Posted August 26, 2016
I have found some evidence of a potential method to max out your stats and skills. Unfortunately, it seems to take to long to be practical; in particular, I haven't fully tested it. For the curious, however, here is one approach that should work:
1. Make sure you can equip steel armor. You need this to equip Lord Methats' Steel Pauldron, which (according to uesp) boosts Swimming skill when equipped. (Other skill boosting items should work, but avoid any that boost a skill that you expect to need constantly.)
2. Play through the first level normally, making sure to obtain the Pauldron. When you finish the level, make sure you have it equipped.
3. On the level up screen, lower your Swimming skill. After you lower it enough, your remaining points will become negative. Keep lowering it until it gets to some point between -2.1 billion and -2.2 billion, at which point (assuming the points are represented as a 32-bit integer) your points will underflow and become positive. (I stopped a bit after -5000, at which point points were at about -10 million; reaching -2.1 billion and underflow probably happens somewhere between -50,000 and -100,000.)
4. Use those bonus points to raise your stats to 100, then raise every skill except Swimming to 100.
5. Play through level 2 normally. (You won't need to swim in this level.) Wait until the message "Your Swimming skill has increased" disappears before going to the next level.
6. At the level up screen, your Swimming should now be 0. You can now raise the skill as normal. (I am not sure if points carry over; if they do not, you will need to raise Swimming normally.)
One side effect: For a while, you will see the message "Your Swimming skill has increased". This is because the game constantly checks to see if a skill is ready to increase, and if it is, the game increases the skill. It turns out that skills at negative values take no uses to increase, causing the game to constantly increase the skill until it becomes 0.
It's a shame that the points variable is signed; if it were unsigned, this exploit would be so much faster. (Also, if it were 16-bit, the exploit would, again, be much faster, as you would only need -32769 points to trigger underflow.)
It is probably faster to just hex edit in max stats, and if you're speedrunning, it probably takes too long to do this exploit anyway.
1. Make sure you can equip steel armor. You need this to equip Lord Methats' Steel Pauldron, which (according to uesp) boosts Swimming skill when equipped. (Other skill boosting items should work, but avoid any that boost a skill that you expect to need constantly.)
2. Play through the first level normally, making sure to obtain the Pauldron. When you finish the level, make sure you have it equipped.
3. On the level up screen, lower your Swimming skill. After you lower it enough, your remaining points will become negative. Keep lowering it until it gets to some point between -2.1 billion and -2.2 billion, at which point (assuming the points are represented as a 32-bit integer) your points will underflow and become positive. (I stopped a bit after -5000, at which point points were at about -10 million; reaching -2.1 billion and underflow probably happens somewhere between -50,000 and -100,000.)
4. Use those bonus points to raise your stats to 100, then raise every skill except Swimming to 100.
5. Play through level 2 normally. (You won't need to swim in this level.) Wait until the message "Your Swimming skill has increased" disappears before going to the next level.
6. At the level up screen, your Swimming should now be 0. You can now raise the skill as normal. (I am not sure if points carry over; if they do not, you will need to raise Swimming normally.)
One side effect: For a while, you will see the message "Your Swimming skill has increased". This is because the game constantly checks to see if a skill is ready to increase, and if it is, the game increases the skill. It turns out that skills at negative values take no uses to increase, causing the game to constantly increase the skill until it becomes 0.
It's a shame that the points variable is signed; if it were unsigned, this exploit would be so much faster. (Also, if it were 16-bit, the exploit would, again, be much faster, as you would only need -32769 points to trigger underflow.)
It is probably faster to just hex edit in max stats, and if you're speedrunning, it probably takes too long to do this exploit anyway.