Last Updated: October 31, 2008
Latest Changes:
- Added Seeds of Destruction to the list of expansions, but with scant
description of the content.
- Updated various items to reflect recent changes to the game. Since it
might be interesting to see which of the recent changes affected things
basic enough to be mentioned in the FAQ, here's a list. (Some of these
actually changed a while ago but the FAQ hadn't caught up.)
- Under "how has the game changed", noted even fewer consequences for
dying, still higher level cap, and addition of mercenaries.
- Players on the Firiona Vie server can have more than one character
per account.
- In discussing guilds, noted that much high-end raid content now is
instanced, making scheduling of targets less of an issue.
- Removed most of the details about LDoN in the "how has the game
changed" section, turning it into a summary of instanced content.
- Updated various UI instructions, such as how to turn off detailed
character models and how to change text colors.
- Described the Potion Belt as an alternative to hotkeys when the items
are inside your bags.
- Noted "/hidecorpses npc" as an alternative to "all" or "allbutgroup".
- Rewrote the section that warned about needing to re-memorise spells
after dying, saying instead you keep your spells but lose all buffs.
- Mentioned that mercenaries, like pets, stay targetted on the corpse of
the last thing they killed, so you can assist them and then use /loot.
- Removed various warnings against accidentally looting your corpse.
- Changed the tip about leaving "Temporary" items on corpses, replacing
it with a warning that this no longer works (since you keep your gear).
Also reworded the definition of CR (corpse run) in the Glossary.
- In the Grouping 101 document, noted you can set group roles, which
affects mercenaries' behavior and also enables the MA target ring.
- Mage-summoned gear is no longer needed for corpse runs.
- Added resurrection to the abilities of Druids and Shamans.
- Noted that mana checks and buff checks can now be done directly by
viewing the other player's bars and buffs, though having the other
player report his status may often still be more efficient.
- Added a section on Mercenaries in the Grouping 101 document.
- Mentioned "/assist someone" as an alternative to targetting the someone
and using a generic "/assist" key.
- Mentioned /discipline alongside /cast and /doability for use in socials.
- Removed the warning that PC descriptions set up for viewing via /inspect
go away when you zone; that bug's been fixed for a while.
- Assorted other minor cleanup.
This FAQ is the work of the community of the alt.games.everquest newsgroup.
If you would like to visit this newsgroup but don't have usenet access, you
can access it through this portal at the Erollisi Marr community forums:
http://www.erollisimarr.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=64
If you see any errors or invalid links in this FAQ, or if you want to submit
content to be considered for inclusion, please contact the current Keeper of
the FAQ, Don Woods, at age-faq@icynic.com. I will edit submissions as I see
fit for correctness, size, or style. I will not add any in-document credit
for any work submitted. This is not because I am ungrateful, but because
this FAQ is the product of many different people, over a very long period of
time, and I am simply unable to track them all down to provide proper credit.
It just doesn't seem right to give credit to some people and not to others.
Contents
1. General Questions
2. Questions about EverQuest
3. Questions about How to Play
4. User Interface
5. Chat Channels
6. Posting in alt.games.everquest
7. EverQuest II
8. Miscellaneous Tips
9. Glossary
10. Useful Links
11. Comical Links and More
Note: In the web version of the FAQ, clicking on a question in the list
of questions takes you to the answer, and clicking on the question in the
answers section takes you back to that section of the questions list.
1.1 What is the FAQ for?
1.2 What is the newsgroup for?
1.3 I think something in the FAQ is wrong. What should I do?
1.4 Where can I find the FAQ?
1.5 Why do you repost the FAQ every month? Why not just post a link to the updated web site?
2.1 What is EverQuest?
2.2 What do I need to play the game?
2.3 What are these expansions I keep hearing about?
2.3.1 What is Ruins of Kunark?
2.3.2 What is Scars of Velious?
2.3.3 What is Shadows of Luclin?
2.3.4 What is Planes of Power?
2.3.5 What is Legacy of Ykesha?
2.3.6 What is Lost Dungeons of Norrath?
2.3.7 What is Gates of Discord?
2.3.8 What is Omens of War?
2.3.9 What is Dragons of Norrath?
2.3.10 What is Depths of Darkhollow?
2.3.11 What is Prophecy of Ro?
2.3.12 What is The Serpent's Spine?
2.3.13 What is The Buried Sea?
2.3.14 What is Secrets of Faydwer?
2.3.15 What is Seeds of Destruction?
2.4 What is EQ Macros and where can I get it?
2.5 Where are the EverQuest servers located?
2.6 There are so many servers! Which server should I choose?
2.7 What is the newest server?
2.8 What are the special servers all about?
2.8.1 What was EverQuest Legends?
2.8.2 What is the Test Server?
2.8.3 What is the Zek Server?
2.8.4 What is the Firiona Vie Server?
2.8.5 What is the Progression Server?
2.9 I bought a set of EQ disks and created an account. Can I give the disks to someone else so they can create an account, too?
2.10 What are "veteran rewards" and how do I get them and use them?
3.1 What do all these acronyms and jargon mean?
3.2 What is the best race/class combo to play?
3.3 Can I change which deity I worship, or become Agnostic?
3.4 What are the Priests of Discord for? Can I become a PK on regular servers?
3.5 Can I transfer a character from one EverQuest account to another?
3.6 It would really be helpful if I could use Notepad or the web while I'm playing. How can I switch out of EverQuest to a different window (Alt+Tab) and return to the game?
