Advanced Loot Info (ALI) guide for FTB StoneBlock 4 1.1.1 to 1.11.0

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 StoneBlock 4'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 started with Advanced Loot Info. It is not a standalone mod. It is a plugin for a recipe viewer (JEI, EMI or REI), and it adds extra pages that show loot tables and villager trades in a clear way.^[1]

So your first step is to open your recipe viewer and look for the loot categories it adds. One example from the mod's own text is the "Hero of the Village Loot" page. Loot entries also show their predicates and modifiers under separate headers, so you can see which conditions and changes apply to a drop.^[1][3]

What the pack sets up for you

The pack ships its own category setup, so these are the pack's values rather than mod defaults. Each category has a hide flag, and the lists below show what the pack sets.^[4]

• Blocks, set in blockCategories: plant loot (anything that counts as a bush block) has hide set to false. The general block loot category has hide set to true.^[4]
• Entities, set in entityCategories: a single entity loot category is set to hide false.^[4]
• Gameplay, set in gameplayCategories: trial chambers, fishing, archaeology, Hero of the Village and a catch-all gameplay loot category are all set to hide false. The general chest loot category is set to hide true.^[4]
• Trades, set in tradeCategories: one trade loot category covers every trade, with hide set to false.^[4]

If you use LootJS, the mod supports it out of the box, so loot changes made that way can show up in these pages too.^[1]

Advanced Loot Info (ALI) has no machines, multiblocks, power, fluids or item automation. It is a plugin for your recipe viewer that shows loot tables and villager trades in a clear way. So the "mechanics" here are about how loot gets sorted into categories and how the screens present it.^[1]

What it needs

ALI is not a standalone mod. It needs one of three supported recipe viewers: Just Enough Items (JEI), EMI or Roughly Enough Items (REI). LootJS is supported out of the box. This pack's language data includes an EMI category called "Hero of the Village Loot", so EMI is clearly one of the viewers it is set up for.^[1][3]

How loot is sorted into categories

Each kind of loot is split into categories that are defined in the pack's config file. There are four lists: blockCategories, entityCategories, gameplayCategories and tradeCategories. Every category has a key, an icon, a type and a "hide" flag. Block and entity categories match by Java class, while gameplay and trade categories match by name patterns.^[4]

Block and entity loot

• ali:plant_loot matches the BushBlock class, uses a diamond hoe icon and has hide set to false.^[4]
• ali:block_loot matches the general Block class, uses a diamond pickaxe icon and has hide set to true in this pack's file.^[4]
• ali:entity_loot matches the Entity class, uses a skeleton skull icon and has hide set to false.^[4]

Gameplay loot

Gameplay categories sort loot tables by matching their names against patterns. This pack's file defines these ones:^[4]

• ali:chest_loot catches chest tables (paths containing chests/ or chest/, including inject/ versions). It has hide set to true.^[4]
• ali:trial_chambers covers trial chamber chests, pots, dispensers and spawners (normal and ominous), plus equipment tables. It uses a spawner icon and is not hidden.^[4]
• ali:fishing_loot matches the gameplay fishing tables and uses a fishing rod icon.^[4]
• ali:archaeology_loot matches archaeology tables and uses a decorated pot icon.^[4]
• ali:hero_loot matches the Hero of the Village gift tables and uses an emerald icon.^[4]
• ali:gameplay_loot uses the pattern ".*", which matches any name, so it works as the catch-all gameplay category. It uses a compass icon.^[4]

Trades

Villager trades have a single category in this pack, ali:trade_loot. It uses an emerald block icon, is not hidden and uses the catch-all pattern ".*".^[4]

Reading the detail screens

The mod's screen text splits a loot entry's details into two sections. One is headed "Predicates" (the loot conditions) and the other "Modifiers" (the loot functions). It also has display names for function types such as Set Writable Book Pages and Set Written Book Pages.^[3]

Extending it

The mod supports plugins that add custom loot entries, conditions and functions, and that work with custom number providers. Plugins can also create custom categories, though right now only from the Gameplay loot category.^[1]

Unverified What the "hide" flag does in practice (for example, whether a hidden category is still reachable in the viewer) is not explained by the available sources.

ALI keeps its settings in config/ali/ali_common.json, and every option in it is a list of loot categories. Each category has a key, a hide flag, an icon and a type, plus either a list of classes or a list of patterns that decides which loot it covers. This is where you control what the loot pages in your recipe viewer group together and show.^[4]

Block categories

blockCategories has the entries ali:plant_loot and ali:block_loot in this pack. The plant category is visible and matches anything extending the vanilla bush block class. The block category matches the general block class, and this pack ships it with hide set to true.^[4]

Entity categories

entityCategories holds a visible entry, ali:entity_loot. It matches the general entity class, so mob drops are covered, and it uses a skeleton skull as its icon.^[4]

Gameplay categories

gameplayCategories is the longest list. These categories match loot table paths with patterns instead of classes. This pack sets them up like this:^[4]

• ali:chest_loot is hidden. Its patterns cover chest and inject/chest style loot table paths.^[4]
• ali:trial_chambers is visible. Its patterns cover trial chamber chests, pots, dispensers and spawners, plus equipment tables.^[4]
• ali:fishing_loot is visible and matches gameplay fishing tables.^[4]
• ali:archaeology_loot is visible and matches archaeology tables.^[4]
• ali:hero_loot is visible and matches the hero of the village gifts.^[4]
• ali:gameplay_loot is visible and uses a catch-all pattern.^[4]

The mod's project page says it supports plugins for creating custom categories, and that right now this only works from the Gameplay loot category.^[1]

Trade categories

tradeCategories has a visible entry, ali:trade_loot, with a catch-all pattern and an emerald block icon, so villager trades are grouped in that category.^[4]

FTB StoneBlock 4 1.11.0 ships Advanced Loot Info 1.9.0, and the mod has been in the pack since 1.0.0 or earlier. Here are the notable changes from the mod's own changelogs, newest first.^[5]

• 1.9.0 (the version in this pack): loot categories can now have a catalyst ingredient, for example a Fishing Rod for the Fishing Loot Category. Hardcoded vanilla loot can also be extended with a datapack.^[5][6]
• 1.8.3: the auto-detected tooltip was improved.^[7]
• 1.8.2: fixed a sporadic game freeze on world start.^[8]
• 1.7.3: fixed loot tree rendering in edge cases, and fixed a crash on older versions of Forge or NeoForge.^[9]
• 1.5.2, 1.6.0, 1.7.1 and 1.7.2: each of these lists the same two fixes. Missing Wandering Trader trade info was fixed, and the packet size used when syncing was decreased to avoid timeouts in some cases.^{[10][11][12][13]}
• 1.5.1: data synchronization was optimized, LootJS modifiers and predicates that were missing from the tooltip were fixed, and properties of auto-detected modifiers and predicates without compatibility are now displayed.^[14]
• 1.4.0: loot is now sorted by chance, highest first. Custom categories became configurable through a JSON configuration file, on both client and server side. The resource pack configuration was removed, and loot data synchronization and logging were improved.^[15]
• 1.3.7: a long-running bug with /reload was finally fixed.^[16]

If you build custom loot categories, the 1.4.0 JSON configuration and the 1.9.0 catalyst ingredient are the two changes most worth knowing about.^[6][15]