So you lost your stuff in Pocket Trains?

I’ve been debating this post for a while now. Mainly because it goes against some of what I believe. Perhaps a little big of background will help in this case…

I’ve spent both a lot of time and money playing Pocket Trains. Luckily the money spent was from the promotional kitkat offers with Google play credit. I got quite far, having covered most of the map. That is until my phone broke. Not to worry, I was signed in with Google, so my account should have been syncing up with some server somewhere. At least, that is what I, like many others, believed was the case.

Apparently not. If you change, or format, your phone or tablet, don’t expect your progress to be backed up and restored when you’re back up and running. Your money, time, and effort will likely be lost for all eternity.

That’s a quite a lot sucky.

I don’t like losing those 3 commodities, especially when it is on a game that I was ever so slightly addicted too. It kind of put me right off. Especially when support are not able to bring them back to me somehow.

So why not? Why should I not try and recover what I had lost? Sure it won’t be a perfect copy, but I can get most of what I had setup back to a point.

Enough background? Sure.

I will put in a disclaimer though. I don’t really condone you doing this from the start. It’s going to ruin the game for you, and you should really pay NimbleBit for the bux and crate upgrades if you can. The game is fun. Keep it that way. What isn’t fun is losing out on money. This is simply my way of recovering what I lost, to an extent. Oh, if you lose your progress, break your phone, generally suffer some form of side affect –  whether good or bad – that is not my fault. You can’t be me. Good.

This process assumes that you’re using a phone that is rooted – Either accessing the files from a file explorer, or accessed with adb from a computer. Without these, the file modifications won’t be able to be done.

In short, what we will be doing is changing the xml file the game reads from when storing settings and data. This is stored within the /data/data/com.nimblebit.pockettrains/shared_prefs/ folder on your device. The file is com.nimblebit.pockettrains.xml.

Unfortunately, changing this is not as simple as I would have hoped. The full list of inventory is not in this file until you have unlocked it. This means we can’t update every number to something higher and see what changes.

That said, I will be trying to catalogue what can be changed. (Maybe, If I get time)

In the meantime, try the attached xml file (taking a backup of yours). You’ll need to change the gift code to something – maybe not your current one just in case – and read the values. You will have a ton of bux and coins, and also 55 Christmas Trains, and 10 Halloween ones. These are not unlockable in the game, and are there as a proof that this is easy to do.

To put this in place, navigate to the directory as pointed out above, and over write the existing file – back up your existing if you don’t want to lose it.

I’ll be updating this post with more information on what seems to change what, and a list of yard eID values for trains so that you can get what you want easily. This would mean no bux, creates, or coins cheating is needed, and less crappy steamers.

Dropbox Link: Pocket Trains Shared Prefs