Original Legacy of the Horadrim Thread

[Myhrginoc]

We are pleased to announce a new project by Quatl. The file should be available in a day or two; for now here is the mod description.

Legacy of the Horadrim

Mod Name:: Legacy of the Horadrim
Mod Maker:: Quatl
D2 Version: 1.10 final

Introduction

This ancient tome holds the alchemical secrets of the Horadrim. Its leather binding is cracked with age. The tome exudes a musty oder of rot. Below the crumbled seal of the horadrim, it's cover bears a partially visible inscription: "r.ths t..t li. he.ein, for th.y are th. las. legacy of the Horadr.m"

Alchemical tradition stretches far into the darkness of history. Traditional alchemy harnesses the four physical elements: fire and water, earth and air. Alchemy can harness impressive powers from these elements and channel them to the will of man, but this is just a shadow of the true alchemy which Antyrael brought with him to earth from the heavens.

True alchemy is a study of the hidden truths. Antyrael spoke to us of a fith essense, the very essense of identity. Herein lies that knowledge which Antyrael has bestowed upon us. Use this knowledge well, harness the quintessens to your will, and alter the very truth of the universe itself.

The horadric cube facilitates the practice of alchemy most items must me specialy prepared to awaken their quintessense, and allow it to be directed. An awakened spectral elixer is used for this process. It's afinity to all five of the fundamental essenses reveals the quintessense withen an object.

The awakening of a spectral elixer is dependant on the power of the one who awakens it. Thus as one grows in overall power they are able to create more potent transformations.

Once the quintessense has been awakened withen an item it may be enhanced by use of alchemical reagents. Simply combining a reagent with an item in the cube will consume some amount of quintessense and alter the nature of the item in some way. Repeated aplications of a reagent are in most cases comulitive.

one exception to this is the process involved in adding trigered spells to an item. This requires a number specialy prepared scrolls, empowered with the spell to be added. The power of the spell is controlled by adding one, two, or three scrolls at the same time in the cube repeated applications will increase the likelyhood of the spell being released.

Details

Legacy of the Horadrim is a mod for version 1.10 of Diablo II - Lord of Destruction. With a heavy emphasis on custom item creation and odd character concepts. Long term planning and resource harvesting are rewarded. Any item may be modified, limited only by character level and available gold.

Highlights include:
Custom Item Crafting
- Unlock the forgoten secrets of Horadric Alchemy
- Very flexible crafting system
- Modify any item from Sets and Uniques to the lowly broken sword
- Create your own powerful artifacts in your own style

New socketing possibilities
- Sockets are more common and more sockets per item at lower difficulties
- Several new gems, and old gems properties have been altered
- Jewels are more common
- Unique jewels may be found in treasure, or via gambleing
- Socketed items can be removed and reused in another item

Wield the abilities of other classes to create a truly unique character concept.

Spend gold, lots of gold.
- So many things to spend money on that gold is never pointless.
- Strategic spending becomes necessary and fun part of game play.

[Quatl]

Most recent General Release is Beta 1.5A
Download-->Legacy of the Horadrim<--Download

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Version Beta 1.5A Changes

Masteries now Appear on the Tree
- Passive and Mastery skills now appear on the skill trees for refrence
| All of them are on the first skill page.
| They will display the benifits you currently recieve from each mastery
| you have added to the Tome.
- The display is a bit odd, but functional.

Bragging Rights
- All crafted items now display the crafter's name

Skill Repairs
- Double Swing is functional, for Assassins and Barbarians
| it's animation looks odd, but the dammage is correctly done from
| both weapons.
- Dodge, Avoid, and Evade should no longer cause crashes
| for paladins who are useing two-handed weapons

Skill Synergies
- Skill synergies should now work properly

Skill Caps Return
- The level 20 cap per skill is back, and working

Save files Broken
- This release breaks some (most) character save files

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Version Beta 1.5 Changes

Crafted Effect Skills Removed
- All recipies for adding event skills and charges removed.
| as in " X% chance to cast SomeSpell on hit" and similar
| Many of these didn't work properly
| Those that did were either too weak or too powerful
| Bascialy a pointless feature, that sounded cool

Minor String Change
- The Tome's total skill bonus now now reads "Kowledge Level"
| just a cosmetic change

Major Behind the Scenes Changes
- Many non-functional elements of the mod were purged from the files
| All things left over from failed experiments, or old implementations
| Mostly unused strings, etc.
| Look out for "an Evil Force" let me know if you see it anywhere


