Save Editing Guide

[Qyubey]

For those of you that want to edit your save files for any reason in particular, cheating or otherwise, the process of doing it is actually very simple and easy to accomplish. All of your saves are stored in Appdata-

"C:\Users\ [NAME] \AppData\Roaming\StardewValley\Saves"

Inside that folder, you'll find a folder for each of your save files. Make sure to create a backup of anything you edit so you can always fall back on your original stuff. Saves are encoded on two files, one with the name of your char and another with name 'SaveGameInfo'. Anything you change inside the files NEEDS to be changed on both of these files otherwise your game will crash when you load it.

---== Character Editing ==---

Now then, to the fun stuff. I'll be taking this in rough segments for what you can edit. Both files contain this portion of the data, but it's easier to edit in SaveGameInfo, so edit in there first.


The first section encodes very simple character data, including your name, appearance, gender, and a few other strings. A lot of these are untested so beware what you play with.


The next part appears to be Quest data. I'd recommend not changing their names or IDs, because that might disable any flags and make them uncompletable. One thing that is VERY useful is that you can edit the <daysLeft> tag to give yourself more time to complete a quest. Setting it at 0 makes the time limit infinite, I believe. So, now you shouldn't run out of time on a quest just because the villager decided to stay in their room on that day.

Or, if you just want to giggle, you can edit all of the quest descriptions. Simple and silly.

There also appears to be a flag for the Daily Quest, so if you want to turn that on or off, you can. You can also edit the reward money itself. After that appears to be professions, experience points, etc.


You can also edit your entire inventory, including what is in each slot and their upgrade status. Haven't quite experimented with this, but it seems pretty straight-forward to accomplish.


Below that I believe is your crafting list. For example:

</int></value></item><item><key><string>Basic Fertilizer</string></key><value><int>20

Now the only things to edit here is the string, which relates to the game logic itself, and the integer, which I believe is how many times you have crafted an item total. You can bump up the grinding this way.


After that appears to be dialogue/quest triggers that you have acquired. This appears to be mostly a list, but judging from things like "canReadJunimoText" and "summer_3_1" that seems likely. Feasibly, if you removed some of these triggers you could repeat cutscenes. Whether you could possibly duplicate your cat/dog this way is currently unknown.


After this comes Clothes and equipment. It's the same as the inventory in terms of layout.


Following that appears to be Character Skills in terms of mining level, farming level, etc so you should be able to edit those quite easily (although I don't know how proficiencies are done. It might be under skill points). There's also a bunch of modifiers in this segment you can edit to cheat your own combat skills, and the integer for how much money you have on hand. So if you want to cheat your cash, it's here. Additionally there's a lot of integers for your house, barn, and building upgrades; most notably <daysUntilHouseUpgrade>.


The next part appears to encode shipping numbers and archeology scores. Not sure how to edit or add new ones just yet.


After this is probably the one most people want to quickly edit: Relationship scores.

<item><key><string>Lewis</string></key><value><ArrayOfInt><int>92</int><int>0</int><int>0</int><int>0</int><int>0</int><int>0</int></ArrayOfInt></value></item>

I'm not sure what the rest of the numbers encode (probably saved for flags on bachelor/ettes), but the first number appears to be a solid encode for the relationship score. Each heart appears to correspond to 250 points (so you need 2,500 for max hearts).


After that there are a few strings encoding for the date. This, I'm not quite sure how to edit properly yet, since there appears to be an integer for saveTime as well as the string.

---== World Editing ==--

This is encoded in the variably named folder (it's your character name_numbers). This file appears to encode all the information for your farm and there is a lotta stuff in here. It appears to encode for every single item on your farm; every rock and weed, so I'm not going to go through all of it.

To start with, the first part of the file is identical to your SaveGameInfo file, so you'll need to append any changes in here also onto the other file. After that, there is a deluge of text encoding your farmhouse, farm itself, any buildings you have, and any animals that are on your farm. I haven't progressed too far into ranching, so a lot of this is probably lacking for me right now.


For now, farm animals appear to be under the <value><FarmAnimal> tag, and appear to have similar encoding for how the player was at the very top. You can edit their name, speed, scale, feed rate, produce rate, price, age, meatIndex, fullness, happiness, happiness drain, whether they're ready for harvest, their reproduction status, their sound, their type, and what building they live in. Sadly, it seems that the actual graphics are encoded in the game file, so you can't swap the graphic of your chicken with your cow - but you could edit their type to create some nightmare animals using this. Cows laying eggs, what a world.

[Note that I've only unlocked chickens so far so I can't speculate on what flags other animals might have]

---===---

That's about all I can gleam from the save data so far. Happy hunting yourself regarding this stuff. Remember to backup any changes you make and edit both files to prevent crashing. Post anything you find interesting or funny with your edits.

[Hollywoodb1]

What did you use to edit them? Notepad freezes for me, and Wordpad freezes when I try to save :/

[dairy farmer]

I had a guide typed up on how to fix tools, but it looks like Ape has fixed it. Instead, I'll paste some relevant helpful stuff:


First you need something that can parse and format XML files. You can use what you want, but I use Notepad++.

Install it, then click Plugins up top, Plugin Manager, and install XML Tools. After installing/restarting Notepad++, find your Stardew save directory by pasting this into your Windows File Explorer (not Internet Explorer), or navigate to it manually:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\StardewValley\Saves\

Make sure the game is closed. Open the folder with your character's name, and you'll see a file with NAME_213411532, or something similar. That is your save file. Drag and drop it into Notepad++. Wait for it to load, then go to the Plugins menu again, XML Tools, then Pretty Print (XML line breaks). It'll take a while to process, but it should clean up so it's no longer a wall of text.

It should look something like this[i.imgur.com].

