XTool Complete Guide

[Razor12911]

With the release of xtool v0.9.9, there's certain things that were added to assist you in compressing your games and I've created this little guide to help you use xtool somewhat to its fullest potential.

Before you proceed, first visit this thread to see if the game you're interesting compressing hasn't been investigated and if you've researched a game want to post your own findings, post them here.

Topics

Investigation (Simple)
Investigation (Advanced)

[Razor12911]

When you're compressing a new game that hasn't be investigated before, what you first need to do is find out what game engine said game is using.
You do this by using steamdb or by looking at the game structure, if it follows [CodeName]\Content\Paks then it is unreal engine, if there's cas files, then it is frostbite and so forth.
You do this first step because such games already have plugins that can work with those games and can be found here.

If it's a sequel to an already existing game, like Forza Horizon 5 and you're repacking Forza Horizon 6, then it is likely that the 6th iteration of the game uses the same method as the older game in which case, you should visit this thread to see what methods were used for that older game(s).

[Razor12911]

xtool v0.9.9 has added detail stream composition and graphical representation of stream and data. What you need to do is drag and drop game folder to xtool.exe whilst making sure xtoolui.dll is nearby. (Optional, if the ui dll is not present, you just get a summary and not the graphs)

We'll be using Dishonored 2 as an example.

This is the summary you get:

Processing input: E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Dishonored 2

Streams: 374562
  - zlib = 273263 (60,26%)
  - leviathan = 18 (0,01%)
  - kraken = 16 (0,02%)
  - mermaid = 1 (0,00%)
  - wwise (vorbis) = 101225 (13,48%)
  - bink (v2j) = 36 (6,66%)
  - png = 2 (0,00%)
  - bink (v1i) = 1 (0,00%)

Time: 00:02:34 (CPU 00:22:12)

Less than 1% detections can be considered false positives as this a quick scan.

and this is the graphical representation of the game.
Screenshot 2026-09-21 114933.png

The bar graph shaded in blue represents streams discovered in specific blocks and the line graph in green represents compression ratio for that block.

Now from here it is a question of which data type do you want to handle first, if it is the audio, you then filter the streams from the ui to see which files contain wwise audio.
Screenshot 2026-09-21 115748.png

You get to see what files contain audio, isolate them and use mesa or whatever tools that are available to process this audio.

Screenshot 2026-09-21 120133.png
Isolate the bink videos, good thing for this game they are easily identifiable by extension, isolate and process those using bpk.

Screenshot 2026-09-21 120417.png
And lastly, 60% of the game is zlib streams, for these you just use zlib+preflate and your job is done.