Adventures in Hacking Magic 2014: Newbie guide to EVERYTHING

[alodia]

first of all i give credits to this forum and all the people who contributed to the following guides/hacks/mods/processes/etc.
i take no credit

i do take credit on putting everything together here in once place (my personal journey) so other new players of Magic 2014 don't have to grind through a dozen different threads figuring out what works and what doesn't and what's outdated.


So!... i got Magic 2014 yesterday... i've been wanting to play this but it was too pricy when it came out. yesterday and today steam had it on sale for 3$! what a deal! now clearly the sealed-deck is the gem of the game, building your own decks and multiplayer! however shortly i realize like many, you only get 2 slots for sealed play (more if you pay $$... but we are here because we don't want to pay $$

early on when this game was released, people tried to find ways to reset their sealed decks, only to find out that you get the same cards because they were saved to your steam id...

so 'hackers' or just experienced folks were like... lets edit the files that describe what cards are in my sealed-deck.
they found this file: <your_steam_id>.profile
here: C:\Program Files\Steam\userdata\,your_steam_id\213850 <---this 213850 is the folder for Magic2014

to edit this file, use any hex editor, like HxD
i found this guide, probably originated from this forum: bit. ly/18YQAfO
it explains how when you open the .profile in a hex editor, there are section devoted to the cards in your sealed deck, so by changing those hex#s to the hex# of the card you want, you can make any deck you want.
there's only 151 cards in sealed, and each card has an ID#, which you have to convert to hex. those id# can be found by the Gibbed tools (explained later below)
...so just change your hex, sav it, and use this program: D13Hash http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=8025
to create a corresponding hash.file (also in the same folder as your .profile)
this hash is a security check the game uses to make sure your profile is legit.
there was a whole thread and probably team of coders devoted to breaking the code to this hashing challenge. http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=7777
and of course the game Devs responded by patching this breach in security probably with a new hashing code that folks couldn't break or did and wasn't publicized.

now onto the currently working method:
here's a comprehensive guide: http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=10898
although the title of the thread talks about 'Promo cards' just by following the instructions with the same tools, you can edit also your sealed decks.
BTW if you're new player and haven't played the game much yet, i recommend their advice of just replacing your profile with one that has everything unlocked. then all's left is customizing your sealed decks.
the key tool here is: Modified Gibbed Tools r6_b10 Binaries.zip (2nd link)
here: http://www.slightlymagic.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=99&t=10463
there's 2 parts to this tool, a "Pack.exe" and "Unpack.exe"
the "Unpack" open's up the DATA_DECKS_D14.WAD which contains the data for cards/decks/sealed/etc.
it is here: C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Magic 2014
once you've edited your D14_SEALED_POOL.XML with notepad and "Pack"ed the folder back into a .WAD file, just replace the original one with this new 'hacked' one...

the difference with this method is instead of changing the hex values aka what's in your deck.
you are changing what 'cards exist' for the game to read.
example: that xml file, if you changed all 151 cards to a 'suntail hawk' then it doesn't matter what card you got in the sealed packs, they will all be suntail hawks.

i've been spending hours on this and found that you can change all 151 IDs to one card... this works
but some combination like... changing 150 IDs to one card, and 1 IDs to a second card... the game freezes on loading screen...

maybe someone can further explain how to best edit this xml file.

thanks for reading! and happy hacking/modding/new years!