Post by [SA}XaeSword on Sept 25, 2015 19:11:37 GMT -5
Learning Hero Editor, for Beginners
Hello Duelers! This guide is going to show you the basics on how to use Hero Editor to create a character, or load a template file, and how to import and create gear for the character you'll be making. There are a few things you'll need to make sure you have before beginning;
1. Hero Editor v1.04: Click Me!
2. The D2Sanctuary Legit Item Pack: Click Me!
3. WinRAR: Click Me!
Note: Downloading WinRAR requires you know whether your system is 32-bit or 64-bit.
4. A reliable source for legit Prefixes and Suffixes: Click Me!
5. A reliable source for base statistics for a Diablo II character: Click Me!
Once you have all of these things, you'll need to install WinRAR, and navigate to wherever the item pack downloaded to (Usually C:/Users/<Your_Account>/Downloads), and open it. A window should come up similar to this;
Select all the folders in the window by clicking and dragging with the mouse, and right-click, and hit "Extract to a Specified Folder." You should something similar to this;
On this screen, you'll need to navigate to wherever your Diablo II installation is. Usually C:/Program Files (x86)/Diablo II or C:/Program Files/Diablo II. Create a folder there, and name it "Item Pack" or whatever you want, then hit enter, and hit OK. This should extract the files to that folder, and your item pack is nearby your Save folder, now, making hero editing just a bit easier.
If you haven't installed Hero Editor yet, you should. This is when we start to actually create a character.
I'll make this step-by-step;
- Open Hero Editor.
- Click the "Open" button.
- Navigate to your item pack's location.
- Open the "Unskilled level 99 Characters" folder.
- Select the class of your choice, I will choose Paladin for this guide.
This will open the base template for whatever class you chose, it has the correct stats and unspent points as per a 100% completed level 99 character for that class. In my case, a level 99 Paladin with 311 Life, 162 Mana, 187 Stamina, 505 unspent Stat Points, and 110 unspent Skill Points.
Now, we want to rename the character;
- Upon opening the template, it should bring you to the "Stats" tab of the Hero Editor screen. Click in the name box, type the name of your choosing.
- Click the "Rename" button right next to the box.
- Click "Ok" on the dialogue that shows up.
- Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the Hero Editor screen.
This is how you rename a character, and you won't mess up the base template this way. To ease later confusion, let's go over moving the character file to the correct location.
- Press "Open" on the Hero Editor screen.
- Navigate to your Item Pack's location, and open the "Unskilled level 99 Characters" folder.
- Cut your newly renamed character's file (Ctrl-X or Right-click, "Cut").
- Navigate to your /Diablo II/Save folder.
- Paste the character there (Ctrl-V or Right-click, "Paste").
Your character is now accessible through the Diablo II game client.
Now open the newly moved character from it's new location, so Hero Editor doesn't freak out when you try to save the character again later. Your character is now ready to be edited. I will quickly go over how to import items from the item pack. There will also be links to guides for creating Rare and Crafted items in Hero Editor added later.
- Right click a spot in your character's inventory, on it's person, or in it's stash. A menu like this should come up;
- Click "Import Item from File."
- Navigate to your item pack's location
- Choose an item, let's do Enigma for this guide.
- Navigate Runewords > Enigma > <Armor base of your choosing>.
- One of two things could happen here, A) The item appears in your inventory screen in Hero Editor, or B) you get prompted with this message;
If you get this error, worry not, for I have the answer. Something to note when importing items in hero editor: The box of your inventory that your mouse was in when you right-clicked is where the top-leftmost spot of the item you're importing will be, so if you wanted to import a 2x3 item such as an armor, you should right click in one of these boxes:
Now, I'm going to go over basic Hero Editor functions that are essential to using the program to its fullest.
Here we have the Stats screen. Here you can view your character's base Life, Mana, Stamina, Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Energy that it has with no gear on, as well as it's level, name, class, what town it will spawn in when it joins, what difficulty it was in last, how much Gold it has on person and in stash, whether it's Hardcore, "Dead," "Has Died," or "Never Died," or counts as a "Ladder" character. Most of these functions will be left alone, especially the "Hardcore," "Died," and "Ladder" ones, since they have no real application to our character editing.