3.6.1 How do I get Alt+Tab to work for Windows XP?
3.7 What is a hotkey?
3.8 How do I make a hotkey?
3.9 How do I make a spell a hotkey?
3.10 What is a social?
3.11 How do I make a social?
3.12 Where can I get an up-to-date list of commands and/or emotes?
3.13 Where should I hunt given my level/class/race?
3.14 How can I make money to buy spells and armor and stuff?
3.14.1 That's taking too long! How about I just beg some money?
3.14.2 Well, how about just buying plat then?
3.15 Why can mobs hit through walls?
3.16 Hey, I can't even play at all! The servers are down! What gives?
3.17 Why did I get chewed out for inspecting someone?
3.18 How can I send a message to my friend on another server?
3.19 Can I ignore someone on another server?
3.20 What is grouping about? What am I supposed to do in a group?
3.21 All those expansions, plus regular free patches that have tweaked the game... I've heard that EverQuest's game balance has changed a lot since it first came out. Is that true, and if so, how so?
3.22 What is a "guild"?
3.23 What is being in a player guild like?
3.24 What is autosplit and why is it unfair?
3.25 What is "stat food" and how do I use it?
3.26 What are the different languages used for in the game, and how do I learn them?
3.27 What is "Fabled" all about?
3.28 The game keeps crashing! How can I fix it?
4.1 How can I increase my frame rate to make the picture move more smoothly?
4.2 How do I change the colors of the text?
4.3 How can I see where I'm going when my map window fills so much of my screen?
4.4 What's the key that opens the such-and-such window? Or whatever? And can I change it?
4.5 What else can I change about the User Interface, and how?
4.6 I've heard I can use a different User Interface (UI) from the one that comes with EverQuest. How do I do that?
4.7 How do I get the UI I have downloaded to work in EverQuest?
4.8 I play a warrior and do not need a caster or mana bar with my character. How can I change this?
4.9 My UI does not work after the last patch. What happened?
4.10 I want to design and code my own UI. How do I go about it?
4.11 Sony changed the default UI and I liked the old one better. Can I change it back?
4.12 What are audio triggers and how do I use them?
5.1 What are chat channels?
5.2 How do I join/start a chat channel?
5.3 How do I leave a channel I have joined?
5.4 Can I automatically join a channel every time I log in?
5.5 How do I stop automatically joining a channel?
5.6 What are some current serverwide channels?
5.7 I've joined too many channels and now the text is flying by too fast! What should I do? Can I have separate chat windows?
5.8 How do I find out how many people are in a channel and who?
5.9 Can I send text to a channel without knowing the channel number?
6.1 I posted one innocent little question, and got flamed. Why?
6.2 So does that mean that I can't ask any questions here at all?
6.3 What is top posting, and why is it so hated here?
6.4 I've noticed a lot of unfriendly posts coming from the same people. This newsgroup sure has its share of jerks, eh?
6.5 Will everyone hate me if I make an off topic comment or post?
6.6 I posted something I heard was true, and then some guy jumped all over me for being wrong! Why did he make such a big deal over it?
6.7 What else should I know about newsgroup etiquette?
7.1 What is this EverQuest II game that I hear about?
7.2 Does this mean that the EverQuest I am playing is ending?
7.3 Can I post about EQ II on alt.games.everquest?
7.4 How can I find out more about EverQuest II?
8.1 Performance / Raid settings
8.2 Spellcasting
8.3 Corpses and other Targets
8.4 Socials and Speaking
8.5 General
8.6 Lost Dungeons of Norrath
8.6.1 How do I earn/spend points in the LDoN camps?
8.6.2 What is the Adventurers Stone for and how do I get it to improve?
8.6.3 What are some general LDoN tips?
9.1 What abbreviations and jargon show up in the game?
9.2 What other abbreviations and jargon show up in the newsgroup?
1.1 Q: What is the FAQ for?
A: This FAQ is designed for a newcomer to the game Everquest and/or to this
newsgroup, but long-time players may also find useful tips, particularly with
regard to game features added after they learned how to play, as well as
various tools and techniques they may not have happened to encounter. It
attempts to answer some basic questions about the game, but owing to the
complexity and depth of EverQuest, it is not possible to answer all queries.
If you have a question that requires more detail, there is a list of URLs at
the end of this document that you might like to visit. (Or, of course, you
can post the question to the newsgroup.)
1.2 Q: What is the newsgroup for?
A: For the discussion of all things related to the game of EverQuest. Other
online games are occasionally mentioned, but generally only in passing or for
purposes of comparison. The particular "other game" called EverQuest II is
best discussed in alt.games.everquest2, and this FAQ does not cover it; see
section 7 for more on this.
1.3 Q: I think something in the FAQ is wrong. What should I do?
A: The current keeper of the FAQ is Don Woods, which is to say, me. I'm
relatively new to the game (started in late 2003) and don't have anywhere
near enough time to play, so I rely on community input to help me come up
with answers. If you see something wrong in the FAQ (or just have a
suggestion for an improvement), the best way to let me know about it is
either to reply to the thread that FAQ was posted to, or to send mail to
age-faq@icynic.com. If you send mail, please include FAQ or EQ or EverQuest
in the subject so it'll be sure to get past my spam filters.
1.4 Q: Where can I find the FAQ?
A: A text version of the FAQ is posted to the newsgroup once a month; the
subject will always be the date of posting, but the "Last Updated" line will
show when significant changes were last made. The FAQ is also available as
a web page (with active links to answers, etc.) at
http://www.icynic.com/~don/EQ/age.faq.htm.
1.5 Q: Why do you repost the FAQ every month? Why not just post a link to the updated web site?
A: Though some people read this group through the EMarr forums or other
web sites, a.g.e is actually part of a larger medium called "usenet". Usenet
predates the web by over a decade, and as such there was originally no place
to which to refer people for things like FAQs. Though things have evolved
somewhat, it's still the case that some people reading usenet groups do not
use a browser to do so, and thus it remains the convention that FAQs are
re-posted at regular intervals (commonly once per month). Posting the FAQ
also ensures that archive sites such as "Google Groups" will have up-to-date
copies on file in case the FAQ web site were to vanish suddenly.
