Darkness Of Souls

A vantablack redesign of Scout's Honor, and a challenge run you won't forget.

How it works

1. A Darkness Of Souls orb waits by the crashed plane at the start of every run.
2. Pick it up and hold E (or hold left-click) to commune.
3. The orb rises out of your hands, trembling as darkness pours into it, then tears open into a black hole the size of a campfire.
4. A massive shockwave blasts out. Every scout it hits gets a small dose of curse (the same amount as being revived at a scout statue).
5. The hole keeps growing. Its gravity drags in scouts and loose items, and as it grows it rips bushes, rocks and palm trees out of the ground. Anything that touches it fizzles.
6. Everything flying round it is solid: get hit by a fast-moving bush, rock, palm tree or item and you're knocked flat and injured (bigger and faster hurts more; a slow one just shoves you). Debris bounces off the ground and cliffs.
7. Touching it fills you with curse fast: you last about 5 seconds inside.
8. When you reach the top of a biome, the next biome appears and you get 15 seconds. Then the Darkness collapses and reforms on top of the campfire you just lit, back at campfire size, with a harmless shockwave. It keeps doing this until the end of the game.

Reclaiming it

Had enough? Hold H (configurable) for 1.5 s while the Darkness is awake: the black hole implodes and the orb returns to your hands, ready to commune again (maybe in a different mode). The host can limit this to the scout who communed.

Size

Scroll while holding the orb to pick how big it opens (hold Shift for big jumps): from a 10 cm pebble, through campfire size (the default), all the way to a 100 km world-ender. The size shows on screen and the orb's rim swells with it; it's remembered for next time (the SpawnRadius config). It reforms at that size at every campfire, and still grows from there.

Challenge modes (right-click while holding the orb)

Built to be fun, not frustrating

• Works solo and with 2-4 players. Solo runs are automatically a little kinder.
• You can always walk away from the pull until you're right at the edge. Holding onto a wall weakens it.
• Passed-out scouts are pushed out of the hole, so friends can still reach them.
• The hole's own curse fades once you escape, and a revive takes it away, so one bad brush can't ruin your whole run (the shockwave's small pinch stays, just like a statue revive).
• Dropped backpacks are never eaten.
• Scenery within 8 m of a campfire or scout statue is never ripped out, and big climbable rock is never taken, so the route always stays climbable.
• A dark vignette and a heartbeat warn you when you're being pulled in, and a countdown tells you when it's coming back.

Settings (BepInEx config, the host's values are used)

Difficulty (Chill / Normal / Brutal), default mode, return delay, seconds-to-pass-out, pull strength, growth speed, scenery ripping, item fizzling, camp protection, max flying debris, volume, screen effects.

Everyone in the lobby needs the mod.

Made by AttackStudioYT.

Changelog

1.0.0

• Darkness Of Souls: a vantablack Scout's Honor waits by the crashed plane.
• Hold E (or left-click) to commune: the orb rises out of your hands and tears open into a black hole the size of a campfire, with a cursing shockwave.
• It grows, pulls scouts and items in, rips bushes, rocks and palm trees out of the ground, and fizzles everything it touches. About 5 seconds inside and you pass out.
• 15 seconds after each new biome appears, it collapses and reforms on top of the campfire you lit (harmless shockwave).
• 6 modes: Classic, Stalker, Ravenous, Binary, Wanderer, Apocalypse. Right-click the orb to choose.
• Ctrl/Alt+Scroll while holding the orb sets the Stalker's speed (0.05-50 m/s); remembered in the StalkerSpeed config.
• Hold H to reclaim the Darkness: it implodes and the orb returns to your hands.
• Scroll while holding the orb to set the hole size (Shift = big jumps), 0.1 m to 100 km; remembered in the SpawnRadius config.
• Flying debris and items are solid: fast hits knock you over and injure you, slow ones shove you; debris bounces off terrain.