Dragon Age: The Veilguard gets a standalone character creator and a new patch for Dragon Age Day

Just in time for Dragon Age Day—D4, DA, get it?—BioWare has rolled out a new patch for Dragon Age: The Veilguard that makes numerous bug fixes, tweaks the game's photo mode, and adds Hawke's "iconic outfit" from Dragon Age 2 as a new cosmetic. It's also put out a new standalone character creator, enabling the creation of your own personal Rook even if you don't own the game—which can then be imported into The Veilguard when you're done.

The new Veilguard character creator is available as a free download from the Veilguard store pages on Steam, Epic, and EA. I was going to give it a try but it's a 14GB download, which to me seems a little excessive for a character creator. More practically, it would take me hours to download (my internet is not good) which doesn't strike me as a wise expenditure of time for something I'm going to horse around with for five minutes. So, just watch this video instead:

EA also dropped some Dragon Age: The Veilguard stats today, revealing how players rolled with some of the big in-game decisions. Most of it won't mean much if you haven't played the game, stuff like "Top 3 companions chosen to stay behind for the counter attack," but if you have—or if you plan to—be aware that there are some spoilers:

Back to the patch: The headline change in this update is the addition of Hawke's Dragon Age 2 duds, including armor, body paint, and face paint. For those with big horns, there are also two new Qunari complexions to choose from.

Another notable change in the patch is actually a reversion of one made in the previous patch, which added a line on the screen indicating the location of screenshots whenever one was taken through Veilguard's photo mode. That's now been removed "due to a safety concern brought to us by some content creators," the patch notes state, presumably related to the directory structure display, which would include the person's Windows username. I think it's a bleak commentary on the state of the world that this is the sort of thing people have to worry about, but it is a legitimate concern, and so better it's gone. Photo mode screens, for the record, can be found in Documents/BioWare/Dragon Age: The Veilguard/screenshots.

On the happier side of things, a "take photo" button has been added to the pause screen so players can take screenshots during conversations and cinematic bits, and there's now an in-game setting to turn off bloom as well. The full patch notes are below.

New Content:

• Dragon Age 2 Hawke’s Iconic Outfit
  
  • Armor
    
  • Body Paint
    
  • Face Paint
    
• Qunari Complexions
  
  • Two new complexions for the Qunari lineage

Quality of Life Changes:

• In Patch 3, we introduced a line on screen showing where a Photo Mode screenshot was saved. In Patch 4, we are reverting that change due to a safety concern brought to us by some content creators. PC players can find their Photo Mode screenshots in Documents/BioWare/Dragon Age: The Veilguard/screenshots
  
• Added an in-game Setting to turn off Bloom.
  
• Added a “Take Photo” button on the pause screen to take screenshots during conversations and cinematics on PC.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed an issue that prevented some saves from loading properly.
  
• Fixed an issue that was preventing the Frame Rate Limit setting from being saved.
  
• Fixed an issue with Rook’s face and hair changing drastically when a save is loaded.
  
• Fixed an issue with certain longer hairstyles that floated above Rook’s chest and shoulders.
  
• Fixed an issue where two Neve characters could appear in the Fire and Ice quest.
  
• Fixed a rare issue where Emmrich did not lead Rook to the next task in his recruitment Where the Dead Must Go quest.
  
• Adjusted the spirit guides in The Warden Vault quest.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the Ultimate Ability to swap to the default Ultimate.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Ultimate Ability Icon was not displayed after Bellara is recruited.
  
• Fixed an issue where the first hit in a Warrior Rook’s shield throw may miss the target unintentionally.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Slaughter of Pillars Revenant had no health bar.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused Achievement Progress to reset when a new Rook was created. This will not restore Achievement Progress that was overwritten, but your Rooks will no longer compete with each other for who can kill more High Dragons.
  
• Fixed an issue with the camera in The Demon’s Bargain quest when playing on an HDD.
  
• Fixed an issue with the camera in the Sea of Blood quest if Rook backtracked too far.
  
• Fixed two instances where Viago was clearly talking to Rook but was too absorbed by Teia’s beauty and staring at her instead.
  
• Fixed an issue with Photo Mode screenshots appearing slightly blurry for some players.
  
• Fixed an issue where taking a screenshot with the space bar in Photo Mode also toggled the highlighted setting at the same time.
  
• Fixed an audio issue that caused battle music to stop playing while Rook was still fighting darkspawn in A Warden’s Best Friend quest.
  
• Fixed an audio issue that prevented music from playing during a conversation with Lucanis in the Lighthouse.
  
• Fixed a rare lighting issue in the One Last Breath quest
  
• Fixed a blocking issue in the Fire and Ice quest when returning to the Lighthouse.
  
• Fixed a blocking issue in the spoiler quest if Rook backtracked too far.
  
• Fixed a UI issue that caused the “New Item” highlight to get stuck on an item.
  
• Fixed an issue with the spoiler.
  
• Fixed an issue that was causing the male British Inquisitor (Harry Hadden-Paton) to be pitched too low.
  
• Updated several German voice line instances with corrected translations.

Sorry, the spoiler tags aren't actually interactive and there's nothing underneath them—if you want to know the secrets, you can check out the patch notes on Steam.