#hacking tutorial

So You Wanna Hack Your 3DS But Have No Idea Where To Start:

That’s ok, I gotcha. I was once a total noob too and though hacking your 3DS might seem scary at first, I promise you it’s not that hard. Just a kinda long and sometimes tedious process but otherwise, anyone can do it with just the right info and tools.

This tutorial might get long but I’ll try to cover as much info as I can for you to be able to fearlessly begin your hacking journey.

What Does Hacking Your 3DS Mean And Why Would You Want To Do It?

Hacking your 3DS basically means modding your 3DS and 3DS games by using various tools and exploits. Think of it as a Powersave but completely integrated into your 3DS.

You can get everything you’d get from a Powersave for free on almost any game by hacking your 3DS but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. A hacked 3DS can give you access to even cooler stuff when used alongside the right tools. This is where it goes way beyond what a Powersave could provide for you.

Like for example, let’s say you’re annoyed that games like Fire Emblem Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates have mostly nothing but Hetero romance options for your characters. With a hacked 3DS, you can easily fix this by using UV’s famous Same-Sex Marriage Hack for instance, which would then give you a ton of support options with no gender restrictions as well as a bunch of new, custom support conversation.

Or maybe you’re playing Animal Crossing but are having a frustrating time getting your Dreamies to move into your town or hate having to wait around for villagers to suggest Public Works? In that case, you can just get yourself ACNL’s Save Editor and get to editing any part of the game you want to make building your dream town a less tedious process.

Maybe you play pokemon and would love to edit your pokemon’s models and textures to look cuter/cooler/prettier/whatever? Then getting Ohana3DS would help you.

So I think you can see the various reasons one might want to get to hacking their 3DS and 3DS games.

Getting Started: A Brief Summary Of Homebrew.

In order to get started though, you need to understand a few things first.

To be able to mod your games and get access to hacks, you need to get Homebrew.

What is Homebrew? Homebrew is unofficial software made by amateur developers for closed systems such as the 3DS and PSVita. Homebrew is the software necessary for practically all sort of hacking to work so you need to be able to run it on your 3DS.

To be able to access homebrew on your console, you need what is known as an entrypoint. An entrypoint is a modded game or app that will act as a “door” between your 3DS and Homebrew. Some examples are:

Pressing A on a modded Ocarina of Time save will take you directly to the Homebrew Channel.  

Putting a certain modded sound file in your 3DS’s SD card gives you access to Homebrew through the 3DS’s stock sound application.

Putting a modded file in your your 3DS’s SD card gives you access to Homebrew through the game Freakyforms Deluxe.

A bunch of other entrypoints are listed on the official 3DS Homebrew Launcher website

Before You Choose An Entrypoint:

Before trying to get Homebrew, you need to know three very important things: whether you have an Old or New 3DS, your region and what firmware your system is currently on. These 3 things will determine which Homebrew entrypoints you can use as not all of them work on all system versions.

To check whether your 3DS is Old or New: Easy enough, just compare your 3DS to the ones on this pic and you should know whether yours is Old or New. 

Note that 2DS’s are automatically placed in the “Old” category.

To check your firmware version and region: You can see which version of the system software you have by accessing the System Settings and looking on the bottom right of the top screen. The number is your version with the letter at the end of it is your region.

Letter E means: Europe and other PAL regions aka Australia, New Zealand and any other countries with PAL software. Letter J means: Japanese region, also known as NTSC J. Letter U means: Region used in USA, Canada, Central America and South America.

Letter K means: Korean region.

Now that you know which 3DS you have and what firmware version you’re on, you can check which entrypoints are available to you here. Compare the “Supported firmwares” section of each entrypoint/exploit to see if it could work on your own system.

BUT I’m assuming you are a complete noob to this, which means you’re very probably on firmware 11.3 and you would rather go for the easiest to use entrypoint that’d work on the latest firmware.

Nothing to worry about, I gotchu.

Launching Homebrew Through Soundhax:

SO, the easiest and safest method that I know of for the current firmware (11.3) is Soundhax.

Soundhax is an entrypoint that uses the stock Sound application that comes with every 3DS ever so it honestly doesn’t get any easier and cheaper than this.

To get started, follow the steps listed below (links to everything you need included):

Turn off your 3DS. Now take your 3DS’s SD card out and plug it into your computer. If you have a New 3DS, you’ll probably have to take off your console’s back cover and use a usb plug for microSD cards. Follow the instructions Nintendo gives on this page.

Once your SD or microSD card is plugged to your computer, download the Homebrew Starter Kit from here. The download link is in the “Preparing your SD card” section of the page. When it says “Extract it at the root of your SD card”, this just means “Don’t put it inside any folders inside the SD card”. Just put the files and folders you just downloaded directly in the “open” space of your SD card and ignore any other folders you might find already in it.

Next up, download the right sound file over at nedwill’s soundhax website. Choose the region that matches your 3DS’s and then just choose between Old and New. Then click on “Download MP4” and you should now have a MP4 file downloaded to your computer. Now, just drag this file on to the root of your SD card.

Now go back to Homebrew’s website and scroll down to the “Otherapp/ropbin payloads” section. Here, you need to download the right “otherapp” file for your console by choosing wheter you have an Old or New 3DS, choosing the exact firmware numbers you see when you go into system settings and then choose your region’s letter. Just go back to system settings, check the bottom right of the top screen and input the numbers and letter in exactly as they are on your 3DS (zeros and all). After you do this, click on “Download otherapp”.

Drag the file you just downloaded to the root of your SD card. It has a super long name that you’ll want to change so rename the file to “otherapp”. Note: Normally, just renaming the file to otherapp should work but there’s been people who reported this sometimes doesn’t work. If when you try to launch homebrew nothing happens, try renaming this file “otherapp.bin” instead.

Eject your SD card from your computer and put it in your 3DS now. Turn on your 3DS now.

Now go to the Nintendo 3DS Sound application. This one:

Once inside the app, use your stylus and choose your SD card folder and you will then see a sound file named “<3 nedwill” aka probably the only file you’ll see. Play this file and ta da! 

You should get a scary black screen with random words and numbers that will then flash colors but don’t worry, this means everything worked and you can now access homebrew!

If nothing happens or your screen freezes for a long time, don’t panic cus this is normal (soundhax sometimes glitches out), just reboot your 3DS and try opening the sound file again.

After the black screen and flashing colors, your 3DS screens should now look like this:

Congratulations, you now have access to Homebrew!

Ok, I Have Hombrew But Now What?

Now you can use any hacks you want for any game you want :) I happen to only know hacks for 3DS Fire Emblem games and ACNL but you can always go on gbatemp and search for other hacks for other games.

To hack Fire Emblem, I recommend for you to watch this video. It’s pretty outdate but most of the steps in it still work.

To hack ACNL, I recommend you go watch this video. Very up to date.