Posts from NCF – Extended list of Neutral creatures.

Does anyone have a mod that replaces the beasts and witches of the Elven faction, or a mod that gives them different outfits?

There's a mod that undresses them. Do you need it?

There's a mod that undresses them. Do you need it?

Does anyone have a mod that replaces the beasts and witches of the Elven faction, or a mod that gives them clothes?

...or a mod that dresses them up?

To create such creatures, you need to be familiar with the models from the sixth installment, but I'm not good with them. However, some creatures were present in NCF, at least ghouls were definitely there.

By the way, I have an idea for an NCF creature, the Kutrub.

Ghoul (Kutrub variety)
Description: Terrifying creatures that inhabit wastelands. While roaming deserted places, Kutrubs prefer not to hide their muscular bodies, as they love heat. Woe to travelers who stray into the favorite haunts of these monsters, for Kutrubs are flesh-eaters. Ghouls are a subspecies of Kutrubs. Unlike their desert relatives, ghouls have white skin because they live in caves.
Abilities: Living creature, Frenzy, No Retaliation, Cleaving Sword, Strike and Return, Swift Attack, Cleaver, Double Strike, and Savage Retribution.
Appearance: Similar to a Kutrub, but with slightly altered colors. The skin is gray, and the fur on the legs is black.

Overall, it's not very interesting, just a monster.

Added 41 minutes later
For me, the most important thing about a unit is its backstory.

Usually, it contains many details, so not everything fits into the description.

A ghoul is just a monster, a relative of another monster that lives in a Dungeon; it's boring.

Here's an example of a backstory I worked on.
These were goblins with rat skulls. I decided that they were evil spirits that take over corpses and change their shape. The resurrection occurs without the help of mages, purely due to the evil aura of these spirits – this applies to both rats and harpies with skulls.

These are general details, then there are individual ones, for example, that they hunt in packs, that they are cowardly not just for the sake of it, but for the survival of the species, because only the aura is needed for reproduction.

Are you talking about the ghouls of Locken or the undead from Chaos?

So, you're not interested in ordinary Cutthroats either. By the way, I came up with a description for the Cutthroats.

Probably about the first ones, or maybe about both, I don't remember anymore.
The Kuthru have descriptions...

Okay, let's talk about the Kuthru. I look at them – well, it's a good unit, but I wouldn't have come up with or created something like that, because it's not my thing.

So, let's say the Kuthru doesn't exist. I find a mention of it in some bestiary, and immediately there's a problem – I'm not interested in corpse-eating monsters. My corpse-eater was originally supposed to jump; it was either the spirit of Irollan, distorted by demonic corruption after the First Sundering, or a demon trapped on Ashan and severed from Shio, but frankly, none of that matters; the visuals were what mattered.

Okay, let's say I wanted to create a Kuthru. I paint a minotaur, and what do I do with the head? I can't model, so the development would stop there forever, or I would glue together chitin from a Corvus, pieces of animals, teeth, etc.

That's not my method; I rarely glue pieces together like that.

Usually, I just take something that's already made. I can again recall my corpse-eater – I found a werewolf skull in Skyrim, but it was covered in drawings, so the whole unit with the wolf skull went into the drawer. Half a year later, I got into neural networks. Kandinsky allows you to erase parts of an image and generate something else there – I cleaned up the skull, hooray! I decided to attach it to a demon, but the demon has a wide neck, so it went into the drawer for 2 weeks. During this time, I started looking for another base for the unit and created the Crypt Lords. It's good that Pavlinho didn't help me; without him, I probably would have given the demon a mane or, more likely, a hairy neck. I was delayed with this because of the horns; I would have had to bend them differently.

So, the whole development revolved around the model, not even of the unit, but of the thing that I attached to the unit!

Added 5 minutes ago
I remembered – the horns weren't there yet at the stage of "the unit has a thick neck"; that's a later concern.

Added 11 minutes ago
Oh, now I see what you meant by the description for the Kuthru.

Added 8 minutes ago
In general, units with descriptions should be tied to some lore – local or global. For example, my dark dwarves have their own local lore, or maybe a connection to, say, the human empire. Here's an example: there's a cool warrior who hunts dragons; that's a simple basis for a description. BUT the warrior is a human – so let it be a branch of the Order of Paladins, which is dedicated to strengthening the imperial religion by destroying the dragons of other gods – cool! You can design it to match the imperial style. You can add that the order is officially recognized as heretical and the empire doesn't supply it – so let them have old armor, tattered cloaks, etc.

I usually create units without descriptions at all, unfortunately, this is not suitable for NCF.

Now I understand how you create units.
Here is my description of the Kutrub: Demon-worshipping mages tried to infuse a demon's soul into the body of minotaurs, and the experiments were successful. Unfortunately, most of the minotaurs were given to the dark elves, and therefore, very few Kutrubs were created.Later, the Kutrubs broke free and settled in various wastelands of Ashan, where they hunt animals and travelers. These demons have well-developed strength and agility and fight well with axes.

...if this is an attempt to entice me into creating a unit, it won't work; I don't like "kutruby"

Added 31 seconds ago
but the description is top-notch 👍

I'm still working on the skeletons.
I've run into a problem - I want to make shoulder pads and a helmet like the Spectres have; they're spiky and would look great on a knight skeleton, but here's the catch: the textures are mirrored, and when I erase the unnecessary parts of the texture, the necessary part gets erased too! So, I want to erase EVERYTHING except the spikes and one helmet, but the spikes are common to ALL of them!
I also can't port my own models. The development has reached a dead end.

What's the problem?!