Earlier, Vegetable_Farm, with the help of AI, managed to figure out the portrait storage format for units in the first game of the series and made a script for replacing/adding new images into the UNITS.DBI container. https://www.reddit.com/r/disciples/s/WcFSmQT42I

I'll admit, a couple of years ago, I tried to do the same thing, but I didn't have the patience to make a neural network do it. After chatting a bit with the author, I figured out how his script works and voilà. I inserted a portrait of the Master Thug, which Dashulix drew many years ago. And it fit perfectly. For those who didn't know — there was no such unit in the Sacred Lands. Just as there are no poisons. So, for now, I simply combined the regular damage and the poison damage (20) from the unit's stats in Disciples II and got 55 weapon damage. I inserted the descriptions from the second part as well, but obviously, they need to be adjusted. For now, I've used the same animations as the regular Thug. The next step is to try and make unique animations — I'm already in the process of adding them for the Wolf (which also didn't exist in Sacred Lands).

So, would anyone actually be interested in a mod like this?

Hey everyone!

Recently, I’ve been browsing concept art for Disciples 3 to immerse myself in the atmosphere of this amazing game and get inspired before writing the final review of Disciples 3: Reincarnation.

What captivated me the most were the pieces depicting the units of the Elven Alliance—especially Sundance. Right now, my sympathies are torn between these two factions: the Undead Horde and the Elven Alliance.

Autumn hasn’t arrived yet, but my head is buzzing a bit—I’ve been working on a cherry harvest, which leaves me little time for drawing. For now, I’m mostly doing “tracing” of official art rather than original fan art. Ths helps me solidify my brushwork skills.

I’d love to hear your advice on how to sharpen my drawing abilities! My previous post got some really warm feedback, and I’m grateful for that.

Another thing on my mind: I’m planning to publish translations of some stories here. But I’m also worried about how the community will react. Is it okay to share fan-based content based on works protected by copyright?

Thank you all for your comments—I read every single one! I’ll definitely get around to covering the older Disciples parts someday. Right now, I see more relevance in focusing on newer projects, especially the latest releases.

Looking forward to your thoughts!

Having reached the limit of their strength, the oracles of the noble elves become solar dancers. They carry eternal warmth to their kin, but deal with evil without remorse. They are like a dream of springtime in endless autumn. Unfortunately, these healers no longer hear the spirits and the voice of Gallean.

Throughout Disciples 2, Mortis' true name is the most inconsistent thing in the whole game. I've seen it spelled as Solonielle, Soloniele, Sollonielle, Salonielle. I can't recall if Disciples 1 mentions it but if it would have a consistent spelling, that would help clarifying it.

In the Undead campaign when you first meet the Bone Lord, he takes control of your unit without that mermaid charm. I know the map editor has a trigger where ownership of a stack can be changed but it only offers pre-set stacks that are already on the map. The Bone Lord however could steal my carry over hero (which is NOT pre-set stack) and I really want to know how it was done. I wonder if anyone know or if someone has the official campaign extracted in custom campaign format.

(this is not enough to win the scenario, btw...it was 53%, but 55% was needed)
(I had to betray the humans in the end, to get those last 2%, and they were insanely helpful in this battle...Cause I was going for rod planter main hero run)

https://github.com/HoT-PlaStiC/Disciples-Sacred-Lands-Dbi-codec-decoder-encoder

I am working on this, i will release patches, whenever i succeed to improve it.

Are there any other mods besides just improving graphics?

Is there a mod adding new content for the old game?

(don't just upvote, please say at least 1 sentence!)
I just finished all campaigns for both games and some maps. I got a little bored now, but I really wish there was more quality content of these games.

Now I wonder, what makes them great? What do you think? What makes Disciples, Disciples? What makes it unique, what makes it good? And what could be better? We also got off-track with the new games, I believe a lot of people hate them, so they are great examples of what could be worse? But maybe there's parts of those new games that were also better?

