Customizing Lineage 2

Imagine a really fancy banner right here

I'm finally ready to share this. It's taken way, way longer than I hoped for, but here we are. I hope someone out there will put this tool to good use. I've poured a lot of love into this over the years.

Thank you for your patience.

If you have any questions, feel free to join L2Homage discord at https://discord.gg/97yAsCA

• Bumble / Claessic

L2Homage (L2H) is a comprehensive modding tool for files with the same datastructure used for Lineage 2 - High Five.

This is not for L2j! It will only work with files similar to L2OFF.

This project contains no illegal content. It's based entirely on publically available information. It includes a few executables, property of their respective developers. If you have any complaints, please reach out to me.

I originally developed L2H for Lineage 2 - Gracia Epilogue, but I've upgraded it vastly. I've even added multithreading to speed up loadtimes, I've polished the interface and interaction design significantly, and it now works for Lineage 2 - High Five. This is the only chronicle I've developed this version for. It will not work for Interlude or anything newer than H5, but feel free to branch this project and convert it to that chronicle if you want to. You have my full support! Let's get modding!

L2H makes modding Lineage 2 files faster, easier and safer, allowing users to rethink and reshape the world of Lineage 2, providing the hordes of burnt out players with new, exciting content, without having to spend hours learning how to manipulate the data structure.

The hope is to see a bunch of unique, new game worlds appear, instead of relaunches of the same L2 experience we’ve all been through too many times to count.

With this tool, you can edit all weapons, armors, misc items (etcs), recipes, npcs, droplists, spawns, system texts and much, much more. The list goes on, and expands as the project evolves.

A special thanks to the people who helped me make L2Homage possible! L2H wouldn't be here if it wasn't for:

• Anarchy
• Eressea of L2Shrine
• Weedy
• Sepultribe
• L2Miko
• Rootware
• PARADISE
• Badwatermagic & the players of L2Knight
• Sindelia of PlayINERA
• Matrix (EDL Team)
• Pada
• DStuff
• And many, many more who provided answers when I needed them. Thank you! If I forgot to mention anyone, please let me know, you deserve the credit.

• Add, delete or modify weapons
• Add, delete or modify armors
• Add, delete or modify etc items
• Add, delete or modify sets
• Add, delete or modify spawn zones
• Add, delete or modify NPCs
• Add, delete or modify NPC spawns and parameters
• Add, delete or modify Skills
• Add, delete or modify recipes
• Add, delete or modify droplists
• Add, delete or modify shoplists (multisell)
• Modify any stats of any class
• Modify the starting equipment of any class
• Modify the starting location of all classes
• Modify when classes learn skills
• Modify what skills cost or require
• Modify NPC AI Properties (requires .nasc files in data/ai folder)
• Modify system text
• Modify class descriptions and titles
• Modify loading screen text
• Modify hunting areas
• Modify the chat filter
• Modify zone names
• Modify raids list (accessible through in-game map)
• Export server and client files simultaneously, ready for use immediately

1. Download the newest L2H release and extract it in a folder of your choice.
2. Copy and paste the content of your Lineage 2 High Five "system" folder into the "Data/Encrypted Client Files" folder.
3. Copy and paste the files from your server's "script" folder into the "Data/Server" folder.
4. If you have any images, put them into the Images folder.
5. If you don't care about the images, you still need the worldmap and worldmap thumbnail images, or L2H won't start.
6. If you have any AI files, put them into the "Data/AI" folder.
7. Open L2Homage.exe.

If nothing happens when L2Homage.exe is opened, something is wrong with the data files.

Before you start, and this is the most important part, always, always, ALWAYS REMEMBER TO TAKE BACKUPS!. To do this, just save a copy of the whole /Data folder somewhere, or simply compress it into an archive. If something breaks, you can just replace the entire data folder with your backup and continue your project. Now then, let's do this.

In the Initialization block, you should see the "start" button. Click it. Everything should start decrypting and loading. If installation was successful, you should see something similar to this:

Content categories are in the menu on the left. Options are:

• Overview - Log, initialization and export options.
• Classes - Class descriptions, stats, when and how they learn skills, starting equipment, start location and more.
• Droplists - NPC drops.
• Experience - Exp Table for levels 1-99
• Items - Weapons, Armors, Etcs, Sets
• Multisell - Shops, NPC trades
• NPCs
• Recipes
• Skills
• System Text - Chat Filter, Game Tips, NPC Strings, System Messages, System Strings
• Zones - Zone names, Spawn zones, Hunting zones, Raids

Below the categories is a Mini Log. The Mini Log shows you a short description of any edits you performed for a quick confirmation.

