Talk:Chat link format/Archive 1

This is INCREDIBLY USEFUL - thoughts?

→ moved from Talk:Dye

This article: [1] details codes (literally codes) one can input in the text box to generate in game items that have brackets around them, the ones you can click to preview. With the TP not allowing you to do this, these codes are the next best thing, and useful anyways. Should I consult the users here or just try to weave the data in myself somehow anyways? UPDATE 1: This is the forum where it was discovered: [2] and since I'm too impatient I'll start by just making a simple item ID page, dumping everything I have found onto it for the time being. Previously Unsigned 11:21, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

That would definitely be useful, and I've been hoping to find some way of getting those IDs. Unfortunately, the people that know how to grab the data tables from the game's memory aren't talking. Setting up a set of index pages for items, locations, skills, etc. would be good for now, and we can figure out things to do with them later. —Dr Ishmael 14:28, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

You can easily grab some IDs. I made a page on Item ID so far for that if you have what you want to add. What I'm really interested in more is if we could get a template code update for "item id = " on item infoboxes or something and have it worked into the side bar so people can easily find and pate into the game if they want to preview items in game. I suck at code. ACTUALLY, on second thought, we could "silently" implent an itemid= on all infoboxes, just not define that to do anything. Eventually when a system is worked out all the pages will have the data they need since it was added before it was decided what to do with it. Hmmm. Previously Unsigned 14:50, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Well, I'll be silently adding some of the item IDs into infoboxes now. They won't do anything though. Previously Unsigned 17:40, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd rather we didn't go around adding useless parameters to templates until we decide what we're going to do with them. Compile them in a central location first, and we can run a bot to distribute them to the individual articles.

Also, don't use the raw base-64 encoded string. Let's figure out how the encoding works so we can derive the actual ID numbers. —Dr Ishmael 19:01, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know a bot could do that. Ok. But Why nto the base-64? You can't get raw numbers when using the method posted. Also I'm not sure if translating it into raw numbers would give you the same clickable items when pasted in game. Some people on theat second link I posted above did some code stuff that is way beyond me. I would look there first since they know about encoding and whatnot and could probably answer additional questions. You don't want any base64 at all? Previously Unsigned 19:05, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

The base64 string is not useful in the context of the wiki. The numeric ID is. Once the encoding algorithms are known (the reddit people may already have it all figured out), then someone can write a utility to convert them, just like with skill templates in GW1. Also, poke already started a page about the encoding at chat link format. —Dr Ishmael 19:08, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

So I should not post anything? Feels like that's wasted but I guess if you really don't want the base64... Previously Unsigned 19:13, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

No, I never said that. Poke's page lists the header bytes for each known type of link, so it's fairly trivial to get the ID.

1. Follow the /wiki procedure to get the base64 string. Copy the string without the brackets or the ampersand.
2. Go to here to decode it. The second and third bytes in the HEX box are the actual ID, in little-endian order, so you have to swap them around. (Example: HEX shows "06 cd 32 00 00", the ID is "cd 32", in proper order is "32cd").
3. Use any hex-to-decimal converter to get the numeric ID. I like this one.

Post the ID on an ID index page. —Dr Ishmael 20:01, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

How will that help players though? I mean I was only into this so people could find how to easily preview items in game as a workaround for the TP. Do you want the base64 or not? Because it doesn't sound like it and I don't really see the point of adding the decoded numbers just for the sake of knowing the ID but having no application besides that. So I guess I'm done. Another topic on reddit with some legendary info if you want to find some legendary base64 or such though: [3]. Previously Unsigned 03:30, 16 September 2012 (UTC) and this too, seems to have the "Real" ids: [4] Previously Unsigned 03:40, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

So what are you saying you want to do? Create a redirect from every possible base64 code to make /wiki searches work? That is a horrible solution. A better way is to write an extension that can decode the string, lookup the id against an index page (which is what I've been telling you to create), and automatically redirect the search to the appropriate page. If I had time (which I don't because I have a fulltime job and I'm spending most of my free time PLAYING the game), I could write this up in a couple days, but then we'd still be at the mercy of Anet's server admins to actually get it installed. —Dr Ishmael 04:23, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

No, nothing about redirects. I just wanted to put the base64 code for each item in the bottom of it's item infobox that way people can easily see things in game after looking them up on the wiki (if a picture isn't enough). I think we were on 2 different wavelengths. Previously Unsigned 09:38, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh, indeed we were. I wasn't even considering going from the wiki back to the game. However, we still only need to store the numeric ID, because we can write Javascript to perform the encoding. I can work on that this week. —Dr Ishmael 15:05, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Something like this was done on the GW1 wiki when ArenaNet formally integrated the wiki into the game. I think they'll do some sort similar linkage (and even greater integration, given their past comments) for GW2 and this wiki some time in the future. Not sure if we should be concentrating any significant effort into this just yet. -- ab.er.rant 05:36, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

It would be nice if they gave us any info at all about what they're planning, though. If they're already working on an extension to translate base64 game IDs on the wiki, then I don't need to worry about writing my own. I guess we should ask Stephane. —Dr Ishmael 06:22, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Any knowledge about the workings of the game, especially item IDs has the potential to be useful. Perhaps not currently in a big way but no harm in collecting them ahead of any possible future use. Simple use right now is working around an oversight by the devs in not including a preview for TP items. If we can get valid codes it does no harm to add them to the articles. FWIW, other people have been working on this ID stuff also. Read THIS. Pretty simple method. Go HERE. Pick an item. Go HERE. Get a code. Enter code into chat. Tested a couple items. Worked fine. — Malacon on Blackgate — 04:04, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we should rather collect the ids instead of the actual chat links. While researching, the chat links were already changed twice and it's not unlikely that they'll change again in the future. So collecting the chat links would just make us update it all the time. Also there are different ways of using an id in a chat link. For example for items, there is a way to include upgrades (I haven’t figured that out completely yet); if we were to document the base item and the upgrades as their standalone chat links, we would have no way to easily combine that. Same with the skills and traits, as there are hints for a template system.

