Welcome to our how-to guide on using mods in Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War – Definitive Edition! This article contains instructions for installing mods into the Definitive Edition, with different instructions provided depending upon whether you have the legacy Dawn of War (Anniversary Edition) game and/or expansions installed. We want to say a huge thank you to our community modders who we have been working with for many months. They've put in a lot of work both in helping us to support legacy mods, and in readying their own mods for the Definitive Edition. It is important to note that this is a different game with different tech from the Anniversary Edition.
ModDB has been the home of modding for Dawn of War for 20-years and we felt it was important to maintain that legacy and community. You can search the Dawn of War hub for legacy mods here: https://www.moddb.com/games/dawn-of-war
IMPORTANT: Though it is our intent for legacy mods to work in the Definitive Edition, we cannot guarantee their performance or that they will be bug-free. Mod authors may need to do some work to update their mods to take full advantage of the improvements in the Definitive Edition and to ensure that their mods are not encountering any issues.
If you have legacy Dawn of War installs:
- The Definitive Edition supports reading mods from legacy installs.
- Download and installation instructions will often be included on a mod’s ModDB page, however, you may need to research installation instructions for that specific mod.
- Verify that the mod works in the Legacy version of the game
- Run the Definitive Edition and go to the Mods menu to see it in the list
- If it is not in the list, there could be a compatibility issue
- Please report mod compatibility issues to https://help.relic.com/
- Include your warnings.txt from your %appdata%\Relic Entertainment\Dawn of War directory
If you do not have legacy Dawn of War installs:
- If the mod comes packaged as a .zip (or other compressed folder)
- Browse to %appdata%\Relic Entertainment\Dawn of War\ in Windows Explorer
- If you don’t have one, create a Mods directory folder and browse inside it
- Create a directory folder for the mod you want to install
- Unzip contents into that new directory
If the mod comes as an .exe:
- Browse to %appdata%\Relic Entertainment\Dawn of War\ in Windows Explorer
- If you don’t have one, create a Mods directory folder and browse inside it
- Create a directory folder for the mod you want to install
- Run .exe installer
- When prompted for an install location, give the newly created directory you made for this mod
- If you don’t see the mod listed on the Mod menu, there could be a compatibility issue:
- Please report mod compatibility issues to help.relic.com
- Include your warnings.txt from your %appdata%\Relic Entertainment\Dawn of War directory
- Larger mods can be made up of several different components and it is possible that not all parts will work as intended. For example, there could be cases where custom UI elements don't show up even though custom units and maps do. When reporting issues, please specify if you are experiencing this kind of partial result
- Please share any feedback you have about this guide to help improve it for other players, and we will adjust it accordingly