Probably about a week now

Yeah, so the last of the area design for this mod is finished, and I also took the liberty of designing five new troll blueprints to spice things up. Took a while to test them out, though, as several of them don't die from fire and acid, but other types of damage, as well as a few other scripts for them. After it's all set to go, I have one side project for my bud Anduraga, and I might actually get a chance to play MotB while the testing is happening.

Either I'm really disciplined at holding off, or I'm terrible at time management. Or some combination of the two.

But, here's 6 new screens for you to take a gander at whilst I whittle away at the last of the work that needs to be done, such as the plot events and encounters. Then I need to balance it against the alternate path in terms of XP and loot (I wasn't an idiot this time around a wrote down all that information as opposed to just winging it). But it might be done by this weekend if I stay on my hustle.

Speaking of whittle, has anyone ever done that before? It's been probably a decade since I last heard that word spoken aloud, and technically since I wrote it (twice) that doesn't count. Probably wouldn't know what that is unless you were either a boyscout or have camped before, so here's a rundown: Basically, you grab a piece of wood and a knife, then you carve the wood into something for hours. Usually you end up with a smaller piece of wood if you lack the skill, or just a branch with some bark missing if you lack the patience.

I suppose the last time I heard that word was when I saw the movie "Son in Law" featuring Paulie Shore, which was incidentally probably the last time I ever heard the words Paulie Shore. But anyway, there was a scene where he sees the old, grumpy, and presumably racist homophobe, grandpa whittling a stick, and I believe he uses the word "whittle" when describing to Paulie Shore who minces up to the grandpa asking what he's doing with his ass cheeks hanging out of his pants like he thinks he's Prince.

Yeah but, I don't know, kind of an odd word.

Still moving along, here's some community mods and reasons why you should play them from a builder's perspective:

Night Howls in Nestlehaven

I'm going to be honest here: If you give me a choice between a pure exploration mod and a linear story mod, I'll choose the linear story. But if you're into open exploration, this is the joint you need to play. I didn't finish this because of time constraints and focusing on building over playing, but with this there's so much to do just poking around in the various houses and seeing some oddball stuff that I thought it was really fun. I'll be picking this up again soon because word on the street is the sequel is going to be dope.

Also, throw in cutscenes here, those were also really well done.

Tragedy in Tragidor

I know you all probably already played this, but this is a prime example of how a technically simple mod can convey a great story. The dialogue choices are simple and almost universally superficial in terms of consequence, there's no custom special script systems, etc. But the writing really carries this whole thing onto another level. I don't know, I thought it was immersive and memorable, and off of memory when I cracked it open in the toolset, I think there was very little scripting in there. That's mostly highlighting what you can do with what Obsidian gave you, which is ultimately make a great mod.

Moonshadows

This is basically, to me, a breakdown of how to do sidequests. Hugie really did a good job with that, I think that's the highlight of the mod. Again, didn't finish this one because of the summon/strip buffs/die bug in the later parts (which I've read was since fixed and I'll have to play it again), but the point here most of the mod is doing sidequests in the parts I played. Thing is though, they weren't the typical "go here, kill that, and I'll pay you" format. The setting and narrative, and the details especially, was enough where you probably could have built another mod around each one. That was the most exceptional part of this mod, and you've got to give dude props there.

Tomoachan

Little sidebar here: in the classic SNES game Lufia II there was this dungeon mini-game where you start from level 1 and move through 100 floors to the end, which obviously takes a long time and you're forced to really manage resources and make smart tactical decisions...it was one of my favorite things in RPG history, an actual challenge.

That's what I liked about this, not that it was gruesomely challenging in comparison to the Lufia II dungeon, but that you're on a no resting policy for most of the dungeon and hit with status afflictions, resource management, and tactical decisions to protect your potentially limited and draining resources. This aspect of D&D, and really RPGs in general, is too often ignored. Making the wizard with low strength having to ditch loot because you don't know where the next shop is, make hard decisions about where to use that last potion of restoration, skipping killing the vampires because of the threat of level drain, do I use my spell on this guy or save it in case something worse is around the corner, that kind of stuff is all an aspect of what can happen in a dungeon, but with unlimited resting abound and clearing buffs when you die...whatever. Thankfully, from what I've seen of MotB when a companion is killed and comes back, the status afflictions stick around! Awesome!

Anyway, good job in that regard. That should be the kind of stuff dungeon design uses over wading through hordes of enemies (though that's fine too, just make them a horde of wights with level drain!)

Well, that's about all I got for now. Enough to keep ya thinking anyway.

Don't forget the contest, and if you want in on the beta test come on and holla at me.

Peace!