Hex1: Grudge Staff

Ok so to start off with learning hex I think we should start with... well, basically start where I did. This was one of the first things I ever learned to edit with effects. That is Hit Effects. Some of you may have seen an example of this kind of edit with my BLACK katanas.

The BLACK Katanas are made in a different way however, they are made with the effects being called from 0.DAT. I will teach you to make weapons with the effects stored on the weapons themselves, thus eliminating the need for 0.DAT. The reason I made BLACK Katanas with 0.DAT is because when I made them, I had been testing with effects on the weapon itself.

It would work fine 'in game' however if you had the weapon equipped on the select character screen the game would explode. I tried this method I will teach you earlier today, and it seems to work, however I would love to see your results after you try it out! People seem to love effect edits because they are very flashy, so be sure to share your effect edits with everyone!

We'll start a whole new thing together! (I pray it doesn't turn out like my HQ discovery ;; )

Ok First things first we need to know what programs you'll need.

Firstly you'll need Altanaviewer : Download Here (Mortama Rocks!)

Next you'll need a Hex Editor : Pixel and I use Hex Workshop but some people use PSPad... I find that to be horrible in comparison so avoid that if you can. (I dont know controls or anything for PSPad, and some things are different)

I think that's about it for this guide, so I guess we'll get started.

Firstly you would start off cruisin the Altanaviewer Effects tab finding an effect you want to attach to your weapon for a hit effect. For the sake of this guide I will be adding the "Everyones Grudge" or whatever its called Tonberry attack hit effect to my "Grudge Staff" (Edited Trick staff, you can use Trick Staff for this if you want to follow along exactly)

As you can see here, even though I have my staff edited to look like an awesome tonberry ghost thing, it will still hit like a normal boring everyday weapon. This is fine and all, however I want my staff to be super special! I want to blow some pants off with my ghost attack!

So to start off we'll need to simply open both the Tonberry Effect dat (ROM2/23/88.DAT) and the weapon dat (For Galka ROM/128/1.DAT) in the Hex Editor. I know this will look really daunting with all these numbers and letters staring at you, but after a while you will get used to the looks and begin to understand it like its a picture.

The first thing to do when you are editing something in hex is to quickly just press CTRL+S (Save command) to prompt a window that will ask you if you want to create a backup of the dat before you save. Select Yes, then remember everytime after this you will need to select No when it asks you to create a backup (you want the .BAK to remain crisp and clean in case of messup)

The next step is to get the Tonberry Hit Effect into the weapon dat, so naturally there will be some copy pasting here.

You will need to click on the 88.DAT tab at the bottom of the hex screen to switch to the Tonberry dat's hex. Press CTRL+A (universal 'select all command') to select everything, and then CTRL+C (universal 'copy' command) to copy the dat onto your computers clipboard.

Once you have this all copied, you need to go to your weapon dat tab at the bottom of the screen.

In this dat you need to go to the very very bottom of the dat, you will see end......... (Possibly 1, possibly more than 1) and above it will be infoE..... (possibly not, depending on the dat) You need to put the cursor right in FRONT of infoE...... (or the first end..... if the dat has no infoE) and paste all of the Tonberry attack dat there. (Edit> Paste Special> Hex Workshop Binary Data)

Once this is done you are essentially done! Just a few things we need to do to get it fully working. The Tonberry attack DAT and the Weapon dat are now fused together, however the weapon is still looking to call the normal boring hit1 effect from 0.DAT (Check this guide if you want more info on hit1) Therefore we have to change this so it will call tgt0 from the Tonberry attack DAT. I say tgt0 because in Altanaview you can see that the Tonberry Attack is split up into pieces, or "Schedules". If you look in AV you can see that tgt0 is the schedule of the 'hit' effect on the effect. This will usually be true in most other effects as well, they are usually called 'tgt0' or 'tar1' or something along those lines. Here is a pic showing you where it shows this in AV.

Now do a search for "hit1" in the hex editor. To do this you need to press CTRL+F (Find) to bring up a screen of search options. Change "Type" to Text String and search "hit1".

In this case it should come up with 3 different results of "hit1" because some of the tonberry attack uses hit1 as well. However the first "hit1" in the results is the one we want, it should be towards the top of the dat, around it should be the word shit, thats when you know you're in the right place.

Change this hit1 into tgt0, now save and open up AltanaViewer again. In Altanaviewer equip the weapon you edited on your character, and select "chit" in the (Basic) actions section.

If everything went right, it should show the Tonberry attack on your character. Now you can go in game and test it out. If it freezes the game you likely posted the Tonberry dat in the wrong position of the dat >0<;


This is a sloppy way of doing this, however for a first guide, I believe it should be kept simple so not to discourage you! If it worked, congrats! If it didnt, try again! This same thing can be applied to other effects, that arent necessarily Tonberry attack. For example you could make the FLARE HAMMAR, or even a BAN HAMMAR with one of the text effects, in the end its all up to your imagination!

On the next guide I will try to teach you more in depth details about effect dats and how to take out parts of an effect you dont want. As always, any questions you have you can feel free to post here or PM me on FFXIDats! Thanks for reading and be sure to tell us about your success/failure! I'm interested in seeing how you guys do! Seeya!

-Mooshywooshy