- You have Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction v1.10 installed. (eg. C:\Program Files\Diablo II\)
- You have a subfolder setup to hold your mods. (eg. C:\Program Files\Diablo II\mods\)
- You are using a PC rather than a Mac.
STEP 1
Download the latest full version from this thread and unzip it to a sub-folder of your mods folder. For example if your D2 folder and mods folder are as above you would probably create the folder C:\Program Files\Diablo II\mods\paganheart\ and unzip the mod to there.
STEP 2
Next up is to check the same thread for update patches that have a later version number than the last full release. Unless you have a super fast connection to the internet, I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate downloading 150+ megabytes everytime the mod gets updated so full releases are limited to every few updates instead. Once you have the update you can simply unzip it to the same folder and the way the zip is structured it should add and overwrite files to the correct places.
STEP 3
So with the mod installed and patched up to the latest version, you need to make sure you have SVR's D2Mod system installed which basically patches one of your vanilla D2 DLLs and tells it to access the D2Mod.dll (in your D2 folder) which in turn calls the DLL plugins (in your PH folder). From a player's point of view you need to unzip D2Mod102.zip into your Diablo 2 folder and run D2ModSetup.bat then click OK to patch the DLL. The zip also comes with a D2Mod.ini but that's just the vanilla one that comes with the system, the Pagan Heart zip has it's own D2Mod.ini which needs to be in your PH mod folder. NOTE: Having PlugY already patched into your DLLs or using non-vanilla DLLs before installing the D2Mod system may cause possible conflicts.
STEP 4
Okay so you've got the newest version of Pagan Heart downloaded and you're ready to try it out so you'll be needing a shortcut. Well start out by just making a copy of the original D2 shortcut then right clicking it and going into properties to make the adjustments. You see the "Target" field? Well that should be pointing to the Diablo II.exe file in your D2 folder so all you need to do is add -direct to the end outside of the quote marks. So basically "C:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" would become "C:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -direct or if you'd prefer to play the mod in a window rather than full screen like I do you can use "C:\Program Files\Diablo II\Diablo II.exe" -direct -w instead
The other part of the shortcut properties that needs changing is the "Start In" field. The entry in here should just be your regular D2 folder (eg. "C:\Program Files\Diablo II") but it needs pointing towards your Pagan Heart folder so if you're setup as above just change this field to "C:\Program Files\Diablo II\mods\paganheart" which is where you unzipped the downloads earlier to. Now click the "Okay" button and your new shortcut should be good to go