User Guide
Upon installation of the Pdx-Unlimiter, you probably have a couple of Paradox games installed where each one has saved a lot of savegames to your computer. The Pdx-Unlimiter will try to automatically detect any of those game installations and savegame directories. Note that only the installation directory is required, the savegame directories and others can be automatically located from the installation data. If any installation is not detected, you can set them manually in the settings menu:
If you are using the Xbox GamePass to play your games, you can register the installation by clicking on the Xbox button as you can't browse for it manually.
The Pdx-Unlimiter has an internal savegame storage that is independent of the savegame directories of your installed games. To manage a savegame with the Pdx-Unlimiter, you therefore first have to import it. There are several different ways of doing that:
- By clicking the Import button in the menu bar, which will open a separate import window.
- Dragging and dropping the savegame files into the Pdx-Unlimiter window. This also works for folders that contain savegames.
- Double clicking any savegame file if its extension is associated with the Pdx-Unlimiter. This includes
.eu4.hoi4,.ck3and.savfiles.
For performance reasons and to prevent the storage from bloating, you have to explicitly import any savegame that you want to manage, i.e. it will not automatically import all the contents of your savegame directories. This separation means that changing or deleting a file from your savegame directory does not delete it from the Pdx-Unlimiter storage and vice-versa. You can change the internal storage directory in the settings menu.
When you import savegames, they are automatically grouped with other savegames that belong to the same campaign playthrough. These campaigns are shown on the left and look like this:
In addition to campaigns, you can create custom campaign branches. Any savegame that originates from this new branch will be automatically assigned to the correct campaign branch when imported. This allows you to freely experiment on multiple different campaign paths from one origin savegame.
At the top there is also a search bar that you can use to quickly filter specific campaigns or savegames by name. The campaign name can be edited by clicking on it. You can also delete an entire campaign by clicking on the Delete button.
The campaigns below are ordered by how recently a savegame of that campaign was launched from the Pdx-Unlimiter. A campaign will automatically go to the top of the list if you launch a savegame from it.
You can open a campaign by clicking on it. In it you can see a list of all the contained savegames, ordered by their in-game dates. A savegame entry looks like this:
All savegame entries contain some information about their current state of the game to make it easier for you to identify the right one to use. They also have an optional name at the top center, which can be changed by clicking on it.
If you click on a savegame entry, a status bar will pop up from the bottom. It usually looks like this:
By clicking the Export button in the status bar, you can copy the savegame into the savegame directory of the current game. This will however not launch the game automatically.
You can also launch the selected savegame directly by clicking the Continue Game button. This direct launch will automatically attempt to enable every required mod and dlc. This will bypass the Paradox launcher and main menu, saving you a lot of time.
Start Launcher will start your active launcher, usually the Paradox Launcher, in which you can then click Continue Game to launch the selected savegame. This is useful, if you want to change your mod or dlc configurations prior to launching the game.
If some content is missing or the game version is not compatible, a red status bar will be shown. You can still launch the savegame, but you will get a warning about which mod or dlc is missing.
If you choose to still launch the game, bad things might happen.
The icon buttons located at the top right of a savegame entry indicate what kind of actions you can perform with it. These buttons perform the following actions:
Ironman converter / Melter, only available for encrypted binary savegames. This allows you to
convert binary savegames into text-based savegames, also called 'melting'.
In most cases, this functionality is used to convert Ironman savegames into normal savegames.
Copy functionality. This is useful to create backup copies before editing a savegame.
Opens the Pdx-Unlimiter savegame editor.
Add a note to the savegame that can pop up when you launch the savegame the next time.
Deletes the savegame.
In case of any unfortunate ingame event that you want to revert, the Pdx-Unlimiter gives you the ability to savescum, i.e. reverting to a previous savegame checkpoint while playing in Ironman. While playing a supported game, a status bar that looks like will pop up:
It will always show the most recent savegame of your savegames folder. When any file in the savegames directory changes, the status bar will update.
