#mostly environmental stuff since most ppl have covered outfits

[princess-stabbity]

@demonwrestler​ well, if you mean, “how do you make mods?” then my help is limited. i’ve futzed around a little with dai mod manager to try to isolate assets for export to dao (i found most of the ones i wanted, i just don’t have the tools to export them lmao). there’s an old forum for this stuff. tho the best tutorials i’ve found are from the lovely sapphim

if you mean “how do you use mods w this game?” THAT i can help with. basically, you’ll want the dai tools suite and the frosty tools suite. for dai, i recommend dedicating a download subfolder to daimods u know you wanna use, and then directing the dai mod manager to that subfolder, so u don’t have to do a lot of work checking and unchecking mods (i used to have separate subfolders by inquisitor, but ive recently reorganized so that i have one subfolder for the stuff that’s a) only in daimod format, and b) smth i want for all inquisitors). 

you run the mod manager, everything hopefully goes smoothly, and then it’s frosty time. to make daimm and frosty work together, you need to find the subfolders in origin games/dai/update named “patch” and another one thats titled smth like patchedblahmergedblahwhatever (i am v helpful). rename “patch” to smth else (i use “patch (official)”) and rename the other to “patch.” you need to do this so frosty will run properly w daimods. 

frosty, itself, is very simple. it’s faster and easier to change mods out, since u don’t need to completely rerun the whole process, and you can even make profiles by inquisitor (eg, i am using a profile titled “amell, with daimm” rn). frosty can run daimods, but it can be iffy, esp w texture mods for some reason. i’m not 100% on this, but i think other daimods are usually fine (eg, you might be able to run stuff that changes store stock or ability trees w/o issue)

the benefits of dai mm are that some mods have simply never been updated to frosty. in some cases, they’re just abandoned, in others, even the modder can’t figure out why they won’t work in the other format (discovered recently i’d been bedeviled for DAYS bc my fav cass outfit refuses to work in frosty, despite the modder’s best efforts and other successfully converted mods. v strange!). it also is still better at handling configurable mods (which are rare, but precious to me. i love you, svarty. thank you for all my pretty and op new knives).

the benefits of frosty are that it’s much quicker and easier to change. if you want to change one measly mod in daimm, you have to completely redo your whole setup (esp tragic if you use a lot of configurable mods, bc u have to reconfigure them EVERY TIME). it also makes troubleshooting much easier, bc u can easily test mods in batches to see which one is fucking you. and if you want a mod to keep working in the dlcs (including trespasser), frosty is your best bet.

frosty is also unique in that, after some recent updates, it can handle certain tasks that are simply impossible in daimm. the biggest example, to me, is bundle editing. it’s still kinda new and tricksy (from what i understand), but bundle editing allows for fun stuff like character swaps (see: my many alistairs) and hair editing for npcs and qunari (now us qunari lovers can have the same wildass sims hair as everyone else, and so can the eggman). it’s a bit touchy (bundles don’t play well together), but very fun!

for general troubleshooting: if the game is forever on a loading screen (like 5+min), then there’s probably a daimod at fault (test any loaded in frosty first, then start futzing with daimm). if everything is completely fucking bonkers, it’s more likely (but not necessarily) a frosty mod at fault. generally. i had three separate vivienne mods, both daimod and frosty, that all fucked my game in different ways yesterday, so you never know. sometimes the entire game world just comes apart at the seams bc you wanted to give your favorite first enchanter a snazzy lil gold accent on her casual outfit :(