Blade & Soul - Dragonforge (Jin Outfit) Mod

After two weeks of requested duo mods, I can finally work on an outfit which I have been eyeing for a long time. Every time I browse though a list of outfits to see which one I want to work on next, I will come across the Dragonforge outfit and think to myself 'I should do this next'. But somehow another outfits down the list or requests always catch my attention and I ended up working on those. 😅

And finally after all this time, I can stay focus and work on this outfit without drifting off to somewhere else. 😆

Since this outfit has existed in the game for some time now, with the Khanda Vihar patch, most players would know the where and how to get this outfit. But for the sake of new players, I will put it down here.

The Dragonforge was originally introduced as a drop in the Naryu Foundary dungeon, located in the Khanda Vihar map. In the early release , it is not easily obtainable because the bosses posed a challenge at that time. For old payers, you will probably remember the fun of sending the second boss flying over the wall of flame at the exact time or risk a wipe out. And how party members died because they failed to jump over the flame wall twice, without a party protect. Last but not least, not forgetting the fun being a driver, 'driving' hemisphere into a furnace to avoid a wipe. Those are the days. 😆

Nowadays, with the game progress and dungeon nerf, a moderate party can easily blow through the bosses, like erasing pencil trace. Since the game story also does not take players into this dungeon and players do not really need anything specific from the dungeon, it is loosing attraction. Thus, the Dragonforge has been removed from the dungeon boss' loot list and placed with the Zaiwei achievement vendor. However, players still need to obtain the "Naryu Foundary Fast Track" achievement (defeat the final boss - Acrimor under five minutes) in order to purchase it from the vendor. As mentioned earlier, with the game progress and dungeon nerf, this is easily achievable. 

The Naryu Foundary is located in Khanda Vihar, a floating island in the sky. The island was sealed away a long time ago by the Naryu to contain a corrupted Sacred dragon - Meganura, which was once a protector of the Naryu. The island was kept secret and protected by the Shadowless Defense Council until Lusung was corrupted and offered to the Raven King by Jinsoyun. Lusung led the Ebondrake Cultists and demons to attack the island in order to enter the Skybeak Spire, where the Raven King was sealed. The Ebondrake Cultist also attacked and took over the Naryu Foundary, which was originally a factory for Naryu automatons. The Cultists converted the factory to produce the Black Pillars which are then launched into the continents to spread corruption.   

With those information out of the way, let us check out the original outfit below.

Front View - Original Outfit

Since the Naryu Foundary has been taken over by the Ebondrake Cultist, this outfit that drops off the final boss - Acrimor in this dungeon also bears the obvious gold-black color tone, just like other Ebondrake outfits.

Front Close-up View - Original Outfit

The unique features of this outfit is the golden half cloak that covers only the right side of the body and the golden shorts that is worn over a full black tights.

Rear View - Original Outfit

Two pieces of similar shroud drape over the front and back of the torso. The front shroud is also the only cloth that is covering the chest area.

Rear Close-up View - Original Outfit

Another interesting feature is that the black collar, that wraps around the neck, looks like our beloved 'U' shape neck support pillow. 😅

Side View - Original Outfit

The right side looks the same as the left side other than the gold cloak and black badge on the top right of the shoulder.

Side Close-up View - Original Outfit

From the mesh structure, it can be seen that the entire torso exist, except for the arms. As such, it is possible for this Jin outfit to be mod into a nude mod. 😆 However, I will not be doing that.

What I will do is to simplify the outfit by removing the half cloak, trimming the shroud and shorts. For the love of leggy legs, I will also recolor the black tights into skin color. 😆

Let us compare to the modified outfit below.

Front View - Modified Outfit

The modified outfit looks much cleaner overall. And the leggy legs. 😍

The half cloak has been totally removed and the legs have been recolored to skin.

Front Close-up View - Modified Outfit

The front shroud has been trimmed down to become bra caps and shorts become shorter.

