Last update for now: the mod that was the culprit is the Many Animations for Species mod here https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3380056396 but in reality, it was my fault because the modmaker said to put this above all species mods and I forgot to do that. So if anyone else has this problem, don't waste 2 hours testing things and just move this mod above all your species mods.

Update: So I fixed my problem at last. I tried moving the mod to the end of my race mods, then to right above my patches. The mod didn't start working again until I moved it (and the patches) all the way to the end of my modlist... pisses me off because I'm not sure which of my patches is interfering with this mod. I'll update again if I find it.

Hey! Just checking in. The Umbra race isn't showing up as available on my character selection, pretty much for any of the starts. I thought it was just modded starts, but I tried one of the official Umbra starts and it reported as not valid. Do you know of any mod conflicts? Do you reckon I should put the tainted blood further down on the modlist? Thanks!

Would it be possible to gather blood from people by killing them with something like the bleeders needle? (a -100 medical item) Maybe give it to the player when they use said item on a downed enemy? To prevent the need of a kill item.

@azrieljohnson afaik they won't grab blood from blood storage. If there's blood in the food storage, they should prioritize blood over other food. I'd love to make other foods forbidden to them, but unfortunately it's impossible given the nature of Kenshi's coding. Thanks for the kind words.

Are they supposed to feed from the Blood storage? Also, I've run into problems occasionally with them not eating blood from food storage. I don't want my Umbras to starve if I'm off somewhere else doing something. :)

Also, love the mod! This is the best vampire mod on Steam.

@Krayt I may have manually removed blood from slaves' inventories to prevent them from being looted and killed. In general, this mod won't place blood in slaves' inventories. the runaway slaves in Stobe's gamble are another example of that, otherwise they'd get killed by being enslaved. ((then again you could just use my other mod "Layken's slave murder fix")). But yeah, starting as umbra rebirth slaves can be quite challenging due to the high hunger rate. My recommendation would be to open FCS, add blood to rebirth slaves and use my slave murder fix mod, and don't forget to reimport game, hope that helps.

Is it normal to not find blood in Slave's inventories In Rebirth with the Slave Umbra start?

Very cool, thank you!

@Rocketsocks88 Both. The shek umbra have strongest stats when t comes to healing and bleeding. They have a bit tougher limbs too. The catch is ofc their hunger, whichj is about on par with a gorillo. All in all I wanted Umbra to be "more than human" but when playing a new game, you'll struggle like any other starving waster with an iron stick, getting beaten up by everybody else. The hunger can also be quite hard to manage early game, especially with multiple umbra characters.

What are their stats? do they heal faster or bleed slower?

you´ve got a point

@Crackajack :p I had to try "something" right? My page is an endless brick wall of text ffs!

"KEEP READING!!! I know it hurts in the head, but I believe in you!!!!" xD

@Playcator yw :)

Thanks so much for the response! Don't apologize, I was just wondering! Also, thanks for the update :D

@Playcator I have updated the mod today. I added personally edited textures to the mod. These are very much the same textures as those from Faces+ (and addon2), except I tweaked them a bit to make the Umbra's eyes stand out more, especially for the Shek Females. Shek eyes still do not glow though. I hope everyone will like it. But as I did just incorporate texture-files that aren't mine, to my mod, I might be breaking some user-guideline, in which case I might have to remove them. The Faces+ mods are still a requirement, despite these changes.

@Playcator, as I mentionned before, I am not the creator of the "face - eye" -textures. The faces with red eyes belong to Faces+ mod, I used the scorchlander faces with red eyes, and apllied them on both scorchlander umbra and greenlander umbra, giving a neat result. However I can't do that for the shek umbra, unfortunately, since you'd have a shek with a human face (imagine that.... holy nation would go crazy over that abomination ^^). The faces for the Shekk Umbra come from the "faces+ addon 2 - dragonstyled shek eyes" and while the red snake eyes certainly look cool, they lack that glowing feature, and despite my best efforts (amateur) I could not get it to look like the other umbras. :( Sorry. If I ever do find a workaround, I'll be sure to make it happen.

Love the mod, seems like a really cool premise. I made a shek umbra, but her eyes don't glow. Is this intended or a bug? Curious. Thanks!

@Enchantress Midna le Fay; You're very welcome ^^ If you wish to make/modify your own race with custom files/textures, it's pretty straightforward. find the .dds files and open them with GIMP (or photoshop). Avoid touching the transparency and export the modified file as .dds. :) If you have basic knowledge of photo-editing, it's pretty simple. If you want a custom race to be the sole users of those new textures. Just make them the only ones to use those faces in Race settings. Good luck ^^

Thank you so much for the info <3

@King McKenna you mean in your modified peeler machine? well, if you go back in peeler machine, then open the function "skin peeler" where it produces blood, you can add an integer value (any number with no comma, or negative value) by default I think the peeler makes "animal skin 5" you can make it into "Blood 10" in theory that should do it, but again, the peeler is a funky machine imho, and it doesn't allways do what you'd want it to do. Normally you are supposed to leave the body inside the machine, beyond death, until every body part is at 0HP in order to get the produced items... but at this point the game bugs out, and the skinned thorax will be stuck inside the machine...

