Installing mods that come as .zip's

[Potatotate]

I've downloaded roughly 40 mods that I want to replay through dragon age with. installing the .dazip's is fairly simple, it seems to work for me, however, I have no idea what to do with regular zip and rar files.
for the ones that had dazip's inside the .rar/.zip files, I took them out and installed them, but there are others where it's just a .zip file with a bunch of stuff in it with weird extensions (like equal love for example, which contains a folder with a text-wall of .dlb's, or a level 50 cap mod which has only .gda's)

renaming them from .zip or .rar to .dazip causes the content updater to give an error and not install the mod.

how do I install them?
thanks in advance! (i'm very familiar with skyrim modding, however, this is the first time in five or six years that I've touched dragon age)

[Craftian]

Honestly, it depends. If a mod author has organised everything, renaming the extension to a .dazip will convert the archive for an easy install through the daupdater. Otherwise, you can extract and drop loose files and folders into the ../Documents/BioWare/Dragon Age/packages/core/override directory.

Once that's done and the file structure is still in order, your game should recognise them and you're good to go. In general, just be sure to check the description and/or readme before installing. (Some might require a particular manager or complex manual install, but they're rare.)

[Potato]

Just read the mod description. For dazip files I think you have to use DAO-Modmanager_1_9d-277 which can be download here:
http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/277/?

[Nighinn]

Originally posted by Your Mother:

Just read the mod description. For dazip files I think you have to use DAO-Modmanager_1_9d-277 which can be download here:
http://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/277/?

No, you don't have to use that. The DAUpdater.exe file, that the first reply mentioned (it can be found in the bin_ship folder of the game folder in Steam), is all you need. From what I've heard, the Modmanager from Nexus is known to cause trouble with DA:O, so I wouldn't use it at all.

[Potatotate]

Originally posted by Craftian:

Honestly, it depends. If a mod author has organised everything, renaming the extension to a .dazip will convert the archive for an easy install through the daupdater. Otherwise, you can extract and drop loose files and folders into the ../Documents/BioWare/Dragon Age/packages/core/override directory.

Once that's done and the file structure is still in order, your game should recognize them and you're good to go. In general, just be sure to check the description and/or readme before installing. (Some might require a particular manager or complex manual install, but they're rare.)

do you mean put the contents, regardless of file type into core/override? for skyrim if i want to install manually i have to find the specific file locations where assets are supposed to go (ie, meshes have to go in the meshes folder, hair styles separated by race have to go in each race's separate hair folders)
does dragon age just recognize and use all assets in the core/override automatically?

is the process different for different file types? (ie, do .gda's go in override and .dlb's go somewhere else?)