I created a set of walk-throughs for my daughter, who has never played Warband. I mention it this way because some people claimed it was obvious and why should they read something they already knew from countless mods? Answer: it depends. Much of the mod is different than you expect, and without knowing what to do you WILL be frustrated, at first. Also sometimes you might learn something unexpected. These were created long before bringing this to Steam.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1QVYQddPXdg97_kOJMWLS2QcwA6N7LBg6/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110457304162204302554&rtpof=true&sd=true

Book 1 - Creating a character. Really simple stuff, you could skip THIS if you want.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1KvJ-2co9qS5gHsQ-cZD8sXw_XqSVPRcW/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110457304162204302554&rtpof=true&sd=true

Book 2 - tuning your character, how to make money trading, examining troops by troop viewer, preserving food, boosting honor, first crafting, epidemics, tracking, deciding how to spend skill points, becoming a vassal as a woman. 30 slides.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1fBAsDwJNsSH0FpaOcOxjYOZO87bpOQvD/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110457304162204302554&rtpof=true&sd=true

Book 3 - Magic, Cleric, races, prejudice, how to compile and what to install to do so. Using a ship, how to make money as an Orc, viewing troop trees, tweaking the mod for a cheap (non-gamer) laptop. 27 slides.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oW9SIbTAnlYHtJbXCaYDn14zxFrdnHOI/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110457304162204302554&rtpof=true&sd=true

Book 4 - Spouses,wages and garrisons, using a constable, order of battle at a siege and a little thought as to best order for troops in a party, how to use the caravan recruiting for troops (this is different than Diplomacy recruiter), managing storage of items in Diplomacy, managing towns, Necromancer guide, formations and battle presentation (backspace key), auto-resurrection tips, seeing debug messages and cheat mode levels. (Spell trace shown). 26 slides.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1lLUu5j_Y1l4h5IQQovrd3JypBp1f6B6v/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110457304162204302554&rtpof=true&sd=true

Book 5 - optional tasks: set up WSE2, party export/import tool in game.
This export/import has been greatly expanded since making this guide.

I will update the guide in the next week but leaving this here to keep the correct sequence of posts. Currently 16 slides but will grow shortly.

so called Programmer's companion spreadsheet used purely as documentation:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zXHVAWOwAf9lKa_xlUSLWLWImrulPrSl/edit?gid=839643742#gid=839643742

First sheet compares line count Native vs Guspav's August 2017 build vs last viable 2018 build from me, which was exactly the base for Phantasy Calradia 2024.

Second sheet is all crafting recipes that can be built by players.
After that each module at the source has an overview. Battles are at Mission_templates.
Four ways inn merchant. All spells, at a glance, and all Cleric prayers/paladin auras.

I will make a separate slideshow with an annotated battle, showing what is happening at the source as a separate link.

Sample savegame: Harkus, a Necromancer/Mage, imported 600 day save from a B-series game earlier this summer, and now day 76 in C series. Notice especially how companions are assigned stats, the hand crafted gear issued to companions, and how some companions were upgraded in class. No cheats were used and only using mod features available to players. Notice the use of different troops to boost magic, clerics, and still have a core of undead. Also notice troop order of battle at the player party, at garrisons. Spouse as a companion example shown.

Your savegames are at c:\Documents\Mount&Blade Warband Savegames\Phantasy Calradia (Steam Workshop) sg08.sav is the bottom right corner save, of the 9 possible save as slots in Warband.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YxzzQVtdQp45DnWCPVksxmaHdPun9lE_/view?usp=sharing

Whose mod is this, anyway? Answer: It's complicated.
Depending on where you look and how you focus, the "best" answer is different.
I'll put it this way: there is the "seen" and the "unseen".

At the surface, the "seen", are factions, races, towns, names, dialogs, graphics/textures, scenes, and game lore. Those are Guspav's. Guspav made the first working edition of this mod, and it was genius. It also had a number of weaknesses in a technical sense, and could not run more than about 60 to 100 agents per side in a battle without very noticeable lag showing. Some parts crashed, even more than this edition. But overall he made great work. The dialogs at the four ways inn are completely his, to show an example of his wit and charm.

The "unseen" is the layer where Warband scripting actually gets things done. This is completely rewritten, and for the most part I added or remade most of it. It runs about 450% more efficiently now, at least. Some of it is from third party add-ins, such as formations or diplomacy. Diplomacy needed a month to merge, with around 150,000 lines to hand adjust. It is not something just a simple cut and paste solves. But more than that, nearly every script in battle has evolved, and some of it is unique to the mods I have had a hand in.

I'll place a slideshow here in the next days showing just how different that was. Consider this - the code here was designed to support not one mod but at least 5. The top layer can be changed very quickly, but I wanted the low level to be strongly tested.

It is exactly this "layered" aspect of modding that keeps me from declaring the mod as an "Open source" rather than "Limited source" project. LSP is precisely because I don't mind giving away the code I wrote, but the concept of the game as presented is Guspav's top layer. So I would prefer to kibbutz with modders that would like to move the scripting ENGINE to their mods but plan a different, unique top layer.

