Players are using cheats to get infinite loot boxes in Middle-earth: Shadow of War on PC

The PC version of Middle-earth: Shadow of War, like so many other games on the platform, can easily be manipulated with the help of scripts.

This is not news in and of itself, but because Middle-earth: Shadow of War has become the poster child this week for having game-altering loot boxes and microtransactions, interest is higher than usual.

In Shadow of War's case, programs like Cheat Engine will allow you to get infinite Mirian, the in-game currency earned by completing missions, challenges and so on. Like we point out in the Shadow of War loot boxes breakdown, you can use Mirian to buy Silver chests, and War chests.

A NeoGAF user employed this trick to get loads of Mirian, effectively allowing them to keep buying loot chests forever.

Those types of loot boxes grant you anything from gear to uruks - but crucially, they don't include Legendary uruks. To get those, you'll need to buy chests only purchasable with Gold. Gold is most easily earned by spending real money. Legendary uruks are needed towards the end of the game, because of how challenging the final missions are, hence the outrage.

In order to use Gold, you'll need to be online, making certain that cheats and scripts do not work. In short, while you can definitely make things much easier by having infinite chests, the Legendary ones will still be a bit of a grind, or require the purchase of Gold.

This Cheat Engine trick is not related to the recent Denuvo protection crack. You can do this with your legitimate copy, as these programmes only manipulate memory addresses. If you'd rather not do that, you can always check out our Shadow of War guide for cleaner tips on how to get better.