Hey I was able to do it!
Thanks for your help, I had one question
It takes forever to make one blood
I need to kill two guys to make one blood which is not very efficient, I was hoping to make 1 guy killed equal 10 bloods

@Enchantress Midna le Fay Well they aren't my custom eyes. I'm using the faces from faces+ as a hard requirement for this mod. Eyes are part of a face as a whole in Kenshi. So when opening a racemod with FCS, you can, in the races' file select the faces it'll use. I just made it so my umbra races use the scorchlander faces with red eyes (not the shek umbras ofc). I might have modified the original .dds files, to tweak the glowing effect of the eyes, not sure.

If I may ask, how did you get your custom race to have a custom eye color?

@King McKenna Glad to help ;) You made your first step towards modding ^^ once you can make your own game starts it'll change how you play Kenshi forver.

@CC Thanks for the positive words ;) but unfortunately no. I currently don't have much time for modding Kenshi, and even if I had, I'm afraid I'm not a fan of JRPG elements in my games. As such I have no interrest in making a patch for something I'm never ever gonna use. Besides I'm not even sure how I would go about it to make it work. Maybe... Just maybe my curiosity will get the better of me, but don't get your hopes up. :)

Thanks man ok that really makes sense I was able to get that far except I couldnt figure out how to switch animal skins to your modified blood item but now it makes sense.

i dont gonna lie man, i fucking hyped for your mod! im going to try it. Just asking, is there any chance to make a patch for jrpg faces?

in theory you could even save the change inside my mod's plugin, but if I update this mod, your change could get overwritten... safer to make your own plugin ;)

@King McKenna good job, in the "peeler machine" on the right side of the window, there is a funcionality named "skin peeler". double click that, it'll open a separate window. Again on the right side of the new window, near the bottom there is "produces'" segment, by default Animal skin 5, just change that to whatever you want. If you want it to produce blood from my mod, you will need to load FCS with my mod enabled aswell as a new plugin. Then change the setting, save it and load the game with the new plugin enabled :)

Ahh ok I'm trying, I found the peeler and even the item it creates but how do I put the custom item of the blood that the umbra drink into that field?

@King McKenna yes, very easily in fact. I hardly would call it a mod, as it would be a single edit. Truth is, I actually dislike the Peeler machine. It's a big part of kenshi lore and it's "fun-factor", but I find it to be extremely buggy. Either you pull out the body before it's completely peeled and you don't get the resources, or you leave the body inside to get the resources, but the then the corpse can't be taken out of it... So I have no real interest in making such a mod. You should start up the FCS via steam, create a new plugin, open it and find the peeler in the drop-down menus, then select and double click the function to edit the yielded resource. A quick glance at a youtube video tutorial, and you'll have made your own mod :) And so the real kenshi fun begins.

Would it be possible to mod a peeler so it creates a big load of blood instead of skin?

@Enchantress indeed, that would be perfect. Allways felt strange that kenshi didn't have that mechanic, seeing how survival oriented it is. I understand the WHY, but still... I could just make blood heavier but that would cause a whole lot of different problems. All those starving bandits going "i'm so tired and hungry... from carying my blood around." I'll try to push out the update, and IF I get negative feedback I'll upload a reroll patch or some such.

Really looking forward to the update <3. I will admit I have been hoarding blood despite the inventory size. Its unfortunate that Kenshi does not have a food spoiling system in place. If so you could have the spoil rate for blood be extremely high so its only practical to consume it on spot.

@Enchantress :) thank you for the advice, I might just do that. There are a lot of things that need to be reworked in this mod-series of mine. But I'm just one man, and everything I published + whatever isn't published yet, I made on-and-off over the course of 2 years'ish. I'd like to rework the "Blood-kill-item" too, the sheer size of it was my solution to avoid hoarding it in a backpack, but let's be honest, it does little in terms of mod-compatibility and it's quite annoying (especially in genesis). So yeah, maybe I'll release the update I mentioned in the coming weeks, see what you guys think of it ^^.

Hmmm, you could always release a more casual version of it as a submod in the future, and have the main mod be focused on your vission for the mod.

@Enchantress Nice to be appreciated :). Currently the submods are on hold, unfortunately. I will eventually get to it, but first I'd like to give the Genesis Add-on a little more polish, lots of things in that add-on just aren't the way I'd like them to be. Also I've been sitting on an update for this mod (the main one), making it closer to the way I personally play it, which is to say far more hardcore oriented, ea. hunger-rate for umbras is about trippled AND Blood nutrition is halved, and it makes the difference between the three umbra-races more significant, among other things. I personally think umbras having to "hunt" and be continously on the lookout for their next fix should be a core-feature of this mod, but I'm unsure wether I should force my vision upon others who might like a more casual approach.

Loving this so far, very well done. Looking forward to your submods, particularly "The Reaping" Having more dialogue for these creatures would be wonderful.

