Heretic cheat codes

Published (or updated) in February 8th, 2022.

In this article, we bring the Heretic — the classic dark medieval fantasy FPS from 1994 — cheat codes. It contains both the good cheats, which will help you, and the bad ones, that will get you in trouble.

We are adding the Heretic cheat codes here since the game was ported to be played online, and we also love this Raven Software’s classic and want to have more content about it at Ace Online Games. Note that we are only considering the vanilla cheat codes, not the ones that are activated via console on some advanced source port.

To use these cheat codes, simply type the code while playing (also work in automap mode). If you do this right, a message of acknowledgement will appear at the top of the screen. The status bar and in-game view may also change, depending on the effects of the cheat. All codes should work in all source ports.

All codes are disabled in multiplayer games and in the “Black Plague Possesses Thee” skill level, except “ravmap”.

So let’s go to the codes and their effects:

Good cheats

• quicken – God mode: makes the player immune to almost any kind of damage (probably not to telefrag).
• rambo – All weapons with full/double ammo and maximum armor (100 points on shareware, 200 points in registered version).
• skel – All keys.
• shazam – Gives the Tome of Power and activates it.
• kitty – No clip mode: the player can walk through walls, characters, items, and obstacles, and climb high ledges instantly.
• massacre – Kills every monster in the current level.
• ravmap – Revel map. Only works in Map Mode (press [TAB]). Entering the code again reveals the quest items and monsters. Typing it again disables cheating.
• ponce – Gets your health to 100%.
• engage## – Warps to level E#M#.
• ravpic – Works in the title screen: makes [F1] take screenshots instead of displaying in-game help.
• ticker – Toggles ticks-per-frame counter.
• noise – Toggles sound debug.
• gimme## – Give some power-up. This code is followed by a letter (a-j) and a number (1-9). The letter defines which item is given, the number the amount of items given. If ‘z’ is entered as the item, and ‘0’ (zero) is entered as the amount, the player is given 5 of each item. In patched games, this code gives the maximum of everything instead. See what each letter give in the next section.

The letters and corresponding items are:

• A: Ring of Invincibility
• B: Shadowsphere
• C: Quartz Flask
• D: Mystic Urn (not available in shareware)
• E: Tome of Power
• F: Torch
• G: Timebomb of the Ancients
• H: Morph Ovum
• I: Wings of Wrath
• J: Chaos Device (not available in shareware)

Example: you want 5 torches (5 torches), then type this: GIMMEF5

Bad cheats

• cockadoodledoo – Turn yourself into a chicken. Maybe useful for something, but makes you pretty helpless.
• iddqd – This original god mode Doom cheat code will just kill the player on Heretic instead.
• idkfa – Another original Doom cheat. It will remove all your weapons and ammo. Any weapon that exists as a map item can be regained by picking one up, but the Elven Wand will be lost for the remainder of the game session, unless you use the “rambo” cheat.

The story behind Heretic’s cheat codes

The video down below is from the Codex channel and demonstrates the effects of cheat codes in Heretic, while discussing their origin, and their impact on the culture of gaming:

Heretic demo play

We added the next video here purely for nostalgic reasons:

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