Diablo has seen a wide variety of mods which attempt to provide a novel experience by considerably altering the game's itemization, character classes, quests, monsters, difficulty, skills, etc. This is not the goal of Apocrypha.
Apocrypha is designed primarily as a balance patch for Diablo. It aims to achieve a more diverse set of viable playstyles by buffing/reworking under-powered mechanics while nerfing over-powered ones, maintaining a roughly similar difficulty curve on average. Another goal of Apocrypha is to enhance class identity and specialization while doing its best to stay true to the spirit and feel of the original game. Melee characters shouldn't feel frustrating to play or feel incapable of being a tank; casters should feel like glass cannons.
However, this doesn't mean that there's nothing new to look forward to in Apocrypha! There are now six new shrines which offer extremely powerful build-defining opportunities, but only for those brave enough to read from their apocryphal texts...
Currently, Apocrypha is designed for and balanced around Hellfire in single player, so that's the recommended way to experience this mod. If you don't care for Hellfire, it's still highly encouraged that you keep Hellfire mode enabled even if you ignore the side areas since multiple balance changes rely on Hellfire being active. This may change in the future as the code gets cleaned up over time.
Apocrypha was built using DevilutionX v1.3.0. This mod wouldn't have been possible for me to create without the huge amount of work, dedication, and assistance from the DevilutionX community.
So far, Apocrypha is only available for Windows 64-bit operating systems. Sorry! If this mod takes off and people like it, then I can devote more time to making it work on other systems too. I'm just one guy, and still very new to coding.
Six new powerful shrines, all available starting from level 1
Loot fixes for nightmare and hell difficulties, making normal difficulty no longer the ideal place to find the best loot in the game
Fixed a bug preventing some unique items from generating, meaning all unique items are now obtainable in both single player and multiplayer
Substantially nerfed Sorcerer's mana gain per magic point
Sorcerer now has drastically reduced mana costs for almost every spell
Melee classes (i.e. Warrior, Monk, Bard, and Barbarian) all gain armor class per character level, but armor class is reduced to zero for these classes while moving. Rogue and Sorcerer still work normally.
Chance to avoid monster melee attacks now capped at 75% at all levels
Attacks from unique monsters + Diablo now ignore 75% of player's armor class
Improved chance to hit bonus for melee from dexterity
Multiple spells have been substantially rebalanced, so don't just assume a spell is bad! Every spell has been playtested and is good at something.
Magic resistance/immunity removed from all regular non-unique monsters
Search, Reflect, Warp, and Teleport removed from the game
Monk's inherent skill is now Infravision instead of Search
Barbarian and his Rage skill have been completely reworked. He is now slightly less powerful than Warrior by default, but Rage now grants a 20 second period of 100% life leech, increased damage, AC and chance to hit at the cost of experiencing life degen.
All farmable permanent stat-increasing mechanics removed from the game (e.g. elixirs, oils, stat-increasing shrines), and Spectral Elixir is now one-time use. Feel free to grab the mushroom as much as you want though.
Powerful item affixes have had their levels raised substantially. You can still find them, but don't expect to farm Griswold anymore!
The Defiler and Na-Krul have had their health significantly increased
Na-Krul's item drops have been reworked, and pulling the lever to summon Na-Krul now spawns a significantly harder "uber" Na-Krul with highly enhanced item drops
Ranged monsters no longer retreat when walking close to them
Diablo and Na-Krul's resistances/immunities have changed, so casters may have to experiment a bit!
All of the wonderful things from DevilutionX v1.3.0 including...
- Widescreen resolution
- 60 FPS animations
- Hold "Alt" to reveal items on the ground
- Hold left/right click to keep attacking/casting
- New UI elements such as enemy health bars and an experience bar
- Shift+click potions to belt, ctrl+click to drop items from inventory
- Countless bug fixes
- And many more...
These are just some of the changes present in Apocrypha. For more complete documentation of all changes, see the release notes.
Note: You'll need access to the data from the original game. If you don't have an original CD then you can buy Diablo from GoG.com.
Download the latest Apocrypha release and extract the contents to a location of your choosing. If you have the GOG version of Diablo, run apocrypha.exe and enjoy! If you have the original Diablo CD:
- Copy
DIABDAT.MPQfrom the CD and paste it into your Apocrypha folder. - To run the Diablo: Hellfire expansion you will need to do the same for
hellfire.mpq,hfmonk.mpq,hfmusic.mpq,hfvoice.mpqfrom your Hellfire CD.
RUNNING THE GAME IN HELLFIRE MODE IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Multiple balance changes will not work unless you're playing Hellfire. Feel free to ignore the Hellfire side areas though, if you'd like :)
To update to a newer version of Apocrypha, just download the latest release, extract, and place the new apocrypha.exe in your old Apocrypha folder overwriting the old apocrypha.exe.
Resolution, fullscreen mode, and other miscellaneous settings may be edited in diablo.ini to your liking.
Apocrypha is released to the Public Domain. The documentation and functionality provided by Apocrypha may only be utilized with assets provided by the ownership of Diablo.
The source code in this repository is for non-commercial use only. If you use the source code you may not charge others for access to it or any derivative work thereof.
Diablo® - Copyright © 1996 Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. Diablo and Blizzard Entertainment are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.
Apocrypha and any of its maintainers are in no way associated with or endorsed by Blizzard Entertainment®.