[TLD] Speak "Friend" and Enter | Useful Information on The Last Days

Hi all,

I have been quite active here in /r/mountandblade and have seen great posts by users that really make the mod shine. I've also seen a few posts made by players who have not played the game since it was ported to Warband (2014).

There has been a lot of changes since, I would like to take this time to lay out some general and some not-so-apparent information about The Last Days (TLD) mod for Warband / M&B 1.011.

So let's get started!

Admin Stuff:

• TLD has been ported to Warband and is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, and NVIDIA Shield. Thanks to /u/swyter for making all of this happen!
• TLD has been translated to more than 10 languages (95%+). Want to contribute? Go here: Transifex.
• TLD as a concept is 10 years old! Started back in 2007 (I think) by AW, then continued on to what people know as 3.3.
• TLD is on Steam Workshop! We think this is the most stable version of the mod, and we push new stable builds to Steam almost every month. You can see our changelog here: Changelog on Steam
• TLD can be downloaded manually. Go to tldmod.github.io for the installation process.
• TLD can be downloaded from ModDB, but I highly suggest patching that version with the latest Nightly Build, which can be seen in tldmod.github.io.
• We are no longer as active as we used to be on ModDB, mostly because we are active on other forums such as our offical TW forum thread, Steam Workshop, and reddit.
• Our official channels are the TW Forums and Steam Workshop. I am active on Reddit, just give me a shout-out.
• You can see our active development on Trello
• TLD is Open Source (except for the music)! You can download our source files on [GitHub] should you want to make your own changes! Note that we do not offer support, as I'm sure our fans would rather have us work on the mod.
• You can change the font to Default Native fonts! With this, you can play the mod in Russian or Chinese. See how it is done here: Steam Workshop Discussion.
• Yes, we still support M&B 1.011, and no, we are not going to stop supporting it. Note that it does not hinder nor limit us from mod development, we juts have to be smarter in our coding.
• We are a very small team (3-4 active members) that only work on TLD during our spare time. We think TLD is in a great place right now, so we do not work under any pressure. We work on TLD out of our love for the mod :)

Usual Suspects:

• The 'I crash whenever I encounter orc parties' crash on Warband has been fixed since 2014 (I still see this come up)
• The 'Save Game corruption` after playing for a long time has been fixed since April/May 2017
• "My framerate goes to sh*t whenever I fight in battles (Warband)" - You can fix this through the menus --> Camp --> Change TLD Options --> Battlefield AI. Turn things off one by one, til you find your desired framerate.
• "I can't find the Smithy, Guild Master, etc...:" - You can allow all NPCs to be accessible in the menu through the Camp --> Change TLD options menu. You can still get the XP from finding them in towns.
• "It is too dark! I can't see sh*t!" - Turn on "Brighter Nights" in Camp --> Change TLD options. Note that this is in WB only.
• "My archers aim above orcs head!" - This has been fixed on Warband. It does have a slight performance impact. You can turn it off in a camp menu option.
• To get the mod to work on Mac / Linux on Steam, please read the relevant posts in the Steam Workshop discussions page.

Total Conversion:

• TLD is a 'true' total conversion and not a 'reskin', in my opinion, where it really just uses the M&B / WB engine as a base. A lot of people do not like that it changed too much (eg. money, politics, becoming a marshall, becoming a lord, starting own factions, getting married, etc etc). Hence why I would have loved to see the other LOTR mods continue, as they could have been alternatives to TLD.

General Game-Design:

