[Q]Shadow Dragon Armor

[hellmonja]

ok i have this idea that i'm not sure what to do. the idea is simple: it's a chest armor that when worn automatically summons a Shadow Dragon,the one that Alric uses in his last fight (either that or the Destroyers Shadow Bowman or Shadow Warrior).

i don't actually use TorchED, i just convert adm's to dat's and edit them on notepad so if you have TorchED instructions remember i'm not that adept to the tool yet.

i've tried taking the affixes for the Shadow Bowman skill and putting them on the armor; tried using the [EFFECT]; tried searching for the Shadow Dragon skill adm in the skills folder (which i didn't find)-- i've tried everything i could think of and am actually thinking it's impossible without completely hacking thru the game. but it's such a cool concept for me and i just wanted to make sure...

[jamesL]

I don't know how to do your skill problem, but you never have to convert .adms

just use the .dats in the TorchEd folder
you don't have to open TorchEd, just use the .dats provided with it
the game will create the .adms when you start the game

[hellmonja]

alas. might not be possible after all. thanks for the tip though. i'll wait for others' opinion...

[Ouroboros]

Don't use the editor either, I used a batch to mass convert all the .dat.adm files to .dat files in the extracted pak copy; editor just slows me down for the vast majority of TL modding

It's possible, but would probably require a lot more editing than preferred - there's a workaround where you can create a hidden 2 lvl skill, have it do nothing at lvl1 and have it as a 'passive' that causes a summon (most likely via a loop that just resummons it every so often) at lvl2, then the item can just have a +1 lvl to that skill. Having that skill do what you want should be easy enough - you have the shadow armour effect as a base and merely need to replace what is actually summoned with Alric's dragon, it's just triggering it to activate only while the item is equipped that is a little more tricky, hence the workaround. All this is possible with a standard mod, it's just triggering it to activate and deactivate at the right time that may take a little work, and of course adding a skill to a character hurts compatibility with other mods and limits the usefulness of this. Be certain the skill is hidden if you have to use an infinite loop to keep it summoned, background processing might be ok with infinite loops (provided each loop cancels the previous before reapplying the effect so it doesn't eat more and more memory each loop), but the UI most certainly won't be.

[hellmonja]

thanks. thank you very much for that! i'll try that first but it seems it's gonna take me a while. i actually made a polearm that casts spectral echo by itself and wondered if i could do that with other skills...