So, making your custom sovereign is all fine and dandy, but what about playing a sovereign, that ain't a human?

It's fairly simple really.

Beginning

We need to start by making a regular custom sovereign via the in game editor.

Spend your points, choose your traits, attributes, history, and advantages/disadvantages. DO NOT bother with Appearance, in fact untick as much as possible.

Once that is done we need to open up the custom sovereign file and make some adjustments.

You can find the file under C:\Users\OSUserName\Documents\My Games\Elemental\Units

Here's a sample file I'll include for reference.

For starters, I suggest you use the reference file as basis for your monster sovereign, I've removed several of the tags that was unnecessary.

For starters, you'll want to replace the <SelectedAbilityBonusOption>, <StartingSpellbook>, <LevelMilestone InternalName=""> data with the data from your custom sovereign file.

Now lets say you want to play a Darkling Sovereign.

Lets go find the basic monster data in C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Elemental\data\English\CoreMonsterUnitTypes

Jump down in the file to <UnitType InternalName="Darkling">

The bits we need to replace in the custom sovereign file are

<EyeTexture>gfx/eyes/male_brown_eye.png</EyeTexture>

Replace EyeTexture from the custom file with this string, and also edit the <Texture_Eyes> to match the eye texture png location.

replace the custom file information for     <ModelPath>, <SkeletonPath> and <Texture_Skin> with the appropriate darkling data.

      <ModelPath>gfx/hkb/Monsters/M_Darkling_Mesh_01.hkb</ModelPath>
    <SkeletonPath>Gfx\HKB\Units\K_Male_Skeleton_01.hkb</SkeletonPath>
    <Texture_Skin>Gfx\HKB\Monsters\M_Darkling_Texture_01.png</Texture_Skin>

Adjust the value for ModelScale to match that of the darkling (0.8)

Add the entry for <Color_Skin>40,45,50,55</Color_Skin> to the custom sovereign file.

Replace the existing data for AnimationPack with the darkling data, <AnimationPack>BanditAnimationPack</AnimationPack>

Replace the existing Medallions card with the darkling one, M_Darkling_Card.png

And that's all there really is to it. You may want to further adjust the <ModelScale>, <ClothMapScale>, <MaxScaleMainMap> and <MaxScaleTacticalMap> for certain monsters, so they don't appear too large in your game.

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