Some exploits

Apocalypse · Post by **Apocalypse** » 05 May, 2014 12:37

Hi everybody,

I've been playing for a while and I've started messing around to see what is possible outside normal grinding. Probably most of you know these by now, but still, thought I should share.

1. Unlimited (mostly) money:
a) To accomplish this make sure you've got maybe 50k, 100k gold to start with.
b) Then go to the game dir and find you character save file.
c) Make it read only.
d) Divide your money so that you have 1 Gold pile and the rest
e) Drop the rest to the trade stash
f) Exit and enter game again
g) Split the gold with 2 Gold pile and rest
h) repeat

2. Unlimited crafting:
a) Make sure you have at least 15 or 20 or all crafting materials (just salvage everything you get from the dungeons and you will in no time get all)
b) Then go to the game dir and find you character save file.
c) Make it read only.
d) Craft whatever you want with the recepies and materials you've got
e) Exit and enter game after each craft (if you don't have much materials)
f) If something crafted meets your requirements, drop it in the trade stash to preserve it

3. Non stop gambling
a) make sure you've got enough gold 5 milion+ (see point 1)
b) Then go to the game dir and find you character save file.
c) Make it read only.
d) Buy from gambling whatever you want
e) Anything you like, drop in trade stash
f) When gold runs out, exit and enter game again. Gold should again be there with you

Observations:
1 Item (gold as well) seems to have some sort of unique ID in the game and whenever it detects it twice, it deletes both copies. That is why, you can't duplicate one and the same item, it will just be deleted. You can though have the same items in ALL you characters, but you have to be careful, 1 item not to have a copy in the same game when you enter.
What this means is - if you want your armor from 1 character to another, just make this char read only, drop the armor in trade stash and take the armor from the stash with the other character. This way there will be no collision.
Also this is valid for money as well, that is why in point 1 you divide the gold, so that new unique ID is "created" and collision is not detected.

Interesting thing is that if 1 item is entered in the game of a particular character (be it a unique armor), then you salvage or sell this armor, then you again transfer the same armor to this character, the armor will get deleted. Somehow the game logs all the IDs of the items in the game, even if they are sold or salvaged or drops on the ground. So if transferring items, be careful.
Not sure about magic books though....haven't tried it, but pretty sure they will get deleted, as the item you "duplicate" will always have one and the same ID.

BrightLord · Post by **BrightLord** » 05 May, 2014 13:10

This can be done in any game that store save data on your local computer.

While it could still technically be made impossible with some addonational work. It is not worth to invest time to fight exploiters. Rather work on something that regular player will benefit from.

Apocalypse · Post by **Apocalypse** » 05 May, 2014 13:20

BrightLord, you are correct in way. People always find a way around certain rules, that's why I point them out.

One thing that pops in my mind in order to avoid most of the stuff is if the game makes only 1 file for all characters and trade stash. Dunno if it is possible, but this way it will eliminate the read only grind drop to stash.

BrightLord · Post by **BrightLord** » 05 May, 2014 13:24

Everything is possible but then again.

Being too strict with these files will limit and hit legit players aswell.

It is technicaly no problem to store some sort of hash keys for players in trade stash. You however get double edged blade...

andronnik · Post by **andronnik** » 05 May, 2014 14:31

now i understand how so many people got many good crafted items, and got allmost all their sets completed

Still not interested in this kind of "sorcery". I better farm my own items.

MazuR · Post by **MazuR** » 05 May, 2014 14:37

is there any chance to gamble one of set item? i don't think so.. or I dont have any luck

gold is not very important think at D1. maybe at the begining.

Apocalypse · Post by **Apocalypse** » 05 May, 2014 18:35

I got a set item from gamble, so it is possible - yes.
For crafting...it is more tedious, because there isn't that much difference in the crafted items from 1 recipe. I guess you have to find a better recipe or be higher level, because everything I crafted (lvl 29 I am) is crap.

Completing sets...dunno about that. Most likely trading save files between people who have different items.

All in all, from the gambling the best I got were 2 rings each with +20 all atrib and amulet +20 all atrib. Gets boring doing it more than 15 mins.

