XML data files¶

Alongside its INI settings files, 1.13 externalizes almost all of the game's content into XML files: items, weapons, dealers, vehicles, the enemy army, difficulty numbers and much more. They live in the Data-1.13\TableData folder of your installation, and you can edit them with nothing more than a text editor.

This page is an orientation: what is in TableData, how the files reference each other, how to edit them without breaking your game, and the state of the dedicated XML Editor tool. For step-by-step recipes (adding items, changing merchants, sector items), see XML modding.

Playing a mod on top of 1.13?

Wherever you see Data-1.13\..., substitute the mod's data folder — for example Data-AIM\TableData for AIMNAS. Mods ship their own copies of these files, so always edit the files of the data folder you actually play with. How the data folders stack is explained in the configuration overview.

Where the files live¶

Everything described here sits under:

<your JA2 folder>\Data-1.13\TableData\

The listing below reflects the current game data as published in the 1dot13/gamedir repository on GitHub (retrieved July 2026), which is what current releases ship. Older installs — especially the legacy r7609 "stable" and mods based on it — have fewer files, different tags and different index numbers, so double-check against your own files before copying advice from old forum posts.

Not everything tweakable is XML, either: gameplay toggles live in Ja2_Options.INI, and skills and traits are tuned in Skills_Settings.INI and the other INI files one level up in Data-1.13 — the configuration overview maps them all. As a rule of thumb, the INI files hold settings while the XML files hold data: the actual lists of items, people and places the game is built from.

What's in TableData¶

Subfolders¶

Folder	What it holds
`Items`	The entire item catalog — see The Items folder below
`Inventory`	Enemy and militia gun/item choices, drop tables, IMP gear and `MercStartingGear.xml` — see Drop tables and gear choices
`NPCInventory`	The stock of every in-game dealer — see Shops and dealers
`Army`	The Queen's army: `ArmyComposition.xml`, `GarrisonGroups.xml`, `PatrolGroups.xml`, `UniformColors.XML`
`Profiles`	Stat profiles for enemy soldiers and militia per experience class (`SoldierProfileEnemyAdmin.xml`, `SoldierProfileMilitiaVeteran.xml`, …)
`Map`	Strategic-map data: `Cities.xml`, `SectorNames.xml`, `MovementCosts.xml`, `SamSites.xml`, `Facilities.xml`, `CoolnessBySector.xml`, the `ExtraItems` folder and more
`Lookup`	Reference lists of the named constants the other files use (`ItemClass.xml`, `WeaponType.xml`, `PocketSize.xml`, `AttachmentSystem.xml`, …)
`BriefingRoom`	`BriefingRoom.xml` — data for the externalized briefing room feature (see externalization)
`Email`	`EmailMercAvailable.xml`, `EmailMercLevelUp.xml` — texts for merc-availability and level-up e-mails
`Layout`	`LayoutMainMenu.xml`
`MapAction`	`ActionItems.xml`
`Multiplayer`	`RandomTeams.xml` (see multiplayer)
`Sounds`	`Sounds.xml`, `BurstSounds.xml`

The "coolness" referenced by Map\CoolnessBySector.xml is 1.13's item-quality tier system — see the glossary.

Files in the TableData root¶

The files most players end up touching:

File	What it controls
`DifficultySettings.xml`	Per-difficulty campaign values: `<StartingCash>`, enemy AP bonus, kills per progress point, initial garrison percentages, minimum enemy group size, `<AllowReinforcements>` and more — each tag is documented in the comment block at the top of the file
`Vehicles.xml`	One entry per vehicle: names, movement type, whether it is enabled, its armor (an `Items.xml` reference), its seats and `<SeatingCapacities>` (how many mercs fit inside)
`MercProfiles.xml`	Profile data for every character in the game — AIM and M.E.R.C. mercs, RPCs, NPCs, vehicles and IMPs (up to 255 profiles)
`MercOpinions.xml`	Mercs' opinions of one another
`AIMAvailability.xml`, `MercAvailability.xml`	Merc availability for hire
`IMPPortraits.xml`, `IMPVoices.xml`	The portraits and voices offered during IMP creation
`LoadScreenHints.xml`	The hint texts shown on loading screens
`SquadNames.xml`	The names of your squads

