Vapourware Dragon's Dogma II - modding general thread

[DJOGamer PT]

Although it's only about 1 month and a half old, thanks to the already extensive work in previous REngine developed games, Dragon's Dogma II has revealed itself to be quite flexible in its modding capabilities
Even despite Capcom's anti-modding stance, which manifested in efforts such as the inclusion of a supposedly advanced DRM called Enigma meant to prevent such dastardly behaviour - DD2 still experienced a considerable boom of mods released
At the current pace, it's set to surpass the amount of mods of it's 8 year old predecessor this month and more importantly, the 700+ mods available already offer far greater variety and complexity of what was possible with the old MT Framework game engine

So far, the only things that don't seem possible are: mods that add or alter the design of the game world's map and levels ; mods that add or alter quests ; mods that add new assets to the game (though it's possible to swap a game asset for another, even with an external one)


Here's the basic requeriments for most REngine mods (yes this applies even to other REngine games), it's quite easy:

1. Fluffy Mod Manager
   
   Installation

   If you have experience modding Betheseda games, you will be familiar with this kind of program
   
   * Extract the mod manager anywhere (if you're upgrading from an old version, simply extract it over the older version).
   * Run the mod manager once and choose Dragon's Dogma 2 as game.
   * You can drag'n'drop mods in PAK format onto the mod manager window while it's running to copy them to the mod manager OR manually copy mods to "[modmanager]\Games\DragonsDogma2_Chara\Mods"
   * Click on mods in the mod list to install them. Click again to uninstall.
2. REFramework
   
   Installation

   Modding tool/framework with a powerful scripting API using Lua.
   Comes with FreeCam, Timescale, FOV, VR, and tools for script/mod developers.
   
   To install, simply extract dinput8.dll from the zip file into your Dragon's Dogma 2 game install folder.

If you have an interest in modding Dragon's Dogma II, here's a quick guide

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Here's a few prominent mods released so far:

VISUALS

Texture Overhaul
Upscales the game's texture to either 2K or 4K, comes in seperate packs for environments, characters, clothes, monsters, weapons and armors

Graphics Suite
Allows the user to tweak numerous graphical settings that aren't available in the game options, including enabling Path Tracing (with caveats, though the author is contiounsly working on it and frequentely updates this mod)


Smaller Lantern
A smaller & more compact lantern model.

High-Res VFX
AI upscalling of all VFX textures

Vibrant LUT
4 colouring LUTs available, all done natively, so no need any addon and it wont affect HUD nor performance

Though if a reshade is preferred these seem to be the best ones so far:
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/94
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/122
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/353
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/578
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/609

GAMEPLAY

Custom Difficulty Tweaks
Allows the user to customize the following properties:

• Damage taken by the PC and Pawns
• Damage dealt by PC
• Pawn damage dealt
• Stagger susceptibility
• Healing
• Exp and Dcp rewards
• Critical Damage bonus
• Loss Gauge
• Economy and items
• Debilitation susceptibility
• Dynamic difficulty
• Individual enemy adjustments

Balanced Combat 2
A comprehensive Vocation rebalancing mod
Most Vocations get slighty buffed (Archer specially), with the exception of Thief which gets massive nerfs (as he's pretty OP in vanilla)
Also Trickster now does damage!

Wild Loot
In DD2 the best equipment is found on shops
The purpose of the open world in the design of the economy and item progression is essentially to gather Gold, XP and Materials
If you prefer the Morrowind style of item progression - i.e. hand placed rewards out the in the world map - this mod does just that

Lucky Scavanger
For those that also prefer to find the best loot outside shops, but also like a touch of RNG to chest rewards

Safer Roads
A QoL mod for those that don't the short enemy respawn timer of DD2 (3 days I believe)
Sets timer to 1 week before normal enemies respawn outside of caves [168 hours], and two weeks for bosses to respawn outside of caves [336 hours]
Also allows to set your own value - between 0 and 2016 hours [0 and 12 weeks] - and even the respawn timer of enemies in dungeons (set to the vanilla values by default)

Random Encounters
Exactely what it says

Skill Maker
Allows the user to create their own skills as sequences of animations, melee attacks, summons, lightning, explosions and other magical or physical effects
You can essentially create new classes with it

