Guide: PC version - Companions Met Along the Way Problems

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

You will need:

 * Most solutions require 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).
 * Other 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)
 * 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! 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.

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.

Local Folder / Appdata
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Annapurna Interactive\Journey\Steam\

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 upload your SAVE.BIN to the website and get the name and ID. Should work in most cases.
 * Hex editor, no upload needed. 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
http://coldknife2.ninja/Journey/journeyParser.html

Source code: https://github.com/Coldknife2/JourneySaveParserHtml/blob/main/journeyParser.html

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.

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   (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).


 * 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.

In-depth analysis
more suited for modding wiki

Trivia
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Quotes
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