Skills Visual FX Overhaul

BigGlow
A bright, colored flash effect that covers the entire camera view.

Vignette
A dark halo around the edges of the screen.

Compatible with Scorpion 1.2.1 Update – 01/04/2026

Bug reports and feedback are very welcome here.

I’ve been working on my other AOW4 mods and also created new ones to complement this one.
I’m taking a break from modding this one for some time. I may do light mods here and there but that’s it.
Just know I’ll definitely come back to it.

This mod isn’t abandoned and will continue to be maintained as all my other mods.

I will maintain all my mods regardless, whenever a live update is released or if a major issue arise.

Retuning all custom decals using a new decal duration table.
New Decal Duration Table[docs.google.com]
New custom decal duration hierarchy:

Old = Blight > Fire > Blood > Physical > Frost > Spirit > Shock
New = Blood > Physical > Blight > Molten > Lava > Fire > Death = Crystal > Radiant > Spirit > Ghostfire > Arcfire = Corrupt > Cosmic > Mystic > Frost > Rift > Shock

Redo Mighty Stomp

Find subtle in-game SFX for Dragon Lord breath skills to better represent each elemental type for all variants.

Find a suitable additional SFX for snipeshot impact that fits all weapon types, making it feel more unique.

Consider recoloring the lightning bolt to a more blueish tone.

Refresh the vault. Refresh the new decal duration tables / values and formulas.

Finish the final pass on the remaining 9 skills :

Exsanguination
Violent Exsanguination
Festering Spine
Miasmic Spine
Greater Phase
Arcfire Cyclone
Cosmic Barrage
Mass Plague
Pushing Attack

Create a before and after video.

• Any modded abilities or units that use vanilla visual effects will automatically show the updated visuals from this mod, no conflicts.
• Visual effects added by other mods (created from scratch) may not display their BigGlow or Vignette effects if they rely on the base game’s Particles.clb, as these are globally disabled. However, the visual effects will function normally.

  If the mod authors created their own CLB, it will stay faithful to their intended vision.

I use the free application Reshade[reshade.me] with this preset[sfx.thelazy.net]
It enhances the game’s visuals by making it look sharper and clearer.

Estimated performance cost of my reshade preset:

You could also increase the render scale manually by editing the configuration file.

Just keep in mind this can be very demanding on performance.

Go to:

and change this line:

On my system at 1080p, setting it to 1.500000 increased GPU usage by around 125%.

There’s a point of diminishing returns depending on your screen resolution, where pushing it higher doesn’t really improve image quality anymore.

Rough guidelines:

• 1080p: 1.500000
• 1440p (2K): 1.330000
• 2160p (4K): 1.125000

Credit to the art team, some seriously impressive assets to build with.
I don’t intend to reuse any AoW4 assets outside of this mod.

After a new Age of Wonders 4 live update, I compare the new Content folder with a pre-patch content folder using WinMerge. This shows me exactly which files were modified by Triumph.

If any of those files are used by my mod, I manually compare them against my modded ones to check for critical changes such as broken links / moved lines and dependency differences.

If Particles.clb was updated, I recreate it from the new version and then re-apply my changes to disable bigglow and vignette effects.

• Conflicts may happen if another mod changes the same resource packs as this mod. If a conflict occurs, the last-loaded mod takes priority. In Age of Wonders 4, the mod at the bottom of the launcher’s mod list is loaded last.
• The resource packs modified by this mod are listed below. If another mod doesn’t list its resource packs, you can check for conflicts by opening its .acp file in a text editor (e.g., Notepad) and searching for .rpk (Ctrl+F) to see which resource packs it modifies.
• If two mods edit the same RPK, there may be conflicts. However, they can coexist as long as they don’t modify the same lines. To check this you would have to learn some basic modding skills. Discord and the official modding guide are great places to start. There are also creators like Visie Maigo on YouTube who have some basic tutorial videos you can check out.

Projectiles.rpk
Sequences_PFX.rpk
Hero_Skills_PFX.rpk
Summon_Modularity.rpk
UnitProperties_PFX.rpk
Culture_Industrious_PFX.rpk
Behaviour_Visualizations.rpk
Destruction_Decal_Set_Tactical.rpk

PFX_DragonLords.rpk
Behaviour_Visualizations_DragonLords.rpk

PFX_EldritchRealms.rpk
Behaviour_Visualizations_EldritchRealms.rpk

Ruler_PFX_GiantKings.rpk
Wildlife_PFX_GiantKings.rpk
Behaviour_Visualizations_GiantKings.rpk

Behaviour_Visualizations_ArchonProphecy.rpk

Vampire_Ruler_PFX_ThronesOfBlood.rpk
Wildlife_PFX_ThronesOfBlood.rpk
Behaviour_Visualizations_ThronesOfBlood.rpk

VoidSentry Extra VFXs.rpk
VoidSentry Extra Decals.rpk
VoidSentry Extra Models.clb

RenderSettings_Strategic.rpk
RenderSettings_Strategic_EldritchRealms.rpk

Particles.clb