So yeah, collect the ids on a separate page for now; I've already started working on lists, and will put them up soon.

I also agree, that it might be a good idea to have an extension automatically decode those links and redirect to the actual item behind (or even show detailed information). I'll think about how well that would be doable. I actually doubt that the /wiki command was supposed to include the chat links like that, but in the end it was good that it is, and we can probably use that for everyone's benefit: by including more information than a simple title could provide. poke | talk 16:03, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

With poke on the case, I can relax. You know PHP and MW a lot better than I do, but should you require any assistance, I'd be happy to help out. —Dr Ishmael 16:44, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Any use for 18,000 item IDs I have? — Malacon on Blackgate — 15:52, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

If they are the correct ones—sure! Just create a subpage and put them up, or send me an email with them and I’ll do it. poke | talk 22:32, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

User:Malacon/Sandbox/itemid.18k is the temp page I put them in earlier. IT IS BIG. Loads slow. 1MB+. Will kill lesser machines. Had to break it into tabled groups. Made it load faster. I can manipulate them however is needed. — Malacon on Blackgate — 05:24, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Wow, that’s a huge list, thanks a lot! This will be quite difficult to present it on the wiki in a nice way, but we’ll find a solution ^^ At least I now have some more IDs to research more on the format :) poke | talk 09:11, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I tested a couple dozen and they all worked. There are multiples of the same name but different IDs. Most of these are different levels. If an ID proves valid I think just adding it to the bottom of the infobox is best. GID: xxx Some item pages will end up like Corrupted_Orrian_Gloves to show multiple levels of the same item name. — Malacon on Blackgate — 13:16, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I seriously hope we can come up with a better solution than duplicating the infobox 6 times for that—but that’s a different topic ;) For the ids, I hope we can make some good use of SemanticMW for that. poke | talk 18:32, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Do you mind if I use that list to create a simple Item database? I'm currently trying to implement a tool that allows me(or other people) to insert wanted stats and the tool will calculate the best result(armor, gems, etc). --Xaymar 17:38, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

The information and research results are available under GFDL, so feel free to use it. poke | talk 18:52, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

It's probably also covered by ArenaNet's copyright, since it is reverse-engineered data from their published game, but like most fan projects, they shouldn't bother you about it as long as you don't do anything that's obviously non-fair-use. —Dr Ishmael 19:08, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

It would be great if we also listed the item id's on the pages to use for chat links or maybe have a tool where you can input the name and it spits out the item id and chat link. It bugs me that I always have to go to the unofficial GW2-site gw2db.com just to get the chat link so I can preview something. Any updates on the project btw? Would've loved to help, but I know nothing about these codes :P — 08Ray 17:39, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I stopped working on it for now, since the recent patch might have changed some things, thus invalidating all data. But aside from that, not much progress, since most data needs to be added manually. If someone knows the base address for the items in memory for Guild Wars 2, and knows how the data is structured, I might be able to create tables and entries automatically. If you want, you can help me by manually adding the items to the Itemlist in my Sandbox. Not sure about which format to use on that page, but I can adjust the parser I wrote to any format that doesn't include the ASCII NUL character. --Xaymar 19:42, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Non-link codes

I just typed [&AzAnAAA=] , a random code and it says Nature's secret is patience, with teh text colored as the chat you're in (gold for guild, blue for party, red for map) | Vegetation [&AzAbAAA=] gives "Help me!".

That decodes to 03 30 27 00 00, a 0x03 header and ID of 10032. Interesting. Using 10033, code [&AzEnAAA=] gives "Where life goes, so too should you.", and 10034 [&AzInAAA=] is "Sieze the moment." Not quite sure what the point of these is, or what to call them even, but they're the first non-link codes we've seen. —Dr Ishmael 12:28, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

The first is adapted from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the second is a biography choice for Sylvari, I think the third is a generic greeting from some NPC, I'm thinking maybe Trahearne. The first probably appears somewhere in game, but this might be part of a block of Sylvari...somethings. Manifold 17:07, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Interesting, thanks for that! I wasn’t able to figure out any example for type 3 yet, so this is really useful. From what I gathered so far, this looks like in-game texts to me. Things NPCs say, or what the interface is showing. I’ll continue working on this. poke | talk 17:10, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

So I started putting together a list of the dialogue codes on my user page at User:Rohar/Chat_codes. Couldn't see a comprehensive list of any other codes in the main namespace so I assume it would not be appropriate as an article. If anyone thinks otherwise, let me know, and I'll post them (or feel free to do so yourself). Cheers. -- Rohar (talk|contribs) 20:44, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the double post, but I just checked the limits (not exhaustively) and there seems to be valid responses from decimal codes 00101 through 19779. That's a lot of messages so I can't imagine we'll have them all discovered any time soon. -- Rohar (talk|contribs) 22:25, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, there is a huge amount of content hidden in the chat links, same for skill codes for example—there are a lot not accessible to players. Thanks for you effort though, if you like, you can put the list in the main namespace. Just pick an appropriate title for it :) poke | talk 15:06, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry that I'm not more familiar with the original development of the wiki, but in order to avoid moving it later, would it make more sense for me to make a sub-page of Chat link format or it's own page? -- Rohar (talk|contribs) 00:40, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd say subpage(s), mostly because I can't think of an acceptable primary article name. XD Also, it's not something most people are going to be interested in, so there's no harm "hiding" it on a subpage.

