New Game Plus

New Game Plus is the game's own "New Journey": after you finish the story you can start the whole adventure again from Heggem while keeping your characters and most of what you own. The game never shows numbers for it, but the data does. Every journey from the second one has stronger enemies (see New Game Plus enemy scaling), better loot and higher shop prices (see New Game Plus loot and shops). Journey 4 is the last step; from journey 5 on, the game keeps counting but nothing else changes.

How to start a New Journey#

1. Finish the story. The ending quests (the ones that carry the "game over" action) show the message Thanks for playing and ask whether to begin a New Journey.
2. Pick Yes and confirm a second time. The confirmation tells you what you will keep (see below) and that every character will be available.
3. Pick No and you are returned to the stage right before the final battle. You can keep exploring Solas but cannot go back to the Colossal Grave.
4. After you have finished the game, Glenn's Owl in the Carriage (story 99) offers a dialog called "Start New Journey" (it appears while the game-complete quest 88888 is set). It asks for the same confirmation.

What carries over and what is removed#

Kept (never touched by the restart)#

The confirmation screen promises these, and the restart code agrees:

Removed#

• 60 story items. Every key item flagged GamePlusRemove is deleted when the journey restarts. That is every chapter key and plot object: Gore-stained Coat, Tearstone, Witch's Note, The Key to The Dungeon, Oracle Crystal, Patrick's Ring, Scarlet Meteor Fragments, The Head of the Knight, Hand-made Puppet, Music Box, Courier's Diary, Sand Glass, the three Stones of the Past, Present and Future, Greasy Candle, Mysterious Envelope, Egg of the Bearer, Key to the Back Door, Key to the Elevator, Key with Patterns, Brass Key, Tristram's Mercy, Blessed Basilisk, the four sword fragments (Fragment of the Sword, Broken Blade, Lackluster Handguard, Archaic Hilt), the four Keys of Yog, Shub, Xada and Nya, Glimmering Pink Bud, Gate key, Luminous Fruit, Key to a Room in Katib, Bracelet (10052), Blood-stained Will, Azure Heart, Gear Wheel, Control Lever, Saint's Broken Spear, Cellar Key, the five area stones (Colossus, Humanity, Treasury, Sifler, Heggie), Short Message, the Chapel, Tower, Sacred Tower, Trinity Hall, Revival Altar and Confessional keys, Eckhart's Cane Sword, Butterfly Stone, Argil (72121), the Seal of Yekub (item 90000; the game text spells it "Seal of Yekub in") and the item named Pascal's Wager (99999). See Key items.
• The Egg of the Bearer (the beginner item that halves the damage you take) is deleted a second time explicitly and the "had the egg" mark is cleared. See Difficulty#Egg of the Bearer (beginner item).
• The quest log. All quest flags are cleared except the 393 marked NotReset (12% of the 3,272 flags). The old flags are copied into a "history" list.
• The world map. All unlocked sites and portals are cleared; only the Carriage and the first site stay open.
• Everything placed in the world. Opened doors, stairs, covers, elevators, cages, crates, statues, fountains, honey pots, gates, bridges, altars (the in-world altar objects) and frog markers reset, as do the lists of dead, summoned and met monsters and the kill counters. All the chapter pickups return (so do the monsters).
• Shop stock counters. Rows with NotReset 0 are cleared and can be bought again. The 30 rows with NotReset 1 stay sold out: Viola's six trophies, ten alchemy formulas, four Dark Mist lamp and oil rows in the Carriage, and ten safe-house rows (see Merchants#Stock, restocking and New Game Plus).
• Timers and conditions. Stage times are cleared and hero status effects are removed.
• Position. You start in chapter 1 with the Carriage called to chapter 1.

What it adds#

• All characters are available from the start. The restart enables Viola, Benita and Norwood, and Jerold too if the DLC join quest 95162 is done. Elena is not touched by it (she is an Arcade hero).
• Norwood and Benita stand in the Carriage in every later journey (their carriage rows are flagged to always show from journey 2).
• Companions do not join the story again. Eleven story encounters are removed when the flag for journey 2 is set (quest 99999): Norwood in Heggem, Viola twice in Adamina, Benita twice in Exilium, and Viola, Norwood, the old monk and the big eyeball in the Karst Cave. A few dialogs are replaced; for example in Blessedland the question about "some of the characters will not be available" is only asked in the first journey.
• Obsession Challenge opens up. In journey 2 and later the eleven story bosses (Maddened Ascetic to The First Messenger) can be challenged at once without having met them in this save (the challenge list checks the journey number). See Obsession Challenge#Unlocking bosses.
• Bone Whistles appear where one-time collectibles used to be (see New Game Plus loot and shops).

What changes in each journey#

The fields that carry the journey are listed in the source tables as columns ending in _1 to _4. They exist for exactly these data sets: enemy levels (StoryMonster), enemy drops (ItemDropData), pickups (StoryItem), shops (TransactionData), trap and trick damage (TrapData, TrickData) and projectile durability (ShellData, which is the same in all four). Other columns whose names end in a number (hero attributes, property ids, challenge and maze levels) are not journey columns.

