How I Removed the Backpack From My Character

Preamble

I don't know about you, but I dislike all the backpacks in the game. They all either clash with my character, look too bulky, or just don't seem to obey physics. More truthfully, though, I just want to be unique. I have never played with someone, post-survival-update, who doesn't have a backpack, so I want to be the stand-out. Lucky for myself, I have found a way to remove it from the character. It actually turned out to be quite similar to the old way.

I tried making this as easy as possible to follow along with. I play on Windows, so finding files might be a bit different on other systems. If you do want to follow along, you will need a text editor that can display functional characters (like NUL, BEL, STX, and ACK to name a few) or a hex editor. I am using Notepad++.

Do also note that the game does not seem to be programmed for this and you may run into issues if you decide to follow along. The only issue that I have experienced, though, is that the character customisation screen displays the name of the last item I was on before opening the backpack menu.

Preview

See how bulky that backpack looks? See how free my back looks without it? I can't play any other way!

Step One

Firstly, I just did what I remembered doing for the pre-survival backpack-removal. I typed into the address bar of File Explorer, `%AppData%\Axolot Games\Scrap Mechanic\User`. I was met with two `User_XXX[...]` folders, one for my account and one for an old family account. I did a quick check for which one was mine by going into each of their`Save`folders.

By looking at which `Save` folder had `.db` files that matched my Creative worlds, I figured out that the second folder was my account. I backed out of the `Save`folder, into the `User_XXX[...]` folder that it was in.

Step Two

I noticed that there were two files with similar names, `character` and `character.json`. I opened the json file first and realised quickly that is from pre-survival scrap mechanic. So I opened the `character` file.

Once I had the file opened, I took a screenshot of it and put it in GIMP. I Opened Scrap Mechanic for and selected a different backpack, before closing it again. I went back to Notepad++ and refreshed the file. I took a second screenshot and brought it also into GIMP, then I compared how the two files looked. I figured out that there are 16 characters that correspond to what backpack is equipped.

Step Three

I replaced all the characters that corresponded to the backpack with NUL (by holding left-Alt and typing 256 on my keypad), saved, re-opened the game, and my backpack was gone! I then tested it with replacing all the characters with spaces and or just replacing part of the backpack's data, but it ends up just putting the burnt backpack back onto me.