If you're reading this in a web forum, you might bookmark the FAQ web site,
and take the monthly post as a signal to check the site and see what's new.
The web version generally has links from the "what's changed" section to the
more significant actual changes.
2.1 Q: What is EverQuest?
A: EverQuest is a real-time 3D massively multiplayer online role-playing
game (MMORPG) run by Sony Online Entertainment (SOE). Another equally
accurate way of describing EverQuest is to call it a graphical MUD.
2.2 Q: What do I need to play the game?
A: Ideally you should check Sony's web site regarding system requirements,
since they are subject to change as the game evolves. But here's what Sony
said as of fairly recently:
Minimum Required Specs:
- Windows® 98/2000/ME/XP
- Pentium® II 400 equivalent or greater
- 256 MB RAM
- Graphics card: ATI Radeon 7500 / NVidia GeForce 1 equivalent or greater
- DirectX Compatible Sound Card
- 28.8k + Internet Connection
- 4X Speed CD-ROM
- 500 MB Hard Drive Space
- DirectX 9.0c (November 2007 version or later)
- EverQuest Classic and a valid EverQuest account
- Note: Not all Direct 3D cards are supported. See site for list.
Recommended Specs:
- Windows® 98/2000/ME/XP
- Pentium® 4 equivalent or greater
- 512 MB RAM
- NVidia GeForce 3 / ATI Radeon 8500 equivalent or greater
- DirectX Compatible Sound Card
- 56.6k + Internet Connection
- 16X Speed CD-ROM
- 2.5+ GB Hard Drive Space
- DirectX 9.0c (November 2007 version or later)
- EverQuest Classic and a valid EverQuest account
Note that your graphics card and system need to support Direct X 9.0,
and that Windows 95 is no longer supported at all.
You will also need a valid credit card, or a pre-paid game card. (In some
countries you may be able to link your game account directly to a bank
account.)
2.3 Q: What are these expansions I keep hearing about?
A: Expansions add new content to the game: new locations, new quests, new
monsters, new skills, and also new user interface features. If you want
access to the new stuff, you have to buy the expansion, but you can also
keep playing the game without the new features. Like the original game,
you only pay once for the expansion; your monthly fee doesn't change. Most
recent expansions to EverQuest have included all previous expansions as part
of the package, making it easier for new or returning players to get up to
date on content.
There have been fifteen expansions to EverQuest so far: Ruins of Kunark,
Scars of Velious, Shadows of Luclin, Planes of Power, Legacy of Ykesha, Lost
Dungeons of Norrath, Gates of Discord, Omens of War, Dragons of Norrath,
Depths of Darkhollow, Prophecy of Ro, The Serpent's Spine, The Buried Sea,
Secrets of Faydwer, and most recently Seeds of Destruction, released in
October 2008. For a while there was an expansion every six months, but
more recently that's been scaled back to once a year.
2.3.1 Q: What is Ruins of Kunark?
A: Commonly called Kunark, Ruins of Kunark was the first EverQuest
expansion to be released. It included a new continent with many new zones
to adventure in, with lots of new dungeons, items, mobs, quests, and spells,
plus a new race that players could choose to play, the Iksar lizard-men.
People with this expansion also were allowed to advance beyond level 50 (up
to level 60), which was previously impossible.
2.3.2 Q: What is Scars of Velious?
A: Commonly called Velious, Scars of Velious is an expansion similar
to The Ruins of Kunark, including another new continent with new zones,
dungeons, items, mobs, quests, spells, level 60 cap, etc. However, it
was geared towards higher level players (level 30+) and did not include
a new playable race.
2.3.3 Q: What is Shadows of Luclin?
A: Commonly called SoL or Luclin, this expansion added new zones on the
moon, including new hunting areas for all levels, and four new cities. It
added the beastlord class and a new playable race, the Vah Shir cat people.
It added Alternate Advancement abilities as a new way to spend experience
(especially for characters who were already at the level cap and thus could
not use experience to gain levels). It also added the Nexus spires to
somewhat facilitate transportation, The Bazaar as a place to trade items
with other players, and new, more detailed player character models.
2.3.4 Q: What is Planes of Power?
A: Commonly called PoP, this expansion raised the level cap to 65, greatly
expanded the Alternate Advancement options available, added the ability to
form raids of up to 72 people, and added a very efficient transportation
system, with direct teleportation between the Plane of Knowledge and most
major cities. It provided additional hunting grounds for levels 46 and up.
2.3.5 Q: What is Legacy of Ykesha?
A: Commonly called LoY, this expansion added expanded bank space, in-game
maps, armor dyes for all slots that show a graphic, the story window, a log
journal, Frogloks as a playable race, and a few new hunting zones for levels
40 and up.
2.3.6 Q: What is Lost Dungeons of Norrath?
A: Commonly called LDoN, this expansion provided "instanced" dungeons. An
instanced dungeon can be accessed only by the group that activated it. To
activate a dungeon, the group must have at least 3 members, and the members
must all be within 10 levels of each other. (Originally the limit was seven
levels.) Dungeons have missions that must be completed within 90 minutes,
or 120 minutes for a lesser reward. A win or partial win grants each member
a number of Adventure Points that can be spent in the Wayfarer camps (which
is also where missions are assigned). LDoN also introduced the concept of
"augmentations", which are items that can be combined with other gear to add
stats or abilities.
2.3.7 Q: What is Gates of Discord?
A: Commonly called GoD, this expansion added a large tradeskill-oriented
boat/city zone, as well as the berserker class, plus normal and instanced
zones aimed at characters level 50 and higher. It added a "tribute" system
where one can trade plat (game money) or items for buffs by talking to an NPC
in the character's home city. It also added "Leadership Experience",
wherein the leader of a group of three or more members, or the leader of a
raid, can choose for 20% of the experience they earn to be diverted into
Leadership Points, with which they then purchase various abilities that
enhance the performance of people in their group, including later groups.
