I’ll admit it: I’m not above exploiting a game if I feel like it adds to the experience. In the case of Left 4 Dead 2, when I ran into some players who taught me a trick to lagging out the game, I was happy to play along.
The trick was you had to quickly swap between dual pistols and some kind of melee weapon. Eventually the technique would start producing duplicate pistols and, if you kept it up long enough, you’d spam the floor with them. The game would subsequently lag out, meaning you could easily avoid enemies’ paths instead of bothering yourself with killing them. Why would you do this? To run through each level on expert mode, of course! That may sound like it kills the challenge and purpose of the game, but it was the tank battles and confrontations with Left 4 Dead 2‘s other special enemies that were all the more entertaining because of it.
I distinctly remember the combat-dance my teammates and I had to partake in against the tank, timing hits as best we could, taking the delay of its actions into account. Eventually you’d start to really learn its movements, and it felt like an entirely new boss with just the right amount of unpredictability.
So, what are your exploit stories?
GIF: MrDevilous
Comments
84 responses to “Tell Us About The Time You Exploited A Game”
Duping top tier weapons and armor relentlessly in Diablo 1.
And Borderlands 2, with a co-op partner.
“Check out this unbelievably cool gun I found!”
“Cool! Can I have a copy?”
“Sure!”
lol, my wife spent days trying to get the Bee Shield to drop from a certain mob. One day a friend of ours jumps into our game and just shits his inventory all over the floor. Multiple bee shields, conference calls, a bunch of other weapons including that one SMG with the reload/grenade ability that we used to kill the first DLC’s raid boss in like 9 seconds.
Good times.
Duplicating items to x999 in Dying Light
Teach me
Haha sorry mate they patched it. I had 999 metkits, 999 molotovs, even had 999 Care drops or whatever they were called handed them in and went up 9 ranks to 25.
Jumping out of the city map in Skyrim to get endless ingots… mmmmm, crafting
Missingno.
’nuff said.
Damnit! Beat me to it!
Haha, before I posted it – I had a quick look through the previous few comments. Couldn’t believe that it had not been mentioned.
Sometimes an exploit becomes a feature.
In Dota, neutral creeps spawn in the jungle at X:00 if their spawn box is empty. You’re meant to kill the camp to let a new one spawn but you can pull a camp out of their box with the right timing, causing a new one to spawn. The trick is called stacking and it’s now expected that all supports know how to do it. I’m sure there are dozens of other interactions just like that in Dota that I just can’t think of.
For single player stuff, there are a handful of exploits I use all of the time in Spelunky. Mostly they come up in high score attempts. If you whip a stack of three gold bricks as you pick it up, the stack will fall apart into three separate bricks (worth $500 each) while you get the $1500 for picking up the stack. It’s a two frame trick that I don’t always get but still neat to pull off.
There are also “pot strats” where any pot that you can normally destroy to spawn an enemy or treasure at random can trigger it’s spawn twice if you open it with an explosion. Stack a whole bunch of pots together while you’re doing a score run and blow them up to get potentially double the gems. If you’re ghosting (this one is an actual feature where you wait for the ghost to spawn at 2:30 and make it go over a gem to turn it into a diamond), this can give you tens of thousands of dollars per level.
Spelunky also has some interesting hitboxes. It’s possible to jump over a giant spider in the mines or mummy in the temple and skid over them with the right timing. Sometimes it’s the difference between life and death but mostly it just looks cool.
Age and lifestyle choices affect my memory – but wasnt Quake’s rocket jumps officially an exploit of the game mechanics which quickly became a staple of the l33t?
If not, bunny hopping certainly was.
ROFL – that was a favourite in my BF days. Especially jumping and going prone right away.
dolphin diving
Yeah! That was The term.
In my mind the BF games of 2003 to 2007 totally more ‘fun’ than the more recent iterations. Even with that buggy scatalogical expression called BFV.
I remember duping items in Diablo. Drop said item/pile of gold on the ground, go to pick it up, and the moment you pick it up, grab a potion off your quick bar. Quick bar potion turns into copy of the item you just picked up, which is now in your inventory. Highly useful for duping 5K piles of gold and spell books for the wizard.
I remember one from Killing floor as well – could power level the medic by just leaving him to heal someone overnight by holding a key and hitting max level? Forget what it was exactly.