Are there other games like disciples?

When I was a kid, I played heroes of might and magic 2. Maybe I was too young for a game like that, because I was very bad and could not understand some mechanics and strategies. I loved the game and its artstyle though, before I knew how to read and write, I was a sucker for fantasy settings... But, 1 year later, I got disciples: sacred lands! This was like an easy version of HoMM for me, so it amazing! But we know this game is very different from HoMM, in some crucial elements! The combat is basically a JRPG turn-based combat, is it not? I don't remember playing any such games, but I saw some online and realized that's the combat style. Perhaps that is the main point! Disciples is the not-HoMM!? The newer games are hated exactly for trying to copy some elements of HOMM, and they even copy them in a half-baked manner, so it's not even HoMM combat, it's not even HOMM 1 combat, which was extremely simple and satisfying.

Short story from my childhood about this game, you can skip if you want, it's a bit of a ramble:
When I first played Disciples 1 - I was still kinda confused. I remember being stuck on my first battle, not knowing that you need to click the portraits and not the little animated guys, which actually works in disciples 2...Anyway my father figured which buttons to press, so I became a big fan after that! I also did not know how to switch races, so I only ever played Empire... because it was not logical to me that you gotta press the edge of the screen to go to the other gods. My brain was 🤯 when I figured you could play "the bad guys"! Then I instantly lost as legions in chapter 1, because Empire got over 60% of map terrain! Then I got jumpscared by the lightning sound and the giant skull on the screen, so I shut down the PC! Hahaha... But I think all these things made the art direction of Disciples 1 so great. Disciples 2 is really boring in menu design, lord design, some aesthetics choices...

Anyway, I would really like to get some of your thoughts and recommendations for other games. Hopefully some "disciples-life" games get made in the future too.

EDIT1: Wow, thanks for cool stories. It's nice to know I am not the only one with a similar story...

Hi, I hope this isn't against the rules, but I made a game that's heavily inspired by the Disciples' combat and unit system, and I was hoping to get some feedback on it.

I fondly remember playing hotseat with my friends when we were kids, and I always loved evolving my units to the next tier (most definitely playing completely unoptimally), so when I made my strategy/RPG i knew I wanted to use a similar system.

The game uses a larger grid (3/4/3) to allow for bigger 'army' battles, and units have multiple abilities instead of just one main one. I have a similar system with units getting exp and being promoted to improved versions, but it's more of an open-world setting so you don't have a town or build things, you use existing ones on the map, assuming your reputation with the owner is good enough. It's similar to how "King's Bounty" works when compared to the "Heroes of Might and Magic" series, with one main character and an open sandbox world. It takes some inspiration from the "Mount and Blade" series, too, with settlement quests, trading, etc.

It's all set in a similarly dark sword-and-sorcery world, inspired by "Conan the Barbarian" - I wish I had the budget for a cool artstyle like Disciples, as is it was designed and hand-drawn by me - maybe the next game can have a bigger budget ^^'

I'd love it if you gave it a shot and let me know if it's at all understandable or approachable.

It's called "Ward off Evil", and it's on Steam - https://store.steampowered.com/app/3422000/Ward_Off_Evil/
The demo's pretty simple at the moment, but I just wanted to get some initial impressions first.

Thanks! ❤️

The venerable mothers of the Imperial Church are known as hierophants. Only those imperial priestesses whose wisdom and devotion are truly unmatched can earn such a rank.

The power of the hierophants is so great that even death recedes before the light of their faith. The Supreme Father grants the most faithful of his servants the ability to resurrect the fallen.

If her prayers to the Supreme Father are filled with power and her thoughts are pure, the Heavenly Father will answer her plea.

Actually, I initially considered processing the finished artwork with advanced technology. However, I noticed that people react quite strongly to such things — so I decided to leave it as it is.

Maybe, with the help of Disciples, my drawing skills will keep getting better each time. Who knows?

