The Phrozen Keep

[Phrozen Heart]

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Cube recipes, since version 1.08, are editable and are actually quite
easy to edit. This is a very powerful and very interesting text file to
edit.



However, there are some drawbacks. Some recipes may not work exactly as
you intended no matter how well you code them- and recipes featuring
new item classes will often not work.



I'm going to start off for the first part of this guide by walking you through the basic columns of cubemain.txt.



At the beginning of every row, in the first column (description),
we have a brief description of the cube recipe. This is useful for you
to have when you are making recipes that are part of a bigger system of
recipes. (For example rune or gem upgrades)



The second column (enabled), when it says 1, tells the
game to use this recipe. To quickly turn off a recipe, but have it
ready for use later, put a 0 in this column.




The min diff (minimum difficulty) column is just that-
having nothing in it means the recipe is always usable. Now, I'm not
100% sure about this, but it's either a 0 or a 1 that makes the recipe
require you to play in Nightmare. Again, either a 1 or a 2 for the
recipe to require you to be in Hell (difficulty).



The Version column tells Diablo II without Lord of
Destruction whether to ignore a recipe because it is part of the
expansion, or not. If this column is set to 1 or 100, then Classic
Diablo II will NOT be able to read this recipe.



For all intents and purposes, the next four columns (start day, stop day, weekday, class) can be ignored. The first three are for Blizzard use, and I don't know how to work the Class column, or even if it does work.




The next column, numitems, is a very powerful one indeed-
it tells the game how many items will need to be in the cube for the
recipe to activate. If you put the exact same number as the number of
required items you added, then the recipe will require that exact
combination.

gzv,qty=3

However, you can also set this deliberately higher
or lower than the amount of required items you added. So, if you
required a health, mana, stamina, and thawing potion for your recipe,
but if you set this column to 2 or 3, you'd only need to use 2 or 3 of
your required items. (I believe this is how it works)



If you set this column to 5, however, you'd need all four of the
potions I just mentioned, and any other item of your choice in the
game. This can be an excellent way to make people experiment- i.e. you
could give them hints on a recipe, adding in a couple of extra items,
and having this column deliberately high enough to make that
combination a valid recipe.



Next you have the input columns, to add up to 7 different types of items required for your recipe. Notice I said TYPES of items. That's right. We'll cover this after I get through all of the columns. These seven columns- input1 to input7, accept three-letter item codes that are used in other text files.




Some examples of those codes are: hp1, a minor healing potion. skp, a skull cap. xar, an ornate plate, or bbb, Lam Esen's Tome.



The next column is the one that's the entire point of the file. The output column. Note that no matter whether you use the ,qty=x parameter or not, you can only ever get the cube to give you one item back.




The next three columns, lvl, plvl, and ilvl are used when making magic, rare, or crafted items. Ilvl (ilvl) is most likely a preset level for the item. Plvl means that the game will use the player's level, until the player reaches the level you type in here. (I can't recall what lvl is :/ )




The next 25 columns come in 5 groups of 5, and are ALL to do with item
mods. They are used in crafted items. The first column is the item
mod's code, the next is the chance it will appear on an item. (100 =
will always appear, 50= appears half of the time, 0= never appears) The
next is the item mod's parameter column, then it's min column, then
it's max.



The last column, called 'term,' should always contain a
zero. Maybe it's there to mark the end of the file. Maybe it lost it's
meaning after the released the patch. No idea. Just give it a zero :)



With what you've learned so far, you should be easily able to make a greater potion of each type (hp4 & mp4) upgrade into a rejuvenation potion.(rvs)




Okay, so now you know what each column does. Great. But you're missing
three really key skills to help you along your way. One is the ability
to use item mods (you'll need this for crafted items, and making new
magical affixes to use with 'make this item have this magic affix'
recipes)



(Right now it might be useful to link to something dealing with magic mods :) )



Using parameters in cube recipes



The second skill you will need is the ability to use
parameters in your cube recipes. Parameters are little codes that have
a comma before them, (like: ,qty=x) and they give the game extra instructions on what type of item you will get from, or put into, the cube.



