Awhile back, I purchased pretty much everything of the DRAGON AGE series on EA Origin. Both DA2 and INQUISITION have the cloud save feature on EA Origin, but the first game doesn't. Used to, but they apparently disabled it 'cause the save files were too big.

Anyway, I've got saves for the first game, and I've never gotten around to the sequels, but I'm workin' on it. When GOG put cloud saves into Galaxy, and ORIGINS was one of the games to get it, I bought it as soon as it went on sale.

Now, I understand that you can transfer your saves from one version of the game - the one from EA Origin, for example - to the GOG version. But I wanted some clarification on things before I got to work on that. Those things are:

1 - Does every single bit of save data transfer over? Your playthroughs, your achievements, the specializations you've unlocked for future playthroughs, the gear you've unlocked for future playthroughs, et cetera? Does anything not transfer over, or are there any complications gettin' it all to transfer?

2 - I'm aware you already have every bit of DLC with the GOG version, so is it safe to assume that there won't be any issues with missin' DLC from the transfer? I made sure to get every bit of DLC in the EA Origin version, and I'm paranoid about losin' stuff, if this post didn't make that obvious already.

3 - Can you do save file transfers from the GOG version of DRAGON AGE: ORIGINS to DRAGON AGE 2? Are there any complications with that, or does it work just as well as it would on EA Origin or anywhere else?

4 - Is there anything I actually need to do in order to transfer all this stuff from the EA Origin version to the GOG version, or will it just automatically take all my stuff from the EA Origin version into the GOG version? Any files or data that I need to move around, or will it just all be there when I get in the GOG version?

I've obviously never done any sorta transfer like this before, and I always worry about losin' or missin' stuff in games, so I wanted to make sure I don't screw things up for myself.
Any help on this subject would be appreciated. Thank you for your time.

1. AFAIK things like achievements and specialization unlocks are not stored in the saves (best illustration is how you can save, buy a book to unlock a specialization, then reload to before you bought the book and you keep the specialization unlocked anyway; likewise achievements like blight queller count slain darkspawn across all playthrough, so you can get it before your current character kills 1000 darkspawns). So I wouldn't assume that these things transfer between different installations of the game when you transfer a save; you'd have to transfer the settings too. (But see my answer to #4.)

2. I don't think so.

3. I don't have DA2, but logically it should work -- the save format presumably hasn't been changed, so DA2 should be able to read a DAO save just fine regardless of whether it comes from a GOG install, a Steam install, or an Origin install.

4. The game looks for saves and settings not in the installation directory like an old-fashioned DOS game, but in My Documents/Bioware/Dragon Age/. If you add mods, that will be where you put them, too. I think it's the same path regardless of installation type (Origin/Steam/GOG) so if you have several different installations of the game on the same computer they should all share the same saves and settings. Basically, just install the GOG version, start it, and look if you can load your existing saves right away, that should answer your questions.

Thanks, that pretty much covers everything I was lookin' for. I'll hopefully get around to installin' the GOG version soon, see if it's as easy as all that. The less work for my computer-illiterate mind, the better.