Mod Review: The Wilderness Mod

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The Wilderness Mod adds many creatures and spawning points to MW. It's
companion sounds mod adds many wilderness sounds.

I've been playing the mod for over a week (a very busy week of
playing), and feel I've barely scratched the surface of this mod.
Still, a week is enough to get a pretty good flavor of what kinds of
changes the mod makes. So, here goes.

First, since the mod adds many creatures to towns and villages as well
as to the wilderness, slower machines on the edge of taking a framerate
hit from basic MW may be pushed over that edge with this mod. Happily
for me, I never notice a degradation. For reference, my machine is a
P-4, 2.4 GHz, with 1 GB ram and a radeon 8500, 128 MB video card. If
your machine is more like the machine I had when I first started MW
(~700 MHz Celeron, overclocked, 256 MB ram, gforce 2), you would not
want to install this mod. You could still install the sounds, but it
might seem strange hearing animals that were not in your game.

The Wilderness mod animals are done quite well visually. Songbirds fly
differently than seagulls which fly differently than eagles which fly
differently butterfly, which fly differently than bats, and so forth.
Both the mesh and body mechanics of the animals is usually well done to
very well done. The notable exception being housecats which have
mis-shapen bodies, short legs and move like dogs---they look like
dachsunds in cat suits. The big cats like Bengal Tigers and Pumas are
well done, however.

The animals have a lot of variety. There aren't just chickens. There
are hens and roosters and chicks, all of which come from a number of
breeds of chickens. There aren't just donkeys. There are grown
donkeys and foals, there are a variety of colors of donkeys, and
donkeys carrying packs have an assortment of different types of packs
they carry. There aren't just dogs, there are Rotweilers and
Dalmations. There are varieties of salt water fish, fresh water fish
and sea animals like Manatee. All haunt their appropriate environment
at the appropriate time of day or night.

At dusk and dawn, the whipporwills call. In the swamps, you can hear
the frogs croak. At night, the wolves come out. So do the fireflies
and unicorns. Mmm, and as you level up, so do the Tigers. Nights are
more dangerous with the Wilderness Mod. You just might want to hole up
in town and sleep until dawn.

Walking around is now a visual treat. I haven't gotten used to
everything yet. Indeed, I'm confident I haven't seen a very high
percentage of the animals yet. And every now and then, the surprise is
intense. There is the snake that turns out to be a coral snake and
poisons you with what seems eternal poison (I finally managed to cure
it). When you finally kill it, you find a rat in its belly. Rat meat,
anyway. There is that giant bat that turns out to be a Vampire Bat,
and that....well, no since spoiling the surprise.

In the last week, I have been nearly killed every now and then...by
giant bats, by wolves, by Bengal Tigers, by Giant Moths, by a blighted
bat that was nearly impossible to hit (with a character areound level
14 with a longsword skill of ~60 and with Lilacor!)...... Usually,
the cute little animals just sit there and be adorable bunnies or
whales. Sometimes, however, they surprise you. And sometimes, you
just thank the Lord above that the thing attacking you is a cliff
racer: you know how to handle cliff racers.

There are Nymphs who will trade you starfish. There are many varieties
of starfish. There are many new ingredients. A comparable number ot
the games orginal ingredients. I doubt I've seen them all yet. The
wholly mammoth tusks do intrigue me....I think I'll go to Solsteim
soon.

This is an immersive mod.

You can find it a pumaman's site:

http://pumaman.zftp.com/pumamods.html

He also has an updated version of Giants (Giants Ultimate). I don't
need any giants, thank you. The blighted bats are quite enough. Mmmm,
where did I put that healing potion?