[Tutorial] How to Hex-Edit Sacred 2 savegame file

[Genesis]

Well to start things off, you should already know how to get to your save file on your hard drive/usb drive (there are several guides already here that explain it), and as always MAKE A BACKUP before starting to mod your save! Just right click then press Copy and then find somewhere else on your computer to put a backup copy where you wont lose it, and right click paste. With that out of the way lets continue.

Before you begin

Before you begin to modify your character, you will need to make sure they are already in a campaign. The easiest way to make this work is to load the game, Select the character you plan to modify, and select Start Game, then create game. If you have already started a campaign go ahead and select continue campaign and start the game. If you have not, select New Campaign on any difficulty, and start the game. Once into the game, Press Start and Save Game. After its finished Saving, go ahead and Leave Game.

Now your character file has been generated properly and is ready to mod. Go ahead and get your save file off your hard drive, and as I said before MAKE A BACKUP of it somewhere safe just in case anything goes wrong you can just put it back on your hard drive.

Things you will need

1) Offzip/Packzip - You can find it here just search for it in the box up top "Offzip UI"

2) A hex-editor - I prefer HxD, its small, free, and easy to use. Search google for "HxD" its the first listing.

3) A rehash/resigner - I have tried Modio and ConCEPT. Of the two I prefer Modio, ConCEPT seemed to cause my saves to freeze the xbox 360. Again search google and you will find a site by GameTuts in the first page of listings.

What you can change with this tutorial

1. Level
2. Experience
3. Skill Points
4. Attribute points
5. Gold
6. Character Name

*note* - There is more that can be changed but they go beyond the scope of this tutorial as each save is different for items, etc.

Main steps in order

1. Unpack Save File
2. Modify correct .dat file
3. Re-inject the .dat back into your save
4. Rehash/Resign your save - Not going to explain this part there is plenty of guides out there.


Unpacking your Save File

To unpack your save file we are going to be using the first tool in the list above Offzip. Offzip.exe is one of the files that comes in the archive and allows us to unpack your savefile so you can modify each character individually.

Go ahead and unpack the offzip archive, put a copy of your save into the folder you extracted it to. Now right click in that folder and press New > Folder. Name the folder Unpacked

Press WindowsKey + R
Type CMD.exe
Press Enter on your keyboard

In the new window, drag and drop the offzip.exe file from the tools you got above into the black command window that popped up.
Next Press Space, then type -a then another space.
Now Drag and drop your save file into the black command window. Then another space after that, then type Unpacked, again another space, and then the number 0.

If you extracted offzip to the desktop it should look something like this

C:\Documents And Settings\[YOURNAMEHERE]>"C:\Documents And Settings\[YOURNAMEHERE]\Desktop\Offzip\offzip.exe" -a "C:\Documents And Settings\[YOURNAMEHERE]\Desktop\Offzip\SACRED2_FA" "C:\Documents And Settings\[YOURNAMEHERE]\Desktop\Offzip\Unpacked" 0

*Note* It doesn't have to look exactly like this just make sure you typed each part correctly and drag and dropped how it was explained.

Go ahead and press Enter on your keyboard, and you should see something similar to what is displayed in this screenshot.

[IMG]img193.imageshack.us/img193/2737/offzip.jpg[/IMG]

If you don't see anything like this or there is some type of error, go back and try re-typing out the command. If it still doesn't work leave a message here and I will try and get back to you asap.

Now go ahead and minimize the command window, and open the Unpacked folder we created earlier. Inside you should see a few files, depending on how many characters you have. In the example image above there was only 4 files generated. Those files are the unpacked files from your save.

Modifying the correct .dat

In the above step we extracted the files from our save (in this case 4 files as this save only had 1 character). Of the 4 files one of them was larger then the rest. Try opening each file with HxD and pressing CTRL + F and typing FFFFAA07 and changing the type to Hex Bytes. Press Search. If it is a character file you opened it will find it and will highlight those bytes.

Look down between 15 and 20 lines on the right hand side of the file in HxD, and you will see a character name with each letter seperated by a "." if this is the character you would like to modify then continue, otherwise try each other file until you find the one your looking for.

*Yet another Note* - Sometimes there will be two files that have your character in them, the last 3 letters/numbers in the file name will be the same but the rest will be different. If this does happen always go for the highest numbered file. (example 0005876.dat and 000d876.dat, because D is higher then 5 in hexidecimal you would want to edit the file 000d876.dat

Now that we have the file we want to modify, make sure at the bottom of HxD that it shows "Overwrite". If not press the Insert key on your keyboard near the Home and End keys.

Finally what you have been waiting for, time to modify!

