So I'm at the point where I'm adding in side quests to supplement the main quest.

Between adding quests (been doing one a day usually they take an hour or two to fully implement) I've been trying to test my game.

Without fail I run into a fight that's too hard or too easy and want to tweak it, but my save game obviously won't reflect the changes - that requires a new game.

I know about moving meta.lsb and such, but is there an easier way? I can't imagine the divinity team played through D:OS time and time again to test minor late game changes.

QA has a version of the executable in early testing with cheats that can be used to teleport, level, add items, trigger story updates, kill all opponents in combat, etc. Once an update starts getting close to being finalized, it needs to be tested without using any cheats.

I remember that time they patched the beta and accidentally left teleport enabled. Good times.

So I've come up with a couple of things to alleviate the repetitiveness of multiple playthroughs.

An item that if "active" makes any creature that attacks you instantly die (wasn't able to figure out how to make it usable and targeted, but this works)

An item that provides an instant level up

An item that allows you to teleport to a bunch of different waypoints.

Here we go with test run #3423489234!

Bleh, can't use debug mode to insta-kill non global monsters. Back to the drawing board unless I want to just make everything global...

...would that have unforseen consequences?

Larian mostly did. Out of 1278 characters on Cyseal 1117 of them are global. And 1/3rd of the non-globals are rats......

Only consequence I can think of is dialog. If your monsters don't have any (or that ones that do are already global) then it shouldn't be a problem. At least it's fairly easy to change back, other than being time consuming.

You could just create a weapon with something like a 5k-6k damage range; then it wouldn't matter much if an opponent was global, or not.

You could probably add a block of code to the DefaultCharacter charScript that checks whether your item is active or not, and then die upon their combat turn starting if so. Non-global creatures are still affected by their charScript code if it is attached to them.

I set my main players to level 30 on their side properties bar and gave them insanely overpowered weapons when I needed to quickly skim through the fight sequences to test the story. This does get difficult when you have as many branches as I did so unfortunately my game still has flaws. In editing mode, you can also speed up a story run by pausing the game and teleporting the players to the next location (though this doesn't work as well when the game is close to completion as the intro screen messing things up and triggers become important).

If you want to test the difficulty of certain mobs, you could make an extra area or use an empty one, and put down the mobs you want to test in different sections so you can run from one to the next and see how hard they are. Drop a few potions or a bed so you can restore your HP to full after each fight.

Undoubtedly you will also miss things that other people will find since different people play differently. I had three other people play my game to watch how they would break the game with their own playstyles. One was just trolling and trying to break everything intentionally, which is called chaos testing and actually helps.

Helpful Programs: Asana helped me organize my tests and keep track of results, such as what still needed to be fixed and what worked. Basically, you can create lists, prioritize items, make notes, and check things off when they are complete. I also found something called a Cheat Engine for D:OS which may help since the person scripted in a godmode and unlimited action points etc. I've never used it myself though.