thank you so very very much for these tips
and the step by step “ikea” instructions 
making it just what a clumsy sod like me can handle 
Weird, if this works then I have no idea why building a regular mod would not work for you. This is way more work and dbrs than a regular mod would have been.
Did you simply not load your mod in game ?
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no i did, like i said from the succesful “non-1kb arz” my changes just had no effect
(tho now i understand why, as tqfan illustrated shammy skills are from gdx1 not regular database)
tho all the other stuff/erros/mishaps still confuses me - tho with some thorough handholding we arrived at a happy end afterall
Not sure why the skills being from gdx1 makes any difference when building a regular mod. Whatever is in the mod overrides vanilla and both expansions.
You might have started out with the wrong skill dbr, but it still should override what is in gdx1.
To avoid having to hunt down the right skill in 3 places I copy gdx1 over vanilla and gdx2 over both, then whatever I find in the dir is the correct dbr to use
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Not sure what you mean but way more work than modifying an existing mod with your changes? That’s OP’s original intent.
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Hard modding is way more work than a regular mod, given your description
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I’m talking hard-modding permanent wind devil + running custom mod on top of it
vs
modifing existing custom packed mod (i.e. Dawn of Masteries) from the beginning
so that it also contains permanent wind devils
Not hard mod vs regular mod.
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i can only speak for my own very amateur’ish and clumsy encounter (and granted the detailed step by step guide made a big difference)
but it took me hours getting absolutely nowhere yday, in what i assumed would be the simplest form of mod to be made (just changing a basic value in 1 place)
and it ofc left me frustrated as i messed it up all the time and everything kept going wrong despite the standard guides on the forum (granted that also speaks a fair bit to my own ineptitude on such things)
compared to that, it took me like 10minutes to get this hardmod up and running - again obvious big deal being tq’s very handholding instructions 
i’ve no doubt regular modding should be way simpler/quicker, but it would, at least from my encounter, require a little more knowhow than just point black starter attempt
guess because when you don’t know what you’re actually doing, even the simplest things become complicated like quantum physics 
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I’m similar, I haven’t gotten used to ArchieveTool from command line yet 
and building Dawn of Masteries from what I’ve read requires you to also download templates,
building / packing still gives some errors.
Of course in the end if doing more complicated changes / merging two mods
or if mod overwrites your changes, then you have to modify the mod.
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I am with you but coming from the other direction… if you managed the hard mod, how on earth did you run into issues before ? 
The hard mod contains a lot more files, so if anything went wrong with the regular mod, there is no way the hard mod would work either.
Or put the other way around, if you managed the hard mod, the regular one should be easier and also work, as it literally is a tiny subset of the hard mod
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like i said i’ve no idea what happened the times it went wrong, getting 1kb arz (or even the arc @_@), or the errors, let alone the write errors
and as far as it not working when i got the right size arz, i’m guessing it mattered somehow that i was extracting resources from and to database instead gdx1, somehow, - who knows what might else have gone wrong along the steps yday 
@mamba Hey could you tell me if I can hardmod in the following way?
Or is it maybe unnecessarily complicated / won’t work.
-
first I make a soft-mod SOME_MOD with some changes in Asset Manager and build it
-
then I make a copy of unpacked GDX2 folder and overwrite it with copy of SOME_MOD folder with changed files
- I delete SOME_MOD.arz and Resourcese from it though
-
now in this copy of GDX2 are appropriate files, even if they are originally from GDX1 / base game
-
now I pack this folder from command line to GDX2.arz and replace the original to hard mod
so basically I always replace only GDX2.arz with this method
I thought also of doing it without command line and building in Asset Manager by copying Working/mods/GDX2/database unpack files to Working/mods/SOME_MOD/database, then make changes / import potentially not-existing records from GDX1 / Base game to it in Asset Manager and then rebuild the whole SOME_MOD = GDX2.arz + CHANGES in Asset Manager.
[edit] ^ I tested this 2nd method and it works nicely, you just have to w8 a couple minutes for the whole GDX2.arz to compile
@Gnomish_Inquisition with this method you don’t need to think whether do “the hardmod trick” at what .arz file (or at multiple). You do it always on GDX2.arz
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sweet, gonna give it a whirl when 9.2 is official, cheers once more tqFan
use AssetManager to build, but yes, this should work, assuming you only made dbr changes and have no actual resources
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Hey, @Umblio I now use a different better method imo that I’ll link you here in a couple seconds when I find my post about it
Thanks for the guide. Tried making slight changes to a mod for days and just couldn´t get it to work. The game is not very modding friendly. With your guide though it worked flawlessly! Thanks again!
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Here a different method that I now use: 2 mods its possible? - #3 by tqFan
The difference is that you don’t have to modify game’s files for its so changes are not overwritten when the game’s updated.
A bit softer hard-mod in a way.
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Also one more thing - if you do it using the (older) method from this thread:
- I recommend to not think whether to modify GDX1.arz or GDX2.arz or database.arz but always modify GDX2.arz as it will always work as it’s the last one in the “chain”
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Thanks again, thats really neat too. Hope more people find these tips and can make the game more to their liking.
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Made a tool awhile back and after skimming this thread figured I might as well share it. It’s a tool for using the ArchiveTool.exe (and as a bonus also utilizes the TexViewer.exe somewhat).
I can’t remember what all I was intending to do with it further anymore but it’s in autohotkey so i’ll also provide the source and I suppose if anyone wants to fiddle with it they can.
When you launch the tool it will detect either default Steam or GoG install locations of GD and have you choose one to use (if both are present). It then copies the needed files for ArchiveTool and the TexViewer from GD’s install folder to its own folder (C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\Documents\My Games\_gdswitcher\arcz).
-
Press the
.arcbutton to navigate to arc files for extraction. -
Press the
.arzbutton to navigate to arz files for extraction.
Upon selecting your file for steps 1 or 2, the tool then automates the rest of the command line stuff for you and extracts it for you.
-
If you happen to extract any tex files you can press this one to navigate to its extraction folder and then it will display any tex files located there. Double-clicking any listed tex file will open it in the TexViewer.
NOTE: All extracted arc files go to: C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\Documents\My Games\_gdswitcher\arcz\extract
All extracted arz files go to: C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\Documents\My Games\_gdswitcher\arcz\database
NOTE2: I guess I never got around to doing anything with the edit field next to the arc/arz buttons. It is what it is I guess 
That’s pretty much the extent of it. Hopefully someone finds it handier/easier.
Download EXE only: arcz_extractor_EXE_ONLY.zip (454.7 KB)
Download Source: arcz_extractor_SOURCE.zip (10.4 KB)
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