Give Feedback
0 of 0
About this mod
A pack overhaul with an 86 duel campaign and a separate "multiplayer-only" mode built around the packs. Packs are based on the TCG releases but with heavy edits to make many otherwise obsolete cards relevant. Starts like Forbidden Memories/ Dark Duel Stories (optional), but plays until the end of the 5D's era.
- Permissions and credits
- Changelogs
"TLDR":
Inspector's Cut completely overhauls the campaign and booster packs. My intention behind making this mod was to create booster packs that complimented the campaign, so that playing with your own deck would actually feel rewarding (unlike making a Gravekeeper's deck asap and beating the whole game with it), but I then made a campaign that worked better with the balance of the packs.
Unlike with the OCG or the TCG, the available card pool starts out particularly weak, with cards gaining strength while maintaining balance, allowing for several types of decks to be viable and for you to use many cards you normally wouldn't (or perhaps haven't heard of). The campaign and card pool continue until the end of the 5D's era. To be clear, the first dozen or so packs don't exactly emulate the OCG or TCG packs you're familiar with, but it slowly incorporates the general ideas of what was originally in the packs. If you want a better idea, Here's a list of all the cards in every pack, or check uploaded images for less spoilers and what to expect.
While I only intended to create a campaign and booster pack mod, I realized link evolution would also work great for a progression series I've been wanting to do for a while. As a result, I've also included optional files for a pure multiplayer experience. Both the campaign and multiplayer use 3 different files including 3 different banlists, which are perfectly fine to use online. Also included are custom savefiles so that you don't need to "progress" through the campaigns to unlock the packs, just coordinate with your opponent what packs and how many you're opening, start making a deck and have fun! :)
Can't finish reading the mod description without falling asleep? Scroll on down to the installation section for the bare minimum info you'll need.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before I get started, I want to thank TheSkulled and StampDD for their respective mods, The Antiquities and Soul Legacy as playing both of those set me on the path to make my own mod. Also huge thanks for the 200+ unique downloads, 5 whole endorsements!!!, everyone who left a post here giving praise or criticism (and therefore ideas), and a big big big thanks to Jetpro for the especially kind words.
So, what exactly does this mod change?
-There are 43 packs, including over 4600 cards. This includes cards from booster packs, starter/structure decks and promotional releases (For reference, vanilla link evolution has over 10,000 cards and 33 packs). The reason for having significantly less cards but more packs is because I wanted to separate the cards in a fashion similar to the TCG, but in the early game I wanted to properly space cards of varying strength. (So you won't see the likes of la jinn and ... turu-purun in the same pack.) Unfortunately, the game starts to break when you've got a pack count somewhere in the 40's, so I can't afford to add more cards to the game without cramming them into the existing packs and messing up the balance (To nitpick, I mean I can't add another whole booster's worth of cards).
(The packs only cover the first 4 rows which usually only display 5 or 6 packs each. You'll have to scroll further to the right than normal, despite there being no prompt to.)
-Between the better common to rare card ratio, as well as cheaper and smaller packs means you'll spend less time opening for a specific card. However, I also made a second tier of "rarity" that makes some rare cards less likely to find than others.
-3 different campaigns (Duel Monsters, GX and 5D's) with a total of 86 duels. I tried to sort of hide the other campaigns' duels but please try not to interact with them.
-28 challenge duels, but they only exist as harder versions of duels from the DM campaign.
-3 different banlists, which rely on separate files to change. The banlists are loosely based on what the banlists were at the end of each respective era (October 2005, September 2008 and March 2011), but a little less restrictive. Of course, for single player it's only a guideline, if you feel like "cheating" then go nuts.
-Cards are mostly uncensored, with a couple dozen cards left "censored" based on preference or localization making more sense.
-Animations are disabled. This is mainly because of preference for faster duels, but as a bonus your game won't freeze when exodia win condition is met and the download size is a bit smaller.
-(Almost?) All the music has been changed, I used music from duel links, and the main menu music includes a song from world tournament 2006 and reverse of arcadia.
-Battle packs are unsupported (I heard it wasn't the most well-liked feature anyway), as it totally messes up the balance of the mod.
Some other notes:
-While it's possible to play through the campaign using only the "story" decks, it's intended to be beaten with player-made decks. It might be especially hard (or easy in a reverse duel) to use the story decks in the first handful of duels.
-Currently only English is supported.
