Playing With UrW Files

Warning: This page contains cheating guides. if you aren't a cheater, exit the page.

The steps descrived below might break the communal trading functionality of the game if you are playing 3.18 or newer version of the game.

Zoom- Files
All visited local terrains in Unreal World are saved in UrW save folder in files ZOOMINDEX..DAT, ZOOMMAP.DAT and ZOOMMAPS.DAT.



When you enter unknown local terrain (terrain which you haven't entered before), all data from this terrain (look, trees, items etc.) will be created and saved to these zoom- files, especially to zoommaps.dat file. Every visited local terrain is "big" approx. 2MB so if you enter 500 local terrains, size of zoommaps.dat will be over 1GB!

You can freely delete these 3 zoom- files, if you do delete them, all visited local terrains' data will be deleted. So if you go to a terrain where you've been earlier before deleting zoom- files, this local terrain will be created again and everything will be different, except terrain roughness. If you delete a terrain where you have a settlement, your house and all items and animals at that terrain will disappear.

Well, deleting these files can bring benefits. For example: if you go to a village for the first time and you can't buy or get something you need, get out to the wilderness and delete zoom- files (or move them to a backup folder before entering an unsaved terrain if you have your own settlement or e.g. trap fence somewhere) and enter village again. You will enter completely new village with potentially other shops, other fenced animals etc.

There's also a trick to delete all known local terrains except one. Enter the terrain which you want to keep saved, don't save the game, browse your save folder (press alt+tab to minimize game window and go to another window) and delete these zoom- files. Go back to the game and your local terrain which you're in is still there with all stuff existing. If you go to save folder again, you will see that zoom- files are re-created with size like at image above.

Playing with zoom- files can let you duplicate items: go to a local area and drop items, then save the game. Browse to your save folder and backup zoom- files. Go back to the game and pick those items. Get out to the wilderness and copy + replace backuped files to your save folder, go to the local area and those picked items will be there again and in your inventory.

You can also use the zoommaps.dat to increase the amount of any item on the ground with the use of a hex editor. First go to the local terrain where you want to increase the amount of items, save the game and backup zoommaps.dat. Then go back to the game and collect a (large) stack of the item you want to increase in a single tile. Save and open both the old zoommaps and the new one. Now you can easily compare changes between the files with the hex editor (many editors should have a tool for this), find the values that correspond to the amount of items in the stacks both before and after. Change this value in the newer zoommaps to wanted value. This can be used for example to create large stacks of logs and create a house within a few days. This obviously should be used with care, if at all.

Version 3.18 Update
If you delete zoom- files after exiting a village and then come back to this village, all houses will be empty (except house with wodden tub and sauna scoop) and there's nothing you can buy, except animals. To prevent this, you have to delete MARKER.DAT as well. If you enter a village without anything you need, exit village, save the game, delete MARKER.DAT and delete or replace backuped zoom- files in order see new village and other available items.

NAME.VIL
This file represents your reputation in villages.

Very interesting in version 3.18 is that we can steal items in villages! If you don't pay and you say: "Yes, I am, this is a robbery!", villagers will attack you. If you manage to escape (the easiest way is to find a village bordering a river, lake or sea and escape in a punt) and then go back to the same village, villagers will attack you again. But if you save the game, delete NAME.VIL (or replace backuped one if your reputation is high) after you escape, you can enter this village again (but without these stolen items in your inventory) and nobody will attack you, you can steal again - potentially other items as well if you delete or replace MARKER.DAT and zoom- files.

DATA.DAT file
If you see something in the wilderness (an item or a character), this was saved to DATA.DAT file. There are (at least) 2 ways to cheat with this file:
 * 1) To duplicate items in wilderness: drop an item in wilderness, save the game, backup DATA.DAT file. Go back to the game, pick the item up, save game again and copy (or move) & replace backuped DATA.DAT to save folder. Go to the game and that picked item will be in the wildernes again and in your inventory.
 * 2) If you notice a character in wilderness, you can "visit" this character after entering and exiting a local terrain (where this character was) over and over again. How? When you notice a character - e. g. foreign trader in wilderness, save the game and backup UrW save folder files BEFORE entering local terrain where a character is. Then load the game and enter that local area. Let's say that there are foreign traders which don't have anything you need. Get out to the wilderness and go 1 tile away from entered local terrain. Save the game, then copy&replace backuped DATA.DAT file and ZOOM- files to save folder. Go back to the game and go to the local terrain where foreign traders were and you will see new traders with other inventory

Seeing Entire Wilderness




This is how the world looks like when you start the game, you are in an unknown, black world.

And if you press F6 to see wilderness map, you don't see much except lots of black color:

You can "erase" this black color (unknown areas) by walking through entire world but this can take lots of real life time. If you want to see whole UrW wilderness map much faster, perform these easy steps:


 * 1) Go to your Unreal World save folder
 * 2) Delete file WORLD.PLM
 * 3) Duplicate (copy and paste to the same folder) file WORLD.DAT
 * 4) Rename duplicated file to WORLD.PLM





And this is all you have to do. Start the game and you will see entire world and map!

WARNING: This is an extremely lame thing to do and will greatly decrease the level of immersion of the game, since the whole point is that you're exploring an unknown territory.

Don't want appearance of new Njerpez camps in your world?
New camps, villages and cultural regions are saved to WORLD.DAT and kulttuuri.dat. In order to prevent appearance of new Njerpez camps out of Njerpez cultural region in south-eastern wilderness, backup these two files when you start playing a new character. When you see a new camp on the map, copy & replace these files and camp will disapear.

Changing the new seasons' names back to what you want
You can edit messages/urw_defs.txt and find the  MARKING OF TIME section

[1:Center month] [2:Pearl month] [3:Soil month] [4:Swidden month] [5:Seedtime month] [6:Fallow month] [7:Hay month] [8:Harvest month] [9:Fall month] [10:Dirt month] [11:Dead month] <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:19.200000762939453px;">[12:Winter month] <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:19.200000762939453px;">[*:Unknown month]

<span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:19.200000762939453px;">Then just change the month names to whatever you prefer: <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:19.200000762939453px;">[1:January] <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:19.200000762939453px;">[2:February] <span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Verdana,Tahoma,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:19.200000762939453px;">etc.

Jumpstart your character
You can cheat your way to a new character with awesome equipments, built houses, etc... Just your stat is newly made.

You already have an established character, AA, with all that riches.

Create a new character, BB.

Open ...gamefolder\BB delete ALL files but BB.* files. There should only be files BB name left in that folder.

Open ...gamefolder\AA copy all files BUT AA.* to the BB folder.

Now BB has same thing as AA.