A savegame checkpoint can be created/imported at any time while being ingame by
clicking on Import button or pressing CTRL+SHIFT+I.
This will import the most recent savegame that was saved by the game, shown in the center of the status bar.
Note that for games which only make autosaves when playing in Ironman mode and do not allow for explicit saving, such as CK3, you can therefore only import the latest autosave and as a result only create checkpoints every couple of months. Other games, such as EU4, allow you to save at any point, which allows you to create a checkpoint at any game date by saving the game first and then importing it.
By pressing either CTRL+SHIFT+K or Kill in the status bar,
you can kill the currently running game without it having a chance to overwrite the latest savegame.
You can simply select your latest imported savegame in the Pdx-Unlimiter and launch it again.
If you just want to revert to the latest autosave a couple of months back,
you can also use CTRL+SHIFT+R to combine the Import and Kill functions,
i.e. import the latest savegame, kill the game process and launch it again.
Alternatively, if reverting to the latest autosave is not enough,
you can also revert to the latest imported savegame checkpoint.
To revert to the latest imported savegame of your campaign,
you can use CTRL+SHIFT+C to kill the game process and automatically
continue game from your latest checkpoint.
In the settings menu you can also enable time-based autoimports of savegames:
-
Enabled timed imports- Enables automatically importing the latest savegame after a certain time has passed while playing. -
Timed imports interval- The interval between automatic imports in minutes.
If a key combination to import is pressed, a confirmation sound will play if the following option is enabled in the settings menu:
-
Play sound on background import- Play a beep sound when importing a savegame while a game is open and the Pdx-Unlimiter is running in the background.
When you import a savegame, its original savegame file is copied into the Pdx-Unlimiter storage. If you want to access that savegame file after importing it, you can easily do so. A savegame entry in the Pdx-Unlimiter behaves like a normal file in the sense that you can drag and drop it as you would do with a normal file. So you can drag a savegame from the GUI outside the Pdx-Unlimiter window and drop it anywhere as a file.
You can also export all savegame files of the entire storage into a directory by clicking Pdx-Unlimiter -> Backup storage... in the menu bar at the top. This can be useful to backup your savegame collection or transfer it between different computers.
The installer-based version of the Pdx-Unlimiter comes with an autoupdate functionality. Whenever you launch the Pdx-Unlimiter, it will check for a new version and download it if it exists. There are several reasons why this was implemented:
- Windows SmartScreen makes manual updates unnecessary difficult since each new version is flagged as untrusted. You can read more about this here
- There are many supported games where each game gets regular updates. In order to maintain support for each of them, new versions of the Pdx-Unlimiter have to be frequently distributed
- The file format of Paradox games is undocumented and messy, therefore there will always be unexpected cases that have to be fixed
If you want to disable this feature, you can do so in the settings menu.
In case you are using the standalone version, you have to manually download updates from the releases page.
In case of any problems, you can do the following:
- Use the automatic report functionality of the error reporter if it comes up
- You can also open the issue reporter at Help -> Report issue in the menu bar
- Alternatively, you can also open an issue on GitHub and describe the error in more detail or visit the Pdx-Unlimiter Discord server
- If you want to try to reset all your settings, delete the directory
<documents directory>\Pdx-Unlimiter\settingson Windows or~/.local/share/.pdx-unlimiter/settingson Linux - If the application does not even start, or you want to dig deeper into the error cause,
you can find the different log files at
<documents directory>\Pdx-Unlimiter\logson Windows and~/.local/share/.pdx-unlimiter/logson Linux. (If you are an older user, your install path may be your home directory instead of the documents directory)
To fully uninstall the Pdx-Unlimiter, you should do the following:
- Backup all the savegames managed by the Pdx-Unlimiter somewhere
- Uninstall the program in the control panel as you would do with any other application
- If you are using Windows, delete the directory
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Pdx-Unlimiter - Delete the data directory that contains savegames and settings data at
<documents directory>\Pdx-Unlimiteron Windows or~/.local/share/.pdx-unlimiteron Linux