World of Vasnar, the good, the bad, and the ugly. -a review

[Rhoetus]

World of Vasnar is a dark (and light) mod, set in a fictional world in the equivalent to the early 1700s. (at a guess)
The major factions are humans and vampires.

The Good:
It is gorgeous. For a Warband mod, it gets the most out of the graphics. The armor land uniforms look good with a nice combination of historical and ...let's call it "cinematic" styles.

It has quests that make exploring the map a lot more interesting than other mods.

Vampires, werewolves, necromancers, mad scientists, demons, witches, the holy Inquisition, and hunters of all stripes fight across the map.

The Bad:
Gorgeous they may be, but all the women are basically clones with different hair.

The quests are occasionally bugged. *will go into later

There is so much diversity that your computer may occasionally decide to stop working. *recommendations for ameliorating that later

Kingdoms don't die. Even if you conquer every fief, a kingdom won't die, and you'll have injured npcs with no armies raiding your villages.

The Ugly:
150 is the top number for battles, which makes army on army fights a very long affair.
(I imagine this is to limit the memory issues, but it's still ugly)

Marriage is bugged. You can court a likely lass, and her father will agree to marry her off, but I've yet to have him actually have the wedding.
That may seem minor, but if you are running your own kingdom, then you can only give away fiefs when you capture them.
Also, that means that most of their generals, especially the ones with good traits, will be locked off from recruitment.

Recommendation?
Absolutely. The pros outweigh the cons. It is a fun mod in an exciting world, different from most other mods.

*So, I recommend playing a bugged mod, I might as well tell you my little hints for getting the most out of it.

1 save outside of cities. Apparently that is the most stable method of saving.
2 save and exit, then restart after a few battles, so as to not tax your memory.
3 limit the variety of troops you take into battle. As fun as it is to make a motley crew of witchhunters, mercenaries, peasants, and griffin riders... that's too much textures for the system. Nothing worse than fighting a 700 on 500 battle over multiple iterations, only for your screen to go blue when you've worn them down to 32 left.

4 Don't ask Reyna of the Clocktower to tell you about herself. you'll go into an endless loop that you can't exit.
5 Likewise, the witches cave mission ends with an endless loop as well.
6 in fact, save before you do anything, just in case.
7 save early, save often.
8 save on multiple spots
9 did I mention saving? Save the game.
10 have cheats enabled, as sometimes enemies in sieges spawn inside inaccessible areas.

TO be fair, 6-10 should be done for any mod, not just World of Vasnar.

Lastly, a thank you to Ryndill Blackfire for making this mod. I've enjoyed it a lot.

[Wizard of Woz]

As far as the Marriage problem. You do t need a wife for that role, you can use a companion, unless this mod is different than almost every other mod.

[kgw145]

Did you try altering the data sheet for max unit on field? (The file on the M&B Document folder or something.)

Usually all mods/native will have low maximum, but you can actually tweak the number up by a ton on all M&B gameplays.

[Rhoetus]

Originally posted by Wizard of Woz:

As far as the Marriage problem. You do t need a wife for that role, you can use a companion, unless this mod is different than almost every other mod.

Looks like I'll be asking my generic official to retire early in a few minutes to find out.

[Rhoetus]

Originally posted by kgw145:

Did you try altering the data sheet for max unit on field? (The file on the M&B Document folder or something.)

Usually all mods/native will have low maximum, but you can actually tweak the number up by a ton on all M&B gameplays.

I will look for that. Most mods go to 300, some go way beyond, but that's always risky.

[ricklong]

Just checking - you remembered to make somebody else marshal, right? Can't get married while you are marshal.

[Rhoetus]

Originally posted by ricklong:

Just checking - you remembered to make somebody else marshal, right? Can't get married while you are marshal.

Wait, what?
I have 2921 hours into this game and I have never had that issue before. Well, that's on my new to-do list.

[Rhoetus]

So, "rgl_config" has a battle size integer, and going from 1.ooo to 2.ooo did the trick.
Really makes the Flame Eruption spell super OP... not that I'm above that sort of thing.

Also, yep, a companion minister fixed the giving fiefs issue...

*Sigh* Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

[ricklong]

When a king appoints you marshal, he'll remind you that you can't get married while marshal, but when your the monarch, there's nobody to remind you of it. To have a feast, I assign it to nobody otherwise they usually call up a campaign before most lords get to my feast.

[Ryndill Blackfyre]

Hello, mod author here. Thank you for your review, much appreciated.

Glad you liked the mod, I just wanted to comment on a couple on the issues you encountered:
-Women all having similar faces is sadly something a bit too late to fix, and the reason why cannot tweak the face structure is because the custom head I'm using seems to melt if you change the sliders;
-Reyna and the witches bug I was sure I had fixed in a patch, but I'll have to look again;
-Sieges will probably be a longstanding problem as everytime I think I fixed them, something new pops up.
-As you discovered, the mod variety makes the game limited memory not feel good, so while your solutions help mitigate a bit the problem, I strongly suggest the mod be played through WSE 2 as it helps a ton with stability, as well as adding some useful features such as expanded battlesize. Nowdays the mod is tested only on WSE2 and not vanilla warband anymore.

[Siegfried of the Flaming Rose]

Thank's for your feedback. As Ryndill correctly said, playing with WSE2 will fix most of your CTD's/memory problems and it'll also permit you to have an included battlesize option up to 1230.