EQ2 Macro Guide

[Khatovar]

A lot of players coming from WoW will pretty much be in a state of culture shock when transferring over to EQ2. One of the biggest problems with WoW having such a monster share of the MMO market is that other games suffer greatly when compared to WoW on information. You want to know how to do something in WoW, it's easy to find the information. Want to do something in EQ2? Good luck. Almost all the information is seriously outdated.

In keeping with Noxxy's post to try and smooth over some of the culture shock and hopefully provide some valid, current information, here's my resource for EQ2 and macros.

EQ2's macro system is not as robust as WoW's or Original EQ's. It is very simple, and somewhat limiting, but still enough to get the job done.

Macro Rules -

Macros can call up to 24 actions each. Actions include :
Spells
Combat Arts
Abilities
Commands
Equipping items
Using items


Macros cannot have any form of delay.

There is no wait command.

You cannot call a macro from a macro.

Macros do not auto-upgrade from level to level. They do, however, from grade to grade. That is to say, spells all get new names when you level.

My fury gets "Minor Elixir" at level 3. It upgrades to "Elixir" at level 10. This is a whole new spell as far as the game is concerned. You will need to edit your macros to use the new spell name.

My Fury has "Minor Elixir" at level 3. As soon as I get it, it is listed as (Apprentice I). I find a nice sage to make me an upgrade to (Apprentice IV) or (Adept III) or get a book drop to (Adept I) or even (Master I) or I upgrade this spell as a Master II choice. It is still the same spell as far as the game is concerned. You do not need to edit your macros.


Creating a Macro

Hit "O" to open your "Socials" menu. Select the "Macros" tab.
Hit "K" to open your "Knowledge Book". Here you will find all actions that your character knows.

Pro Tip - Not everything you learn will go in the "Spells" or "Combat Arts" sections. Some special spells and actions, such as attacks learned from AAs, will end up under your "Abilities" tab.

Use "Sort" to organize your abilities better.

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Hit <Click to Edit> in your Socials window to start a new Macro.
Give your macro a name and select an icon.

Pro Tip - Don't like the icons listed? You can drag an icon directly from your Knowledge book and drop it on the default icon.

Add your actions.

Pro Tip - You can just drag and drop any spell or ability from your Knowledge Book, or item from your inventory, into the Macro Editor. The Macro Interface will automatically fill in the proper step type. You will still need to use the "Add Step" for commands like "follow", "pet attack" and "assist", however.

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This is where you can end up diverging a bit. So let's look at the macros in a friendly vs. unfriendly setup and break down some of the options.

Friendly Spells

EQ2 has a built-in "Target=" function for certain spells. Mostly any "Friend" targetted spell will have this functionality. That would be direct heals, reactionary buffs, wards or summonable items. Once you drag a spell like this to your Edit Macro Window, a "Target" box will be added. You can either fill in a player's name so it will cast on that target no matter what you target, or you can leave it blank to make it cast on your current target.

Leaving it blank will also allow you to also pass the spell through a hostile target to a friendly target, just like the targettarget conditional in WoW. {Thanks, Noxxy.}

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Hostile Spells

For spells that don't fall under the Friendly catagory, you will need to use a command line to send them off in the right direction. You'll just be using a simple assist command here. A list of current in-game slash commands, such as emotes, assists and pet commands can be found at The EQ2 Wiki ('http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Slash_Commands').

Select Macro Step : Command and click "Add Step".
Add the appropriate command. In this case an assist.
If you're a pet class, you can also add an attack command.
Start dragging your spells in.
Save your macro by clicking "OK" and drag the icon from your Socials window to a hotbar slot.


Equip/Use

You can also use macros to "Use" items in your bags or Equip items from your bag onto your paperdoll. Some will give you options to tell you where to put them, such as mainhand and offhand weapons. These can be set via a dropdown menu after you drag them from your inventory to your Edit Macro Window.

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Queueing

EQ2 uses a Queueing system for spells and abilites. When you push a button, the game casts that spell. When you push 2 buttons, the game casts the first button and queues the second button to be cast as soon as your first spell completes casting. When you press 3 buttons, the game casts the first, queues the second and then overwrites the second with the third. This is vital when it comes to macros.

What queueing means in a macro is you push your macro button once, it uses the first spell/ability and queues the last function in the macro.