I say subpage(s) because it probably would be best if you split this over multiple pages. Maybe 5000 per page with an index page? —Dr Ishmael 01:45, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

OMG. 5000 per page? You make it sound like work ;) -- Rohar (talk|contribs) 03:47, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, assuming you keep with it that far. :P Until you reach 5000, don't worry about splitting. —Dr Ishmael 06:39, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

This link was posted on reddit, with a note of it being possibly outdated, but it may help “completing” the list. poke | talk 18:02, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like you may be going to more trouble than you need to for these. You can extract string data from the dat almost effortlessly, and actually the above mentioned site only contains a fraction of them. MadMaxx 00:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Great! I'm still going to keep adding to the sub page list, but the posted reddit list will help me find some really entertaining ones. -- Rohar (talk|contribs) 18:02, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I just tested the codes in-game and it appears that they do not appear in the chatbox anymore, though you can still see them when you talk in /s --Vegetation (talk) 03:45, 25 May 2013 (UTC)

Possible coin limit?

Was messing around with the template codes earlier (like one does) and found that the coin amount linkable in chat will go no higher than 424,463 gold 56 silver 47 copper (Hex code: 01 FF FF FF FF 00 00 or Template code: [&Af////8AAA==]). Could this be a possible theoretical limit to the amount of gold storable on a character at one time? --109.175.162.152 15:33, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

That makes sense, since we know from this format that they're using a 4-byte integer for coin amounts. —Dr Ishmael 15:46, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it is actually even very likely that there is a hard limit below that number, just as the item count in a single stack is limited to 250 instead of the possible 255 from a single byte. I could also imagine though, that there are different limits for the amount of gold on a single character and the bank, just as it was the case for GW1. poke | talk 21:15, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh well, just around another 424,460g to go before I can test it ;) --192.168.104.82 23:32, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Weird. Shouldn't it technically be 424p(latinum)/? 463g 56s 47c or something similar? We don't say 150 silver, we say 1g 50s. Previously Unsigned 23:10, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

There's no platinum coin in GW2 (is there?), gold is the highest denomination. —Dr Ishmael 02:44, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I know that. It was technicalities. Previously Unsigned 09:08, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Platinum is actually referred to by some in-game sources like the pirates who captured Demmi Beetlestone, but it's not defined more specifically ("make it a platinum or fifty", iirc). Can't really tell how much that'd be worth with the revaluation of gold, but instead of actual currency, the term "platinum" may still refer to 1,000 gold coins, especially in human societies. But that's irrelevant to usage of templates, just thought I'd mention it. :) Mediggo 09:25, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

This part of the discussion is probably more relevant to the Coin talk page, but... if you listen to the human and skritt talking in the TP @ LA, the skritt is selling centaur spearheads for "20 gold" (previously 10 gold). I don't know about you, but that seems a little expensive so perhaps some of the inhabitants still use the old money system (intentionally or not). --82.71.41.74 18:54, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Armor & Runes

I was comparing codes today while linking some of my personal items using the in-game /wiki command. The last two characters being AA for most default armor signifies no rune or the default rune. If this AA is removed and replaced with the proper suffix you can swap runes on armor that you link. Example: Inquest Helm (medium armor) [&AgFRRQAA] is the default link, to add say a Superior Rune of Divinity you remove the AA and change it to the code BInGAAAEhcf9lcGQAA which in turn makes it [&AgFRRQBInGAAAEhcf9lcGQAA].   —Kyau 07:30, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

I actually have most of the item code already decoded, I guess I should update the article to reflect what I found out about it. In general, you have a specific slot in the code where upgrades go into, and a flag at the beginning indicating that said slot is occupied. Same applies to a few other slots, for example for the skin/transmutation. poke | talk 15:56, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

NPC Chat

An NPC chat section was just added to the end of the article which duplicates the information found further up the page under "Non-linked highlighted chat text". It's duplicate information but I didn't want to get into reverting anything, since I posted the original information and feel like I have a conflict of interest. Should a undo the last two edits, or am I off base? -- Rohar (talk|contribs) 22:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Fixed. If it's something obvious like that, go ahead and revert it, just be sure to explain in the edit summary. —Dr Ishmael 22:30, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Change item name

Does anyone have an idea on how to start making a chat code modifier that changes the displayed name of an item? It is possible (you can try messing around with codes and it will change the name) but haven't found out how it exactly works, how you change it to what you want it to be. I have already made an item link quantity changer and changing the displayed name of an item in chat links sounds like fun. Thanks for the tips in advance! Howellq (talk) 16:08, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Alright as it turns out, you need a long chat link (longer than the 8 characters). The longest link I have ever seen is 32 characters. To change the name of an item you need to change characters 17-20 (that's 64^4 combinations...). The problem is that I still don't have a clue how to make it show what I want. The 21-24 characters determine the description below the item name, if I'm correct. Still got no clue what other parts do exactly. So mystery is: 9-16 and 25-32 characters. I'm totally an amateur so if anyone is pro at this I would really appreciate them digging a bit (or telling me how to dig into this). Howellq (talk) 21:14, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

For an item to show its actual name it is required to explicitely include the upgrade that is applied to the item (even if the base item already contains that information). I haven’t tried it directly, but changing the upgrade should also change the displayed name. The position of the bytes for the upgrade depends on the specified “item chat code flags” (I’ll put up information about that later).

