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Vanilla Surprise for Warband 1.174

This is my first mod! I've played it to death and then some, so here is a list of what to expect.

Important: This Is Not Multiplayer Friendly

Improved facial models. Girls look Pretty, guys look Handsome; about as much as can be expected from this unique engine. Your companions won't make you wince anymore when they place their face on your screen. Because the women use a different model structure, they only have three sliders upon creation. Play with the slider some if you make a female character. Marriage to an NPC for power and influence doesn't sound so bad anymore, does it?

Honor, Loyalty, Renown, Gold and Experience have been adjusted in a unique manner. Save a city from bandits? They're going to love you properly for saving lives. Train villagers to fight? They will appreciate you more than ever.

Spend 1000 hard earned coins to buy everyone in the city a beer? The city will show proper gratitude. In other words, the quests are truly worth doing, but if you fail any of them, it's going to hurt in the happy NPC department.

Hiring Mercenaries in city Taverns is more about picking up entire squads instead of a handful of riff-raff. Their rate of pay is lowered to compensate, but if you're still too stretched on gold, hiring small amounts of peasants in the villages is a much cheaper avenue. Geared and experienced fighters will always cost more than somebody who dropped out of farming school taught by cross-eyed Swadian hillbillies, if you know what I mean.

Your troops are not slobs that love overeating because the world may end tomorrow. Food goes farther than before.

Tournaments are now worth doing. Volunteer to bash people unconscious and to get bashed in return, winning the final purse is an easy way to earn gold and early levels for skill building. If you win the Tournament, you just proved to the whole city you can turn them inside out with your little finger. They will respect you properly as well.

Please note that while building an army may be easier, some of the bad guys out there are also higher in number to give you a good fight. They aren't too stupid though. Thirty or so screaming rock throwers see twenty-five well armed fighters coming their way, chances are they're going to run like chicken noodle soup. You can believe me when I say chicken noodle soup is very runny.

The better type of 'Surprise' in this mod has an RNG element to it. You may see it upon your first store visit to get weapons. You may not see it for a long time. Feel free to make new games until you do find one before extensive playing, by checking the Arms Dealer in the city you spawned in. I did that a few times myself because I didn't feel like finding which city has it for sale, as I've done so many times on other campaigns. What's this really all about? You'll know it when you see it. It'll have something like 'flaming sword' or some such in its description. (Yes, your companions can use them if you find more than one, which is possible! See Screenshots above!)

Your companions are actually companions, not your psych patients who need constant personal coddling over how they feel about your actions, or the actions of your other companions. They follow your orders and feel good about it. Or else.

I own three Personal Computers from three different companies, two medium end and one high end gaming system, and this mod has never crashed on me on either of them. While this doesn't mean it won't crash on your system, if it does, I probably won't have the time to find a fix for it. This mod is offered from the realms of long time pure enjoyment, and if it doesn't work out, then unsubscribe. It took me a long time to develop this into a working mod. A texture here, item there, re-coded to work properly with 1.174 and some items remastered just a touch or two, this was not assembled overnight. (Not easy to figure out!)

Have fun and please don't forget to rate!


UPDATE: 11/02/2021 - As much as I love this game, I can no longer devote time to fixing the code on this mod. It's not about liking or disliking. In March of 2021 I suffered a stroke, then an infection that went septic and nearly killed me. Instead, it killed my kidneys and I'm now on dialysis three times a week, and it wears me out to the bone. So I must stop here and let this mod live as is. I will not remove it, but it will also no longer be updated or worked upon. Thank you everyone for giving this mod a try.