Vampire Lore and Heroes – Arboreonecromancy

Hi guys, finally i managed to bring this mod in TWW2, i got some unexpected porting problems, sorry for the delay 😛 If you like this work, don’t forget to leave a thumbs up 🙂

This mod adds the Arboreonecromancer, a new hero for the vampire factions (Mousillon, Vampire Counts, Von Carstein), along with a new magical lore; The Lore of Arboreonecromancy. Here are the features of the hero:

• Recruitable as the vanilla Necromancers in the Forbidden Library and heroes pool.
• Custom magical skill tree devoted to the arboreonecromancy (at least what can be from the few informations we have)
• Custom ability: Disciples of Sycamo, that gives bonuses to campaign movement, spells cooldown and reduce the attrition in Athel Loren forest (still to be tested). In battle it gives bonuses to forest spotting, strider attribute and ignoring ground penalties, at least until the unit is in a forest.
• Custom appearance and staff along with a little recolor of a vanilla unit card.

This hero is based on lore from the Warhammer tabletop supplement Storm of Magic, and the lore is as follows:
“Arboreonecromancy is a little-practiced branch of wizardry — any mystic wizard crazed enough to attempt it normally transfers his attentions back to raising zombies and skeletons, rather than undead trees. However, legends tell of the Archmage Sycamo, ‘The Daemon Carpenter of Estalia’, who not only perfected a method of reanimating trees from their residual elements, but also filling them with astounding vigour.”

• Hellish Vigour —> +21% speed, +30 melee attack, +22% weapon damage to the targeted friendly unit.
• Barren Apotheosis —> Basically another version of the Invocation of Nehek, inspired by the Verdant Apotheosis of the lore of life from the wiki. I would like to make the spell works exclusively for the summoned tree units, but i don’t think it’s possible. Added effect: +10% vigour (15% in upgraded version) for the unit affected.
• Grasping Roots —> Different version of The Dwellers Below Spell from the lore of life. -22% speed to the affected enemies.
• Summon Withered Treekin —> Summon a unit of Withered Treekin (custom version of the treekin). The unit behave as every undead summoned unit, and degrades over time. Only one use per battle.
• Raise Rotten Dryads —> Summon a unit of Rotting Dryads (custom version of the Dryads). The unit behave as every undead summoned unit, and degrades over time. Three uses per battle. Upgraded version spawn a more numerous unit.
• Evil from the Woods —> Different version of the Awakening of the Wood from the lore of life spell. -49% speed to the affected enemy units.

• New Features: skill tree, spells, and stats brought up to speed with TWW2 Necromancers. Also, custom porthole and unit card in campaign.
• Summoned Units are weaker than their vanilla counterpart, due to their undead nature.
• Every spell comes with a custom icon.
• Due to the lack of information we have (basically a page of a magazine), most of the spells are mine reinterpretation, the same could be said of the abilities. I do not claim an entire lorefriendliness of the mod.

There are some issues of which i am already aware of, for them there is probably a solution, but not for all of them.

• Summoned Dryads pop-up in the field without animation (there’s not really much i can do about that).
• Due to the way i have recolored the necromancer, he will appear with his vanilla colours in the campaign map (he will hold the custom staff and he shows correctly on the battlefield, however). I will probably rework him soon enough.
• On the Grasping Roots tooltip there is still a reference to the Dwellers Below, it should be something related to the Vortex type, but i haven’t found a way to change it.
• There is some clipping with the dryads pulling the cart, but nothing to be afraid of.
• Corpse Cart still shows vanilla zombies in the campaign map. I haven’t figure out if it is possible to change this.

I haven’t found any incompatibilities for now, but i don’t have much time to test it. So please let me know any issues you find.
I’ve tried to stick with the vanilla balance in mind, of course any suggestions on balancing is welcome. This is my very first mod that mess with spells, so be gentle, please 😛

If you want more mods, consider also checking my workshop

Khazmo, for the information thread[www.twcenter.net] that was the base of this mod.
Marthenil, for the custom unit cards and portholes guide.