- Aug 5, 2005
- 8,074
- 2,586
- 113
Originally posted by Warrior of Light
The Table of Contents
1. Basics
2. Terminology
3. Short Explanation of Drop Process
4. Game data files
4.1. TreasureClassEx.txt
4.2. Monstats.txt
4.3. MagicPrefix.txt and MagicSuffix.txt
4.4. Weapons.txt
4.5. Armor.txt
4.6. Misc.txt
4.7. ItemTypes.txt
4.8. Itemratio.txt
5. Area, monster and item levels
6. TC selection and number of dropped items
7. Item type selection
8. Item quality selection
9. Set and unique item selection
10. Sockets' number selection
11. Affix selection
12. Item generation at shops
13. Gambling
14. Ethereal items
15. Rune and charm generation
16. Quest drop and Andariel bug
17. Object drops
18. Countess
19. Crafting
20. Imbue
21. Cubing
22. Circlets and Magic Level
23. Runes in Hell Forge
24. Magic Find
25. 1.11 Drop Changes
26. Thanks
1. Basics
The goal of most players in Diablo II is to kill enemies while staying alive. This trivial concept is based on three things that determine your effectiveness: 1) your tactics, 2) the build of your character, 3) the items that you use. All these things have great impact on gameplay, you'll quickly die at hell difficulty if you play without any tactics, you'll be killing slowly without wise skill distribution, but many people find that the most important aspect of Diablo II is its unique item system. Almost any character reckon on its items, for example a Mage becomes very powerful after doubling his skill levels, using items, and a Warrior almost completely cannot be separated from his weapon. Many people spend a lot of hours trying to find certain items, and most dedicated players make item hunting the goal of their playing.
This guide is trying to answer the most popular question about item generation, most aspects of item creation in the game.
If you have any other questions, feel free to post them in the Single Player Forum.
2. Terminology
Item Type - it is a kind of item, e.c. a cap, a gem, a short sword, a ring.
Item Quality - it is a kind of item properties: low quality, normal, superior, magic, rare, set, unique.
Affixes - it is item magic properties: prefixes and suffixes. Note, that not all item properties are affixes. For example: stuffmods, pre-defined properties of crafted items and some special mods of set and unique items. E.c. "+60 to Mana" on a magic ring is an affix, "+20% crushing blow" isn't an affix.
Qlvl - Quality level. 1) A level of item type. All these levels are stored in weapons.txt, armor.txt and misc.txt data files. 2) A level of set or unique item. All these levels are stored in UniqueItems.txt and SetItems.txt data files.
Ilvl - Item Level. All items in the game have levels that are generated when it is created. For some strange reason Blizzard decided to hide it from players. Don't confuse Item Level with Required Level, - it is different things.
Mlvl - Monster Level. All monsters in the game have levels as well as players.
Area Level - Area Level. All areas in the game also have levels.
Alvl - Affix Level. It is a level of prefix or suffix. They are stored in MagicPrefix.txt and MagicSuffix.txt in the "Level" column. The name "Affix Level" is used to differentiate them from other "Levels".
TC - Treasure Class. All item types in the game are organised in the game into treasure classes. They are recursive. This means that one treasure class may include another treasure class. E.c. Hell Baal drops all his items from "Baal (H)" treasure class, which consists of "Act 5 (H) Equip B", "Act 5 (H) Junk" and "Act 5 (H) Good" treasure classes. Each of them consists of several other treasure classes.
Clvl- Character Level. It is one of few levels that you can actually see in the game.
Rarity - it is a value, assigned to every set and unique item in the game. Higher the rarity of an item, more common it is in the game. So you may see that "Rarity" is quite a bad name. E.c. Stone of Jordan has Rarity=1, Manald Heal has Rarity=15.
SP - Single Player mode.
3. Short Explanation of Drop Process
When you kill a monster or open a chest the game may generate items to reward you. Their properties are also generated at the same moment. The item may be unidentified, however if it is dropped it already has certain properties, that doesn't depend on who will identify it or when.
The game creates dropped items with algorithm of such kind:
1) At the beginning it finds treasure class (TC), that describes all drops of the monster you killed or a chest, you opened, rock, you touched, etc. All drop sources have treasure classes.
