StixsworldHD Songs of Conquest mods

SoC Ultra Graphics Suite v1.0.1

The ungodly madly vastly enhanced graphics overhaul for Songs of Conquest and every DLC. One plugin, 69 settings across 13 categories, all of them live-tweakable from a full in-game menu — and every one mirrored in a richly documented config file. Installation is a single file copy.

BepInEx 5 · x64 Hotkey F10 Changes apply live Base game + all DLC Multiplayer-friendly (visual-only)
Prerequisite

BepInEx 5 (x64) must already be installed and initialized — that's Part I. If BepInEx\plugins doesn't exist yet, go do Part I first (five minutes).

Download SoC_UltraGraphicsSuite_v1_0_1_BepInEx5_x64.rar and open it with 7-Zip / WinRAR / NanaZip. Inside:

FileSizeWhat it is
StixsworldHD.SoCUltraGraphics.dll88 KB The entire mod — one BepInEx 5 plugin.
README.md10 KB Full offline documentation: every category, suggested loadouts, FAQ, changelog. Keep it.

  1. Copy the DLL into plugins the one and only file that has to move

    With the game closed, drag StixsworldHD.SoCUltraGraphics.dll out of the archive into your BepInEx\plugins folder. The final path must be:

    SongsOfConquest\BepInEx\plugins\
└── StixsworldHD.SoCUltraGraphics.dll

    The DLL sits directly in plugins\ — no subfolder needed (a subfolder also works; BepInEx scans recursively). The README.md can stay in the archive or live anywhere you like — it's documentation, not code.

    BepInEx plugins folder containing StixsworldHD.SoCUltraGraphics.dll and StixsworldHD.SoCDifficultyDirector.dll
    Checkpoint — the plugins folder. This screenshot shows the finished state after Parts II and III: the Graphics Suite (88 KB) alongside the Difficulty Director (138 KB). After this part alone you'll have just the Graphics DLL.

  2. Launch the game the plugin announces itself in the log

    Start Songs of Conquest. On this first launch the plugin registers its hooks and generates its config file. BepInEx\LogOutput.log now contains a line like:

    [Info   :SoC Ultra Graphics Suite] SoC Ultra Graphics Suite v1.0.1 by StixsworldHD (StixsmasterHD4k) loaded. Press F10 …

    and the config appears at:

    BepInEx\config\stixsworldhd.songsofconquest.ultragraphics.cfg

    BepInEx config folder showing BepInEx.cfg plus the generated config files for both StixsworldHD mods
    Checkpoint — the config folder after first launch. stixsworldhd.songsofconquest.ultragraphics.cfg (27 KB of documented settings) generated automatically. The difficulty config shown beside it arrives in Part III.

  3. Press F10 the whole mod lives behind one key

    In-game — main menu, adventure map, battle, anywhere — press F10. A solid-background menu opens with 13 tabs on the left and every setting explained in plain English right under its control. Move a slider and the game changes immediately; there are no restarts anywhere in this mod.

    The SoC Ultra Graphics Suite F10 menu showing the Display & FPS tab with live resolution, scale and FPS readout
    The F10 menu. Top-right shows the live readout (1920×1080 · scale 2.00 · 61 FPS here — 2.00× supersampling). The footer buttons are your save/load/reset controls.
    Done — but read on

    The mod ships with safe, better-than-vanilla defaults (sharper shadows, 16× anisotropic filtering, higher LOD persistence). Everything spicier is opt-in. The sections below tour the menu, the config file, and four ready-made loadouts.

