Posted July 02, 2023
Hello there. I had a bit of fun doing some memory hacking, boosting stats up.
Anyways, findings. Dark Alliance stores the stats 3 times one after the other, all as 32bit values (though it seems only the lowest byte is used, though the upper ones can display large numbers in your status have no effect). From what i gather the first is the original starting stats (can affect mana and store prices), the unmodified stats (after boosting every 4th level), and lastly the working stats (which is calculated after equipment is taken into account).
Anyways, if you were to edit memory, you'd modify the second set (and first set too if you wanted the mana boost). If you modify the 3rd set, you'll see it in the status update, but the moment you do anything (go downstairs, kill a rat, sell an item) it resets to new calculated stats.
Curiously, wisdom has a major bug. After close to +60% boosted XP, if you go much higher, the game will crash. Reason? Not sure, though the debugger says it's a divide by zero event, so how its calculating experience is borked. So far Wisdom of 30 is safe as i can tell. This is too bad as i'd have wanted to boost wisdom to give like 5x experience gains and just play normally otherwise.
Then there's charisma. Every point in charisma above 10 gives you a 5% improvement in purchasing/selling power. At 30 you can buy anything for 0 and sell at full value. Go higher and you get paid to purchase items :P broken indeed.
You can give yourself experience, but the trigger to level up won't happen til the next kill. As the max level is 40ish well you'll probably get all your skills and perks if you go high enough,
Anyways that's some quick overview of my experience with the game and hacking it.
Anyways, findings. Dark Alliance stores the stats 3 times one after the other, all as 32bit values (though it seems only the lowest byte is used, though the upper ones can display large numbers in your status have no effect). From what i gather the first is the original starting stats (can affect mana and store prices), the unmodified stats (after boosting every 4th level), and lastly the working stats (which is calculated after equipment is taken into account).
Anyways, if you were to edit memory, you'd modify the second set (and first set too if you wanted the mana boost). If you modify the 3rd set, you'll see it in the status update, but the moment you do anything (go downstairs, kill a rat, sell an item) it resets to new calculated stats.
Curiously, wisdom has a major bug. After close to +60% boosted XP, if you go much higher, the game will crash. Reason? Not sure, though the debugger says it's a divide by zero event, so how its calculating experience is borked. So far Wisdom of 30 is safe as i can tell. This is too bad as i'd have wanted to boost wisdom to give like 5x experience gains and just play normally otherwise.
Then there's charisma. Every point in charisma above 10 gives you a 5% improvement in purchasing/selling power. At 30 you can buy anything for 0 and sell at full value. Go higher and you get paid to purchase items :P broken indeed.
You can give yourself experience, but the trigger to level up won't happen til the next kill. As the max level is 40ish well you'll probably get all your skills and perks if you go high enough,
Anyways that's some quick overview of my experience with the game and hacking it.
Post edited July 02, 2023 by rtcvb32