Don't fret over getting cheats for HMM3. Because it can all be had through the map editor. You can set up your own maps, give your hero gold & other resources, any of the artifacts, any spells, set up any castle you want, etc. And your game score DOES NOT include the label "cheater."

I enjoy using the map editor as much as the game itself. And many people agree with me that HMM3 is the best of all the 5 HMM games. HMM4 & 5 had map editors in the planning stages, but they never came to fruition.

You may also use a memory editor to alter the resources. That also won't get you a cheater label. Anyway I think it is not needed to cheat the game because there is the difficulty setting if you can't manage to win on normal difficulty.

Though, for me, it has nothing to do with not being able to win, sometimes you just want to have a massive army of 1203246123156 Black Dragons. Or simply take the resources out, by maxing them out and making the game a race for time, not money.

or, for me, it was that I was 10-14 and no good at planning (I played to build cities not armies, lol).

Sadly, the unit quantity value is 4 bytes, so you can only have around 4 billion of them.

Personally I actually enjoy some degree of cheating (via Cheat Engine) in HOMM3. I can get rid of useless skills like Eagle Eye and replace them with something more useful; or I can give magic-users the one stat point they were shortchanged without having to repack the .lod files. Unlike using the map editor, you can do it in the campaign, too. Mostly I use it to bypass particularly irritating level design, like having Town Portal disallowed for the player 5 maps in a row... or giving the main enemy hero Fly, allowing him to attack with a humongous force inside the first week.

How would you use the map editor to alter some of the campaign scenarios? I saw in an online faq that says the “campaign.tmp” file in the maps directory can be altered. However, after looking in every folder I could not find it.

As far as choosing the difficulty level, I have not been able to do that myself playing the restoration campaign. Though if my understanding is correct that ability comes in one of the expansions.

Yes, I am one of those schmucks that has a hard time with this game at higher difficulty levels and being able to alter some of this stuff from the get go would go a long way for me.


I am just adding this addendum to answer my own question. On a forum post at http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=26941
a moderator by the name of Cepheus typed this out:

Ok, now for another patent-pending tutorial by the HC chicken.

1. Download ResEdit here.

2. Enter ResEdit, click Open and locate your Heroes III data directory. Open the file named H3bitmap.lod for RoE, SoD or WoG campaigns, and H3ab_bmp.lod for AB campaigns.

3. In the tab next to QuickView, highlight .h3c. You should be able to see plenty of campaigns to extract.

4. Extract the campaigns you want to edit. Their names are self-explanatory. To set an extract path, press Ctrl+F. To extract highlighted files to that path, press F2.

5. Now meddle with the extracted campaigns using the campaign and map editors. Once done, pack everything back into the campaign.

6. To play the edited campaign, just drop it into your Heroes III map directory, start Heroes III and select Custom Campaign from the New Game menu.

Note. It's possible to repack the edited campaign back into the data files, thus making your changes permanent short of a reinstallation. However, you need a different program for that, and it's possible to make game-crashing errors in doing so.

I have downloaded the resEdit and am going to play around with it for a little bit. I’ll let you all know how it works out.

The resEdit tool actually works very well. It can be a bit confusing, but if the steps outlined in the forum post are followed it’s no problem at all. After the campaign you want is extracted, just use the campaign editor that came with the heroes 3 complete package to open them up. From there you can alter the campaign as a whole (example: prologue) or if you want to fine tune something particular on the map (example: max hero level) export the maps using the campaign editor and follow up with the map editor.

For adjusting the difficulty level I have found that both the campaign and the individual scenario maps have this setting. I believe that the campaign setting is there just to “show” you what it is. It doesn’t actually alter the map itself in any way. So if you want to actually adjust the difficulty it would have to be adjusted on the map level. That is done on the menu bar within the map editor. Go to tool then click on map specifications.

I’ll have to play around with it further by playing multiple scenarios in the campaign (and that will take a bit) but it seems that you don’t have to play a custom campaign after you have adjusted the settings to the campaign and maps. Just drop the now altered campaign into the heroes III map directory and start a normal campaign. Thus far every change I have made is showing up, but I won’t be able to see long term effects until after I’ve played a couple of scenarios.

I’ll update as more information becomes available.

The changes made carried over from scenario to scenario within the first campaign. At least the first 2. So I am content to call this method successful. :)

Hey! How did you manage to edit skills in HEX? Mind sharing your knowledge of the addresses? I'd love to get rid of Eagle Eye...