Apart from that I don’t think it’s possible to change the name of an item in a way that does not reflect the item’s actual data, so custom names are very likely impossible. poke | talk 03:15, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

A friend of mine just got a shot: watch the last phrase in chat. Besides, a lot of links from gw2db link items correctly, but without name. MalGalad 04:23, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

GW2DB’s link are like that because they don’t explicitely list the upgrade but just the base item (i.e. they have a short chat link). But that screenshot is very interesting! I’ll try to find out what’s happening there—thanks, very interesting! poke | talk 14:40, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Oh that link. Well that's not a proper link, you can see that when he hovered the cursor over the link, it has shown no name. I meant to change the name of the actual link to show it when hovering the cursor over it. To get a link like that on the picture, see the reddit post called: How to link Items as text? under GuildWars2 section (link of the comment is this - remove it if it is not proper to link stuff like this) Howellq (talk) 15:45, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

The reason for this happening is really just an oversight in the engine's text processor. I'll wait for Poke to update with info and make any necessary changes. MadMaxx (talk) 05:43, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, based on what I have found this behaviour is not really something that can be “activated” from the chat code at will. Instead it seems that some items just have this bug that the item name formatting leaks out of the link, when the actual item name has not been loaded yet by the client. That last part unfortunately means that this leaking is not even a reliable way to get this behavior; it just happens to be working often because those items are rare enough to not have been loaded by the client. In my testing I got to a state where the text then did load and all previous texts fixed themselves immediately.

And as mentioned, it cannot be activated arbitratily. For example the often used code for purple text is this: [&AgHbTAAg3P4w9GazAAA=]purple. The guy on reddit explains that he changed some bits of the code to make this work; in fact, the simplest item code (just the id) already gives this behaviour: [&AgHbTAAA]purple. This all is still rather odd and I’m not exactly sure about the exact way it works yet.

In any way, coming back to the original question of changing the item’s name (not just leaking the chat link), it seems to work in some weird ways. I can make the item name contain some very gibberish (for example “U4] qo ) Wb”) but it does not seem to follow any logical pattern. The name is then displayed both in the (non-leaking) chat link and in the item popup. I’m don’t think it will allow arbitrary text, as the bits that are included to generate those gibberish things do not contain enough information for it to encode that (especially as the gibberish is not only from ASCII-range). And also the flag-system (as said, will put that up soon) does not allow specifying much more bits. But I’ll continue to try to find some pattern in the gibberish and see if I can figure out more. poke | talk 15:23, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

To make it worse, that gibberish is actually being translated into more and different gibberish. And actually switching the language using right-CTRL breaks all previous links. poke | talk 15:28, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

You are correct in that you won't be able to specify a custom name. This oversight really only allows you to type in the chat and have it appear in the item's rarity color. As far as the "gibberish" goes, there is a reason for this. MadMaxx (talk) 17:27, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure if this is how you comment(feel free to format this however you wish). This is Dragonzz6 from that reddit post. First off, I think of the longer link as a keyhole. Once you use it, any time you use the shorter link in the same client session, the figurative door is already unlocked and it will appear the same as the longer link. This means that someone that may not have seen the original [&AgHbTAAg3P4w9GazAAA=]purple would instead see []purple when you typed [&AgHbTAAA]purple in chat. As for a way to actually get the name on the hover-over image, it would be extremely complicated. Right now we can change the color of text by exploiting a loophole in the naming by removing the end bracket and tricking the game into thinking everything that we are typing is still part of the original link. These loopholes are far and few. I have yet to find a relationship between the name of the item that pops up and the text that you type. In other words, a way to type the name into hover-over menu probably exists, but there are so many combinations that it is impractical to find them. That is why it is still a process of guess-and-check to find that loophole. For example here are a couple letters. [&AgAPUwAwVk2sjZHUASCWMZLxYQQAAA==]Hi in white[&AgF1lAAgTfgutFMOAAA=]Golden G If you have any specific questions, I would prefer if you shoot me a pm at http://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Dragonzz668.45.158.252 18:21, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

@Maxx - is that because the "extended" item link includes the string ID of an encrypted string and the key for decrypting it? This is something I've suspected for a while, but I don't know enough to dig into it myself. It would be very helpful if people like you could actually explain things rather than just saying "trust me, there's a reason for this." —Dr Ishmael 18:41, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Dragonzz6, that matches my observations too. There are still quite a few unknowns to me in the chat code which cause some weird behavior (like the gibberish text); I hope we can actually check that out at some point.