My Diablo duping trick was mostly the same, but instead of clicking a potion I pressed ‘I’ to open the inventory on the same frame the item was picked up leading to it being in the inventory and under the cursor.
Command & Conquer.
Sandbags.
Sandbags everywhere. And a mini gunner north of your base ‘watching’ for enemy air support.
Ah, this one time I exploited a game by installing it on D: drive instead of C: drive so it would be secluded from all my other games. D: (labelled Dungeon Drive) was a cold, empty and dark place.
Little did anyone know that It was a stolen game.
I would go to D: and run the game only a couple of times a day, feeding it random commands each time, while the game was slowly breaking.
Eventually I became worried, thinking that the cops were on to me because it was a stolen copy. So a few weeks later I concluded my sadistic exploitation and uninstalled it. Nobody ever caught me.
PIRATE! PIRATE! POLICE!! YOU PRACTICALLY STOLE A CAR! IT’S THE SAME THING!
FYI it came with a free purse and $3.65
Bargain.
Will you teach me your ways?
Of course. First go to Bunnings and get yourself a crowbar…
Awesome.
You wouldn’t STEAL A BABY!?
No, but I’d download one.
FYI, the music in the YOU WOULDN’T STEAL A CAR ad was pirated :p
I did hear this. Many laughs were had.
I had a good chuckle when I found this out. Hypocritical bastards.
TIL …
Cloning my Feraligatr in Pokemon Gold so I could destroy everything.
And cloning rare candies and master balls at the same time.
I was just a kid, so thought it, and I, were really cool.
I try to avoid exploiting games these days.
I occasionally help out in raids in Destiny, and silently wonder why we can’t just fight the raids as intended.
I’ve yet to do the bridge in Crota’s raid as intended. I have solo’d the abyss with my bladedancer though. I mean it’s not “as intended” but I ran past every single lamp then held position at the end until the bridge formed. That counts, right?
I remember playing Elder Scrolls Oblivion, and somehow duplicating ridiculous amounts of arrows and potions behind some houses in Cheyindahl.
I just loved how the NPC’s would walk past and stop and stare at you as you were dropping items from the sky, like you were some sort of wizard.
Draw your bow and go to drop an item after doing something. Great way to make the game lag out like crazy. Do it on the top of a hill for great effect.
That’s exactly it, I couldn’t remember how but that’s exactly how it worked lol.
W-item trick. Made FF7 the only game where I actually used Megalixirs.
Did the missingno glitch as a kid with Pokemon Blue I actually corrupted my save drive in the end, sent my cart back to Nintendo and they actually gave me a brand new copy lol that was awesome of them to do.
In Skyrim I used the bookcase glitch to max out all my stats with that Oghma Infinium, however this was my 2nd or 3rd play through so naturally i was going to look for shortcuts.
Also abused a lot of exploits with my short stint with Destiny… however considering how buggy raids were I think it only leveled the playing field.
Countless other examples, but only reminding me how much of a terrible cheat I am D:
One of the earliest I can remember is cloning rare candies in pokemon blue/red. Other than that, the loot cave springs to mind.
Morrowind. While recovering drained intelligence after a fight, my brother noticed that it doesn’t just restore magicka capacity (expected as capacity is derived from intelligence), but also keeps the same percentage of magicka. We went experimenting with spell crafting and enchanting and found draining your intelligence below 0 for a brief moment sets your magicka to 0/0 (as expected), but this calculates to 100% when the drain finishes.
Much fun was had with infinite magicka mages.
Deus Ex (original) – Pausing the game while lockpicking or using a multitool wouldn’t stop the device from working, and it wouldn’t break in that time. This meant you could open any lock or keypad with just one pick/tool instead of many (uncrackable locks and keypads were an unfortunate exception), which also meant you didn’t need to upgrade these skills.
Got stuck while playing it recently without the right upgrades or enough lockpicks and the internet told me to do exactly this.
Does the loot cave in Destiny count? God….pour one out for the cave. You still missed homie!
Replaying the crap out of high paying high XP missions in GTA Online. Didn’t use any other glitches though, and did freak out a little I might get banned when some random gifted me millions. Stopped playing after I ported my character to Xbox One and my name was changed due to being “Racist”.
I remember when someone gifted me millions I hard reset my 360. Was gone when it reloaded. The relief was real.
I didn’t play for a month. I wasn’t banned, and still had the money haha.