Non-Functional Items and Modifiers Removed
- Includeing things like "+X to Sorceress Skills", and "staff mod" skills
| which look like specific skill bonus, but are created from class lists
| as well as + to skill tabs
| These modifiers no longer worked anyway.
- Class specific items other than claws should no longer drop
| Sorry if you have one already. It may or may not become unusable
| Uniques and sets based on these types should not drop either

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Version Beta 1.4G Changes

Skill Scrolls are Functional Again
- This was caused by me forgetting to save the files

Item Enchanting Updates
- Alchemical Enhancement has been simplified
| To Alchemicaly Enhance an item simply Cube it with a Spectral Elixer
| Quintessence will be added acording to character level
| The description of the Spectral Elixer has been updated
- Quintessence availible, by level has been reduced
| This does not effect any items you've already enchanted
- The procedure for useing Reagents is unchanged

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Version Beta 1.4F Changes

Crash Bug Fixed:
- Quest related cube recipies should no longer crash the game.
| This effected Khalim's Will, The Horardic Staff, and Cow Portal
- This Fix breaks the per skill level caps on the tome. (v1.4E)
- Thank you, Jounk33 for reporting this

Skill Updates:
- Double Swing now works for assassin
| Frenzy should work for her too, but hasn't been checked

- Dodge has been tested with several classes ( should work for everyone)
| Avoid and Evade should work as well (not confirmed)


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Version Beta 1.4E Changes

English language is now forced:
- This should make instalation simpler on non-english instalations
| You should no longer need to rename the DATA\local\LNG\ENG directory
| (If you have been doing this, don't. Let me know if this works. I can't test it.)

First pass on Gem properity modification:
- Gems generaly toned down.
| Most damage adds were reduced
| Thorns from gems are much weaker
| Gems granting Elemental resistances, are reduced in effectiveness.
| Single leach gems,leach less life or mana
- Skulls now add Magic Damage instead of dual leach

Some Disfunctional Skills Have Recieved Therapy:
- Assassin traps should now work by all classes
| Druid's Arctic Blast should work too.

Skill restrictions:
- Some classes are now not allowed to add certain skills to the Tome
- The scroll descriptions have not been updated to reflect this (yet)
| bar.Double Throw -> Alowed for Barbarian only
| bar.Double Swing -> Allowed for Barbarian/Assassin only
| bar.Frenzy -> Allowed for Barbarian/Assassin only
| ass.Claw Mastery -> Allowed for Assassin Only
| ass.Weapon Block -> Allowed for Assassin Only
| ass.Fists of Fire -> Allowed for Assassin Only
| ass.Dragon Claw -> Allowed for Assassin Only
| ass.Claws of Thunder -> Allowed for Assassin Only
| ass.Blades of Ice -> Allowed for Assassin Only
- Some of these restrictions may change later
| particularly skills that require claws

The following Skills are of High Concern:
- Either because of things I've heard or how they look in the texts
| ama.Dodge
| ama.Avoid
| ama.Evade
| pal.Smite
| bar.Leap Attack
| ass.Dragon Talon
| ass.Cobra Strike
| ass.Dragon Tail
| ass.Dragon Flight
| ass.Pheonix Strike
| And all druid elemental skills
- If anyone has tested these please let me know if they work
| or not. This would save me alot of testing time

Tome Skills are Now Caped to Level 20 (Each)
- This is a per skill limit, you can have more than 20 diferent skills
| but you can no longer have Level 36 fire bolt from the tome alone.
| Attempting to add the 21st point of each skill should return the scroll
| and Tome unchanged.

[cj]

would love to play , but due to "bad inventory unable to enter game" , i installed as per instructions.....please help

[Quatl]

cj, I sent you a pm with some sugestions.

Has anyone else out there had problems getting the mod to run?

--Quatl

[cj]

ok... i tried a clean install , patch to 1.10(final) , install loth then copy and install mod .....starting screen = v1.10 d2modsystem 1.02 plugy 3.02....all good sofar... then the four new characters barbazon assyn etc.. but they all come up with "bad inventory cannot enter game" ????? other mods work on my system ....im out of ideas

[IndianaMaggot]

Delete the save folder

[cj]

i deleted the save folder , and can now start a new character
edit.
ok played act 1 , what are these reagents you mention that can be gambled? i have not seen them yet , sofar the game seems well balanced and drop rates are good for gems , but it seems alot like the standard game with plugy... or am i missing something?

