Aion 2 Pet Tracker

A free, open-source Windows companion for Aion 2 Global: track pet souls, explore farming locations and keep an eye on Spacetime Rift openings.

Download for Windows · Official website · Full guide · Releases

Completely free and ad-free. All features are available to everyone, with no premium features, subscriptions or paywalls. Patreon support is entirely optional and does not unlock features.

_{The actual desktop interface with demo progress. Screenshots are application renders, not mockups or live-spawn evidence.}

Independent community project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by NCSOFT. Passive packet capture is not an anti-cheat exemption: detection, account restrictions or bans remain possible. Read security and anti-cheat risks before use.

What it does

Pet collection tracking

• Follow pet levels, soul progress and remaining goals in a compact desktop overlay. Counts follow soul gains, not monster kills.
• Display pets from observed activity or add them manually. Pin, reorder and remove cards without deleting collection progress.
• See the detected monster variant beneath a pet name when that information is available; alternative names are not guessed.
• Keep preferences separate for each character/server. A fresh validated collection is required at startup.
• Recognize uncertain data: readable gains can continue under a red warning, while a fresh collection reconciles the totals.

Interactive Pet Atlas

• Explore six bundled region maps with recorded in-game farming locations, zoom, pan, search and pet portraits or dots.
• Combine region and pet-type filters: Cogni, Fera, Natura, Varian and Special, plus All types.
• Browse farmable or MAX pets, including a separate category for pets without recorded coordinates.
• Open a pet's information card for its portrait, progress, available acquisition sources and wiki link. Use the highlighted + beside Close to add it directly to the tracker.
• Enable Tracker pets only to limit the displayed pets and map markers to currently visible tracker cards, together with the other active filters. A red checkbox glow and status label make the filter clear; it becomes unavailable and switches off when the tracker is empty.
• Show all matching farmable locations together, or focus a pet and choose among its recorded regions.
• Enable Map-exclusive pets to combine the selected region, pet type and tracker filters while excluding pets with recorded farming locations in other regions. This uses the bundled location snapshot, not a guarantee of global exclusivity.
• Open the Pet Discovery Guide with the book beside this filter: browse single-map pets by map, type and farmable/MAX status, or inspect special sources, known boss identities and suggested acquisition sources. Every row opens a pet card with the same tracker Add action. Source suggestions are not measured fastest routes or guaranteed drops.

Map markers are a reference guide, not live spawns or player-position tracking. Missing coordinates do not mean a pet cannot be farmed.

Spacetime Rift timers and alerts

• Detect a supported Global server region from the current character identity after synchronization.
• View that region's daily schedule and UTC offset, with daylight-saving handling.
• Choose a 1–10 minute reminder, enable or disable alerts and sound, and preview the notifications. The default reminder is five minutes before opening.
• Receive a reminder and an opening alert, each held for five seconds: below the visible tracker, or at the top left when it is hidden. Only one notification is shown at a time.

Times follow the Shugo.GG community timetable; an opening alert is scheduled, not a live spawn confirmation. Unknown server regions suppress automatic alerts.

Desktop experience

• A dark interface with animated transitions, clear shortcut controls and an illustrated handbook.
• Automatically grow and shrink with 1–7 visible cards, with scrolling beyond seven; compact mode stays compact.
• Adjust opacity from 85–100%, lock the tracker position, toggle Always on top and move Settings or Rift Settings independently.
• Use Ctrl+P to hide/show and Ctrl+U to compact/expand; both shortcuts can be changed in Settings.
• Install with a localized Windows Setup, an optional desktop shortcut and the included .NET runtime. Installed copies check stable GitHub releases for updates.
• Choose among Turkish, English, German, Russian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi and Simplified Chinese.

Screenshots

Pet Atlas: filters, tracked pets and pet details

Spacetime Rift settings

These are screenshots rendered by the existing application's offline UI tests with demo data. Click an image to inspect it at full size.

Pet Discovery Guide: single-map farming and acquisition sources

Installation

Requirements: Windows x64, Aion 2 Global and a separately installed copy of Npcap. You do not need the .NET SDK to use the release installer.

1. Install Npcap from its official website. Npcap is not bundled or installed by this project; its own license and installation options apply. Capture permissions, including whether elevation is required, depend on your Npcap configuration.
2. Download A2PetTracker-win-Setup.exe from the latest release. Updater .nupkg files are not the installer.
3. Run Setup, select a language, review the terms, choose an installation folder and optionally add a desktop shortcut.
4. Open the tracker. With it running, return to Character Select and log in again so the game supplies a fresh character identity and collection. The tracker opens after validation.
5. Attack a supported pet monster or use + Add pet. Open the globe icon for Pet Atlas and the purple Rift icon for its settings.