Rear View - Modified Outfit

I only trimmed the gold cape instead of total removal because the front and back shrouds actually share the same texture. Since I trimmed the front down to two caps, the back will be the same. However, the gold cape will hide them nicely. 😆

Rear Close-up View - Modified Outfit

However, keeping the gold cape cause a top-heavy-bottom-light feel. 😓

Side View - Modified Outfit

The black badge on the right side of the chest has also been removed.

Side Close-up View - Modified Outfit

With the shorts trimmed, it is possible to peek inside from certain angles, but you will not find anything interesting beneath. 😅 

After the mod and in mid of video creation, I though about changing the shorter shorts into skirt. So, I tried it out and took a screen shot of it as shown below.

Front and Rear View - Skirt Version (Raw)

By removing the part of the shorts, where the crotch bridges the butt area, it can be turned into a skirt. But to totally remove the curve part that connects the front and back, the skirt needs to be very short as shown above. 😓

We have reach the end of this post. You can check out the video to take a better look at the mod. I know I said I will simplify the video to just sufficiently show the mod, but I can't resist the urge to make the video more lively. 😅

Download Link (Skirt Version)

Blade & Soul - Dreamcatcher (Jin/Yun Outfit) Mod

In this week's post, we will be looking at two mods, namely the Jin and Yun Dreamcatcher. I had done the Gon version two months back and just last week, a patron requested for the other two races. The patron also promised a donation so I took the bait. 😆

The information about the outfit has already been provided in the Gon post so I will not go into those again. But just for information, this outfit's appearance is the same for all three races. The position of the costume portion in the textures are exactly aligned and that is why I can make two mods in a go, by copy and paste. However, the skin portion are distinct for each race, so I will still need to separately remove the shadows on the Jin skin texture. Fortunately, the Yun skin texture does not have shadows. 😅

Another difference that I found on the Yun texture is that the mesh structure for the breasts are intact, unlike for the Gon and Jin. This means that the Yun version can probably go topless. 😲 But how that will turn out still have to depends on the shape of the mesh (i.e. some are compressed to a side or right out flattened so as to be able to remain under the costume, no matter how bombastic or weird the shape player tries to customize them. 😅 )

I wanted to do something to the area which surrounds the Yun's upper torso portion, but the same card structure which I mentioned in the Gon's post prevented my idea. In simple terms, the whole stretch that made up the part of the costume that wraps around the upper torso, is actually made up of only two vertical cards. So my two options are to either totally remove them or keep them intact. I chose the latter. 😥

Let us view the two original outfits in the images below, with Jin on the left and Yun on the right.

Front View - Original Outfit

Same design verified. Same cloth cutting leg verified too! 😆

Front Close-up View - Original Outfit

The turquoise region wrapping around the upper torso is made up of just two vertical cards.

Rear View - Original Outfit

Pieces of  white cloth extends from below the dress.

Rear Close-up View - Original Outfit

The red cloak looks similar but while the Jin one is flatly opened, the Yun one is crumbled towards the center.

Side View - Original Outfit

Side Close-up View - Original Outfit

Since the patron did not specify any other thing, I decided to mod the Jin and Yun outfit similar to the Gon mod.

As a recap, the dress and red cloak were trimmed and the embroidered lotus patterns were shifted accordingly. The pieces of cloth below the dress, the trinket at the back and the portion below the front butterfly knot also had to be removed to match the mod.

In addition, the shadows on the skin texture of the Jin need to be erased as well.

Front View - Modified Outfit 

Front Close-up View - Modified Outfit 

The images above show the outfits after the dress has been trimmed.

Rear View - Modified Outfit 

The trinket attached to the bottom right of the dress had to be removed since that portion of the dress, that it was attached to, has been removed.

