Our 2022 game of the year is a challenging one, and if you're not already enamored with FromSoftware's style of combat, you might want to resort to Elden Ring cheats to bypass some of its tougher areas. An industrious NexusMods user going by the handle Marcus101RR produced the first table for Elden Ring using the popular CheatEngine utility, and things have only expanded from there in the intervening two years.
If this sounds like just the thing for you, read on, but note that this tool is only designed for use in offline mode (with very good reason), and you'll want to carefully quarantine your modified saves for if you ever do go back online.
How to access Elden Ring cheats:
To use Marcus' tools, you'll have to download their cheat table from NexusMods, as well as CheatEngine from from it's official website. A word of caution: CheatEngine's installer is known to contain third-party adware separate from the utility itself, with even experienced users accidentally consenting to the download through a confusing EULA. Download with caution.
Marcus' instructions for getting it up and running are a little terse, and assume you have already disabled Elden Ring's Easy Anti-Cheat. One method I saw for doing so, suggested by Shamadruu in Nexus' forum thread on the project, requires you to:
- Before anything, launch Elden Ring and set it to run in offline mode from the options menu.
- Go to your steam install folder (steamapps/users/common/Elden Ring/Game)
- Rename "start_protected_game.exe" to something else (could be anything, you just want to be able to change it back)
- Rename "eldenring.exe" to "start_protected_game.exe," effectively replacing the original Easy Anti-Cheat launcher
If you log into a cheated character while online there’s a chance FromSoftware’s detection system will flag you and ban you on a temporary or permanent basis, which is how it handled things in Dark Souls 3.
Survive the Lands Between with these Elden Ring guides
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The next step is to follow Marcus' instructions for running the cheat table, but instead of attaching CheatEngine to "eldenring.exe," like it says, attach it to "start_protected_game.exe.” I think the original instructions assumed a different path to getting around Easy Anti-Cheat.
From here, you should be able to use Marcus' table to perform typical CheatEngine-y functions like editing stats and equipment or running the custom scripts Marcus has implemented.
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Additional cheat tables are also popping up, including the "Ultimate cheat table" by Hexington which also apparently allows you to edit the parameters of spells. You'll also need the ID codes for various weapons, gear, and Sites of Grace if you're trying to cheat your way to new locations or grab new armor. You can find a growing list of Elden Ring IDs being compiled by Hexington and other players.
How will Shadow of the Erdtree change cheats?
Cheat authors will have to update their tables to let us play around with Shadow of the Erdtree's new, secondary leveling system, and we'll also have to wait for them to figure out the ID codes for new items and spells. Otherwise though, it'll probably be safer to go into Shadow of the Erdtree with a cheat-enabled save than a modded one, but it's still safest to start with a fully vanilla save file.
What about reversing cheats?
To re-enable Easy Anti-Cheat if you need to play online again, all you have to do is undo the steps in reverse.
Again, you do this at the risk of messing up your saves or getting banned from online play. I saw several commenters brainstorming ways to edit a save in offline mode and then bring your game back online, with some even stating that they did so successfully.
However, for past games FromSoftware has performed weekly account checks that have caught even innocuous changes made to saves while offline. The ultimate opsec would be to move a modded save to another folder entirely before going back online, but even that may not be enough to evade FromSoftware's detection.
And really, that hypervigilance on FromSoft's part is for the best. The Souls games have seen some truly egregious online cheaters in the past, with ne'er do wells dropping save-corrupting hacked items being some of the worst of the lot. We also had a bit of a scare in January 2022 when the extent of Dark Souls 3's online security vulnerabilities were revealed, but thankfully that issue seems to have been fully resolved. Still, if you wish to enter the world of Elden Ring cheats in offline mode and the privacy of your own home, the left-hand path is open to you.
Ted Litchfield
Associate Editor
Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch.
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