Game is Quite Literally Unplayable Due to Constant Crashes...

[Lycaedes]

Just picked this one up and the sequel during the current sale. Sadly I can't seem to keep the game open longer than a few minutes.

First crash came at the exact moment I finished character creation and pressed play.
Booted the game up again, remembered all my choices, pressed play and I'm in-game. Cool.

Played a few minutes and then boom, crashed. Booted up again, instant crash in main menu.
That's the only thing that's consistent for me right now, I can't get past the main menu.

I tried all the guides and tips I could find here on Steam and Google. A lot of them pretty basic steps that work for pretty much every game that has a rough time. Nothing worked.

For those interested: Acer Nitro 7 (2020)

Kinda sucks I have to uninstall it now and let it collect digital dust in my library, was looking forward to the entire series.

[worm_master]

Turning the graphic settings down solved 98% for me.

[BB Mouse]

Graphic -> low
texture -> medium
Flame buffer effects un-checked

My PC spec is not bad and this works for me. It rarely crashes with this setting. Anything higher than the above setup would have a high chance to crash every time you have a change of scene or enter a door, etc. But if I change texture to low the armors won't shine anymore, which makes the game no quality to play. You really don't want to play it with everything set to low. XD

[Lycaedes]

Originally posted by BB Mouse:

Graphic -> low
texture -> medium
Flame buffer effects un-checked

Already tried it prior to posting, didn't work.

[x-the-Andy-x]

also try the 4gb patch it sorts out a majority of crashes

[Fictus22]

A couple things you could try

1.) Run the config utility for the game and make sure your graphics card is selected. Sometimes the game might use your CPU/Onboard Graphics instead of your graphics card which in your case would be the RTX 2060 I do beleive.

2.) Go to your game install's "redist" folder and run the three exes DXSETUP (Found in the DirectX folder), physx and vcredist

3.) Click the link below, download "Frosty's Dao.exe" and replace your daorigins.exe in your game install's "binship" folder with the one you downloaded. This is the proper 4gb patch for Steam to enable the game to use 4gb of RAM compared to it's 1-2 RAM limit. Reason why this is important is explained in the "Description" tab's video of the patch.

https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/5368?tab=files

4.) If neither the previous work than try getting the game through EA App. There is a exclusive update through EA App that optimizes the game to run on modern hardware such as your Nitro 7.

[Rhythm]

I've also had a lot of crashes, but only in certain parts and turning down the graphics settings all to low stopped the crashes that I couldn't get around. I also will have random crashes every hour or so. I try to save often. It's playable for me, but definitely not a great experience.

[Arcterion]

There's two fan patches that help fix a lot of bugs, plus add some quality-of-life tweaks.

Dain's Fixes - https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4384/
Qwinn's Ultimate DAO Fix Pack - https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/4689/

They're compatible with each other, so no need to worry about conflicts.

[Lycaedes]

Originally posted by x-the-Andy-x:

also try the 4gb patch it sorts out a majority of crashes

Duuude bloody Hel, after 3 hours of combing through the internet and trying everything I saw, somehow this 4GB patch eluded me.

So I Googled it and now everything appears to be fixed.
Just played for 5 hours straight and no crashes or any interruptions, all on the highest graphical settings.

Cheers mate for the hint!

[Lycaedes]

Update for anyone who stumbles upon this!

Researched the 4GB patch and ended up downloading this unencrypted DAOrigins.exe:

https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/5989?tab=description

1. Downloaded the game again
2. Went into the install location and deleted the DAOrigins.exe that Steam gave me
3. Replaced it with the unencrypted one from Nexus

Downloaded this 4GB patch:

https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371

4. Used the patch on the unencrypted DAOrigins.exe
5. Booted the game and turned all settings to the highest for maximum stress
6. Surprisingly had an enjoyable 5 hour play session with no interruptions

I also want to have it on record that I did watch the guide video that the Nexus uploader made and I did copy him by going to the Nvidia Control Panel and forcing the same program settings he did prior to pressing play in the end.

Game is pretty and shiny now.

[Fictus22]

Originally posted by Popp🗲Korn:

Update for anyone who stumbles upon this!

Researched the 4GB patch and ended up downloading this unencrypted DAOrigins.exe:

https://www.nexusmods.com/dragonage/mods/5989?tab=description

1. Downloaded the game again
2. Went into the install location and deleted the DAOrigins.exe that Steam gave me
3. Replaced it with the unencrypted one from Nexus

Downloaded this 4GB patch:

https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371

4. Used the patch on the unencrypted DAOrigins.exe
5. Booted the game and turned all settings to the highest for maximum stress
6. Surprisingly had an enjoyable 5 hour play session with no interruptions

I also want to have it on record that I did watch the guide video that the Nexus uploader made and I did copy him by going to the Nvidia Control Panel and forcing the same program settings he did prior to pressing play in the end.

Game is pretty and shiny now.

Hey that's awesome I am glad you were able to fix your issue! I didn't know about the unencrypted daorigins.exe so I will defintely keep that in mind when I help others in the future! Thanks giving us a update and sharing this information! Enjoy the game Popp!

[Jquist47]

Yea, the 4gb patch will solve most problems with this game on modern systems. If you have the GOG version, it is much easier to apply the patch, all you need is to patch the exe file with a LAA program. The steam version is much more cumbersome.

I honestly don't know why the original exe file isn't prepatched to be 4gb, it would fix the issue for so many people and turn many negative reviews here into positive.

[Lycaedes]

Originally posted by Jquist47:

I honestly don't know why the original exe file isn't prepatched to be 4gb, it would fix the issue for so many people and turn many negative reviews here into positive.

I wholeheartedly agree with you. I read a lot of posts having a wide assortment of issues with this game but then they discovered the LAA 4GB patch and that seems to have fixed every issue everyone had. Some have said they had to keep the graphics settings to a minimum so I'm very happy I don't have to.

One might think this is a pretty simple fix for EA or Steam to apply so we're spared the headache of fixing it all ourselves. I did notice in a few places that people were talking about LAA being illegal to do, which I find to be kind of weird.

[ADEC Inc]

LAA isn't illegal. Distributing the game's exe might technically be, but it would be up to EA to pursue action on that. It would be very easy for them to fix this once and for all, but they've chosen to keep the game broken on other platforms in order to drive sales to their own storefront.

[arnelilleseter]

I loved this game when I first played it. I've wanted to buy it on Steam for a long time but all the posts about crashes made me hesitant. I don't want to buy a game that will cause me hours of frustration to try and fix, and still may not be playable.
After reading this thread I think I'm going to take the risk. Wish me luck.

[Fictus22]

https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-Dragon-Age-Games/DAOrigins-exe-Large-Address-Awareness-for-Steam-and-other/td-p/491020

This actually tells us why Steam may have it's unique issues regarding the LAA patch if anyone wants to give it a read.