recommending me a BUNCH of these mods! i owe u my life rachel. rachel also makes awesome dragon age: origins mods - many of which are listed on my da:o mod recs page - so be sure to go through their stuff on nexusmods!!!

• dragon age 2 mods are blissfully simple to install when compared to other games in the series. you just extract the files you downloaded and place them in your game's override folder. you can typically find this folder here: documents/BioWare/Dragon Age 2/packages/core/override.


• if you don't see this folder in your core folder, feel free to make it yourself; that will work just fine once you name the folder 'override'.

as promised, these are the mods which i use in my personal playthrough of dragon age 2. i have included dlc mods in this list, too.

- better and evolving companion weapons by dankrafft: lets your companions' starter weapons be viable for the entirety of the game, as they level up alongside them.

- unique face textures for companions by ellise: a cosmetic mod for all of your companions. some of them have quite a few options, so take care to choose the ones which you want. if you want to use 'elven tallis redux' (which i will link next), i'm pretty sure you should skip out on downloading her textures for this mod.

- elven tallis redux by yifalchunbee: no offense to felicia day, who is very beautiful, but tallis' face model is really jarring compared to literally everyone else in the game. this mod fixes that issue.

- da2 epilogue restoration and fixes by starrarte: bioware failed the 'release an epilogue sequence which isn't bugged' challenge yet again in dragon age 2; this mod fixes some of that. it restores the f!hawke visual, restores the sebastian romance audio (and is compatible with m!hawke romancing him, if you use the bi seb mod!), and fixes some weird romance flag bugs.

- female hawke movement animation tweak by revan1988: this is an absolute must-have mod if you play as female hawke, tbh. it replaces her awful walking and running animations with the male character ones, so her spine doesn't look like it's about to snap in half at a moment's notice. there's also a version of it which swaps male hawke's animations to the female hawke ones, which fully showcases just how ridiculous the female ones are.

- modest mom animations by blades538: another animation replacement that gets rid of the awful female hawke running animations, this time not applying them to leandra.

- sapphim's dialogue mini mods by starrarte: an assortment of small dialogue mods. you can pick and choose the ones that you want; i use most of them.

- fenris' spring cleaning by magpiedragon: this mod gets rid of all the corpses littering fenris' mansion. da2's plot takes place across the span of a decade, those guys SHOULD literally rot away into nothingness.

- hairy male topless 1_04 by tummy_za: my hawke existing without body hair would be like an angel without wings.

- hr fenris armor by ellise: yes i know this is my blatant fenris favoritism at work here, but he deserves nice things, such as high res armor.

- new import vault fixes and editable vault by starrarte: admittedly, i use an old version of this mod and had no idea that a new one existed until now, but it gets rid of some really horrible and wacky bugs that can potentially pop up when you import your world state in from origins. apparently, this version allows you to edit your world state using console commands, too!

- isabela asap by starrarte: lets you recruit isabela before anders and, in the process, unlocks a really funny little reaction from isabela if you take her along for recruiting anders.

- ishs tougher dog by ishmaeltheforsaken: buffs your mabari hound, because the base game version is waaay too squishy for a war hound.

- kidnappapalooza - best served cold redux by starrarte: at a certain point of the game, a character gets kidnapped in order to bait out your hawke. in most cases, your sibling character will be the one yoinked away, but this mod alters the priority so that you aren't eternally stuck with the same exact version of the quest for all your playthroughs.

- kirkwall armor for aveline by quenchedsteel: because why on earth did bioware give her grey warden armor.

- npc color fixes by skltra: fixes a bunch of npc designs, including varania's weirdly whitewashed skin and the atrocious makeup that the devs randomly smeared all over some characters' faces.

- npc gear immersion tweaks by varricsretelling: adjusts a bunch of characters' armor so that it's more lore-friendly. works fine with the face mods, too!

- repeatable romance scenes by quenchedsteel: cute lil mod that plays a little animation of your hawke spending some quality time with their romanced companion around the hawke estate. (it's sfw!!!)

- same gender dialogue tweaks by wardenanders: with this mod, donnic will assume that male hawke is into men, and that female hawke is into women.

- sebastian revisited by starrarte: awesome sebastian mod which unlocks his romance for male hawkes, fixes faulty plot flags, and expands his dialogue. also lets you recruit him in act 1 if you wish.

- sebastian texture fix by noisomewind: fixes sebastian's whitewashed hands (yeah, i have no idea why bioware did him like that) in the base game.

- sketchy on the details fix by elegant996: fixes a quest by having an npc leave when he's supposed to.

- varric dialogue edits and restoration by starrarte: restores a bunch of cut varric content, including a flirt equalizer and bugfixes.

- official-ish zevran fix for da2 by hawkethority: adjusts zevran's da2 appearance so he actually looks the zevran we all know and love from dragon age: origins.

- zevran romance dialogue fix by starrarte: if you downloaded the 'new import vault fixes and editable vault' mod, this is apparently fixed in it, but i figured i'd link it on this page, anyway. there's a legendarily shitty bug where zevran's romance with the warden is not acknowledged (if you imported your da:o worldstate in and your warden romanced him in it). this mod fixes that. it's therefore a godsend. it also fixes the dialogue associated with this broken flag.