Somber KCC
Koala’s Creature Collection has become a classic monster mod and for good reason. It pushes the envelope on so many ways: from lore friendly creatures and backstories, to unique diseases and gameplay mechanics. The monster designs are well thought out and consistent with the DD1 game universe.
One thing that did irk me, despite how much I enjoyed the mod, was the design of the shriekling. It just just looked a little too cute for my taste and not quite a plausible offspring of the intimidating Shrieker.
I literally became fixated with changing the look of this creature in my campaign. A quest that took me down the rabbit hole of DD1 modding. I spent a couple of days redrawing the shriekling and the fungal deer and tried to figured out how to insert them into my game. Then I went on a hiatus from playing and modding this game for several years till recently. So now that I’m back, I decided to dust it off and finally release it for others to enjoy my slightly different take, the Somber take, to an already incredible monster pack.
BONUS: I went ahead today and spent a few hours tweaking other monsters, particularly drown gunman.
I’ve reworked most monster sprites, and some animations:
- Shriekling: a more monstruous appearance, almost a complete rework but still in keeping with the original. Animations updated for the extra eyes (Dead Meat! FX changed to Carrion)
- Drown Gunman: changed facial traits to look more haunting. Added more barnacles on him and cleaned up his linework to be tapered. He looked very sketchy before due to lines being squared off at the ends. Readjusted mouth animations to show ghostly glow.
- Fungal deer: made it look more disturbing and decayed
- All eyeball monsters Minor changes to these guys. Hue & saturation changes to better match flesh creatures from the Darkest Dungeon level
- Swine leader his sprite were tiny and colors washed out. Upscaled him and added grain, color corrections, and more cast shadows to better match the skin colors of vanilla swine
- Fish captain This guy basically already matched vanilla. I just added a little noise and adjusted mid-tones to be a perfect match to the fish folk
- Albino bat just added texture noise to match vanilla.
- Blood Leech, Stingray or the Eyeball Normal: No changes to these creatures. (If I get the encouragement, I might review them at a later date)
Since this mod is only a visual update of some of the creatures, on its own it does nothing and it’s completely dependent on Koala’s Creature Collection. Please endorse the original mod, and if you feel generous and thankful about my tweaks, please give all donations to Koala’s Co-Fi. I want to support his work, and ideally this patch will get him more subs.
This is meant as a respectful tribute: a mod-of-a-mod that I tailored to satisfy my particular taste, and now freely share with others.
Place this patch above KCC
Credits and thanks to Koala and his entire team for creating so many excellent mods that really enrich the game and inspire aspiring modders. He was very down-to-earth and granted me permission over Discord back then to publish my tweaks as a patch. Unfortunately, we no longer share Discord servers so I couldn’t touch base with him again directly.
If for whatever reason, certain members of the Discord clan manage to manipulate Koala into retracting his approval, contact me directly and politely and we’ll work it out.
Thanks to some of the fine folk over at the PiC and Official Discord server for their encouragement: nothing motivates me more than a preachy and paranoid clique. Thanks in particular to Woona, Zot, and Iris for their conniving and heavy-handed moderation. And also thanks to cerebralcloud’s very amusing delusions of grandeur. It is not up to you who gets "weeded out" of the modding community.
I am a firm believer in free speech and abhor censorship, which I see as an underhanded and cowardly way to deal with opposing views. But I also think it unfair to allow haters to spam the mod’s comment section and drown out the comments of legitimate users. The compromise is to allow a Discussion section where detractors can pour all their grief. Introducing:
The Chalice of Tears
A place to unload all of your seething. I will happily harvest your tears of rage into the chalice and respond accordingly. Your grievances will stay up for posterity for all to see and take pity on you, or just be entertained. No comments will be deleted, except for anything illegal.
Keep the mod’s comment section free of rage and spam. Legitimate mod users need a place to give feedback without the clutter and drama. Rage-bait in the mod comment section will be deleted. But feel free to post it in the Chalice of Tears without fear of removal.
"Somber KCC" is not an official Red Hook Studios product or product modification, and Red Hook Studios Inc. is not responsible in any way for changes or damages that may result from using the mod. Furthermore, “Darkest Dungeon” and the Darkest Dungeon logo are trademarks of Red Hook Studios Inc. All content in the game is Copyright Red Hook Studios Inc. All rights reserved.