Next up, the Inventory tab:
Here we have the "Person" and "Stash" parts of the Inventory tab. These are pretty self-explanitory. This is where all of your character's gear will be shown once you have imported it.
Here are the "Cube" and "Merc/Belt/Iron Golem" parts of the Inventory tab. The "Cube" tab is currently crossed out with red lines, because this character has no cube, or any items, so I can't place any items there. In the "Merc/Belt/Iron Golem" tab, we have a few things going on. The top four boxes are for a Mercenary's gear. The 16 in the middle represent your belt, the red lines disappear or get smaller, depending on the size of the belt you're wearing. Most of the time it will be a 16 slot belt. Finally, we have that one box on the left bottom. This would be where the item your Iron Golem were made out of would be, could you summon one. This box is rarely used, since Iron Golems are not very popular, and only Necromancers can use them without a special item, such as the Metalgrid amulet.
Next screen we have is the "Waypoints" screen.
In case you hadn't guessed, this screen is where you give your character the waypoints. Usually you'll give yourself all of them, but all of the acts are expandable as the Act I Normal tab is, and you can give yourself only certain waypoints throughout the game, instead of all or none of them.
The "Skills" tab.
This screen simply shows you all the skills your character has, lets your add or subtract from them, and see what level they currently are. Usually you'll leave this tab alone unless you're resetting your skills to zero and giving yourself another 110 skill points to spend. It is much easier to add the points in-game yourself, than to try to do it with Hero Editor, and I highly recommend statting in-game, always.
Ahh... the Quests tab.
I was debating skipping this one, out of laziness and the irrelevance of it for a PvP game, since the templates already have the quests set correctly as it is, but I figured I'd go over it anyways. Each Mode and Act can be extended to show individual Quests, and you can check to complete certain phases of each quest. You can use the area on the left, beside the check boxes, to put the quest to a pre-determined state. "Not Started" simply makes the game assume you haven't even received the quest, yet, and hides it from your view in-game. "Looking For" means you have started the quest, but haven't done any part of it, yet. "Just Finished" means that you have just finished the quest, and need to turn it in. "Long Finished" simply completes all parts of the quest, including the "Reset Stats & Skill Points" from Den of Evil, the "Imbue" from Charsi, or the socket quest from Larzuk. The three areas at the bottom right are labeled "Current Act," "Current Mode," and "All Modes." The two "Current" areas judge "Current" by which quest is selected. If you have a quest from Nightmare Act 4 selected, "Current Act" will apply to Act 4 Nightmare, where "Current Mode" will apply to Nightmare as a whole. "All Modes" simply applies to the entire questline, Normal, Nightmare, AND Hell.
TL;DR: Quest things. Figure it out, if you're concerned about Quests.
Mercenary.
This tab is where you can pick and choose a mercenary from any act, of any mode, with any name you want, as well as set it's level. Remember that mercs max out at level 98, not level 99.
The Introductions screen.
This tab basically is what it says. These are the introduction and welcomed-back dialogues from each npc in each act, if you don't want every single NPC in every act greeting you and welcoming you back the first time you talk to them, leave these checked.
The Options tab.
I generally leave this tab alone, I don't know what difference a lot of these options even make. The only one I bother changing is the "Automatic Character File Backup," I don't like a bunch of backup files littering up my save folder.
Information tab.
This tab goes over a few of the same things I already have, as well as telling you a bit about the program itself. Might be worth a read to a curious eye.
Roll Credits- er, "About" tab.
Congratulations, you reached the end of Hero Editor. This is literally the credits screen for Hero Editor. However, there's still the Extras button, down there at the bottom. I'll briefly go over that here, and in more detail later, in another guide.
If you were to click the Extras button while on a character with no items, this is what you'd see, when it first comes up:
So for the sake of the guide, I will load one of my own characters to show what it will look like when you need to use it.
The Extras button.
This is the extras screen. Here is where you do the item editing, and creating of basic white items that start off Superior and Indestructible, and armors and shields start with 10 defense. We all know that isn't correct for these items, and I'll go over what we use this for in a more advanced guide. The bottom left two tabs, "Character Hex" and "Item Binary Compare/Edit" will never be used for legit purposes, so there's no need to worry about these.
Alright newbros, you should be ready to begin making your character, now. If you have any questions, feel free to PM Cyber_Punk or myself on the site, or ask us in-game, if possible. Remember- save your character often, and as always, keep it legit.
