This is an explanation of the formats of the password used in the game. I found this information by trying different passwords and seeing what is accepted by the game and what the effects were. Since this process didn't involve a debugger it could have been done on the console, but using an emulator sped this up a lot.
This game has a hugely long password (48 characters.)
Each alphanumeric character is one of
.BCDFGHJKLMNPQRSTVWXYZ0123456789That's a '.', the letters of the alphabet with no vowels plus the numbers 0 through 9. This gives 32 choices in total.
The general layout of the password is: (where '.' represents an alphanumeric character)
Samwise Merry Frodo Pippin
[ ][ ] [ ][ ]
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Legolas Aragorn Gimli Gandalf
[ ][ ] [ ][ ]
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Spawn location keys Checksum
[ ][ and events ][ ]
. . . . . . . . . . . .
Inventory
[ ]
. . . . . . . . . . . .
As shown above there's
- 3 characters for each of the 8 people in the fellowship (Boromir isn't joinable)
- 1 character for your spawn location
- 8 characters representing keys and events
- 3 characters for checksum
- and a 12-character inventory code at the bottom labeled 'INVENTORY CODE' in the password input screen.
Following goes into more detail for each of these.
Password characters
The alphanumeric password is a convenience (lol) for the user. Internally the game maps each character in a password to a number.
The mapping is this
Character | Value
------------------
. | 0
B | 1
C | 2
D | 3
F | 4
G | 5
H | 6
J | 7
K | 8
L | 9
M | 10
N | 11
P | 12
Q | 13
R | 14
S | 15
T | 16
V | 17
W | 18
X | 19
Y | 20
Z | 21
0 | 22
1 | 23
2 | 24
3 | 25
4 | 26
5 | 27
6 | 28
7 | 29
8 | 30
9 | 31 In the sections that follow, these numerical representations of password characters get used and there is math done on them.
People in the fellowship
For each joinable person in the fellowship there's a three-character code that encodes their level and equipment.
Firstly, if the three character code is all '.' (value zeroes), that character is not in your party. Otherwise yes they are in your party.
The way in which the codes determine equipment is a bit convoluted and broken. The reason I say that is there are some
passwords that are accepted by the game but will either crash the game or cause corrruption while you're playing. The charts and things below describe passwords which are accepted and also don't crash or corrupt the game.
You can find situations (e.g., what if Code3, described below, is less than 16?) where the password gets accepted, the level gets loaded and things appear okay but corruption happens when you go into the menu for example. I reverse engineered what level/items you get in those cases too, and they're accounted for in the source code of my password editor. I'm leaving them out of this document so that these formulas stay neat and concise as they're specified, because those don't follow the rules listed below. If you want you can see source code here for more info on them
So anyway, each person in the fellowship gets a three-character code in the password. Call the three characters in the code
Code1, Code2, and Code3 in order.
For example if the password contained 'B89' then Code1=1, Code2=30, Code3=31 referring to the chart above. Yes, each of
Code1, Code2 and Code3 is a number between 0 and 31 inclusive.
Level is decided by the following:
if (Code1 < 10)
Level = (Code2 mod 8) * 20 + Code1
else
Level = (Code2 mod 8) * 20 + (Code1 mod 16) + 10The 'mod' operator here is modulus. I.e., A mod B is the remainder when A is divided by B.
Armor is decided by the following:
PW char 2 | Code2 | Armor
--------------------------------------------------------------
. through F | 0 through 4 | If Code3 is even, Cloth Cloak.
| | If Code3 is odd, Plate Mail.
--------------------------------------------------------------
. through F | 0 through 4 | If Code3 is even, Cloth Cloak.
| | If Code3 is odd, Plate Mail.
--------------------------------------------------------------
K through P | 8 through 12 | If Code3 is even, Padded Armor.
| | If Code3 is odd, Mithril Armor
--------------------------------------------------------------
T through Y | 16 through 20 | Leather Armor
--------------------------------------------------------------
2 through 6 | 24 through 28 Chain Mail
Weapons are decided by the following:
PW char 3| Code3 | Weapon
----------------------------
T | 16 | Old Dagger
V | 17 | Old Dagger
W | 18 | Dagger
X | 19 | Dagger
Y | 20 | Barrow Dagger
Z | 21 | Barrow Dagger
0 | 22 | Troll Dagger
1 | 23 | Troll Dagger
2 | 24 | Elvish Dagger
3 | 25 | Elvish Dagger
4 | 26 | Sting
5 | 27 | Sting
6 | 28 | Light Sword
7 | 29 | Light Sword
8 | 30 | Sword
9 | 31 | Sword The password encoding for level, weapon and armor works the same for each of the 8 joinable characters.
Fun fact: if you enter an only-partially-valid password that includes some configuration for a character (e.g., the string is not all '.'), it permanently adds the character to your party until SNES reset. Even if the password is rejected. This leads to a well-known cheesy trick where you can enter a bad password, press start and hear the "invalid password" noise, then delete it and start the game with all the Fellowship unlocked.
Spawn Location
This is the place in the game world your party will be in after the password gets accepted.
It's a 1-character code.
PW char| Code | Location
-------|------|------------
. | 0 | Hobbiton
B | 1 | Brandywine Bridge
C | 2 | Farmer Maggot
D | 3 | Ferry
F | 4 | Crickhollow
G | 5 | Tom Bombadil's House
H | 6 | Barrow Downs Stones
J | 7 | Crossroads
K | 8 | Rivendell
L | 9 | Moria entrance
M | 10 | Moria 1 (glitched)
N | 11 | Moria 2 (glitched) For the last two Moria locations, the game will include those location codes in the passwords it provides to you when you're in Moria.
