D2CE User Guide: Edit a Diablo II: Resurrected Character Step by Step

D2CE — the Diablo II Character Editor revived by Walter Couto from Burton Tsang’s original editor — is a free, open-source (GPL-3.0) Windows program for editing offline Diablo II: Resurrected and classic saves. Its final release is version 2.22 (April 2023, GitHub tag release-2.2.2), author-tested up to D2R PTR 2.6 and classic 1.14d. This guide walks through a complete edit using only features documented in the official UserGuide. New to it? Start on the download page, where the verified checksums are printed.

Before you start

Close Diablo II: Resurrected completely before you edit. The game holds your save files open while it runs, and an editor writing to the same file at the same time is the easiest way to corrupt a character. Work on offline characters only: online characters live on Blizzard’s servers, have no file on your PC, and cannot be opened by any editor — see can you edit online D2R characters? for the full explanation.

Make sure you know where your saves are. On Windows they sit in C:\Users\<your name>\Saved Games\Diablo II Resurrected\, one .d2s file per character. Our save file location guide explains every file in that folder. You do not need to run D2CE as administrator: your saves are in your own user folder, not in a protected system location.

Step 1: Open your character file

1. Launch D2CE (D2Editor.exe).
2. Choose File > Open and browse to your Saved Games\Diablo II Resurrected folder.
3. Select the character’s .d2s file — the file name matches the character name — and open it.
4. The editor loads the character’s stats, inventory, skills, quests and waypoints into its tabs and dialogs.

If the file will not open, the usual causes are the game still running, the wrong file type, or a save from a newer game version than D2CE supports — see the compatibility box above and our safety checklist.

Step 2: Edit character stats

The main window shows the character’s core information: name, class, level, experience, strength, dexterity, vitality, energy, life, mana, stamina and gold. Type new values directly into the fields. As soon as you change a field, D2CE marks it: edited fields turn bold, and an asterisk (*) appears in the window title bar to show the file has unsaved changes. That marker is your reminder that nothing is written to disk until you save.

Edit one thing at a time while you learn the tool, and keep values plausible for the character’s level. For focused walkthroughs, see how to edit character stats and how to respec a character.

Step 3: Skills, waypoints and quests

Three dedicated dialogs handle the parts of a character that are tedious to fix by hand:

• Skill Trees button — opens the skill tree view, where you can set individual skills or use the option to set all skills to one value. Useful for testing a build or undoing a mis-clicked point. See also editing skills in detail.
• Waypoints button — shows waypoints per act and per difficulty, with an Activate All option per difficulty. Activating a waypoint does not complete the quests around it.
• Quests button — shows each quest as Not Started, In Progress or Completed, with a Complete All option per difficulty. Use it to repair a bugged quest state rather than to skip content blindly.

The UserGuide also documents a Starting Act option. Treat it with care: changing the starting act only changes where the character begins, it does not complete the quests or waypoints of the acts you skip. A character moved forward this way can arrive in a later act with earlier quests still open, which is confusing if you expected a clean progression state. Use the Waypoints and Quests dialogs explicitly if that is what you want to change.

Step 4: Items, the Upgrade submenu and the GPS converter

D2CE can create, import and export items using .d2i item files, and it has edited the shared stash since v2.14 — see creating items and .d2i files and editing the shared stash. One of its most-used tools is the Upgrade submenu, which applies bulk improvements to items you already own:

• Upgrade gems, potions and skulls to perfect quality.
• Upgrade potions to full rejuvenation potions.
• Set item durability to 255.
• Restock stackable items (such as arrows, bolts and thrown weapons) back to a full stack.

The program also includes a GPS converter / creator for working with gem, potion and skull combinations — converting what you have into what a recipe needs, or creating those components directly. Try it on a backed-up character first.

Step 5: Your mercenary

A dedicated mercenary dialog lets you manage the hireling attached to the character. From it you can hire or resurrect a mercenary, change the mercenary type, and adjust mercenary level and experience — up to, but not above, your character’s own level. Gear the mercenary from the same inventory tools you use for the character. If a mercenary seems to vanish after an edit, re-open the freshly saved file first and confirm the change actually wrote before editing again.

Step 6: Save — and undo when you need to

1. Choose File > Save (or press Ctrl+S) to write your changes. The asterisk in the title bar clears once the file is saved.
2. Changed your mind before saving? Choose View > Reload (or press F5) — Reload discards all unsaved changes and loads the file from disk again.
3. Launch the game and check the character on the selection screen before you delete any backup.

Two Options settings protect every save. Options > Backup Character Before Save keeps a .bak copy of the character before each save overwrites it — it is on by default, and you should leave it on. If a saved edit goes wrong, Options > Restore Character restores the character from that backup. Our dedicated guides cover backing up D2R saves and restoring a corrupted or lost save in full.

The discrepancy checker, and hex-edited files

D2CE includes a discrepancy checker that flags inconsistencies inside the file. It matters most for files previously edited with a hex editor or another tool, where one wrong byte can leave two parts of the file disagreeing. If it reports discrepancies, do not stack more edits on top: restore your backup and start from a clean file.

A safe editing routine

1. Close the game. Copy the whole save folder as a manual backup.
2. Open the .d2s in D2CE and make one group of changes at a time.
3. Save with Ctrl+S, keeping the .bak option enabled.
4. Re-open the game and verify the character loads and plays correctly.
5. Only then make the next edit — and keep the older backup until you have played the character without issue.

For the bigger picture — which tool fits which job, and what no editor can do with current saves — browse the guides hub and the best D2R save editors comparison.