Savefile Storage - A concept for additional save files.

DragonGuardianAR

Green Slime
Have you ever gotten to the point where you want to try a playstyle, but all nine save slots are full? Wanted to go make a character for multiplayer, but you can't bring yourself to delete a save file? Worry no more, as I've found a solution to this chaos!

...wow, that sounded WAY more infomerical-like than I wanted. Anyways, yeah. I've run into the same problem as listed above. And so, I've done some testing with the game, and found out how to alleviate that issue.

I have no idea if the game works on Mac and/or Linux, but to be safe I'm going to throw out a disclaimer that this only works for Windows. I have no experience in those other operating systems, so it'd be a bit hard for me to find where the files are stored.

Another disclaimer: In no way am I responsible if you mess something up on your computer. Neither are the developers. This is a bit of a technical workaround, and you will be playing with stuff in your computer. But, if you stray from my directions, stuff might go wrong. Be warned.

Here's a quick rundown of how the save files work, for those who haven't gone poking around:

Secrets of Grindea's save files are stored in the main SoG folder. This folder is found in what's called AppData.
Normally, the AppData folder isn't easily accessible, or found for that matter. However, there's an easy way to locate it.

There's an application called Run. To summon it, you'll need to either press the Windows key and R at the same time, or search for it in your Start Menu (may depend on your OS. Windows 8 is weird like that).

Got that open? Now, the next part is simple. All you need to do is scroll to where "Secrets of Grindea" is located. Open that folder, and you'll be straight in the game's storage.

Before we move onto the main point of this guide, create a folder somewhere in your computer. This will come in handy, in just a bit.

Alright, now onto the focus. Open that folder named Characters. This is where every character you have created is stored. But, you might not recognize them, as they aren't named! Don't fret though, as this is normal.
Each character is stored as a number, from zero to eight. Their information, however, is stored inside the respective .cha file.

"But Guardian, I don't know which one is which!"
Don't worry! Think of it this way. Slot zero is the upper-left slot. Slot two is your lower-left slot. Six is placed over at the top-right, and the eighth character is in the bottom-right.

Need a graphical representation? Here ya go.


Code:
0|3|6
-+-+-
1|4|7
-+-+-
2|5|8

Now is a good time to back up your characters, if you're worried about this. You can use that folder you made earlier (if you made one), or make another. Just copy the characters, and paste them over in your new folder. However, we're going to go beyond that.

"But Guardiaaaan, all you've done is show me how to back up my characters!"
That may be true, but we're just finally starting the magic!

So remember those numbered character slots back in the Characters folder? The game reads whatever is in there that is named properly, and loads it into the proper spot. This is how we change our characters around!

Let's say that, before you read this post, you had the character Zekenator over in Slot 4 (the center slot). Now, you've successfully copied and pasted that file into your backup folder. Here, you can put in another character. You've got two options for this:

Route 1: Normal Delete
This is the simplest of simple; since Mr. Zeke is copied to your backup folder, you can delete the character through the game itself. Like I said, simple. But, if you're looking for a quicker route, or want to do it technically (who wouldn't?), you have...

Route 2: Save File Swap
This path is what you will do once you've got a few characters set for a certain slot. Simply put, we're basically swapping out the x.cha file with another one.

Now, say you have Zeke McZekenator placed in the game on Slot 4. At the same time, you have the character Joelly in your backup folder, as a 4.cha file. What you'll need to do here is easy:

First, get another folder location to serve as a middleman. This is important, because you cannot have two identically named files in the same location at once. Place the 4.cha (Zeke) file in storage over in the temporary folder, and bring the other 4.cha (Joel) into the Characters folder.

THIS NEXT STEP IS VERY IMPORTANT:
If you do not want your recently-placed-into-Characters file overwritten, and a special 1337.cha file dropped in there as well, you will need to delete the respective character backups, in the Backups folder.

If this has not been done, upon starting up the game, you will receive a message explaining that a character was corrupted, and has been restored from backup. This, ninety-nine times out of one hundred, is brought up because the backup for that slot and the character in whatever slot does not have matching data.

(If it is that one hundredth time, Grindea help you.)

Now that you've replaced the slot with the character you want to be in rotation, simply load the game up! If everything has been done correctly, you should see the character placed into that slot up on the selection screen.

Let me know if you ever have any problems with this! I'm on the Discord server a lot, so message me (I'm DragonGuardianAR#1093 on there) if you need help.
 
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