-There's an issue that comes and goes (if you're unlucky enough, on god I have no idea what exactly triggers it) but sometimes when you try to open a pack, the game will tell you that you already own 3 of every card when you most certainly don't. You might be able to fix this by scrolling horizontally through packs and trying to open the pack from a different "angle" (aka different position on the screen), but closing and opening the game seems to work for now.
-I personally use cheat engine to play the game at 3x speed as it feels sluggish to me, this also won't give you any issues with playing online. Note that if you play with increased speed and your online opponent doesn't, it will only increase the speed of certain actions. Music won't be affected.
Q & A:
Q: "what's with the AI at the beginning?"
A: The AI isn't "confident" attacking face-down monsters unless they have a monster with 1200 ATK or more. (Thanks Death!) Enjoy abusing this, I guess. It's also possible that the AI will use cards in a self-destructive manner since it isn't built to use literally any card. I'd appreciate if you gave me a specific example of this in hopes I can find a fix.
Q: Where can I find (x card)?
A: Here's the spreadsheet. Sorry it's mostly lacking in info, beyond pack name, card name and rarity the rest of the info is mostly for my own convenience of editing the sheet.
Q: Why did/ didn't you include (x card) in (x pack)? This is [not the yugioh I remember/ horribly unbalanced/ completely randomized/ actually pretty cool]!!!
A: Note that almost every card included here is only from the pre-XYZ era, and that I wanted to spice up the early game with cards from all over the place that I felt weren't too strong in their original environment, since the "meta" of early game is considerably more simple. However, if you feel that a card is notably too strong or too weak for where it is, OR if there's a card from the future that could work out earlier, feel free to make a suggestion.
Q: Do I really need 3 banlists? / These banlists are weird.
A: The lists are somewhat traditional-leaning, but I also took some liberties because of a few erratas. One thing I'm currently rethinking is making the exodia pieces unlimited, since it's been argued that having too many exodia pieces is too cluttersome to be viable anyway. If you're playing single player and disagree with the banlist, just ignore it lol. But also if something feels weird (like how proygon mentioned unlimited makyura because I didn't know the errata didn't make it to LE), feel free to inquire.
Q: Can I use your mod to make my own mod?
A: Feel free to make minor changes to the installation (custom card sleeves come to mind especially), but if you've got some big plan to make major changes and release the mod on your own terms, I'm probably not cool with that. DM me about this (on discord preferably).
Installation:
First, decide if you'll be playing the single player campaign or only multiplayer. Note that you can still play multiplayer using the campaign files, it's just much less convenient if you plan on ONLY playing multiplayer.
Download "banlist 1" first (SP or multiplayer) and when you get to the next era (GX campaign or GX boosters, namely "Cybernetic Millennium") start using banlist 2.
Replace the 2 "YGO_2020" files in your main install directory (same folder as YuGiOh.exe) with the 2 files in the compressed file.
Secondly, are you using one of the provided custom save files? If not, you'll still need to delete your old save file (Savegame.dat). It can be found in "Steam\userdata\[unique numbers based on your steam account]\1150640\remote". Note that you may need to run the game offline one time with the mod installed directly after deleting the save file, otherwise steam cloud may try to restore the old save data.
If you ARE using one of my save files (see descriptions in file section for more info), simply take the included savegame.dat to overwrite the one in your save folder.
If installed correctly, the startup logos will be different. If the save file is installed correctly, the card shop will be accessible immediately with multiple packs available.
Future plans for the mod:
-Overhauling the mod to increase the strength of several weaker cards and get rid of lots of cards that are essentially duplicates as a result, followed by redoing a large part of the campaign (currently slowly working on this in 2023 :D), as well as having less packs in the early game because of less power gaps from one pack to the next
-Possibly a "sequel" to the mod that uses the space made from said changes to packs to make room for a zexal campaign / boosters, with of course multiplayer support
Credits:
-Yugioh wiki, for almost all my pack images
-Death (author of Requiem, aka basically a "proper free dlc" for link evolution), for most of the info on the modding guide and collecting the modding tools as well as offering support through my modding journey, including lots of "I don't know if this will work, but try this".
-TheSkulled for helping me with some stuff before I got heavily into the modding process, and listening to me rant about issues with challenge duels.
ALSO: (thanks so much lol) TheSkulled suggested putting the link to his discord here: [https://discord.gg/drttVMtNyh]
I lurk around the server myself so it's a good way to find me so you can dm me or just ping me there.