The rest of the root — Backgrounds.xml, CampaignStatsEvents.xml, CivGroupNames.xml, Disease.xml, EnemyNames.xml, EnemyRank.xml, FaceGear.xml, HiddenNames.xml, History.xml, MercQuote.xml, MilitiaIndividual.xml, OldAIMArchive.xml, RPCFacesSmall.xml, RandomStats.xml, SpreadPatterns.xml — is best explored by opening the files themselves: like DifficultySettings.xml, most start with a comment header that explains their tags.

The Items folder¶

TableData\Items is where the famous "hundreds of new guns" live. The central file is Items.xml: the master list in which every item in the game has one entry, numbered by <uiIndex>. The other files add class-specific data keyed to those items:

File(s)	What they define
`Items.xml`	The master item list: names, classes, flags, prices, weight, coolness, and per-item Bobby Ray availability (`<BR_NewInventory>`, `<BR_UsedInventory>`)
`Weapons.xml`, `Magazines.xml`, `AmmoTypes.xml`, `AmmoStrings.xml`, `Launchables.xml`	Gun stats (magazine size, range, impact, autofire, recoil, overheating — with separate accuracy values for OCTH, `<bAccuracy>`, and NCTH, `<nAccuracy>`), magazines and ammo types
`Armours.xml`, `Clothes.xml`, `CompatibleFaceItems.xml`	Armor, clothing and face gear
`Attachments.xml`, `AttachmentSlots.xml`, `AttachmentInfo.xml`, `IncompatibleAttachments.xml`, `AttachmentComboMerges.xml`	The New Attachment System; data model detailed in NAS internals
`LoadBearingEquipment.xml`, `Pockets.xml`, `PocketPopups.xml`	LBE gear and pockets for the New Inventory System
`Explosives.xml`, `ExplosionData.xml`	Explosives and blast behavior
`Food.xml`, `FoodOpinion.xml`, `Drugs.xml`	Food and drug items
`Merges.xml`, `Item_Transformations.xml`, `RandomItem.xml`	Item combining, in-inventory transformations, randomized items
`StructureConstruct.xml`, `StructureDeconstruct.xml`, `StructureMove.xml`	Building, dismantling and moving structures with items

Note that there is no separate "Bobby Ray" data file: Bobby Ray's catalog is driven from Items.xml itself, through the <BR_NewInventory> and <BR_UsedInventory> tags on each item's entry.

Drop tables and gear choices¶

TableData\Inventory decides what your enemies (and militia) carry and what they leave behind:

EnemyGunChoices.xml and the GunChoices_*.xml / ItemChoices_*.xml files pick what enemy admins, regulars and elites — and green, regular and elite militia — bring to a fight. The choices are lists of item numbers referencing Items.xml.
EnemyAmmoDrops.xml, EnemyArmourDrops.xml, EnemyExplosiveDrops.xml, EnemyMiscDrops.xml, EnemyWeaponDrops.xml and EnemyItemChoices.xml govern the drop tables — what dead enemies actually leave on the ground.
IMPItemChoices.xml covers IMP gear choices, and MercStartingGear.xml defines the starting kit of hireable mercs — that one has its own page.

Shops and dealers¶

TableData\NPCInventory holds one stock file per dealer — TonyInventory.xml, DevinInventory.xml, GabbyInventory.xml and so on — plus Merchants.xml and sixty AdditionalDealer_*_Inventory.xml slots used by mods to add entirely new merchants (see externalization). A dealer file is just a list of references into Items.xml:

<INVENTORY>
    <uiIndex>1</uiIndex>
    <sItemIndex>2</sItemIndex>
    <ubOptimalNumber>1</ubOptimalNumber>
</INVENTORY>

How the files fit together: uiIndex¶

Nearly every list-style XML numbers its entries with a <uiIndex> tag. That number is the entry's identity, and it is how other files point at it:

A dealer inventory's <sItemIndex> is the <uiIndex> of an item in Items.xml.
EnemyGunChoices.xml lists guns as item numbers (<bItemNo1>689</bItemNo1> means "item 689 in Items.xml").
DifficultySettings.xml has one entry per difficulty level, selected by its index.