Ish, I don’t really think it’s an encoded string ID. The code I had yesterday had only 8 empty bytes (just zeros) as the additional information and resulted in a chat link [mwq 6±±j|¢ Xt, ]. When translating to German this would expand into a crazy long super-gibberish that I couldn’t even write down. Unfortunately, applying the same pattern to other items did not yield the same results, so its effect is dependent on the item as well. But maybe you are right, and this “text” is actually the encoded name of some item and the link just needs the key for decrypting it. Do you have any experience with the encryption mechanism of GW2’s texts? poke | talk 12:37, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

I know a little bit from discussions with someone who knew about GW1's string encryption, but he never explained the full thing to me, either. I think the keys were 4 bytes long, which made me suspect that the 6 extra bytes (e.g. 02 01 75 94 00 20 -->4d f8 2e b4 53 0e<-- 00 00 were a 2-byte string ID and a 4-byte key. (The 20 byte is always either 20 or 30 on all the item links I've seen, so it probably means something on its own.) —Dr Ishmael 14:49, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

You are correct, Ish. The reason you don't see the names for many items with you link them is because they are encrypted. The gibberish you are seeing Poke is the output of a failed decryption sequence. MadMaxx (talk) 15:57, 1 June 2013 (UTC)

Any progress, Poke? MadMaxx (talk) 06:05, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Not really, no… :/ poke | talk 13:37, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

I've only observed the client generate links using three flags: one for the upgrade and two for encryption. I didn't bother reversing more to find out if more exist. Does that about match your finding? MadMaxx (talk) 16:07, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

(Reset indent) Hey guys. I want to change the name of something. I only want to change the name as it appears in map chat, not the name in the pop-up. The item is Zojja's Spire of Perception ( [&AgG1tgBABGAAAA==] or [&AgG1tgAA] for the staff with no upgrades). Im guessing that because its a short link, it won't work but you'll know right. : ) So what do you think, can it be done?

All I want it to say, btw, is "The Chandlier". lol Titan Crow 13:37, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

That's impossible, you can't change name into something custom. MalGalad 13:58, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for quick reply MalGalad : ) What about this link "[&AgHbTAAg3P4w9GazAAA=]Full Purple Text"? The item on that has had its name changed to "Full Purple Text" or can be changed to something custom. Not the actual name ofc, just the name the comes up in chat. You see what I mean? I just want to do the same with Zojja's Spire so I can put "The Chandlier" instead of "Full Purple Text".

Sorry if you got what I meant the first time and this is indeed impossible. : ) Titan Crow 15:06, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

It only works for certain chat links. The bytes that encode the decryption key have to have certain values in order to be properly corrupted, so it doesn't work for every item. —Dr Ishmael 15:14, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Ok guys, thanks a million : ) was worth a try. Titan Crow 16:16, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Coloured Text in Chat

Just for clarification, This Color Chat link method was PATCHED in the Tequatl Rising Patch. Currently there are no codes which will reproduce the same effect.

Colour	Code
Grey	[&AgFZTAAoGCgYZsEawvA==]
White	[&AgFKVQAgH2PAAawlzAA==]
Blue	[&AgHFCAA17Czb39CvzAA==]
Green	[&AgCtlAAwAAoavtmEvAAWjyttRxYAAA==]
Yellow	[&AgChiwAgda4Cf24aAAA=]
Orange	[&AgF0lAAxv2c2bo4RzAA=]
Purple	[&AgHbTAAg3P4w9GazAAA=]
Pink	[&AgHDkAAwVk2sjZHUAAAxkus/oAMAAA==]

Example (Orange): "[&AgF0lAAxv2c2bo4RzAA=]This is a test." - will appear as - [This is a test. A space after the code is not required.

Thanks to Dragonzz6 [5] for Green, Yellow, Orange, Purple and Pink colours.

• Found and added Blue, White and Grey colours.
• Fixed (grey, white, green, orange) colours from having a space at start. ([ Hi] will now appear as [Hi])
• Made a table for added sexiness. Enjoy.

• Recovered the blue colour, sorry!

Note: Section complete - no need for more edits :)

If you need help with something, contact me in game or here.

Interknet (talk) 16:26, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

This was now fixed in today’s update, so it no longer works. poke | talk 18:35, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

They did more than just fix it. It looks like encryption keys have been removed from all chat links, with the game presumably looking them up itself when it needs to render the link. That means wiki-generated links to items will now display with their proper names rather than as "[]". -- Dagger (talk) 00:20, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Shame they fixed this, wasn't really doing any harm in any way - or was it? I haven't been playing since I made this helpful table and managed to grab all the codes with all the colours, so I can't be sure how often these were used. I'm going to guess there is still a way to do this, but probably a little more complex or a longer code? Checking this out right after this comment, will be sure to report back. Interknet (talk) 22:01, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

My discovery tells me that it may not be at all possible anymore - I am to believe that the game recognizes a code like this [ with just a colour. If anyone manages to find a way (somehow) to get coloured chat back, feel free to edit the above table with WORKING codes - but for now, the codes will be there to help someone find the colours again; if they can. Interknet (talk) 22:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

It was abuse of a chat engine bug, and it was not harmless. While coloring text in the chat was just fun, some links could make all links and items appear in hieroglyphs, and some even could crash the client. Since those were considered as exploits, I can not give any proofs, but IMO all these three action have something in common, and fixing bad ones would also fix coloring. MalGalad 22:42, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

