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wakkler
Hired Hero
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posted September 27, 2023 12:05 PM |
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Great work, can't wait to play with the new ruins town!
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joemomma
Tavern Dweller
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posted September 28, 2023 01:17 AM |
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congratulations are in order. *hands fiorin a cigar*
also, sweet update. can't wait to try your updated content out. 
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fiorin
Promising
Famous Hero
☠️
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posted November 15, 2023 06:11 AM |
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Edited by fiorin at 06:26, 15 Nov 2023.
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Once again here we are proudly to announce our newest version... Ruins v2
By Fiorin and Stefan Ciobanu (Star_mage)
The project started more than 5 years ago and right now we are moving to the next step, the full faction rework. The new lineup, new town screen, new heroes, new abilities... and a completely brand new lore to put Ruins in the proper historical place. Before starting to present the new features, I have to say this release is in a testing phase for further completion.
So, we have decided to move faster as possible with some models, and animations and leave some pending things aside to bring to you guys something cool as soon as possible. We will need a lot of help to test, balance, and implement things, but slowly we will succeed... again!
Town screen
We have moved the town towards some rocky thing.
Map Castle
Along the new town screen, all the map objects were remade. They are still in alpha, but for sure now will be more recognizable as a string faction.
Heroes
As the heroes, a lot of new faces come to tell their life history.
Lineup
We had a lot of changes in the lineup. Starting with the Wildmen as our brave little guys. The dangerous cockatrice sitting on the second step, then the tactical Huntsmen tracking his prey.
Tracker
For the fourth place, our wet horse with a new bright plant hair. Quickly on the fifth, our beloved Perytons. As the newest addition, the badass Wendigo lurks around.
Feral Wendigo
And as the big boss, the Colossus, with a new visual troubling around.
Most of the choices were carefully made to bring the nicest experience to our gaming sessions. There is a lot to tell, but I want to invite you guys for something else...
Our Manual... like in the 90s
Click in the image, or here
There are a lot of pages with all the initial information about Ruins, the history, maps, creatures, heroes... The manual is a work in progress with way more content for further updates.
Oh, how we can test the mod?
We will be updating the VCMI launcher this weekend, but if you guys want to give it a try before that... this is the current version available on my drive: download here the Ruins 2.0.0 alpha testing
A huge thanks to Star_mage for the awesome lore work, Firepaladin for help with scenes, and everyone who turns this huge effort a joyful hobby.
Lets keep working to make it better and better!
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fiorin
Promising
Famous Hero
☠️
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posted November 15, 2023 06:24 AM |
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It is important to say this is an alpha release, so our focus is testing and implementing all the pending features ASAP.
Here is our roadmap
Fix until VCMI launcher update
- Cockatrice portrait
- Cocaktrice move and attack animation
Short list
- Balance creature stats and abilities
- New Puzzle map
- New classes models
Medium term list
- Castle building rework (every town screen model will be reworked following the current visual, but with a clear result)a
- Colossus aura VCMI implementation
Long-term list
- Kelpie model rework
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zeryss
Promising
Famous Hero
http://i12.pixs.ru/storage/6/4
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posted November 15, 2023 09:32 AM |
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my congratulations for a wonderful job
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zeryss
Promising
Famous Hero
http://i12.pixs.ru/storage/6/4
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posted November 15, 2023 10:15 AM |
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Edited by zeryss at 10:16, 15 Nov 2023.
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When you assembled the def, you incorrectly indicated the color of the flag
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fiorin
Promising
Famous Hero
☠️
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posted November 15, 2023 01:30 PM |
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zeryss said:
my congratulations for a wonderful job
Thanks 
zeryss said:
When you assembled the def, you incorrectly indicated the color of the flag
I will check the def color tables. Thanks for pointing out. There some white pixels on the creatures as well. Should be same reason
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zeryss
Promising
Famous Hero
http://i12.pixs.ru/storage/6/4
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posted November 15, 2023 02:36 PM |
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fiorin said:
zeryss said:
my congratulations for a wonderful job
Thanks
zeryss said:
When you assembled the def, you incorrectly indicated the color of the flag
I will check the def color tables. Thanks for pointing out. There some white pixels on the creatures as well. Should be same reason
exactly
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FirePaladin
Legendary Hero
DoR Modder
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posted November 15, 2023 03:24 PM |
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I didn't know Star_Mage was Romanian, too (or maybe Moldovan?)!
I can't wait to check it out after work. It looks promising, that I can say, but I do acknowledge it's still WIP. And the manual might be one of the best pieces of fanmade H3 lore I've seen (even though the bar is not high, but still, it looks good).
