While cheating is the bane of multiplayer games, especially competitive ones, and esports, a lot of people cheat in single-player games, as well. Why? Well, there’s a number of reasons. Some might cheat because they find the game or the level they’re in unfair. Others cheat because they find it fun. A lot of people are min-maxing because they enjoy the feeling of being overpowered in the game. This min-maxing sometimes includes an exploit or two. 

In the past, this cheating was more straightforward. You had cheat codes in the game, and all you had to do was open chat or console commands and type in the word. This way, you would get resources, invulnerability, infinite mana pool, or anything else of that kind.

1. Time-glitch (a number of games)

Some games have time-sensitive missions. These games usually give you a timer that unfolds as you play, and, in the meantime, you’re supposed to do something else (level up, grind, do side-quests, etc). 

One example of this is Dragon Age: Inquisition, where you can send one of your advisors on a quest that will take several hours to complete. Well, if you change the timer on your device, it will “trick” the game into believing that the time has passed, and you’ll get the reward (and your advisor back) right away.

The reason why this is one of the rare exploits that we didn’t tie to a specific game is just how all-present it is across different games and genres. You can even use it for mobile and browser-based games, but you would have a VPN extension. This is a quicker and less complicated alternative to the traditional (app-based) form of VPN, especially if your browser is the main reason why you need a VPN.  You see, a browser sometimes tracks the global time, which is why just resetting your timer won’t work. You have to change your time zone, and a VPN makes this easier and more natural (in case there’s an extra GPS check-up).

Just keep in mind that what we’re talking about is the time exploit, where you’re tricking the game into believing that the real-time has passed, not about games that have the option to speed up time. In other words, fast travel or speeding up time in strategy games (Europa Universalis IV or Dune: Spice Wars) wouldn’t count since speeding up the time is a base feature in the game. The same thing applies to speeding up time in games like The Sims series.

2. Instant Daedric armor (The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion)

The main reason why we chose this specific glitch and not its more famous counterpart (The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim) is that everyone knows all the Skyrim glitches by heart. Everyone knows how to duplicate items by having a follower pick them up. There’s also the glitch where if you put a bucket over the head of a vendor, they won’t see you stealing things right in front of them.

There’s also a reason why we didn’t mention Morrowind (The Elder Scrolls III), seeing as how that game is so glitch-ridden that they’re almost features. For instance, when you drink a potion to increase a stat in Morrowind, each potion stacks. So, technically, you could drink hundreds of potions to increase your magic power at once and cast the most powerful spell that the world has ever seen while still level one.

The interesting thing about this glitch in Oblivion is that there’s a spell that allows you to conjure incredibly powerful armor on level one. The biggest difference is that it will expire in a matter of seconds. However, if you also summon a creature to follow you and then provoke it to attack you (thus damaging the armor), you can later repair the armor, and the game will see it as a regular item (not a summoned one).

Not only that, but the armor would have no weight. 

If there’s one thing that Bethesda is consistent, it’s how fun it is to exploit these many bugs. It’s not even just The Elder Scrolls franchise. If you don’t believe us, just look up the “Infinite Caps” glitch in Fallout 4. 

3. Guarantee independence peace glitch (Europa Universalis IV)

Only people who play 4X grand strategies by Paradox know that the games are so incredibly complex that abusing an exploit is more of an equalizer than an actual cheat. 

Here, you have so many great exploits, one of them is known as “birding.” The exploit lies in streamers pressing alt+F4 to turn off the game before it can autosave after a bad event. The etymology is due to a streamer sarcastically yelling: “Look, a bird!” to their audience so that they would “look away” before they were to leave and restart the game.

However, the exploit that we’re talking about right now has to do with something else. A few patches back, there was this feature where, after you guaranteed the independence of a certain nation (a basic diplomatic action within a game) and, for some reason, canceled it, you would get a five-year truce with that nation. 

The reason why this is so powerful is because the nation that you have a truce with cannot declare war on you, and they cannot join a coalition against you. In other words, it makes one of the game’s biggest bottlenecks (aggressive expansion modifier) completely inconsequential. By using this exploit, you could just aggressively expand (pun intended) at the speed of your conquest (and coring ability). 

This exploit was promptly fixed, but with a game as complex as this, there was always something to exploit.

4. Diablo II experience glitch

While there is a lot of speculation about why BlizzCon 2024 was canceled. Some say that it’s due to the oversaturation, but there are a lot of people who believe that Blizzard just wants to dodge more in-person fan backlash. Still, let’s quickly return to the era when this company was beloved by its fandom. Back to the times when their game was a golden standard of the genre.

Diablo games have always been a bit grind-heavy; it was a part of the overall experience. After all, every time you left the game and returned, all the enemies would respawn. Not only that but if you entered a multiplayer game with your single-player character or even changed difficulties, the entire map would change. This is because the map in Diablo games was procedurally generated, which made this possible. 

However, for a lot of players, this was too slow. Also, we wouldn’t even consider this an exploit, seeing as how it’s the way the game’s intended to be played. You’re supposed to kill the same bosses and clear the same areas over and over again in order to get all the items, sets, and runes so that you would become invincible in PVP.

So, the players would abuse lag and glitching in the system to duplicate items or fast-kill certain minions and bosses and gain a lot of experience.

Other than this, there was a lot of use and abuse of third-party software, which goes beyond simple exploits.

Exploits can be incredibly fun

There are some exploits that are just so much fun, and in a single-player game, if you dislike them or dislike their effects, you can just not use them and be done with it. Still, these exploits are always fun to know, regardless of whether you’ll use them or not. Who knows, they might end up being a fun piece of trivia that you’ll use to impress someone who mentions they play the same game. If not, it could just be something you find interesting.