So let's look at a macro example. Here my spells are set in random order, without regard for cast time or cooldown time.

Pro Tip - This is a bad, bad macro on so many levels.

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I hit the button once and wait. Wild Salve casts immediately. Hibernation casts right after it.
I spam the button, Wild Salve casts. Maybe Hibernation queues and casts. Maybe Nature's Elixir cancels Hibernation and casts next, and Hibernation gets queued again. Perhaps Hibernation goes off next...and on down the list.

Messy and unpredictable, yes?


This is where we need to understand how the macro is trying to work. It will always try to cast the topmost available spell and the bottom spell. Available or not, it will always "Stick" on the bottommost spell and queue to cast when it can, while moving along the line on the upper spells. The macro will never move up the list from the bottom. If the bottommost spell is on cooldown, the macro will queue it for later and go back to the topmost available spell.

Likewise, it will always start at the top of the macro. It can take a ton of spamming to get any of my spells in the middle to go off because Wild Salve has a 1 second cast and a 5 second cooldown. With seizure-inducing button spamming, I can maybe get 3 spells down the list before Wild Salve is off cooldown and the macro casts that again.

A much better way to make this an effective, if not efficient macro, is by putting your longest cooldowns at the top of the macro and your shortest one at the bottom.

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This way, I can spam away and it will pretty much go through the whole list, top to bottom, using Wild Salve every time it can, without it starting over too soon or skipping spells in the middle.

When boxing, you will also want to take cast times into consideration. While that's not too vital in a normal situation, multi-boxers will want their spells to matchup somewhat otherwise you have one character all the way through a macro full of short-cast spells while the rest are still trying to get through a bunch of long cast spells. I currently break my macros up into debuffs, dots, direct damage, close range and situational. While I try to get all the debuffs into my first macro for all my toons, some debuffs have a very long casttime. In these cases, I'll drop some debuffs into my dots macro for that toon, so they can pick up where they left off while my other toons are moving on through their damage.

Pro Tip - Heroic Opportunities ('http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Heroic_Opportunities') are huge boons to your group, you will want to use them as often as possible. Be sure to drop your various HO starters into your macros so each group member can start different ones back to back.

There is also the option to turn off spell queueing. {Options > Controls > Button Queue > Enable Ability Queue}. This will allow you to create macros that are closer to /castsequence macros, but will still stick to the first available cast order. It just prevents the end spell from ever trying to queue as a secondary cast.

Finally, you will see the option to check "Primary" in all your macro steps. This does not force a spell to be your primary cast. It only selects which spell you want to use as your cooldown marker for the macro button.

[Noxxy]

Great guide to EQ2 macros Khatovar - thankyou!

If I may, I'd like to add a little more to this statement:

You can either fill in a player's name so it will cast on that target no matter what you target, or you can leave it blank to make it cast on your current target.
- leaving the player's name area of the macro blank can also cause the beneficial spell to be cast on your current target's implied target assuming the current target is a mob. For example, you are attacking a mob who is currently attacking another group member. You can cast a heal and it will fall on the attacked group member without having to explicitly target them.

Some listings of ingame 'slash commands' which can be used in macros can be found at these links (some are getting pretty old now and haven't been updated for a while):
http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/54475
http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Slash_Commands
http://eq2.allakhazam.com/wiki/slash_commands_(eq2)
http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=982

[mesmerise]

Good to see finaly more and more topic about EQ2 ;o!!

I started 1 year ago with keyclone ( and droped it 5 days ago for ISboxing ) and this forum was an empty space for sharing some infos for EQ2 boxers ;o.

[Noxxy]

A more up to date listing of slash commands:

http://www.eq2interface.com/forums/showthread.php?t=12455

[Frosty]

Great info, thanks! This has answered a lot of questions I was wondering about.

Perhaps it's time that the EQ2 wiki here ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Everquest_II') got some information put into it for multi-boxing?

I'm having a blast so far in EQ2, and took the leap to 6-boxing it. :thumbsup:

[Frosty]

I haven't been able to find this anywhere..but is there a way to assign keybinds to the other hotbars outside the first 3?
Like "CTRL+SHIFT+1" on hotbar 4 in slot 1?

I've seen a way to rotate out hotbars, so perhaps I need to look in that direction.

