Mastery Exploit

There is an easy trick to increase maximum mastery points in StarCraft II Co-op from 90 to 180. I will explain how to do it using a map I created, and explore its cause and consequences.

How to do this?

1. Load "Maguro's Max Mastery Map" on arcade
2. Quit the map after it starts
3. Change masteries to your liking
4. This works only for one game. After a game you will need to load the map again and set your masteries.

    Use at your own risk!

Full 180 mastery points for Kerrigan

What happens?

Basic commander data is stored in Liberty mod instead of the Co-op mod. This is so there are data to be shown in UI without loading the full Co-op mod. However, this can be overridden when you load any map that has a mod with custom commanderdata.xml. A simple map overriding the data won't work, but a mod will stick for one game before it's overridden by the Co-op mod.

For the most part this will affect only visual elements in menus, however, there is no limit for the maximum mastery points spent.

Masteries are applied correctly in-game (my overlay & interface)

What Can it potentially do?

1. What works in-game:
• Increasing maximum mastery points to spend (available on this map)
• Default player color visible in-game to ally only
2. Menu visuals only:
• Unit roster change
• Upgrade change
• Prestige change
• Unlocking commanders
• Max points per mastery are limited in-game for most (all?) masteries
• And more...
3. I'm unsure these affect the game:
• Swapping masteries

Liberators for Kerrigan (visual change affecting only menus)

Guardian Shell for Kerrigan (visual change affecting only menus)

Thank you for reading. I can't say whether this will be fixed or if it's safe to use, but it's an interesting bug for sure. I do hope this will get fixed, as it's very easy for any map maker to intentionally or unintentionally break things in menus. It doesn't require any trick – only changing things that are also used in menus.