Let's have a brief look at one of the most simple, and most necessary parameters for this file:




,qty=x



Looks silly, doesn't it? What it tells the game is: 'Make sure that that have put x of the item before the comma into the cube.'



So, if I wanted to make a recipe that required seven skull caps and
gave you a great helm, I wouldn't have to write skp in every input
column. (and set numitems to 7, but you'll need to do that no matter
what) I could instead write:



skp,qty=7



And this would tell the game to make sure there are seven skull
caps in the cube. Unfortunately, this very useful parameter is the only
one (that I know of) that cannot work in the output column. Any usage of it will just be ignored- the cube only outputs one item per recipe.




There are three other parameters you will immediately understand the use for, I hope:



,mag

,rar

,set (for this and ,uni you can, instead, use the name of an individual unique item)

,uni




Which will either make the output item magical/rare/set/unique, or require an input item to be of that type.



,sock=x



Note that x will always be a whole number, just like for the ,qty=x
parameter. Sockets cannot exceed 7, and if the item you use the recipe
on does not support the appropriate amount of sockets, it will add
sockets based on your level.



Note that the amount of sockets you can add by using the cube is
loosely based on your level/experience. There also appear to be a few
bugs with this parameter.



,eth


,noe



The first one, ,eth - should force the item to be ethereal.
The second one, (which is often more important for use in the output
column) will force the item that leaves the cube to not be ethereal.
Can be very useful.



,upg



Means the exceptional or elite version of an item will also work.



,pref=x


,suf=x (one f or two?)



These will force the output item to use a magical (or rare, if possible) prefix/suffix from the magic prefixes/suffixes file. The x
here is related closely to line number, but I am not sure how much it
is off the actually line number. I believe it will not count blank
lines.



any




Oh yeah. This one is good. You can use it very trickily by combining parameters- so you can have any,mag,qty=3 (any three magical items) Like ,qty=x - it can only be used in the input columns.



useitem



Only work in the output column. This makes the item in input 1 continue over as the cube's output.
There's no point in using this one unless you use other parameters with
it. So, for example,  you could theoretically stop an item from
being ethereal by making input1 look like this:




any,eth



and output look like this:



useitem,noe



With this knowledge, you only have one thing remaining...



Horadric Cube Grammar




You've got enough knowledge to do almost anything in the cube. As long as it requires only one line.

Groups of more than one recipe can often fail in the cube, because you don't place them properly, in relation to each other.



This is something I am loosely going to call 'cube grammar.'



It's very simple. If you have two similar recipes in the cube file, you should have the more specific one placed above the less specific one.




So, if you had one recipe which required:

skp,qty=6 | hp2,qty=4



And another that required:

skp,qty=6 | hp2,qty=5



The one with ,qty=5 would be more specific and should be
placed above the other one. Why is this? Well, the Horadric cube checks
the recipes in order from top to bottom, and if it sees the ,qty=4 recipe first, even if you have five light hp potions in the cube, it'll carry out the ,qty=4 recipe, because it applies to what you have in the cube.




Let's give you another example, just to be sure we've got it right! :)

aar,mag | tsc,qty=7



aar | tsc,qty=7



The top recipe has an extra parameter, so it should stay in it's place above the lower recipe.



Beginning to see how it works? Good. If one recipe has more total items
than another, and their items are very similar, the recipe with more
items should be above the one with less.




If both recipes have equal amounts of items, then it is the one that has more parameters that should be placed above.



If they have equal items and no parameters, or the same amount of parameters, it doesn't matter which one is placed above.



Those three simple rules should work very well to avoid problems with 'cube grammar.'

Link to this article: Select all

[url=https://www.d2mods.info/forum/kb/viewarticle?a=177]Knowledge Base - Creating New Cube Recipes[/url]