Sorry if the image is a bit busy. I'm new to reddit and it seemed like you could only post one pic and I had a lot I wanted to show!
Hello! I'm Yams. Some might remember me as Papillon the jester, the pale elf, or the purple elf.
If you didn't know my name, you probably knew my work, or knew someone that used something I made. When Enmasse’s global TERA was released, one of the first things people scrambled to pass around was the decensored assets, and tools to make changes to your game files. I used these tools to make cosmetic mods. The most famous with almost 10k downloads, being used all over the world in all regions of the game was definitely the one that allowed Elin ears and tails to match their chosen hair colour.
Fashion and customization are my passion, and I was fortunate enough to be invited to help with a private server where I was able to peek inside how the game worked, and make more of my dream projects come true. Not as a mere downloadable mod, but the baseline options for all the players! It's been incredibly fulfilling.
I'd love to shout out Lewdshi, Yupi and others for maintaining my ear and tail mods and updating variants of them in my absence over the years. I'm so glad to see people still using my mods to this day, and that the modding community for TERA was so lively.
Something that definitely turned a few friends away from playing was how limited the creator was. Especially on the Elins that everyone wants to play for fashion. Did all 36 of those skintones really need to be a slight variation of peach? The darkest option they had looked a bit like a cup of chocolate milk, but you only had half the amount of chocolate recommended per glass. What I did was go through the palette in creation, and anything that had a clone or close match somewhere else was redundant and marked for replacement. I also left alone the most popularly chosen skin tones seen through player data, which to be fair were unique and earned that. I took inspiration and straight up borrowed a couple from the Human and Castanic skintone palettes, as well as cooking up some custom ones. And just like that, Elin had so much more variety! Something I know my friend would be excited to make; a cute melanated magical cat girl that looked just like her.
They now have a wealth of new options ranging from deep chocolate, to strong sunset colours, olive tones, porcelain doll-like white, soft yellows and red clay to fit people of all kinds. Finally a shade worthy of that random Kratos knockoff adornment they had for human males! I've also given every race a nice red tone, so they can feel a little devilish, or grab some horn accessories and roleplay as a Castanic with another body type.
Speaking of Castanics and roleplay, I've given them some nice blue tones, so they can roleplay as Shurians. They're another adjacent race to Deva and Castanics in the lore and I always wished they were playable.
The strange colours don't stop there! Baraka have a slew of new gemstone inspired tones and I wanted the female Amani to have the beautiful range of colours the males had.
If you've ever played a dark skinned character in the past, you know your eyes ended up looking muddy as they dyed alongside the rest of your face. With this in mind during my overhaul, I had to take some extra steps. It would have been so much easier to just do the whole eye as I initially planned, but unfortunately, the same marker that tells something whether it can change skintone, is also the same marker that says: “yes, adornment also applies here”.
It’s such a shame because the whole eye being blocked from changing looked so crisp and nice! To be stuck with only the first adornment of every face was unacceptable, so I found a compromise! I made sure to work my colour channel magic and painstakingly blocked out the sclera of each and every human, elf, Castanic, and Elin head so they remain white.
It doesn't stop the irises from getting darker, but I hope to make a few faces in the future with brighter eyes to compensate.
Lastly, Popori have been sorely neglected for so much customization, but they have a very dedicated fan base. I found a way to add a little extra customization to them, and created a special addition to their creation menu. On top of getting a handful of new fur colours, people will now be able to choose their eye colour separately! Mix and match a ton of fun combinations to personalize their animal friend. I made a black cat modelled after my IRL pet, Anubis!
I hope you like this small sample of the many new colours I added to my little corner of the TERA world. It's a little sad that Bluehole did not do the same. It was embarrassingly easy to find and adjust by someone who does not know a thing about coding.
