Starting Guide

Introduction

Welcome to Nintendo Switch Cheat Learning Guide! We will be trying to help people interested in learning how to find and create cheats for Nintendo Switch. I will try to help everyone I can but I have a few requests.

I can't help with every software/firmware/cfw combination. So for all intents and purposes this channel will assume that you are running the latest stable version of Atmosphere (currently 1.2.6) on the current required Firmware (currently 13.2.1). See Software Needed for what software will be used.
I have only been dealing with Switch CFW since about February 2021, but I've been creating cheats on PC for 7 years, and created Anti-Cheat methods before that. So there may be things I don't know or I may mix up terms. If you don't understand something, ASK (ways to contact me can be found in the Contact Section)!
All advice and knowledge are given to the best of my current knowledge. I cannot guarantee anything. I tend to be a very good teacher and I enjoy it but what we are doing here is not for everyone. It can be frustrating when you are first starting out and nothing seems to be working. I will try and give you advice and tricks but I can't promise you will be a cheat creating expert in any kind of time frame.
This guide is only for learning about making cheats. I do not condone piracy and will not answer any questions about where to get games or dlc for free. My guide will only contain games that can be found for free in the Nintendo E-Shop.
I am creating this guide with the intent of teaching you how to modify single-player or offline games. I do not condone cheating online nor do developers. Developers are quick to patch games that have cheats and exploits that effect multiplayer. If this was your intent, I highly suggest you think otherwise. Most cheat creators will not help you do this because it makes their lives harder when developer update their games frequently.
Knowing a programming language is not required, but I would HIGHLY suggest starting to learn one at this point. If you want to go far with this skills, you will need to have a deep understanding of how games work. This can be accomplish by learning most languages, but I would suggest learning something simple but deep, like Java or C/++/#. There are plenty of free guides online that are good. If you are looking for a serious challenge (and already know at least one language), look for an Assembly language guide (Switch uses ARM Assembly, but I had only a little difficulty moving from x86/64 to ARM). This will help you understand when we get into the Advanced Guide.

Starting Out Information

Now before we can get into searching and creating your first cheat, we need to understand what is going on inside the computer. Note: If you have software development experience or any cheat creation experience on other platforms, feel free to skip down to Software as we will be covering storage and memory types below. Otherwise, let's dive right in!