If you already have done some hex editing before I would recommend just skipping to the offsets section as the data structure is pretty simple, otherwise follow along it shouldn't be too difficult.

All you need to edit Grandia II saves is a hex editor, in this guide I will be using HxD[mh-nexus.de]. If you want to Grandia II saves on a Dreamcast use Dream Explorer[bswirl.kitsunet.org].

Todo in the future

• Check if Roan and King Roan are different characters
  
• Add more offsets

If you want more offsets added ask nicely.

First we need to open a Grandia II save in HxD, Grandia 2 saves are located in the data\saves folder in the Grandia II installation folder. Note that the save numbers in the folder are one less than they appear in the game, ex GRANDIA2_000.VMS is save slot 1.

Once the file is open make sure that HxD is in 'Overwrite' mode, if it is in 'Insert' mode double click it to change. Also make sure you never use delete or backspace to delete values since it won't override the bytes and just delete them. Make sure you backup your saves.



First find the data range you want by pressing ctrl-g and entering the offset of the data you want to edit. In this example we are going to be editing the party's gold which is a 'Little Endian 32bit Unsigned Integer' at offset 2C0.



Entering the value into a Hex to Decimal Converter[www.scadacore.com] shows that it's value is 68.




Next we need to figure out the little endian 32bit equivalent of the new value we want, in this example the goal will be to make the party gold 100000. First we need to find the hexadecimal value of the amount we want, using an online Dec to Hex converter[www.rapidtables.com] we get 0x00 01 86 A0, converting that to little endian we get 0xA0 86 01 00. Replace the old value with the new one and save.



First find the data range you want by pressing ctrl-g and entering the offset you want. Next on the right hand side enter the text you want, make sure it is within the allowed data range specified in the offset list, finally save the file.

In the example below the text that indicates the party's location was changed.

The area of the save that contains the Inventory appears to be AB0 - DDF. I would recommend not setting any of the values above 99 / 0x63 since selling items when you have over 99 can cause the game to crash. I also recommend not setting the book and egg quantity to anything other than 0 or 1 since it is not possible to obtain more than one of each egg or book in the game.

Consumables

Weapons

Armor

Headgear

Footwear

Accessories

Valuables

Books

Eggs

To use this method you need two save games, before and after a change. In this example I want to find the offset for the 'Mystic Potion', to do this I first find a save that has at least 1 of the item, then I use / sell one of the item and save in another slot. In theory the only difference between the two save games is having one less of the potion, the increase in gold because of selling it, and the files play time.

Once you have two save files press ctrl-k in HxD to start a compare and select the two save files, this will open the two files in two windows, you can now press F6 which jumps to the next difference in the save file until you find the change you want, in this example I had 6 mystic potions and I sold 1 to give me 5 so I press F6 until I find a change in the data that matches which will be the offset for the item.



In some cases it is simply searching the file is good enough to find what you want, this works best with large numbers since there are way more unique two or four byte integers than one byte ones.

In this example I know the value for the party's gold in game is 35507 so I open up the save file in HxD and press ctrl-f to search. The data type we want is an integer number, this means that it it will search the integer values that the hex represents rather than the hex itself. Make it is searching Little Endian values since it is the format used in Grandia II saves, If you know bitwidth of the data you are searching for set it, otherwise set it to any. Finally enter the integer value and search.