2) Then it makes one or several iterations, that are called "Picks", when it selects one chosen from several possibilities.
2.1) One of these possibilities often is so called "NoDrop", when it simply no drop items at all. However, note that the game may do several picks, so one of them may select NoDrop, but all others select some items. Most normal monsters have only one pick, though.
2.2) If it selects to pick from another TC, then it starts another cycle of picks from the selected TC, which may again contain several picks from different TCs and may also have NoDrop chance.
3) At some iteration the game may eventually select a certain item type. If this item may have several qualities, the game starts with an algorithm of quality determination. E.c. Keys, runes, potions may only be normal quality, but rings, short swords, helms, bucklers may have different qualities like magic or unique. Note that Magic Finding works only here.
4) For every selected item it calculates item level.
5) If it selects unique or set quality, the game creates the list of all such items according to item level. Then it selects one of the items from the list randomly according to rarity. If there are no items in the list, then it will create double durability magic or triple durability rare item.
6) After it selects item type and item quality, it generates item affixes if needed. Also it generates all other properties of an item, that may vary. E.c. El runes, mana potions, identify scrolls don't have variable properties, but magic rings, rare kite shields, cracked sashes need property generation.
You may find this algorithm a bit complicated, but it is actually quite simple. I'll show you it in the next chapters, when I'll explain every step in detail.
If you want, I'll simplify it even more. When, say you kill Mephisto, the game:
4.Game data files
In this chapter I'll explain several data files that are used in the item generation process.
Many parameters of drops are stored in txt files, that are packed to MPQ files in your Diablo II directory. If you have installed ATMA you may find that files unpacked in its data folder.
This file is stored in CSV format, it is plain text tables, you may open them in Excel or OpenOffice.org.
You don't need to know everything about them to be effective in item hunting, that files are a bit complicated. However it would be better to know their structure.
If you are a crazy dedicated item hunter like me, I suggest you look at Diablo II 1.10 file guides, which are published at Phrozen Keep.
Note, that I will not explain the fields that are not needed for item generation.
Item Generation Tutorial for Patch 1.11
The Table of Contents
1. Basics
2. Terminology
3. Short Explanation of Drop Process
4. Game data files
4.1. TreasureClassEx.txt
4.2. Monstats.txt
4.3. MagicPrefix.txt and MagicSuffix.txt
4.4. Weapons.txt
4.5. Armor.txt
4.6. Misc.txt
4.7. ItemTypes.txt
4.8. Itemratio.txt
5. Area, monster and item levels
6. TC selection and number of dropped items
7. Item type selection
8. Item quality selection
9. Set and unique item selection
10. Sockets' number selection
11. Affix selection
12. Item generation at shops
13. Gambling
14. Ethereal items
15. Rune and charm generation
16. Quest drop and Andariel bug
17. Object drops
18. Countess
19. Crafting
20. Imbue
21. Cubing
22. Circlets and Magic Level
23. Runes in Hell Forge
24. Magic Find
25. 1.11 Drop Changes
26. Thanks
1. Basics
The goal of most players in Diablo II is to kill enemies while staying alive. This trivial concept is based on three things that determine your effectiveness: 1) your tactics, 2) the build of your character, 3) the items that you use. All these things have great impact on gameplay, you'll quickly die at hell difficulty if you play without any tactics, you'll be killing slowly without wise skill distribution, but many people find that the most important aspect of Diablo II is its unique item system. Almost any character reckon on its items, for example a Mage becomes very powerful after doubling his skill levels, using items, and a Warrior almost completely cannot be separated from his weapon. Many people spend a lot of hours trying to find certain items, and most dedicated players make item hunting the goal of their playing.
This guide is trying to answer the most popular question about item generation, most aspects of item creation in the game.
If you have any other questions, feel free to post them in the Single Player Forum.
2. Terminology
Item Type - it is a kind of item, e.c. a cap, a gem, a short sword, a ring.
Item Quality - it is a kind of item properties: low quality, normal, superior, magic, rare, set, unique.
Affixes - it is item magic properties: prefixes and suffixes. Note, that not all item properties are affixes. For example: stuffmods, pre-defined properties of crafted items and some special mods of set and unique items. E.c. "+60 to Mana" on a magic ring is an affix, "+20% crushing blow" isn't an affix.
