Talk:Cheating/@comment-31580860-20170323035254/@comment-28783361-20170326013830

No, there's no actual long-term flag that's tripped, it's just a few very simple checks. You can play through the game without issue by cheating money/ProN, just as long as you stick to giving yourself enough to buy everything currently available rather than giving yourself a massive pile of it at once to coast on until the end of the game. Pretend your money pile refreshes to the level you currently have and you should be fine, since you can equip everyone with the best gear and also give yourself a bunch of advantages in investments.

The only thing you can actually miss by cheating is the Incubus King's Armor in the Deep Cache, and that happens under one of three occasions:

1) You're doing the cache the second time around, and not at the first opportunity (this is the normal way to miss it)

2) Simon's level is 40 or higher (so, you're cheating)

3) You have 100,000 Sx or more (again, you're cheating, but also that you left it all in cash form. But it doesn't affect you if you cheated yourself some money and then bought a ton of durge swords or whatever and left them in your inventory)

So don't cheat your level, and don't leave a giant pile of cash in your inventory, and you will be fine.

The only dialogue is the guy in the Yhilin outskirts who tells you how strong you are (which is basically the game checking your level). He mentions that you're clearly cheating if Simon's level is 90 or higher and tells you to have fun. The game doesn't penalize you or trip any flags for it, because Sierra is very chill about this and accepts that people are going to have fun in different ways.

I wouldn't cheat levels anyways just because I'm not sure how finalized the final skill stuff is. Giving yourself enough funds to buy all the best gear is usually enough to solve your problems and I'd recommend it as the simplest way to coast through the game and figure out what everything does.

Cheating to make yourself invincible can have some minor problems if you do it in the fights you're not supposed to be able to win, like Orcent's fight with the Rodak Elite, but it's usually in the form of "game treats it as though you did the worst option" rather than branding you forever, for instance.

Other than that, have fun.