Sick and tired of shelling out valuable materials or rare coins for Epic gems only to be cursed by the RNG with crappy stats? Or maybe you're just curious as to what sort of effects you can achieve if you're given free reign over Gem bonuses? ...


... Yeah okay, I can't really market this stuff, so just ... be patient, I guess...

I'm going to try to explain in simple enough terms for anyone to understand just how to use CheatEngine to tweak Gems more to your liking. Once you've learnt that much, you can play as fair or unfair as you like with it.



WHAT YOU WILL NEED FOR THIS:
#1. Dynasty Warriors 9 (obviously)
#2. Cheat Engine[www.cheatengine.org]
#3. The Windows Calculator app or some other means of converting Decimal numbers to Hexadecimal and vice versa... unless you're fluent in Hex.


For those who don't know, Cheat Engine is a very neat program that can be used to connect to games as they're running and modify values within the game. Sorta like an on-the-fly hex-editor... or something like that. I use it a lot. Please don't judge me.

Righteo... getting Dynasty Warriors 9 running and installing + opening Cheat Engine is the first step.
Once you've opened Cheat Engine, you should see a button that looks like a computer in the upper left corner ("Select a process to open"). Clicking that brings up a dropdown list of active programs running on the computer. Scroll down to where Dynasty Warriors 9 is and select open. IF you've already done this before, saved some settings or whatever and made a file for them, it will ask if you want to open the associated file at this point... OTHERWISE... it'll just open.

It should look something like this, except the box at the bottom will be empty if you haven't done this before... and maybe a different colour-scheme...

Now see, normally with Cheat Engine stuff, I'd be typing things into that "Value" box and doing scans of the game for particular values, then modifying them and scanning again to narrow the search. Funnily enough that is exactly how I found where the Gems were stored in the first place...

BUT... in this case that shouldn't be necessary. I'm not here to give general-purpose Cheat Engine tutorials. This is about the Gems.
What you want is the "Memory view".

See that button on the lower left? That is one way of getting into the Memory view. Another way is to select an address that you've found (not getting into that) and selecting to Browse the memory region.

Anyway...
The Memory View...

This can be a bit daunting. Don't change anything in it just yet. Seriously, don't go changing things at random. It can screw up the game. Seriously.

SPEAKING OF THE GAME... you'll want to get back to that for a moment now.
Gotta pick a Gem to do science to...


My, what an interesting Gem I've got there...

Azure Dragon Gem
Attack Speed +8% with Wind Elemental
Elemental Attack Damage +6 during a Counter
Musou Attack Damage +29%
Trigger Attack +6%

These are the important things to remember... These are the things that will enable us to find the Gem in the Memory View.

SO.... the Gem code.... or what we'll be looking for.
I'll make it nice and formulaic:

Technically speaking, the 00 after WB, XB, YB and ZB are just extra slots for larger bonus values, but those will be 00 for most Gems. Only gems that have particular item drops upon attacks hitting are likely to change those, so if you're modding one of the Lord Gems that has item drops, it may be best to replace the related "00" slot with "??".

I'll be listing the Gem Types and Bonus Attributes in separate sections for convenience.
Anyway.... for the particular Gem I'm using for the example... and note, the Memory View is all in Hexadecimal, while the in-game view is Decimal... so...

Azure Dragon Gem = 23 (hex)
Attack Speed % with Wind Elemental = 36 , Value = 08
Elemental Attack Damage during a Counter = 2B , Value = 06
Musou Attack Damage % = 24 , Value = 1D (still in hex, remember?)
Trigger Attack % = 1E , Value = 06

If the hexadecimal confuses you... just keep in mind that it is a base 16 number system that computers use a lot. Most normal (decimal) numbers past 9 start to look a bit different when converted into hexadecimal. In this case, for instance, the "29" value for Musou Attack Damage becomes "1D" in hex. The Memory view is all in hex, so that is what we use.

