The save is not actually in a file but in registry. So run regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Antti Haavikko\Equipmentris. There is a key named SaveData_something and if you rename that with a leading undescore or something, next time you load up you should get a fresh start but your money should remain as it's stored in a separate key. And also if you could give me a copy of that value so I could maybe debug what there is causing the issue. There shouldn't be any reason why getting too far in the game would do that. Must be either just some rare occasion error that just gets more likely the further you go as enemies get more and more gear or that the windows registry values can't contain enough data for the save.
Here's a MEGA link for the registry branch - I already deleted the most recent playthrough but it was the same bug nonetheless, character selection and adding items is fine, but as soon as you enter combat you'll find the enemies don't have slots and you instantly win combat, and are forced to hire one of the 0-stat enemies. The leaderboards simply show 3 empty, no-slot characters and no names or numbers where they should be.
In fact, after deleting the entire registry branch the leaderboards STILL show nothing. Is this a connectivity issue, or something else? I'd like to see where I sit on the leaderboards, but usually I tend to play offline and it looks like I haven't submitted a score since apparently 2022, which is the save in the file below.
https://mega.nz/file/SDZT0bAJ#BxNL6BEVdA3cZ-4LWTReK6X_erOUxmBtGiu2baaiXJE
As for anyone attempting to hijack this save, please let me know if you figure out how to make the save playable again. I'd like to see how far this old build can go ^^
76 days ago (+1)
Hmm true, leaderboards seems to be broken even with a completely blank save. There must be some weird score submission there preventing it from loading. That should be unrelated to your blank enemies bug though. There must be something still broken in the save if it keeps loading the same glitchy enemies every time. Try clearing the EnemyBones_something key too...
Okay so most of the time just Alt+F4ing and rebooting the game works to refresh the enemies, at least at low levels. I haven't yet tried clearing the EnemyBones_whatever key (it actually doesnt exist at the time of writing on the new save I'm on right now), but what I assume is that the EnemyBones_whatever key is the one that stores the enemies, and when they're randomly generated there's a chance for them to bug out and return a nothing? So not having an EnemyBones_ key in my registry right now suggests the deletion fix works. I'd have to get back to you on that one until I get to high enough of a level to encounter players though (iirc around level 50?)
I have also encountered the no items in shop bug that @potatobirb mentioned below. Rebooting in this case does not seem to fix the issue so I'm not sure what to clear. I don't see a value here that might store the shop's items, and I presume it randomly generates it based off of a predetermined seed every hour, since it refreshes even when offline.
Edit: Deleting the EnemyBones_ key did in fact fix the blank enemies bug :D
However, even after deleting the entire branch, the shop is nowhere to be found...
76 days ago(+1)
The leaderboards thing is now fixed. The issue was not actually on your end but my server service provider (which was migrated from another provider) had some strict firewall setting on and blocked all web requests from non-browser apps. For the empty shop I'll have to do some investigations but it seems like normally it works but there can be some items appearing which make it not work...