If you don't want to edit your save, you can still make backups of your saves in case you want to protect yourself against game-breaking bugs. Just highlight the folder, hit Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. It helps to add a note to the name of these folders so you know what point they were saved at.

To restore an old save, first delete the main save folder (NAME_1239471), then find the copy you want. Make a copy of the copy, then delete all the "Copy of Copy of..." etc affixes.


From there, you can use SpaceKing's general guide to help you find stuff you want to tinker with -- at your own risk!

If you hit Ctrl-F, you can search for things and keywords. If you search for "experiencepoints" the section right after is your inventory. You can use this section to duplicate or increase the stack of items if you wish. The current caveat is that if you want an item, you'll probably need the code "block" from another player since it's not entirely obvious how to "guess" the fields necessary.

Search for your pet's name, and you can change it from a dog to a cat. I did this, and so far I haven't seen any problems. Also be sure to search for "catperson" and change the true/false value as necessary. So far this has worked and I see no problems.

Search for "fishinglevel" and you'll find the area that represents your various skill levels. I used this to mod my fishing back to Lv4 because I accidentally hit ESC when the skill specialization came up, and I think I lost it. I also modified my <experiencepoints> for the skill to 1, but I haven't tested yet to see if this will actually allow me to choose my specialization again -- I'll report back once I find out.

I also haven't had a need to change both save files yet, and I wonder what the purpose of having two files is; I've only changed the file with my character's name.


I actually encourage ConcernedApe to leave the save file in plaintext! It's a great boon for modders, and I think it should stay that way. Keep in mind that tinkering with your save may screw up multiplayer when it comes out, and there's no way of knowing if it'll mess up your game in the future. Please be sure not to bother Ape with problems from save tinkering.

[Sirithre]

Ape has said he doesn't care if people edit their save files. If people want to 'cheat', that's up to them.
So the save file will likely stay in plaintext.

Personally, I wouldn't do it on a first playthrough, kinda takes the fun away from the game, but that's just me. If that's what you consider 'fun', then editing the game is fun and thus the game is fun for you. Everyone's different. :)

[dairy farmer]

The bigger boon is not cheating, but fixing bugs. I originally was going to make a guide to mod tools back in[i.imgur.com] after people lost them, but thankfully Ape was fairly quick in fixing that.

In my case, I got screwed out of choosing a fishing spec, so I'm trying to get it back instead of restarting my 20+ hour game. Also, doing this let me pick a cat instead of being stuck the whole game with a dog I didn't like.


Unfortunately, the next time I leveled up it brought me back to Lv2 instead of 5, so I suspect the experience point values are a cumulative value since I set my fishing experience to 1. What this means is that if you want to increase your skill level permanently, you have to set the experience points past a certain threshold so you don't "level down" like I did.

So far, it looks like the level-up thresholds are 400 for Lv2, and 800 for Lv3. One of my skills is at 1231 and I have not hit Lv4 yet, so it's not a linear progression. My old save file with Lv6 fishing (in which I missed my fishing spec) is at 3375 exp for fishing, so my initial guess for experience values is:

Updated guesses:
Lv2: 400
Lv3: 800
Lv4: 1300
Lv5: 2000?
Lv6: 2900?

Also, the order of the skills in <experiencepoints> doesn't seem to match the in-game list. I think the first three skills are Farming, Fishing, and Foraging, in that order. Not sure about combat and mining though.

e: Managed to get the level-up prompt for Lv5 fishing by setting experience to 1900. Ending value was 2157, so the actual level up value is somewhere between those.

[Mel]

Is it possible to change the date using this at all?
If you do find a way it'd be great!

[chaotix14]

I'm just gonna use the save editing to edit out the duplicate tools I have from before that hotfix. I mean I got them stored far from everything else, but it bothers me that they exist.

[martinkaca]

Take a cherry bomb to the chest

[wolfknight]

can you add items? I need a rabbit's foot bad but my rabbits will not spawn one

[Dreamowl]

This has been fixed. I tried to modify the amount of Hard Wood I had to test it out and it remains the same when I load up the game.

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by Firefly:

This has been fixed. I tried to modify the amount of Hard Wood I had to test it out and it remains the same when I load up the game.

I discovered how to do this on my own, tonight (I tend to look thru gamefiles out of curiosity and wondered if you could open the save files in notepad++, and yup) and it still worked for me. Are you sure you changed the same parameter in *both* files? It doesn't work if you just change one. Although, I also didn't actually test inventory number changes.

Anyway, I'm like Sirithe in that I like to play vanilla/legit for at least a first run, but while I was testing, it was hilarious to run around with a ridiculously massive size Energy bar. Energizer bunny! Then I copied my original saves back.

But later, I think I may get some pretty fun giggles from this.

[benji_v_5]

\AppData\Roaming\StardewValley\Saves i do not appear to have this file, my game crashed and when i search for it the search comes back with nothing :/ also lost my save data

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by benji_v_5:

\AppData\Roaming\StardewValley\Saves i do not appear to have this file, my game crashed and when i search for it the search comes back with nothing :/ also lost my save data

Do you have hidden files set as viewable? Because the folder AppData is hidden by default, in Windows I think.

[Redronn]

Originally posted by Firefly:

This has been fixed. I tried to modify the amount of Hard Wood I had to test it out and it remains the same when I load up the game.

You could use Cheat Engine for that.

[benji_v_5]

okay found my save data, still corrupted though, cant get my old data back, but i think this is more of a bug. thanks

[Israelmurias]

Originally posted by Redronn:

Originally posted by Firefly:

This has been fixed. I tried to modify the amount of Hard Wood I had to test it out and it remains the same when I load up the game.

You could use Cheat Engine for that.

editing item stacks through cheat engine causes the game to crash at the end of the day before saving, and i couldnt edit item stacks through save editing either