Advanced Loot Info (ALI) in FTB Evolution 2

Same as in the FTB Skies 2 1.22.0 guide

Advanced Loot Info (ALI) is an add-on for your recipe viewer. It shows detailed information about loot tables and villager trades, and it lays everything out in a clear way. If you've ever wondered what a chest, mob or block can drop, or what a villager will trade, this mod is built to answer that.^[1]

ALI is not a standalone mod. It needs one of three supported recipe viewers: Just Enough Items (JEI), EMI or Roughly Enough Items (REI). It adds its information to the viewer you already use.^[1]

This pack includes ALI 2.1.0, built for NeoForge 1.21.1.^[2]

What it supports

• LootJS is supported out of the box. That matters in a modpack, since LootJS is a common way to change loot.^[1]
• Other mods can add plugins that display custom loot entries, custom loot conditions and custom loot functions.^[1]
• Plugins can also work with custom number providers and create custom categories. Right now, custom categories can only come from the Gameplay loot category.^[1]

Who it's for

It's for anyone who wants to look up drops and trades without guessing or digging through data files. Open your recipe viewer and look there for the loot and trade information.^[1]

Unverified Which recipe viewer this pack uses, and where ALI fits in the pack's progression, are not confirmed by the sources I have. Nothing here shows quests or a progression step that involves ALI, so treat it as a lookup tool rather than something you need to unlock. This site does hold FTB Evolution 2's own recipes, read from the pack itself: look the item up in the item browser.

Good news: there is nothing to craft to get going with Advanced Loot Info (ALI). It is not a standalone mod. It plugs into a recipe viewer and shows detailed information about loot tables and villager trades. It needs one of three viewers: Just Enough Items (JEI), EMI or Roughly Enough Items (REI).^[1]

Unverified The sources here show no crafting recipe for any item from this mod and no quest in the pack's quest book that involves it. Anything beyond opening your recipe viewer and browsing the loot pages is not covered by the sources. This site does hold FTB Evolution 2's own recipes, read from the pack itself: look the item up in the item browser.

What you will find in the viewer

The pack's config file blockCategories sorts loot into categories. Block loot has a plant loot category that covers the crops block tag, plus a general block loot category. Entities get an entity loot category, and villager trades are all grouped under one trade loot category.^[3]

Gameplay loot gets the most categories, set in gameplayCategories. Some of them are tied to a catalyst item, so you can look them up by that item. Here are a few from the pack's config:^[3]

• Fishing loot, with Fishing Rod as its catalyst.^[3]
• Archaeology loot, with Brush, Suspicious Sand and Suspicious Gravel as catalysts.^[3]
• Piglin bartering, with Piglin Spawn Egg and Gold Ingot as catalysts.^[3]
• Shearing, with Shears as its catalyst.^[3]
• Trial chambers, with Trial Spawner, Trial Key and Ominous Trial Key as catalysts.^[3]
• Chest loot, Hero of the Village loot and a catch-all gameplay loot category, which have no catalysts listed.^[3]

In EMI, the mod's Hero of the Village page is titled "Hero of the Village Loot". Loot pages also separate their conditions and modifiers with delimiter lines labelled "Predicates" and "Modifiers".^[4]

The pack also changes one entity loot table in entityLootTables.minecraft:creeper. For the creeper, it lists a loot table from Ars Magica: Legacy called creeper_dismembering.^[3]

Advanced Loot Info (ALI) is not a machine mod, so there is no power, fluid or item handling to learn here. Advanced Loot Info (ALI) is a plugin that shows detailed loot table and villager trade information inside a recipe viewer. It is not standalone: it needs Just Enough Items, EMI or Roughly Enough Items.^[1]

What follows is how it sorts and displays loot, based on the pack's config and the mod's own text.^[1][3]

How loot gets sorted into categories

Loot is grouped into categories, and the pack defines them in gameplayCategories, blockCategories, entityCategories and tradeCategories. The file also has a configVersion value, which is 2 in this pack.^[3]

Each gameplay category has a key, an icon, and a list of patterns that are matched against loot table ids. Some also list catalysts, which are items tied to that kind of loot.^[3]

• Fishing loot matches loot tables under gameplay/fishing and lists Fishing Rod as its catalyst.^[3]
• Archaeology loot matches the archaeology and brush tables. Its catalysts are Brush, Suspicious Sand and Suspicious Gravel.^[3]
• Piglin bartering matches gameplay/piglin_bartering. Its catalysts are Piglin Spawn Egg and Gold Ingot.^[3]
• Trial chambers cover chests, pots, dispensers, spawners and equipment tables. Their catalysts are Trial Spawner, Trial Key and Ominous Trial Key.^[3]
• Shearing uses Shears as its catalyst, and carving lists the same item.^[3]
• Other gameplay categories in the pack cover chest loot, hero of the village gifts, cat morning gifts, sniffer digging, panda sneezes, armadillo shedding, chicken laying, charged creepers, harvesting and turtle growing.^[3]