(Only members who also have the GoD expansion get the direct benefits of the
group leader's Leadership Abilities.)
2.3.8 Q: What is Omens of War?
A: Commonly called OoW, this expansion raised the level cap from 65 to 70,
and added new zones for the high-end crowd. It added quests for upgraded
"Epic weapons", voice macros, more Alternate Advancement skills (including
one that will provide an extra spell slot, and ones that let players have
more active buffs), new player titles, and a "task" system which is a series
of specialized individual quests geared towards characters of most levels
(with varying degrees of success). It also expanded the tribute system from
Gates of Discord to let tribute be shared by all players within a guild.
2.3.9 Q: What is Dragons of Norrath?
A: Commonly called DoN, this added new, mostly high-level content off the
Lavastorm Mountains. Players can go on "missions" (sort of a cross between
tasks and LDoN adventures) for crystals that can be traded among players and
cashed in for special gear. It also added the Bandolier and Potion Belt for
quick access to selected inventory items, Guild Halls (with guild banks and
other useful features, including some available to non-guilded players via
the Guild Lobby), the ability to set up a Buyer in the Bazaar, and cultural
tradeskill-related quests at many levels. DoN also introduced in-game
mailboxes, which are available to all players whether they've purchased the
expansion or not.
2.3.10 Q: What is Depths of Darkhollow?
A: Commonly called DoD (or DoDH), this added new, mostly high-level content
(for levels 45+) off Nektulos Forest. Players with this expansion can also
form groups that, regardless of their character levels, can take on "monster
missions", where they take the role of monsters in an instanced event (such
as a dragon defending its lair); success in these missions yields rewards
for the "real" characters. Characters can also get "spirit shrouds" that let
them take on "monster" forms with different abilities (e.g., a cleric could
play as a warrior-type monster, or vice versa). The expansion also added
"evolving items" that become more powerful as their owner gains experience.
2.3.11 Q: What is Prophecy of Ro?
A: Commonly called PoR, this expansion added new, mostly high-level
content (levels 60+) in zones and missions accessed from Freeport and the
Desert of Ro (both of which were revamped as part of the release of PoR).
It also added player-settable traps and "auras" (spells that set up an
area-effect buff), the ability to destroy certain walls and other objects
in the new zones, increased bank space, and some new tradeskill quests.
2.3.12 Q: What is The Serpent's Spine?
A: Commonly called TSS or just SS, this expansion added the Drakkin
race and their starting city, Crescent Reach (which can also be used as a
starting city for new characters of other races), plus other new zones off
of Highhold Pass. The level cap was raised to 75, and the new zones
have content for all levels 1 through 75. Many other changes were made
at the same time as TSS but are available without buying the expansion, such
as reduced downtime when out-of-combat and faster accumulation of Alternate
Advancement points. This was also when the color system for identifying
monster levels changed to include gray. (TSS was also the first EQ expansion
without "of" in its name!)
2.3.13 Q: What is The Buried Sea?
A: Commonly called TBS, this expansion added new content off Toxxulia
Forest for levels 70-75. It added "guild banners" that guilds can use to
let members teleport quickly from the guild hall to wherever the guild is
raiding, and a similar mechanism called "campfires" that can be used by
"fellowships" of up to nine players. The Buried Sea also added an inventory
slot for a new "Energeian power source" that affects all Energeian-based
(also known as "infusible") gear you have on.
2.3.14 Q: What is Secrets of Faydwer?
A: Commonly called SoF, this expansion raised the level cap to 80 and added
new clockwork-themed content off the Steamfont Mountains, aimed almost solely
at levels 75-80. SoF introduced items that bestow "heroic" stats, which
automatically raise the corresponding stat caps to allow increases beyond the
normal caps, as well as granting various additional benefits.
2.3.15 Q: What is Seeds of Destruction?
A: Commonly called SoD, this expansion raised the level cap to 85 and added
new content set in the distant past, aimed almost solely at levels 75-85.
It introduced "mercenaries", NPCs that you can hire using in-game money and
add to your party. Other details are sketchy as the content is not yet
well-explored.
2.4 Q: What is EQ Macros and where can I get it?
A: EQMacros was a program whose purpose was to provide a way for users to
circumvent some of the more tedious aspects of the game. It also dispensed
with some character disadvantages, such as night blindness. Third-party
macro programs, such as EQMacros, tend to be frowned upon by both SOE and
a large number of players. Therefore, they will not be discussed in detail
in the FAQ. This is a controversial subject in this newsgroup, and has been
argued to death. Posting questions on this subject is generally discouraged.
2.5 Q: Where are the EverQuest servers located?
A: The entire EverQuest universe (at present, about 25 separate worlds) is
run on approximately 1,000 servers. These are located in an onsite
datacenter and at AT&T CERFnet (in San Diego). The Antonius Bayle server
is located in the UK. The servers Venril Sathir, Kael Drakkel, and Sebilis
are located in Europe.
2.6 Q: There are so many servers! Which server should I choose?
A: For the most part it doesn't matter; the game is the same on all of them,
except for a few special servers. Characters generally stay on whichever
server they start on (moving them costs real money), so if you have friends
who are already playing, you may want to play on the same server they're on.
All the servers, wherever they are located, tend to have players from all
parts of the (real) world, but depending on where you are you may find that
some servers have more or fewer people playing at the same times you do.
(More is usually better!) The most recently added server tends to have a
slightly higher concentration of novice players and somewhat fewer top-level
characters, which has both good and bad points.
In early 2005, various pairs of servers were merged, presumably with the goal
of making it easier for players to find other people to group with. Each
merger came with a one-time opportunity for players on the affected servers to
move their characters for free to another server, so this was an opportunity
for friends on different servers to bring their characters together.