Edit- I was also wondering if there are training dumies (or something like them) to test out spell macros?

[Noxxy]

TBTH - I haven't found a way to get more than the 3 hotbars going (besides the shift+1, shift+alt+1, shift+ctrl+1, etc., to swap hotbars around - which incidently can be a real pain in mid-combat hence why I disable it!)

Training dummies = Kunzar Jungle - Tabernacle of Pain - training 'walls' which are free but you will need to do the faction quests so you are not KOS

Also - if you have a guild hall:
Training Dummy Supply Chest
Allow members to spawn training dummies for combat practice.
Purchase: 5p 500,000 status
Upkeep: 10g 2,500 status

[Frosty]

Hrmm.. I just chose to /duel one of my other accounts to set up the macros.

I ran into something interesting though. I turned off the Button Queue and it seems to break the macros for the cast sequence type setup.

Verified it by placing all the spells in the macro on a hot bar..and only the first one will go off.

Edit - I"m putting the order from lognest to shortest recast in my macros...in case that's needed. :p

[Khatovar]

I had to ask on the boards on that one, it sounds like a bug. If you run the macro through test it works like it's supposed to, but it stops working the second you try to use the actual macro. I'll post back once I hear something, but until then they'll probably just say use queueing and put a long cooldown ability at the end if you don't want to spam a low-cooldown attack.

[Frosty]

I had to ask on the boards on that one, it sounds like a bug. If you run the macro through test it works like it's supposed to, but it stops working the second you try to use the actual macro. I'll post back once I hear something, but until then they'll probably just say use queueing and put a long cooldown ability at the end if you don't want to spam a low-cooldown attack.
Ah, I didn't think to run them through the test button. I just put it on a hotbar and spammed.

But, it still works a LOT better than what I was doing. I was able to kill stuff that had previously been slaughtering me. :D

[Khatovar]

Yeah, I had to go ahead and bug it. Either the test mode is broken or queueing is broken, my vote goes for queueing. Hopefully fixed soon, but until then, it's queueing on.

[Frosty]

To not lose all the great info you guys posted, I'm "attempting" to add it to the wiki.

It seems like we'll be upgrading to mediawiki soon, so I added the info to there:

http://www.dual-boxing.com/mediawiki/index.php/EQ2_Macros

This is my first real attempt at a wiki...so it still needs cleaning up a bit.
I wasn't able to get the images to display like I wanted, but I'm thining it might not be allowed right now?

[Herc130]

Anyone have EQ2 icon pictures already shrunk and converted from DDS to something that can be printed and fitted to an XKeys keycap? Maybe even a UI with the hotkeys set-up in the form of an XKeys pro? I know there are WoW UI's like that, but haven't found an EQ1/EQ2 like that yet. Maybe I'll put a request in at EQ2interface unless someone here already knows of one.


Having trouble programming X-Keys to work with EQ2. I have programmed it for EQ1 before with very little problems, but EQ2 doesn't seem to work right with it. Lets say I want to use my #2 Hotkey banks and activate the #3 key in that bank. Going by the keyboard, I can do : (shft+2)3(shift+1) . That will bring me to keybank #2, hit the #3 key and then take me back to keybank #1. It works fine with the key board. So I program that in to the Xkeys and it does not shift to the different keybank. All it does is hit the #3 key. I thought maybe the x-keys was just going too fast, so I slowed it down and still doesn't work (assuming I slowed it down correctly). I am at a loss as to what the problem is.

I even tried something as simple as (alt+3) which should directly hit the #3 key on the second hotkeys bank, but no joy. I also tried just seeing if I could get the hotkey bank to cycle by just doing (esc+shift+2) but it just ignores everything except the single digit #.

[Khatovar]

The wiki has spell icons in .jpeg format at this link ('http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Icons_by_Class'). Clicky the pic to see the 42x42 version, the link under the 42x42 will bring your to just the normal image.

I have no idea on the xkeys, but you can now set hotkeys for all 10 spell banks, so you can avoid switching the spellbanks altogether. Are you using a whitelist/blacklist somwhere? Or perhaps look at some of the stuff here ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=2911').

[Frosty]

A few of us were having problem with the new hotbars and keybinds.

You might want to make sure that you can actually send the commands normally to the windows before setting them up in your Xkeys (I've never used Xkeys..)

I posted a workaround for the keybinds here: EQ2: Hotbars and bind keys ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&postID=192379#post192379')

[Herc130]

Thanks for the help. I program the X-keys in this manner for movement keys in EQ1, didn't think EQ2 required everything to be done that way. Really a pain in the ass. Hitting esc+sht+1 should be seen to EQ2 as being Shift+1, but all it sees is 1. Instead I have to SHift+insert down arrow+1+on release+shift+up arrow. Which is a combo of typing and mouse clicking menus.....which is a pain in the ass. I went ahead and assigned 7 hotbars with their own key combo, none of which were in use except for the Shift+# to flip back and forth on the what was displayed on the first hotbar bank (would complicate things for me to use anyway, so went ahead and deleted association with it). Anyway, back to programming the X-keys, luckily will just have to do it once and then can copy and paste to all other comps.

[moosejaw]

With all those toons and those hotkey combos...... /pulls hair out
Try to stay sane Herc. 8)

I spent some time rearranging macros last night and it made a huge difference. It seems that around the middle teens your group synergy really starts to shine.

[Herc130]

Macros cannot have any form of delay. There is no wait command. You cannot call a macro from a macro. So all the fun stuff you've been starting to use with /click and stuff...not gonna happen in EQ2.


None of my /assist or /target works without me having to hit the key more then once. Like something as simple as a /follow.

/target Phrak
/follow

EDIT: Ok, figured out I could just do a simple /follow Phrak and that works great. So targetting can be worked in witht he same command line. Cool. Still, what about /assist in order to start attacks?

It jumps to trying to follow before it actually targets my other box, so I get a "You must first select a group member to follow" Works that way with all my /assist macros as well. A /pause command would be great. I tried throwing in abilities and even food summoning between the /targat (or assist) and the /follow (or attack) and it still cycles to the next command lines before the first command line gets a chance to follow through. How do you guys work around this? I think I can go into my X-keys and make it so everytime I tap a button once, it will act like it was double tapped, but I much perfer an ingame macro that works instead (without me having to tell it twice)

[moosejaw]

For assisting, put it on a key that is used for the tank to pull with etc. Assist eats a keypress so leave it out of your dps/heal macros and only do it once per mob to get the target.

If you are doing 2 groups and not in a raid, I don't think follow will work. I believe you can only follow a group/raid member. Not 100% sure on that one though.

[Frosty]

There is lag/delay in gaining the target of the toon you want to /assist.
This is pretty common even in WoW.

What moosejaw said about setting your follower's assist key to the same one your tank pulls with works great and gives your tank a little lead to gain aggro.

And I know for sure you at least have to be in a group to /follow. I haven't tested a raid though. :P

Ok..I'm really really logging in to play now... :whistling:

[Noxxy]

I believe you can only follow a group/raid member.
Yes and no - Yes, can only follow a group member, no, cannot follow a raid member if they are not part of your group within the raid

The last part is a bit of a sticking point with me as I have tried /follow with 7 accnts in a raid setup and the 7th char (who I had sitting off in their own group within the raid) was unable to /follow requiring me to manually move it all the time

When it comes to assist I simply use:
/autoattack 1
/assist {insert tank name here]

But I do admit - sometimes I have to spam it a bit before everyone is attacking so I tend to dbl tap it

[Herc130]

I believe you can only follow a group/raid member.
Yes and no - Yes, can only follow a group member, no, cannot follow a raid member if they are not part of your group within the raid

The last part is a bit of a sticking point with me as I have tried /follow with 7 accnts in a raid setup and the 7th char (who I had sitting off in their own group within the raid) was unable to /follow requiring me to manually move it all the time

When it comes to assist I simply use:
/autoattack 1
/assist {insert tank name here]

But I do admit - sometimes I have to spam it a bit before everyone is attacking so I tend to dbl tap it

I'll try the /autoattack 1 as first command. Makes sense, gettting em attacking first and then /assisting, but if they don't have a target, then still won't work. Might just have to break down and make one key dedicated to being assist and nothing else as moosejaw said .
EQ1, I'd do: /assist whatever, /pause 2, /attack/cast/whatever inserting pauses of various lengths when casting spells. Worked great. We're playing over the internet, always going to be some latencies, some people have worse then others, so I cannot understand why they don't have a delay as a / command, especially since they had it in EQ1. But they also didn't have the "implied target" as EQ2 does, which is throwing me for a loop. I keep trying to make hotkeys like I did in EQ1 and it is kinda the same /commands.

So, with implied target, if my warden has my tank targetted and the warden cast a direct damage spell or any kinda hostile spell, that spell will land on the mob that my tank has targetted? Or if the warden has a mob targetted and the warden cast a heal spell, that heal spell will land on whomever the mob has targetted? I might have a couple accounts with 5 year vet rewards, but EQ2 is a whole new game for me lol. So, as long as all my boxes have my tank targetted, they will assist him without me even needing a /assist command? So really, I don't need a /assist button, I need a /target tank button which can be hit well before going into combat and then all boxes will attack the mob via the implied target my tank has...? And while in combat mode, the only time I break off from having my tank or main assist as target for any boxes is if I need to cast a beneficial spell on a different box, but then I can just include a /target tank at the end of the heal spell.

EQ1 you can't /follow outside of groups either, but you can group up, /follow a toon in the group, then disband and you'd still be following that toon. I use to run an alpha team and a bravo team with my rogue taking point :) Alpha team had my tank and usually shaman +whatever. My shaman was usually /follow on my tank and all others in that team would /follow the shaman. Bravo team had my druid and my druid would join alpha team in order to set-up /follow, then disband. All bravo team was /follow on my druid. I'd run ahead and check things out with my rogue then run my warrior through which would drag the whole box army with him. If I was going to attack a target, I'd break off follow with my shaman at a safe location thats close enought o land spells, then run in with my tank. Fights over, shaman goes back to following the tank and all others never stopped following the shaman. Or if I was just transiting, my warrior would just /follows my rogue...yep...9 accounts following 1. Unfortunately, just checked in game and once you disband for EQ2, /follow ends.
For

[Noxxy]

I honestly and humbly apologise - you are totally correct - my macro is assist first then autoattack not AAtck then assist

Yep - re implied target - I use all my heals this way - to reiterate what you have said but in a different way:
- healer /assists the tank
- therefore, the healer will have the tanks mob targetted (and not the tank)
- if the tank takes a few hits, the healer casts a heal which will land on the mob's target - that target being the tank or whoever else is targetted at the time the spell was cast

All my heals are set this way as are my cures (except one) - it basically means that each cure/heal is targetless if you like - and also means I only have 1 of each heal/cure

There are cases when this approach may put you in strife though:
- tank gets stifled (so can't taunt), mob starts chewing on say the DPS, in this case I do have my 1 and only targetted macro being simply '/target tank /useability cure' to remove the stifle/stun so it can begin taunting again
- another example, tank pulls mob, mob takes a swipe at say the healer in passing knocking it down 50%, then retargets the tank - to heal the damaged char I just throw a group heal (as I can't target the specific char who is damaged without a lot of fiddling)
- above I made a point of including the statement 'at the time the spell was cast' - so an example, mob is targetting tank, I cast a heal intended for the tank as a top up, mid cast the mob chews on the DPS knocking down 50%, the heal I am casting will land on the tank not the DPS which is the new prioirty - to heal the DPS mid-cast I retap the heal spell and as I have /cancel_spellcast included in the macro it simply restarts casting but with the DPS as the recipient of the heal

Personally, I would not recommend using /target - this basically means that your slaves will have say the tank, and only the tank, targetted - yes, all dmg spells will land on the tanks target but all heals / cures anything and everything will land on the tank alone even when the mob is targetting another group member - you 'could' get around it by always casting group heals but they aren't the most efficient or fastest heals (both in cast and refresh) to be using all the time

[Herc130]

I think having everything work off my tank on target may be best for me. Seems pretty simple that way. Also, I have an X-keys pro for each account ( look at the pic to the left), it is no problem to have keys dedicated to healing all my boxes for both my healers. In EQ1 I had 10 keys on the X-keys pro to assist my tank: fast heal him, heal over time him, delayed big heal ( love this spell, basically lands a heal that counts down from 20 seconds and is very low agro) big slow heal, snare his target, DoT his target, nuke his target, root his target, various debuffs and then a mirror of that for my other melee. And then I also had a fast heal and a heal over time for each box. I have more X-Keys buttons then I know what to do with really lol. And with only having to have a /target tank and a /target scout key and then working all other spells off that, I have even more X-keys to play around with then before. Both of my healers are already set-up to fast heal and big heal/heal over time all of my boxes by name. SO really as far as healing goes, they won't be healing via implied target. And I just noticed that a macro made by dragging the heal spell into the macro box and then typing in the name of the toon you want healed, does not change any targetting when used, so all my toons can keep my tank (or my scout if I am offtanking with him...or the tank died) as primary target at all times and heal all the toons I have by name using every kinda heal line EQ2 has ( fast, big & slow, HoTs, timed?) and I'd still have more Xkeys to play with then I can probably use. Hell, I use to have X-keys to just do emotes lol.

Really, /target on my tank clears it all up for me. I just gotta figure out how to layout the macros ingame. Before I was simulating all 58 keys ingame.....which was 7 hotbars onscreen. But I think I will just go down to three actually on screen and the rest just set-up with macros offscreen. I even have x-keys for moving each characterm which helps with placement if a box didn't set-up right to melee (although things die so fast at low level that its not even wortht he effort for now to move em) I can nudge em forward, left, right or back to place em better. Also have x-keys just to /follow different toons.

[Frosty]

Now that they are allowing more hotbars with keybinds, I'll probably set up designated keys to heal each member as I did in WoW. :thumbup:

[Herc130]

Let me make sure I am not missing some obvious setting that allows me to do it.

This is a screen of me setting up the hotkeys to work with the x-keys

http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/3843/eq2000001.jpg (http://img12.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eq2000001.jpg)

This is with all the hotbars linked to X-keys off screen except for 1 bar that represents the 3x4 section in the middle of the xkeys that I will use for heroric opertunities.

http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/7996/eq2000000f.jpg (http://img21.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eq2000000f.jpg)

Unfortunately, taking those hotbars off screen appearntly shuts em down completely and I can no longer hit my xkeys button to exicute the spell/ability/macro. Works fine if the hotbars are on screen. Was there a setting to allow me to use hotbars that are not on screen? Are am I going to have to re-think this and go through setting things up using the first hotbar and (shift+1-12)downarrow and basically re-doing it yet again from the ground up?

[Noxxy]

Actually - that's a very good question Herc - I've never tried firing off a key on a hotbar which isn't visible - I'll have a play tonight and see what I can come up with for you

As a note too - see all those macro icons which are blue and just say EQ2? - when you create the macro, the icon is the top right - beside it has little spinny arrows - hit the arrows and there's a whole bunch of other icons you can use - it may make it easier to associate a picture with your spells instead of trying to remem all the key positions on your x-keys

Few others bits which may help:
- you only need 1 group member to yell to break the encounter so that would free up a spot for you
- your going to have a fair few different types of rez spells in later levels
- unlike eq1 - we don't need to sit to regen mana / hp - /shudders at remembering sitting for hours with a troll SK trying to regen mana in eq1
- all chars 'run' by default (as opposed to walk) - the only time I actually use walk now is in dungeons with fearing mobs where I set the slaves to both walk and crouch
- honestly, don't ever remem needing to 'sprint' as you'll pwn most things - plus - at later levels your warden (by the look) will have evac
- at the start, we all get free food and water, personally, once this runs out I never restock food (perma-hungry) till 80. I always buy drink which is simply, your level rounding up to the next 10, as the mana regen is so good (i.e., so at 20, buy level 30 drink, etc). But that's somethig you won't need to worry about till your in your 20s- and dungeon crawling

Edit:
Forgot to mention - if hiding the bars and using the spells doesn't work - you can always shrink the hotbars
- right click a hbar, click hbar options?? (going from memory), and on the left? I think there is a either a slider or a number, have a fiddle with that and you can shrink the bars down a fair way
- hbars can also be displayed vertically as well as horizontal - basically, go back into hbars options again and unlock bar, hover your mouse over a corner, drag'n'drag till you get an outcome you like the look of
- also, see all those empty hbars borders? you can hide the grid lines if you wanted to by right clicking and selecting hide borders?? I think it is

[Herc130]

All the blue EQ2 boxes just represent an unused box since ingame hotbars are 12 buttons a row, while X-keys have 8 buttons per row (2+4+2.....+ being a blank space) Also, the near solid row of EQ2 boxes on the bottem is just because I set the xkeys to do up/down, left/right....and a jump outside of EQ2s hotkeys, so yah, the blue boxes are just to remind me not to put a spell, ability or macro there.

I am not sure what you mean by yelling to break an encounter? Totally in the dark there lol

I printed out icons from the wiki, but all of them are too small, but I think my hotkey/x-keys set-up will be going through many revamps along the way and I am not really sure what spells are must haves and what can be left in the book. So not gonna go through the effort of playing around with the icons in paint to get them the right size yet. Right now just trying to set-up all my toons in a playable manner. I was hoping to start playing again by today, but I think I will be using up most of the time just setting up the hotkeys and x-keys. Oh well, once they are set-up, it makes everything else much easier.

My wardens x-keys. Icons too small and not nearly done yet, but the plan for my healers is all heals and cures are on the top section, devided into 6 sections (3 top, 3 bottem) to correspond with how my screens are set up. Left section....so far I only have 3 keys (not counting food suommoning) just has a target tank and a target scout key. Then below that will be any hotile macro keys I make (only have one that does fire nuke and ice nuke so far) . Big middle section , top three rows will have probably all the hostile spells and heroic opertunity icons. Two bottem rows are movement keys and /follow keys. Right section will be whatever buffs the character has.

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/2774/img0941y.jpg (http://img7.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img0941y.jpg)
Sorry for the flash, it really puts a bad glare on things, but I don't know hwo to turn it off and blocking it just makes the picture red. Once I have the icons printed out to the right size and all buttons filled, it actually looks pretty cool. But I am gonna do that over time as it becomes more clear to me how best to do this. Right now, I am just trying to get it in a workable manner and all I need from each account is a /target tank and then melee attacks and spells...and heals. Back to re-programing the x-keys again. Only problem I have now is I can have the x-keys button shift into the hotbar I want, hit the key from that hotbar I want, but don't see how to swtich it back to the default #1 hotbar.

Thanks for the info on shrinking and adjusting the hotbar, that opens up some more options for me, Will be pretty useful.

[Frosty]

As a note too - see all those macro icons which are blue and just say EQ2? - when you create the macro, the icon is the top right - beside it has little spinny arrows - hit the arrows and there's a whole bunch of other icons you can use - it may make it easier to associate a picture with your spells instead of trying to remem all the key positions on your x-keysYou can also drag spells from your spell book onto that icon.

[Noxxy]

I am not sure what you mean by yelling to break an encounter? Totally in the dark there lol
The first picture posted - 3rd row, 2nd and 3rd icons = yell (as in yell for help) - basically, when you fight mobs, the encounter is locked to your team - so any passersby can't kill-steal or help if you get into trouble (i.e., mobs unattackable to them). When you /yell, the encounter is unlocked and passerbys can help get some mobs off you. Even when there is no-one around to help you, it is sometimes good to yell for help to avoid training a huge chunk of mobs all over the place (i.e., sometimes they reset back to their original positions faster - not all the time though). Once you yell though, the mob/s gives no exp or loot.

As for shifting between hotbars:
- first hbar - default = shift+1, shift+any other number = non-default
- second hbar - shift+alt+2 would be the default, any other number for non-default
- third - shift+ctrl+3 = default, any other number = non-default

So you got your xkeys to shift into the hbar - I assume it's just a matter of putting in the relevant 'default' command to revert back (i.e., shift+1 or shift+alt+2 or shift+ctrl+3)

[Khatovar]

Unfortunately, taking those hotbars off screen appearntly shuts em down completely and I can no longer hit my xkeys button to exicute the spell/ability/macro. Works fine if the hotbars are on screen. Was there a setting to allow me to use hotbars that are not on screen? Are am I going to have to re-think this and go through setting things up using the first hotbar and (shift+1-12)downarrow and basically re-doing it yet again from the ground up?

Here's something you can do to help.

1. Grab a bar mod from EQ2 Interface ('http://www.eq2interface.com/downloads/cat101.html') if you have not yet. As a matter of fact, grab a bunch of stuff. The default EQ2 interface bits all have a TON of deadspace in them that rapidly eats up your viewable area. For hotbars in particular, I found the deadspace preventing me from cllicking icons because the deadspace from the bar above or next to it was in the way. You can see the deadspace by rightclicking the edge of the bar > window options > Frame and Title slider. Or alternatly tapping f10 {tap it twice more to get back to your normal interface.

2. Once you've got your hotbar set up, rightclick the edge > hotbar settings. Here you can size the bars down to tiny little buttons if you like. With this, I can resize and realign my windows 6x2 so they take up about the same space as a single group member window without buffs. Three 6x2 windows sized down to an icon size of 25 and padding of 0 takes up the same amount of space as a single default EQ2 bar.

3. Rightclick > window settings. Window > Normal opacity slider all the way to the left will make the window invisible. Same with mouseover if you don't ever want to see it. I have a lot of my stuff set to visialbe only on mouseover, or barely visable.

This should allow you to keep your bars on screen without making it so your screen is nothing but bars.

[Herc130]

So you got your xkeys to shift into the hbar - I assume it's just a matter of putting in the relevant 'default' command to revert back (i.e., shift+1 or shift+alt+2 or shift+ctrl+3)

I originally started out trying to do it that way, but EQ2 is weird. For EQ1 I could just hold escp+shift+#1-10 and EQ1 will see shift+#, but EQ2 sees escape as well (escape is suppose to be just seen by the x-keys). ANd if I do a Shift+# then it see's the number in the upper case...like @!$%^. I had to do a arrow down, on release and arrow up deal. Unfortunately, you can only do one on release command per button on the x-keys, so that means I can make the #1 hotbar switch to the hotbar I want, hit the key I want...but I can't make it switch back to the #1 hotbar when done. So I just went with shrinking all the hotbars except for the first two.

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/8476/eq2000006.jpg (http://img5.imageshack.us/my.php?image=eq2000006.jpg)



Think I will just stick with defualt UI's. I used a cutom UI in EQ1....it was the one that let me use all the old spell gems/icons and old windows. Don't really like messing with custom UI's all the time. I think they got it to a point now (in EQ1) where big patches don't break em, but new game additions still didn't show until whomever made the UI you use updated to it and you manually went through and redo the UI. I thought it was more a pain then it was worth. I don't know about the deadspace, all the small hotbars are shrunk as small as they can go and I can still click em with the mouse fine. Anyway, it's too a point where I can start boxing and leveling again.

[Redbeard]

Howdy,

I seem to have a problem with my buff macro.

I have 3 buffs. Theyre all "until cancelled" buffs. It seems as if my macro that im using doesnt know not to turn off active buffs. I know in WoW there was a ! or whatever you could use to tell it not to turn your auras off if you spammed the button, is there something like that here?

Thanks.

[Noxxy]

I would not recommend putting all your buffs in the 1 macro at all - as a matter of fact, the only way I would recommend would be to set up a hotbar with each buff being displayed seperately

Lot of high end content is notorious for debuffing - with each buff displayed seperately, you can see what is on and what has dropped off (single or self buffs) - groups buffs (i.e., bards) are a pain but you still get a good idea if one of them is missing after a boss fight

There is no such thing as a 'don't turn off my active buffs' command in EQ2 as everything I know is toggled

[lorddread]

I found out that if you turn spell queue off like one of posters said it does break it but can be fixed by making the bottom spell the primary spell then it will cycle as it should ea ch press using the first available skill from top to bottom in the macro.

Also to hide hotbars you need to have skills on but not seen ie ones with keybinds just right click the hotbar choose window settings and set opacity as low as it will go and turn click through on so you can't click the hotbar good to put them somewhere not in the way though maybe leave mouseover opacity up so can see them a bit when mouse over them to edit etc?

edit again: the macro firing in order only works right if spell at bottm is primary and is also on a low cooldown so its ready most of the time the others will be since setting to primary makes none of them available if its not.

[Oatboat]

I tried the EQ2 Extended this weekend just to try boxing it. (played single box a while back and wanted to try it) Question is. Do you know if the setup for Rift will work for this? I tried it yesterday with limited success. Does this game recognize the modifiers in ISboxer?

here is the guide i'm referring to. http://isboxer.com/wiki/RIFT:Basic_Multiboxing_Macros_Walkthrough

I'm having a good time just 3 boxing atm tank/healer/dps

[Lyonheart]

/necro .. this was very useful .. thx again!