____________
Enshackling time itself, heralds of the Ancients among their heat-depleted land.... Who could they be, who could rally the beings of the East and the North and control the mortals' fate?
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Star_mage
Hired Hero
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posted November 15, 2023 03:39 PM |
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Nope, i am from Bucharest.
It's my gift to Fiorin and to the community. Fiorin and I are actively working on improving it.
EDIT: FYI, I only created the texts. The manual visuals and layout are made by Fiorin.
Thank you so much for your appreciation. I knew that this work would count for a select few people. And it's enough for me.
I am working on the story for the campaign and, hopefully, the VCMI map editor will be stable enough to help me create it.
And, yes, the only other projects that i know of and are true to the original universe are HotA and Andruid's Forge campaign (and DoR's, but it is not release yet).
I apologize if I didn't mention other projects. Are there any other? Genuine question.
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FirePaladin
Legendary Hero
DoR Modder
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posted November 15, 2023 03:47 PM |
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I believe there were some others as well, but more obscure and smaller, and not focused on new game additions. And no, I can't recall any names yet, just some contributor names.
But yeah, I always appreciate good MM lore, the people who know it, as well as how to tie it in and write it are quite few.
____________
Enshackling time itself, heralds of the Ancients among their heat-depleted land.... Who could they be, who could rally the beings of the East and the North and control the mortals' fate?
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mitsche91
Hired Hero
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posted November 16, 2023 01:08 AM |
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First thank you for this update! I really like the new design and the added lore of the new Ruins town. I had a few minutes for testing the new version. It worked without problems so far and I'm looking forward to the final version.
There are some little things I noticed (Maybe they depend on some other mods I had enabled):
- a turquoise pixel above the blacksmith
- a few heroes start with Wildman and Wild Chief (maybe wanted?)
- Bellona starts with Colossus at first slot - so starting a game with 15 Colossus instead of 15 Wildman is quite easy 
And a question at the end: What function is exactly planned for the Siege junkyard? Or does it have an effect I haven't noticed?
Again, thanks for this amazing work!
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fiorin
Promising
Famous Hero
☠️
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posted November 16, 2023 02:24 PM |
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mitsche91 said:
First thank you for this update! I really like the new design and the added lore of the new Ruins town. I had a few minutes for testing the new version. It worked without problems so far and I'm looking forward to the final version.
There are some little things I noticed (Maybe they depend on some other mods I had enabled):
- a turquoise pixel above the blacksmith
- a few heroes start with Wildman and Wild Chief (maybe wanted?)
- Bellona starts with Colossus at first slot - so starting a game with 15 Colossus instead of 15 Wildman is quite easy
And a question at the end: What function is exactly planned for the Siege junkyard? Or does it have an effect I haven't noticed?
Again, thanks for this amazing work!
Thanks for your words.
About the issues:
- I will check the blacksmith .bmp to remove then. But just to inform, all the building will be reworked slowly with similar brand new models. What your thoughts on the blacksmith one?
- I will check, but should be only the ones 3 wildmen only.
- I added the Colossus in Bellona for testing the aura effect. Forgot to return, but I think is already fixed. Oh, the aura is not working yet. I will rethink the implementation.
- Sorry about that, I forgot to implement the Junkyard effect. I will on the next patch.
Thanks for all you inputs. All the critics and suggestions are welcome.
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Ancientdruids
Famous Hero
(Andruids for short)
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posted November 16, 2023 03:27 PM |
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Word about heroes' skills and specialties:
- As Birog starts with Air Magic skill, her specialty will become useless the moment she reaches advanced (not even expert) level. I don't think it would be too OP to just give her a normal +5% spell specialty.
- Gobni's Pathfinding specialty won't do anything. Pathfinding at expert level nullifies all penalties to movement on non-native terrains. Additional percentage to that won't give e.g. additional movement points. Also, his bio sounds like he should be a Cockatrice specialist.
- Horae has the same problem as Birog. Starting will Earth Magic will negate his specialty as soon as he reaches higher level of the skill. I'm not sure what I can advise here.
- Huldra doesn't start with Air Magic, so it's slightly different. But there's already +5% Hipnosis specialist in the game.
- Kali seemingly has the same problem, but it might be OK, because starting with 5th level spell seems like a specialty in itself. I'd still think about that, because players might feel cheated.
- Thar, same situation.
- Woden's specialty is Interference but he starts with Resistance skill. Does HotA port replaces Resistance with Interference in VCMI? If so, then it's OK.
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fiorin
Promising
Famous Hero
☠️
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posted November 16, 2023 04:06 PM |
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Ancientdruids said:
Word about heroes' skills and specialties:
- As Birog starts with Air Magic skill, her specialty will become useless the moment she reaches advanced (not even expert) level. I don't think it would be too OP to just give her a normal +5% spell specialty.
