Mod: Architems

[jeremyosborne]

Why did I create and why do I use this mod?
I wanted something to "live for" for my high level characters. This mod, while it will have more high level (90+) items as time goes on, is not designed to be a Monty Hall Campaign addition: each Architem will have a cost of doing business associated with it. With great power comes (somewhat) great responsibility.

Please consider these items alpha: I haven't been able to pop one on anything other than test characters that I force-load with the items. That said, I have started playing with this mod, so I figured I'd share in case anyone else wanted to use it.

Where do I get this mod?

Attached to this post, and at:

https://github.com/downloads/jeremyo...s_20110110.zip

How to Install?
Drop this into your Din's Curse/Assets folder. If you are using Windows XP and installed the game in the default location, your Assets folder is located at:

C:\Program Files\Din's Curse\Assets

NOTE: You do not need the Demon War expansion for this mod. If there comes a time when you do need the Demon War expansion, I will put those files in a separate mod pack.

How to uninstall?
Just delete the file from your Assets folder. Note: If your character happens to find one of these items and you stop using this mod, I have no idea what will happen to the item data in your character. Remove at your own risk while your characters are in possession of any Architem.

For the rest of the notes, including information about the items, please see the official readme below:

Architems

High level, artifact items
for the hack-n-slash RPG
Din's Curse
by Soldak Entertainment, Inc.
http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/


Play tested against:
    * version 1.010 of Din's Curse
    * version 1.011 of Din's Curse
    * version 1.011 of Din's Curse + Demon War Expansion
    * version 1.012 of Din's Curse + Demon War Expansion
    * version 1.013 of Din's Curse + Demon War Expansion

The purpose of this mod:
    * Provide a selection of higher level general and class specific
      items.


Caveats of this mod:
    * Once you start using item mods, you need to keep using item mods
      otherwise Din's Curse will not know what sort of data belongs to
      the item at load time.


Items this mod adds:
    Necklaces
    * Flameheart Champion (Level 37), Elite (Level 67), and Legend (Level 92)
        Bonuses:
            * Very good fire resistance
            * Good chance to cast Maelstrom when hit
        Penalties:
            * Negative Cold resistance
    * Coldheart Champion (Level 37), Elite (Level 67), and Legend (Level 92)
        Bonuses:
            * Very good cold resistance
            * Good chance to cast Frost Nova when hit
        Penalties:
            * Negative Fire resistance
    * Ohmstone Champion (Level 37), Elite (Level 67), and Legend (Level 92)
        Bonuses:
            * Very good Lightning Resistance
            * Good chance to cast ShockWave when hit
        Penalties:
            * Negative Dexterity
    * Toxicshard Champion (Level 37), Elite (Level 67), and Legend (Level 92)
        Bonuses:
            * Excellent Poison Resistance
            * Very good chance to cast Blight when hit
        Penalties:
            * Negative Health Regen (careful with this one)
    * Darkrock Champion (Level 37), Elite (Level 67), and Legend (Level 92) level
        Bonuses:
            * Very good Magic Resistance
            * Good chance to cast Arcane Swarm when hit
        Penalties:
            * Negative Mana regeneration
      
