Find your new weapon of choice, and see how they're redefining combat for you all!
Hey Clevererraptor6, thanks for doing this interview! Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself?
Hello and thanks for having me! I'm Clever, and I'm a modder for Elden Ring, particularly focusing on the combat side of things, like new weapons and gear. IRL, I'm from the USA and mostly have experience working in tech, with a little bit of professional gamedev experience. I've been a diehard From Software fanboy for over a decade now, and it's been awesome to get into modding and seeing how these games were built.
Just to follow on from your answer, could you tell us a little more about your game dev experience?
Sure! It's not too interesting though, just some work in QA @ Bungie. I'm a massive Destiny 2 fan and during covid, they had a lot of remote work openings, so I took a chance and got to work on one of my favorite games for a bit. Unfortunately, it didn't last too long as I got another opportunity that I couldn't pass up. It was a fascinating time though, and taught me a lot that carries over to my mod work. I'm pretty limited in what I can say due to NDA stuff, but it was a super interesting and educational experience.
How did you get into modding? What was your first experience with it?
I've only gotten into modding semi-recently, after the launch of Elden Ring. I had been aware of the Fromsoft modding scene for a while, with large mods like Cinders and The Convergence for Dark Souls 3, but never got into it. However after Elden Ring launched, the game world looked so ripe for shenanigans that I couldn't resist diving in and seeing what was possible.
My first experience was very intimidating, as the general way to learn in the Fromsoft modding scene seemed to be "join the discord server and ask a lot of questions" hahaha. But luckily I met some very nice people who pointed me in the right direction. The community is very fortunate to have a lot of considerate and helpful members, which made getting started a lot easier.
Why did you choose to specialise in creating move set mods, particularly for Elden Ring?
I've always been a huge weapon nerd in all the games I play. It's the way you interact with the game's world, so I love it when games inject personality, a "vibe", and most importantly, a feeling of mastery, into the weapons. Borderlands, Destiny's exotics, and Bloodborne's trick weapons, all shaped my taste on how I like weapons to feel. Elden Ring, to my disappointment, chose to stick to the more generic weaponry from the Dark Souls series, so I figured I'd spice things up myself.
How do you decide which move sets to create? Do you draw inspiration from any particular sources, such as other games, martial arts, or even your own imagination?
It varies a ton! Lots of ideas start as me chasing a vibe that I saw somewhere, for example, One Piece, Vagabond, and Avatar the Last Airbender, are great at getting me excited to cook something up. Otherwise, a lot of ideas just come straight from my imagination, or me seeing a gap in Elden Ring's available weaponry that I wanted to fill. My community also loves to throw around weapon ideas, which can be very inspiring. It's a huge challenge to take a fresh idea and turn it into a weapon in-game though. A lot of times, it's simply impossible, and I need to be flexible and adapt my idea so it can work in-game. This can end up creating really neat and unique stuff sometimes, so it usually works out.
Can you walk us through your process for creating a new move set mod? Where do you typically start, and what are the main steps involved?
After I have an idea that I'm convinced will probably (hopefully) work in-game, I like to start brainstorming the unique skill, or ash of war, for the weapon. I like the skill to capture the overall feeling of the weapon, and then once I nail that down, the rest of the moveset follows. On the technical side, it's mostly an insane amount of time in Darksoulsanimstudio, aka DSAS. It's an amazing tool that lets you easily swap and edit animations, add cool effects to them, and much more. I can use animations from most of FromSoft's game catalog, so the amount of potential and combinations is insane. I spend a frankly obsessive amount of time swapping out animations and tweaking tiny little details to make sure everything feels good, or at least "correct". It's pretty zen for me honestly, but sometimes it's a real struggle to figure out the right feel of a moveset, so it takes a lot of time.
The full process for creating movesets in Elden Ring is much more than this, and it's honestly pretty crazy. But if anyone wants to learn, I would highly suggest jumping into the Fromsoft modding server, ?ServerName? (yes that's the actual name) and poking around.
Out of all the mods you’ve created, do you have a personal favourite? If so, what makes it stand out for you?
There are so many of them that I love and am happy with, but my personal favorite has to go to the Wandering Swordsman moveset, the "Tachikaze" katana. It's heavily inspired from the Vagabond manga, and allows you to walk around with your katana sheathed, but ready to instantly unsheathe and attack with an iai style. I spent months carefully creating the weapon, making sure it felt exactly how I wanted. Very late in the process, I had an idea to add a flute that you can peacefully play while walking around, which came out perfectly and set the tone for the weapon really well. Overall it's a fairly complex weapon that once mastered, can let you effortlessly adapt to situations, which is exactly what I wanted to achieve.
Here’s a video of the legendary ONGBAL absolutely whooping Morgott with it:
Some other favorites are the wearable Dark Moon Ring, which is a spell catalyst and also allows you to summon a massive frozen greatsword, and the Heaven Splitter, a paired katana/bow weapon that allows for crazy flexibility in combat. All of my favorites open up a new way to think about Elden Ring’s combat, and hopefully freshen up the game experience for people. I could honestly yap for hours about any one of them, but I’ll leave it at that.
Are there any move set ideas or concepts that you’re particularly excited about but haven’t had the chance to work on yet?
So many! I don't want to spoil all my secrets, but compared to a year or two ago, so much more feels possible. The recent DLC for Elden Ring has been amazing for new ideas, and I honestly have problems deciding which one to work on sometimes, hahaha.
Do you see yourself branching out and making mods for other games in the future?
I think so, yeah. Elden Ring has been the perfect game to work in, and I love it to death, but I am eagerly looking forward to what FromSoft makes next. I'm also keeping an eye on the new emulator progress for Bloodborne, it's progressing insanely fast and I dunno, maybe I'll decide to cook up some stuff over there…
What advice would you give to new modders?
Don't be afraid to ask for help. There are tons and tons of resources hiding out in Discord servers and sometimes it's really hard to find what you might need, but someone can usually point you in the right direction. The scene can totally be intimidating sometimes, but once you get your footing, learning gets a lot easier.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with the community?
I'm sorry I've been quiet lately! I'm mostly heads-down working on my big upcoming mod "The Great Hunt", which I am super excited to show off when it's ready. It's a new questline where you get to fight a bunch of NPCs wielding my modded weapons, which is about as fun, and terrifying, as it sounds.
I released a small teaser a while ago, so if you'd like to learn more about that, check it out:
I’d also love to give a shoutout to the souls modding community, and especially the helpers and tool creators that make this hobby possible. If anyone is interested in checking stuff out, here’s the link again for the main Discord server.
If anyone is interested in trying out what I’ve made, I maintain a modpack of all my weapons that I keep updated and is easy to install.
That's all from me though! If you'd like, pop into my Discord server and say hi.
SlugGirl, thanks so much for the interview!
Thank you so much once again clevererraptor6 for this interview. Why not try out some new movesets yourself? And as always, if you have any recommendations for future mod author interviews, send them my way or drop them in the comments below!
14 comments
Playing with his stuff is what made me wanna do my stuff.