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Tips, Exploits and Cheats

Tips

Getting more bang for your buck in a combat round:

Piecemeal armor: Avoid armor that takes up multiple body spots, in favor of single-location items, to take advantage of more magical enhancements. You would think that a sleeve mail coat (defense 25) is better than mail sleeves (5), a mail shirt (10) and mail leggings (5) (total 20). But a sleeve mail coat++ (defense 45) can't compare to combination of mail sleeves++ (25), a mail shirt++ (30) and mail leggings++ (25) (total 80). (Down sides: You may not find all of those ++ items, and your inventory may get crowded with piecemeal armor. Up sides: There are other improvements available to piecemeal armor; most characters can wear gauntlets instead of mail sleeves, and a thief can wear the Cloak of Thieves instead of a mail shirt.)

Exploits

Save/reload exploits: You do this in every game, right? Save the game before training, to avoid getting jilted on skill points or hits, or to make sure you get that new spell list. Boxes and chests yield random loot, some of it very good in the tougher dungeons, so save the game and try opening them several times.

Deadly Strike is a battle-winner. It's not just that your thief can drop an enemy in one hit; it's that their turn then resumes as if they had made no attacks at all! As long as you have movement remaining, you can walk from one enemy to another, and swat them like flies. Once you use up your movement, you can still make a bow attack. If you can get the thief's movement high enough (with a Ring of Speed, a Thieves Ring, a Belt of Speed, a Cloak of Thieves, and/or a Swift Killer), they can mop up an entire battlefield before anyone else bats an eyelid. (Note that some monsters (like giants) are less susceptible to Deadly Strike, so your other characters won't be useless.) I hit "P" after a Deadly Strike to avoid taking unfair advantage of this glitch.

Items that can be used (by pressing "i") do not have to be equipped. This even goes for weapons! You could give that awesome Staff of Minds (which can only be equipped by a Mentalist) to your Fighter (or whomever), who can use its special power to cast Mass Domination, without ever putting down their Grey Sword. Sneaky!

If you start a new game in a particular save slot, but quit during character creation, the party that was in that save slot beforehand will be introduced into the new game, the next time you load that slot.

The Power Ring and the Ring of Power give a character ten extra bow shots. This is almost certainly an oversight, as it allows a decent low-level archer to effortlessly rip through mid-level opponents. These rings aren't rare: They can be bought at a few shops.

You can run right past all of the monsters in a dungeon. Hit "R" to run away from every fight, and go straight for the nice loot, the quest item, or the boss battle. (The monsters will still be there when you pass that way next.)

There is a glitch in how the game handles character swapping, that you can use to duplicate items and money. Exactly how to do this is explained in an Open Office document sent to me by volti-115.

Cheats

Editor

First off, there's the character editor. Sure, editors can be used to make games absurdly easy, but they can also be used to make slight adjustments, to change things about the characters that you aren't quite happy with. You can save inventory space by ditching armor and editing characters' defense to reflect the armor they had. Or adjust a hireling to have the skill levels that you would have given them, had you created them. Or pretend that you have enough skill points when training to check every slot.

File Swapping

Saved games are broken up into several files, which you can use to your advantage simply by moving them around. Party.dat holds your party statistics and equipment. So try this: Go into a dungeon. Save the game in slot 1. Drop a really nice piece of equipment. Save the game in slot 2. Copy the party.dat file from the SAVE1 subdirectory to the SAVE2 subdirectory. Now load the game from the second slot. Your party (with the nice item) can now pick up that same item from the dungeon floor. Now you have two of them! Try this with both, and you'll have four! I advise saving also to the third or fourth slot beforehand as a backup, just in case you screw something up.

If you're feeling really munchkinish, you could win the game, save, start a new game in a different slot, then copy your game-winning party into the new game. (Now you'll have a use for that stupid Champion Sword! Seriously, what were you supposed to do with it after winning the game?) The map.rsc file records which parts of the dungeon maps are exposed and which are still black, so if you copy that over as well, you'll be able to see where you're going. (Theoretically, that is. I haven't tried it yet this way.)

The file stores.dat holds the current store inventories. So if you really wish some store had a larger supply of rings of speed, or elven longbows, you could copy the stores.dat file from a new game in a different slot, and buy the "restocked" items.

The file T1.rsc holds the current state of the dungeons. You could move either that or party.dat to do things like repeat a dungeon crawl, or multi-loot a box or chest.

Hex Editing

Many aspects of the save files have not made it into my character editor, but you can play with them yourself. Just make sure to save a backup in case you break the save files.

Savegame.dat stores the party's current X and Y coordinates on the map at offsets 58 and 60, respectively. Fiddle with those to move your party around.

Item records (found in your characters' inventories and in item.dat) are 78 bytes long. Bytes are signed (except perhaps for use results).