    Weapons
    * Lifetaker Champion (Level 37), Elite (Level 67), and Legend (Level 92) dagger
        Bonuses:
            * Excellent Critical Hit Bonus
            * Weapon Speed bonus (Legend dagger only)
            * Slightly lower dexterity requirements than normal daggers
            * Slightly faster than normal daggers
            * Perception
            * Disarm Traps
        Penalties:
            * Greatly penalizes Crushing Blow
            * Greatly penalizes Stunning Blow
            * Greatly penalizes Deep Wounds
            * Virtually negates magic crushing blow
            * Virtually negates magic criticals
    * Thoushalnopass Champion (Level 37), Elite (Level 67), and Legend (Level 92) staff
        Bonuses:
            * Lots of extra elemental damage: Fire, Cold, Lightning, Poison
        Penalties:
            * Health Regen negative
            * Massive Mana Regen negative... better take some mana potions 
              with you for special attacks, and your timing better be good.
    * Purge Champion (Level 37), Elite (Level 67), and Legend (Level 92) one handed sword
        Bonuses:
            * Excellent Deep Wounds bonus
            * Greatly increased attack (to-hit) bonus
            * Greatly increased movement speed
            * Increased weapon speed compared to normal one handed swords
            * Increased min and max damage compared to normal swords
              of same level
            * Slightly lower dexterity and strength requirements compared
              to normal swords of same level
        Penalties:
            * Greatly penalizes Crushing Blow
            * Greatly penalizes Stunning Blow
            * Greatly penalizes Critical Strike
    * Sacrament Champion (Level 37), Elite (Level 67), and Legend (Level 92) one handed mace.
      Sacrament has virtualy no direct penalties as it is a much more 
      specialized weapon.
        Bonuses:
            * Good crushing blow bonus
            * Very good attack (to-hit) bonus
            * Excellent damage bonus to many demonic and undead monsters
            * Faster than the average mace
            * Higher min and max damage compared to maces of same level
            * Lower strength requiremenents
            * Very good light intensity bonus
        Penalties:
            * Minor dexterity requirement
     
    Tools
    * Multiool 1000 (Level 37), 2000 (Level 67), and 3000 (Level 92) dagger
      and
      Utilistaff Alpha  (Level 37), Beta  (Level 67), and Gamma (Level 92) staff
      What I have always wanted in this game is not so much a weapon
      to put in my 'w'-hotkey alternate weapon slot, but a tool.
      Something that can help me out when I'm not fighting monsters.
      This is that tool, one masquerading as a dagger, one masquerading
      as a staff. This will allow almost every single class combination
      to use this tool.
        Bonuses:
            * Very good light intensity bonus.
            * Excellent Perception bonus.
            * Excellent disarm traps bonus.
            * Very good extra money bonus.
            * Very good extra item chance bonus.
            * Very good "better magic item" chance bonus.
            * Improved lock picking skill for those that can lockpick.
            * Much less requirements to use than base weapon of the same 
              class.
        Penalties:
            * This is a tool, not a weapon. You won't be killing things
              with this.

    Sets
    * Conundrum's set, Level 87 Leather Gloves, Leather Boots, and Cape
      A Rogue set requiring a bit of Intelligence to wear.
      By themselves, the items are pretty mundane:
      Conundrum's Gloves:
        Bonuses:
            * Weapon speed increase.
        Penalties:
            * Disarm trap decrease.
      Conundrum's Boots:
        Bonuses:
            * Movement speed increase.
        Penalties:
            * Find items decrease.
      Conundrum's Cape
        Bonuses:
            * Defense increase.
        Penalties:
            * Magic find chance decrase.
      Wearing two and three pieces of the set provide the following:
        Bonuses:
            * Good vitality increase.
            * Good Dexterity increase.
            * Good cast time decrease.
            * Very good Disarm trap increase.
            * Very good Find Items increase.
            * Very good Magic find chance increase.

Changes, by date
01/20/2011
    * Added Conundrum's set.

01/09/2011
    * Broke items into their own gdb files. Magic modifiers are placed
      at the top of the file followed by the item definitions at the
      bottom.

12/26/2010
    * "Shock Wave" string reference is now spelled correctly, and 
      displays correctly.
    * Removed (I believe) the ability for random items to be spawned
      with the magical modifiers found in this mod.

Known Issues when using this mod:
    * I cannot get base item types, like "Necklace", to show up in the
      tooltip item label without having the Architems inherit from an
      already existing item.


How to package and deploy the mod (assuming you don't have the 
zipped version already):
    * Package up folders into a zip file, but no other files.
      DO NOT zip up the _raw folder into the mod.
    * Name the zip file whatever you want, but make sure that the
      contained folders are at the root of the zip file.
    * Place the folder in your Din's Curse/Assets directory.