Two practical consequences:

Never renumber or delete entries

Because everything cross-references by number, deleting an entry or changing a <uiIndex> silently breaks every file that points at it. Change the values inside existing entries instead. Some files say so themselves — DifficultySettings.xml opens with: "DO NOT CREATE NEW ENTRIES! INSTEAD MODIFY THE DIFFICULTY LEVEL YOU WANT TO PLAY ON!"

An index only means something in its own context

The same number points at different things in different files. In Vehicles.xml, <uiIndex> is documented as "the profile index from … TableData\MercProfiles.xml" — the Hummer is entry 160 because that is its character profile number, not its item number. Read each file's comment header to learn what its indexes refer to, and always search your own copy of a file for the entry you want: numbers can differ between 1.13 versions and between mods.

Editing safely¶

Back up first. Copy the file (or the whole TableData folder) before touching it, so you can always restore a working state.
Use a real text editor, such as Notepad++ — not a word processor.
Read the comment header. Most files begin with an XML comment explaining each tag; it is the closest thing to official per-file documentation.
Keep the XML well-formed. Change only the values between tags. Keep every opening tag matched by its closing tag, and leave the file's structure and encoding alone.
Change one thing at a time, then restart the game and test, so that when something misbehaves you know which edit caused it. Note that some values by nature only matter for a new campaign — <StartingCash> in DifficultySettings.xml is the obvious example.
Compare against pristine copies. The unmodified current files are always available in the 1dot13/gamedir repository, which makes it easy to diff your edits or restore a single file.

For concrete, worthwhile edits — starting cash, vehicle seating, reinforcements — see the recommended settings page; to go beyond tweaks and build a mod, start with XML modding and the modding overview.

The XML Editor tool¶

There is a dedicated GUI tool for editing these files: the JA2 1.13 XML Editor, maintained at github.com/1dot13/xml-editor.

Some history: old 1.13 packages used to bundle an XMLEditor tool, but it was removed from the installation because it caused problems. The GitHub project is a revival — per its README it "aims to be a continuation of the development of the XML Editor for the Jagged Alliance 1.13 modification", picking up from revision 168 of the editor's old SVN repository (ja2svn.mooo.com/source/ja2_v1.13_xml_editor). It is written in Visual Basic .NET.

Current status (as of July 2026):

Downloads are on the project's Releases page. The latest release is 0.2.2-beta, "Updated to latest game build" (January 2025), shipped as XML-Editor-Release_beta_x86.7z.
It is marked as a beta / pre-release, and its release notes list a known issue: editing Drugs.xml does not work.

Beta tool, same rules

The XML Editor is convenient for browsing the item data, but it is beta software: keep the same backups you would make for hand editing. A text editor plus the pristine files on GitHub remains the most reliable workflow.

Sources¶

Data-1.13/TableData listing in the 1dot13/gamedir repository, retrieved via the GitHub API, July 2026 (including the Items, Inventory, NPCInventory, Army, Profiles, Map, Lookup, BriefingRoom, Email, Layout, MapAction, Multiplayer and Sounds subfolders, and the Data-1.13 root folder)
Current game data files fetched from 1dot13/gamedir: DifficultySettings.xml, Vehicles.xml, MercProfiles.xml, Items/Items.xml, Items/Weapons.xml, NPCInventory/TonyInventory.xml, Inventory/EnemyGunChoices.xml, Inventory/GunChoices_Enemy_Admin.xml
1dot13/xml-editor repository — README and releases
JA2 v1.13 Starter Documentation and Recommended Settings (previous community documentation, r8741 era)