So... inserting all that into the code I listed earlier gives us:


Yes, those question-marks are meant to be there. They're wild-card characters for the search. Most of them are usually "00", but sometimes they change... so better safe than sorry. I'm pretty sure they're not important anyhow...

SO

We go back into the Memory View, hit Ctrl+F to bring up the search...
Then we set the "From" value to something suitably early like "1" (this is where in the memory it starts the search), set the "(Array of) byte" radio button, past the code into the long searchy box... and hit OK.


And lo and behold... it found it.

Just so it is crystal clear, I'm even saving this screenshot as a PNG instead of the usual JPG goodness... Oh the extravagance!



Now before I go running off to the next section: the best way to check and make sure you've got it right is to change one of the values. Preferably one of the number bits... Look... I'll show you...


See that? I change the second "06" to "69" (69 in Hexadecimal is 105 in Decimal), and sure enough the Trigger Attack % value changed to 105. Good. That means I've got the right bit of the memory.

NOTE: You may notice that a little bit ahead in the memory, possibly on the line below depending on how wide you've got it set (definitely on the line below if you have it 5 blocks wide), there should be another identical line to your first. Just to be on the safe side, whatever changes you make to the first line, be sure to make the same changes to the second line as well. They have to remain identical, ideally.


(Yes, I added this image later and this is a completely different Gem to the one from earlier examples. It is a Poison Lord Gem with strongly modified attributes.)


Right... but that won't mean anything if you don't know what all the numbers correspond to.
NEXT SECTION!

This is mostly just supposed to be a reference section.
The very first number (two digits) of the code I used earlier indicates the gem type. If I change it to a different value, it changes the type of gem. This won't change the attributes at all (you can make a super-powered Common gem if you like), but it probably will determine the Element... so... don't go too hog-wild.

VALUES:


Oh, and if you still haven't got the hang of Hexadecimal, those are the Hex versions of numbers 0 to 48. It doesn't really matter in this case since they all correspond to names anyway, so there is no opportunity for confusion...

So... Onto the juicy stuff which actually makes a difference!

a.k.a. The things that change your stats and make Gems useful for more than just Elements....
I call them Bonus Attributes for now. Might change what I call them later. It isn't important.

Anyhows... the Gem can have up to 4 of these.

WARNING : If the Gem you picked has one less attribute than others of its type and it appears to have a higher value... e.g. an Azure Dragon Gem with Musou Attack Damage +36% or something (normal max is 29%, I think), that means that two of its attributes are THE SAME THING... and since its value is a combination of two different values, that makes it a bit more awkward to search for in the first place. I probably should have mentioned this earlier.... well whatever. Pick a different Gem...
So yeah, if you set two values to the same thing, the game will combine them into one. Just so you're aware.

And so.... THE LIST... and remember these are all in Hexadecimal:



Now before you come asking me what they all do... some of them I know and some of them I really don't. I haven't done any extensive testing yet. All I've done is change the number and seen what the text in-game says... A lot of them are recognisable... either from other Gems or even from Accessories (hehehe)...
I can't even begin to guess what the last 3 values are like... Not sure I want to find out...

Take note, for the record, that some are very similarly named. Some raise stats by a static value while others raise percentile values instead. Also that "Musou Attack" and "Musou Attack Damage" probably aren't the same thing...

Also, for the "May drop ____ when attack hits" effects, I haven't bothered listing all the different material codes that may come from that. Adding a whole extra list to the guide for an effect most people probably won't use seems a bit needless. I'd recommend just changing the variable that would normally code for a number and seeing what it switches to.

Alright... time to wrap up, for now at least.

Oh gods... another PNG. It is like Clarity Christmas in here...
COLOUR-CODED FOR HER PLEASURE:



And I'm adding in the code section from the second bit of the guide again, as a reminder.


Once you've found the correct line and confirmed it... make whatever changes you like, then make the same changes to the identical line below it. I'm no expert, but two identical lines for every Gem kinda indicates one for view and one for function... so you're best off changing it. The lower line may be offset a little depending on the width of the window.



Okay. All clear?




Then go make some crazy Gems already...