Legalese:
I, Jeremy Osborne, assert that to the best of my knowledge, all 
modifications made herein are within the ground rules stated at:

http://www.soldak.com/Dins-Curse/Mods.html

Further, to the extent that I have rights within the ground rules,
I wave all of my own rights over any modifications I make, and
make all of my modifications freely available to owners and users
of Soldak Entertainment products and anyone else legally allowed to use 
Din's Curse modifications.

[Caal]

The idea of negative attributes on items is interesting. If I might make a suggestion, I think that having the items linked in some way (maybe by part of the name being the same), sort of like a giant set, might be interesting, where say one of item B's positive attributes will offset item A's negative attribute, one of item C's positive attributes offsets item B's negative attribute, etc. so that by using multiple items from this group, synergies develop and more of the negative attributes are neutralized, increasing the power of the items as more are used.

[jeremyosborne]

Originally Posted by Caal

...If I might make a suggestion, I think that having the items linked in some way (maybe by part of the name being the same), sort of like a giant set, might be interesting, where say one of item B's positive attributes will offset item A's negative attribute, one of item C's positive attributes offsets item B's negative attribute, etc. so that by using multiple items from this group, synergies develop and more of the negative attributes are neutralized, increasing the power of the items as more are used.

Excellent idea. If you have ideas for names, or specific things you'd like to see, let me know. I'm totally open to suggestions, I could even make a "Caal's Set" The only rule is the items have to eventually be able to have some sort background written about them, and can't be blatant Monty Hall-esque.

My general plan is as follows:
* Make an item for each of under represented item in the game (IMO): short sword, mace, two handed mace, leggings, arm-things (I forget what they're called), jewelry.
* Move into making some sets. This is where I'll use your idea. The plan is to make a set for each of the class archetypes: Warrior, Rogue, etc... that could be used by anyone, but in particular will benefit that class. For example, a Rogue set that greatly boosts what rogues do best: find and disarm traps, open locks (if I can figure out how to boost skills vs. OnHit and WhenHit moments), heavy poison attacks, smoke screen when hit... in other words support skills that I like to use as a Rogue but I really don't want to put skill points into.

In a lot of ways, if I can figure out all the things I want to do with items through what's exposed to us modders, I'd like to take an approach to filling out sections of the game in much the same way that Magitek did with the Din's Additionals mod.

[jeremyosborne]

Found two bugs in the previously posted architems mod (thearchitems_20101224.zip):
* (Minor) Typo in my application of the "Shock Wave" localization string.
* (Major) The previous way I was implementing the magic modifiers for the architems meant that the modifiers could wind up on almost any rare or even magical items. I have (I believe) fixed this with the 20101226 release: the magic modifiers should only show up on the architems and should not be able to be spawned on randomly generated items.

[jeremyosborne]

I've never found two weapons I've wanted to flip-flop between on my characters, so I thought what would be the best use of the second weapon slot?

How about a Swiss Army Knife?

That's right, for the low, low cost of free, and a sufficiently high level character, and this mod, you can now pop either the Multitool (dagger), or the Utilistaff.

Each tool comes in three flavors, like all the other Architems.

New as of the 20101226a release.

If anyone ever pops one of them, let me know. The tools are powerful, but I don't really think they unbalance the game at all as you really aren't going to kill anything with them. If someone can figure out how to kill a level 50+ mob with them, you have more determination than the average gamer.

[jeremyosborne]

Originally Posted by Caal

If I might make a suggestion, I think that having the items linked in some way (maybe by part of the name being the same), sort of like a giant set.....

I finally got around to putting items together. I'm satisfied enough, but not super elated with my first Level 87 set geared towards a Rogue character.

Figuring out the set was both simple and a bit of an exercise in exactness and managing lots of particles.

Wanted to let you know that I appreciate your advice, and will be working on building more sets and set like items into the game.