TabWhat lives there
Display & FPSUncap FPS entirely or cap anywhere up to 1000 · force VSync Off/On/Half · kill the brutal alt-tab throttle · defeat the Energy-Save refresh divider · queued-frames latency tuning.
Render ScaleForce 3D resolution scale 0.25×–2.00× supersampling · upscaling filter incl. AMD FSR 1.0 (all GPU brands) with a sharpness dial · Nearest-Neighbor for the pixel-art faithful · UI always stays native-crisp.
Anti-AliasingHardware MSAA up to 8× · per-camera post AA: FXAA / SMAA Low-Med-High / TAA · banding-killing dithering — forceable on any quality preset.
ShadowsShadow maps up to 8192 (vanilla ≈2048) boosted out of the box. Distance to 500, up to 4 cascades, soft shadows and bias tuning are explicit opt-ins that default to GameDefault — see the black-terrain note.
TexturesForce 16× anisotropic filtering everywhere (vanilla ground goes muddy at distance) · full-res textures on any preset — or crush texture memory for 2 GB cards.
World Detail2× LOD persistence · decorative flora/clutter density to 2× vanilla · ambient critter density to 3× (or 0 for silence).
Color & ToneACES / Neutral filmic tonemapping · exposure, contrast, saturation, hue, white balance · HDR pipeline forcing · max-precision 64-size color LUT. All neutral until you move a slider.
EffectsFull bloom takeover (intensity/threshold/scatter/HQ filtering) · vignette · chromatic aberration · 10 film-grain stocks · motion blur · Panini projection · lens distortion · force post-processing on cameras that had it disabled.
Game FeaturesTri-state force for the game's own Outlines, atmospheric Fog and See-Through silhouettes — run them on any preset or strip them for a clean diorama look. (Fog of war is a different system and is never touched.)
AtmosphereCloud-shadow drift speed 0–5× · cloud coverage 0–2×. Frozen skies, sunny days, or storm-chaser time-lapse.
LightingPer-object dynamic light limit up to the engine max of 8 — night towns and big spell fights show every torch — or strip lights for FPS.
PerformanceIncremental-GC frame budget (kills long-session micro-stutter) · async GPU-upload tuning · particle raycast budget.
Overlay & MenuRebindable hotkey · menu scaling for 4K/couch · corner FPS overlay with average and 1% lows — perfect for A/B-testing your settings.

The footer buttons

Save to Config File
Writes the current live settings to the .cfg. Live changes are session-only until you save.
Reload from File
Reads the .cfg back in and applies it — this is how you hand-edit the file while the game runs.
Reset This Tab / Reset ALL
Back to mod defaults, per tab or wholesale.
Close
Same as F10. Tip from the menu itself: the game still sees clicks under the window — drag it aside.

BepInEx\config\stixsworldhd.songsofconquest.ultragraphics.cfg

Every menu setting lives here too, with the same plain-English explanation, its type, default, and allowed min/max range or value list. Edit it with any text editor while the game is closed — or edit it live and press Reload from File in the menu. Delete the file at any time to regenerate pristine defaults on next launch.

Cinematic Ultra strong GPU

RenderScale override On at 1.50 · MSAA ×4 · SMAA_High · shadows 8192/4096 · SoftShadows ForceOn (High) · LODBias 3.0 · decoration density 1.5 · Tonemapping ACES · MaxAdditionalLights 8. Optionally try ShadowDistance 200 + CascadeCount 4 — if terrain goes black at night, set CascadeCount back to 0 (why).

Balanced Beauty the defaults, basically

SMAA_High · shadows 4096/2048 @ 120 · 16× aniso · LODBias 2.0. Better than vanilla High for a couple of FPS.

FSR Performance older GPU / handheld

RenderScale override On at 0.65 · UpscalingFilter FSR1, sharpness 0.9 · shadows 1024/512 · SoftShadows ForceOff · MaxAdditionalLights 2 · Half VSync for thermals.

Pixel Purist

RenderScale 0.50 + NearestNeighbor filter · PostProcessAA Off · CameraDithering ForceOff · MotionBlur Off. Chunky, faithful, fast.

Upgrading from v1.0.0?
Delete the old .cfg (or set CascadeCount=0, ShadowDistance=0, ShadowDepthBias=-1, ShadowNormalBias=-1, SoftShadows=GameDefault) — the old file carries v1.0.0's riskier shadow defaults. v1.0.1 defaults these to GameDefault so black night-terrain can never happen out of the box.
Preset changes can't undo you
The plugin hooks the game's own graphics manager and re-asserts your overrides the instant the game touches anything — switching the in-game quality preset never silently reverts the mod.
Update-proof by design
Zero compile-time references to game code; every hook resolves by name at runtime and is individually sandboxed. If a game patch renames something, that one feature idles (the log shows SKIPPED) while everything else keeps working.
Multiplayer
Purely visual / presentation-side — rendering pipeline, post-processing, frame pacing. The game simulation is never touched.
Uninstall
Delete StixsworldHD.SoCUltraGraphics.dll from BepInEx\plugins. Vanilla returns instantly; delete the .cfg too if you want a truly clean slate.