Item Creation Tutorial - dredmor-com/dungeons-of-dredmor GitHub Wiki
Here, you'll be taught to create any item you might want to introduce in your mod. Let's get started!
- Setting your mod up
- Food and Drink
- Weapons
- Armour
- Bolts and Thrown Weaponry
- Potions
- Traps
- Crafting Materials
- See Also
Before anything, you'll need a proper directory structure prepared and a valid mod.xml file built. You can follow those links if you need to set this up.
Otherwise, you'll now need to make a file named 'itemDB.xml' in the 'mod' directory. When you start to edit it, make sure it starts with <itemDB> and ends with </itemDB>, or your mother will be very disappointed. You can then start to add more items to the file. According to the XML Prophecy, each item starts with <item> and ends with </item>.
For starters, we can begin with Food and Booze. The following is an implementation of the Cheese and Dwarven Gut Rot items.
<item name="Cheese" iconFile="items/food_cheese.png" level="3">
<price amount="30"/>
<food hp="7" meat="1"/>
<description text="This is what happens when someone leaves the milk out."/>
</item>
<item name="Dwarven Gut Rot" iconFile="items/booze_gutrot.png" level="6">
<price amount="94"/>
<food mp="27" effect="Lingering Weakness"/>
<description text="God only knows how they stomach this stuff."/>
</item>
| Tag | Attribute | Description |
|---|---|---|
| item | name="Cheese" | The item's name. Other XMl files will use this to call it. |
| iconFile="items/food_cheese.png" | The icon for the item. What it appears as in-game. | |
| level="3" | What level this item appears most often in. It can appear on other levels less frequently. | |
| price | amount="30" | The item's price. Depending on difficulty, purchase price will be higher and sell price, lower. |
| food | hp="7" | This item will be used as food and animated as such. It will place a "recover HP" buff for 7 turns once consumed. |
| meat="1" | OPTIONAL! A boolean indicating if the item is vegan or not, for purposes of the Vegan skill tree. | |
| mp="27" | This item will be used as booze and animated as such. It will place a "recover Mana" buff for 27 turns on consume. | |
| effect="Lingering Weakness" | OPTIONAL! When this item is used, the spell Lingering Weakness is cast on the user. More about spells on the Spell Tutorial. | |
| description | text="..." | The humorous and/or descriptive text that appears when you mouse over an item. |
Weapons have some more tags pertaining to their weapon-ness. Let's see the Axetar.
<item name="Axetar" iconFile="items/axe_axetar.png" level="7" type="1" artifact="1">
<price amount="7440"/>
<weapon slashing="11"/>
<artifact quality="2"/>
<targetHitEffectBuff percentage="20" name="Rockburst"/>
<description text="Wielded by awesome bards that journey the lands, this axetar will totally shred your enemies with sharp-feeling rocks."/>
</item>
| Tag | Attribute | Description |
|---|---|---|
| item | type="1" | The type of weapon. Read more about it here. |
| artifact="1" | OPTIONAL! A boolean to rename the item. Here, the item will not get a fancy randomly-generated name, even if it has artifact enchantments. | |
| weapon | slashing="11" | This tag determines the item is a weapon. After that, there's damage attributes: This axe deals 11 Slashing Damage (plus melee bonuses). |
| artifact | quality="2" | OPTIONAL! When generated, this item gets 2 randomly-generated bonuses. |
| targetHitEffectBuff | percentage="20" | This tag is OPTIONAL! When you hit a target, you'll get a bonus effect. In particular, when this weapon hits, it has a 20% chance to cast the Rockburst spell on the target. More information on the Skill and Spell tutorials. |
| effect="Rockburst" |
As is tradition of Dredmor modding, the syntax for armor is slightly different from the one for weapons. Just slightly.
Note: When modding, use armoUr, not armor.
<item name="Knight's Helmet" iconFile="items/helm_knights.png">
<price amount="1600"/>
<armour level="6" type="head"/>
<primarybuff id="2" amount="-1"/>
<secondarybuff id="9" amount="-2"/> <!-- edr -->
<secondarybuff id="10" amount="3"/> <!-- armour absorption -->
<secondarybuff id="7" amount="4"/> <!-- block -->
<secondarybuff id="3" amount="-2"/> <!-- magic power -->
<secondarybuff id="14" amount=".2"/> <!-- mana regen -->
<resistbuff piercing="1"/>
<secondarybuff id="18" amount="-1"/>
<description text="This knight's helm looks a lot like a bucket if a bucket had a hole cut in it for you to see through and a visor you could raise to eat through. These features would not be useful on most buckets, however."/>
</item>
| Tag | Attribute | Description |
|---|---|---|
| armour | level="6" | Yes, the level attribute is now on the armour tag. Don't ask why. |
| type="head" | Where the armor piece is placed (either head, chest, legs, hands, feet, neck, ring, shield and, most importantly, sleeve) | |
| primarybuff | id="2" | This tag is OPTIONAL! When equipped, this will debuff the primary stat of id 2 (Nimbleness) by -1. |
| amount="-1" | ||
| secondarybuff | id="10" | This tag is OPTIONAL! When equipped, this will buff the secondary stat of id 10 (Armour Absorption) by 3. |
| amount="3" | ||
| resistbuff | piercing="1" | OPTIONAL! When equipped, this item grants 1 point of Piercing Resistance. |
These are written up like weapons, with a specific type (5 for Thrown Weapons, 6 for Bolts) and some additional attributes.