The last gameplay category, ali:gameplay_loot, uses the pattern ".*", which matches any loot table id. Villager trades work the same way: the single ali:trade_loot category also uses ".*".^[3]

Blocks and entities

Block loot has two categories. The plant category is set to the #minecraft:crops block tag, and the general block category has an empty block list. Entity loot has a single category with an empty entity type list.^[3]

The pack also sets entityLootTables.minecraft:creeper to the loot table arsmagicalegacy:entities/modify/creeper_dismembering, a table from the Ars Magica: Legacy namespace.^[3]

What the displays show

Loot entries are split into two labelled sections, "Predicates" for conditions and "Modifiers" for functions. Modifiers include setting the pages of writable and written books. Number providers can read an environment attribute or a storage value. Villager trade lists can say that a random number of the listed trades is selected.^[4]

The mod's language file also names an EMI category called "Hero of the Village Loot".^[4]

Extending it

Out of the box, ALI supports LootJS. Other mods can add plugins for custom loot entries, conditions, functions and number providers. Plugins can also create custom categories, though right now only from the Gameplay loot category.^[1]

Advanced Loot Info keeps its settings in one file, config/ali/ali_common.json. Most of it is about categories: how loot tables, blocks, entities and trades get sorted into the groups you see in the viewer. Here is how the pack sets each option.^[3]

Block and entity categories

• blockCategories lists ali:plant_loot and ali:block_loot. ali:plant_loot uses the diamond hoe icon and covers the #minecraft:crops tag. ali:block_loot uses the diamond pickaxe icon and has an empty block list.^[3]
• entityCategories lists ali:entity_loot, with a skeleton skull icon and an empty entityTypes list.^[3]

Gameplay and trade categories

gameplayCategories is the biggest option. Each entry has a key, an icon and a list of regex patterns that match loot table ids. Some entries also have catalysts, which are items listed alongside that category.^[3]

The pack sets categories for chest loot, trial chambers, fishing, archaeology, hero of the village, cat morning gifts, piglin bartering, sniffer digging, panda sneezing, shearing, armadillo shedding, chicken laying, carving, charged creepers, harvesting and turtle growing. The last entry is ali:gameplay_loot, with a compass icon and the pattern ".*".^[3]

A few examples of the catalysts: fishing lists Fishing Rod, archaeology lists Brush plus suspicious sand and suspicious gravel, and piglin bartering lists the piglin spawn egg and Gold Ingot.^[3]

tradeCategories contains ali:trade_loot, with an emerald block icon and the pattern ".*".^[3]

Creeper loot table

The pack sets entityLootTables.minecraft:creeper to arsmagicalegacy:entities/modify/creeper_dismembering. That loot table comes from the arsmagicalegacy namespace, which is Ars Magica: Legacy.^[3]

Config version

configVersion is set to 2 in this pack. You shouldn't need to touch it.^[3]

FTB Evolution 2 1.1.0 ships Advanced Loot Info (ALI) 2.4.0. The mod was already in the pack as of 1.0.2 or earlier, so this is the version you get in 1.1.0.^[5]

What the 2.4.0 changelog lists

These are the mod's own changelog entries for the version the pack uses. They describe the mod itself, not changes the pack made to it.^[5][6]

• A new spawnInfo configuration option lets you hide entity spawn info.^[6]
• Chances and rolls that depend on luck now show one row per luck value. Entry chance accounts for quality and luck, and chances in pools with alternatives account for the weight of the alternative that is picked.^[6]
• Tooltips scroll with the mouse wheel when they are taller than the screen.^[6]
• Counts and chances show the most likely value, level rows, charts (showCharts) and formulas (F3+H).^[6]
• With showInGameNames on, IDs (biomes, dimensions, structures and so on) and tags are shown translated when a translation exists, including in spawn info.^[6]
• Storage, enchantment level, exponent level, sum and environment attribute number providers show their value instead of unknown. Enchantment level based values show as one number with level rows instead of a structure tree.^[6]
• Trader registration receives server utils, so trades can be read from datapack registries.^[6]

Fixes for broken loot support

A lot of 2.4.0 is about one broken thing no longer ruining the whole display. This matters in a big modpack where many mods add their own loot.^[6]

• Broken loot function or condition support from other mods no longer hides the whole loot table.^[6]
• Broken loot entry, tooltip or trade support from other mods shows that part as unsupported instead of hiding the whole loot table or trader.^[6]
• Broken loot modifications from LootJS, global loot modifiers or other mods are skipped instead of hiding the whole loot table. LootJS replaceLoot no longer hides the whole loot table either.^[6]
• Names built from arguments are fixed, for example the GregTech name pattern "%s Dust".^[6]
• Blocks that only drop themselves stay hidden when the only thing applying to them is auto-detected global loot modifiers.^[6]
• Invalid configuration values are skipped with a warning instead of silently resetting the whole option to defaults.^[6]

Unverified The sources here include no pack changelog entries for this mod, so what FTB changed about it between pack releases is not shown. Check the pack's own changelog for that.