Quick and easy cheat for all the gold you want

[chris_oates]

Obviously this is cheating. Use at your own moral discretion.
* Write down your party'scurrent gold amount
* Have a hex editor handy. I used HxD, which is free.
* Find your save file. It is named Autosave.dat I found mine in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\12747815\843260\remote\saves
* Make a copy of your save file! THis is in case you mess up. Note: HxD makes an automatic copy when you save, named Autosave.dat.bak
* in HxD, select "find", select the "integer number" tab, and type in your party's gold amount.
* Mine was found at offset 0xabf. My gold amount was 2058, which is 0a080000 in little-endian hex.
* This should be in between two entries that read in plaintext "BardsTale.Facing" with a bunch of non-ASCII characters in between.
* start changing those values! I suggest FFFFFF00, which is over 16 million gold. I am not sure if the game would support a full 32-bits of gold (not to mention what would happen if you accidentally entered a negative number) -- so keep it somewhat reasonable :)

That should be more than enough gold to keep your characters healed up between dungeon runs, stocked up on spell points at Roscoe's, and Learning your spells as soon as you level up.

If you ever run low, just repeat this process.

[JPMcMillen]

Gold is only an issue in the beginning. Once you start hitting the catacombs you will make tens of thousands in a run. As this is usually when casters start their 2nd class, you will be leveling up multiple times after each run and will be able to afford multiple levels of spell training easily. As for healing, there is a 7th level conjuring spell that heals all party damage (+poison & insanity). And a 6th level wizard spell that restores life. So in a worst case scenario, you have an extra character drag the party to the temple, rez the wizard, have the wizard rez everyone else, then mass heal them all. As for drain/stone/old, you won't run into these until much later on and gold won't be that big a deal by then. Also, Roscoe's becomes only a minor expense around the time you hit the catacombs as well.

[chris_oates]

True enough. But it is still brutal in the beginning levels. My current party was at level 9 and went for 1 fight too many in the sewers, and ended up with 3 dead, and 11,000 in healing costs, which wiped me out with no $$ for Rosces.

I got as far as Mangar's tower back in the 80s, so I know how the curve evens out later on. I'm also a kickstarter backer for BTIV, and my backer quote is "Can I still use the cheat from the Atari ST version to get infinite gold?" -- I have a long history of this kind of cheat, and a reputation to uphold. :D

[chris_oates]

It's also possible to use a hex editor to change the number of charges/uses of magical items. Search or the item's name, and one byte past the end of the name should be the number of charges. I now have a fire horn, mithral arrows and ag's arrows with millions of uses. One odd thing is that the item's name only appears to be listed once in the character section (it may be listed more than once if you have sold it to the store) -- but I cannot find where the same item held by another character is, and where the number of charges would be for that. Oh well.

[Guderian]

maybe I miss what are the values that I need changing but every time I end up with a non playable save game (it loads up but the frame is white and nothing works) duh

[chris_oates]

Using hex editors can be tricky if you aren't used to them. If you are using HxD, make sure you are typing "ffffff" in the hex columns and not the "decoded text" columns.

Also, if you are searching for your gold value, make sure that you do the search several times, just to ensure that there is only one spot in the file with that particular value. You also want to make sure that you are only overwriting values in the file, and not adding or subtracting from the length. Again, it can be tricky. I'm a programmer by profession, so I'm used to this sort of thing. Good Luck, and feel free to ask questions if there is any step that is not 100% clear to you. Because of my background, I am likely to assume that some things are obvious when they aren't to non-programmers.

[chris_oates]

Also: If you have sold an item to the shop with charges, the trick I mention above doesn't work to edit the number of charges for the item you posess. I've figured out how to do it, but it's kind of involved: Apologies if this isn't 100% clear. As always, back up your save game before editing!

To edit the number of charges of an equipped item if you have sold the same item to the store:

* Find the item name as before. But, this time you may notice that there are a lot of item names in the area, including standard items like leather armor, etc. and also a string saying "BardsTale.SaveableShopItem" before the first item, which in my save game is "Torch"
* For example, search for "Ag's Arrows" -- In my save game file, the first 'A' of the name is at offset 2B28
* subtract 5 from that number. (Use calculator in "programmer mode" if you can't do hex math. For my file, that's 2B23.
* In HxD, press "ctrl+g" for Goto. Type the number you got above (2B23) into the "offset" -- make sure it's in hex, and the offset is from the beginning of the file.
* Yes, this is just moving 5 bytes backwards in the file. Use arrow keys or another method if you are more comfortable with the hex editor.
* Once you get tot he right spot, in the "Data Inspector" panel to the right, in the "Int32" field, you should see a relatively normal number. For me it was 314. This is the "Item Identifier" number for that item. I don't know if this number is the same for everybody's save file or not.
* if it's a really large number, or a negative number, you aren't in the right spot. SOrry, I'm not sure how to help you. Try again. :)
* here's where it gets a bit tricky. You need to search in your save file for that item identifier number. It is going to show up several times, and you will need to be able to tell if it's the right spot or not.
* press ctrl+f to search, mark "forward" and in the "ininteger number tab" and with "32 bit double word" selected for the "bitwidth" field, search for that number (314 in my case for Ag's Arrows)
* for me, the next place it was found is the right one. In the "Decoded Text" area, nearby are the names of unique items I have, such as "Ybarrashield" and "Crystal Sword" as well as a lot of "BardsTale.StatusEffect" -- that is a good sign you are in the right spot. The 4 bytes making up the item identifier nyumber will be highlighted in HxD, for 314 it's "3A 01 00 00" -- the next byte for me is "01" -- I believe that is a tag for whether the item is equipped or not. It is probably "00" if not equipped. Then, the next 4 bytes are the charges. Verify by putting the cursor at the first byte of this, and checking the Data inspector to see if the number there matches the number of charges you have.
* Then, as above, type "ff ff ff" in the hex side (not the "Decoded text" side!) to give yourself 16,777,215 charges!

Maybe I should make a YouTube tutorial video. It might take less time than trying to explain it all in text like this... :D

I probably won't post any more hacks. I don't intend to edit my character's data any further than I already have. I just hated not having enough money in the early game, and running out of charges of great items like the Fire Horn.

[Guderian]

Thanks a lot mate. Very useful. Will keep you posted about my progress with the editor.

Back in the days, my father helped me using the hex editor on the Amiga version of the game.
But many years have passed now and I totally forgot how we managed tu build a great party!

[SaschaGoto]

I agree that gold becomes meaningless during/after the catacombs.

I actually enjoyed the fact that I couldn't immediately heal everyone in the beginning, or even buy the next spell level for my casters.

[MacRaeBRB]

Thanks for this. I needed to use this after finding that all of the gold I put in the bank through BT1 and BT2 didn't transfer to BT3. Wasn't an issue until I needed to buy Gotterdammerung 2/3 of the way through BT3 and I didn't want to start BT3 over.

[Aliquid A]

That brings back memories of being 13 in the 1980s and having a cracked version of BG1 on my Apple IIc... and I had a hex editor. No idea what hexadecimal was, someone just told me that I could see the "code" for a game by using it, so I explored and experimented. Got lots of gold as well as weird glitches as a result.