Buying a modded switch lite?

[dimentio39]

Hi guys,
I have no switch hacking or modding experience but I like the idea of tinfoil and loading NSPs onto a micro SD card for play. I can buy a modded switch lite and the picture of the hekate launcher shows v6.2.1. The seller says he's only been playing roms and homebrews on it and keeps it in airplane mode. If I buy this switch, what am I likely going to need to look out for, to not be scammed, and what am I going to need to do to get it running my NSPs? Should I download the HATS pack onto a 256gb card and go through the install process even if the device is already setup? Thanks!

 

[Blythe93]

If you need to update your Switch after purchase, you can follow this guide.
If you're like me and just installing games in NSP/XCI format and playing them on your Switch, I'd say it's totally fine to update to the latest firmware (19.0.1), Atmosphere (1.8.0-pre), Hekate (6.2.2) and sys-patch (1.5.4).

The seller says he's only been playing roms and homebrews on it and keeps it in airplane mode. If I buy this switch, what am I likely going to need to look out for, to not be scammed, and what am I going to need to do to get it running my NSPs?

I'm not an expert but I'd check whether it can access eShop while in stock firmware. It'll confirm whether it's banned or not. Being in an airplane mode doesn't keep the console from getting banned. If they've installed pirated content to the sysNAND in the past, it's already "dirty" and without a clean backup to restore back to, it'll get banned as soon as you connect to the Nintendo servers.

If they can access the eShop, you should be fine then, just make sure to use emuNAND from that point forward if you'd like to play pirated games. After you buy it and receive it, I'd check once again if eShop access works and you can download something from it. If successful and you don't plan on using your Switch to play legit games on your Switch Lite, I'd remove all saved wireless connections and "clean it up a bit" (I'm not sure if you can do a factory reset on a modchipped Switch). After that, I'd meake a "clean" NAND backup just in case things go wrong somewhere down the line.

After that, I'd create an emuNAND from scratch by following this guide. Make sure to set up DNS MITM afterwards if you'd like to connect to the Internet on your emuNAND and previously mentioned sys-patch if you want to play game backups.