Hidden mechanics#

• The journey number is capped in the data, not in the save. The save keeps counting journeys without any limit (the "is loop max" check always returns false), but every table read uses min(journey, 4). Journey 7 plays like journey 4.
• Legendary Courier has a loophole. Legendary Courier needs "journey 4 or more without using the Egg of the Bearer". The game tracks the egg only while the journey number is exactly 4 (SetHadNoobItem checks equality), so in journey 5 and beyond the egg is no longer tracked and the achievement can still unlock (code reading, see Sources; the end-of-game check is in Achievements#hm-legendary-courier-at-the-end-of-a-run). New Journey unlocks when you restart.
• Level is not your level. Enemies come in at the level in the table, however strong your carried-over hero is. In journey 2 an enemy in Heggem is level 25 to 30 whether you are level 5 or level 70. The one exception is the Dark Mist side areas, where your Altar Level is added (New Game Plus enemy scaling#hm-dark-mist-side-areas-follow-your-hero-in).
• Two boss counters wake up. In journey 1 the Rosen Cavalier Patrick and the Usurper do not counter-attack during their defence stance until they have blocked 1 and 2 hits. From journey 2 they do (the code condition is in New Game Plus enemy scaling#hm-two-bosses-riposte-sooner-in-journey-2-and).
• Flags decide what is "new". Quest 99999 ("journey 2 or later") is a NotReset flag completed at the start of a restart. Content that appears or disappears in later journeys is gated on it, not on the journey counter. A set of seven story patches (StoryPatch rows 12 to 18) also checks the flag and completes the seven challenge-unlock quests 91201 to 91207 for you.
• Maze and Arcade ignore all of this. The Dark Mist maze uses its own maze levels (Maze rewards#Enemy scaling), and Arcade mode forces the journey column to 1 (its restart still adds 1 to the counter, but the "logic loop" is 1).
• Loot does not need you to wait for journey 4. Region progress already raises trophy levels in the first journey (+0 to +2); the journeys then push the same drop to +3.
• Killing bosses again. Boss-defeat quests are not NotReset, so they clear on restart: the Carriage plant shop rows that depended on them lock again until you kill the bosses once more (Carriage supplies).

Sources#

• controller/controllermain.lua:2098-2117 (ControllerMain:Restart: sets quest 99999, clears timers, calls FS_ItemList:Restart and FS_SaveStory:Restart, clears statuses, records achievement 20001, reloads the scene); controller/controllermain.lua:659-660.
• structdata/fs_savestory.lua:1252-1330 (FS_SaveStory:Restart), 2150-2175 (ResetAllQuest, NotReset), 3262-3282 (InitMapData), 3419-3432 (RestartTransaction), 1956-1996 (SetLoop, GetLogicLoop capped at 4, GetIsLoopMax always false, SetHadNoobItem); structdata/ms_transactiondata.lua:60-65 (IsNeedReset); structdata/fs_savemaze.lua:592 (maze Restart does nothing).
• structdata/fs_itemlist.lua:138-153 (Restart removes GamePlusRemove items and item 10018); ES_ItemData (60 rows with GamePlusRemove 1, all type 101; ids 10005 and 90000 carry the game's spellings "Oracle Crystle" and "Seal of Yekub in"; 16 other type 101 rows are kept).
• controller/controllerstorymode.lua:9362-9378 (RestartConfirm: the two prompts), 1520-1530 (patches), 2578 (AlwaysShow with journey above 1), 9439-9442 (OnCompleteOneGame), 1149-1150 (journey column); ui/controller/dialogctrl.lua:1055-1060 (restart action), ui/controller/challengectrl.lua:645-668 (journey above 1 unlocks MutliEnable bosses), ui/controller/mainmenuctrl.lua:4465-4473.
• structdata/ms_storyquest.lua:6-9 (GameOverQuestId 88888, GameLoopQuestId "99999", DLCHeroJoinQuest "95162"); ES_StoryQuest 83008, 83009, 83015 (game over action), 88888, 99999; ES_StoryDialog 23045 "Start New Journey" (show quest 88888), 12901-12907, 62195-62196; ES_StoryMonster 1/1018, 2/2063, 2/2067, 3/3062, 3/3074, 7/7060-7064, 7/7067 (hidden by 99999), 99/99003 and 99/99004 (AlwaysShow); ES_StoryPatch rows 12-18; ES_StoryChallenge (MutliEnable); ES_TransactionData (NotReset).
• Game text: UI_GAMEOVER_TEXT, UI_CONFIRM_RESTART_GAME, UI_CONFIRM_CONTINUE_GAME; achievements 20001 and 20005 in Achievement.jsonl.
• logic/player/hero20017.lua:93, hero20044.lua:69 (journey 1 only counter rule).