Well, if some writing is helpful, I'm happy to offer it. This is really great work.

@Ebonyte lastly, the dialogue part of things was and is still very much a WIP, but it is by far the most time-consuming part of my mod. I don't know If you found many of my "forsaken NPC's" of which I'm pretty satisfied, but not a 100% satisfied... but each of those 6? 7? characters took a long time to write. And when all is said and done, you can finish their dialogue tree still very fast. So yeah I'd like to add in more passive/flavour dialogue outside of their recruitment dialogue tree... but It'll take time :)

@Ebonyte As for the "Umbra", I specifically named them this way because they are NOT vampires, they are damned/blessed by Narko to... *insert objective here*... obviously the ideal enemy is the holy nation, but kenshi is all about *your* personal story. I thought this "lore" is a better fit than traditional vampirism, and it bypasses the whole daylight-turn-to-ash problem... And no, such a thing can not be implemented afaik. The blood-farming mechanic also needs work... but I don't have a better Idea as of now. I could make some sort of refinery that turns blood-item to X, but you'd have to kill your cattle... I personally like to torment my enemies a little, (don't quote me on that :p) But it is a very easy thing to implement. In "The old ways" add-on I actually have "Rituals" where you turn a great amount of blood to "offering" and turn that to a "gift" which essentially crafts a belt item with various bonuses. These items come in various flavours depending on character skills.

@Ebonyte :) some of the things you mention actually already exist in "the Old Ways" and "the reaping" add-ons, which I have yet to release on the wokshop. And yes the "roleplay over mechanics" are my main issue, as it is my amateur-ish way of getting around my own/the game's engine's limitations. I am very displeased by the "Blood" death item myself, and will have to rework it. I want to force you not to stack up blood in your inventory, so either I make it very big, or I make it very heavy... but very heavy might slow down weak NPC's, hence my choice.

If I was going to throw in more immersion, I'd make a bunch more race-specific dialogue for them. I'm not *nuts* about the name Umbra, but it is pretty damn cool, and I like that I get addressed by what I am, which really helps. Might be possible to make some stuff from Okranites about "shadowwalkers" "Narko-spawn" "Drinkers of the drowned flames", stuff like that, maybe some Flotsam chatter about "Please, no! Okran save my light from the darkened ones!" Or some Empire peasant playing the creepy wannabe, "Say... can I become like you? Then I could become a Noble!"

Anyway, I'm just throwing ideas out there. I'll quit the spamming, but its a hell of an inspiring project!

Feral or enemy vampires could be a kind of strong wandering mob, possibly with their own more nutritious blood kill item, too. And it makes for a fun opponent on equal footing.

I really like that there's a way to "farm" blood, but it does require a certain degree of roleplay over mechanics, which I'm not against. Still, when mechanics can support immersion, it's all the better, so maybe there's a way to make a "grog" machine that makes blood from some kind of kill item? Or maybe it refines blood into a more compact or nutritious form, which might split the difference on blood size/nutrition into a production cost/reward scale? You could have a recipe bundle usable through a specific crafting bench, maybe severed limbs make alternative mixes.

It would mean having to learn quick shelter construction and making the time for it, or building little outposts and hideaways to stay in. Maybe some artifact (magic? tech? chemical? Okran/Narko?) that goes in the belt slot that provides 100% protection from this damage, for those who don't want the hassle? Takes me back to my Morrowind days using the Vampire Embrace Mod, turning smuggler caves into hideouts and foodstock pens.

One thing I keep wondering about: having to deal with sunlight is the classic complication for any vampire, and in a game as insanely open and desert-bound as Kenshi, that's clearly an obstacle. You can role-play shelter by wearing a gas mask and a big hat and a coat and long sleeves, etc, but if you wanted to up the challenge, is there a way to make a race-specific acid effect during daylight hours comparable to acid rain? Being inside, or under the right tent, offers shelter, but I'm not sure if certain hours can count as a weather effect in the code... Still, if there was, it would have the smoking effect, you could even keep a few of the quotes (My F***** SKIN IS GETTING BURNT OFF!).

Oh, at this point I've got a whole slew of hacks that make the game easier no matter how I do it. That's why I enjoy the challenges of vampirism. ;)

Personally? I do think the blood is a little large compared to a lot of other comparable food items. When I want a greater hunger challenge, I just move the hunger decay on the main options, though I can see how that would affect a whole party in a mixed game... Lower nutrition in a smaller package would be the ideal compromise to me. I do wish there was another icon/toon for blood, though, but that's *work*.

@Ebonyte :) glad to hear it. Since you are enjoying the mod, don't you find Umbras' hunger rate to be too low? I myself play with a modiefied version of this mod which cranks up hunger to about 200% of the normal. Added on top of that, blood nourishes 30 instead of 50... And I still find it quite simple to manage food levels, If I'm constantly on the move. I'd love to hear your opinion on the matter. I am a kenshi veteran however, and tend to 'hardcoreify' kenshi, so thats why I toned it down in the released version.