Mmm… Back when the WoW client was less secure I port hacked by changing my xyz coords in ram – does that count?
Sonic 3
Screen wrapping
Failed many times but manage to get it once and went in the wrong direction to my death
Alchemy in Morrowind
before they patched it in WoW we used to mind control people and make them leave the battleground they were in.
You mean to say you’d use your powers to get people to stop playing the game and go outside?
YOU MONSTER!
Really, you’re talking about going outside, instead of gaming, here?
Just talking about it. I’d never actually consider it, but.
HAHA in the same vein there was also the Saurfang rage bug that let Alliance tear into Orgrimmar.
Back when I first started playing Dark Souls 1, I played the entire game without ever having my Xbox go online so I could do the glitch where when you died, you’d just back out of the game and come back in and you didn’t lose your Souls.
Skyrim, hidden merchant chest in Dawnstar
Used shortcuts/exploits in Destiny to beat the abyss and bridge sections of the Crota’s End raid on hard mode, but given that Bungie designed the hard mode to be inherently unfair in the laziest way possible I consider this a fitting tribute and don’t feel bad about it in the slightest.
Also used a trading guide on my second playthrough of GTAV to get in excess of $1bn on each character by abusing the assassination missions, but again, I feel like this is basically necessary since there isn’t really any way to make the tens of millions necessary to buy all the properties otherwise.
I’m sure there’s a dozen examples but one of my earliest clear exploits I can remember was doing the LVU Campus T-Hunt mission in the original Rainbox Six: Vegas. Since the better multiplayer weapons/equipment were locked behind higher ranks, people used to do T-Hunt on “realistic” difficulty to unlock stuff.
Anyway on this particular level it was discovered that if you got to a certain set of doors and placed a breaching charge, then repeatedly opened and closed the doors to trigger the noise (but blocked the door to keep them from actually opening) you could attract the attention of the majority of the enemies in the level so they would all cluster around the other side of the door but be unable to come through. You could also glitch the third person camera through the wall to check progress on how this was going.
So, once everyone is in position you detonate the charge and boom, most of the 20 or so terrorists would be dead, and you just have to perform cleanup on the few remaining.
One of the first bosses in Borderlands 2. I was rushing through and seriously ‘under gunned’ for the battle… He shot a rocket at me which blasted me up into/inside a wall where I was ‘semi-stuck’ and he couldn’t hit me. Took him out with my crappy pistol.
I Bot WoW more than I play it.
The original Halo.
To complete it on Legendary my mate and I would have one person hang back in a “safe” area and take turns throwing ourselves at the enemies to slowly whittle them away.
A never ending army of cloned spartans we were.
Took us a long time to finish it but we stuck at it for a year spending maybe 4 to 7 hours on every level.
In Blood there was a Multiplayer map, with a hidden passage behind a clock. You could stand were the clock sprite was, then close the clock and you’d clip under it, being able to still shoot and view under the clock. You weren’t visible until the clock passage was opened again.
This was the time when LANs consisted of 5 PCs in your friends tiny bedroom, so it made for some good laughs.
Master Blaster pause trick on the NES. Throw a grenade at a boss and when it explodes hit pause, the grenade infinite explodes and takes damage off the boss.
Super Mario 3 – 99 lives on the second level. Just keep bouncing on those goombas as they come out of the pipe.
I’m partial to save scumming in CK2.. love my 103 year old emperor, on his 5th wife, multiple lovers 80 years younger than him. All while he leads troops from the front lines of his latest crusade.
Just Cause grappling hook while skydiving.
Showing my age here…..
The invisible throw and invincibility freeze with guile.
Oh how that pissed off the big kids at the local fish and chips shop.
I tried Two Worlds a few years ago and finished the game within a couple of minutes.. by accident.
I was playing the game thinking, this is such an awful game. Then I started talking to this evil looking guy in town, ignored him and ran out of town, only to be chased by goblins or trolls or whatever they were. I ran back into the town for assistance, where this evil looking guy and the towns people started attacking them for me .. well, this evil looking guy accidentally hit a civilian which turns out, they are all invincible. Yeah.. he pissed off the whole town
Long story short, the whole town killed this guy. Who turns out to be the last boss of the game. Which started the ending cut scene .. I was dumbfounded and never played the game again.