<item name="Clockwork Drill Bolt" iconFile="items/bolt_drill.png" level="8" type="6" maxstack="5">
<price amount="259"/>
<weapon piercing="8" hit="Clockwork Drill Hit"/>
<description text="Originally invented to assist in long-range carpentry, the tragic prototype test results spurred unintended breakthroughs in weapon technologies."/>
</item>
<item name="Hand Grenade" iconFile="items/thrown_grenade.png" level="8" type="5" maxstack="3">
<price amount="350"/>
<weapon crushing="4" thrown="items/thrown_grenade.png" hit="Grenade Center" canTargetFloor="1"/>
<description text="You're going to blow someone's eye up with this."/>
</item>
| Tag | Attribute | Description |
|---|---|---|
| item | maxstack="5" | How many of these appear in a single stack. They can be stacked in larger numbers in the player's inventory. |
| weapon | hit="Clockwork Drill Hit" | This spell is cast on the target when the weapon hits it. It is unclear whether or not it works on melee weapons, too, but it is unlikely. |
| thrown="items/thrown_grenade.png" | Use this if you want a fancy graphic for your item when it is thrown. You can use the same icon you use for a regular item, as shown here. | |
| canTargetFloor="1" | A boolean to indicate if this weapon can target an empty floor tile. In our case, that's a 'yes'. |
Potions are almost identical to food and booze, only with the <potion> tag instead of the <food> one.
<item name="Potion of Lively Regeneration" iconFile="items/potion_regen0.png" level="3">
<price amount="260"/>
<potion spell="Medium Regen"/>
<description text="This flask is filled to the brim with cheerful pinkiness."/>
</item>
| Tag | Attribute | Description |
|---|---|---|
| potion | spell="Medium Regen" | This potion casts the spell "Medium Regen" on the target when used. Read more on the Spell Tutorial. |
Traps are the only items that do anything when stepped on, and the only ones that can't be taken from the floor arbitrarily.
<item name="Shoddy Dwarven IED" iconFile="dungeon/trap_tnt.png">
<price amount="100"/>
<trap trigger="once" casts="Makeshift Bomb Center" level="1"/>
<description text="This is a sub-par Dwarven IED design. All craftsdwarfship is pretty lousy, actually."/>
</item>
<item name="Gargoyle Arrow Trap" iconFile="dungeon/trap_pressure_plate0.png">
<price amount="100"/>
<trap origin="dungeon/trap_wall_gargoyle0.png" originFacing="south" originMount="wall" trigger="always" casts="Gargoyle Arrow" level="1"/>
<description text="Triggering this plate causes a Gargoyle to spit a large spinning arrow at you. Ow!"/>
</item>
| Tag | Attribute | Description |
|---|---|---|
| trap | trigger="once" | This trap triggers once, then disappears. |
| trigger="always" | This trap will trigger every time it's stepped on, until removed. | |
| casts="Makeshift Bomb Center" | This spell is casted when the trap is triggered. As always, more info at the Spell Tutorial. | |
| level="1" | The trap level, aside from telling you what level it appears most in, defines how hard it is to disarm. | |
| origin="dungeon/trap_wall_gargoyle0.png" | This kind of trap spawns a gargoyle head to the north of it. | |
| originFacing="south" | The direction the spawned mechanism is oriented. It's unclear if anything other than "south" works, although it's very likely. | |
| originMount="wall" | Where the trap spawns its spell. While "wall" is currently the only option available, "floor" was also intended to work, but it currently isn't. |
The simplest items in the game, by structure. Keep in mind they won't do much until added to 'craftDB.xml' as well.
<item name="Zinc Ingot" iconFile="items/ingot_zinc.png" alchemical="1" craftoutput="1">
<price amount="90"/>
<description text="Zinc - one of the three Forbidden Metals."/>
</item>
| Tag | Attribute | Description |
|---|---|---|
| item | alchemical="1" | This item appears in the Crafty-Crafts vending machines. |
| craftoutput="1" | This does absolutely nothing. |