It was not ... ugh ... "hieroglyphs" (I've heard that so often), it was Korean/Chinese characters, and it was due to the text engine being corrupted by malformed decryption keys. (The following is my assumption of what happened, of course - I didn't decompile the game or anything.) Instead of outputting a string of characters in the Ux0000 - Ux00FF range (standard/extended ASCII), the output was being flung all over the Unicode spectrum. And since the majority of the Unicode space is filled by the various east Asian scripts, that's what you saw in-game. —Dr Ishmael 00:30, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

As Dr Ishmael says, they are Chinese/Korean/Japanese characters. It's a shame they did cause problems, though. I think the codes crashed me out a few times when I was finding the colours Dragon hadn't, and I did experience quite a lot of foreign symbols that resembled Chinese characters or what ever. Either way, I suppose this was a helpful thing to ANet so they could fix it - too bad they probably didn't credit anyone. Interknet (talk) 18:44, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

While Korea has an alphabet, Chinese symbols are definitely hieroglyphs ;) MalGalad 18:54, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Depends a lot on what you define hieroglyphs as. ;) poke | talk 19:16, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

"Player link"?

Subj MalGalad 21:45, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

These are auto generated by the client to display a player's name in front of their messages in the chat box. I didn't bother adding the format because they don't really have any other use. The same goes for PvP games as well. (i.e links that are generated when a member of your party joins a PvP game) MadMaxx (talk) 22:08, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Would be nice if you had the chat links for those. I'd consider messing with them a little and see if theres some more colours -if any-. It took a short 30 minutes to get the 3 extra chat colours and I've been trying to do it with the skills, like [Withdraw] and such - though none of these can have a quantity. Interknet (talk) 12:16, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Items

The item id is not a 4 byte integer. The engine makes heavy use of variable length integers. MadMaxx (talk) 16:42, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Item link: 2 1 115 60 0 0 - [1]item link, [2]quantity, [3,4,5,6]item id

Item link: 2 1 115 60 0 64 254 95 0 0 - [1]item link, [2]quantity, [3,4,5]item id, [6]upgrade mod, [7,8,9,10]upgrade item id

Item link: 2 1 115 60 0 128 202 106 0 0 - [1]item link, [2]quantity, [3,4,5]stats item id, [6]skin mod, [7,8,9,10]skin item id

Item link: 2 1 115 60 0 192 202 106 0 0 254 95 0 0 - [1]item link, [2]quantity, [3,4,5]stats item id, [6]upgrade+skin mod, [7,8,9,10]skin item id, [11, 12, 13, 14]upgrade item id.

That's results of my small research; I hope it will help to anyone.

Question: why does 2 1 115 60 0 248 202 106 0 0 254 95 0 0 237 240 0 51 134 30 0 0 48 146 235 63 160 3 0 0 9 170 253 137 56 2 0 0 produce visually the same result as 2 1 115 60 0 248 202 106 0 0 254 95 0 0 and what all those bytes mean? MalGalad 17:50, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure why people keep changing the article. The item ID is only two bytes——not four. Each data section is UTF16 terminated. The extra bytes you're referring to there is used to decrypt information about the item. Without the correct information, you'll usually see a blank link ([]) and no item name. The second set of data is actually incorrect, but the client may not care. MadMaxx (talk) 00:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

It may sound agressive, but you really irritate me. I try to find some info about chat links that isn't described here, make experiments, spend time, make assumptions - and the you just jump out of the bushes and indulgently say "Nah, you're wrong" without any explanation. If you know something - you can share it with other people, it can save a lot of time. I'm not even asking, what is the source of the numbers on your pages, 'cause it looks like you have access to the game client source code...

As for item ID, any verifiable assertion about exactly 2 bytes? I can assume fourth byte will never be used and thus serves as a flag for skin/upgrade parts, but accordingly to your unknown source there's already more than 43k items, and with 2 bytes you can encode only 65k - I highly doubt it will be enough for the future years of GW2, along with the fact that I did not observe third byte used anywhere. MalGalad 06:36, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

What I meant is that in that last example is that you have too many flags specified and not enough data. I've already stated here that those extra bytes (specifically flags 0x08, 0x10, 0x20--the flags are a bitmask) are used for decryption. There's no point trying to "research" it. A stream cipher is never going to give you a distinguishable pattern. As for the numbers I provide on my page for other interested people, that can be found in game memory or by dumping certain files from the dat. Also, they utilize variable length integers. ID numbers in general will occupy as many bytes as are required. MadMaxx (talk) 16:53, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

What am I doing wrong?

Whenever I try to decode the examples in the "Item link" sections I can't get the stated ID. Let's take a look at the copper mining pick: AgH3WQAA=. It decodes into 02 01 f7 59 00 00. Thus the item ID is: 01 f7 59 00, least significant byte first. Let's convert the individual bytes to decimal for readability: 1 247 89 0. Now, let's add them up to arrive at the final decimal item ID: 1 * 1 + 247 * 256 + 89 * 65536 + 0 = 5895937. This conflicts with the correct item ID stated in the article (23031). What am I doing wrong? -- Owoc (talk) 15:17, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

No, the item ID is F7 59 00 00, and 01 is quantity. F7 59 00 00 translates into 256*89+1*247=23031. MalGalad 15:24, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

As an extra note, the last byte of the 4-byte "item ID" is flags, and we have no idea what the third byte is/will be (I've only ever seen it be 0x00). This particular link just happens to have no enabled flags. The flags aren't calculated into the item's actual ID, of course. -- Dagger (talk) 16:44, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

