Guide: PC version - Companions Met Along the Way Problems

Many people reported, having names in the list, but never saw anyone.

'''

### Basic information

At the end of the Credits, the game shows a list of "Companions Met Along the Way (CMATW)".

Often players try to contact their Companions, but sometimes they face issues:

* name missing in list
* name is only numbers
* crash before the list appears
* can not find the specific name
* too many results after searching for the name

 **Using the "Quit to title"-option will delete the names from the CMTAW list**, but they probably stay in the SAVE.BIN. See information below about overwriting. Read about losing Companions names by using Chapter Select on the main article.

Save file system works different on Epic and the Save.bin is needed to find players.

#### You will need:

* **To know where the SAVE.BIN file is located**. To read it, you can use a simple editor ("open with", when right clicking the file).
* **Easy way to read out Steam profiles:** Website by Coldknife.
* Advanced editors provide better results and more options. For free are
	+ notepad++
	+ HxD. (**Use at own risk!**, HxD has the power to hook running processes and read and modify RAM of them, which some anticheat software might not like)
	+ https://hexed.it/ (online, no need to download)
	+ Find a certain Steam-ID on: https://steamidfinder.com/

#### When does Journey overwrite names in the SAVE.BIN?

The names of a previous Journey are probably still in your SAVE.BIN, though in the list on the names of the current Journey are shown.

To **avoid mixing up Companion names** **from several Journeys**, search for the names, before you start a new Journey!

 Journey 2
 In your SAVE.BIN

Below mentioned automated tools to read out the save file, can not distinguish between new and leftover Companions names.

A picture from the CMATW can help to find out the chronology of names, by **comparing their Symbols**. Or remembering the names of Companions from the past.

### Steam - SAVE.BIN

No one-for-all-tutorial:

There are two folders, where a save file (SAVE.BIN) is stored.

Depending on if the Steam Cloud is enabled or disabled one of them is updated while playing (or one folder reports to the other...).

To check for the right SAVE.BIN, check timestamp of the file - last changed.

#### Local Folder / Appdata

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Annapurna Interactive\Journey\Steam\

Normally this is the folder with the correct SAVE.BIN.

#### Steam install folder / remote folder

1. Usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\user-number\638230\remote. Or the folder you choose, when installing Steam (D:\GAMES\steam\...).
2. 638230 is Journeys application id.
3. If you played on different accounts, you need to find the folder with the user(number) that you use when playing *Journey*. Check the timestamp of the SAVE.BIN.

### Epic - SAVE.BIN

See here. It might not be possible to read out names from the SAVE.BIN on Epic Games.

### Name does not show

There is only the Symbol of the player, but no name to it.

Those names contain "unusual" characters the game is unable to display non-Latin characters such as chinese or emoji for example.

Solution: Open the SAVE.BIN in Notepad++ and view the file with UTF8 encoding. Your recent Companions are listed at the top after a bunch of NUL's

### Name is only a number

Those are usually Steam accounts who have never set up the Steam Community feature enabling the display name.

Solution: Search that number among Steam members, you should be able to find them. That number *is* their current profile name. https://steamidfinder.com/

### Ways to read out the SAVE.BIN, find the SteamID of recent Companions

The SAVE.BIN file contains the Steam account name and the SteamID3 ID's of recent Companions.

You can either use a

* **a website** to parse your SAVE.BIN. Simply drag your SAVE.BIN into the field on the website and get the name and ID. Should work in most cases.
* **Hex editor**. Might need some trying out to find the right settings to view the information.
* **a PowerShell script** to automatically parse the file.

The information starts at offset 0x19A8 in SAVE.BIN and a new player name occurs every 32 bytes. The player name is the first 24 bytes - UTF8 encoded, and the 4 bytes immediately afterward are the SteamID3.

#### Website by Coldknife

1. Open the folder with the SAVE.BIN
2. Open the homepage: https://journey.coldknife2.ninja/
3. Drag & Drop the file into the field
4. Click on the names of companions to get to their steam profile
5. Success!

Note: The parser may show "Companions from the distant past", in addition to the Companions you met on the recent Journey. See here.

Source code: https://github.com/Coldknife2/JourneySaveParserHtml

#### PowerShell script by Peksa

**In general, be wary of executing random PowerShell scripts!**

This script is for assumed experienced users of PowerShell.

The PowerShell script is available here: https://gist.github.com/Peksa/8059367b4f1a620df0ed9cba3ff6d5d2

The script searches for the two folders, that contain a SAVE.BIN and you just have to choose which one is the right for you. Note: if your files arenot in the standard folders, the script will not find them.

The output will look like this:

1. Save the contents of the script as journey.ps1 somewhere
2. Open PowerShell
3. Run the script from the PowerShell command prompt using `.\journey.ps1` (you may run into ExecutionPolicy issues, see the respective Microsoft Docs page to learn more.)

#### Hex editor

As seen at the image below, the output is not as direct as when using the website or script. Though using an editor can help, if the other options do not work.

You can for example use the free Hex editor HxD (**Use at own risk!**, HxD has the power to hook running processes and read and modify RAM of them, which some anticheat software might not like).

or the online Hex editor (https://hexed.it/)

1. Open the SAVE.BIN file in HxD, or alternatively notepad++ for a clearer text representation
2. Mark the numbers after the name and look at the right side to get the numbers that are the Steam-ID.
3. Use any Steam ID finder website to locate your Companion.

## See also

Companions Met Along the Way (CMATW)
PC Version FAQ

## References

1. ↑ '''Lilly''', 2020-11-14 on discord. "it's tricky, there's names from several runs listed in there. Actually switched notepad++ to UTF8 encoding and there's a 4th other name in Chinese characters was able to search Steam for that Chinese name and find about 20 users
2. ↑ Lilly 2020-11 on discord.