[Quatl]

check the shops, most of the obvious changes are in them for now.

Only the spectral elixer is gambled for (the item that lets you begin enchanting an item) the reagents are for sale in different places in different towns (usualy who ever offers repairs), in act 1 charsi has them on the "misc" tab. The skill scrolls are usualy on the gambler's misc tab(they also drop as treasure).

Most of the other changes are subtle, some dungeons are bigger, hirelings are a bit more effective, the player classes are less different in their hidden stats.

--Quatl

[Malachai29]

hmm, I cant seem to download the file, all I ever get is a file named LoTH, which appears to not be the right filename. Any clues?

Malachai

EDIT: nvm, got it to download by right click save as...seems it doesnt like the spaces or something...

[cj]

uuuhhhhmmm no..... there are no changes in the shops???? all i have installed now is d2 1.10 and loth , i thought maybe the loth folder should be extracted into the main folder...but this makes no difference either, my guess is that in the misc tab there should be some scrolls and other stuff ....all i get is throwing weapons and arrows??? i thought maybe its the mod.exe but its installed and comes up on the starting screen.
any ideas??? thanx.

[Malachai29]

I also see no changes in the shops. I installed as the directions say, and run it via the link provided, with one alteration, instead of "/mod:LotH" I use "-mod LotH". It seems there is something missing, like the loth config file maybe?

Malachai

EDIT: Ok, I got it to run, after deleting the saved characters, by renaming d2mod.ini to loth.ini, but still dont see any changes in the shops, and my starting gear as a druid is a club and a shield, pots, tp and id scroll. I dunno if everything is getting loaded or not at this point...

[Quatl]

Ok, clearly there is something severly wrong with 1.2
I've posted a (temporary) link to the new version hopefuly this version will work properly.

Hopefuly this will fix the problems. I'd recomend completely removeing the old version, before seting this one up just in case. If the game wasn't reading the new data files your characters are missing items that they should have started with (the Horadric Tome and Cube.) Although you could pass these from a new character via the shared stash.

Edit:I just did the install myself from the new archive and it seams to work on my system, please let me know if you still have problems
--Quatl

[Malachai29]

I will have to wait til I get home to download, just got to work, but will give it a shot as soon as I can....meaning 12 hours from now...

Malachai

[Quatl]

hehe, no problem, you're doing me a favor at this point. I feel pretty stupid about the initial release at this point. Thank you for hanging in there.

--Quatl

[deloro]

1.3 Works just small one thing is there any I can get a bigger stash?

[Malachai29]

with plugy in use, why would you need a bigger stash? you have something like 4 billion pages you can use...

Malachai

[cj]

thats better... 1.3 works just need to change target in startup to where its installed...its set to c:\games\d2 etc... mine (and i guess most) are c:\program files \d2 then go to charsi and theres a whole page of new stuff once i worked it out i will give some feedback.
cheers
cj

edit

xellent mod... i love it, but i noticed sofar the reagent for 1%faster hit recovery(armor) does not work. if i had more gold i could try them all it seems easy at times but then i run into some ubermonsters and it takes a bit longer , well done , i thought with all the extra skills it would be too easy but its a good balance ..... looks like it will be a long nite

[Quatl]

I'm glad it's working now

@cj:
What type of item were you mixing the hit recovery with? a body armor, helm, boots or which?
I kinda like never haveing enough money, it makes those "useless" rare drops feel usefull:) With vanilla I always ended up with too much gold and nothing good to spend it on.

About the shortcut thing, windows gets cranky if you try to make an invalid shortcut. I just figured out right now that I could just copy the file just long enough to make the shortcut for the archive, I'm slow sometimes;) I'll set it up nice for next version.

Reguarding balance, I'll likely be rebalanceing the monsters to make them slightly tougher at some point. When the cash starts really flowing at higher levels all the extra stuff makes it a bit too easy in my opinion. Especialy if you're aggressive about enchanting your hirelings equipment.
--Quatl

[Yopurzag]

Hello QUATL!

Great concept to a mod! finally!

Let me congratulate u for the ideia and for your work!

I´ve playing Diablo2 LOD since the begining. and the mods since patch 1.09 release, and finally a mod that reflets my own ideias of what I really like in a mod! the addictable skills to an item (a book) and the item customize formulas!

Ok. Some instalation issue that maybe u could help:

After the installing, I run the game and it does not assume the plugY. I´ve to install - by my hand - the complete plugy (version 7.01)in the DIABLO 2 folder and in the LotH folder, to work.

