Pet Modding Questions

Grim Dawn Modding - Tutorials and Help
1

I have been searching the forums for pet modding help and am finding minimal results. As such I’m hoping someone can answer a few questions for me. I have been creating a mod that includes a summoner and I have a few issues that I have run into…

  1. I’m using a skeleton as a frame for one of the pets. I want him to start as a basic model with just a weapon and then later in the skill tree once you invest in a skill modifier, I would like it to also change the skeletons appearance to include a shield. Can this be done by changing the model type from lets say skeleton warrior to skeleton knight? Or can it be done by adding a shield to item set? The issue I’m seeing is that it looks like the skeleton appearance is based on array from the original skill and cannot be from a later skill. Maybe there is a creative answer I cannot see…

  2. When putting points into the skeleton, I figured out how to display the headers “ability” and “attacks” but the values for them are not populating. Where do I link the description so that when adding skill points into the pet, you can see the increase in health, dmg etc (like how summon hellhound displays +5% health +10%mana regin +X% dmg per lvl)?

2

Try dissecting the Hellhounds files to see how it all works. The Coronus mastery does a lot of cool pet stuff you could learn from as well. As far as progressive s gear on the pet, check out Frost Knights summon. The gear is linked to level based loottables.

3

  1. If you want to change the appearance across all levels you have to add the new pet file to the override field (petChanges) in the skillSecondary_PetModifier file. at least that’s the only way I know, and a transmuter might be better in that case unless you want to use different shields with a modifier. problem with this is you cannot change the appearance again.

  2. there is a field “isPetDisplayable” it needs to be true and it should display stats/skills or something isn’t right (or GD refuses to do it, it happens).

I literally started working on pets 3 days ago and it took me a day to get the mastery done, so I’m sure there are some nice tricks I don’t know about, but it works for me :smiley:

in general as kath suggested, looking at vanilla skills is a good place. take them apart, even if you copy them into your mod and change values for testing purposes.
hellhound (general pets)
totems (player scaling pet and transmuter to change appearance or a skill)

4

Reverse engineering is the best tutor when it comes to GD mods.

As for a modifier to add gear to pets, as warebare said your only option is with a transmuter to completely change the pet file which results in a tremendous undertaking by you and it won’t really scale well since one point is basically all you can do. Best alternative is to include the items in your base creature file.

5

Well, I’ve got the health display working correctly… still trying to get the ability to display right, but these suggestions seem to be sending me on the correct path.

I’m thinking if I have to, I can make the skill line contain 2 primary pets, each as exclusive skills, one after the other. That way they can both have their own appearance (just hate wasting an exclusive skill like that) and then pet_modifiers on down the line can still work with both? IT would be much nicer if it could be a transmuter…

6

Not sure if it’s your choice of wording or you’re planning to use skillexclusives but if it’s the latter then know that exclusives only work on buffs.

7

Hopefully my last question. I must be missing something simple… All the displays are correct now, but as I increase the kill level, the linked pet stats do not increase. I am seeing the base skill increase because the mana cost is going up, but the pet stats(life/mana/attack) are not. I thought it would be that I didn’t list the spawnObjects Array under the summoning skill correctly, but everything there seems good. I need an “EASY” button!

8

Are you using character bios to determine stat growth?

9

Yes, the hellhound template which uses my character level to increase their base stats, but I was under the impression that records/skills/playerclass03/pets/petskill_raven_innate1.dbr should still be increasing them regardless of my level?

10

Each file for each rank of the pet has to have the innate skill +1 of the last.

For example, pet level 1 should have innatepassive level 1, pet level 2 should have innatepassive level2, etc etc for every rank of the pet.

11

Oh :smiley: lightbulb! I never really understood the skillLevel - equation and now, FANTASTIC! I kept thinking it didn’t make sense that the equation would be 1 all the time… THANKS!