Adjusting game difficulty by editing game files

This game is too hard, right? Learn how to make it easier by doing a few simple edits to a couple of files!

Intro

Space Hack is a decent game, but it's got a very steep difficulty curve in the early game, and this can be a big turn-off to new players. This guide will show you how to make the game easier (or harder!) in just a few simple steps.

Step One: Find your game files

First, we need to find the files we're going to edit. To do this, right-click the game in your Steam library, then click properties, then local files. Then click the "browse local files" button. This will open up the game's directory.

Step Two: Back it up!

Before we make any changes, we're going to back up a few files, just in case something goes wrong. From the main Space Hack game folder, make a copy of the "save" folder somewhere else on your computer. If you haven't yet started the game, you probably won't have any save files, so this step isn't necessary.

Next, we'll back up the actual files we'll be editing. Navigate to the "data" folder, and then to the "config" folder. In here are two text files, openable in notepad, named "config" and "itemsDef". Make a copy of these files and save them somewhere else.

Step Three: Editing the files

First, let's open up the "config" file. For the purposes of this guide, we're only concerned with the first three paragraphs, which should look like this:

(enemyCharIncr 0 1.2) # mno¿nik zwiêkszaj¹cy w³aœciwoœci potworów na kolejnych lokacjach
(energyDamIncr 0.8) # mno¿nik dodatkowo zwiêkszaj¹cy damage (i fightSkill) potworów energetycznych na kolejnych lokacjach
(maxResist 80)

(expLevel1 2500) # iloœæ punktów doœwiadczenia potrzebnych do przejœcia na drógi poziom
(qExp 1.25) # mno¿nik zwiêkszaj¹cy iloœæ punktów doœw. potrzebnych do przejœcia na kolejne poziomy

(pointsOnNewLevel 5)
(pointsOnLevel1 15 15 15 20) # si³a, zrêcznoœæ, wiedza, wytrzyma³oœæ

Ignore the foreign language, the stuff we need is thankfully in plain English. All we have to do to make the game easier is change a few of the numbers in this file. When changing the numbers, be sure and leave all spacing intact!

Now, let's break down what all this stuff means, and how you can fix it to your advantage.

Step Four: Making enemies weaker

Let's look at the first paragraph of the "config" file now.

The first line, "(enemyCharIncr 0 1.2)" refers to how much the regular melee enemies scale to the player character's level. Reducing the number to "0 1.1" should make the enemies about 10% easier, but you can put whatever number you want - keep in mind, though, that I'm not sure it's possible to eliminate enemy scaling altogether. Don't change the first 0 - leave it there, and only change the second number.

The second line, "(energyDamIncr 0.8)", refers to how much the energy-shooting enemies scale to the player character's level. Reducing the number to 0.6 should reduce the amount of damage you take from these enemies.

The third line, (maxResist), is super-important. Energy-based enemies have a very high resistance to energy weapons, which makes it difficult to play characters that are based solely on energy weapon usage. The default number here is 80 - which means that the maximum amount of damage that enemies can resist is 80%! That's way too high. Lowering it to 40 or 30 should be sufficient.

Step Five: Making you stronger

Let's move on to paragraph two, about experience and leveling.

Line one, "(expLevel1)", refers to how much experience points Hack needs to get before he levels up from level 1 to level 2. The default is 2500. For a quicker, easier early-game progression, I recommend changing this to 1000. (IMPORTANT NOTE: I don't know how changing these numbers affects characters that have already been created. I'll test this out.)

Line two, "(qExp)", refers to how many more experience points Hack needs to get to achieve higher levels. It's expressed as a percentage of the base experience. For example, if Hack needs 1000 exp to get to level 2, and the number here is 1.1, then he needs to get a total of 2100 exp to get to level 3 - 110% of the previously-gained amount. The default is 1.125, which I think is rather high. I recommend changing it to 1.100 (I've kept the same amount of digits as the default, just in case). (IMPORTANT NOTE: I don't know how changing these numbers affects characters that have already been created. I'll test this out.)

Paragraph three is about skill points.

Line one, "(pointsOnNewLevel)" is how many ability points Hack is granted when he levels up. The default is 5. If you want more points to play with, change it to whatever number you want. If you don't want to be too overpowered, you could leave this number alone and just adjust how frequently you level up, or you could leave the exp alone and just give yourself more points. Adjust the numbers according to how steep you want your character progression to be. Note - I recommend keeping the amount of digits in most numbers the same, but I did test changing the 5 in this line to a 10, and it seemed to work perfectly fine.

