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General Info
1. About this Walkthrough 2. Keyboard Shortcuts
3. Party Consideration
3.1. Classes 3.2. Scrolls in the Game 3.3. Bracelets in the Game 4. Party Creation 5. Saving 6. A Note on XP 7. Grinding
Map of Athas 8. The Arena & Slave Pens
8.1. Leveling Up 8.2. Objective 8.3. Gilal & Dinos 8.4. Haunted House 8.5. Freeing Semyon 8.6. Merzol 8.7. King of the Pens 8.8. Mirlon & Pehtucl 8.9. The Great Escape
9. The Sewers
9.1. Churr and his Ratpack 9.2. Damsel in Distress 9.3. The Temple 9.4. Escape Routes
10. Return to the Slave Pens
10.1. Genocide 10.2. Loot 10.3. Freeing Trustee
11. Dagolar
11.1. The Inner Sanctum 11.2. Clean-up and Loot 11.3. Keldar: Old Dog, Old Tricks 11.4. The Big Reveal 11.5. The Man, The Myth 11.6. Rewards
12. Escape from the Sewers 13. Fields of Draj
13.1. Shops 13.2. Multiplying Items 13.3. Old One Eye 13.4. Fields of Draj Obelisk
14. White Sands
14.1. Laussa & Ssovan
15. Teaquetzl
15.1. Chahl 15.2. Equipment 15.3. The Visionary 15.4. Teaquetzl Obelisk
16. Nazca Lines
16.1. Feeling Salty 16.2. The Psionicist 16.3. A’Poss’s Heart
17. Red Sands Plateau
17.1. Red Sands Plateau Obelisk 17.2. Notaku 17.3. Master of Mastyrials
18. Wagon Train
18.1. First Allies
19. Sand Oasis
19.1. Tyrian Butterfly Wings 19.2. A Dish Served Cold
20. Elven Slavers
20.1. Getting Captured 20.2. Release 20.3. Second Allies 20.4. Retrieval
21. Elvish Caravan
21.1. Merchants 21.2. Elvish Caravan Obelisk 21.3. Ambush? 21.4. Drisana 21.5. Tidzio
22. Messenger Route
22.1. Messenger 22.2. Hototo & Dagger 23. Elven Slavers Redux 23.1. Metiklt
24. Hot Springs
24.1. Copper Mining 24.2. Patrol Duty
25. Gedron 26. Salt Oasis 27. Cedrilte
27.1. Cedrilte Obelisk 27.2. Terror Bloom
28. Undermountain
28.1. The Outcast 28.2. The Entity 28.3. The Queen 28.4. The Pact
29. Lower Castle
29.1. Serpent Boots 29.2. Initial Cleanup 29.3. Dark Flame 29.4. End of the Line
30. Upper Castle
30.1. The Good Druid 30.2. The Bad Master 30.3. The Ugly Tara 30.4. Return to Cedrilte 30.5. Third Allies
31. Temple Ruins
31.1. Tynan 31.2. Tristram 31.3. A’Poss 31.4. The Lovers
32. Lava Rift 33. Gem Fields
33.1. Hard Labor 33.2. Ylakez and Ketzia 33.3. We Axed For It 33.4. Makhlad 33.5. Hesutu
34. Silt Sea South 35. Silt Sea North
35.1. Jasmine 35.2. Wyrmias
36. Ssuran Ruins 37. Wyrm Belly 38. Wyrm Temple 39. Wyrm School
39.1. Draketooth 39.2. Balkazar 39.3. Terror Blade
40. Captured Gladiators
40.1. War Preparations
41. Korbnor
41.1. Cragg’s Body 41.2. Genie in a Bottle 41.3. The Wishes 41.4. Final Preparations
42. War
42.1. First Wave 42.2. Second Wave 42.3. Third Wave 42.4. Dragon’s Bane 42.5. Leader of the People
43. Preparations for Wake of the Ravager
43.1. Item Translation 43.2. My Selections 43.3. Special Notes
44. Cheats
44.1. Using Switches 44.2. Cheat Keys 44.3. Comprehensive Cheats

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands Walkthrough

44. Cheats

Command-line parameters are switches added in DOS (DosBox) to start the game. They change the game’s behavior slightly and are primarily used to enable cheats in the game, but a couple of them are also simply for convenience. To use them, you have to edit the DosBox configuration file which is used to launch the game (usually dosbox.conf in the game’s folder).

