Advanced Loot Info (ALI) in FTB Skies 2

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 Skies 2's own recipes, read from the pack itself: look the item up in the item browser.

Advanced Loot Info is a plugin for your recipe viewer that shows detailed information about loot tables and villager trades. You use it by looking things up in the viewer, so there is no first item to craft here.^[1]

It isn't a standalone mod. It needs one of three supported recipe viewers: Just Enough Items (JEI), EMI or Roughly Enough Items (REI). Its info shows up inside that viewer.^[1]

What you'll see

• A Hero of the Village Loot category in EMI.^[3]
• Villager trade lists with a note reading "Randomly Selects %s Of These Trades", where the %s is filled in with a number.^[3]
• Loot table details with divider lines labelled "Predicates" and "Modifiers", which separate the conditions from the functions.^[3]

It also supports LootJS out of the box, so loot changes made through LootJS can be shown too.^[1]

Advanced Loot Info is different from most mods in this pack: it has no machines, multiblocks, power or fluid systems to automate. It's a plugin for a recipe viewer that shows detailed information about loot tables and villager trades. The sources I have don't describe any machine, power or item-handling mechanics for it, so there's nothing to build or wire up.^[1]

How it works

The mod isn't standalone. It needs one of three supported recipe viewers: Just Enough Items, EMI or Roughly Enough Items. It supports LootJS out of the box.^[1]

Its tooltips and descriptions tell you what it shows. Villager trade entries can say that the game randomly selects a certain number of the listed trades. Loot entries separate their details into a Predicates section (the loot conditions) and a Modifiers section (the loot functions). In EMI there's also a category called Hero of the Village Loot.^[3]

Other mods can extend it through plugins. According to the project page, those plugins can display custom loot entries, conditions and functions, work with custom number providers, and create custom categories. For now, custom categories can only come from the Gameplay loot category.^[1]

How the pack groups loot

The mod sorts loot into categories, and the pack defines them in its config. The config version is configVersion = 2. Everything below is what the pack's config sets.^[4]

• Blocks, set in blockCategories: a plant loot category covering the crops block tag, and a general block loot category with no blocks listed.^[4]
• Entities, set in entityCategories: a single entity loot category with no entity types listed.^[4]
• Trades, set in tradeCategories: a single trade loot category whose pattern matches everything.^[4]

Gameplay loot, set in gameplayCategories, gets the most detailed split. The pack defines these categories:^[4]

• Chest loot, including village chests.^[4]
• Trial chambers, covering chests, pots, dispensers, ominous and normal spawners, and equipment. The catalysts listed are Trial Spawner, Trial Key and Ominous Trial Key.^[4]
• Fishing loot, with Fishing Rod as its catalyst.^[4]
• Archaeology loot, with Brush, Suspicious Sand and Suspicious Gravel as catalysts.^[4]
• Hero of the Village loot, with no catalysts listed.^[4]
• Cat morning gift, with Cat Spawn Egg as its catalyst.^[4]
• Piglin bartering, with Piglin Spawn Egg and Gold Ingot as catalysts.^[4]
• Sniffer digging, with Sniffer Spawn Egg as its catalyst.^[4]
• Panda sneeze, with Panda Spawn Egg as its catalyst.^[4]
• Shearing, with Shears as its catalyst.^[4]
• A general gameplay loot category listed last, whose pattern matches everything.^[4]

Advanced Loot Info is configured through config/ali/ali_common.json in this pack. It decides how loot tables and villager trades are grouped into categories in your recipe viewer (JEI, EMI or REI). The options are all about categories, icons and patterns.^[1][4]

Block, entity and trade categories

• blockCategories defines ali:plant_loot and ali:block_loot. ali:plant_loot uses a diamond hoe icon and covers the #minecraft:crops block tag. ali:block_loot uses a diamond pickaxe icon, and its block list is empty in this pack.^[4]
• entityCategories defines the category ali:entity_loot, with a skeleton skull icon. Its entity type list is empty in this pack.^[4]
• tradeCategories defines the category ali:trade_loot, with an emerald block icon. Its pattern is .*, so it matches every trade.^[4]

Gameplay categories

gameplayCategories holds the most entries. The mod page says custom categories can currently only be created from the Gameplay loot category. This pack sets up these categories:^[1][4]