Line two, "(pointsOnLevel1)", is how many ability points Hack has at the start of the game. If you're having difficulty even killing enough enemies to level up even once, you could change these numbers to start with better stats. Be sure and keep the spacing intact! (IMPORTANT NOTE: I don't know how changing these numbers affects characters that have already been created.)

PLEASE NOTE, according to Gemini Warlord, the enemies will scale to your character stats - if you try and put too many points into things, the enemies may become too difficult.

That's all we're going to do in this file. Be sure and SAVE all these changes!

Bonus: The rest of the "config" file is pretty useless, but if you like, you can change your keyboard shortcuts by scrolling to the bottom and fiddling with that bit. You could also theoretically get the game to play different music by giving it a different path for "(mainTheme)".

Step Six: Adjusting shops

Now let's look at the "itemsDef" file. I'm still in the process of playing around with this info, and haven't figured out everything yet, but we can make a couple of quick changes in here right now.

First, find the "(identifyPrice)" line, right below all those price modifier lines. It's defaulted at 100, which means it costs 100 credits to identify an item. Feel free to change that number to 10 or whatever, to save you some money.

Now, hit ctrl + F and type in "medkit" without the quotations. Find the price for it, notice it's at 100, decide that you want a discount, and change it to 30 or 50 or whatever. Yay, bartering!

This section will have more added to it as I experiment with other stuff. For now, you can save this file, we're all done.

Step Seven: Enjoy!

Having adjusted the numbers in the "config" and "itemsDef" file to your liking, and making sure your changes were saved, you're done! Go ahead and launch the game, create a new character or load your existing one, and marvel at how much more fair the game is now.

Information you don't care about (legal stuff)

This guide was written 100% by me, KelpTheGreat, exclusively for Steam. You are NOT permitted to post it to any other website.

Information in this guide was obtained through personal experience and testing. Special thanks to Geek - Gemini Warlord for answering a couple of questions and contributing information about the first couple of lines in the config file.

Please rate up and leave a comment if you liked the guide and/or it helped you. If something didn't work, please don't just thumbs down - post a comment and I'll see if I can help you out.

[Rozenek]

I have experimented with some leveling modificator and i know that if you level fast, mobs will to (At least the ones in locations you haven't been in yet) So i would be carefull when messing with that.

[Zoe Muller]

right. be careful if you stumble upon some polish words. google translate is your friend

[Mysterious]

hmmm what about making it hardcore mode? It can make game harder instead of easier with other numbers right?

[Dragon Leftovers]

It could be the maxResist affects the mobs and player both. Good guide though.

[KelpTheGreat]

A lot of the stuff I was basically guessing on - I assumed it was intuitively obvious from the wording. I did some testing, but not a lot.

I'm really curious about how this MaxResist thing actually works now. This bears further study.

[Dragon Leftovers]

A note on qExp, I'm level 27 and changing the value to 1.100 immediately bumped me up to level 32, but sadly with no available attribute points to spend. So, as you advised, change it at the start of the game only is the way to go.

[Dragon Leftovers]

Well, I had equipment that gave me 39,51,39 to my resistances. Then when I changed the value in config from 80 to 30, it showed 'max' on all my resistances.

[KelpTheGreat]

@Dragon Leftovers

Really? Well, that's counter-intuitive. So if the default number is 80, and changing it to 30 maxed out your resistances... I don't get it. <_>

[Dragon Leftovers]

The MaxResist lowers your own resistances. When I entered the value of 30, mine became maxed out.

[Zoe Muller]

(enemyCharIncr 0 1.2) # mno¿nik zwiêkszaj¹cy w³aœciwoœci potworów na kolejnych lokacjach=A multiplier that increases the monster's abilities in subsequent locations

(energyDamIncr 0.8) # mno¿nik dodatkowo zwiêkszaj¹cy damage (i fightSkill) potworów energetycznych na kolejnych lokacjach=Additionally, the multiplier increases damage (and fightSkill) of monsters in subsequent locations

(expLevel1 2500) # iloœæ punktów doœwiadczenia potrzebnych do przejœcia na drógi poziom=The amount of experience points needed to move to the second level

(qExp 1.25) # mno¿nik zwiêkszaj¹cy iloœæ punktów doœw. potrzebnych do przejœcia na kolejne poziomy=multiplier increases the number of points. needed to move on to the next level

(pointsOnLevel1 15 15 15 20) # si³a, zrêcznoœæ, wiedza, wytrzyma³oœæ=strength, dexterity, knowledge, endurance

the google translate is nice. it translate ? or other strange letters (there are not polish letters) to their correct english words