I have variously considered modding a 5 magics (4 elements + dark magic) mod, a Dune mod, something like Avatar, something like Wheel of Time, something like Traveller the Sci-0Fi RPG... and actually there are layers in this mod that completely enable each of those as a lesser task. I do lack any graphics whatsoever, but the SCRIPTING is ready. Time will tell how much ever gets finished. I can envision a series of maps, not just one, in layers. I can envision a radical overhaul of how coop works. I just want clarity while I experiment. Opening my home "studio" to a public is a two edged sword. I get free energy from positive vibes, but a hostile public becomes an energy vampire draining all ability. In some ways 50 users were easier than 50,000. But I confess I like steam in these last 2 weeks. Easier to update, and less frustration for both you and for me. Win/win.

I expect at least another 1000 days of life, but less than 5000. It's difficult to know how wisely those remaining days will be spent. Or even if I can still function as a modder. 2018 I lost my abilities from stress. We'll see. I feel optimistic today.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z5sSWDwV-Zjux90VLGKb8zAwq2qLw0Ze/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=110457304162204302554&rtpof=true&sd=true

Guspav's original source "programming companion" spreadsheet (which I made later), which I created to summarize layout of module_mission templates and others. For mission templates a side by side comparison of current Phantasy Caladia 2024 usage is shown, as I earlier guesstimated overall bandwidth to be about 1/4.5 in the remake as from the original. I wanted to show how that happened. There is yet more that changed under the hood but this gives an idea of how it was changed, sometimes with an explanation as to why that matters going forward.

Looking again at Guspav's code I see quite a bit he wrote uniquely, and except for a few easily fixed changes he was very close to having a perfect mod, for his time. It lacked diplomacy, formations, anything calling modmerger, and still crashed from glitches with spells looping infinitely and too many procs chained from the same event, but if you credit that he pioneered all of the systems needed then really the genius stands out.

Oh! i forgot to post the combined patch log. It is buried under the mod, but who has time to go dig for buried treasure? It's in the Player Handbook folder under the mod. Here's a link directly: (37 pages of text!)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j05KVSeLmc5T_wArfaRLNczGI6HM9O1X/view?usp=sharing

Today I noticed the companions added by Guspav had incomplete likes and dislikes, whcih need sorting before I can fix the text strings forming the companion dialogs for personality clashes. The starting towns did not match factions, nor the towns with contacts, and the starting faction was often blank. Where comments existed at the script setting up companions "initialize_npcs" these were often wrong. So phase I was finding what the likes and dislikes were right now, and fixing annotations at the source so whatever dialogs are changed make some sense, game wise. There are currently quite a few blanks:

Likes Dislikes Kingsupport opponent
#npc1 = Borcha Marnid Deshavi, Klethi Lezalit
#npc2 = Marnid Borcha Alayen, Baheshtur Klethi
#npc3 = Ymira Alayen Artimenner, Matheld Baheshtur
#npc4 = Rolf Baheshtur Bunduk, Deshavi Firentis
#npc5 = Baheshtur Rolf Marnid, Katrin Firentis
#npc6 = Firentis Jeremus Katrin, Nizar Matheld
#npc7 = Deshavi Klethi Borcha, Rolf Ymira
#npc8 = Matheld Nizar Jeremus, Ymira Marnid
#npc9 = Alayen Ymira Nizar, Marnid Borcha
#npc10 = Bunduk Katrin Rolf, Lezalet Nizar
#npc11 = Katrin Bunduk Firentis, Baheshtur Artimenner
#npc12 = Jeremus Firentis Matheld, Artimenner Nizar
#npc13 = Nizar Matheld Alayen, Firentis Bunduk
#npc14 = Lezalit Artimenner Ymira, Bunduk Katrin
#npc15 = Artimenner Lezalit Klethi, Jeremus Rolf
#npc16 = Klethi Deshavi Artimenner, Borcha Jeremus
#npc17 = Aedan ?
#npc18 = Raesrira Aedan
#npc19 = Xanaver Alithrya
#npc20 = Alithrya Xanever Frudak, Quionna
#npc21 = Fruorin
#npc22 = Maraga
#npc23 = Frudak
#npc24 = Unaella
#npc25 = Traril
#npc26 = Quionna
#npc27 = Kevtil
#npc28 = Cortranna
#npc29 = Endel
#npc30 = Umie
#npc31 = Berembert
#npc32 = Ninnock
#npc33 = Padubast
#npc34 = Molocauduhm Rolf Jeremus, Kevtil Firentis

I hope it doesn't sound like blowing my own horn, but if you find the mod hard to get into, why not google ReformistTM Phantasy Calradia and look at both his 2024 let's play series and the 2018 version(s). He must have I don't know, a few dozen Youtube videos showing how to play, how to use spells, be a necro, be a paladin, craft, sieges, and so on. 2018 was an era of many changes and quite a few glitches; the version you have now is a little cleaner but still needs another hmm 2 weeks to clean up.

Links are scary, but try Googling let's play Phantasy Calradia and skip anything created before 2018, as the previous Phantasy is written considerably differently underneath (or not, the top layer stayed mostly intact during the hand-off in second half 2017). Some other play throughs exist as well, VMP or Vamp comes to mind. There were at least 50 when I looked. At one time the mod had 50K + downloads, but I am a contentious caretaker and managed to drive them away :)