Enabling Ladder Runewords and Creating a New Runeword for Diablo 2

I was asked at one point, “How do you enable ladder runewords in a mod?”. Simply deleting contents of one column fixes this.
Since this would be such a short tutorial, I’m also going to teach you how to add new runewords.

What you will need:

  • An MPQ program;  unless you have already extracted runes.txt
  • Runes.txt from Patch_d2.mpq
  • AFJ’s Sheet Editor or similar.

Tutorial Prerequisite: Beginner’s Guide to D2 Modding

Estimated Completion Time: 5 minutes

Enabling Ladder Runewords

This is very simple and easy. Open Runes.txt, and ensure the ’server’ column is blank on all rows. For example, take Delirium row and remove the 1 from ’server’ column. So easy isn’t it? The server column controls whether or not the runeword classifies as a ladder runeword.

Creating New Runewords

This is a little more complex. Lets create a new runeword called ‘Tempest’. There is a line for this name, line 57. (Note: the ‘Rune Name’ column is the name of the runeword.

First and foremost, we need to set the itemtype that uses this runeword. Put ‘tors’ in the ‘itype1′ column

Next, we need to set what runes we need. Go to the *runes column and type in ‘OhmTalAmnLemBerNef’. This is what appears below the runeword. Now, lets fill in on the right the item codes needed for each individual rune, out of misc.txt. (NOTE: Gems and Jewels can work in runewords, too!). I put these fields:

  • Rune1: r27
  • Rune2: r07
  • Rune3: r11
  • Rune4: r20
  • Rune5: r30
  • Rune6: r04

If you notice, r27 is the item code for Ohm, r07 is the item code for Tal, and so on. If we inserted these gems into an item, the runeword would work, but we have no special properties for the runeword! Lets fix this.

Write in these fields on the Tempest Row:

  • TCode1:  ac%
  • TMin1: 157
  • TMax1: 196
  • TCode2: charged-skill
  • TParam2: Charged Bolt
  • TMin2: 40
  • TMax2: 3

Now if we made the runeword, we’d get +157% to +196% to our Defense, and we would also get 40 charges of Level 3 Charged Bolt.

But one more problem arises! When we insert it, the runeword is called ‘An Evil Force’. Now we need to add strings. Save and close runes.txt and open patchstring.tbl. Add this field:

  • String ID: Runeword140
  • String Text: Tempest

Enjoy your newfound feature to your mod!


Written by Nick in Tutorials for

8 Responses to “Enabling Ladder Runewords and Creating a New Runeword for Diablo 2”

  1. David says:
    March 28, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    Can you give items infinite charges?

    Reply
  2. Nick says:
    March 28, 2009 at 6:36 pm

    You can’t. But you can use the oskill property, which gives you access to the skill while you have the item equipped, like starter items for instance which have +1 to Firebolt if your a sorc and +1 to Raise Skeleton if your a necro

    Reply
  3. David says:
    March 29, 2009 at 1:10 pm

    So you can’t give a Paladin infinite Firebolts?

    Reply
  4. Nick says:
    March 30, 2009 at 1:29 am

    Yes you can. Give the item these lines
    property: oskill
    param: Skill Name
    min/max: skill level

    For instance, you can have an item with +15 to Fire Bolt and the Paladin can get +15 to Fire Bolt when the item is equipped. Which is the same thing as unlimited charges essentially

    Reply
  5. Greg says:
    November 20, 2009 at 10:57 am

    I made the server column blank but I cant make ladder runewords on single player still…

    What do I need to do?

    Reply
  6. Dj.D says:
    December 6, 2009 at 11:19 pm

    you need to find the runeword you want and fill in the blank spots

    Reply
  7. Sera says:
    December 20, 2009 at 8:59 am

    Yeah, I cleared the ’server’ colum too but the infinity runeword still won’t work.

    Reply

Leave a Reply