January Update

Hey everyone!

It’s been a while since I made a post. I forgot to update my Patreon when I released Manbeast 2.0 earlier this month, so sorry about that, but hopefully you saw that announcement somewhere else. As you probably know, I’ve been gearing up for a break for a while now. In fact, I’m technically supposed to be on break now, but after I released Manbeast, I felt really good about modding, and I channeled those good vibes into some updates to several mods, including Aetherius, Mundus, Adamant, and now Hand to Hand. Most of these updates are relatively small, but they’ve added some pretty cool things (new racial starting spells, new bound weapons perks, and a perk that gives elemental damage to unarmed attacks are three of my favorites).

I have a few other things coming before my break that I wanted to let you know about.

First, Oreo and I will be releasing Thaumaturgy 1.3 in the near future. It will include about ten new enchantments. Most of these will be either niche or utility enchantments, but we think Thaumaturgy could use a few more of those. We’ll also be re-adding Fortify Movement Speed, covering some untouched Vanilla enchantments (like the Silent Moons enchantment), and making some balance changes to Absorb Life, Absorb Magicka/Stamina, and Damage Magicka/Stamina.

Second, I’ll be releasing Mysticism 2.3, which will add a few new spells to the mod. Some spells  that existed in Mysticism 1.1 will make a return, and I’ll also be adding some new Master level Illusion spells as well as making a few balance changes to Alteration.

Finally, Delta, Sparx, and I have been working on a new mod, which I plan to release before I take my break. This mod will add a brand new crafting system for researching and enchanting magical scrolls, as well as a new table for enchanting staves outside of Solstheim. The project title for this mod is “Sorcerer,” after the traditional TES class most associated w/ staves, scrolls, and the Atronach Stone’s spell absorption effect.

Before I sign off, I want to talk a bit more about my break. As I mentioned, I have a few more updates coming, and then I will release a new mod. Once that is done, I will be “on break.” As most of you know, I’ve been spending a lot of mental energy over the last year working on a space opera novel, and I’ve found that I can’t really be in the right headspace for writing and modding at the same time. Pretty much every time there was a conflict between writing and modding, modding won, and it’s now been several months since I’ve made much progress on the novel. What my “break” is, then, is basically just reshuffling my priorities, so that the novel comes first for a while. I expect that I’ll need about four months of full time work to create a working first draft. That does not necessarily mean my break will be four months long. I might write for two months and come back to modding for a while. I will check back in a month after my break starts (I’d guess this date would be somewhere in mid-March) and update you on my plans from there.

While I am on break, I will not be absent from modding. I will still be participating in my discord, and I’ll still be available to fix critical bugs and perform other maintenance tasks. I might be consulting w/ Oreo on a few projects (we really do intend to finish Artificer, I promise!), and if things go well, I might even take a few weekends to work on some of the smaller ideas that I have. The key point, as I said earlier, is that my break will be a time of shifted priorities, where modding sits on the back burner for a while.

I have a lot of exciting projects coming in 2023, and I’m really hyped about the future of Simonrim. I look forward to coming back from my break, both refreshed and also satisfied with the progress on my other creative projects, because the mods on my post-break “to do” list are some of the coolest projects I’ve worked on yet.

Alright, that’s all for now. I’ll be in touch when the next mod is done. Until then, cheers!