This wiki page only tells how to CTRL-click and item to link to it in chat, but how do you copy a chat code from the wiki and paste into in-game chat, and make it work? Simply copy and pasting doesn't seem to work for me, and I'm missing a clear explanation how to do that. Thanks! Kurtosis (talk) 06:33, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Decoder

Is there any automatic way of doing this? And if there's not, shouldn't we add it on this page? A code to transform /wiki [item] into its ID would be very handy --Fowk (talk) 19:55, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

We have a widget on the wiki for generating the code from an ID (Widget:Game link), but the opposite direction doesn't have much use for the wiki so I didn't implement that. However, I do have Excel VBA functions for decoding, would that help you? —Dr Ishmael 14:02, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I have some HTML/JS for it, I just need to work out the kinks before I can post it.

I thought we did have a (planned) use for it, though: decoding links that are passed to /wiki and automatically looking up the corresponding article(s), to allow people to search from in-game by linking items. What happened to that project? -- Dagger (talk) 15:29, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

It was fulfilled 3 minutes ago. MalGalad 15:31, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Discussion and feedback goes here :) poke | talk 15:43, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I wrote a script to convert chat codes into item IDs for my own uses. It's a lua script you can find here: https://bitbucket.org/HorizonShadow/guild-wars-2-chat-code-to-item-id-converter

Creating the link help needed

If I wanted to create a link (in guild wars 2 chat) to the world vs world wiki page, I believe i would type /wiki World versus World or is that wrong? When I type that into the chat window in my guild chat it just automatically drops be out of guild wars, brings up a web browser and shows that page. How would I type it if I wanted to create a link for someone else? Varuuth (talk) 16:46, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to post links to the wiki or other websites in-game. The chat links are restricted to the in-game resources described in the article (e.g. game locations, items, skills). poke | talk 17:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

You put a space in front of it (i.e. " /wiki ..." without the quotes), then tell the other person to retype it without a space. As poke said, you can't make a clickable link to the wiki in the in-game chat. —Dr Ishmael 18:42, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

thanks for the help :-) Varuuth (talk) 03:16, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Alright I know this is a mainspace article, and obvious to everyone but..

perhaps we should add a section that notes that you can decode the ingame chat link by entering it into the wiki search box. seems kind of an obvious omission. -Chieftain Alex 17:31, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

oh yeah, that will be because it only shows the id before anyone has added it to the infobox. >.> my bad forget I said anything. -Chieftain Alex 17:33, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

New chat codes format

In April Feature Pack, there were some changes to chat codes. Wiki still doesn't support new codes. An example of a new code it will be Ancestral Outfit - [&DAkAAAA=]. Can someone update it please? If I knew how, I would do it. --W.Wolf (talk) 17:50, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

That's an outfit link.

{{outfit link|9}}

—Dr Ishmael 17:52, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

The confusion seems to be that the link at the top is to the container. >.< -Chieftain Alex 18:14, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

It's an outfit link, but if put that id (9) in the Ancestral Outfit page will apear other chat code, not the correct one--W.Wolf (talk) 18:45, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

The wiki fully supports all codes. The reason why it doesn’t work is because we are not storing outfit ids anywhere yet. We would need to integrate those into the infoboxes, or create a page like this for outfits. The standard id parameter in item infoboxes is for the item id, so setting the id to 9 in the item infobox will give you item #9, not outfit #9. poke | talk 18:48, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

You are right Alex. Found the right code. Ok, poke already updated the page. Thank you guys for the fast answers.--W.Wolf (talk) 19:01, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Please Clarify Quantity

"The quantity of items is encoded as a single byte immediately following the header byte, before the item ID. "

So how do I change Copper Harvesting Sickle ([&AgH1WQAA]) into 2 Copper Harvesting Sickles Separ (talk) 23:31, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

You change the second byte from 01 to 02. Surprisingly, this does work for kits and tools, although some of them don't have a defined plural form.

• 02 01 00 5a 00 00 = [&AgEAWgAA] = Basic Salvage Kit
• 02 02 00 5a 00 00 = [&AgIAWgAA] = 2 Basic Salvage Kits

• 02 01 f7 59 00 00 = [&AgH3WQAA] = Copper Mining Pick
• 02 02 f7 59 00 00 = [&AgL3WQAA] = 2 Copper Mining Pick (sic: "Picks")

I used http://paulschou.com/tools/xlate/ to perform the translations between hex and base64. —Dr Ishmael 23:54, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I think this would be worth adding to the quantity section on the parent page, but I cannot edit it. Separ (talk) 00:11, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Coin links no longer working

I just noticed that coin links apparently no longer work. When you send a chat message with a coin chat link, the whole message simply won’t appear anywhere. Can anyone confirm that? poke | talk 19:53, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

WEIRD. For me, links semi-work: I can see the text in a bubble above character's head, and in chat log it appears as well. Only first time. When I tried another link with 1g, it didn't appear in chat log and message with 0c disappeared oO. All consecutive tries resulted in text bubbles but no additions to chat log. Restart/relog didn't help. Also I didn't see currency-coin icons in those messages, was it always like this? MalGalad 22:37, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

IIRC: The displayed chat link would say "[1 gold]" but the tooltip when you hovered on it would say "1 ".