-StampDD (Poking around their mod was hugely useful for finding OCG cards to use in the early game and I took their idea of influencing card rarity with duplicates)
Last note:
Please PLEASE let me know if you enjoyed the mod or have any questions, even if you don't finish it. Do you like the slow start and the cards it incorporates, or did you skip it and enjoy pack 10 and on? Thanks! :)
Inspector's Cut completely overhauls the campaign and booster packs. My intention behind making this mod was to create booster packs that complimented the campaign, so that playing with your own deck would actually feel rewarding (unlike making a Gravekeeper's deck asap and beating the whole game with it), but I then made a campaign that worked better with the balance of the packs.
Unlike with the OCG or the TCG, the available card pool starts out particularly weak, with cards gaining strength while maintaining balance, allowing for several types of decks to be viable and for you to use many cards you normally wouldn't (or perhaps haven't heard of). The campaign and card pool continue until the end of the 5D's era. To be clear, the first dozen or so packs don't exactly emulate the OCG or TCG packs you're familiar with, but it slowly incorporates the general ideas of what was originally in the packs. If you want a better idea, Here's a list of all the cards in every pack, or check uploaded images for less spoilers and what to expect.
While I only intended to create a campaign and booster pack mod, I realized link evolution would also work great for a progression series I've been wanting to do for a while. As a result, I've also included optional files for a pure multiplayer experience. Both the campaign and multiplayer use 3 different files including 3 different banlists, which are perfectly fine to use online. Also included are custom savefiles so that you don't need to "progress" through the campaigns to unlock the packs, just coordinate with your opponent what packs and how many you're opening, start making a deck and have fun! :)
Can't finish reading the mod description without falling asleep? Scroll on down to the installation section for the bare minimum info you'll need.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before I get started, I want to thank TheSkulled and StampDD for their respective mods, The Antiquities and Soul Legacy as playing both of those set me on the path to make my own mod. Also huge thanks for the 200+ unique downloads, 5 whole endorsements!!!, everyone who left a post here giving praise or criticism (and therefore ideas), and a big big big thanks to Jetpro for the especially kind words.
So, what exactly does this mod change?
-There are 43 packs, including over 4600 cards. This includes cards from booster packs, starter/structure decks and promotional releases (For reference, vanilla link evolution has over 10,000 cards and 33 packs). The reason for having significantly less cards but more packs is because I wanted to separate the cards in a fashion similar to the TCG, but in the early game I wanted to properly space cards of varying strength. (So you won't see the likes of la jinn and ... turu-purun in the same pack.) Unfortunately, the game starts to break when you've got a pack count somewhere in the 40's, so I can't afford to add more cards to the game without cramming them into the existing packs and messing up the balance (To nitpick, I mean I can't add another whole booster's worth of cards).
(The packs only cover the first 4 rows which usually only display 5 or 6 packs each. You'll have to scroll further to the right than normal, despite there being no prompt to.)
-Between the better common to rare card ratio, as well as cheaper and smaller packs means you'll spend less time opening for a specific card. However, I also made a second tier of "rarity" that makes some rare cards less likely to find than others.
-3 different campaigns (Duel Monsters, GX and 5D's) with a total of 86 duels. I tried to sort of hide the other campaigns' duels but please try not to interact with them.
-28 challenge duels, but they only exist as harder versions of duels from the DM campaign.
-3 different banlists, which rely on separate files to change. The banlists are loosely based on what the banlists were at the end of each respective era (October 2005, September 2008 and March 2011), but a little less restrictive. Of course, for single player it's only a guideline, if you feel like "cheating" then go nuts.
-Cards are mostly uncensored, with a couple dozen cards left "censored" based on preference or localization making more sense.
-Animations are disabled. This is mainly because of preference for faster duels, but as a bonus your game won't freeze when exodia win condition is met and the download size is a bit smaller.
-(Almost?) All the music has been changed, I used music from duel links, and the main menu music includes a song from world tournament 2006 and reverse of arcadia.
-Battle packs are unsupported (I heard it wasn't the most well-liked feature anyway), as it totally messes up the balance of the mod.
Some other notes:
-While it's possible to play through the campaign using only the "story" decks, it's intended to be beaten with player-made decks. It might be especially hard (or easy in a reverse duel) to use the story decks in the first handful of duels.
-Currently only English is supported.
-There's an issue that comes and goes (if you're unlucky enough, on god I have no idea what exactly triggers it) but sometimes when you try to open a pack, the game will tell you that you already own 3 of every card when you most certainly don't. You might be able to fix this by scrolling horizontally through packs and trying to open the pack from a different "angle" (aka different position on the screen), but closing and opening the game seems to work for now.
