Cheat System
Hidden cheat system built into the Redguard game engine. The 13 cheat codes are XOR-obfuscated in the binary (each byte XOR’d with 0xAA) and not documented in any official or community source at the time of writing.
Activation
Cheats can be triggered in three ways:
During Gameplay (no console)
Type the cheat name on the keyboard during normal gameplay and press Enter. The engine reads keypresses every frame into a hidden 127-character input buffer. On Enter, the buffer is compared against all cheat names. No visual feedback is given — the cheat silently toggles.
Developer Console
Press F12 to open the console, type the cheat name, and press Enter. The console prints Cheat <name> turned on or Cheat <name> turned off.
Console with Explicit Value
In the console, use <cheatname> = <value> to set a specific integer value instead of toggling. For example, magiccarpet = 1 forces the cheat on, magiccarpet = 0 forces it off.
Cheat List
| # | Name | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | oracle | Lists all 13 cheats and their current on/off state in the console |
| 1 | nodemarker | Debug display of pathfinding node markers — renders the navigation waypoint network used for actor movement. Corresponds to the node_marker key in SYSTEM.INI [debug] (related settings: display_node_map, display_nodes, display_markers). The SOUP scripting layer uses this network via functions like movenodemarker, atnodemarker, disablenodemaps, and enablenodemaps. |
| 2 | moonraker | For the player actor, skips several combat/movement processing calls and flips a player state bit used in combat flow |
| 3 | task | Toggles the task scheduling system — a high-level bytecode-driven behavior scheduler that runs on top of SOUP scripts. SOUP is the low-level scripting VM (“do X right now”); the task system is the higher-level sequencer (“do X, then Y, then Z over time”). Each actor has 6 independent task slots with their own bytecode pointers and frame counters. When enabled, a state machine interpreter processes ~30 task opcodes (0x00–0x1e) per actor per frame, handling action queuing, behavior transitions, AI/combat processing (pathfinding, combat stances, NPC-vs-player logic), and actor destruction. When disabled, only SOUP script execution runs — actors lose multi-step behaviors, combat AI, and pathfinding. Corresponds to task_system in SYSTEM.INI [system] (default: yes). |
| 4 | animation | Toggles the animation state machine — the system that manages animation playback, transitions, blending, and frame timing for all actors. When enabled, actors play animations (walk, fight, idle, etc.) with managed transitions and priority blending, and combat actions are gated by animation timing (a new attack cannot start until the current animation allows it). When disabled, all animation management early-returns: actors freeze on their current frame, combat action timing checks are bypassed (attacks fire without animation constraints), and animation progress always reports zero. Corresponds to animation_system in SYSTEM.INI [system] (default: yes). |
| 5 | magiccarpet | Fly mode — disables gravity and falling, allowing the player to walk horizontally through the air at current altitude |
| 6 | savecheats | Writes all cheat states to REDGUARD.CHT so they persist across sessions |
| 7 | drevil | Prevents player death — suppresses death handling when health reaches zero and bypasses some player damage application paths |
| 8 | drno | Disables part of the non-player actor update path, reducing/skipping some NPC behavior processing |
| 9 | goldfinger | God mode — continuously refreshes the player’s post-hit invulnerability timer while active, preventing it from expiring. Once the player takes a hit (which starts the timer), subsequent damage is blocked indefinitely. Differs from drevil, which prevents death when health reaches zero rather than blocking incoming damage. |
| 10 | neversaydie | Dead code. The flag can be toggled and persisted in REDGUARD.CHT, but it does not change gameplay behavior. |
| 11 | oddjob | Dead code. The flag can be toggled and persisted in REDGUARD.CHT, but it does not change gameplay behavior. |
| 12 | yeahbaby | Vertical surface bypass — while active, Page Up moves the player upward through surfaces and Page Down clips below the current surface. The collision bypass only engages while one of these keys is held; normal surface collision applies otherwise. Not a permanent noclip — horizontal collision is unaffected. |
The cheat names are themed after James Bond films (Moonraker, Dr. No, Goldfinger, Oddjob, Never Say Never Again) and Austin Powers (“Yeah Baby”).
Persistence — REDGUARD.CHT
The savecheats command (cheat #6) writes the current state of all 13 cheats to a file called REDGUARD.CHT in the game directory. On startup, the engine checks for this file and restores any previously saved cheat states. Delete the file to reset all cheats. See CHT format specification for the binary layout.
Obfuscation
The cheat names are stored in the game binary as XOR-encoded strings (each byte XOR’d with the constant 0xAA). This is a simple obfuscation to prevent discovery via hex editors or string dumps. The names are decoded into memory at startup.
External References
- UESP Redguard Console — Documents the developer console but not the cheat system
- UESP Redguard Cheats — Lists only the
item addconsole command and a geometry exploit; does not mention the built-in cheat system