Each new live session requires a fresh collection; saved counters are not treated as a current authoritative baseline. Users of older portable distributions should run Setup once to use the installed updater. Public releases provide Setup rather than a portable ZIP.

If an update check fails, Retry or Continue current version is available. Relaunching the desktop shortcut restores the running tracker instead of creating a second session.

How passive capture works

The implementation is available for inspection in PassiveCapture.cs, GameConnections.cs and the capture project.

1. The application looks up supported Aion 2 process names, process IDs/start times and the Windows TCP connection table to identify a process-owned IPv4 connection on remote port 13328. This is connection identification, not access to game-process memory.
2. SharpPcap uses the separately installed Npcap driver to receive traffic from the matching network adapter. The capture device is opened without requesting promiscuous mode.
3. A filter selects the exact server-to-client TCP direction; received packets are checked against that connection again before decoding. If more than one matching game connection exists, capture waits rather than choosing a character arbitrarily.
4. TCP reassembly and supported protocol decoding produce character identity, collection snapshots, soul events and target/NPC metadata. Soul totals use numeric Pet IDs and validated events; targeting alone adds no souls.

The application does not read or write game-process memory, inject DLLs, modify the game client, inject/send/replay game packets, intercept and change traffic, or automate gameplay. It does not bypass anti-cheat. Ordinary HTTPS requests to GitHub for updates are separate from the passive game capture; website and wiki links open in the default browser.

Data quality and limitations

• Collection snapshots, soul events, session activity and UI preferences are separated. New validated snapshots reconcile real values without losing stable preferences.
• Stream/frame identity guards against replayed frames; identical Pet ID/amount values alone are not used to discard legitimate gains. Multi-pet AoE/auto-loot batches are validated before application.
• Reconnects, dropped packets, unsupported messages or protocol changes can make counts uncertain. Last-known values remain visible with a warning; subsequent readable gains can continue when identity and a collection baseline remain available. Gains inside unreadable or missed messages may still be absent.
• Return to Character Select and log in again when safe to obtain a fresh collection. Teleporting is not a guaranteed resynchronization method. Do not risk leaving a timed instance just to clear a warning.
• The current connection lookup supports the known IPv4/port layout. VPN, IPv6, game patches and adapter permissions can prevent capture from working. Offline tests cannot establish compatibility with every live game build.

Local data and diagnostics

Character/server identifiers, collection state, preferences and text diagnostics are stored under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Aion2PetTracker. Fresh sessions discard cached live totals while retaining stable preferences.

The tracker does not ask for your game password or automatically upload collection state or diagnostic reports to a developer service. It does not write full PCAP captures. Text logs can include character/server identifiers and bounded hexadecimal snippets of unsupported soul messages, so review and redact diagnostics before posting them publicly. Automatic bug-email submission is not implemented; sharing a report is manual.

Security and anti-cheat risks

There is no official NCSOFT approval and no guarantee of anti-cheat safety, invisibility or freedom from account sanctions. Passive capture does not establish permission to use a third-party tool. Publisher rules and enforcement can change, and use may result in temporary restrictions or permanent bans.

Precautions in the implementation include connection scoping, server-direction filtering, no game-memory access or packet injection, explicit consent before live use, validation of decoded data and uncertainty warnings. These describe implementation choices, not an anti-cheat certification or an independent security audit.

Review the game's current rules and the in-app terms source before use. Do not disable anti-cheat, antivirus or other security protections to run the tracker. If you are unsure whether a tool is permitted, seek clarification from the publisher rather than treating this README as authorization.

Use the official repository and GitHub releases as distribution sources. Release asset details provide SHA-256 digests, and releases include corresponding source archives. A hash or antivirus result alone does not prove a binary is safe; code signing remains a separate distribution task.

Help and contributions

• Learn: website and full guide · patch notes.
• Report a problem: open a GitHub issue with the app version, Windows version, server region, steps to reproduce and expected/actual behavior. Use Settings → Diagnostics if needed, and redact identifying information first.
• Contact: [email protected]. Use email for information you do not want in a public issue; do not send passwords or account credentials.
• Contribute: pull requests for focused fixes, documentation, translations, tests and verified data corrections are welcome. Discuss larger changes in an issue first, preserve attribution and include relevant tests.

