Homebrew Brute forcing an old game save

[Danttebayo]

Before I started with the downgrading and AL9Haxing shenanigans a few momths ago, I did a full backup of my SD card including what I thought were backed up game saves. By 'backed up, I'm referring to the built-in save backups that the official firmware can do.

Of course I didn't realize they are still encrypted and as such are pretty much useless now but my question is does anyone know if it's possible to remove the encryption on my PC? I have an old MH4U save of around 400 hours that's be nice to have back...

 

[olizbu]

Sorry, but I think it is not possible

 

[RMZK]

if you have a backup of your Vanilla sysnand (everyone with A9LH MUST have one) you could flash it to an Emunand, then just install jk's save manager and dump everything. That nand image shoud be compatible with your old save files. if your games were in an Emunand and you didn't make a backup of your Emunand, you're screwed.

 

[Danttebayo]

if you have a backup of your Vanilla sysnand (everyone with A9LH MUST have one) you could flash it to an Emunand, then just install jk's save manager and dump everything. That nand image shoud be compatible with your old save files. if your games were in an Emunand and you didn't make a backup of your Emunand, you're screwed.

You, sir or madam, are a genius. How did I not think of that? Thanks!

 

[GizmoTheGreen]

why is your vanilla backup not comaptible with your current firmware anyways?

when I did this on all three systems I ended up with the same Luma3DS sysnand as I started out with with no mods. hence all old content fully compatible.

 

[Danttebayo]

why is your vanilla backup not comaptible with your current firmware anyways?

when I did this on all three systems I ended up with the same Luma3DS sysnand as I started out with with no mods. hence all old content fully compatible.

A good question. My original SysNAND backup and game saves are from January, before I did the old 9.2 downgrade and EmuNAND setup. I didn't really know what I was doing and wanted to make sure everything went smoothly so after backing everything up I wiped my system to do everything from a clean slate. And now that I am slightly more knowledgeable, I would have done it differently.

 

[RMZK]

You, sir or madam, are a genius. How did I not think of that? Thanks!

You're welcome sir.

 

[RMZK]

why is your vanilla backup not comaptible with your current firmware anyways?

when I did this on all three systems I ended up with the same Luma3DS sysnand as I started out with with no mods. hence all old content fully compatible.

Unlinked nands, thats the answer XD

 

[GizmoTheGreen]

A good question. My original SysNAND backup and game saves are from January, before I did the old 9.2 downgrade and EmuNAND setup. I didn't really know what I was doing and wanted to make sure everything went smoothly so after backing everything up I wiped my system to do everything from a clean slate. And now that I am slightly more knowledgeable, I would have done it differently.

Unlinked nands, thats the answer XD

ah, I see. if you follow the guides correctly you'll end up with the same NNID on your emunand (which you take a backup of before wiping it for downgrade) that you later restore onto your sysnand. keep that in mind until next time

 

[Danttebayo]

ah, I see. if you follow the guides correctly you'll end up with the same NNID on your emunand (which you take a backup of before wiping it for downgrade) that you later restore onto your sysnand. keep that in mind until next time

That's easy to say in hindsight but it was the wild west back then compared to now. Because everything was new, I ended up following different parts of no less than 4 separate guides because not one of them was complete or accurate enough to use as a single source.

Having Plailect's guide and all of the tools that people have created to simplify the process (such as OTPHelper) has completely changed the landscape for someone wanting to get into 3DS hacking.