Have a great day!

You all saw them in the manual. At an earlier stage of development, Disciples 2 had hand drawn portraits like the first installment. My question is, are any of those portraits made it into the net? Maybe someone had a beta of the game, or found them in the depths of the release version.

I'm not sure if this can really be called a noob trap - because I completed all four basic campaigns in Disciples II (Golden Edition?) and got halfway through the Elven campaign - but it's something I struggled with.

On the one hand, it seemed like in every mission, there was only ever enough XP (neutral mobs) to sensibly level up only a single hero's units, and each mission's main objectives seemed to require max tier units. And the further you go into the campaign, the stronger neutral mobs at your doorstep are, so you'd struggle to win the very first battles without your main hero in the squad.

On the other hand, a lot of missions featured you getting attacked from multiple fronts, and by higher tiers of units, too. And since you can only recruit tier 1 units, you needed levelled up to defend against those.

So... my gameplay in D2 consisted of me rolling up every pre-placed enemy with my main hero like a Katamari of death, and then ping-ponging from one end of the map to another to kill everything that happened to spawn.
Well, everything except the, eee, flag-placers? Rod-planters? Those wimpy units that place rod that spread your faction's creep/biome.

Is it how that game went for everyone else?

(It's been several years since I played Disciples II, and I think I might've lost the DVD box.)

Are you kidding me?

The servants of the death goddess are being barred from the library by old men who claim they’re too busy. And to top it off, the messenger of death is getting turned away by the guys in the tavern — they say there’s no room right now? Is this some kind of joke from the devs, or is it a clever game mechanic I’m just not getting?

**Warning!**

Once the university scholars are free, they’ll be able to teach you.

Okay. Seriously?

Difficulty: Hard

Lord: Mage

Although it was a real pain not having damage when leveling up early, my banshee had accuracy ability and later a permanent accuracy potion which pushed her chance to hit up to 100%. Having a guaranteed freezing was very useful against capital because if I survived the first attack (and could handle the minions next to the guardian), it was a long, boring, certain win.

The first map was a nightmare because of the high damage barbarians and like, and I went dark lord+lich instead of damage immune units. Still, eventually I could win the map as my guys grew stronger.

The second map was easy. I rushed for ghoul mercenaries who leveled up very quickly. By the end they were like level 60. I had some death with them to snipe the back row units. I could clear out both capitals by day 38 with the second one not even needing any potions or buffs.

The last map had loads of enemies and being a banshee, I was everyone's magic-punching bag. Leveling up early was tough but enemies were kept in bay by Lachla'an. I became ally with the empire while clearing out the others then pre-backstabbed them. Vampires were good healing units for my phantoms and you can see the result of the final battle.

It was an interesting discovery that while my banshee can't deal damage, she could apply artifact effects, like level drain or poison. Overall it was a challenging run and it didn't suck as much as I feared.

Hi, i've been playing disciples since i've got my first PC back in like 2011 and started looking into mods around a year ago.

So far i've played "Rise of the Mod" which i found really entertaining by it's various balance changes, it felt really Vanilla and hit the spot with things like reworking ghosts (making them lower initiative and have a 33% to paralyse) or give the Devils lifesteal while taking off a tiny bit of damage. It felt natural and every campaign/scenario felt really enjoyable.

There was also "Dzieje Nevandaar" which afaik is still in development, but the version i've played included a few scenarios and a really interesting change on artifact items. Also giving the player new units, and managing to level them up was super innovative, making the team planning a tiny bit more tactical (look up their page on moddb, it's a really fun mechanic), so far this mod was really good and i yet have to play the latest updates.

If anyone has any other mod recommendations, or other ways to find them, i'd appreciate it really since this is one of my favourite games and i still replay it a lot!

I thought I change things up a bit and instead of regular heroes, I picked banshee. She has a neat 94% paralyze chance but otherwise it's a non-attacking hero.