MISCELLANEOUS

DD2 CPU Priority
Not a mod in the strict sense of the word, but a Registry file which forces windows to alter the CPU priority to high everytime DD2 is launched, proviving significant performance improvement on this heavy CPU bound game

Better UI
A all-in-one pack of the author's various UI mods

Clear Effect Descriptions
Shows the exact values of all Skills and Consumables

Disable Mouse Acceleration
Helps with aiming

Mouse Wheel Movement Speed Grand Cruise Control
Kinda like Splinter Cell

Stop Selling Yourself
Prevents stray pawns behavior to come directly to the player and initiate hiring dialog

 

[RoBoBOBR]

Texture Overhaul
Upscales the game's texture to either 2K or 4K, comes in seperate packs for environments, characters, clothes, monsters, weapons and armors

as a heads-up, game currently does not work well with 4K textures, it basically aggressively downscales it to 2K.

there's a ton of Capcom's ineptitude, like they fucked up all normal map textures with wrong compression. This mods helps with that:
https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/766

Graphics Suite is nice even without Path Tracing (that can look good, as latest REFramework lets you combine it with regular RT for denoising, but it still looks crap sometimes and requires more GPU power), and it lets you get OK looking clouds (default ones are bad and blurry, mod makes them OK but you gotta re-enable them everytime) and increase Ray Tracing resolution (by default game renders RT in 0.4 scale).

https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonsdogma2/mods/197 is a small mod that prevents random pawns from talking to you out in the world, which is very good.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

as a heads-up, game currently does not work well with 4K textures, it basically aggressively downscales it to 2K.

I think the game's files may be highly compressed
After all the game is only 60Gb total, not much for such a recent AAA open-world game

There is a mod called Cloudfix (which the author seems to have abandon it, though he seems to help the Graphics Suite author), and in it the author says the reason clouds look so pixaleted is because the main texture is just 128x32 pixels
To put in perspective, PS2 game cloud textures tended to be either 128x128 or 64x64

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Monster Infigthing
Allows the user to fine-tune the properties that govern the "monster faction" system (for the lack of a better word)

 

[Jinn]

When I replay this a year or two down the line with a proper difficulty overhaul mod and a lot of these other smaller, detail oriented mods, it's going to be one of the most glorious gaming experiences of my life.

I don't regret playing through vanilla - with the difficulty modifier applied halfway through - but I won't sit here and say that they didn't drop the ball with the difficulty. They absolutely did, and the entire experience suffered from it. Even with the difficulty modifier mod applied, there came a point where the tension was just no longer there, and I know I left probably about 25% of the world unexplored because the game was no longer putting any pressure on me.

Thank god for PC gaming and modding, because it's what is going to bring out the true potential of DD2 and turn it into the 9.5-10/10 game it should have released as.

 

[deama]

Is there a mod to crack the game?

 

[Ezekiel]

Haven't played it yet. Should mod in more trees, because the land looks barren like in the first game.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Lock-On Combat with Dodge
A mod taylor-made for players too used to rollslop
It even allows to choose between 3 dodge animations (feint, roll, slide)
Frombabies rejoice!

 

[DJOGamer PT]

And for Bloodborne fans, here's a mod that implements something like the Rally System (i.e. regaining lost HP by hitting enemies)

 

[mediocrepoet]

The last thing this game needs is a mod that makes it easier. Interesting though.

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

The last thing this game needs is a mod that makes it easier. Interesting though.

For reals. Alot of these just sound like they would make the game even more piss easy.

The game is already dead because there's no challenge beyond level 50ish.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Oh shit, apparently it is somehow possible to alter animations in DD2
Already changed the op

Ninjutsu (FFXIV Style)
Is a mod that alters some animations and with the help of the Skill Maker mod, implements a gameplay system of "Ninjutsu" magic similar to the one in Final Fantasy XIV
The way it works is:
- you have several inputs each representing a Mudra (i.e. a Naruto Hand Sign) and "Cast Spell" input;
- you correctly input a sequence of mudras, press the Cast button and a specific Ninjutsu will be executed

According to the author, this is primarly aimed at Thief as that vocation is already quite identical to the Ninja job of FF14

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Monster Arena