Rear Close-up View - Modified Outfit 

What is left of the red cloak can be seen on the neck. I had tried several variations for the cloak when I was making the Gon mod, but none seems good enough so I trimmed it down to leave only the neck portion. 😓

Side View - Modified Outfit 

Side Close-up View - Modified Outfit 

Similar to the Gon texture, the skin portion for the Jin and Yun only took up around 6 percent of the total texture. So we can expect the skin to have less details and looks stretched in some area. 😥

This brings us to the closure of the Dreamcatcher mods for the three races. You can watch the video to get a better idea of the mod outfit. Sadly, I do not own this outfit on any of my characters so I can only capture the outfit in the in-game Tailorshop. 😥

Download Link for Jin
Download Link for Yun

Blade & Soul - Rising Flame (Jin/Yun Outfit) Mod

Normally, I would not put up two similar mods consecutively, but since the request was put up almost immediately after the last post, and by one of the supportive patrons, I decided to go ahead with these two mods.

Since all the information about the outfit and where it can be found has been detailed in the Gon Rising Flame post, we can skip straight to the outfit mod. Just to mention, the outfit is exactly the same for the three races, except for the differences due to respective inherent body shape.

The meshes/textures for the costume part of the outfit are laid out almost exactly the same for the three races, so I can simply copy everything over from the Gon mod. However, that would also mean that the same issue of missing mesh for the top half of the torso remains true for both Jin and Yun. So those hoping for more under boob will be disappointed. 😅

I mentioned the meshes/textures are almost the same because the Yun's red top seems to be shifted a little. For that, I tried to see if I can reveal a little more of the Yun torso but the answer is no. 😓

Well, let us look at the original Jin and Yun Rising Flame outfits in the images below, with the Jin on the left and Yun on the right.

Front View - Original Outfit

As we can see above, the two outfits are exactly the same.

Front Close-up View - Original Outfit

The difference in size, most notably the width of the dress, is probably due to the body shape.

Rear View - Original Outfit

Rear Close-up View - Original Outfit

Side View - Original Outfit

Side Close-up View - Original Outfit

As seen in the images above, the two original outfits are much similar except for some changes in size, which is due to body shape.

I applied the same mod that I have done on the Gon outfit, to both the Jin and Yun mod. Check below to see the finished mod. 

Front View - Modified Outfit

Front Close-up View - Modified Outfit

It seems the Gon mod shows more under boobs than the Yun and Jin, although they are all given the same length for the red top. Blame the body shape? 😅

Rear View - Modified Outfit

The dress at the hip seems to be wider for the Yun, as compared to the Jin mod. That might be due to my Yun character having a bigger hip size. 😆

Rear Close-up View - Modified Outfit

See? Not just my imagination.

Side View - Modified Outfit

Side Close-up View - Modified Outfit

I have also recolored the under boob portion of the bra to skin color. This must be repeated for each race because each race has their own inherent skin tone. But it does not seems to be very obvious from the images above.

With this, the Rising Flame mod for the three races are completed. I did not pray to the RNG goddess much, so by now, I still do not have this outfit for any of my characters. As such, the video is captured again using the in-game Tailorshop. 😥

I guess my video editor is working okay for now but it still produces a glitch in the middle of the video. The preview before compilation is fine but some how it appears in the final product. 😦

Anyway, the color in the video may seem a little off because I have captured this video in Midnight Skypetal Plains (MSP), where the scenes are normally bluish due to the night sky. I have applied a filter to reduce the blue color so it appears more greenish-yellow. 😅

Download link for Jin Rising Flame
Download link for Yun Rising Flame

Blade & Soul - Rising Flame (Gon Outfit) Mod

Just last week, a patron made a request for the Gon Rising Flame outfit. Since I do not have another outfit in mind to mod just yet, I decided to go ahead with it.

For players of the game, you will know that this is quite a rare outfit as it can only be obtained as a random drop from the last boss - Dark Vicar in Ebondrake Lair dungeon. Previously, it can only dropped in the Hard Mode dungeon but since the Hard Mode version has been removed, the outfit can now be obtained from the Normal Mode dungeon.

Its rarity is comparable to the Oblivion outfit from Desolate Tomb but on a higher level dungeon. The rarity is not due to the dungeons being hard to beat but our beloved RNG Goddess. If you don't pray hard enough, you might not even get to see it once in two hundred runs. 😅

The reason the outfit is called Rising Flame has nothing to do with the Dark Vicar, although the outfit drops off him. And the fact is that nothing on the outfit is really related to flame other than the red color. So why is it call the Rising Flame?