Incidentally, the servers tend to be named after deities and other major
characters from the game.
2.7 Q: What is the newest server?
A: The last regular server added was Morden Rasp in February, 2004. This
server allowed transfers from other servers from the very start, so never
really had a "virgin" economy, and was merged with the Povar server in 2005.
The last server added that did not allow transfers is Stromm, added in May,
2003. While this server's economy was not "contaminated" by an influx of
transfers, it has had enough time to be considered mature.
The newest servers overall are currently the Progression servers.
2.8 Q: What are the special servers all about?
A: The special servers include EverQuest Legends (now defunct), Test, Zek,
Firiona Vie, and the Progression servers. These have different rulesets
or conditions that change the gaming experience to varying degrees from the
regular servers. In general, all the special servers except Progression have
lower server populations. Your regular subscription fee lets you keep
characters on all of the current servers, regular or special.
2.8.1 Q: What was EverQuest Legends?
A: EverQuest Legends refers to the now-defunct Stormhammer server, a premium
service server. Players had to pay extra to be able to create characters on
Stormhammer, where the game included various bonus features and increased
dynamic content and customer service via GM-driven events. The Legends server
was shut down in early 2006, with existing characters being offered a chance
to transfer for free to regular servers. Note that the Legends server is not
related to the collectible trading card game, Legends of Norrath, which was
introduced in late 2007.
2.8.2 Q: What is the Test Server?
A: This server is designed to be a place where the developers can see how
potential changes to the game will work when regular players interact with
them. Players on Test often get to see new developments to EQ before
people on production servers do (if the changes get implemented at all).
They also play on the most unstable server available. The Test server is
frequently taken off line, with and without warning, and there can be small
rollbacks where minutes or hours of gameplay may be undone. Also there
is a chance that SOE might elect to do a total character or equipment wipe.
To date, there has never been a character wipe, and there was one total
equipment wipe. To access the Test server you must go into your EverQuest
folder and run the application TestEverQuest.
2.8.3 Q: What is the Zek Server?
A: This is a server on which all players are subject to Player versus Player
(PvP) gameplay as well as the Player versus Environment gameplay. There used
to be four such servers (Sullon Zek, Rallos Zek, Tallon Zek, and Vallon Zek)
with varying PvP rules, but due to declining population they were merged in
early 2005 to form a single server, Zek, using the Rallos Zek ruleset. Many
people love the PvP experience, while others hate it and consider the Zek
inhabitants to be among the worst "griefers" that EQ has to offer. While it
is up to the new player to decide their feelings on this matter, many would
consider it a good idea for truly new EQ players to get a handle on the PvE
aspects of the game before having to deal with the added challenges of PvP.
2.8.4 Q: What is the Firiona Vie Server?
A: Firiona Vie is a "roleplaying preferred" server. This server has
several special rules including a limit of three characters per account (the
limit was one per account until late 2008), Trivial Loot Code (TLC) where if
a mob is gray to anyone in the party that killed it then any loot tagged
Lore or Magic disappears (poof!), the ability to trade many items tagged "No
Trade" on other servers, and a lack of Common Tongue (each race starts with
their own racial language, and Common is replaced with Human). The old
rules about alignment grouping restrictions and language learning have been
lifted. SOE doesn't enforce any roleplaying rules, though several
members of the server do with varying degrees of commitment.
2.8.5 Q: What is the Progression Server?
A: Two Progression Servers, called The Combine and The Sleeper, were opened
in mid-2006 as a way of recreating some of the experience of playing the
game as it evolved. These servers used the same rules as the regular servers,
but most of the content (zones and quests) was not available until players on
the server accomplished certain key events, such as defeating top encounters
from the earlier content. This is based mostly on the expansions that have
been added over the years; thus, no content from Ruins of Kunark or later
expansions (and especially the easy travel and other amenities offered by
the Plane of Knowledge) was initially available. Many long-time players
returned to give these servers a try, and they were also an interesting way
for new players to start out on a more equal footing. As more advanced
content was unlocked, populations apparently waned, and characters on The
Sleeper were merged into The Combine server in March 2007 (by which date the
servers had advanced past Lost Dungeons of Norrath into Gates of Discord).
2.9 Q: I bought a set of EQ disks and created an account. Can I give the disks to someone else so they can create an account, too?
A: No. The disks let you install the game on any number of computers,
but to play the game you need an account (the station name and password you
use when you log in). To create a new account you need a special "code", a
string of letters and numbers that came with the disks. Each code can be
used to create only one account. You can use the account from more than one
computer (though only one at a time), so if you go to a friend's house you
can bring your disks, install EverQuest, and log in and play using the same
characters you play at home. But to create a separate account, with a new
set of characters, you must pay for a new account creation code (e.g., by
buying another set of disks).
2.10 Q: What are "veteran rewards" and how do I get them and use them?
A: Veteran rewards were added in May 2005 to reward long-time players, but
newer players may also reap some benefits. However many years your account
has been active, you can claim the rewards on that many characters, and each
of those characters will get as many rewards as the number of years. Thus,
if your account has been active three years, then each of three characters
can claim the first three veteran rewards. The rewards are things like
double experience for half an hour once per day, recover full hit points and
mana once per three days, etc. You can read full details at
http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/news_article.vm?id=50003&month=042005.
To claim the rewards on a particular character, log in as that character and
type /veteran. You'll be asked to confirm, because the choice is permanent,
counting toward your limit of characters eligible to claim the rewards. To
use the rewards, go to the Alternative Advancement window (via the button in
the bottom left of the Inventory window) and select the Veteran tab. Select
a reward and click the Hotkey button to make a hotkey that you can use to
activate the reward. (If you find the names confusing, you can create your
own hotkeys and use /alt activate ### to invoke them. Do "/alt list" to get a
list of activated AAs, including the veteran rewards.)
