Edit: no more need to bump, but the mod is still awesome. Look for it in this thread NEW MOD: Magic World for 1.011
Very excited for the translated version mentioned on 12/10, as many of the dialogs in the version at
http://pickup.mofile.com/1814455738908911 don't display any text (presumably Chinese characters my PC doesn't have installed). Features I've found so far not mentioned in this thread:
-Zendar is back! Sort of. You can speak with a teacher of magic in one of the towers above the old town (who gives you the wand and fireball spell to get started), and if you take a running jump out the window you can wander around the old haunt. The merchants are gone, but the tavern and its free chest are still there. Trainer doesn't train anymore and you can't talk to the herald to get the river pirate quest Didn't try the arena.
-Undead brigand parties. Because everything's better with zombies.
-AI lord parties run with beginner and intermediate level mages of two schools, fire and wave (which I'm guessing is the misty thing) Haven't fought one yet, so I can't tell if the AI uses magic like the video below or if that's an ad for the upcoming version.
-It seems as though wands are treated as one handed thrusting weapons that do piercing damage (with zero reach but an area of effect in front of you), so a Mage character will want high one-hander skills. And a lot of money, wands are rare in the arms dealers and freaking expensive, as they should be.
- Mana regenerates with time elapsed in the game world, so you recharge on both the main map and in scenes. You'll burn through mana potions a lot. Early on your spells aren't strong enough (I think 30p damage in an area effect) to deal with much more than looters and recruits, and the progression of magic through casting it seems to be balanced well so that by the time you're throwing the high end spells around, you're facing armies and will still be challenged.
-Horses run faster than your fireballs. Mounted magery is hard on your own horse and should be avoided.
-Magic doesn't seem to depend on attributes or skills, just how much you use it, so you want a good solid sword and board footman build with high athletics for those fights when you run out of mana (most of'em). My magic-focused background max INT character is having a hard time with her starting strength of 1
. Good RP, the sheltered mage student coming out of the ivory tower and getting her hands dirty in the real world. Great fun.
I asked Google for help reading the Chinese forum thread the creator mentioned earlier. The mod has its own subfourm here:
http://bbs.mountblade.com.cn/forumdisplay.php?fid=3 It seems that the source code was made available today, 12/13
Also,
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fbbs.mountblade.com.cn%2Fviewthread.php%3Ftid%3D50630&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 seems to be a discussion of where to find other magic teachers and how to complete the quests they ask you to do before they'll teach you. Alas the auto-translator isn't much help. I did get this out of it:
-Hold down the left mouse button until the fourth wave of the staff for maximum power from your spells
-There's some other wizard who wants 20 ales (or as Google put it, malt liquors
If only it'd been 40. Would be hilarious in a totally un-politically correct way to have a grumpy old bugger sitting around town who would only help me if I brought him a 40 of malt liquor).
-High power fire school spells seem to need high levels of surgery skill, dunno if party surgery skill helps or not
-I think the instructors are in each faction's capital city, although someone found one in Tigray
on the right side of the staircase.
-Instructors want you to perform quests for them and achieve certain levels of competence in their schools of magic.
-There's at least one instructor who will teach you 3 different high power spells, but only one of the three, depending on which answer you give when he asks you a question. Which makes me really, really want the translated version.