Random Encounters Menu Option

What happens if you do not start a new save?  I'm about 10 hours into a TWUE playthrough, and I applied the on/off options hack, and it seems to work fine as far as I can tell.  I was just wondering if this will cause issues later on?

iirc, that unused memory byte has a value of 0x55 throughout the game. If it's the case, the hack won't be able to handle that value correctly because it needs to be 0 or 1. If the hack is working as intended no need to worry though, it can't have other side effect.