Build from source

Development requires Windows x64 and the .NET 10 SDK; the SDK version/roll-forward policy is in global.json. From a checkout of this repository:

git clone https://github.com/keytftw/aion2pettracker.git
cd aion2pettracker
dotnet build PetTracker.slnx -c Release -m:1
dotnet test PetTracker.slnx -c Release --no-build --no-restore -m:1

The test projects exercise state reconciliation, identity isolation, batch soul gains, pin/delete retention, installer logic, localization, map data/filtering, camera behavior and elapsed-time animation. Source-based UI tests render demo forms without starting live capture; they do not launch packaged installers or tracker binaries. Passing offline tests is not evidence of anti-cheat approval or guaranteed live accuracy.

Developer reference: controls, data and rendering

• Level stages have within-stage goals of 5 / 25 / 75; 105 total souls reaches Lv 3 MAX. Shard/crystal messages do not provide reliable pet attribution and are not counted as pet souls.
• A non-MAX attack can display a card without incrementing its counter; MAX pets can be added manually. Unpinning removes only the pin, retaining the card. Delete/CLEAR removes the visible card and its pin, preserving progress. A subsequent real soul gain can reactivate it.
• Pins, retained cards and saved order are scoped to character/server. Up/down arrows reorder cards. The full tracker fits one to seven card slots, grows and shrinks after additions/removals and scrolls beyond seven. Empty retains one slot. Position lock is separate from sizing.
• Custom shortcuts accept Ctrl/Alt/Shift with a letter, digit or F1–F24. Conflicting combinations are rejected and held keys do not repeatedly toggle. MAX transitions can play a subtle sound; hover CLEAR removes a MAX card.
• The catalog contains 207 IDs, including seven Special entries; this is not a claim that the game displays 207 regular collection pets. The bundled map snapshot associates 200 IDs with six maps and has coordinates for 160 pets. Acquisition records are wiki-matched for 206 catalog entries, with the remaining entry explicitly unconfirmed.
• Multi-region cards provide a Show on map menu. Region filters exclude pets without coordinates in that region; All pets and Pets without locations retain access to acquisition information. Portrait markers and dots use saved preferences; nearby markers of the same pet are coalesced at the current zoom.
• Maps/terrain are bundled; no WebView2 or online map dependency is required. The current map bitmap is disposed when regions change. Region, map size and position persist.
• The separate illustrated handbook has eight pages and can be opened from the tracker, Pet Atlas or Setup's button below its progress bar. Setup's completed-work progress screen remains visible for at least six seconds and never reports completion before installation steps finish.
• Rift alerts start enabled for new settings; a saved opt-out remains respected. Delivered reminder keys are retained to reduce repeats across restarts. Unsupported server identities suppress automatic alerts.
• Rendering caches text and portraits, uses elapsed-time easing and lowers timer activity when idle or hidden. Active animation uses an 8 ms timer request, which is not a guarantee of an 8 ms frame interval. Offline seven-card paint measurements have varied by revision and environment: a prior local 96-DPI comparison measured 10.31 → 4.19 ms median and 354,984 → 36,216 allocated bytes/frame. These are historical offline measurements, not in-game FPS guarantees.
• Manual validation still includes fluidity under game load, installation/update/restart behavior and live collection recovery after data gaps. Development instructions prohibit executing packaged installers or application binaries during local development.

Maintainer reference: release packaging

Install the pinned packaging tool and build the installer:

dotnet tool install vpk --version 1.2.161 --tool-path .tools/vpk
./tools/Build-Setup.ps1

Build-Setup.ps1 publishes the app, checks required data/portraits/maps/licenses, disables portable generation and skips Velopack's app-execution probe. The localized wizard embeds the matching installer payload with a SHA-256 integrity check. Installation runs only after the user's consent and Install action; successful installation writes the installation profile and preferences.

For publication, use Actions → Build and publish updater release → Run workflow. App and Setup project versions must match and be incremented before a release. The workflow builds/tests on Windows, packages the installed Velopack feed and publishes the public Setup, full/delta update packages, feed metadata and corresponding source ZIP. User update checks need no GitHub token. A fresh collection is required after updating.

License and acknowledgements

Distributed under GNU GPL-3.0. Required capture/protocol/catalog components have attribution; the tracker state and desktop interface are independently implemented. Third-party code, fonts, maps, portraits and server-data sources are documented in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md, data/PET-SOURCES.md and licenses/.

Aion 2 names, game artwork and trademarks belong to NCSOFT and their respective owners. Their inclusion does not imply affiliation or endorsement.

Optional support

If the tracker is useful to you, you can support Keyt on Patreon. Donations are optional: the application stays free, ad-free and fully featured, whether you donate or not.