- Gobni's Pathfinding specialty won't do anything. Pathfinding at expert level nullifies all penalties to movement on non-native terrains. Additional percentage to that won't give e.g. additional movement points. Also, his bio sounds like he should be a Cockatrice specialist.
- Horae has the same problem as Birog. Starting will Earth Magic will negate his specialty as soon as he reaches higher level of the skill. I'm not sure what I can advise here.
- Huldra doesn't start with Air Magic, so it's slightly different. But there's already +5% Hipnosis specialist in the game.
- Kali seemingly has the same problem, but it might be OK, because starting with 5th level spell seems like a specialty in itself. I'd still think about that, because players might feel cheated.
- Thar, same situation.
- Woden's specialty is Interference but he starts with Resistance skill. Does HotA port replaces Resistance with Interference in VCMI? If so, then it's OK.
Real goo considerations Andruids.
- Birog was dumped from the initial release because was hard to fit in the lore. She will be moved to an extesion outside this mod.
- Gobni was discussed to be a cockatrice expert one, we can change that for sure
- Horae could have his earth magic start for something like logistics/pathfinding, based on his structural concerns.
- Huldra has hipnosis based on the myth background, but we could rethink that as a seduction spell instead.
- Kali we have to test.
- Thar, we will reavaluate then for something related to the colossus, or even other earth magic.
- Woden has no interefence as secondary skill just for the alpha tests, but he will.
In fact, Neit was supposed to have your Initiative as first secondary, but I have removed only for the alpha as well to have no further dependencies. But we will keep as Initiative.
Thanks for all inputs
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FirePaladin
Legendary Hero
DoR Modder
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posted November 16, 2023 07:06 PM |
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One thing I'd like to point out is that in the vanilla game, only heroes from the Conflux, the elemental town, start with elemental magic skills (of course, there are exceptions like Adrienne, but she is a RPG hero). I am not saying you should abstain from having your heroes start with any of those skills, of course, just bringing up the fact that by design, NWC considered that only Conflux heroes should start with elemental magic school skills, due to the town's elemental nature. A related fun fact, but "racial/class/town skills" do actually kinda exist in the vanilla game: the way it was thought was like so:
As far as Might races go:
Humans: Leadership (Castle, Rampart, Dungeon) - oratory etc.
Dwarves: Resistance - dwarves often resist magic, even in DnD
Elves: Archery - the classic elven ranger (DnD)/archer
Djinns: Scholar - they are long-lived? H4 did talk about Djinns being able to learn a lot in their lives if I'm not wrong; perhaps this is another DnD thing
Tower Humans: Mysticism
Troglodytes: Offense
Minotaurs: Tactics - the elaborate labyrinth tropes and so on
Earth & Water elementals: Tactics
Fire & Air elementals: Offense
Tower humans are a bit of a special case, since Tower is supposed to break things up a bit, and the Alchemist is meant to be between a Might and Magic class. This is really important in the context of the next fact: magic classes do not respect this "racial skill" design. Instead, they simply have higher odds of learning a certain "class skill" (at least in NWC's own philosophy).
The "class skills" are (and in case the class is Might, it starts with the skill):
Cleric: First Aid - priests as healers, also DnD
Druid: Luck - consistent with other nature portrayals in NWC games
Wizard: Intelligence - Knowledge
Demoniac - Logistics? But this is a very special case, since it is the only case in which a Might class employs having the highest odds to learn a particular skill, rather than starting with it. Otherwise, it would be a jack-of-all trades, which does seem to be the case if you look at the skill odds and the design as a whole.
Heretic: Mysticism - The more esoteric sounding magic skill in H3
Warlock: Sorcery - Power
Beastmaster: Armorer - Defensive town
Witch: Eagle Eye - The closest skill to witchcraft, but it also fairly ambiguous
Elementalists: Everything - Due to the whole elemental theme)
And then there are also "town skills".
Necropolis: Necromancy - Happy skellies
Stronghold: Offense (Might heroes start with it, some of the Magic heroes have to learn it, with its odds being very high) - again, the purely offensive town
Edit: The priority of what skills the hero gets is town > class > race. Thus, with neither Castle nor Knight having a skill of its own, the Racial skill is used, and in this case Leadership for the Human heroes.
One more thing to bring up is that Might heroes have an odd of 1 and/or 0 for at least one magic school skill, except for Planeswalkers (again, the elementalism).
