I guess you could just put coins in as well.
Can someone post a save with all followers recruited? I think there's at least 5.
Yeah the map save / load works for anything that can be saved in a container. Thought that would be obvious.
And depending on which version you are using, you now need CHA to recruit all the followers.
I think you need to be near level 30 to have enough for all five.
If you can get your hands on the v4.7.2 update, there was an XP bug where if you take a reset potion, all you had to do subtract a level then add one over and over again and the XP would increase each time you subtract.
I'm still using my god tier save from that mess.
Editing item_data, not all things can be obtained, for example, kitty_tail or a set of goblins, they are simply not in the file...
If you want anything that is not inside of item_data, you have to extract the mesh from resources/app.asar (use a 7zip plugin) then create a mod from scratch with the mesh as a reference.
It's not as hard as it sounds, but you do need to know what you're doing with the json syntax. I might look into this myself, since the tails / ears don't drop very often.