Finding vaults for the Erlking in Tides of Avarice [SAVE EDITING]

[Warlider]

After searching for help on the godforsaken Avarice vaults i couldn't see any concrete solution other than to just carpet bomb sectors with advanced satellites so i shall drop my own solution.

This solution temporarily changes ownership of the vaults to the player so we can easily locate them on the map.

You use this at your own risk. I am not well experienced with editing save files for X4. Method worked for me and so far game works fine.

So first things first you will need Notepad++.
https://notepad-plus-plus.org/downloads/
Its so we can edit the massive save file for the X4.

Now lets drop a save in game. You have to make sure save compression is off. Its under game settings. Then we will navigate to "F:\Documents\Egosoft\X4\96781723\save" Or wherever you keep your documents. Copy the save file you want to edit into a safe separate folder as a backup. It should be the newest file in there.

Now after a backup is made open your save file with Notepad++ and press "ctrl+f" to bring up the search window. Now we input into "Find what:" "landmarks_erlking_vault" which are all 5 erlking vaults we need to find.

One of the lines we look for looks as following:

 <component class="object" macro="landmarks_erlking_vault_05_macro" connection="space" code="UWU-257" id="[0x22231]"> 

What we do is we add a line

 owner="player" 

to the line so game thinks we own the vault and shows it on the map.

An edited line will look as following:

 <component class="object" macro="landmarks_erlking_vault_05_macro" connection="space" owner="player" code="UWU-257" id="[0x22231]">  

Inside that line could also be

 owner="ownerless" 

in which case we simply swap "ownerless" for "player".

We repeat the process for all 5 vaults adding the owner line. After all 5 have been assigned ownership we save the file and open the game, load the edited save and just type "Data Vault" into the search bar and Viola all 5 vaults should pop up.

Grab a fighter drop some nav beacons next to the vaults and then reverse the process. Swapping all "player"'s to "ownerless"'s next to the erlking vaults lines should do the trick.

(Thanks to Pandorian for this)
Alternatively you can just remember or screenshot the vaults position and load the backup save. This avoids the save receiving the "MODIFIED" marker.

After god knows how many hours of searching and then finally finding the last vault 430km's from the centreish station i was just done with searching. I hope this saves some of your nerves.

Enjoy the King.

[Pandorian]

I'd suggest just noting where the data vaults are and then just loading up your original save if you don't want the modified tag.

Handy tip though. Thank you!

[D55]

You can find them all in under 20 minutes

Originally posted by Warlider®:

After searching for help on the godforsaken Avarice vaults i couldn't see any concrete solution other than to just carpet bomb sectors with advanced satellites so i shall drop my own solution.

There is a legit way to find them all in around ten minutes without using satellites.
This will definitely help people though, even i love the easy route every now and then

[eMYNOCK]

this is a neat guide... i highly recomment to incorporate Pandorians advice though.

having just a peak in a backup to note down some locations is totally okayish.

remember, any and all manually modified Saves, even if they do not contain any Mod related Data, will be excluded from any form of Support.

[Warlider]

Yeah i will incorporate whatever advice i see into the original guide i just want to wait for a few hours and compile it all instead of editing it every 20 minutes or so.

As to what DS5 said by god did i try to do it "legit". Scout ships, tons of them, staring at the map for a vault to pop up. Only to find after editing the save that the vault dropped in a weird spot i couldnt spot on the map.

Its a shame you dont get a log entry saying a ship stumbled upon a Vault or that they get marked on the map outside of your visual range... Or yknow just make them ping on the long range scanner like a normal vault.

[Rogue]

OP you sir are a GODSEND!


Update: Worked a treat in 2025 thank you again!