Blade & Soul - Dreamcatcher (Gon Outfit) Mod

In this week's post, we will be looking at an outfit which is neither old nor new. It was released late 2018 after the main storyline patch in September, together with the introduction of the Dreamsong Theatre dungeon. The outfit can be obtained from the dungeon itself or bought from NPC in Mushin Tower using Dungeon Challenge tokens.

The Dreamsong Theatre dungeon's setting is much like a theatre where Chinese Opera are performed. It is actually a setup by cultist to bewitch and kidnap citizens. The bosses and their minions wore costumes similar to Chinese Opera actors, as such the outfit design is mostly based on the costumes worn by Chinese Opera actors too.

Just for some fun facts, Chinese Opera is much like Western Opera in which historical or fictional stories are performed on stage by live actors. Except that in the former, the actors wore costumes that mimics the cloths worn by Chinese ancestors but in an exaggerated way. Some of the performance by the actors are also deliberately exaggerated, such as moving actions that suddenly come to a stop. Another feature of Chinese Opera is the fully painted face which represents the character type of the performed character. 😲

Although it is rich in heritage, the Chinese Opera is fast loosing traction as it looses the ability to attract performers and audiences from the new generation. 😟

Coming back to the outfit, we can see that the base design is a Cheongsam, decorated with multiple butterfly knots. The difference between the outfit and a Cheongsam can be seen from the bare shoulder and single-sided sleeve. There is also a red cape that rests on the shoulder and flows down to the waist level.

Front View - Original Outfit

The Cheongsam dress can be seen above with embroidered patterns of lotus petals.

Front Close-up View - Original Outfit

The chest portion is actually a separate structure from the rest of the main dress. The entire area wrapping around the chest is actually formed by multiple vertical 'card' structures.

Rear View - Original Outfit

We can see more embroidered lotus petals and a decorative butterfly knot at the back of the dress.

Rear Close-up View - Original Outfit

Left Side View - Original Outfit

The sides of the dress is like a Cheongsam, with inverted 'V' slits that shows off the legs.

Right Side View - Original Outfit

In the mod, I trimmed the length of the dress and removed those white pieces of cloth at the bottom. But after trimming, the dress is left with just a plain color, and so, I shifted the golden lotus petals patterns upwards, for both the front and back of the dress.

Next, I tried to adjust or re-arrange the red cloak but in the end, I took out majority of it, leaving just the collar portion.

Thereafter, I tried to see what can be done for the chest portion. Unfortunately, there is nothing that can be mod. As explained earlier, the turquoise-white portion that wraps around the chest is actually made up of several vertical 'card' structures and these structures share the same piece of texture. As such, any mod on that texture would affect the entire area. And removing the texture means that the entire area will be gone, leaving holes. Trimming it for a certain part would reveal hole at another area. In the end, I had to leave the chest portion untouched. 😥

Check out the modified outfit in the images below.

Front View - Modified Outfit

We can see the trimmed dress in the image above and below.

The lower portion of the decoration at the center of the dress had to be removed because it shared the same texture with the decoration at the back, which had to be removed because it is attached to the back portion of the dress to be cut off.

Front Close-up View - Modified Outfit

Rear View - Modified Outfit

The petals patterns can be seen shifted upwards to the remaining part of the dress.

Rear Close-up View - Modified Outfit

The red cloak has been removed, except the collar portion.

Left Side View - Modified Outfit

Right Side View - Modified Outfit

Right Side Close-up View - Modified Outfit

After the dress has been trimmed, the panties strap on the right hip becomes visible. Although I tried to turn the strap into skin, it seems that the mesh alignment is not perfect and will leave artifacts revealing the edges of the meshes where they meet. Even though I tried to mend it in the normal (N) texture, it did not seem to work either. Therefore, I had to leave the panties strap as it is. 😰

Eagle-eyed viewers might also noticed that the skin surface lacks details. That is because the entire skin area is represented by approximately only 110x130 pixels area and that size just is not sufficient to contain the required details. 😰

We have reached the end of this post. Watch the video for more details of the mod. However, since I do not have the outfit, it can only be captured with the in-game Tailorshop. Hopefully it is enough to show all the details. 😅

[Updated] A patron noticed that the skin color is darker and it seems to be the mask (M) file skin layer being given an incorrect alpha value. I have fixed it as shown in the image below.

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