Export settings are on the right. Options are:

• Server IP - Input the IP of your server.
• Custom Spawns Only - Export only custom spawns. This is used when creating an entirely custom world. No original NPC spawns will be included in the export.
• Use Export Module - This is for using a custom module to export content. It's only useful if you create your own exporting module and implement it in the source.

Clicking the "Export" button saves any changes and exports both server and client files. If you don't want to export the project, but save it for later, use the "Save" button below Initialization.

There are two types of classes. The base classes and the specific classes. You can choose between class type by clicking one of the two buttons below the ID search field on the left.

Base classes are:

• Human Fighter
• Human Magic
• Elf Fighter
• Elf Magic
• Darkelf Fighter
• Darkelf Magic
• Orc Fighter
• Orc Shaman
• Dwarf Fighter
• Kamael Soldier

You can modify their stats individually by clicking on any of the buttons in the four categories on the right, Combat, Stats, Creation and Misc.

Specific classes are all classes, including the base classes. In this section, you can modify which skills each class can learn, when they learn it, what it costs, any prerequisites and much more.

You can also choose to include another class as a base. Think of classes in L2 as branches or tiers. If you're tier 3, the game considers you tier 1 and tier 2 as well. Take a Duelist for examples. It includes the "Gladiator" class, which includes the "Warrior" class, which includes the "Fighter" class. A duelist is considered all of those classes.

Modifying a base class will affect all of the classes which include that specific base class.

I wanted to keep droplist editing simple, so I designed a custom system for this purpose. The first thing L2H does, is to separate all drops from NPCs. All the drops are then stored and assigned to each NPC. L2H keeps references to droplists across NPCs, which means you can reuse the same droplists for different NPCs, if you so like. If you assign the same droplist to multiple NPCs, any changes you make to the droplist will affect the drops of all those NPCs. It's pretty neat.

There are two types of droplists, single and multi.

A single droplist contains X amount of drops, but only ONE drop can trigger per single droplist. Each drop has:

• %Chance to trigger when killing an assigned NPC.
• Minimum amount dropped when triggered
• Maximum amount dropped when triggered

A multi droplist contains X amount of single droplists. Each single droplist can trigger independently. This is the most commonly used droplist in L2. If you only use single droplists, each NPC would only be able to drop one thing at a time. That'd be a bit boring.

L2H shows which single droplists are assigned, and the probability of them triggering. You can edit this freely.

WARNING

If the trigger chance of all the drops in a single droplist, or all the single droplists in a multi droplist exceeds 100, only the first 100 will work.

Example:

1. Gremlin has a single droplist assigned
2. The single droplist has 5 items that can drop, each with 20% chance to trigger
3. You decide to increase the drop chance of the first item to 50%
4. The gremlin now has:

• 50% chance to drop item 1
• 20% chance to drop item 2
• 20% chance to drop item 3
• 10% chance to drop item 4
• 0% chance to drop item 5

The same applies to single droplists inside of a multi droplist.

WARNING

L2H allows you to modify the experience curve. The experience value for each level is visualized with a dot on a graph, and shown in editable boxes on the right.

To edit the experience curve, you can input the values in the boxes or simply drag the dots if you prefer to work visually.

WARNING

Changing the experience curve does not automatically change NPC levels or player levels! Each level is defined by the amount of exp the NPC or player has. Any change to the experience curve should be one of the very first things you do for a project. If you change the experience curve later, you'll have to manually edit all NPCs to fit your new settings. I've tried adding some custom algorithms to alleviate this issue, but it'll only take you so far.

WARNING

I've implemented five different experience algorithms. You can always click the "Reset EXP Table" button to revert changes to the EXP table, but any changes made with these algorithms are permanent. Make sure you know what you're doing. Also, keep a backup. Always keep a backup.

Maintains all NPC LEVELS and adjusts the EXPERIENCE values of all NPCs. The EXP value assigned will be the lowest EXP value of that level. Example:

1. Orc is level 2 with 300 EXP.
2. You change the EXP curve so level 2 starts at 400 exp.
3. Orc would now be considered level 1, even though all entries still show it as level 2.
4. Clicking the Recalculate NPC EXPERIENCE based on LEVELS algorithm will recalculate the EXP value of the NPC and set it to 400.

