Installation

From the Tarkov install your official launcher maintains to a modded one you can play, in five steps.

• Before you start
• 1. Check your client
• 2. Preview, then install
• 3. Import the game's data
• 4. Verify
• 5. Play
• Building the payload yourself
• Adding mods to an install you already have
• Uninstalling

Before you start

• A post-1.0 Escape From Tarkov install (1.0.0 or later). Pre-1.0 clients are Mono and are not supported; they cannot be made supported. See the FAQ.
• An SPT install, to import the game's item/trader/quest/map data from. Without it the server runs and the game is empty.
• About 1 GB free on the same volume as your Tarkov install. Not 78 GB — the asset bundles are hard linked, not copied.
• Windows. No .NET runtime, no PowerShell, no Python needed to install.

Your existing install is only ever read. Everything is built in a second directory. If any of this goes wrong, delete that directory; the install your launcher maintains is untouched and still updatable.

From an extracted aowlspt-<version>.zip the tools are in install\ and the payload is already built. Commands below are written that way; if you are building from a source tree the tools are in installer\build\ and there is one extra step (see Building the payload yourself, below).

1. Check your client

install\aowlspt-install.exe detect

  root      D:\Games\Tarkov
  version   1.1.0.46777
  backend   IL2CPP
  suitable  yes — this is a post-1.0 client

Write the version down. detect searches the usual places; pass a path if your install is somewhere unusual.

2. Preview, then install

install\aowlspt-install.exe plan ^
    --source D:\Games\Tarkov --target D:\Aowlspt --payload payload

plan prints the client it found, the payload it loaded, every objection it has, and the list of steps — and does nothing. That list is not an approximation of what install does; it is the same list, executed.

install\aowlspt-install.exe install ^
    --source D:\Games\Tarkov --target D:\Aowlspt --payload payload

--target must be a new directory beside the source — not inside it. It asks once; --yes skips the question.

This takes seconds, because the ~77 GB of asset bundles nothing ever writes to are hard linked. Everything a patcher could plausibly rewrite is copied even so. --copy turns linking off entirely.

What lands in D:\Aowlspt:

D:\Aowlspt\
  EscapeFromTarkov.exe          copied
  EscapeFromTarkov_Data\        mostly hard linked
  aowlspt\                      everything this project owns
    aowlspt-launch.exe          what you start
    aowlspt-backend.exe         the server
    aowlspt-host-il2cpp.dll     the host that goes into the client
    backend.json                where the client looks for the backend
    mods\<name>\<name>.dll      each mod, with its config.json and data\
    registry\mods.json
  aowlspt-install.txt           what was created, for uninstall

BattlEye and ConsistencyInfo are deliberately not carried across.

Useful flags:

flag	what it does
--list ID	picks the mod list a fresh install starts with. Default aowl.list.vanillaplus (the feel mods); aowl.list.raidnight turns the bot population up and adds the AI and faction mods.
--overlay	rewrites only the payload into a target that already has a client.
--dry-run	prints every step and executes none.
--copy	copy instead of hard linking.

3. Import the game's data

Not optional, and not part of the installer. Everything above produces a complete, verifiable, empty server: it answers every route the client asks and has no items, traders, quests or maps in any of them.

install\aowl-importdb.exe --from D:\SPT --out D:\Aowlspt\aowlspt

About three seconds and 39 MiB later there is a db.json where the backend looks for it. --out is the aowlspt\ directory inside the install, not the install root — one level up and the server comes up on its fallbacks with nothing saying why. The SPT install is opened read-only.

4. Verify

install\aowlspt-verify.exe --root D:\Aowlspt

It checks the client is post-1.0 and IL2CPP, that the host, launcher and backend are present, that every mod directory actually holds a library, that the registry went in — and then starts the backend on a spare port, asks it the first questions the client asks, and stops it again.

The check count moves as mods are added, so read the failures and the warnings rather than the number. The warnings are the interesting part: a missing db.json is a warning, not an error — the install is not broken and there is no game in it, and those are two different sentences.

5. Play

D:\Aowlspt\aowlspt\aowlspt-launch.exe

→ Getting started for what happens next.

Building the payload yourself

If you have a source tree rather than a release archive, build the payload before step 2:

installer\build\aowl.exe build
installer\build\aowl.exe payload
copy installer\payload\payload.json.template installer\payload\payload.json

Then set targetTarkovVersion in payload.json to the version detect printed. payload.json is per-machine and is not in the repository.

Read the exit codes. aowl build exits 1 if any mod fails to compile, and aowl payload refuses to stage a mod with no library, or a payload missing the client host, the backend or the launcher.

Adding mods to an install you already have

Install again with a payload containing only aowlspt/ and no --source. It becomes an overlay that owns only what it added, and nothing re-links forty thousand files.

Uninstalling

install\aowlspt-install.exe uninstall --target D:\Aowlspt

It is driven by the manifest the install wrote, so it removes exactly what was created. Your original install was never touched.