diff --git a/skel_common/backup/auto_update.json b/skel_common/backup/auto_update.json
index 7b1b4e0..7ba5722 100644
--- a/skel_common/backup/auto_update.json
+++ b/skel_common/backup/auto_update.json
@@ -19,6 +19,7 @@
 						"Made the comments in boilerplace mod metadata optional",
 						"Fixed omitted Validate warnings for PNG files",
 						"Added Validate warnings about FTL 1.6.1+ for TTF, MP3, and PNG files",
+						"Disabled XML escaping when reencoding to ensure invalid chars cause an error",
 						"Changed logging framework to SLF4J/Logback",
 						"Changed command line parser to picocli"
 					]
diff --git a/skel_common/readme_changelog.txt b/skel_common/readme_changelog.txt
index 678d30d..2fa22bf 100644
--- a/skel_common/readme_changelog.txt
+++ b/skel_common/readme_changelog.txt
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ Changelog
 - Edited a comment in boilerplate mod metadata to include AE ships
 - Made the comments in boilerplace mod metadata optional
 - Fixed omitted Validate warnings for PNG files
+- Disabled XML escaping when reencoding to ensure invalid chars cause an error
 - Added Validate warnings about FTL 1.6.1+ for TTF, MP3, and PNG files
 - Changed logging framework to SLF4J/Logback
 - Changed command line parser to picocli
diff --git a/src/main/java/net/vhati/modmanager/core/SloppyXMLOutputProcessor.java b/src/main/java/net/vhati/modmanager/core/SloppyXMLOutputProcessor.java
index 1818037..118f940 100644
--- a/src/main/java/net/vhati/modmanager/core/SloppyXMLOutputProcessor.java
+++ b/src/main/java/net/vhati/modmanager/core/SloppyXMLOutputProcessor.java
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ import org.jdom2.Content;
 import org.jdom2.Document;
 import org.jdom2.Element;
 import org.jdom2.Namespace;
+import org.jdom2.output.EscapeStrategy;
 import org.jdom2.output.Format;
 import org.jdom2.output.LineSeparator;
 import org.jdom2.output.XMLOutputter;
@@ -153,6 +154,9 @@ public class SloppyXMLOutputProcessor extends AbstractXMLOutputProcessor {
 	 * is encoding bytes to match. If encoding is null, the default
 	 * is "UTF-8".
 	 *
+	 * There will be no XML character entity escaping, which would have allowed
+	 * otherwise unmappable characters to print without errors.
+	 *
 	 * LineEndings will be CR-LF. Except for comments!?
 	 */
 	public static void sloppyPrint( Document doc, Writer writer, String encoding ) throws IOException {
@@ -163,7 +167,16 @@ public class SloppyXMLOutputProcessor extends AbstractXMLOutputProcessor {
 		format.setIndent( "\t" );
 		format.setLineSeparator( LineSeparator.CRNL );
 
-		if ( encoding != null ) format.setEncoding( encoding );
+		if ( encoding != null ) {
+			format.setEncoding( encoding );
+		}
+
+		format.setEscapeStrategy(new EscapeStrategy() {
+			@Override
+			public boolean shouldEscape( char ch ) {
+				return false;
+			}
+		});
 
 		XMLOutputter outputter = new XMLOutputter( format, new SloppyXMLOutputProcessor() );
 		outputter.output( doc, writer );