I´ve done the install think just like it´s written in the readme. file.
No others mods in the D2 folder and I used 1.10 clean files. What´s wrong here?


OK, now the skill bugs:

To u already know what skills are bugged to the other classes?

I´m testing it for my own and i´ll share with u. So far:


Artic Blast - bugged(character dissapear during the action)

BARB Leap Attack - bugged (character dissapear while jumping)

BARB Leap - works fine!

BARBARIAN and ASSASSIN double weapon skills don´t work with other classes and maybe U sould remove it... it´s not usefull and it takes room

1 to 6Lv skills- Necro/Druid/Amaz skills work´s just fine.

12 to 18Lv skills- Pal/Sorc/

Barb warcryes work without voice sound - good to all classes and for the ladies.

Amaz "strafe" - makes a the female sound with the other classes.

Necro sommons and curses - working fine.

I will Keep in touch.

Keep up your good work. Don´t give it up!

[cj]

i used it with body armor....mind you it was a rare to begin with and already had a few potions used on it, then i noticed another one (cant remember which now) that was for armor or jewelry and i tried it on rings and amulet ... nothing. seems every now and then theres a potion that does not agree with an item
are the potions depending on level or specific item levels ?
also notice no tricubing gems etc... did u remove this for a reason?
what is the maximum skills versus levels in the horadrim ?? (only asking for character planning)
how many item stats can there be on one item using the potions? (this might sort out the first question )
lastly theres a hammer for destroying socket contents....is there any way of creating sockets?

[Quatl]

[quote=Yopurzag";p="286864"]Hello QUATL!

Great concept to a mod! finally!

Let me congratulate u for the ideia and for your work!

I´ve playing Diablo2 LOD since the begining. and the mods since patch 1.09 release, and finally a mod that reflets my own ideias of what I really like in a mod! the addictable skills to an item (a book) and the item customize formulas!
[/quote]
I'm glad you're enjoying it so far
[quote=Yopurzag";p="286864"]

Ok. Some instalation issue that maybe u could help:

After the installing, I run the game and it does not assume the plugY. I´ve to install - by my hand - the complete plugy (version 7.01)in the DIABLO 2 folder and in the LotH folder, to work.

I´ve done the install think just like it´s written in the readme. file.
No others mods in the D2 folder and I used 1.10 clean files. What´s wrong here?
[/quote]
The only thing I can think of off had, is if the "start in" directory of the shortcut is not set properly. Otherwise I'm not sure, the mod should work with d2mod.dll, and d2gfx.dll either in the d2 directory or the mod directory.

[quote=Yopurzag";p="286864"]

OK, now the skill bugs:

To u already know what skills are bugged to the other classes?

I´m testing it for my own and i´ll share with u. So far:


Artic Blast - bugged(character dissapear during the action)

BARB Leap Attack - bugged (character dissapear while jumping)

BARB Leap - works fine!

BARBARIAN and ASSASSIN double weapon skills don´t work with other classes and maybe U sould remove it... it´s not usefull and it takes room

1 to 6Lv skills- Necro/Druid/Amaz skills work´s just fine.

12 to 18Lv skills- Pal/Sorc/

Barb warcryes work without voice sound - good to all classes and for the ladies.

Amaz "strafe" - makes a the female sound with the other classes.

Necro sommons and curses - working fine.

[/quote]
This is very useful information, thank you. I knew there would be some issues like this. I thought it would be easier to add them all and prune the invalid ones out afterwards. But I didn't know specificaly which ones were poopy.

I'll work on trimming these out next version.

[quote=Yopurzag";p="286864"]
I will Keep in touch.

Keep up your good work. Don´t give it up![/quote]
Thanks for the enchouragement I've needed some

This mod was sitting on my harddrive for about a year, in pretty much the same state it's in now. The tome had me frustrated (still does) so I set it aside for a while ... the while ended up being a year.

I ran across it the other week and thought I should just blow the dust bunnies off of it and let people see it, and hpefuly enjoy it dispite it's imperfect state.

--Quatl

[Quatl]

[quote=cj";p="286871"]i used it with body armor....mind you it was a rare to begin with and already had a few potions used on it, then i noticed another one (cant remember which now) that was for armor or jewelry and i tried it on rings and amulet ... nothing. seems every now and then theres a potion that does not agree with an item
are the potions depending on level or specific item levels ?
[/quote]
The only restrictions for reagent mixing should be the quintessence cost, and the item type. Unfortuneatly the item type can be problematic.