Item Offsets and Values
0-1Index 2-7Cost (float) 8# of uses 9Name length
10-25Name (unidentified) 26Name length 27-42Name (identified) 43"Use Item" result
44"Use Item" 2nd result 45Movement 46Extra shots 47Defense
48Spell Points 49Pick Locks 50Disarm Traps 51Deadly Strike
52Trading 53Read Runes 54Unarmed Combat 55Handheld Arms
56Bows 57Item Identification 58Hits 59Extra swings
60Maximum damage 61Minimum damage 62Difficulty to use1 63Race restriction2
64Body slot3 65Class restriction4 66Mythic Lore 67Woods Lore
68Mountaineering 69Detect Traps 70Perception 71Cursed (1=cursed)
72Equipable (1=yes) 73Fire resistance 74Cold resistance 75Water resistance
76Mind resistance5 77Shock resistance5  

  1. Difficulty to use: Mage: 2 or less. Ashikari, Bard, Thief: 6 or less. Ranger, Rogue: 8 or less. Fighter, Paladin, Cleric: 10 or less.
  2. Race restriction: 0=none, 1=Human, 2=Elf, 3=Half Elf, 4=Dwarf, 5=Hobbit. (Half-elves can also use items meant for Humans and Elves.)
  3. Body slot: 1=1-hand weapon, 2=2-hand weapon, 3=bow, 4=shield, 5=head, 6=boots, 7=arms, 8=belt, 9=torso, 10=legs, 11=torso and legs, 12=torso and arms, 13=torso, arms and legs, 14=coif.
  4. Class restriction: 0=none, 1=Fighter, 2=Rogue, 3=Thief, 4=Ranger, 5=Bard, 6=Cleric, 7=Elementalist, 8=Sorcerer, 9=Mentalist, 10=Conjuror, 11=Paladin, 12=Ashikari.
  5. I refer to "Mind Resistance" and "Shock Resistance" based on the few items that invoke them specifically. They might be better termed "Mind/Body Resistance" and "Air Resistance".

Party.dat contains up to six character records, each 1886 bytes long. Bytes and integers are signed. Note that character statistics herein include bonuses granted by equipment and ability scores.

Character Offsets and Values
0Name length 1-15Name 16Race length 17-32Race
33Class length 34-47Class 48-49Active Status1 50-51Level
52-71??? 72-73Weapon swings 74-75Bow shots 76-79???
80-81Movement 82Inventory size 83??? 84-89Experience (float)
90-95Gold (float) 96-97??? 98-99Pick Locks 100-101Disarm Traps
102-103Deadly Strike 104-105Trading 106-107Read Runes 108-109Unarmed Combat
110-111Handheld Weapons 112-113Bows 114-115Identify Item 116-117Defense
118-119Hits max 120-121Hits left 122-123Spell Points max 124-125Spell Points left
126Strength 127Agility 128Constitution 129Intelligence
130Wisdom 131Presence 132Memory 133Reason
134-153??? 154-169Stat Bonuses2 170-185Final Bonuses3 186-221???
222-1781Inventory 1782-1801Equipped items4 1802-1821Identified items5 1822-1823Fire Resistance
1824-1825Cold Resistance 1826-1827Water Resistance 1828-1829Mind Resistance 1830-1831Shock Resistance
1832-1833Detect Traps 1834-1835Perception 1836-1837Mythic Lore 1838-1839Spell List
1840-1841Woods Lore 1842-1843Mountaineering 1844Portrait 1845-1857???
1858-1871Spell lists known 1872-1885???      

  1. Active Status: Value 21 indicates that this character slot is not being used.
  2. Stat Bonuses: The bonus granted by each ability score to relevant skills, in the same order (from Strength to Reason) as above.
  3. Final Bonuses: Stat bonus plus racial bonus, again in the same order.
  4. Equipped items: For each item in inventory, in order, 0 means not equipped, 1 means equipped.
  5. Identified items: For each item in inventory, in order, 0 means unidentified, 1 means identified.

Lobosolitario offers the following information (which I have not checked, but I trust him) regarding the contents of the stores.dat file. "The first part of the file is split up into entries 2541 bytes long, each covering one store in the game. These entries contain the following information:"

Store Contents Offsets and Values
0Store name length 1-40Store name 41Item 1 name length 42-83Item 1 name 1
84-2090Item 2-50 names (same format as item 1) 2091-2096Item 1 price 2097-2390Item 2-50 prices
2391-2392Item 1 ID2 2393-2490Item 2-50 IDs 2491Item 1 quantity in stock 2492-2540Item 2-50 quantities

  1. The item name does not need to match the item's "real name" in the item ID file.
  2. This is the item's index in the item.dat file.

Lobosolitario suggests: "It would be possible to set up a 'Sneaky Pete's Bargain Magical Weapons Shop' where the item name states 'Broadsword ++' and the price is slightly higher than a normal broadsword, but the item ID is that of a normal broadsword. It would also be possible to set up a scenario where trading between towns was possible by setting different prices in different locations."

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