A lot can be changed and tweaked in Diablo 2 – however, lots of modding sites went down in the last couple of years, so it is getting increasingly harder to gain some info on how to do it – especially when running under Wine(skin) on Mac OS X.

In this article I will be slowly gathering my own experiences and manuals for modding and tweaking Diablo II 1.13d.

This is probably obvious, but get Diablo II with expansion (Lord of Destruction). Without it you will miss most of the game content and many programs must be configured differently for basic game (or do not work at all).

Blizzard released native Diablo II for Mac. However, since files in this version are different from the PC version, majority of mods simply won't work. I therefore prefer to use PC version of Diablo II running under Wine(skin).

• The latest Diablo II version is currently 1.14d (released June 7, 2016).
• However, the last version that changed anything gameplay‑wise is 1.13d (released October 27, 2011).
• And the last content patch was 1.13c (released March 23, 2010).

Therefore everything after patch 1.13d are just tweaks for new operation systems – see version history. This is important to know since some editors and modding programs will not work when Diablo II data (like items, skills, monsters) are changed. Any program that works with Diablo II 1.13c will work with all later versions.

Installation is easy and non‑problematic, do not expect anything fancy. I prefer using Wineskin, since that way I can isolate different Windows games and programs.

In the rest of this article, I will assume you are using Diablo 2 LoD 1.13d running under Wineskin.

These are the basic mods I always use. They are both based on the idea that playing vanilla Diablo II in single player is actually much harder and less fun than multiplayer. They are therefore aimed to make single‑player more enjoyable, but not necessarily easy.

• Download here: http://plugy.free.fr/
• Current version (14.02) works with any version of Diablo II up to 1.14d

What does it do?

• Adds infinite storage space for stash + creates shared storage stash.
• Enables the ladder-only runewords for single‑player and TCP/IP game.
• Enables the World Event and Pandemonium Event (Uber Quest) for single‑player and TCP/IP game.
• Unassign assigned skills and stats points.
• Added some pages for display more characters stats.
• Display item level in its popup.
• Display the current stats value (without magical bonus).
• … and much more (read the official page)

• Download here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/enjoy-sp-mod
• Current version (1.7) was made for Diablo II 1.13c, so it works with any version of Diablo II

What does it do?

• Enables all ladder‑only rune words and uniques
• Increases experience gain on higher levels (or, more precisely, eliminates the ExpRatio decrease starting from level 70)
• Increased the chance of getting uniques, rares and sets when gambling
• Increases drop rates of uniques, rares, sets, runes and gems and decreases junk‑drops
• Further increases drops from all bosses (Act, Super Uniques, Uniques) and adds new Mini‑Boss class. Additionally, Ancients now drop items.
• Decreases the item‑level and the required‑level of 80+ weapons and armors, and slightly decreases the required level of all uniques
• Changed some Cube recipes, added recipes for socketing unique and set items (1 socket only) and normal and superior items (up to 6 sockets), simplified de‑socketing and upgrading runes
• … and much more (read the official page)

x

• Order of loading files
• ‑direct ‑txt commands

Disable unwanted shrines:

• set required level so high that they will never appear (200+)

Make monster shrine

My version: only spawn monster, experience and gem shrines, disable other shrines

Good sources for info:

• x

Change probability for unique/set items:

• Preferred (tested, working):
  • x
  • x
• Other (untested or not properly working):
  • x
  • x

Game texts are stored inside *.tbl files, which themselves are packed in three different source *.mpq files:

• string.tbl is in d2data.mpq and contains texts for original Diablo 2 release;
• expansionstring.tbl is in d2exp.mpq and contains texts from Lord of Destruction expansion;
• patchstring.tbl is in patch_d2.mpq and contains the texts from the current patch.

Game “loads” its texts in this order, so the latter will override the earlier files – e.g. if the particular text from original Diablo II gets redefined in the expansion, and later again by a patch, game will use the text from patch (pretty clever).

List of editors:

• Preferred (tested, working):
  • AFJ tbl Editor 1.12: download here. This is the best editor to use. It has support for colour code escape sequences, does not have any program dependency and I have tested it and it simply works. Two important notes:
    • To install AFJ tbl Editor, you have to set Wineskin compatibility mode to Windows XP (Wineskin → Tools → Config Utility)
    • Most places on the internet offer you to download version 1.11. This version is broken and does not work. You need to download version 1.12 from the link provided above. It has two variants: Unicode and “normal” version. Unicode works for me, so start with that and if it does not work for you, download the other version.
• Other (untested or not properly working):
  • Darkstorm's Diablo 2 Table Editor v1.02: download here. Do not use: Darkstorm's editor lacks functionality, it might corrupt your files and does NOT support escape sequences – if you want to enter color codes, you need to use these human-unreadable texts.
  • Peer TBL Editor v3.38: download here. Works and supports escape sequences (and colour codes), but needs .NET Framework. This is problematic to install under Wineskin, so you might rather want to install wine‑mono (read about it here), which is an open‑source and cross‑platform implementation of the .NET Framework. However, at least for me, the program was crashing all the time with wine‑mono. If you cancelled installation of wine‑mono during Wineskin creation, you can additionally install it using these instructions. Basically, (1) download wine-mono, (2) run it with msiexec using e.g. msiexec /i wine‑mono‑4.5.6.msi, and (3) if there are errors like this, ignore them.

As Enjoy‑SP increases drops from all bosses and unique monsters, running for them is now more important and much more fun.

There are three basic types of monsters in Diablo II (see monster basics here or here):

1. Normal monsters with white name: mobs not really worth anything
2. Champion monsters with blue name (see here or here): spawned randomly; they appear in 5 varieties: Berserker, Champion, Fanatic, Ghostly or a Possessed champion monster. They are all much harder to kill, but not really worth the time.
3. Unique monsters with golden name (see below): these include ordinary unique monsters, which are spawned randomly, and super unique monsters spawned always at the same place; and they all drop the best items.

With a Mini‑Boss class introduced by Enjoy‑SP, there are now 4 kinds of unique monsters (ordered by drop rates from best to least interesting):

1. Act Bosses (see here or here):
   • Act I: Andariel – stats here or here
   • Act II: Duriel – stats here or here
   • Act III: Mephisto – stats here or here
   • Act IV: Diablo – stats here or here
   • Act V: Baal (stats here or here
2. Mini Bosses are Super Unique monsters “elevated” by Enjoy‑SP mod, so they are stronger and have much better drops:
   • Act I:
     • Blood Raven, Griswold, The Smith, The Countess
   • Act II:
     • Radament, The Worm, The Summoner
   • Act III:
     • The 5 Council members
   • Act IV:
     • Izual, Hephasto, the 3 Seal‑Lords
   • Act V:
     • Shenk, the 3 Ancients, Pindleskin, Nilathak
3. Super Unique Monsters (see here or here or this list with the exact location and treasure class of all super‑unique monsters):
   • Act I:
     • x
   • Act II:
     • x
   • Act III:
     • x
   • Act IV:
     • x
   • Act V:
     • x
4. Unique Monsters (see here or here):
   • These are spawned randomly, but if you see them, you should kill them, as with Enjoy‑SP they drop good stuff too.

This is the complete list of Cube Recipes, taking into account both original Diablo II recipes, and recipes changed or introduced by Enjoy‑SP mod:

Text…

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