-[SA}XaeSword
Hello Duelers! This guide is going to show you the basics on how to use Hero Editor to create a character, or load a template file, and how to import and create gear for the character you'll be making. There are a few things you'll need to make sure you have before beginning;
1. Hero Editor v1.04: Click Me!
2. The D2Sanctuary Legit Item Pack: Click Me!
3. WinRAR: Click Me!
Note: Downloading WinRAR requires you know whether your system is 32-bit or 64-bit.
4. A reliable source for legit Prefixes and Suffixes: Click Me!
5. A reliable source for base statistics for a Diablo II character: Click Me!
Once you have all of these things, you'll need to install WinRAR, and navigate to wherever the item pack downloaded to (Usually C:/Users/<Your_Account>/Downloads), and open it. A window should come up similar to this;
Select all the folders in the window by clicking and dragging with the mouse, and right-click, and hit "Extract to a Specified Folder." You should something similar to this;
On this screen, you'll need to navigate to wherever your Diablo II installation is. Usually C:/Program Files (x86)/Diablo II or C:/Program Files/Diablo II. Create a folder there, and name it "Item Pack" or whatever you want, then hit enter, and hit OK. This should extract the files to that folder, and your item pack is nearby your Save folder, now, making hero editing just a bit easier.
If you haven't installed Hero Editor yet, you should. This is when we start to actually create a character.
I'll make this step-by-step;
- Open Hero Editor.
- Click the "Open" button.
- Navigate to your item pack's location.
- Open the "Unskilled level 99 Characters" folder.
- Select the class of your choice, I will choose Paladin for this guide.
This will open the base template for whatever class you chose, it has the correct stats and unspent points as per a 100% completed level 99 character for that class. In my case, a level 99 Paladin with 311 Life, 162 Mana, 187 Stamina, 505 unspent Stat Points, and 110 unspent Skill Points.
Now, we want to rename the character;
- Upon opening the template, it should bring you to the "Stats" tab of the Hero Editor screen. Click in the name box, type the name of your choosing.
- Click the "Rename" button right next to the box.
- Click "Ok" on the dialogue that shows up.
- Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the Hero Editor screen.
This is how you rename a character, and you won't mess up the base template this way. To ease later confusion, let's go over moving the character file to the correct location.
- Press "Open" on the Hero Editor screen.
- Navigate to your Item Pack's location, and open the "Unskilled level 99 Characters" folder.
- Cut your newly renamed character's file (Ctrl-X or Right-click, "Cut").
- Navigate to your /Diablo II/Save folder.
- Paste the character there (Ctrl-V or Right-click, "Paste").
Your character is now accessible through the Diablo II game client.
Now open the newly moved character from it's new location, so Hero Editor doesn't freak out when you try to save the character again later. Your character is now ready to be edited. I will quickly go over how to import items from the item pack. There will also be links to guides for creating Rare and Crafted items in Hero Editor added later.
- Right click a spot in your character's inventory, on it's person, or in it's stash. A menu like this should come up;
- Click "Import Item from File."
- Navigate to your item pack's location
- Choose an item, let's do Enigma for this guide.
- Navigate Runewords > Enigma > <Armor base of your choosing>.
- One of two things could happen here, A) The item appears in your inventory screen in Hero Editor, or B) you get prompted with this message;
If you get this error, worry not, for I have the answer. Something to note when importing items in hero editor: The box of your inventory that your mouse was in when you right-clicked is where the top-leftmost spot of the item you're importing will be, so if you wanted to import a 2x3 item such as an armor, you should right click in one of these boxes:
Now, I'm going to go over basic Hero Editor functions that are essential to using the program to its fullest.
Here we have the Stats screen. Here you can view your character's base Life, Mana, Stamina, Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, and Energy that it has with no gear on, as well as it's level, name, class, what town it will spawn in when it joins, what difficulty it was in last, how much Gold it has on person and in stash, whether it's Hardcore, "Dead," "Has Died," or "Never Died," or counts as a "Ladder" character. Most of these functions will be left alone, especially the "Hardcore," "Died," and "Ladder" ones, since they have no real application to our character editing.
Next up, the Inventory tab:
Here we have the "Person" and "Stash" parts of the Inventory tab. These are pretty self-explanitory. This is where all of your character's gear will be shown once you have imported it.
