Guide to Editing Starting Stats in the DSVania games!

Six days have passed, and I have a promise to keep: I did say that eventually, similar guides would be made for Portrait and Ecclesia, after all. Alas, I have yet to find where starting HP and MP values are found in these two games, nor have I managed to find the growth rates for any of the DSVanias (i.e, how much a stat progresses per level up, and for the latter two DSVanias, how much a Max Up gives, as well as their caps). If anyone manages to find where those are stored, I would gladly welcome the helping hand, and will give credit where credit is due.

But enough talk... Have some guides!

And may they prove helpful to future modders!

Portrait of Ruin: Somewhat similar to Dawn of Sorrow: in the usual extracted folder created for your built ROM, look for the ftc sub-folder. Your destination is the overlay9_0 file. Grab your usual hex editing tool like HxD, and open said file.

Now, head to the offset 50B90.

If you did this right, you should arrive at this sight:



Offset 50B90 is the start of coding arrays that determines a character's starting attributes, in this order: ATK, DEF, STR, CON, INT, MND, and LCK. These arrays go in the order of character modes as is sorted in-game: first, you have Jonathan starting off as 50B90 and 50B91 with ATK, Charlotte at 50BA8 and 50BA9 with ATK, then Stella at 50BC0 and 50BC1 with ATK, followed by Loretta at 50BD8 and 50BD9 with ATK, next Richter at 50BF0 and 50BF1 with ATK, then Maria at 50C08 and 50C09 with ATK, and last but most certainly not least: Old Axe Armor at 50C20 and 50C21 with ATK.

Here's a tiny bit of trivia for everyone: did you know that Old Axe Armor starts off with 30 STR and CON, and 20 INT and MND in vanilla Portrait of Ruin? Such insanely high attributes compared to everyone else! And yet Old Axe Armor is lauded as the most difficult of the modes. Poor thing.

Much like it is the case with Dawn of Sorrow, editing these starting stats is as simple as changing the values stored here, keeping in mind that the second of the paired offsets increments by 256 for each 1 you put into that offset.

Order of Ecclesia: Same usual deal: extracted folder for your built rom, look for the ftc sub-folder. Your destination is different, however: instead of the overlay9_0 file, you want the arm9.bin file. Grab your usual hex editing program like HxD, and open that .bin file with that program.

After this, you want to head to the offset EF1F8.

If you did this right, you should have this in view:



Much like it is with Portrait of Ruin, these offsets go in order of ATK, DEF, STR, CON, INT, MND, and LCK, in the order of the characters: Shanoa, Arma Felix, Arma Chiroptera, Arma Machina, and Albus.

Shanoa starts off with EF1F8 and EF1F9 with ATK, Arma Felix at EF210 and EF211 with ATK, Arma Chiroptera at EF228 and EF229 with ATK, Arma Machina at EF240 and EF241 with ATK, and finally, Albus at EF258 and EF259 with ATK.

The pic given in the second attachment is a completely unaltered arm9.bin file. So rejoice, fellow modders. Thanks to this picture, you now know everyone's starting ATK, DEF, STR, CON, INT, MND, and LCK stats.

Editing these starting stats is, much as is the case with Dawn and Portrait, as simple as adjusting the values stored here, once again keeping in mind that the second of the paired offsets increments by 256 for each 1 you put into that offset.

Hey, happy to help dude

While I'm on this subject, though, I do have a little bit of bad news for the community.

After searching as much as I could of all the available files for the games, I fear that it may have to go as far as to apply ARMIPS patches if people wish to adjust starting HP/MP in Portrait and Ecclesia, as well as the growth rates for all stats per level up for all three of the DSVania games and for the latter two games, how much the Max Ups give along with their caps.

As a result, until someone with enough ARMIPS know-how to pull that off comes along, or I learn the ways of ARMIPS'ing enough to do it myself, I, with great reluctance, will admit that on this front, this is the best that can be done as of now for the community.

But hey, better that we can at least adjust STR, CON, INT, (MND), and LCK as we deem fit for our projects than otherwise.

I've yet to learn/find the addresses for HP/MP/Hearts for Order of Ecclesia, but what I do know is this, which I will go ahead and note while I still have the opportunity:

Portrait of Ruin's addresses for HP/MP are, according to an acquaintance of mine from Discord, gonna have to be edited in a completely different manner than this one. So I'm not going to tip toe around the bush: it's possible that the same could be true for Order of Ecclesia regarding HP/MP/Hearts.

Probably not the answer you were hoping for, Shanoa, but it's the only thing I can truthfully say, at least at this point in time.