• TLD is primarily a book-based mod, with some very slight influences from the movies. We primarily used / will be using the books as our main sources, while still being open to what the movies have shown us.
• TLD has a different way of approaching campaign 'balance'. Not all factions are 'balanced' in a traditional sense, this is Middle-Earth after all. However, the mod team is aware that it still needs to make sense, gameplay-wise, and also be fun. I cannot be the one to talk about what the approach was/is, as I wasn't around when the original mod authors discussed. Perhaps one of the old mod devs could chime in :) But for me, I first think if it would make sense in Middle-Earth, then, "Is it Fun?"
• The War of the Ring can be resolved without player intervention. This is by design.
• TLD in my opinion has 'varying difficulty', where depending on which faction you choose, you'd have a very different difficulty curve IN THE BEGINNING (from level 1 - 18 maybe?). For example, if you want to have a slightly easy time, you can choose to be one of the Elven factions, and just decimate the Central Theatre, which are populated by orc factions. In the evil side, you can choose to play as Mordor and steamroll Gondor. If you want something not so easy, but still not hardcore, you can play as the Dwarves or as Isengard, and battle against Mordor/Rhun and Rohan respectively. Lastly, if you really want a challenge, you can play as Gondor, facing off against the armies of Mordor, Umbar, and Khand. In the evil side, play as a Gundabad Orc and test your skills against the Elves of Middle Earth. Whatever you choose, you will have to face off with everyone eventually.
• Troop Balance/Stats is again, something else. The original mod authors actually did not want to have a troop tree viewer / have someone publish the troop tree, because it will eventually be discussed in a min/max manner. I have coded that in since 2014 (I think), and yes, we've had people approach us and offer advice in the way that was mostly benefiting the faction they are currently playing. However, we did see some inconsistencies and have worked to fix them. Now that doesn't mean some things are set in stone, nor does it mean we condone min/maxers. Some troop stats may have just been decided on through coding-convenience (i.e the use of templates). We are open to discussion but not micro-managing.
• In TLD, there is something called Faction Strength. The higher the Faction Strength, the more parties are created (e.g scout parties, war parties). Faction Strength is gained / lost through the creation / destruction of parties. Hence, Faction Strength & Number of Parties on the map increases / decreases over time. That means, the longer you play, the more parties will be created, leading to more potential battles. Battles in TLD are not tied to lords and looters only. There are so many factions --> so many parties roaming the map --> more potential battles.
• Lord AI is still mostly M&B 1.011 AI, which unfortunately, is not the best. Warband brought about massive changes to Lord AI, but is quite difficult to port over without completely overhauling TLD AI. People better than me tried and decided it was too big of an undertaking. I have added band-aid solutions everywhere, but please do understand this when making complaints about how Theoden / Imrahil just charges forward with only 15 troops (I promise I did as much as I can!).
• Gondor is supposed to lose, it cannot win without player intervention. However, it shouldn't be impossible. We have balanced Gondor in a way that they should last as long as possible, awaiting player / other faction intervention.
• We are aware that some faction rewards are not really fun and/or worth spending influence on. We are looking into it, but please remember that we are a very small team (3-4 active members) and everything takes time.

Resource Points:

• We tried to stay away from the concept of 'money' in TLD. Hence, "Resource Points" in each faction. This is part of the 'lore', where, in a nutshell, you have to 'earn' another faction's trust before you are able to trade with them. You earn them through battles, yes, but as you earn more 'trust' in a faction, you can also earn 'ranks' from each faction, which in turn gives you an 'income'.
• There is no 'loot' in WB/M&B terms in TLD. You get scraps from defeating enemies. This can then be sold for resource points in the faction of your choice.
• You can give X amount of 'gifts' / 'bribes' to other factions of your side, which then gives you X amount of resource points from that faction.

Non-Apparent Stuff:

• You can reinforce Lords, Centers, Parties (Scouts, War Parties, Foragers, etc) with their own faction's troops. Remember the war-system: The stronger these parties are, the more likely they are to NOT get defeated, which means their faction's strength does not decrease.
• There are healers in certain towns that could heal injuries and wounds for a price. They are not accessible by menu, only by walking around the towns.
• You can leave your troops in advance camps. Just note that if they are destroyed, so are your troops.
• We added a new skill, "Wildcraft", that allows you and your men to hide from enemies when they are encountered in the world map. Hiding depends on party size, and the higher your Wildcraft skill is, the more troops you can have hide. The skill also increases your map speed in forest terrain. Watch out for some parties that may have troops with high Wildcraft skills (e.g Rangers) as they can move quite fast.
• Oath of Vengeance kills do not count if you fall in battle.
• The Spears of Bladorthin Quest is still unfinished. We almost finished it, but found a critical lore error (i.e a mistake in the timeline), which led us to redesign the quest. IF you are getting that quest, that means you have an outdated version of the mod.
• 2 types of Custom Camera are available in TLD: Over the Shoulder and Free Mode. You can access this by pressing CTRL+END. You can switch shoulders by pressing CTRL + Arrow Key Left / Right.
• You can cycle through different Weapon Orders by pressing "O" (Shields, Polearms, Twohanders, Side-Arms, Ranged)
• TLD is quite customizable through the Camp Options --> Gameplay Tweaks. You can reduce Faction Strength requirements of sieges, increase rank/influence reward rate, disable injuries / permadeath, etc... My goal has been to allow players to immerse themselves in Middle-Earth no matter their skill level in M&B/WB.
• We update almost every month, we just don't use the standard v3.X, v4.X. I think we will forever be v3.5, with only the revision numbers (rXXXX) changing. It will always be shown in the launcher image.
• One of my main focuses when I took over was making TLD as accessible to non-WB players as possible as I believe TLD is currently the only game out there that allows players to enjoy being a commander of a Middle Earth faction and lead their faction's troops to battle. I have re-implemented the Tutorial in the main menu, added some tutorial text and quests, and added some tweaks to make the game slightly easier.

I think this is all for now. If there is anything else that I missed, please let me know and I can add it to the list above.

Thank you all again for your support and for those that play / will be playing TLD, Enjoy Middle-Earth!

Submitted April 17, 2018 at 03:07PM by Kham-TLD https://ift.tt/2JVBOLl