So as I said above there are several things you will be able to modify in your save, and I will list them again in order.

1. Level
2. Skill Points
3. Attribute Points
4. Experience
5. Name
6. Gold

Ok so here is an image for reference as to how I modified my character.

[IMG]img547.imageshack.us/img547/3319/hex.jpg[/IMG]

Ok so look back to where you searched for "FF FF AA 07" After those you will see "00 ##" the #'s are your level in hexidecimal.

In my screenshot mine was 51 which is level 81. Your best chance is to set this to 50.

So it should look like "FF FF AA 07 00 50". After the 50 are two more bytes that haven't been figured out yet (so we are at "FF FF AA 07 00 50 00 00"). After that is 4 more bytes which are your skill and attribute points. Best bet is to set these each at FF 00, If you try and set it to FF FF and don't use any of them before gaining experience they will roll back over to 0.

So now we have "FF FF AA 07 00 50 00 00 FF 00 FF 00". Now to make use of the fact we just jumped to level 80 but haven't picked any skills yet, we need to level up a level. Luckily I have already calculated the total experience you need to hit level 81. 62,415,900 Total experience.

Well lets go ahead and knock 10 off of that and set our experience to 62,415,890 so that all we have to do is gain 10 experience. The next 4 bytes after the skill and attribute points are your experience. So lets convert that number over to hex 62,415,890 in Hex is 03 B8 64 12, so now our total and final string for now is.
"FF FF AA 07 00 50 00 00 FF 00 FF 00 03 B8 64 12"

Now name is really easy to change you can just scroll down and on the right hand side where it shows your name (like we looked at before) you just type over your name with the characters you want. (YOU CAN NOT MAKE YOUR NAME ANY LONGER THEN IT ALREADY IS!) Like in my screenshot above my characters name is 8 characters long (including the space), I can not make my characters name any longer then that.

Finally Gold, below your name you will see a large group of zero's taking up several lines of space. Right after the zero's is several numbers (in my example they are 02 02 01 ## ## ## ##) those ##'s are for money. The max money you can have is FF FF FF FF. When you load your game with that amount it will show as 0 until you buy something after which it will show over 4 billion gold.

Go ahead and save your modifications, making sure you haven't accidentally changed anything else.

Re-injecting your character back into your save

This part is very similar to the offzip section, go ahead and bring the command window from earlier back up. Now drag and drop packzip.exe into the window, then put a space then type -o 0x######## where the #'s are the same as your characters file name, like my filename was 0000d876.dat so I would type -o 0x0000d876 then put another space, now drag and drop your save file onto the command window, and finally drag and drop the .dat file that had your character in it into the command window. It should look something like this

C:\Documents And Settings\[YOURNAMEHERE]>"C:\Documents And Settings\[YOURNAMEHERE]\Desktop\Offzip\packzip.exe" -o 0x0000d876 "C:\Documents And Settings\[YOURNAMEHERE]\Desktop\Offzip\Unpacked\0000d876.dat" "C:\Documents And Settings\[YOURNAMEHERE]\Desktop\Offzip\SACRED2_FA"

After you press enter you should see something similar to

img836.imageshack.us/img836/9066/packzip.jpg

Now go rehash/resign your save file, copy it back to your hard drive/usb drive. And load your character in game. As soon as you gain 10 experience you will level to level 81, and will be able to pick your 10 skills if you haven't already.

If you would like anything explained a little better, need help with a part, can't seem to find any of the tools, or just have any type of input towards modifying Sacred 2 your posts are always welcomed.

Also as this is my first tutorial I am fully open to constructive criticism.

Special Thanks to Fullslayer322 for being my test dummy during the testing of these modifications if it weren't for those backups you probably would have killed me. Also thanks to BlazinNAmazin for his work towards finding the locations of the values of these hex's!

Credit Goes to AlmostEpic420

[xICEMANx117]

When i do this my Character gets erased everytime i do the step down to the tee and it gets erased

[xICEMANx117]

if you wouldnt mind could someone here unlock the noib level on campaign plz here is my save


http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4L6R63AC

[xICEMANx117]

Hello Hello Hello Is anyone out there ....... Hello Hello

[kals9]

hello i found a way to hex edit the amount of kills you have if any1 wanna know or wanna add to the tutorial let me know il give you the info

[Game Wizard]

if we have this info can anybody make a save editor for this game all i would need would be level modding up and down

[CptJackRabbit]

Any idea why it always ends up in a corrupt save? Also, the repack confuses me. Your instructions say save file, then dat file, but the example it says dat file then save file. Which is it? Thank You.

[ticallion]

im curious. will try it now :-) hop it works