-I personally use cheat engine to play the game at 3x speed as it feels sluggish to me, this also won't give you any issues with playing online. Note that if you play with increased speed and your online opponent doesn't, it will only increase the speed of certain actions. Music won't be affected.
Q & A:
Q: "what's with the AI at the beginning?"
A: The AI isn't "confident" attacking face-down monsters unless they have a monster with 1200 ATK or more. (Thanks Death!) Enjoy abusing this, I guess. It's also possible that the AI will use cards in a self-destructive manner since it isn't built to use literally any card. I'd appreciate if you gave me a specific example of this in hopes I can find a fix.
Q: Where can I find (x card)?
A: Here's the spreadsheet. Sorry it's mostly lacking in info, beyond pack name, card name and rarity the rest of the info is mostly for my own convenience of editing the sheet.
Q: Why did/ didn't you include (x card) in (x pack)? This is [not the yugioh I remember/ horribly unbalanced/ completely randomized/ actually pretty cool]!!!
A: Note that almost every card included here is only from the pre-XYZ era, and that I wanted to spice up the early game with cards from all over the place that I felt weren't too strong in their original environment, since the "meta" of early game is considerably more simple. However, if you feel that a card is notably too strong or too weak for where it is, OR if there's a card from the future that could work out earlier, feel free to make a suggestion.
Q: Do I really need 3 banlists? / These banlists are weird.
A: The lists are somewhat traditional-leaning, but I also took some liberties because of a few erratas. One thing I'm currently rethinking is making the exodia pieces unlimited, since it's been argued that having too many exodia pieces is too cluttersome to be viable anyway. If you're playing single player and disagree with the banlist, just ignore it lol. But also if something feels weird (like how proygon mentioned unlimited makyura because I didn't know the errata didn't make it to LE), feel free to inquire.
Q: Can I use your mod to make my own mod?
A: Feel free to make minor changes to the installation (custom card sleeves come to mind especially), but if you've got some big plan to make major changes and release the mod on your own terms, I'm probably not cool with that. DM me about this (on discord preferably).
Installation:
First, decide if you'll be playing the single player campaign or only multiplayer. Note that you can still play multiplayer using the campaign files, it's just much less convenient if you plan on ONLY playing multiplayer.
Download "banlist 1" first (SP or multiplayer) and when you get to the next era (GX campaign or GX boosters, namely "Cybernetic Millennium") start using banlist 2.
Replace the 2 "YGO_2020" files in your main install directory (same folder as YuGiOh.exe) with the 2 files in the compressed file.
Secondly, are you using one of the provided custom save files? If not, you'll still need to delete your old save file (Savegame.dat). It can be found in "Steam\userdata\[unique numbers based on your steam account]\1150640\remote". Note that you may need to run the game offline one time with the mod installed directly after deleting the save file, otherwise steam cloud may try to restore the old save data.
If you ARE using one of my save files (see descriptions in file section for more info), simply take the included savegame.dat to overwrite the one in your save folder.
If installed correctly, the startup logos will be different. If the save file is installed correctly, the card shop will be accessible immediately with multiple packs available.
Future plans for the mod:
-Overhauling the mod to increase the strength of several weaker cards and get rid of lots of cards that are essentially duplicates as a result, followed by redoing a large part of the campaign (currently slowly working on this in 2023 :D), as well as having less packs in the early game because of less power gaps from one pack to the next
-Possibly a "sequel" to the mod that uses the space made from said changes to packs to make room for a zexal campaign / boosters, with of course multiplayer support
Credits:
-Yugioh wiki, for almost all my pack images
-Death (author of Requiem, aka basically a "proper free dlc" for link evolution), for most of the info on the modding guide and collecting the modding tools as well as offering support through my modding journey, including lots of "I don't know if this will work, but try this".
-TheSkulled for helping me with some stuff before I got heavily into the modding process, and listening to me rant about issues with challenge duels.
ALSO: (thanks so much lol) TheSkulled suggested putting the link to his discord here: [https://discord.gg/drttVMtNyh]
I lurk around the server myself so it's a good way to find me so you can dm me or just ping me there.
-StampDD (Poking around their mod was hugely useful for finding OCG cards to use in the early game and I took their idea of influencing card rarity with duplicates)
Last note:
Please PLEASE let me know if you enjoyed the mod or have any questions, even if you don't finish it. Do you like the slow start and the cards it incorporates, or did you skip it and enjoy pack 10 and on? Thanks! :)