Open the file in a text editor like Notepad. At the very end you should have a section named [autoexec] under which are DOS and DosBox commands that launch the game. One of the lines will read Dsun or Dsun.exe. This is where you can add the switches accepted by the game, each separated by a space. For example, to enable all parameters, the line would be Dsun -k911 -s -m -a.

If you have installed the GOG version of the game, the default configuration file will be dosbox_darksun_single.conf and the command that starts the game will be darksun not Dsun.

44.1. Using Switches

-k911: This command-line parameter is required to enable cheats within the game. Without this, none of the cheat-related switches or built-in cheats will work.

-s: If cheats are enabled (by using -k911), everyone (irrespective of class) will have access to all mage and cleric spells, with 19 casts at each level. Note that this will not actually give you the spells, only access to those pages within the casting window. See Cheat Keys below for information on how to actually get all the spells.

-m: Start the game without music or sounds. This does not mute sounds, it simply does not load any sound files. That means that you will never be able to activate any sounds in the game while this switch is used. Changing the sound settings in the game’s options will have no effect. You’ll need to remove this switch to re-enable music and sounds. This switch was very useful on early computers when hardware resources were scarce and expensive—players with less memory or no sound card could still play the game by not loading the sounds.

-a: This switch only works along with -m, otherwise it has no effect. If both switches are used, the game skips all start-up animations including the SSI logo, the AD&D information, and the Dark Sun World splash screen. It also skips the note from Pehtucl that is usually displayed after starting a new game.

Sources on the internet claim that -p gives access to all psionics to psionicists, but this is not true. Psionicists already have access to all psionics and the spell cheat described below will give them the actual psionics in every branch.

By the way, you can skip the start-up animations (but not Pehtucl’s note) by spamming any key as the game is starting up. You don’t need any command-line switches for this.

44.2. Cheat Keys

Once you have enabled cheats (by starting the game with -k911), you can use the following keys or key combinations to apply certain cheats.

Alt+F2: Increase the current party leader’s attacks per round to 60 (30 per hand; so only 30 if wielding a single weapon) and movement steps to 100. You can change the party leader to each character and use this cheat to give them all superhuman APR and movement. Note that this boost is not permanent. It is reset each time a character levels up so you have to re-apply it every time.

Unarmed thri-kreens don’t get 30x4 APR. They only get 30 APR + 1 poison bite by using this cheat.

Alt+F4: Learn all mage and cleric spells irrespective of class and clerical sphere if -k911 and -s are both used to start the game. Upon using this cheat, everyone will be able to cast all spells and psionicists will be able to cast all psionics. These are permanent: once used, there is no way to unlearn the spells or psionics. All new psionics are learnt at level 1. Non-psionicists will not get all psionics even within their chosen school. Non-clerics will not get Turn Undead.

t (has to be lowercase; caps lock must be off): Increase the level/s of every character by 1. This only increases the levels of all classes of the characters and gives the benefits of the level-up (more HP, new spells and/or psionics for casters, etc.) but does not increase the XP required to reach that level. So if you do not cheat your way all the way up to level 9, you will still have to earn the XP for the levels you have already cheated before the characters can progress further.

Shift+T (or T if caps lock is on): Set everyone’s XP to 10,000,000, which will also result in everyone getting immediately to level 9 in all classes.

M (case is irrelevant): Restore all used-up spell slots. This will not restore your ability to cast spells if you have been hit in combat in a particular round.

44.3. Comprehensive Cheats

If you want more comprehensive cheats, install Cheat Engine and download my cheat table from https://fearlessrevolution.com/viewtopic.php?t=23768. It will let you edit every aspect of your characters within the game’s internal limits and give you abilities like being able to cast spells even if you have been hit in a particular round. You can even change your stats, race and classes on the fly if you are unhappy with your starting choices or simply want to experiment with different characters.

The cheat table will work only partially if you use the -m switch to launch the game.