Guide: How to Use A Decompressed EQ2 Client

[Tiger]

John Admins please post this in the Tutorial Section after you approve it
First off, it is possible to use Blaz's EQ2VPKTOOL to see the individual files that make up the EQ2 client. These files are stored in VPK files in your \paks directory. It is also possible to have the game use the extracted files instead of VPK files. Some possible uses are for modding, or simply understanding the structure of the client better. Blaz's webpage is gone, but the license of the VPKTOOL allows me to share it. Here are the steps need to get the game to use the decompressed and extracted files:

1. Make sure you have about 25GB of free space on your harddrive (This is 10GB more then the compressed client)
2. Make a new folder someplace on your harddrive called something like EQ2_Decompressed. I will use the folder C:\EQ2_Decompressed
in this tutorial
3. Download this version of the VPKTOOL which I have tested and have confirmed to work with clients from about 2009 to 2012:
http://ps23dformat.wikispaces.com/file/ ... -1.2.3.zip
4. Open VPKTOOL and under the file menu press "Open VPL file" and select the file called assetslib.vpl which is located in your regular EQ2 Client folder.
5 . Once the tools has processed all of the files (look on the bottom left hand side to see the number of files that have been processed). Select and highlight ALL of the base folders and files, then click "Extract With Path Information" and select the folder where you want the decompressed client (I used C:\EQ2_Decompressed).
6. Wait for the files to be decompressed. The wait time will vary from less than an hour to several hours. There are over a half million files.
7. Go to your old client and copy and past all files and folders from their except for the paks directory. Past the files where you decompressed client is (I used C:\EQ2_Decompressed).
8. In C:\EQ2_Decompressed create an empty folder called paks.
9. Now this is the most important part because the client is almost ready, but will give you an error message saying that there are no game assets. We can trick the game by copying a small VPK file from the regular client into the paks folder in the decompressed client. Note all VPKS will work, some like the 1KB ones are too small, so simply paste in a 3KB one such as fprt_hood_epic03_SG.vpk or similar.
10. If you did everything right you can now start the decompressed client by clicking EverQuest2.exe and the game will start as normal.

Part two of this guide will show you how to decompress, decompile, and extract, clientvdl.bvd and app_cache.dat because unfortunately there are still thousands of more files contained in their.