I am familiar with saving data such as strings and ints to XML files and such but what if the data is important? Such as an int representing what level the character is on in your game? You cannot simply put that in an XML file. Encryption comes to mind but really, whatever you come up with someone will hack and exploit. Also, you must deal with decryption and is really a waste IMO. Surely there must be a better way?

I was thinking about storing the values IN the exe. Would such a thing be fine for this sort of thing? Also, decompiling DLL's seems to be almost impossible. Should I just write and read to and from a DLL?

(I'm not going to have a server so please don't suggest it)

I'd really like to hear some nice, clean suggestions on performing such a task as I don't really want 10 seperate classes just for writing and reading what level a character is on.

I'm sure other people have encountered this problem before? What did you do?

Thanks