# Dalamud

Dalamud is a plugin development framework for FINAL FANTASY XIV that provides access to game data and native interoperability with the game itself to add functionality and quality-of-life.

It is meant to be used in conjunction with FFXIVQuickLauncher, which manages and launches Dalamud for you. It is generally not recommended for users to try to run Dalamud manually as there are multiple dependencies and assumed folder paths.

## Hold Up!

If you are just trying to use Dalamud, you don't need to do anything on this page - please download XIVLauncher from its official page and follow the setup instructions.

## Plugin development

Dalamud features a growing API for in-game plugin development with game data and chat access and overlays. Please see our Developer FAQ and the API documentation for more details.

If you need any support regarding the API or usage of Dalamud, please join our discord server.

Thanks to Mino, whose work has made this possible!

## Components & Pipeline

These components are used in order to load Dalamud into a target process. Dalamud can be loaded via DLL injection, or by rewriting a process' entrypoint.

Name | Purpose
--- | ---
Dalamud.Injector.Boot (C++) | Loads the .NET Core runtime into a process via hostfxr and kicks off Dalamud.Injector
Dalamud.Injector (C#) | Performs DLL injection on the target process
Dalamud.Boot (C++) | Loads the .NET Core runtime into the active process and kicks off Dalamud, or rewrites a target process' entrypoint to do so
Dalamud (C#) | Core API, game bindings, plugin framework
Dalamud.CorePlugin (C#) | Testbed plugin that can access Dalamud internals, to prototype new Dalamud features

## Branches

We are currently working from the following branches.

Name | Purpose | .NET Version | Track
--- | --- | --- | ---
master | Upgrade to .NET 6 | .NET 6.0.3 (March 2022) | Staging
net5 | Current release branch | .NET 5.0.6 (May 2021) | Release
api3 | Legacy version, no longer in active use | .NET Framework 4.7.2 (April 2017) | -

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