When activated, some vet rewards show up in your buff window (and presumably
count toward the maximum number of buffs you can have active). However, they
are immune to being dispelled, and their timers continue to count down even
when you're in the Guild Hall or Lobby.
3.1 Q: What do all these acronyms and jargon mean?
A: There are various glossaries online that can help you understand some of
the odd terms you'll see both in the game and in the newsgroup. Here is one,
though it's considerably out of date: http://tinyurl.com/2qnmb
On the other hand, if you just want a short list of terms that are most
commonly seen, try section 9 of this FAQ.
3.2 Q: What is the best race/class combo to play?
A: To answer this question you have to ask yourself what is important to you.
If you're familiar with other RPGs and games of this nature, you probably know
that each character will have his or her strengths and weaknesses, and that no
single class/race combo will give you all the good with none of the bad. The
question to ask is not what race/class combo is the best, but which is best
for YOU. The best way to answer this question is to learn about all of the
classes and races, and make your decision based on that knowledge.
The biggest factor will be your choice of class, since that determines most
(but not all) of your abilities and thus your typical role in a group. Your
character's race mostly determines your starting city (not a big deal these
days since it's fairly easy to travel), and some abilities (night vision,
sneaking, more initial agility or strength or intelligence, etc.), and may
affect how some NPCs react to you, but its main effect is that each class
can only be played by certain races, so again your biggest decision will be
which class to play. Section 3.20, grouping, has a brief description
of the roles of many classes.
3.3 Q: Can I change which deity I worship, or become Agnostic?
A: No, sorry. The only way you can "change" your deity is to delete your
character and start over. Even that may not help, because some races have a
limited choice of deities. What you see on the character selection screen
is what you get.
3.4 Q: What are the Priests of Discord for? Can I become a PK on regular servers?
A: The Priests of Discord (PoD) will give you a Tome of Discord if you talk
to them and follow their prompts. If you return the Tome to them, you will
become a "player killer" (PK) and your name will now show in red. Becoming a
player killer has grave consequences that you may not understand completely
from reading the tome. A player killer can engage in combat with other
player killers, but cannot kill or be killed by non-PK players (except in a
duel). More importantly, if you are a player killer, you will NOT be able to
receive most forms of aid from other players, nor will you be able to aid
them. This means that you cannot be healed or "buffed" by anybody who is not
a player killer. Since more than 99% of the players on normal servers are
not player killers this totally ruins your ability to get in a group beyond
level 15 or so. If you want to be a player killer, play on a PvP server. If
you do turn in a Tome and later change your mind, there is no guarantee that
you will be able to change back to normal status, so only do it if you are
certain that you want your character to live a solitary life.
With the release of the Omens of War expansion, the Priests of Discord also
provide the means to access the new OOW zones. Hail one to learn more.
3.5 Q: Can I transfer a character from one EverQuest account to another?
A: Yes, you can, but it will cost you real money. You can also move your
character to a different server, though not all servers can be transferred
to/from. Full details can be found at SOE's web site:
https://store.station.sony.com/eq_char_moves/index.jsp
3.6 Q: It would really be helpful if I could use Notepad or the web while I'm playing. How can I switch out of EverQuest to a different window (Alt+Tab) and return to the game?
A: EverQuest can run in either full-screen mode, or in a window. To switch
modes, press Alt+Enter. Alternatively, open the Options window (Alt+O) and
click "Switch to Windowed" or "Switch to Fullscreen" in the Display options.
(If you use both methods, you may find that the Options window shows the
wrong setting, but the button there will still switch modes. You may have
to wait a few moments for the screen to settle down, so be patient, and don't
switch modes in the middle of combat!) In Windowed mode, you can minimize
the window EQ is in, or use Alt+Tab to switch to other windows and run other
tasks, surf the web, or even open another instance of EQ if your machine can
handle that and you have another account on which to play.
It used to be, after switching to Windowed, you had to type Alt+Shift+R to
make EQ relinquish control of the mouse pointer, but that is no longer true.
3.6.1 Q: How do I get Alt+Tab to work for Windows XP?
A: (From the EQ Live FAQ, with some modifications owing to the dead link
they provide): Windows XP keeps a list of program compatibility
information. Up until recently, EverQuest was not built to allow Alt+Tab,
and so our executable ended up in this list explicitly preventing the Alt+Tab
functionality. Obviously that has changed. We are working on getting that
changed. But in the meantime, if you are using Windows XP and you would
like to enable Alt+Tab, there is a way to get it to work.
First, you'll need the Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/appcompatibility/toolkit.mspx
(if that URL wraps around, try http://tinyurl.com/9bf1).
You'll need to download and install the toolkit. Then:
- Open the Compatibility Administration Tool.
- At the top go to Search - Query.
- Search for EverQuest.
- Double click the item the search finds.
- Right-Click the EQGame.exe entry and choose Disable.
3.7 Q: What is a hotkey?
A: A key that is customized to perform an in-game function. Most often this
refers to the keys 1234567890, because typing one of those keys will perform
the action(s) associated with the corresponding button on your "Hot Buttons"
window. (If your Hot Buttons aren't displayed, type Alt+H to show them.)
There are actually 100 hot buttons, in ten sets of ten. You can change which
set of ten is active (and thus what will happen if you type a number) by
hitting shift-1, shift-2, etc., or using the little arrows in the Hot Buttons
window. Often you'll tie a hotkey to a "social" (see Q3.10), but you can
also make hotkeys for spell gems, skills, and inventory items (but not items
inside containers).
