You’ve been there. You’re stuck on a boss for three hours, or maybe you’re just sick of grinding for gold in a single-player RPG that feels more like a second job than a hobby. Most people think of "hacking" as some Matrix-style screen of falling green text, but honestly, it’s usually just a guy in a hoodie staring at a memory hex editor. That’s where learning how to use Cheat Engine comes in. It is the Swiss Army knife of the PC gaming world. It's been around since 2008, created by Eric "Dark Byte" Heijnen, and it remains the gold standard because it doesn't just "cheat"—it pulls back the curtain on how software actually thinks.
Cheat Engine is essentially a memory scanner. When a game runs, it stores variables—like your health, your ammo, or your coordinates in the world—in your computer’s RAM. Cheat Engine finds those specific addresses and lets you overwrite them. Want 99,999 gold? You just find the number representing your current gold and tell the RAM it’s actually a much larger number. It sounds simple. It often is. But if you’ve ever tried to use it on a modern game and ended up crashing your desktop, you know there’s a bit more nuance to it than just clicking a button.
Getting the Basics Right Without Breaking Your PC
Before you even touch a game, you have to install the thing. A word of warning: the official installer from cheatengine.org often includes "bundled" software or "offers." It’s not a virus, but it’s annoying. You have to be that person who actually reads the installation prompts and clicks "Decline" on the extra browser toolbars. Once it’s on your system, the interface looks like something straight out of Windows 95. Don’t let that fool you. It’s incredibly powerful.
To start, you open Cheat Engine and then open your game. You’ll see a glowing computer icon in the top left corner. Click that. This is the Process List. You need to tell Cheat Engine which specific program it should be "looking" at. If you’re playing The Witcher 3, look for the Witcher3.exe. If you select the wrong process, like your web browser, nothing is going to happen. Or worse, you’ll accidentally freeze your Chrome tabs while trying to give yourself infinite mana.
The First Scan: Finding Your Data
Let's say you have 500 gold. You type "500" into the Value box and hit "First Scan." Cheat Engine will find every single piece of data in your RAM that currently equals 500. There will be thousands of them. Some might be the game's volume setting, others might be the X-coordinate of a random bird flying in the distance. You can't just change all of them, or the game will explode.
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You have to filter it down. Go back to the game, buy a potion, and drop your gold to 450. Now, type "450" in Cheat Engine and hit "Next Scan." This is the most important step. It narrows the list down to only the addresses that changed from 500 to 450. Usually, after two or three scans, you’re left with just one or two addresses. Those are your gold values. You double-click them to move them to the bottom list, change the value to whatever you want, and boom—instant billionaire.
Why Values Sometimes "Disappear" or Reset
Ever changed a value only to have it snap back to the original number a second later? It’s frustrating. You think you’ve won, but the game is smarter than you. This usually happens because of "Visual Values." In some games, the number you see on the screen isn't the actual number used for calculations; it’s just a display. The real number might be stored in a different format or even encrypted.
Then there’s the "Value Type" problem. Not every number is a "4-byte" integer.
- Floats: Used for things like health bars or coordinates that have decimals.
- Doubles: More precise decimals.
- Strings: Actual text, like a character's name.
- Bites: Small numbers, usually 0 to 255.
If you’re searching for health and "4-byte" isn't working, try "Float." If you see a health bar but no number, you have to use the "Unknown Initial Value" scan type. You scan, then you go get hit by an enemy, then you scan for "Decreased Value." It’s tedious. It takes patience. But it works for almost any single-player game ever made.
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The Elephant in the Room: Anti-Cheat and Multiplayer
Let’s be real for a second. If you try to use Cheat Engine on Valorant, Call of Duty, or Apex Legends, you are going to get banned. Fast. Modern multiplayer games use kernel-level anti-cheats like Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) or BattlEye. These programs are designed specifically to look for Cheat Engine running in the background. They will see it the moment you attach the process.
Even if you manage to bypass the detection, most multiplayer values are "server-side." This means your gold or your rank isn't stored on your computer; it's stored on a massive server in a data center somewhere. You can change the number on your screen to 1,000,000, but the moment you try to buy something, the server says, "Wait, my records say you only have 50," and the transaction fails. Cheat Engine is for local memory. It is a tool for single-player exploration, modding, and debugging. Don't ruin someone else's afternoon by trying to bring it into a competitive lobby.
Advanced Techniques: Pointers and Assembly
Once you get tired of scanning for the same value every time you restart the game, you’ll want to learn about Pointers. See, every time you close a game, the RAM gets cleared. When you open it again, your gold will be at a completely different memory address. If you want a cheat that works every time, you have to find the "Base Address" or a "Pointer Trail."
This involves "Right-clicking" an address and selecting "Find out what accesses this address." This opens a debugger. It shows you the actual assembly code—the raw instructions the CPU is following. You’ll see things like mov [eax+18], ecx. This is where the real magic happens. You’re looking at the game’s DNA. By using a "code injection," you can change the instruction sub (subtract) to add. Now, every time you spend money, your gold goes up instead of down.
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Safety and Best Practices
Honestly, the biggest risk isn't a virus; it's corrupting your save file. Always, always back up your saves before you start poking around in the memory. One wrong move, one "invalid pointer," and your 100-hour save file can become a pile of unreadable digital junk.
Also, keep an eye on your CPU usage. If you do a "Scan for All Types" on a massive game, Cheat Engine can temporarily freeze your system while it sifts through gigabytes of data. It’s a heavy-duty tool. Treat it with a bit of respect.
Practical Steps for Your Next Session
If you’re ready to dive in, start with an older, simpler game. Something like Plants vs. Zombies or an old emulated SNES game. They have very simple memory structures that are perfect for practicing.
- Open Cheat Engine and the game.
- Attach the process using the computer icon.
- Search for a specific number (Gold, Ammo, etc.).
- Change that number in-game.
- Scan for the new number.
- Repeat until you have 1-5 addresses left.
- Change them to 9999 and see what happens.
If you want to go deeper, the Cheat Engine official website has a built-in "Tutorial" program. It’s a small app that walks you through increasingly difficult steps, from simple scans to multi-level pointers and code injection. It’s the best way to learn without the pressure of a real game crashing on you. Use "Cheat Tables" (.CT files) created by the community on sites like FearLess Revolution if you want to see how the pros do it. These tables are pre-made scripts that do the hard work for you, but reading through them is a fantastic way to understand how complex game logic is structured.
Just remember: it's about having more fun with the games you bought. Use it to bypass annoying grinds or to explore maps you aren't supposed to see. Just keep it out of the online arenas.