More money, less clicking...

I've seen many complain about not having enough money and I absolutely hate all the clicking involved to make money with those damn guild arrows. So here goes...

Grab a hex editor, open the ROSTER.DAT file with it, find the name of the character you wish to give all the money to, go down the screen until you see the Bag of Gold item, in the four bytes right in front of the Bag of Gold item enter FF FF 7F FF. This should give you 2,147,483,647 gold. More than enough I think for anyone's needs.

*begin technical stuff*
I believe they used signed longs (been too long since I've dealt with C++ so it could be something else but I'm sure its signed whatever it is) which means that the first bit determines whether the number is positive or negative (1 is negative, 0 is positive). That is why you must put a 7 (its the highest hexidecimal number possible whose binary representation doesn't begin with a one) instead of an F.
*end technical stuff*

Also, I was bored a few days ago and figured out where much of the important info for the characters is at in the ROSTER.DAT file. I wanted to figure it out since I hadn't seen any character editors on any of the sites I'd been to. I never did find where the character's image or skill levels were stored...though I did find where the mana totals and spells were stored along with race, current class, sex, ability scores, hit points, experience, and the bit mapping for all the traits. I found two undocumented and probably unimplemented traits: Blood Realm and Faery Wings. It took me about an hour of entering and exiting the game to figure out where they all were...yes, I was VERY bored.

A word of warning. Maxing out your gold this way may cause the game to crash if you add even one gold to it. At best, it'll probably cause the number to become negative...at worst, it could crash the game. I didn't bother to see what happens though. I highly recommend using FF FF 3F FF instead. It'll give you 1,073,741,823 gold which should still be plenty. And, as always, back up the ROSTER.DAT file before you start any kind of editing just incase.

Happy Gaming!

BellTower

[Wyvern]

There's an easier way which doesn't require hex editing at all. The famous gold cheat!
Ironworks has a copy of it in their site and I think slip has a copy of it over on his (follow the link in my signature if you want to check it out).

For those players who like to hex edit it is very nice to have the details so clearly explained.

For some of the info you were unable to locate in your hexedit adventure - try looking in the save game files!

Wyv

Yeah, I'm aware of the gold cheat thats posted on Ironworks and a couple other sites. The reason I posted this was in response to someone's message about spending 90,000,000 gold enchanting all their items. To get that much gold through the gold cheat would require 450,000 characters to be added, gold transferred, and deleted. That is just too much for me even when I'm bored. And making that much money buying and selling arrows in the Samurai guild in Ishad N'ha would be just as painful. The easier (and less clicking), the better I say.

BellTower

[Wyvern]

Nope - that's still the hard way! and it's much easier than that!

You don't have to create or delete any characters! Just give all the gold to the last character and save the game outside the gates. Enter the town, go to the inn, pool gold to character #1, remove the last, add the last, pool gold to #1. Do that a few more times and then pool the gold back to the last character. Go back outside the town and save again. Enter town and repeat. Takes a very short time to have mega bucks.

Wyv

Oh...I didn't realize thats how it worked. I must've completely misunderstood what the cheat pages were saying then...wouldn't be the first time, won't be the last I'm sure. At least it gave me something to keep me busy.

BellTower

[Wyvern]

Grin - sometimes it is more satisfying to figure out how to do it in the hexed! I generally dig out that editor for my son and quite often the one thing I don't figure out how to distort beyond all reasonable levels is the gold - so I found your post interesting and educational! Time well spent, I think!

Wyv

If you did a full install the roleicons and character portraits are on you're hard disc.The portraits are the easiest to edit but they're so nice that it's hardly worth the hastle.

There is another way to make money. I have a thief with the merchant skill. He buys skull daggers in Brimloch thief guild for 680 and sells the dagger in the wizards guild for 1030.
That's not bad I think (if you are not hacking the save game of course).

FF FF 7F FF and FF FF 3F FF Just return me to the money amount I had? I check back at the file, and it has reverted back to what it was after I saved it with the new values. I put the values in the right spot, and saved the file, closed it, opened it, they are still there "FF FF 3F FF" but when I play the game, its reverts back. Why?

Wyvern - thanks!

Adam: Morik, why are your pants fallen at your feet?
Morik: Well, I put 92,000,000 pieces of gold in my pockets and WHOOSH! came down my pants!
Erin: we need a purse or something....
Gambyt: Don't look at me! those little purses I found are meant for lockpicks!
TAOQ: how about put it in the bank?
Adam & Morik: NO!
Erin: last time they tried that, the bank charged them interest/services and they docked our gold..
TAOQ: what a ridiculous idea... it'll never catch on in the near future....