BrightLord, I didn't say the above was bad for the game. Quite reverse (at least for me), because now I don't have to farm gold or pick blue items from the ground for $$$ to sell and I can concentrate on the game. Removing the gold barrier after I completed the game and got 2 heroes at lvl 29, it is very pleasing, cause otherwise I have to do tedious runs for $$$ which is...boring for me.

For me, having these little "tricks" adds a little to the game variety, by eliminating some repeating stuff and makes it more...interesting. For example in D2, gold was not an issue, cause in Hell difficulty you could make 1 million gold for about 10 mins playtime so...yeah...

Nomic · Post by **Nomic** » 05 May, 2014 20:08

Its a single player game, cheat if you wanna I guess.
As long as the save files are stored on the players computer it will always be possible to cheat like this... no sense getting caught up trying to stop cheaters when there are so many more important things to do

Jofuss · Post by **Jofuss** » 06 May, 2014 1:04

andronnik wrote:now i understand how so many people got many good crafted items

It was worse, (or better?) in previous patches. Lets say you had an unique item with a set HIGH AC for its level such as "Royal Circlet," a crown with 40 AC. You could craft an item from it that might get 100% additional defense and the item would now have 80 AC. (I reported after crafting a normal crown with well over 100 AC using a lowbie crafting recipe...)

Now lets say you roll some rags. You could roll the item until you got "Increased Durability" and you may end up with an item with a durability of lets say "50." If you kept re-rolling the same item, the increased durability scores stack and you could end up with a light belt with 156 durability after a couple crafts, (this is the item that caused me to report the bug.)

Now take and do a combination of the two and you could end up with abnormally high AC item for the level, with extremely high durability.

Luckily (unluckily?) BrightLord was able to have both exploits fixed.

riesa · Post by **riesa** » 06 May, 2014 1:36

andronnik wrote:now i understand how so many people got many good crafted items, and got allmost all their sets completed

Sets? It's just MF sorc + Shared Stash or any other char with quite high MF rig and Shared Stash xD

When we talk about crafting it's something different. When you have sorcerer it's easy to salvage gems. Only thing that you need to do with this sorc is... Beat Diablo Hell. When you have Lost Treasures opened on all diff levels you can salvage gems from flawed to perfect easily. So you don't need this exploit so badly. Those crafts that you saw on people screens was from high level receipies... Yes, it still usually need few crafts to roll that stats but... As i said, gems are easy and fast to salvage (my LT run takes 3mins with salvaging) and the only problem is to get receipe. So... Those craft you saw are not (at least most of them) a result of this exploit.

andronnik · Post by **andronnik** » 06 May, 2014 13:43

riesa, well I would like to think so

Actually, its everyones right, as long as this small vulnerability exists, to do how they like. If they want to craft items in masses, and exchange set items with one another, it's their right to do so.
But i think the game looses its purpose then. It's clear cheating.

Apocalypse · Post by **Apocalypse** » 06 May, 2014 22:16

Well you have to consider what you classify as ruining game experience.
I for one, have played Diablo 1 a lot before and now this mod. I completed it on 2 difficulties with all quests done with 2 heroes.
Now I don't think I'am alone on this, but if I create a new hero, I'd probably transfer some gold to him from my other chars, maybe some items to go along with his levels. Is that cheating? I already found the items with the other characters. I've done this on battle.net for Diablo 2 and 3.
So do you consider this after you have completed the game several times with more than 1 character - game breaking?

I for one, don't want, when I've done a lot with my primary character, do start from scratch (no gold, no items whatsoever) with a new character. So in a way, if you do this (transfer gold, some items) can as well be considered "cheating" and it currently can be done in D2 and D3, where savegames are not in the computer's directory.

So ask yourself this, how does knowing of these 'exploits' ruin your game experience, when you cannot realistically create stuff that are so good, it would take zero to no effort to continue.

As I mentioned above with the gold, it is easy to make piles of it, but I get tired of constantly picking small chunks from the ground (at least in D3 automatic) so I decided to eliminate this problem. The other stuff....well you can consider it sort of grinding. You can either do this, or grind Andariel and LT.

andronnik · Post by **andronnik** » 06 May, 2014 23:52

No, I don't consider sharing your stash with your other character as cheating, in contrast to sharing your items with other players.