So yeah, H3 does in fact have some sort of race-class-town skill system, it's just not so obvious at a first glance, and I have the feeling that NWC did consider it an important and perhaps even visible design point, but did not anticipate that it would not be so obvious to the players after all. Thus I cannot really blame HotA for not respecting this design, either (at least in NWC's design, Cove's heroes would have most likely had Navigation as a learnable (or starting, for Might) class skill in that case, simply for thematic reasons, which were also prevalent in NWC's design).
Otherwise, starting with a magic school, be it even a specialty, has its own merits, too: the hero could very well be good both because that school is guaranteed, and because of the early tempo attained by starting with the magic skill. In case such a magic skill specialty boosts the effectiveness of a magic school by one level (eg. advanced = expert), then that can also be quite good on smaller, shorter maps, where you won't necessarily be able to max out the magic skill, could use its maxed level earlier (mass slow etc.), and could learn another skill instead of maxing the magic school.
Edit 2: If you wish to use NWC's design, I'd personally suggest Pathfinding as a class or town skill: tribespeople knowing the lands, having a deep connection to it etc. But again, just to be clear, I'm not forcing this onto anyone, you can feel free to ignore this design. HotA did and it's still a great mod, and almost nobody notices this philosophy.
____________
Enshackling time itself, heralds of the Ancients among their heat-depleted land.... Who could they be, who could rally the beings of the East and the North and control the mortals' fate?
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Ancientdruids
Famous Hero
(Andruids for short)
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posted November 17, 2023 12:16 AM |
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FirePaladin said:
One thing I'd like to point out...
Wow, I think I might even learn something. Just three things that I'd like to draw attention to:
1) What Air Elementals?
2) You could also add that Estates is Earth Elementals' racial skill.
3) The Leadership being Human trait... Going there seems a bit far-fetched to me. It's definitely Knights' and Overlords' promoted skill, and the rest of Might-aligned humans don't have it (neither in Tower, Inferno, Necropolis*, Stronghold nor Fortress**). And Mephala is a former Knight Erathian Soldier, so that leaves Ryland as sort of an exception. Just my impression.
(*That would be a riot.
**Drakon has Leadership and he's a Gnoll.)
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FirePaladin
Legendary Hero
DoR Modder
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posted November 17, 2023 12:45 AM |
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1. My bad, it's Psychic Elementals.
2. Huh, interesting. And then both Pasis and Ignissa share the same skillset as well. Perhaps just Conflux going by its own rules, as usual.
3. As far as Drakon goes, virtually any skill can be a second skill. But in all cases when the first starting skill is not overwritten by a class or town skill (or are Alchemists), humans have Leadership. In Rampart, Ryland, Mephala and Gelu all have Leadership. Of course, Gelu is a campaign hero, but campaign heroes do not really contradict starting skill rules/trends either (with the exception of Adrienne, and debatably Mutare - however, the latter becomes a dragon). Gelu even has both Leadership and Archery, to signify that he is half-human, half-elf. Of course, perhaps they'd be exceptions related to Erathia, but I don't really see why Overlord humans would have Leadership specifically, either, if Leadership is not the humans' default skill when there is no other skill to fallback to. Not only, but another half-human, Xeron, also has Leadership, which, while not necessarily being conclusive, is just another hint at the same thing.
However, this does not mean that it would be absolutely impossible for someone who wants to respect NWC's general skillset design to give humans a different main skill in a new faction, akin to the Alchemist's case. Humans especially are meant to be fairly flexible, and I can imagine NWC reusing the same oddity for humans, if needed for thematic reasons.
____________
Enshackling time itself, heralds of the Ancients among their heat-depleted land.... Who could they be, who could rally the beings of the East and the North and control the mortals' fate?
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fiorin
Promising
Famous Hero
☠️
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posted November 18, 2023 03:44 AM |
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Edited by fiorin at 05:11, 18 Nov 2023.
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FirePaladin said:
One thing ...
I learned a lot about the original the original design decisions, and Hota ones. Thanks for that.
So I revised all the secondary skills, and initial magic school and that is the newly established one, based on roles/history, not exactly town or race.
Maybe we could have a new secondary skill for those light-aligned. Let me think about it.
I was to use Andruids initiative for Neit, and Hota Interference on Woden
Also... A lot of repaint is in progress
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Ancientdruids
Famous Hero
(Andruids for short)
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posted November 18, 2023 04:46 AM |
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Seems like I'm not the only one that learned a thing or two then ^^
But there's another point I gotta raise that FirePaladin will definitely agree with. Except Necromancers, every Magic hero has Wisdom as a secondary skill.
One or two heroes who break the mold would be OK in my book, but a mishmash of skills that replace Wisdom seems absolutely no good. Other than going against NWC philosophy, you deprive your magic heroes higher level spells. You practically gimp them.
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This thread is pages long: 