Here are the "Cube" and "Merc/Belt/Iron Golem" parts of the Inventory tab. The "Cube" tab is currently crossed out with red lines, because this character has no cube, or any items, so I can't place any items there. In the "Merc/Belt/Iron Golem" tab, we have a few things going on. The top four boxes are for a Mercenary's gear. The 16 in the middle represent your belt, the red lines disappear or get smaller, depending on the size of the belt you're wearing. Most of the time it will be a 16 slot belt. Finally, we have that one box on the left bottom. This would be where the item your Iron Golem were made out of would be, could you summon one. This box is rarely used, since Iron Golems are not very popular, and only Necromancers can use them without a special item, such as the Metalgrid amulet.
Next screen we have is the "Waypoints" screen.
In case you hadn't guessed, this screen is where you give your character the waypoints. Usually you'll give yourself all of them, but all of the acts are expandable as the Act I Normal tab is, and you can give yourself only certain waypoints throughout the game, instead of all or none of them.
The "Skills" tab.
This screen simply shows you all the skills your character has, lets your add or subtract from them, and see what level they currently are. Usually you'll leave this tab alone unless you're resetting your skills to zero and giving yourself another 110 skill points to spend. It is much easier to add the points in-game yourself, than to try to do it with Hero Editor, and I highly recommend statting in-game, always.
Ahh... the Quests tab.
I was debating skipping this one, out of laziness and the irrelevance of it for a PvP game, since the templates already have the quests set correctly as it is, but I figured I'd go over it anyways. Each Mode and Act can be extended to show individual Quests, and you can check to complete certain phases of each quest. You can use the area on the left, beside the check boxes, to put the quest to a pre-determined state. "Not Started" simply makes the game assume you haven't even received the quest, yet, and hides it from your view in-game. "Looking For" means you have started the quest, but haven't done any part of it, yet. "Just Finished" means that you have just finished the quest, and need to turn it in. "Long Finished" simply completes all parts of the quest, including the "Reset Stats & Skill Points" from Den of Evil, the "Imbue" from Charsi, or the socket quest from Larzuk. The three areas at the bottom right are labeled "Current Act," "Current Mode," and "All Modes." The two "Current" areas judge "Current" by which quest is selected. If you have a quest from Nightmare Act 4 selected, "Current Act" will apply to Act 4 Nightmare, where "Current Mode" will apply to Nightmare as a whole. "All Modes" simply applies to the entire questline, Normal, Nightmare, AND Hell.
TL;DR: Quest things. Figure it out, if you're concerned about Quests.
Mercenary.
This tab is where you can pick and choose a mercenary from any act, of any mode, with any name you want, as well as set it's level. Remember that mercs max out at level 98, not level 99.
The Introductions screen.
This tab basically is what it says. These are the introduction and welcomed-back dialogues from each npc in each act, if you don't want every single NPC in every act greeting you and welcoming you back the first time you talk to them, leave these checked.
The Options tab.
I generally leave this tab alone, I don't know what difference a lot of these options even make. The only one I bother changing is the "Automatic Character File Backup," I don't like a bunch of backup files littering up my save folder.
Information tab.
This tab goes over a few of the same things I already have, as well as telling you a bit about the program itself. Might be worth a read to a curious eye.
Roll Credits- er, "About" tab.
Congratulations, you reached the end of Hero Editor. This is literally the credits screen for Hero Editor. However, there's still the Extras button, down there at the bottom. I'll briefly go over that here, and in more detail later, in another guide.
If you were to click the Extras button while on a character with no items, this is what you'd see, when it first comes up:
So for the sake of the guide, I will load one of my own characters to show what it will look like when you need to use it.
The Extras button.
This is the extras screen. Here is where you do the item editing, and creating of basic white items that start off Superior and Indestructible, and armors and shields start with 10 defense. We all know that isn't correct for these items, and I'll go over what we use this for in a more advanced guide. The bottom left two tabs, "Character Hex" and "Item Binary Compare/Edit" will never be used for legit purposes, so there's no need to worry about these.
Alright newbros, you should be ready to begin making your character, now. If you have any questions, feel free to PM Cyber_Punk or myself on the site, or ask us in-game, if possible. Remember- save your character often, and as always, keep it legit.
-[SA}XaeSword
