Dark Souls Save Scummer

Disclaimer

No warranty whatsoever. I know next-to-nothing about powershell. Use this at your own risk.

You can potentially get more souls / get better without this script, and just play the game normally. I wrote it mostly as an exercise in powershell / registry.

Prerequisites

• Disable Steam Cloud Sync (google it)
• You need to set Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted for powershell scripts to work. This is a potential hazard to your PC.

Download

Zip files of releases can be found on this page

Installation

Copy dsss.ps1 and dsbr.ps1 to any directory. I usually put them in the Dark Souls save folder, because I need to keep that open anyway to restore saves: C:\Users\<YOUR_USERNAME_HERE>\Documents\NBGI\DarkSouls

Usage

"Dark Souls Save Scummer" script (dsss.ps1)

• Right click -> Open in powershell.
• You should see the powershell window. Keep it Open
• CTRL+C in the powershell window to exit the script, or click the "X" in the corner

Optional installation and usage of the "Dark Souls Backup Recovery" script (dsbr.ps1)

Install:

• To install the DSBR, just right click -> Open in powershell. This installs the right-click menu.

Normal usage (if installed as explained above)

• ENSURE THAT DARK SOULS IS NOT RUNNING
• Right-click any .dsbak file, and you should see various options:
  • "Recover Dark Souls backup" :
    • Creates a backup of the current save file
    • Recovers the .sl2.dsbak file in place of the save
    • Starts Dark Souls (Prepare to Die Edition)
  • "Mark as SAFE": Appends "-SAFE" to the file. Example: 2017-09-30__13-33-DRAKS0005-SAFE.sl2.dsbak
  • "Mark as BOSS": Appends "-BOSS" to the file. Example: 2017-09-28__05-39-DRAKS0005-BOSS.sl2.dsbak
  • "Delete old DS backups": Deletes all but 3 autosaves and 5 "SAFE" saves. Ignores "BOSS" saves.

How it works

Dark Souls Save Scummer:

It works by creating an background "event listener" for whenever the Dark Souls save file changes. After the save file changes (finishes changing), this script creates a timestamped backup in the same directory. See Restrictions"

Dark Souls Backup Recovery

If ran as-is, it will install the "right-click" menu to support restoring .dsbak files.

See above for usage and description

Restrictions

Confirmed working for non-GFWL version (current on Steam as of 2017/09)

It only creates 1 backup per minute because of two main reasons:

• Dark Souls would sometimes autosave multiple times a minute
• Every save file change consists of two OS-level changes. Without the 1min restriction, every autosave would result in two backup files.

Info for nerds

I spent half a day trying to see whether the changes Dark Souls makes to a file are "fake" by comparing hashes of the previous backup and the save file.

Turns out Dark Souls does frequently make changes to the save file. This is why I restricted the script to make bakups once every minute (at maximum).

If the game decides not to change the save file for a few minutes, no backups will be made.