For those who find it awkward switching between sets of 10 hotkeys (or, more
likely, who forget to switch back and later invoke the wrong hotkey!), the
game added three more banks of hotkeys in late 2005, so now you can have up
to 400 separate hotkeys, with up to 40 of them "available" at any time. If
you want to use Hotkey windows 2-4, however, you must either use the mouse
to click on them, or use the Keys tab in the Options window to set up for
yourself what keys (or combinations of keys, such as shift-alt-#) you wish
to use to invoke the additional hotkeys.
3.8 Q: How do I make a hotkey?
A: Press and hold down the left mouse button on the spell gem, ability, or
item that you want to make into a hotkey. After a few seconds you should
get a hotkey button on your cursor. Click on the desired hotkey box to
place it. (If there was already a hotkey there, it'll pop onto your cursor.
You can place it in another hotkey box or click on the ground to discard it.)
Some windows (for instance, some of the skills in the Skills window that you
can get to from the Inventory window) let you click a button to create a
hotkey, which again you then place by clicking on a slot in the Hot Buttons
window.
If you want to make a hotkey for an item inside one of your bags, you're
mostly out of luck; only top-level inventory slots (including worn gear) can
be made into hotkeys. But if the item is a stack of potions or something
else with multiple charges, and its item window says "Potion Belt Enabled",
you can put it on your Potion Belt. Open the belt using Shift-P, then drag
one or more of the stack into a slot in the belt. (Only the first two slots
are available until you spend AA points to unlock more.) As long as you have
some of the item in your bags, you'll be able to use it via the potion belt.
You can also use the Options>Keys>Commands window to set key combinations for
invoking items in the potion belt.
3.9 Q: How do I make a spell a hotkey?
A: Left-click and hold down the button over the spell gem until the spell
icon appears on your cursor. Then drag that icon to your hotkey window and
left click to drop it into the slot that you want. (See section 3.8.) Note
that if you change which spell is in that gem, it'll change the hotkey.
(The same is true when you make an inventory item a hotkey; the hotkey will
invoke whatever item is in that inventory slot, not the item that was there
when you made the hotkey.)
If you want to invoke a spell as part of a more complex hotkey, for instance
to have a key that announces the spell being cast, you must create a "social".
Within the social, the command to cast a spell is /cast 1, /cast 2, etc., with
the spell gems being numbered from the top down.
You can also cast a spell by pressing the corresponding gem number while
holding down the ALT key (alt-1, alt-2, etc.).
3.10 Q: What is a social?
A: A social is a way of doing up to five typed commands with a single press
of a button. Typical commands include casting spells or using skills (via
/cast, /doability, and /discipline commands) and saying predefined phrases.
Socials are often made into hotkeys to make them easier to invoke.
One important thing to know about socials is that you can't invoke a social
if you already have one that hasn't finished. So if a social takes a long
time to do its thing (e.g., because it includes a slow action such as casting
or fishing) you won't be able to invoke other socials until it's done.
3.11 Q: How do I make a social?
A: In the Actions window, press the rightmost tab; or just type ctrl-O.
Either will get you the Socials window, which has several buttons with
pre-made sets of commands. You can modify a social by right-clicking it.
To edit a line of a social, just click it and start typing. You can edit
the name of the social in the same manner, and can also select what color
the name shows up as. Note that there are actually 120 socials available;
you can find blank ones by clicking on the arrows in the Socials window.
When you finish (press Accept), you can invoke your social by clicking on
it, or you can make it into a hotkey by pressing and holding down the left
mouse button on it. When you activate the social, it executes whatever you
typed in on the lines of the social key. For example, you can make a social
that looks like this:
/afk
/groupsay I'm going away from keyboard for a sec, guys.
If you activated this social key, it would flag you AFK, and you'd tell your
group "I'm going away from keyboard for a sec, guys." Any "line command"
(command that starts with a slash) can be used in a social. There are even
a few commands that are specifically intended for use in socials. For more
information on these commands and others, read eqmanual_supplement.doc in
your EverQuest directory.
You can also create a new social by typing /ho somename /blah blah. (The
/ho is short for /hotbutton.) This particular example would create a social
named "somename" that invokes the nonsense command "/blah blah". The social
is left attached to your cursor so you can drop it right into your hotkeys.
If you want to include a space in the button name, put the name in quotes.
(But note that the name can't be very long since it has to fit on a button.)
When a hotkey is tied to a social (either using /ho or by dragging it from
the Socials window), you can right-click on the hotkey to modify the social,
just as though you were in the Socials window.
3.12 Q: Where can I get an up-to-date list of commands and/or emotes?
A: Type /help to get a list of commands. You can also try the
eqmanual_supplement.doc file in your EverQuest directory, though it tends
to be out of date. Also, if you visit http://everquest.allakhazam.com/ and
scroll down for the links to "Commands & Terms..." you will find 3 links:
Emotes, Game Commands, and Chat Terms. These are again not necessarily
up to date, but will give you a good base to work from. Another site
that seems to be more current is http://www.jaburt.com/eq/eq_commands.htm.
If you want to put an Alternate Ability into a social (to make it part of a
more complex hotkey, or just to give it a more meaningful name), you can use
"/alt activate ###", where ### comes from the list generated by "/alt list".
(Veteran reward AAs are listed only if your character has claimed them.)
Similarly, melee disciplines can be invoked via "/disc blah" where blah is
the first part of the name of the discipline, e.g. "/disc Fearless".
3.13 Q: Where should I hunt given my level/class/race?
A: The following sites have good level-based charts on this:
http://www.eqatlas.com/huntguidelevel.html (only the first few expansions)
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zlvlchart.html
Race tends not to matter too much, unless you're kill-on-sight to high level
guards (e.g., at Highpass Keep). Some classes prefer fighting vs. undead,
or prefer fighting in spacious outdoor zones, etc., so you might use class
considerations as a way to choose among the level-appropriate zones listed.
