State of the 'Rim - August 2021

Hey everyone!

I hope you’re doing well. I’m sorry it’s been a while since the last State of the ‘Rim. My wife and I had a nice vacation in early July (just after the Apothecary release) and then I spent the rest of the time working pretty much every day on mods. Summer is now winding down and it looks like I have about eight more days that I can spend working before school starts again. Unfortunately, once school starts, I do expect to be pretty busy. I planned to announce a decently long break, but since there are quite a few unfinished projects on my plate I’m going to do my best to push through and see what I can complete.

Apothecary

The Apothecary release went extremely well. After my vacation, I released Update 1.1., which rebalanced quite a few effects and added a new potion effect. I also released the Food and Drink Addon, which was originally intended to be its own mod. However, I wanted to bundle it with Apothecary because there was a lot of demand for it, and because Apothecary had done well on the Hot Files and was climbing up in the MotM ranking. It paid off, and Apothecary finished #1 on the MotM. Delta and I both want to extend our thanks to everyone for all of your support. It’s been really fun to watch everyone find OP combos in the discord, and I hope no one has any permanent brain damage from all the bone dust you’ve been snorting.

For the rest of this post, I want to update you about the three projects I currently consider to be “active.”

Mysticism 2

I’ve made great progress on Mysticism 2 this summer. Alteration and Illusion are completely done, and huge parts of Restoration and Destruction are finished. I still need to do Absorb Health spells, Poison spells, and Sun spells, and I do have a few asset reworks on my wish list. Everything else in Restoration and Destruction is finished. (This includes staves and scrolls.) Once I finish those three things, I’ll be ready to move on to Conjuration. I’ve done almost no work on Conjuration since the release of Mysticism 1.0, over two years ago now, so I’m unable to estimate how long it will take me. I have a few ambitious asset-related plans, and asset work especially can be really hard for me to estimate. (If you’re curious, I’m not planning to add new creatures. In fact, I think the creature list is a place where Mysticism can afford to be trimmed down a bit.)

Thaumaturgy

Thaumaturgy is the second mod I’m co-authoring with DeltaRider, and it’s the companion to Apothecary. It balances (read: nerfs) Enchanting pretty heavily in some ways, both to bring the power level of Enchanting down to appropriate levels, and to make room for some very strong new enchantments without breaking the game. Expect to see some of the new effects from Apothecary repeated here. There will also be enchantments to fortify Destruction and Restoration damage, new weapon enchantments (Sun Damage, Weakness to Frost, etc), and solutions to game-breaking issues like 100% cost reduction.

Pilgrim

Probably the most exciting mod in the pipeline is Pilgrim, which is a massive, fully featured religion mod. I was stuck on some peripheral features, which had put the mod in limbo for a bit. Recently my co-author Tate encouraged me to drop some of those peripheral features and focus on the main appeal of the mod. This has resulted in much faster progress, and the mod no longer feels “stuck.” If you’re new, here are the basics for Pilgrim: new shrines, high quality assets, 40 gods from Elder Scrolls lore, and compatibility with all major perk overhauls. It’ll also make the priests in the major cities into vendors who sell healing items, spells, and scrolls, and it’ll re-implement the “Divine Intervention” spells you know from Mysticism in a more cohesive way. If you want a sneak peak of how the mod will feel, check out Adamant’s religion perks, Pilgrim and Cultist.

So when will any of this be released?

Summer was a lot shorter than I wanted it to be. Anybody who’s been in the discord knows that I’ve worked pretty much full time since June 18th, but I just wasn’t able to finish everything before the end of the summer. Right now, my hope is that I will be able to release one of these three projects in August, and then release the other two in September. The most likely scenario seems to be that Pilgrim will release in late August, Thaumaturgy will release in early to mid September, and Mysticism will release in late September. Once school starts, of course, it will be a lot harder to predict how much I can work, so it’s unfortunately possible that one of these projects will get delayed. But I don’t currently see any reason to think they will.

What’s next for Simonrim?

After I release this next round of content, I have one or two new releases that I’ll be itching to work on. Specifically, there’s a mod that I’ll be making with DeltaRider that will be another companion to Apothecary and Thaumaturgy. But I also have quite a few mods that need updates, and I’d like to put aside some time to work on a 2.0 of Blade & Blunt before Christmas of this year. Finally, at some point I’m going to need to take a long break and play some video games or something. I’ll keep all of you updated about long term plans--in fact, I was thinking I might write up a post about long (and I mean long) term plans sooner rather than later.

The future is bright for Simonrim. We have tons of great content coming down the pipeline Thanks for coming along for the ride, and thanks for reading this long-ass post!