The Reliquary is a mod dedicated to restoring the complete version of Diablo II that Blizzard North intended. It is not a heavily reimagined mod: the goal is to present and polish this classic in its most genuine, complete form.

Research into the game data has turned up a great deal: early design plans and features still buried inside the game are both surprisingly rich, and restoring and showing them is worthwhile in itself. New content is therefore kept conservative — anything added beyond cut content needs a clear basis and a clear reason.

The list below is not exhaustive; there is a great deal of small detail that cannot be laid out in one pass. This article will keep being updated.

General

• New rendering algorithms for textures, lighting and shadows, raising their fidelity.
• Strengthened day-night system
• Players enter the game at a random time of day, instead of always at 6 a.m.
• Different acts sit in different time zones, so there is a time difference between them
• Fixed the day-night transition bugs
• Day-night equipment affixes introduced
• Darker overall
• Characters start with no self-illumination
• More blood
• Monsters bleed more often
• Characters and mercenaries now bleed too
• Damage types
• Restored the cut damage type — Burn (a persistent fire damage over time attached to the target), along with the related fixes
• Implemented mastery and resistance reduction for magic damage
• ……
• Optimised poison damage calculation
• Fixed a large number of game bugs
• Text and translation corrections
• Fixed several UI textures that were never upgraded when Lord of Destruction shipped and still look grey
• Vendor screen
• Cube screen, same problem
• Waypoint screen
• Quest screen

Characters

Existing skills get modest balance changes, aimed at making overlooked skills useful and widening the range of builds.

Many of the skills below are cut content or early designs. Some survive only as a name, others only as a visual or sound effect, with the actual behaviour largely unknown. Most cut and early-design skills here are my own reconstruction.



• Barbarian
• Whirlwind now triggers equipment effects, such as skills cast on striking…
• Swapped the icons of Natural Resistance and Berserk, which have been the wrong way round all along
• …
• Amazon
• Added the cut skill Fist of Ares: while active, the Amazon's arrows and javelins fire two at a time (a character-level Multishot — almost certainly a must-pick)
• ……
• Assassin
• A poison tree is planned for the Assassin
• Reworked [Cobra Strike] into an area attack that spreads a cloud of poison.
• Added the early-design skill [Acid Spray]
• Necromancer
• Added the cut skill [Summon Familiar], a minion that strengthens the Necromancer's curses, poison and bone effects: it grants curse mastery, makes poison tick faster (shortening the duration to raise DPS) and mimics the character's bone skills.
• Added the cut skill [Poison Inferno], a poison version of Inferno
• Added the cut curse [Mind Control], which makes a monster fight temporarily on your side
• Paladin
• Added the cut skill [Holy Sword]: the weapon in hand becomes a burning sword with improved properties
• ……

• Sorceress
• Added the cut skill [Chill Blood]: a spreading cloud of cold mist that lowers enemy physical and light resistance and blocks healing.
• ……
• Druid
• Reworked [Spirit of Barbs] to raise party movement speed and add lightning damage to party basic attacks.
• Added an eagle shapeshift form, focused on boosting the Druid's spellcasting
• Added the early-design skill [Lightning Claw]
• Added the early-design summon [Giant Wasp]
• Added the early-design summon[Vampire Bat]
• Added the cut skill[Vine Nest], a vine that casts its own corpse explosion on frozen corpses.

Mercenaries

• Fixed the running problem for all mercenaries: they now break into a run to catch up over long distances, and the sluggish run and animation speed when a mercenary engages in melee is fixed too (which modestly improves their combat efficiency)
• Restored the cut interaction between players and their mercenaries and summons, so the player can direct their attacks and movement precisely (which also puts the mercenary acknowledgement voice lines to use)
• Mercenaries can now sometimes use skills granted by their equipment.

• Rogue
• Added the Rogue's cut helmet, a chainmail design
• Added a poison-bow Rogue variant
• Desert Mercenary (Mizan)
• Restored the Desert Mercenary's unique town idle and walk animations
• Added the Desert Mercenary's cut helmet, a full-body armour design
• Iron Wolf
• Added a melee Iron Wolf variant
• Added staff and great-shield appearances for the Iron Wolf
• Barbarian (Khan)
• Restored the cut dual-axe Barbarian variant
• Added a heavy-armour appearance for the Barbarian

Areas

• Act I and Act III rain now comes with its proper lightning and thunder
• Enabled every map object that never actually spawns (crates, coffins, obelisks, Rogue statues, crosses and so on)
• Enabled every unused map tile (a large number of distinctive visual elements)

Act I

• Rogue Encampment
• Enabled several cut maps
• Burial Grounds
• Reworked the Blood Raven fight: Rogues come to support the player and fight alongside the many undead Rogues Blood Raven raises.
• Tristram
• Lighting remade to recreate the dusk of the first Diablo
• Map rebuilt

Act II

• Lut Gholein
• Enabled a cut map from which the Act I entrance into Lut Gholein is visible
• Enabled Atma's introduction dialogue
• Added a handful of guards to Lut Gholein — during the eclipse they trigger a line of cut dialogue
• Lut Gholein's guards get back the town idle and walk animations they were always meant to have (stand up straight and you actually look like a guard...)
• Mercenaries can only be hired after Radament's quest is done
• ······

Act III

• ……

Act IV

The whole of Act IV has been reworked — see the Act IV remake plan. Act IV is lengthened to match the other acts and gains a visual identity completely unlike the retail version.