Fun times
10/10 would exploit again
Dislodging the game cartridge in my Sega Master System just enough that the game could keep running but the memory was corrupted and produced all sorts of wonderful side effects.
Gaming the assist points system in the original release of BF2. Best times were when four of us would grind along in a remote part of a 64 player server. Two Medics and two supports – one of each from each side. We’d take turns shooting, reviving and rearming each other. But they killed that in subsequent patches.
Before that, the closest thing to exploiting a game would have been ‘nade spam in BF42 or adding macros to keybindings in Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein Enemy Territory.
Unreal Tournament 2003 many years ago.
Last bot on hard mode 1v1 in a square maze-like room. Was leading 9-0 (to reach 10) and then the bot became godly. The game did NOT want me to win and the bot basically killed me as soon as it had line of sight. I had a few games which I lost 9-10 and then raged it up.
Activated the god mode cheat from the console and laughed at the bot as he stood right next to me fruitlessly unloading endless clips into me. I took great pleasure sniping his face point blank to finish the game. I don’t regret it at all.
EDIT: I know it’s not an exploit and is a cheat, but had the same result nonetheless.
I get a real kick out of breaking the economy in games.
One of the first things I did in AC2 was set up that town so it was making money hand over fist.
I assume almost everyone did the clock adjust things in the Fable games.
I dunno about clock adjust, but if you bought everything in a shop you could sell it all back at a higher price… I got totally rich doing that!
I… did not know that.
I just used to buy every house and shop.
Ok, this is old school, but Item duplication on Wild Arms 1 on the original Playstation 😛 99 of the ambrosias, sherrif stars etc
I think the last time I exploited was using noclip I fail at cheating
I lured the mid-level boss in the final level of Tenchu all the way back to the start of the level and got him to fall in the river (cue awkward cut back to the temple with cutscene of him being stabbed) 😀
I used the Missingno “cheat” in the original Pokemon games, as well as the famous Mew glitch.
Then in Pokemon Gold I cloned a lot of Pokemon to get heaps of master balls and rare candies.
When I was playing borderlands online once a random player just handed over an infinite shield and an instant kill rifle. I finished the game with them and I’m not actually sure if it made the game more or less fun.
Doom (Playstation) : tag teaming a cyberdemon in ultraviolence co-op with only pistols and fists because we kept dying/running out of ammo thanks to űber critters like that showing up way earlier than expected.
S. T. A. L. K. E. R (PC) : Loading a corpse with a tonne or more of weapons, equipment, and supplies; then dragging it around the map to avoid lengthy and expensive resupply runs.
Homeworld (PC) : Salvaging everything… Fleet cap be damned.
Used the 3 person campaign glitch in the Halo 3 campaign. Set it to legendary and then my friend and I would hide the 3rd player somewhere safe and infinitely respawn. We finished the game in a week of hard-core playing
more of a scam.
Back in the Runescape days when I was a young kid.
I used to message randoms saying that they won the “jagex lottery”
I’d get them to call my mobile to “verify their details” which I would then proceed to change their passwords, I’d then login and take all their items.
The fact that said players believed my 13 year old kiddy voice is really saying something lol
This method worked about 80% of the time too.
Halo 2 breaking the map in many different levels 🙂
Getting the hidden Mace of Doom in ES Oblivion by saving in one of the DLC buildings, deleting the DLC and spawning underground snd being able to get to the testing area. That weapon made everything cake as it was gamebreakingly strong. Wack dead, wack dead. And the glitches in Mario Kart64, hopping over walls etc. Getting to the secret intro area in GTAIII. I love doing that kind off stuff out of curiosity!
IDDQD, IDKFA, IDCLIP, IDSPOSPOPD So many good times. Haven’t played it for 7 or so years but those codes will always be there in my head.
The Mew glitch in Pokemon Red. Didn’t learn about how to do it right until after Ruby and Sapphire came out, but it was still cool to discover. I did use the trade duplication glitch with Red and Blue though. I had a team of Mewtwos because obviously, I thought at the time, the rarest Pokemon must be the best.
Another glitch, which I never figured out HOW I did it, was in the PS1 Star Wars Episode 1 game. I managed to glitch a new game to start with my entire inventory from a saved file at the end of the game. The best part of that was that you could change your character’s equipped item mid cut-scene so I would swap Obi Wan’s lightsaber for a proton missile launcher and he’d wave it around like an idiot during scenes. I thought it was hilarious.