Well, if you actually keep an eye open when you fight through the dungeon, you will probably only see two enemy NPCs wearing this outfit, which is very different from the black-gold colored outfit that other Ebondrake cultists wear. They are the first mini bosses that your party will face in Ebondrake Lair - Adept Myna and Adept Starling. These two NPCs who are standing on a stage addressing a group of newly recruited zealots, when you barge in, will exclaim "You shall be purified!".

Since they are addressing new recruits, we can assume that they are not very high ranking. But since they are addressed as Adept, it would mean that they are also elites who are assigned to inspire the new recruits. Low ranking elites rising through the ranks with twisted flame of passion. And thus, Rising Flame. Or maybe simply because they are flaming the passions of the new recruits. 😆

Now that we got the information about the outfit out of the way, let's check out the original outfit in the images below.

Front View - Original Outfit

Front Close-up View - Original Outfit

The base outfit is made up of three separate pieces, which includes a read colored top over a base white dress. The pair of sleeves is the separate third piece.

The base white dress has laced layer on the torso portion and extends downward in a tapered fashion. A red ball, which looks like a dragon fruit, hangs at the bottom of the tapered dress.

The outfit also comes with a wing accessory that hangs on the back, but I did not show it here so as not to obscure the outfit.

Rear View - Original Outfit

The rear looks much more simpler when compared to the front view.

Rear Close-up View - Original Outfit

Side View - Original Outfit

The white dress' front and back portion is split by two slits on the sides, starting from the waist level. As such the panties' straps are visible.

Side Close-up View - Original Outfit

So did you find anything that indicates the outfit's name - Rising Flame? 😆

In the mod, I tried to trim the red top so it will reveal more of the torso. Players who actually looks upward from below the outfit (which I can't since I do not have the outfit), will notice that there is a laced layer immediately below the red top, and below that, a full opaque white layer acting as the bra. I know because this can also be seen in the 3D model. 😆

Since I wanted to trim the red top, I first have to remove the laced layer directly below it. However, after this is done, all we will see is the bottom of the white bra. As such, I recolored the white bra portion into skin, so instead of looking at a white layer, we can see the bottom of the breasts (something like the Dreamcutter outfit). Unfortunately, I cannot trim the red top too much because the mesh for the top half of the torso is missing. 😓

Next, I trimmed or rather modified the bottom of the dress from a tapered end to a rounded end. While shortening the dress, the red dragon fruit was also sacrificed as a result since it cannot be left hanging in thin air. 😓 But simply rounding off the dress looks too simple so I copied the laced layer from the torso and duplicated it at the bottom of the dress, on both the front and back.

Let us now take a look at the modified outfit below.

Front View - Modified Outfit

The dress can be seen shortened to thigh level and the rounded bottom part is replaced with lace layer.

Front Close-up View - Modified Outfit

We can see the trimmed red top and a bit of the under boobs. But why is the lace layer still there? 😓

Rear View - Modified Outfit

Rear Close-up View - Modified Outfit

The back of the dress is similarly modified like the front portion.

Side View - Modified Outfit

Ah! The panties' straps remain. 😑 That is because the straps are not painted on the thighs but the entire panties is a separate mesh from the legs. In this case, recoloring away the straps will be difficult due to color matching (i.e. we will see a patch of color where the panties straps are after recoloring, not forgetting uneven edges between the leg and panties 😥 ).

Side Close-up View - Modified Outfit

This brings us to the end of this mod. But I have not explained why is the lace layer still present beneath the red top. To make it simpler, refer to the image below.

Holes!

Although the front image may not reveal them, the holes show up when we have the chance to look up from below. As such, I retain a portion of the lace layer beneath the red top so that the holes will not be too obvious. 😥

Fortunately, the video editor still seems to work okay, so you get to watch the video below for closer views. But since I do not have the outfit, I can only make the video using the in-game Tailorshop. 😅

Download Link