This would not work due to how the game is coded! I can't really offer advice or take a bug report seriously if someone's messing around with their files like that, since you might've just bungled something on your end, which sounds like what happened here. The patreon-exclusive versions of each update might be a more reliable way of cheating the game, given it includes a debug room for this exact purpose!
I still have my save that I import to the latest version from when I can get a lot of witch potion and I make my stats at 8. it works fine for all stats. But honestly, I like to play with the RNG so I had other save that were made on the latest version of the game. It's stressful to fail but also fun for me