making runewords

[darkprince99]

hello! im new at modding and i tried adding a runeword to runes.txt

so i went in game and tested and it crashed instantly do i have to add this information to another file any help would be nice thanks

heres a s/s

[cla$$ics]

You need a new string as well
And what kind of crash? What does the message say? There are literally millions of errors.

[darkprince99]

i figured out had to add string in patchstring.tbl thanks tho lol

[Doombreed-x]

iirc runewords are the one place where not putting a string will crash the game.

[fernsehen123]

in wonder why there is nothing in the patchstring.tbl for the runewords that are already there

should I add them there just for new runewords?

[gcc]

The game has multiple string tables. The patchstring.tbl in the patch mpq will overwrite values from other tbl files. To prevent a crash, the name of the runeword must be present in one of the tbl files. So yes, simply add new runeword names to the patchstring.tbl and it will work.

[fernsehen123]

The game has multiple string tables. The patchstring.tbl in the patch mpq will overwrite values from other tbl files. To prevent a crash, the name of the runeword must be present in one of the tbl files. So yes, simply add new runeword names to the patchstring.tbl and it will work.

ah, i understand, thx!

can i see the other tables? or are they hidden somewhere (not in MPQ files)?

[gcc]

One is in d2exp.mpq, and the other one in one of the other mpq files. Simply open the file with mpq2k and search for .tbl files.
Files placed in patch_d2.mpq will replace files stored in other mpq files.

[fernsehen123]

Okay, I have another questions about the runeword names.
As you can see here, I have weird names in the Runes.txt :



I have seen this entry in expansionstring.tbl :



Am I correct with the following assumptions?

1. The Runes.txt column "Name" is linking to an entry in the TBL files. So the Runeword name will be "Voice of Reason".
2. As the "Rune name" column in Runes.txt is not in use anyway, I can change the entry from "Winter" to "Voice of Reason" to achieve better readability for myself.

[gcc]

Exactly, you can change this entry to whatever you want.
You also can add more columns if you need some space for comments in all txt files. Simply add * as the first character, and the column will be treated as a comment.

[fernsehen123]

Oh, thats cool. thx !

another question:

I have a similar problem in the UniqueItems.txt :
index = Mindrend
And in the string.tbl :
Mindrend -> Skull Splitter

Can I change the entry in the UniqueItems.txt to Skull Splitter and put a new entry in patchstring.tbl that says
Skull Splitter -> Skull Splitter

??

Or how should I deal with this?
I want my items in the txt files to have the correct names....

[gcc]

You can do that, yes. If a string cannot be found in patchstring.tbl, the game will simply display "An evil force". For runewords you have to make sure that the patchstring.tbl entry exists, otherwise the game will crash. For everything else - regular items, skill names, monsters, uniques, etc, it will display "An evil force".
Index in runewords.txt and uniqueitems.txt does not have to be unique, so you can also create different runewords or uniques with the same name - for example, you could create 2 versions of magefist, one with the current stats and one for melee fighters that casts some skills when you hit or attack enemies.