The coin links did not work for me at all - no text bubble, no chat log. I'll mark it on the page as deprecated. —Dr Ishmael 23:58, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Infusions?

I've experimented only a little bit, but I can't seem to figure how Infusions are added to these links.--173.180.63.220 19:15, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Getting links from in-game items for wiki?

Is there a way to get item ID from the in-game link?

I've recently encountered a missing item wiki page so i made one. However i ran into the problem of getting item ID. I got lucky this time by simply increasing last number of the ID by 1. But i might not next time i might need this.--Lukfruit (talk) 08:30, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Most simple way is to type in-game "/wiki " then shift+link the item, it will display something like "/wiki [MY ITEM]". Press enter and it will open the wiki search for that code and will decode its id. – Valento ^msg 10:28, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

^ Yep. We've added some special code to Special:Search that decodes the chat link when it gets pasted in, or when you search from within the game. -Chieftain Alex 12:28, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

That's one of the most awesome things you guys have done! :) – Valento ^msg 13:28, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

wow! thank you very much, that is very helpful. I've read the message about implementation of this function but didn't understand how to use it:S --Lukfruit (talk) 09:23, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

How/where can i make a skin table for Outfits?

Currently, if you link any outfit skin from the wardrobe, wiki says that no page with that id exists (Witch's outfit skin ID is an exception, it leads to this page).

I've added Outfit skin links to the pages of Witch's Outfit and Hexed Outfit, but i don't think it's the way to go. I've tried to emulate the table like the one for armor/weapon skins, but failed (mainly the problem was that the page generated wrong in-game links from outfit IDs and i don't know how to change that). So if anyone can provide some guidance that would be helpful – Lukfruit (talk) 19:42, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

There's a much simpler solution - add it to the ID parameter on the page, next to the existing one. As you can see from my edit, I simply added another code to the infobox and it works. So now typing [&AgEEAAAA] from the game should link Witch's Outfit. There's no need to create additional tables if a less complex solution exists. —Ventriloquist 19:46, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Item templates use the {{item link}} template, so the id 4 is linking to "Assassin Transform Weapon." —Mora 19:48, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) Nope, that's not right. That's the item infobox, so it's producing an item chat link. We need an outfit chat link, which template:game link already supports; we just need an infobox for outfits. —Dr Ishmael 19:49, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Heh, knew it was too good to be true. Assumed it worked since the wiki would direct it towards the link and its related outfit. I guess creating an outfit infobox that uses outfit links instead of item links is really the only solution without having to add another section to each outfit page. —Ventriloquist 19:57, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Can't Item infobox be modified to take another optional variable for outfit skin link and convert only it to outfit in-game link? or will this take more effort than creating full outfit infobox? — Lukfruit (talk) 20:04, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Based on the precedent set by skins, no, we should not combine outfits onto item pages. —Dr Ishmael 20:17, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

In one of of my first attempts i managed to add the in-game (the base64 one) link into infobox without it being visible there. I was so focused on getting the link to work that i forgot that is not really required. My goal was to make outfit pages on wiki be accessible by wardrobe outfit skin links from game, not the other way around. So maybe this is thhe way to go? since items link will can be previewed anyway.

I think i just added an extra line that info box didn't know how to convert so it didn't show anything at all. I have to go now, but i will try to reproduce that tomorrow — Lukfruit (talk) 20:44, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Don't bother - the item infobox isn't going to display an outfit link, and we don't want it to. Because of how the chat-link-search extension parses the data, it wouldn't work anyway. As I stated above, we need an outfit infobox to put on an outfit page where it can display the outfit chat link. —Dr Ishmael 20:51, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't think you understood me, i don't want it to generate the link either. Here, i changed Hexed Outfit to what i was talking about (check the page's changes). This way you can still access the page from the in-game link without the necessity of doing extra work of creating the outfit info box. But if somebody still wants to do that, i want stop him — Lukfruit (talk) 21:13, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

“This way you can still access the page from the in-game link” - Unfortunately, no, it’s not that simple. poke | talk 21:47, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

That's using the basic text-search functionality, not the chat-link-search. That's why you also saw this template in the search results, because it displays the link for Witch's Outfit. —Dr Ishmael 22:02, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Right clicking on the existing item chat link on outfit pages (in the item infobox) already provides a right-clickable preview option. I don't see an enormous benefit to having the direct skin link on the same page.

We could create a small template that stores the ID, context + canonical name in a subobject on the outfit item page. This template would display the outfit link (left clicking on an outfit link provides a direct preview) -Chieftain Alex 22:39, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Quick app for generating item codes

I've put together a super-quick Javascript fiddle that allows you to create a chat code by entering item, upgrade and skin IDs or codes if anyone needs a reference. Still not sure how to get infusions in addition to the upgrades. Fam (talk) 21:27, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Players and PvP Arenas links

Has anyone been able to generate Player and PvP links? The page says they are generated by the client, so I'm curious as to how someone figured out PvP arenas had header 0x05 and players had 0x09.

I've been experimenting with it for a while, but I haven't found anything too interesting so far.

Chokapik (talk) 22:18, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Skills header

Skills are now 0x06. 0x07 is now used for something else that has a blue border (#36 is "Not yet implemented"). --BryghtShadow (talk) 17:57, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Updated wiki search and coder widget. -Chieftain Alex 00:07, 18 December 2015 (UTC)