In April, I talked about Masterstroke coming back in about two months. Well, we’re at two months. Unfortunately, the list isn’t ready, but we’re close. Yesterday I passed Beta 5 Release Candidate 1 (0.5.0) to my staff to try out and report issues on. I expect there will be one more round of revisions, possibly two before it’s completely ready. In the meantime, I’ve asked them to begin posting screenshots from the list to Discord, so we can start building hype.

I won’t give a firm date for the release of Masterstroke, but I would say somewhere between two weeks and a month is reasonable.

I also feel the need to address some specific questions about the list so people can give an idea of what to expect from the list. As you might expect, there have been some significant changes since the original Beta.

Toys vs. Devious Devices

We’ve decided to move away from Toys and to Devious Devices for Masterstroke. While Toys is newer, that unfortunately is its downfall. The simple fact of the matter is that, at the moment, Devious Devices is more flexible and more ubiquitous. More mods use Devious Devices and, while not perfect, it integrates better with the other things in the list and allows for me to expand the list in the future if necessary.

This also means that we’ve been forced to change the “traps” mechanic of the list. Instead of Toyful Temptations, we’re now using Deviously Enchanted Chests. This is a simpler trap mod than Deviously Cursed Loot while still giving the functionality I want. It also doesn’t include numerous extremely intrusive changes to the game. Sticking with the theme of Masterstroke, its MCM also allows for the flexibility of customization.

Toys also has separate arousal and denial mechanics that overlap and interfere with the arousal system already in the list, so there’s that. Technically, yes, Toys can use the built in arousal mechanics, but it doesn’t integrate as seamlessly with everything else in the list.

Creature Support

Out of the box on release day, Masterstroke will not support creatures. This is a future plan for Masterstroke that I will add in a future update. You’ll be able to choose between the Creature profile or non-Creature profile once it’s ready. The switch to Devious Devices will also allow this profile to have more meaningful differences from the base profile.

Realm of Lorkhan

My work on Living Skyrim 4 and Path of the Dovahkiin has convinced me that Realm of Lorkhan is one of the, if not the, best alternate start mods out there. It’s flexible, allows for significant customization, and is extremely difficult to break. To that end, I have migrated Masterstroke to use a heavily modified version of Realm of Lorkhan instead of Alternate Perspective.

Defeat

Yamete is defunct. This is a mixed blessing. The original Yamete worked fine, I guess, but was never amazing. The curse of all defeat mods. Because it is no longer supported and I don’t want to use Yamete Kudesai until it’s fully released, we’ve swapped to SL Defeat Baka Edition. Defeat is also fine, but it does support more mods than Yamete did and allows for further flexibility when the Creature profile is released.

Magic

Feedback from my staff has indicated that magic in the previous betas was severely underpowered. We’ve fixed this through a mix of tweaking Simply Balanced settings and I’ve also switched from Spell Tutor to Spellforge. Spellforge is a much more interesting way to manage learning spells in my opinion without the tedium of sitting around and trying to learn spells for several in-game days. I feel that it fits the list much better and should bring magic more in line with other combat styles in the list.

Anything Else?

Not really. These are the most important changes that have happened over the course of the beta. If you have specific questions you’re welcome to ask on Discord, but be prepared for answers like “we’ll see.”

Either way, I’m pleased with the progress we’ve made on the list and look forward to sharing it with you.

Cheers.

FG