Qlvl - Quality level. 1) A level of item type. All these levels are stored in weapons.txt, armor.txt and misc.txt data files. 2) A level of set or unique item. All these levels are stored in UniqueItems.txt and SetItems.txt data files.
Ilvl - Item Level. All items in the game have levels that are generated when it is created. For some strange reason Blizzard decided to hide it from players. Don't confuse Item Level with Required Level, - it is different things.
Mlvl - Monster Level. All monsters in the game have levels as well as players.
Area Level - Area Level. All areas in the game also have levels.
Alvl - Affix Level. It is a level of prefix or suffix. They are stored in MagicPrefix.txt and MagicSuffix.txt in the "Level" column. The name "Affix Level" is used to differentiate them from other "Levels".
TC - Treasure Class. All item types in the game are organised in the game into treasure classes. They are recursive. This means that one treasure class may include another treasure class. E.c. Hell Baal drops all his items from "Baal (H)" treasure class, which consists of "Act 5 (H) Equip B", "Act 5 (H) Junk" and "Act 5 (H) Good" treasure classes. Each of them consists of several other treasure classes.
Clvl- Character Level. It is one of few levels that you can actually see in the game.
Rarity - it is a value, assigned to every set and unique item in the game. Higher the rarity of an item, more common it is in the game. So you may see that "Rarity" is quite a bad name. E.c. Stone of Jordan has Rarity=1, Manald Heal has Rarity=15.
SP - Single Player mode.
3. Short Explanation of Drop Process
When you kill a monster or open a chest the game may generate items to reward you. Their properties are also generated at the same moment. The item may be unidentified, however if it is dropped it already has certain properties, that doesn't depend on who will identify it or when.
The game creates dropped items with algorithm of such kind:
1) At the beginning it finds treasure class (TC), that describes all drops of the monster you killed or a chest, you opened, rock, you touched, etc. All drop sources have treasure classes.
2) Then it makes one or several iterations, that are called "Picks", when it selects one chosen from several possibilities.
2.1) One of these possibilities often is so called "NoDrop", when it simply no drop items at all. However, note that the game may do several picks, so one of them may select NoDrop, but all others select some items. Most normal monsters have only one pick, though.
2.2) If it selects to pick from another TC, then it starts another cycle of picks from the selected TC, which may again contain several picks from different TCs and may also have NoDrop chance.
3) At some iteration the game may eventually select a certain item type. If this item may have several qualities, the game starts with an algorithm of quality determination. E.c. Keys, runes, potions may only be normal quality, but rings, short swords, helms, bucklers may have different qualities like magic or unique. Note that Magic Finding works only here.
4) For every selected item it calculates item level.
5) If it selects unique or set quality, the game creates the list of all such items according to item level. Then it selects one of the items from the list randomly according to rarity. If there are no items in the list, then it will create double durability magic or triple durability rare item.
6) After it selects item type and item quality, it generates item affixes if needed. Also it generates all other properties of an item, that may vary. E.c. El runes, mana potions, identify scrolls don't have variable properties, but magic rings, rare kite shields, cracked sashes need property generation.
You may find this algorithm a bit complicated, but it is actually quite simple. I'll show you it in the next chapters, when I'll explain every step in detail.
If you want, I'll simplify it even more. When, say you kill Mephisto, the game:
- calculates the number of items to drop;
- selects item types;
- selects item qualities;
- selects certain unique or set items if needed;
- selects item properties.
4.Game data files
In this chapter I'll explain several data files that are used in the item generation process.
Many parameters of drops are stored in txt files, that are packed to MPQ files in your Diablo II directory. If you have installed ATMA you may find that files unpacked in its data folder.
This file is stored in CSV format, it is plain text tables, you may open them in Excel or OpenOffice.org.
You don't need to know everything about them to be effective in item hunting, that files are a bit complicated. However it would be better to know their structure.
If you are a crazy dedicated item hunter like me, I suggest you look at Diablo II 1.10 file guides, which are published at Phrozen Keep.
Note, that I will not explain the fields that are not needed for item generation.
Last edited: