1.1) Hot Keys ~ also called Macros in EQ
These keys are vital for fast performance of many abilities, skills, and commands. Before the explanation of how to make them, we are going to clarify the terms we will use here to avoid confusion. Also, remeber, that all the keys can be moved. I personally use my keyboard numbers 1 to 0 for my hotkeys, and have spells set to key F1 through F8.
In the lower right corner of the screen is a menu. This is our actions menu. It has four catagories: general, ablilities, combat, and social. Each of these is represented by a tab on the top of the menu. The second tab, the abilities menu, will have non combat abilities your specific race/class combination is born with, and ones you later aquire. To open and close the Actions Menu hit Alt M.
In the lower left corner of the EQ screen, is the Hot Keys or Macros Bank / Menu, which has ten slots per menu. To change HotKey Menus, hold shift and hit a number 1 to 0. Making available a total of 100 hotkeys. This is alot! Once you develop specialty abilities, trades, and languages, you will find you need all of them. To open and close the Hotkay Bank / Menu hit Alt H.
One more menu to identify is the tool bar menu. To open ( and close ) this, hold alt and W.
1.2) Ok, let's make some hot keys!
The first ones you need are basics. Go into your abilities menu and click on the empty numbered keys, and choose from the menu. You will definately want sense heading and bind wound, as these skills are vital more than daily in Norrath. If you are blessed with Forage, make one for that too.
Do the same for your combat skills. In the actions menu under the skills tab. You will want to utilize as many of your combat skills as you can. Having a second and third attack is vital for melee classes to stop casters from landing spells. Using your auto attack (swinging your hand held weapon) then waiting a second or so, and then letting off a kick, slam, bash, can change the fight dramatically. Raise these skills at every chance. Some people will even fight tons of light blue conned mobs, which give little XP, so they can raise skills, such as hand to hand, and not gain too much experience, thus making mobs green that could have raied skills easily. Once a caster, for example, gets past 16 or so, you can bet it is going to be incredibly difficult to find any mobs to fight hand to hand to raise this skill. Then also remember how many times you will be naked running for your corpse, and a mob or PK randomly attackes you, thus death causing more XP loss. Hand to hand is a skill one does not know is valuable until too late.
1.3) Personalizing Your HotKeys
Open the fourth tab on the actions menu. The one that looks like a talking bubble icon. These are socials. The first page of them is filled with bogus default socials. I never end up using any of these personally. Click on the little arrow to go to the next page. There are plenty of pages, fear not. Page two is blank. Right click on any one of the blank spots, this opens a dialog where we "make" the hotkeys. The first space is the name of the key: this matters very little: name them all booger for all anyone cares: this will be your identifier of what the key is only. The next line is the first of five command lines. Each key unfortunately only has five command lines.
now in the first line type "/language 2" in the second line type "/say i like to talk to myself" and in line three type "/dance" in line four type "/smack" and in line five type "/language 1" ~ do not use the quotes, i put them in to specify what was to be typed. You will now hit the accept key. Now the name of the button appears on it in our socials menu. to add the key to our hotkey menu we will click on it, and hold until a copy of the button appears on our cursor, then take it over to the hotkey menu and drop it in the spot you wish. The numbers go left to right, top to bottom in order for each page of hotkeys.
Now, when you hit this key you will: switch to your second language ( assuming you have one: to find out what you speak type /language help this lists all the languages you speak. To see how proficient you are in each, see your skills chart in the inventory screen ), you will then talk to your self in this language for others to hear, then dance a little bit, then smack yourself or who ever you have targeted, and then return to common tongue.
You cannot make open ended socials though: such as the "/g" to begin talking to a group, left open for you to add dialog will not work. It will come out as you said nothing to the group; More on all the Social Commands later on this page.
* * Recommended Keys To Make:
- - a /time command on the same key as your /loc is great: time and location
- -/corpse is one i have made, but only drop in the hotkey menu when i need it
- - /who friend all is a good one to put on the same key as your /who guild all and any other guilds you may watch, like i do a /who mask all also, to see who is on in the Mask of Vengeance on that same key.
- -/hidecorpse all or /hidecorpse group hides either all but yours, or all but you and your groups bodies: this DOES hide dead NPC's that were killed before you hit the key. So if you need to dee a body, do a /hidecorpse none to undo it at anytime.
- - and finally, a /follow key; i stick this one on the 0 key. It come in handy quite a bot. I have made and used a /assist key before, but it is touchy, and I do not know all the parameters for use of this command.
2) Chat Channels
There are an endless number of chat channels able to be created by us in the world of Norrath. These come in handy when you have alot of people you want to talk to at the same time. I have often been in a conversation, and some one else sends a tell as i am about to type back to the person i was talking to, inadvertantly sending my tell to the wrong person.
To make a channel, simply type /join channelname - - obviously i am using "channelname" where you would type the words or letters or numbers you desire. You are now the channel moderater. This does little for you hehe. To see what channels you are in type /list , And to see who is in a specific channel type /list channelname or number.
Once in a channel or channels, you will see they are reffered to by the computer as numbered channels. To speak in a channel with out typing /channelname every time, you can simply type the "slash" and the channel number
If you are invited into a channel, simply type:
/join channelname
To leave a channel, simply type:
/leave channel # or name
Once you are given access to one or any channels, you are able to join them any time by typing:
/join channelname:password
- * * * or you may set your account to automatically join said channels when you log in,
by typing the following:
/autojoin Chaos:password , MDHC:password , ooga-booga:password , and so on.
Obviously replacing the word "password" with the actual password once obtained.
*Also the space is needed between the end of the password to the last channel and the comma, and then another space between the comma and the name of the next channel when setting your account to auto join multiple channels. You may also set hot keys, or Macro keys as they are called in EQ, tp join and leave channels.
3) Chat Text Window(s)
To begin, let me explain one thing. Any changes made to anything here (reguarding the chat boxes) will only appear when you log on this character. Thus to do this to all your characters you will have to repaet this process. Unlike changes made to autojoin channels, or changes made in the Tool Bar Menu such as display settings, chat filters, and clippling plane settings, which are universal, in that when you change them on one character, all your characters will have those settings.
Ok, that said, let us clear up your text so you can see everything much more easily.
Right click on the title bar of your text box, named main chat by default. This brings up a menu, lets choose New Chat Window. You now have a second window to use as you choose. Lets put all your conversations in there. I mean isn't it annoying when you are trying to talk and there is a battle or alot of people casting near you, and all the conversation is wisked up and off the screen ? . . .
On our new box, right click on the titel bar, this one is probably named chat 1 by default, and slide down to Filters. Once you touch filters, it will open a longer menu, choose Guild. Then repeat this choosing Group, Tells, Say, and Emotes. Now all your conversations will come to this window only. You can name it chat or conversations or what ever you choose. Now lets do one more thing to help sort out your jumbled info box.
Lets make a third box. Name this one Information. Under the filters choose OOC, Shout, Auction, Skill, and Other. Now your original box is only combat text, you have one for talking to ppl, and the third is all the info you need plus what ppl are shouting, auctioning, and saying Out Of Character in the zone your in. I have found this system to be so much more easy to dop multiple tasks at once. I out the combat and info boxes along the bottom of the screen side by side, and the chat box along the topn stretched out. I also set all my boxes to fade away completely when i do not touch them, thus keeping my line of sight clear.
The Channel selection in the menu only sets it so when you type on THAT chat box, all you type, npo matter of what you preceed it with, will go to the channel specified
More to come on chat windows as need or requested . . . . .
4)Consider Messages
To "con" someone or something in EQ is to "consider" it. When you right click on a person or NPC (non player character) you will consider it.
The message displayed has three pieces to it.
4.1)the color: this determines the level of what you are considering against your level. Red being much higher than you, and Green being much lower than you. The other colors depend on if the thing being considered is a player or an NPC. For NPC's Light Blue is generally a few levels lower than you, Blue a couple levels lower than you, white or black is around your level (for NPC's and players), and yellow is a bit above your level. To get a complete breakdown of the colors, and their meanings go to Allakhazams Magical Realm .
4.2)the consideration: which also can be the "looks at you" phrase, and other subtle variations. This tells you your standing with this NPC, and their Faction as a generality. A Faction is a group that the NPC belongs to. Whether it be political, or tribal, or just a beleif. Guards, Goblins, Wolves, and even YOU have factions you are in when you are born. This is one of the most important aspects of the game on a PvP sever. Why ?!? you ask . . .
Faction in every city determines how the town folk look at and like you. This affects prices, and can be a devastatingly fast way to end a fight, even if defending yourself. If i was a human in Rivervale, and a halfing attacks me: if i turn and swing at him out of defense, the guards will kill me. Why? he is a native, and is born weith higher faction that i am as a human born in Qeynos or Freeport. BUT i can raise my faction, by doing quests, or often there is a certain item you can give to a certain NPC and raise faction. Almsot all cities have on eor the other or both.
The breakdown of faction scales is as follows:
ally
warmly
kindly
amiably
~ indifferently
apprehensively
dubiously
threateningly
ready to attack
Now, generally speaking, Green mobs wil not attack you unless you are sitting down in their aggro range. But ready to attack means that: if you get in the mobs aggro range it will attack.
4.3) The end of the message means almost little to nothing. Why? it does not take armor or skill lvls into account when guessing. It only measures level. Do not go by this exclusively, if at all. I don't.
5) Socials, Emotes, and things you can do . . .
Best thing i can say, is to go to this page on Allakhazams for a list of all the commands people have found. I think there is a small list in the tool bar menu also.
6) Location:
This is a very vital tool, especially when in really large zones. When you hit your local you will get a set of numbers like this: 902.47 , -1162.55 , 22.07 The first thing to know is that the numbers after the decimal mean nothing. they are just trying to be really exact. Think of these numbers as a foot in measurement. The first set is North and South, the higher the number, the further North you are. The second set is East and West, the higher being the further west you are. The third set is almost useless, it is height, or level above or below sea level. Now, when some one asks your local, you will respond with the first two sets ONLY, and do not put the numbers after the decimal. For example: p902 : n1162 would be the one we used as an example. Many skilled people will use a p for positive and an n for negative. Why? because not all peoples' text shows slashes, dashes, and pluses and minuses, we do not know why, but they don't always show up.
7) Skills and Abilities:
Skills ans abilities are different for every race and class combination. Some you are born with, some you get as you level up. And most of them raise them selves as you play. ALL skills improve the more you use them. Hence you only need to put ONE point into them. You may use more if you wish, but when you reach higher levels and want to do alternate advenment skills, you will need hundreds of skill points. So use them very sparingly in the first 50 levels.
Most new players want to level up as fast as they can. They are thinking the game is only good at high levels. The only problem with this is: if you get Power Leveled (PLed) up or level up nice and fast, you will not have raised all your skills up. So you will have a level 30 character with the skills of a level 10 character. This will really suck later in the game. Why? Because, for example, for a caster, you have basicvally up to level 16 or so to get your hand to hand, and weapon and defense skills up. After that, it is incredibly difficult to raise them. What many advanced players do is fight low experience mobs to raise skills before advancing up levels OR DEleveling to max skills. Personally I try to fight tons of light blue mobs before advancing too far, and try to find ones that give faction to a city or group of guards, like the Aqua Goblins for example.
8) Some scren clearers and lag killers . . . .
First off, type Alt D to get rid of that stupid worthleess, lag makin compass they put on the darn screen. Your sense heading tells you the info in the text, so why have it clogging up your visual range.
Turn off the tool bar menu when you're not using it by typing Alt W.
In heavy trafficed areas, open the tool menu and choose options, then choose display, and slide your clippling plane all the way down, and turn down the near clip plane too. I have to do this in both the PoK and the Bazaar to reduce lag.
More in this section as we recieve question or comments . . . . .
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