I don't know how familiar you are with D2 modding (if at all), but there are issues with equivelent item types sometimes that mess things up. For example +duribility should work on all objects of type weapon, except for sub-types combination (javilins and such), and thrown. If I set up the recipe for weapon it sometimes wont work on anything. I asume because it's invalid for some subtype, but I don't really know this to be true. Other times it will work on some of the subtypes but not others in weird ways (like not working for axes but working for swords.) I don't realy know how to predict these issues, so I'm fixing them as I go along at this point.

The way I fix them is to "unroll" the item types so if an armor recipe is not working I create 5 extra recipies (torso,helm,belt,shield,glove,boot.) Which makes the file larger (I'm not sure how much I need to worry about this, I don't know what limits there are if any. The file that controls the cube is already 8300, lines in the mod, if there's a limit I'll probly find it)

When I made the mod at first I didn't know this, so some recipes are still cranky.

Thanks for the info I'll take a closer look at the (armor or jewelry) type reagents.

[quote=cj";p="286871"]
also notice no tricubing gems etc... did u remove this for a reason?
[/quote]
Yes, and yes;
I removed them because the gems are availible for sale, and things get out of hand rapidly. I may in a future version add it back in. I've been concidereing various options for rebalanceing gems anyway, especialy in comparison to reagents. If gems go back to treasure drops only, the tri-cubeing will likely return.
[quote=cj";p="286871"]
what is the maximum skills versus levels in the horadrim ?? (only asking for character planning)
[/quote]
The max for skill totals is unchanged, I believe its 20 for inate skill points, and a total bonus of 30. This may change later, after I see what hapens with the mod in hell difficulty.
[quote=cj";p="286871"]
how many item stats can there be on one item using the potions? (this might sort out the first question )
[/quote]
There is no "hard" limit for how many properties you can add, but...
I read a post once that said that if you had too many mods on an item for it to be displayed on screen the game would crash. I've never seen this happen but then I've never had an item with that many mods on it.
I'd recomend keeping the number of different modifier types below 15 or so, if you're worried about it.

Because of the way the cube works I'll never be able to restrict this. So I'm hopeing it's not true.
[quote=cj";p="286871"]
lastly theres a hammer for destroying socket contents....is there any way of creating sockets?[/quote]
the hammer will actualy pop the gems etc, out of the sockets so you can reuse them (if it says destroy in the discription, I should fix that they used work that way)
As for adding sockets, there is not currently a way to do this. I do plan to implement recipes for this eventualy (I do have some recipies for it but they are disabled for the moment as they were acting strange)


--Quatl

[Malachai29]

Quick question on the druid front, I keep finding things with automagic for other classes, daggers for necros, orbs for sorcs and such, but, I can find nothing for druids, even found a magic wolf head that had +life, but no +skills. Is there something I should be watching for for + to druid skills?

Malachai

[Nameless]

[quote=Quatl";p="286876"]There is no "hard" limit for how many properties you can add, but...
I read a post once that said that if you had too many mods on an item for it to be displayed on screen the game would crash. I've never seen this happen but then I've never had an item with that many mods on it.
I'd recomend keeping the number of different modifier types below 15 or so, if you're worried about it.[/quote]
I mostly play Eastern Sun and there you can often exceed the max number of stats, particularly when you add rare jewels to a set item that has more than one socket and you complete the set.

As the number of lines in the display gets larger, several things happen:

First the font size of the whole item description (when you hoover the mouse over it) gets smaller. You can use that as a gauge when you're entering dangerous territory and that you should probably stop adding stats.

Then you won't get any more description (nothing is displayed when you hoover the mouse over the item). At this point the game may or may not crash. Usually it doesn't, I'm not quite sure if it only crashes if you're exceeding another limit or if the crash is random.
In ES you can usually avoid the crash by removing one of the other set pieces first so that the set is broken and the set boni don't have to be displayed.

[Quatl]

@Malachai29:
the druid helms should still drop with skills, however they don't always have them. You may have been unlucky. I know I always seem to get the "wrong" class items no mater who I play
The only thing in this catagory I changed was adding necro stuff to daggers and removeing them from wands. I never used to use a knife with the necro in vanilla as i had to give up the skills, but they do have the dagger skills so so I thought it was more coherent this way.

@Nameless:
Thank you for that. It's nice that there's some sign at least.

--Quatl