• Enabled Act IV's special lighting and day-night system.
• Weather effects designed
• Dust storms
• Drifting sparks
• Lightning
• Pandemonium Fortress
• An additional version of the map
• NPC dialogue about the glass windows, the Dark Knight statues and so on
• Outer Steppes
• Tiles retuned around a theme of burning corpses, with many stepped areas, drifting smoke and funeral pyres
• Added a Hell portal: players entering Mephisto's portal first arrive at Act IV's Hell portal and have to find the town themselves.
• Withered Steppe
• New map: a large floating island connected by bridges.
• Plains of Despair
• Tiles retuned around a theme of jungle-like fences
• City of the Damned
• Tiles retuned, with many maps built around its own look: dungeons on the surface and ornate black city blocks
• Chaos Sanctuary
• A new map embedded inside the City of the Damned: a cross-shaped cathedral at the city's centre
• Abyssal Descent
• A small transition map reached through the portal at the centre of the Chaos Sanctuary and linking to the entrance of the lava maps
• Burning Threshold, Spiteful Labyrinth, Harvest of Souls, Bay of the Damned, Scorching Promenade
• New maps, each with its own character
• Sanctum of Terror
• The original Chaos Sanctuary

Act V

• ……

Arena

• Restore the arena maps and add more
• Considering an arena game mode

Guilds

• Restore the guild maps
• ……

Monsters

• Enable all ten unused fixed uniques
• Every designed but unused monster will appear on some map (a very large number)
• New aura type for unique monsters: Evil Aura (raises overall skill levels and adds life steal)…
• Monster AI and skills fixed…
• Fetish Shaman
• AI and skills fixed: it can cast its Fetish Aura properly, buffing the Fetish and raising their attack speed
• Greater Mummy
• Bestow skill fixed: it can heal undead properly
• Abyss Knight [battle mage]
• AI fixed, Bone Spirit enabled
• Oblivion Knight [mage]
• AI fixed, Bestow skill enabled: heals allied monsters
• AI fixed, Bone Armor enabled
• Andariel
• Uses one unused voice line
• Duriel
• Cut skill [Charge] enabled, bugs fixed
• Uses one unused voice line
• Mephisto
• Cut skill enabled: [Glacial Spike]
• Cut skill enabled: [Poison Bolt]
• AI changed so it casts [Glacial Spike] and [Poison Bolt] at mid range
• Fixed the bug where the AI rarely used [Blizzard]: the correct condition is line of sight blocked by terrain or distance from the player greater than 30
• Diablo
• S4 (cast 4) animation fixed and applied
• BL (block) animation fixed and applied
• Cut skill [Diablo Blaze] enabled
• Increased the cast frequency of [Fire Wall]
• Uses Diablo's laugh and other unused sound effects
• Four new melee gorgons
• With the skill [Stone Curse]
• Four new caster gorgons
• With Poison Bolt (Mephisto's cut skill), Poison Inferno (the Necromancer's cut skill), Stone Curse and Bone Spear
• Diablo's knights — the Doom Knights — added
• With Charge, Holy Fire aura, Frost Nova and Stun
• Fallen wolf-riders added
• Wild wolf monsters restored
• Elemental spirits restored: poison, cold, fire, lightning
• They attack the player suicidally and release an area blast on death
• …more than can be listed here…

Other

• Restore the three shrine types
• Shrine of Enirhs
• Health Exchange
• Mana Exchange
• Shrine buffs
• Not overwritten by curses
• Can receive some affix and skill bonuses
• Restore the Obelisk system
• Offer a gem to gain a permanent character stat reward
• Cut item quality — dark green tempered equipment
• Hand-crafted gear: a tempering system that adds properties to an item one recipe at a time
• Many cut items added: torches, candles, herbs, elixirs, weapons…
• Completed several unfinished unique items
• Uses every unused magic affix
• Uses a large number of unimplemented character and item properties
• For example day-night gear: +XXX to a stat (depending on in-game time)
• For example the finer physical damage properties: +xxx% slashing / bludgeoning / piercing damage
• Uses six unused music tracks
• Uses N unused sound effects (a large number)
• Uses N unused graphical assets (a large number)

Under consideration

• Swapping the order of Act IV and Act V
• A good idea, but the existing snow areas would need rethought story, layouts and cutscenes, and making it flow well would be difficult.
• Building the Cleric class from the second expansion
• Very appealing — but the workload.