• ali:chest_loot (chest icon) matches chest loot tables, including village chests.^[4]
• ali:trial_chambers (trial spawner icon) matches trial chamber chests, pots, dispensers and spawners, plus equipment tables. Its catalysts are Trial Spawner, Trial Key and Ominous Trial Key.^[4]
• ali:fishing_loot (fishing rod icon) matches fishing loot, with Fishing Rod as its catalyst.^[4]
• ali:archaeology_loot (decorated pot icon) matches archaeology loot. Its catalysts are Brush, Suspicious Sand and Suspicious Gravel.^[4]
• ali:hero_loot (emerald icon) matches Hero of the Village gifts and has no catalysts.^[4]
• ali:cat_morning_gift (phantom membrane icon) matches cat morning gifts, with Cat Spawn Egg as its catalyst.^[4]
• ali:piglin_bartering (gold ingot icon) matches piglin bartering. Its catalysts are Piglin Spawn Egg and Gold Ingot.^[4]
• ali:sniffer_digging (sniffer egg icon) matches sniffer digging, with Sniffer Spawn Egg as its catalyst.^[4]
• ali:panda_sneeze (bamboo icon) matches panda sneeze loot, with Panda Spawn Egg as its catalyst.^[4]
• ali:shearing (shears icon) matches shearing loot, with Shears as its catalyst.^[4]
• ali:gameplay_loot (compass icon) is listed last and uses the pattern .*, so it matches any gameplay loot table.^[4]

Version marker

configVersion is set to 2 in this pack.^[4]

FTB Skies 2 1.22.0 ships Advanced Loot Info 2.1.0, and the mod has been in the pack since 1.0.1 or earlier. The pack changelogs have no entries for this mod, so everything below comes from the mod's own changelogs.^[2]

2.1.0 (the version in this pack)

• Advanced Core Info (ACI) is now a required dependency.^[5]
• New tooltipColors configuration lets you change the tooltip text, value, error and branch colors.^[5]
• Enum values shown in tooltips are translatable.^[5]
• Loot entries can now be displayed inside a tooltip, for example on a Shulker Box.^[5]
• The equipment pattern was removed from the default Trial Chambers loot category, because it also matched unrelated modded equipment loot tables.^[5]
• Fixed a crash on server start that happened in rare cases.^[5]

1.12.0

• Network optimization on larger packs, with about 25% less data transferred.^[6]
• The client now requests data from the server instead of waiting for it, which fixes an occasional freeze when connecting to a server.^[6]
• Negative count values are clamped, and the chance calculation for the Random Chance With Enchanted Bonus predicate was fixed.^[6]
• Common item components (such as max_item_stack: 64) are no longer displayed.^[6]

1.10.0 and 1.9.1

• 1.10.0 dropped support for most mods except LootJS, on the basis that support should be done by the mod owners.^[7]
• 1.10.0 fixed conditionally removed loot not being displayed (LootJS) and a warning when loading fake loot tables.^[7]
• 1.10.0 sends translation keys as indexes, which means about 40% less data.^[7]
• 1.9.1 made the Block and Entity categories filter by tags, blocks and entityTypes instead of classes, and fixed a sporadic crash when hovering over an item.^[8]

Earlier releases

• 1.8.2 fixed a sporadic game freeze on world start.^[9]
• 1.7.2 fixed missing Wandering Trader trade info and decreased the packet size when syncing to avoid timeouts in some cases. The same two changes are listed for 1.21.1-1.6.0 and 1.21.1-1.5.2.^[10][11][12]
• 1.21.1-1.3.7 finally fixed a bug with /reload.^[13]
• 1.21.1-1.3.4 added compatibility for a long list of mods, including Supplementaries, Moonlight, The Bumblezone, Immersive Engineering and Deeper And Darker. It also fixed a crash when the registry is unavailable and missing item stack modifications for LootJS items.^[14]
• 1.21.1-1.2.5 fixed no LootJS info being displayed when adding to an empty loot table, and 1.21.1-1.2.3 fixed a crash on a failed mixin.^[15][16]
• 1.21.1-1.1.8 fixed view usages in EMI not working, used black text for the loot name in REI, and shortened overly long loot names with an ellipsis plus a tooltip.^[17]