Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge $200 lightsabers can be hacked to change color

Well … well, well. Here is a hack that, assuming one has the proper equipment, can save Jedi tourists to Disney’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge park quite a bit of dough in the lightsaber column of their budget for professional attire.

It seems the color of the blade (and they’re quiiiite spendy) is determined by an RFID code — it’s not something specific to the crystal itself. So, as Riot Games’ Gene Chorba pointed out yesterday, if you have an RFID read/writer, you can avail yourself of all five lightsaber colors without buying a different crystal.

The custom lightsabers at Disneyland and Disney World’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge run $199.99, a price tag we likened in comparing the purchase to “a drug deal [blended] with a religious experience.” The heart of this purchase is the Kyber crystal, which the buyer/role-player then fits into the handle of their lightsaber. That crystal is a specific color, but what it tells the tube/lightsaber blade to emit is apparently governed by the RFID that said crystal transmits.

Your humble author has no experience with RFID readers and writers, but a cursory search reveals devices with these capabilities for $17.99 on Amazon and elsewhere. So if you visited, or will visit, Galaxy’s Edge, and splurge for the elegant weapon for a more civilized age, and then decide you’d rather turn to Sith red from your chaotic-good hipster purple, your treason shouldn’t require a return trip and another two hundy.

An even cheaper solution? We’ve found the lightsaber customization in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to be quite good at recreating the ones we made IRL. Plus you can swing it around and whack bad guys with it without worrying about damaging the blade.

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