However, it won't accept the passwords the next time you start the game 🙁 (Update: unless you have my bug fix described in this post)
Might want to keep a map of Moria, you definitely don't want to do it more than once if you can help it
Keys and events
These control the state of various unlockable doors and questlines. I haven't investigated which bits control what because it wasn't important to what I was trying to do.
Checksum
The checksum exists to stop you from trying random passwords and cheating. It's a way of making sure the only passwords accepted are ones the game has actually given to you, not ones you randomly made up yourself.
However, the checksum is pretty easy to understand if you look at the various passwords it gives you. For example, you'll see that leveling up or changing equipment only changes the first character. And using something in your inventory only changes the third character. And, you know how the password characters translate to character codes and there are 32 of them, and modulus kinds of operations are common and inexpensive for computing checksums.
The first character is the 'party checksum':
partySum = the sum of the character codes of the first two lines of the password
checksumCode = remainder when partySum is divided by 32. (For example, if partySum is 33, the checksumCode is 1.)
The second character is the 'event checksum':
eventSum = the sum of the character codes in the "spawn location" and "keys and events" part of the password
checksumCode = remainder when eventSum is divided by 32
The third character is the 'inventory checksum':
inventorySum = the sum of the character codes in the "inventory" part of the password
checksumCode = remainder when inventorySum is divided by 32
This gives you the first, second and third characters of the checksum in order.
I think they put the checksum in the middle of the password to obfuscate it a little bit.
If you're trying to troubleshoot, know that valid checksum doesn't necessarily mean the password will be accepted. The game sometimes rejects passwords for reasons other than invalid checksum. For example, if you specify an invalid location code like 'Z'.
Inventory
These character codes store your inventory state pretty compactly.
Each item corresponds to 1 bit within a byte. Not all the bits are used, which is why a full inventory's password code looks like "9S9S9S 9S9S9S" rather than all 9s (all 9s means all bits set).
There are 12 inventory code characters in all, which I'm calling code 0 through 11.
For readability the bit is written as a hexadecimal flag.
Item |Code #| Bit
--------------------------------
Tomb Key | 0 | 0x1
Moria Key | 0 | 0x2
Red Gateway Gem | 0 | 0x4
Elvish Book | 0 | 0x8
Magic Rock | 0 | 0x10
Bottle | 1 | 0x1
Lost Amulet | 1 | 0x2
Maggot Note | 1 | 0x4
Scroll Of Floi | 1 | 0x8
Gate Key | 2 | 0x1
Moria Key | 2 | 0x2
Yellow Gateway Gem | 2 | 0x4
Book Of The Ages | 2 | 0x8
Gold Piece | 2 | 0x10
Jug Of Honey | 3 | 0x1
Lost Amulet | 3 | 0x2
Old Willow Note | 3 | 0x4
Scroll Of Oin | 3 | 0x8
Tomb Key | 4 | 0x1
Moria Key | 4 | 0x2
Gateway Keystone | 4 | 0x4
Book Of Mazarbul | 4 | 0x8
Gold Pieces | 4 | 0x10
Eye Glasses | 5 | 0x1
Lost Amulet | 5 | 0x2
Note From Gandalf | 5 | 0x4
Color Scoll | 5 | 0x8 Item |Code #| Bit
---------------------------------
Tomb Key | 6 | 0x1
Moria Key | 6 | 0x2
Green Gateway Gem | 6 | 0x4
Bilbo Diary | 6 | 0x8
Gold Pieces | 6 | 0x10
Healing Moss | 7 | 0x1
Lost Amulet | 7 | 0x2
Letter To Elrond | 7 | 0x4
Keystone Scroll | 7 | 0x8
Tomb Key | 8 | 0x1
Boat Oar | 8 | 0x2
Purple Gateway Gem | 8 | 0x4
Jeweled Ring | 8 | 0x8
Gold Pieces | 8 | 0x10
Athelas Major | 9 | 0x1
Lost Amulet | 9 | 0x2
Horn Of Boromir | 9 | 0x4
Long Bow | 9 | 0x8
Key To Bree | 10 | 0x1
Healing Mushroom | 10 | 0x2
Violet Gateway Gem | 10 | 0x4
The Ring | 10 | 0x8
Athelas Minor | 10 | 0x10
Healing Fruit | 11 | 0x1
Lost Amulet | 11 | 0x2
Magic Fern | 11 | 0x4
Orb of Drexle | 11 | 0x8 The inventory codes come from bitwise OR-ing the corresponding bits together for each inventory item you have.
For example, suppose you have the first tomb key and the red gateway gem. This is bit '0x1' and '0x4'. When you bitwise-OR these, you get '5'. Code 5 corresponds to password code 'G', from the chart all the way at the top. So if those two are the only items you have, your inventory code in the password is 'G….. ……'.
For another example, suppose all you have is the first tomb key and the Orb of Drexle. This is bit '0x1' of the first code, and '0x8' of the last. So if those were the only two items you have, your inventory code in the password is 'B….. …..K'.
There's one special case- although there's an inventory bit allocated to the One Ring, the ring is always in your inventory regardless of whether it's encoded in the password or not.
Links
Hope you found this helpful
All this information is used in a password editor I made. That is here
https://github.com/clandrew/lotrpwcheck/
To view this post in text form, it's here
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/clandrew/lotrpwcheck/master/Format.txt
This post is following up from this one where I posted the editor, where someone asked about the information that the editor uses
Thanks for this wonderful guide! I was able to craft some working passwords for some interesting roleplays. A common problem is some corruption in the UI, though…
August 7, 2022 @ 9:10 pm