I think it is kind of "balancing" - between the fact that you can exchange items with other characters you create (give items from your sorcerer to barbarian for example) and that the game difficulty is so high. I have never played The Hell mod, i've heard that it is far from easy, but as of my experience with Vanilla and Hellfire Diablo, the Belzebub mod is extremly fucking difficult, and with some classes it is almost unbeatable (at least as for now), if not sharing items with other characters. So for me the stash future is no kind of cheating.

Sharing set items with other players and creating endless amount of jewels so that you can craft THE ITEM you need, with endless amount of attempts IS cheating.
Because i think it is a very good thing, that in the normal gameplay you just can't get the perfect items that you want. Or you can, but it takes a lot of time and effort (for example killing torment diablo over and over again, increasing MP difficulty. Even on MP 0 it's fucking difficult). And when you finally found the item, or crafted it, or completed the set that you want so badly, you have a feeling of great achievement!!! Satisfaction! Or at least you should have

But when you just gamble all the time and craft all the time, and receive your missing set item from someone else, when you have only 4 of 5 set items - it is no satisfaction. That is what cheating ruins.

Apocalypse · Post by **Apocalypse** » 07 May, 2014 8:52

Well to do these you must be really patient

From the crafting from what I've done...doesn't really differ all that much the first crafted item from the 10th. The stats are almost the same...so I don't know about the crafting. Maybe grinding for a better recipe might be better.

Gambling...well yeah, here you have a chance to get everything, but it requires a lot of resilience. From all the gambling I've done all I got is a 1 nice armor and a couple of rings. Dunno is MF plays any role, have to find some items with it and try

Elle · Post by **Elle** » 07 May, 2014 20:01

Apocalypse wrote:BrightLord, you are correct in way. People always find a way around certain rules, that's why I point them out.

One thing that pops in my mind in order to avoid most of the stuff is if the game makes only 1 file for all characters and trade stash. Dunno if it is possible, but this way it will eliminate the read only grind drop to stash.

I'm fine with keeping them separate. We're not competing against each other. When I first entered this topic, I expected some serious exploits which evaded my attention. But I've done this exact same thing with Diablo 2 and Plugy which offered hare stash; or vanilla D2 but with a mule instead of a shared stash. And this exact same thing will be possible in Belzebub once there is multiplayer. So it would be a pointless to go to great lengths to protect a game which isnt even played as massively as the D2 ladder. And there are other ways still; if I want to gamble infinitely, I open up my memory editor and patch the goldchange bit with a NOOP. Not everyone here knows how to do this, but I'm sure that if savegames were better protected, this sort of meta-exploit would be quickly learned and passed around the community too.

Now let me put this same thing from another perspective. By limiting exploits (even if they are perceived as "bad"), one would be limiting the possibilities of what the players can do. Now there are two types of players; those who have fun doing exploits and those who dont. You could try and forbid exploits but this will undoubtedly reduce fun for one entire class of players, and the only reason would be so that the other class of players can feel superior for "winning", then carrying on without benefits of detriments. That is, a chunk of players may be restricted for no gain in... fun.

Jofuss wrote:It was worse, (or better?) in previous patches. Lets say you had an unique item with a set HIGH AC for its level such as "Royal Circlet," a crown with 40 AC. You could craft an item from it that might get 100% additional defense and the item would now have 80 AC. (I reported after crafting a normal crown with well over 100 AC using a lowbie crafting recipe...)

I observe that ever since you reported the AC and durability crafting issue to have it fixed, your every other (or third or fourth) post somehow refers to this exploit, and how it was reported by you. I held back from saying it because I thought that I must be the only person who notices, but there are other bug reporters, and then there's Brightlord who's working to fix them, though I havent seen any other old bug being so frequently referred to, and especially by the person who reported/fixed it. If I am maybe wrong to think this way, I'd like to know what I'm missing here.

By the way, this remark is related to the first paragraph, in that it has closed off certain (if minor) possibilities for the player, while in my opinion giving little-to-nothing in return as this was not a game-crashing issue and could have been avoided by anyone and everyone who did not want to use it like an exploit.

Some exploits

Some exploits

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