Re: Recovering Steam DA:O character on a new computer

@Conchobar1488 I believe that if you're running the game on Steam, any cloud saving would be done by Steam, not Origin (since you're not using it). 😉 If cloud saving isn't available for that game on Steam or you didn't have it activated, then of course you would only have your local saves, always a good idea to back them up if you're doing anything to your computer which could cause them to get lost. For more information about cloud saving on Steam, I suggest you contact Steam/Valve, not EA. 😉

The Dragon Age servers used to keep some track of your progress, such as achievements and your characters, they didn't actually store your saved games (again, that would be cloud saving). DA Origins (and possibly DA 2 as well) data stopped being uploaded to the servers quite some time ago, since the old Bioware social site (where all the information was kept) is on its way out. This won't make any real difference, it just means you won't have your unique character portraits and names when you create a world state in the Keep for DAI (decisions/progress was never uploaded to the Keep, you have to fill all that in yourself via the tapestry). 

Hope that clears things up. Unfortunately, if you don't have cloud saving for the game on Steam, the only way to get your saves back is to retrieve them from your old computer, if that's possible. For the game on Origin (or disk), the saves are found under <User> > Documents > Bioware > Dragon Age > Characters > <Character Name> > Saves. I'm not sure if the same is true of the Steam version, though I'd think so since you were able to load your saves when you switched versions.

OK, for some reason I thought you said you got a new laptop. This is why I shouldn't try to read when I'm sleepy. 😛 I... really can't be bothered trying to fix what I wrote. 

If you had to reinstall your games because you upgraded Windows or something, if you have a windows.old folder on your hard drive, you might find your old Documents folder in there (I haven't upgraded to Windows 10, I'm just going off what happened when I upgraded from XP > Vista and Vista > Windows 7). If you had to wipe your computer, I'm afraid your files are most likely lost, unless you had cloud saving enabled in Steam and didn't somehow write over your cloud saves with a blank save folder (not sure if that happens with Steam, but it's very easy to do with Origin).

Edit: And now I know why I thought it was a new computer, the thread title title. 😛