Maintains all NPC EXPERIENCE values and adjusts the LEVEL of all NPCs. Example:

1. Orc is level 2 with 300 EXP.
2. You change the EXP curve so level 2 starts at 400 exp.
3. Orc would now be considered level 1, even though all entries still show it as level 2.
4. Clicking the Recalculate NPC LEVELS based on EXPERIENCE algorithm will recalculate the LEVEL of the NPC and set it to 1.

Compares the original level value with the new level value and adjusts the EXPERIENCE PER KILL value by the percentage difference. EFFECT IS CUMULATIVE, ONLY DO THIS ONCE PER PROJECT

Compares the original level value with the new level value and adjusts the SKILL POINTS PER KILL value by the percentage difference.. EFFECT IS CUMULATIVE, ONLY DO THIS ONCE PER PROJECT

Compares the original level value with the new level value and adjusts the REPUTATION POINTS PER KILL value by the percentage difference.. EFFECT IS CUMULATIVE, ONLY DO THIS ONCE PER PROJECT

L2H lets you edit almost any item in the game.

To create a new item, find an item you want to use as a template. Select it, and click the "Clone" button. You can also delete an item, but you should only ever delete custom items. Deleting original content causes trouble. The module button does nothing by default, but you can program your own module for modifying items.

Items are split into four categories:

• Weapons
• Armors - All armor types, including accessories and decorations.
• Etcs - Everything else, including arrows, quest items, consumables and so on.
• Sets

Items share some basic properties, but each item type has properties unique to that type.

I've exposed almost all interesting properties for users to modify. I've hidden the hundreds of properties that aren't of use to content modding. The hidden stuff is mostly client-side stuff, like how an armor piece fits each race model, rotation and so on.

Most properties are self-explanatory, but some are a bit more obscure. Below are descriptions of each item property.

Sets are a combination of different items that, when equipped together, provide a bonus to the player.

Sets are tied to the Chest Piece of the set. The chest holds the reference to all other set pieces. Because of this structure, a chest piece cannot be part of more than one set. Well, maybe it can, but you definitely won't be able to see it reflected in-game. In short, keep sets to one chest piece.

To create a set, make sure no set is selected, then click the "Create New Set" button in the middle of the screen.

Select a set you want to edit. You should see something like this: If you want to add any items to the set, click an empty slot. A popup will appear, showing you only valid options for that slot. If you want to change any set pieces, click on the set piece. A popup will appear, showing you only valid options for that slot. If you want to remove an item from a set, right click the set piece.

It's that simple.

Each set has different properties.

Multisell is the term for NPC traders in the game.

Adding a multisell to the actual game requires editing the AI and HTML files, but you can freely edit existing ones, if you don't feel like doing that.

There are four types of settings for a multisell list.

You can also assign a required NPC, as an added security measure. If a multisell has a required NPC, it cannot work for any other NPCs, even if it's assigned to it through AI and HTML.

There are two parts to a multisell list. A sale and a cost.

A sale is one or more items (a bundle) for sale. It is a single transaction.

A cost is the price for that one transaction.

Usually, there's only one thing in a sale, with one or more items as its cost. There can be more items for sale though.

The following options are available for multisell sales:

You can also adjust the castle tax base value above the costs. This is the amount that's used to generate income for castle owners. It is independent from the actual cost of the item.

Modifying NPCs is very similar to modifying items. You can clone or delete NPCs, or edit the properties of their AI variables. This is very different from editing their AI. More on that below. This is Vrykolakas in all his glory. He was taken from all of us much too soon.

At the bottom of the NPC page, you'll see a bar with a list of all the passive skills assigned to this NPC. It can be edited freely as well.

Now, about those AI settings I mentioned earlier.

If you have AI files that can be read, and are placed in the Data/AI folder, you can click the "AI" button next to the delete button. That'll open a popup, showing you all the different variables for the AI assigned to the NPC, including any variables of inherited NPC AI files. For Vrykolakas, it looks like this:

It's simple to edit. Toggle variables on/off and fill in the values. That's it. You can't change the actual AI this way, but you can modify the existing AI parameters. You can change skills the NPC casts during combat, movement timings and stuff like that.

