[Galuhad]

The data is compressed using Zlib. The string contains info essential for generating a tooltip for that specific item, things like the generic item ID, item level, and any additional info such as equipped essences etc.

At one point I was working on an update for Tulkas that would allow you to piece together slottable equipment to create hypothetical instances of that item, and then compare stats. Part of that feature allowed users to share these items in the chat channels by recompressing the item info into a sharable link. It worked really well, I just stopped playing for an extended period of time that I never got around to finishing it. I think if the game devs ever extended LUA to give us more item info data, I may consider completing it, but I really can't be bothered maintaining a database of items that require manual stat entry.