In the original Dark Sun games, it was possible to copy characters over from Shattered Lands to Wake of the Ravager (I believe a program called CharTran.exe was bundled with WotR that transferred the save files).

Is there any way to do this with the GOG versions?

I'm playing on OSX, but if there's a fix that only works on Windows I'm still interested in that.

Chartran.exe is in the darksun 2 folder but I had to run dosbox on its own and run Chartran.exe through there to do the transfer. I did this on windows 7 64 bit but I think it would work with OSX since I used my own installation of dosbox.

I'm not sure if they did anything with the character transfer system since trying to use it directly from the folder without dosbox just gives a version error (x86/x64).

chartran.exe is included, along with all the bugs it originally had. You will first need to copy your saves to a subdirectory in Ravager (DSUN1 should be fine), then modify the dosbox config file to run chartran.exe instead of ravager.bat. You'll also need to pick the correct directories, with C:\ being the directory Wake of the Ravager is installed in. Not sure how easy the above are in OSX, but if you need help getting it to run on Windows, don't hesitate to ask.

It will indeed work. Copying the savegames as JMich suggested is probably the cleanest method.

Chartran will work on OSX too. But you could also just transfer and save the game on Windows, then transfer that Ravager save back to OSX. Should work.

note that mobs in games with transferred characters will have double normal hp, so you should only do it if you want to play WoTR in extra hard mode

Due to how dodgy chartran is, it's likely better to create new characters of the same race/class and just transfer over items using the import/export character feature anyway. It lets you clean out the items that get turned into weird dodgy stuff like invisible boxes, and 1cp gems etc.

Is that in addition to the extra difficulty increase in the options, or due to that?

in addition

Ok, just to go through some steps...after you have transferred your final save to dark sun 2 folder under the folder dsun1 as JMich suggested in (the saves from dsun 1 are not numbered so it is best to use the last save slot so you know for sure.)

1. goto the dark sun 2 directory (for me was C: > gog games > dark sun 2
2. open dosbox_darksun2_single in notepad
3. changer "ravager" to "chartran" save and exit
4. click Launch Dark Sun 2 - Wake of the Ravager in the folder.
5. where it asks you where the file is located input c drive and input c:\ "dsun1"
6. where it asks you where to put the file click c drive and input "c:\"
7. after this is complete - open dosbox_darksun2_single change "chartran" back to "ravager"
8. run darksun 2
9. your characters will be in the add character folder and you can just bring em in and now your op yay just like me.

Dark Sun 1 saves are numbered by the position in the save menu. The character storage (where characters are dropped / imported) on the other hand isn't numbered because it's jut a list of characters with their data as off the last time they got dropped.

I've tried the character trasnfer methods suggested and they are not working. I put the DS1 save files into a directory in the DS2 folder, run the chartran program and it seems to go fine, but when I go to add the characters they are not on the list. Is there something else that can be done?

Slept on it overnight and figured out the peoblem, everything works.

Has anyone managed to transfer on OS X?

I've managed to get chartran working via DosBox but I'm having trouble finding the save location for Shattered Lands.

<i><span class="bold">READ FIRST (MAC OS X):</span> FAQ and solutions for known issues</i>

Thanks for the help Gydion, I'd mixed up my locations when I was digging through the application package.

The downside appears to be getting chartran to accept locations beyond C:\DSUN (i.e. ~/Library/Application Support/Boxer/Gamebox States or even ~/desktop/dsun (having copied and moved the folder).

At this stage I think I'm just going to chuck it into windows and bring it back heh

Where is the dosbox config file on OSX? I cannot find it to switch to chartran.exe