Did I download the 'wrong' artificer mod?

[Kreddi]

With all due respect to the people working on the Artificer mod uploaded to the official mod service; it's just not that good.
I went looking on Nexus Mods instead and it looks like there's a 'better' artificer mod there. It has flintlock weapons, less grammatical errors in the descriptions and more thorough descriptors.
So I'm just wondering which of the versions you guys would say is the better one.

[Raz]

I haven't tried the one that's hosted on both Nexus and Mod Manager. The one only on Nexus has been around since 2023 so they've had the time to fix things vs the one that's on Mod Manager just came out tail end of last year.

[seeker1]

So, here's the deal. I agree with you overall the Nexus Artificer is better. That version of the class includes gear for the class and firearms. Plus besides being able to buy flintlocks from merchants, it can make its own arcane cannon and use that. The mod.io Artificer (Artillerist) has no gear, includes no firearms, and can't even make its own arcane cannon.

The only hitch for me is the older Nexus Artificer relies on 5E Spells, whereas I (and lots of other folks) have moved on to using Mystra's spells. The mod.io Artificer integrates with those instead.

Yeah, I have noticed all the other issues with the mod.io version. The typos, the bugs, the weird progression system (the author has you picking proficiency with different individual weapons as you level up -- pointless as you can get ALL of them with Martial Weapons proficiency), the fact that it only is supposed to level to 12 yet weirdly lets you level to 17 or so when you run out of infusions (LOL), it's poorly documented.

Oh and the alchemist subclass can make bombs, which is better than the Nexus version, which can't, BUT it does so randomly, and it's weird, I think the small and large bombs are reversed, because the large bombs do less damage and have a smaller AoE? (LOL) I haven't tried the Battle Smith but apparently your mecha summon is jank, too.

I wouldn't be using it at all, if not for this glorious fella named Skirbie, who's independently made gear and an arcane cannon and pistol for it. And that it integrates with the newer spell mods. But it has lots of issues, and I've mentioned them all on the author's forums, though they haven't done any fixes or updates in a long time.