How to Edit Quest Progress in D2R with D2CE

Every quest in an offline D2R save carries one of three states in D2CE — Not Started, In Progress (Started) or Completed — and you can set each one individually, or complete an entire difficulty at once. Quest edits are powerful and easy to overdo: they change story progress, act access and reward eligibility in one move. This guide covers the mechanics and the caution that matters most — completing flags out of order can cost you the rewards those quests were supposed to pay.

Patch 3.x / Warlock caveat

D2CE’s final release (2.22, April 2023) was author-tested up to D2R PTR 2.6. The current game (Patch 3.x, Reign of the Warlock DLC) writes a newer save format that D2CE was never updated for, and no Warlock character can be edited with it. The steps below apply to saves from the editor’s supported era — see the Patch 3.x & Warlock compatibility status before editing a current-version save.

Back up first

Copy your Saved Games\Diablo II Resurrected folder before you edit. D2CE can also keep a .bak backup per character (Options → Backup Character Before Save). For automatic, versioned backups of the whole folder, see how to back up D2R saves.

Step by step: editing quest progress

  1. Close the game, back up, and load the character in D2CE. The D2CE user guide explains the editor’s layout; get D2CE itself from the download page and find your files with the save file location guide.
  2. Click the Quests button to open the Quest form.
  3. Select the difficulty you want to edit — quest states are stored per difficulty.
  4. For individual quests, set each one to Not Started, Started / In Progress or Completed as needed.
  5. To finish everything in that difficulty at once, click Complete All Quests for the currently selected difficulty.
  6. Confirm the dialog, save with CTRL-S, and repeat for other difficulties if intended.
  7. Load the character in game and open the quest log to confirm the states match what you set.

The Act 5 rule

As with waypoints, Act 5 quests are only available to expansion characters — D2CE’s user guide states this directly. A non-expansion character simply has no Act 5 quest entries to edit. Do not treat their absence as an editor fault.

The reward caution — read this before using Complete All

A quest flag is not the same thing as a quest reward. Several D2R quests pay out in ways players actually care about: permanent bonuses, socketing and personalisation services, skill or stat points, and the act progression itself. Setting a quest straight to Completed tells the game the quest is done — completing flags out of order can skip the rewards and the in-game moments that grant them, because the NPC conversation or event that hands over the reward may never happen. Treat this as a real caution, especially with Complete All:

  • Prefer editing one quest at a time, then checking the character in game, over blanket completion.
  • If a quest is stuck or bugged mid-progress, setting it back to Not Started or forward by one state is usually the safer repair than completing it.
  • If what you really need is travel rather than story progress, edit waypoints instead — waypoints alone never touch quest rewards.
  • If what you need is to start in a later act, that is the separate Starting Act field on the main screen. Note what the user guide says about it: changing Starting Act does not complete any quests or activate any waypoints, and you cannot properly finish later acts if the earlier ones were skipped.

Sensible uses for quest edits

  • Repairing a character whose quest state no longer matches its actual progress after other edits.
  • Preparing a test character at a specific story point, paired with unlocked waypoints for travel.
  • Resetting one quest to Not Started so it can be played properly.

Quest flags sit alongside everything else in the save, so keep the usual discipline: small changes, test in game, keep your backup until the character has survived a play session. If the save will not open at all, start with the unreadable-save guide and the Patch 3.x compatibility status. More one-job guides are on the guides hub.

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