The recipe page is for editing existing recipes. You cannot add recipes in here. Why, you may ask? Well, that's because recipes are tied to the item that teaches you that recipe. If you want to create a new recipe, go to the items page, find a recipe and clone it. The new, cloned recipe will appear in the Recipes page for you to edit.

Recipes have at least one outcome, two at most. You can click the outcome buttons to change the result of a recipe.

You can also edit the amount of items a recipe creates.

Below the amount, you can edit the chance for that specific outcome to happen. You have to make sure the chances of the outcomes equal 100%.

Required materials are listed below, in the Materials section. A recipe can have at most 11 types of required materials. You can add or replace an item by clicking the image or an empty slot. To remove an item from the recipe, use right click instead. Simple as that.

Recipes have the following properties:

L2H allows for modifying and cloning existing skills.

Skills are either Active, Passive or Toggleable.

There's a lot of properties for skills. Let's get into it.

First of all, skills can come in different varieties. Each variety of a skill is available in the "Variants" block. You can navigate freely between them.

If you want to add a skill, find it and click "Clone". To add more levels to your new skill, click the "Add Levels" button below the "Levels" block.

You can also delete custom skills and batch edit all levels of a skill at once - we'll get back to that later.

First, let's get all those properties out of the way:

Enchanted skills are not as easily edited in High Five, but I've exposed the variables I could find.

When editing skills with many different levels, it became apparent that it's way too much work to adjust the values of each level individually.

Enter BATCH EDITING!

Select a skill and click the "Batch" button. You'll be greeted with a popup like this:

Select a property with the dropdown on the left and easily edit that property across all levels of selected skill.

You can write the values manually or drag the points if you prefer to work visually.

The value type is tied to the existing types. If all numbers are integers, only integers are allowed. If L2H sees a float value, floats are allowed.

System Text require no description. It's simple stuff.

When clicking the zones category, you'll be faced with a world map.

You can click a part of the world map to go see all the zones in that part of the world. You can also click on the shortcuts on the left, if you don't quite remember where areas of interest are.

When you've selected an area, you'll be taken to the spawn areas page.

Above is the Execution Grounds area. The list on the left are all the existing spawn areas, available for use. You can hover your mouse over each entry to see exactly where it is. Just right of the list of spawn areas, you can see all layers in this part of the world, if it has any. As you may or may not now, there's a catacomb beneath Execution Grounds. You can click the little thumbnail of that map to switch to that layer if you so please. I'll stay above grounds for this documentation though. Above the list of spawn areas, you'll see four buttons; Spawn Areas, Hunting Zones, Zone Names, Raids. Let's start with spawn areas.

Click on a spawn area to lock it into place, and you'll see existing NPC Makers in the NPC Makers block. NPC Makers are responsible for spawning NPCs in an assigned area.

If no NPC makers exist, you won't see any (for good reasons I'll say)

In the example above, I've selected the spawn zone called dion02_2122_22. There's only one NPC maker, so I selected that one. I can see the properties next to the NPC Maker list. The properties are:

In the top-right corner, you'll see the NPC Maker Spawns block. This is a list of all NPCs assigned to the selected NPC maker. You can add or delete NPC spawns with the buttons just below the spawns.

Below the buttons are the NPC Spawn Parameters. These parameters apply to the selected NPC Maker Spawn:

That's all there is to spawning NPCs. You can clone spawn areas, add NPC Makers, add NPC Maker Spawns and make the world your own.

Let's move on to Hunting Zones.

Hunting zones are the list of areas accessible through the in-game map. It's nothing more than a list of points of interest for users to see. That makes it easy to edit.

Hunting zones are just points in the game world. The properties for a hunting zone are:

That's it for hunting zones.

Zone names are the names displayed when entering the area in the game. You cannot change the location of these areas, but you can change the existing ones. Well, that's not entirely true, but it's a lot of work to change the areas. It's assigned with a Color ID, targeting a multi-layered image encrypted in the game files, which can tell you exactly which zone you're in when the game reads your location and compares it to the specific layer ID on the encrypted image. In short, it's a hassle. Let's look at the parameters instead.

Editing raid zones are very similar to editing hunting grounds. It's a simple location with an NPC assigned. This doesn't have anything to do with the actual raids, this is for the Raids list accessible through the in-game map.

I genuinely look forward to seeing what you guys will create!

Cheers,

• Bumble / Claessic