3.14 Q: How can I make money to buy spells and armor and stuff?
A: Kill things, loot them, sell the proceeds, repeat. Some of the items
found on "newbie yard" critters sell for a few gold to NPC merchants (the
famous Plague Rat Tails used to sell for 2 plat, but got nerfed in mid-2006),
but the best way to raise money at low levels is to find items you can sell
to other players in the Bazaar. Many items whose information windows
show "This item can be used in tradeskills" are needed in large quantities,
and higher-level characters are happy to pay you for them rather than spend
their time "farming" the stuff. Spiderling silks, spider silks, bone chips,
and various pelts can all be sold to players for considerably more than
merchants will pay for them. Check the prices these are going for in the
Bazaar and you might be pleasantly surprised.
Before you set out on low-level hunting with a level one character, however,
you should consider going through the Tutorial. You might not want to hunt
there, but you should at least get the Kobold Skull Charm and fully activate
it (by visiting all of the Tutorial NPCs). If you do skip that, you can
get the charm later by doing the first assignment from either the elven or
dark elven "Armor Quests" NPC in PoK. It's a very nice item for many levels,
and you can't beat the price!
Also, if your character has the Forage skill, you can forage many things to
sell in the Bazaar that higher level players need for trade skills. Even
common forages like vegetables may sell for a few plat each, depending on
what new trade skill recipes people are trying out.
3.14.1 Q: That's taking too long! How about I just beg some money?
A: Sure, there are tons of fabulously wealthy people walking past you. And
if you beg from them, there is a fairly good chance that some of them might
give you something. But DON'T do this. Many people get angry at beggars,
considering them to be the lowest form of life in the EQ universe. You will
damage your reputation, end up on ignore lists, and stand a good chance of
being insulted with varying degrees of venom. Also, if someone is trying to
beg from you, feel free to ignore them. Not giving them money does not mean
that you're a bad person, any more than not making an effort to feed
cockroaches makes you an animal hater.
In contrast, it's not unusual to see people asking for spells to be cast on
them (such as SOW -- Spirit of the Wolf -- which makes you run faster, or
Temp -- Temperance -- which makes you tougher to kill). Though some spells
do cost money to cast (because of physical components being used up), many
cost "only" time and mana, so people are often willing to cast them for you.
Even so, the people able to cast such spells are often deluged with requests,
and they may prefer to get on with their own business, so always be polite,
even if nobody will cast the spells for you. Also if it's within your means,
it's common practice to offer a few plat to the caster (who may decline to
take your money, in which case you should be especially grateful).
3.14.2 Q: Well, how about just buying plat then?
A: You've seen the banners and advertisements at various EQ sites, and it
does seem to be a quick way to get the plat/item you're lacking. Should you
do it? Well, there are a few different schools of thought on this matter.
First is hell yes, we need your business and all your friends are doing it
and you can't play without it and give us your freaking credit card number
already!
Second is more laid back. Some people think that buying plat is a
personal decision, and if someone has enough real life money to spend it
this way there's no harm done.
Third is perhaps the most common, or at least has the most vocal proponents.
They feel that EQ plat buyers/sellers are doing a Very Bad Thing, and they
have several reasons for this that many find to be compelling:
- It is against the End User License Agreement (EULA). You know, that thing
you click past every time you play EQ. When you do that, you are in effect
agreeing to what is written there. One of the things it says is that you
won't do this. You're not a scummy liar, are you?
- That plat and those items are "farmed", and farmers hurt the honest folk
who are trying to play the game. Are you trying to earn your very own
Shiny Doodad of Awesome Wowzer, but some guy named Eqpharmer always seems
to be at the camp where the Enraged Snow Pea that drops it spawns? You
pay the same money to play EQ that he does, so you should have a chance to
earn the item same as he, instead of being shut out because he has to sell
it to support his on-line porn habit. Same thing for good money camps.
- People that buy their equipment/plat/characters are not really learning
how to play the game, and thus are more likely to hurt the poor saps that
have the misfortune of being in the same zone (or group) as them when they
blunder through, causing trains and mayhem.
Soooo.... should you do it? That is up to you, of course. Just know that,
if you do, a great many of your fellow EQ players -- including many who
frequent alt.games.everquest -- will think less of you because of it.
3.15 Q: Why can mobs hit through walls?
A: You were happily trading inside a vendor's shop, when suddenly you got
smacked by a Griffon for 300 points... Loading, please wait... WTF? Mobs
and other NPCs in EQ are controlled by a computer AI, which is no substitute
for a (supposedly) intelligent human being controlling an avatar. Monsters
all behave according to strict rules on pathing, aggro-range, etc., and don't
really employ sophisticated tactics and strategy in the same way a human
player would. To avoid unbalancing the game, mobs are given some "unfair"
advantages: they can hit through walls, they ignore the z-axis of 3D space to
hit from a long way above or below a player, and generally have the ability
to hit back from seemingly unreachable locations. This is to avoid exploits
like getting easy experience by raining down spells or arrows on a mob from
a location which that mob (because of its programmed pathing) cannot reach.
Pet-using classes may gain some satisfaction from knowing that their pets
have the same unfair advantages as other mobs, and can hit back at that pesky
monster whacking you from under the ground.
There are other things NPC monsters are immune to that would be good for you
to know: NPCs and monsters can't drown, take falling environment damage, or
be burned by environment lava. They can also "warp" (teleport instantly) to
you if they get stuck in the world geometry.
3.16 Q: Hey, I can't even play at all! The servers are down! What gives?
A: SOE is ripping you off, the sons of bitches. Well, that's the sarcastic
answer. Actually, EverQuest is an evolving game, and it requires periodic
maintenance known as patches. Patch time is also when various changes to
gameplay are made. SOE does not promise you'll be able to play 24/7/365.
SOE will not compensate you the 40 cents per day or whatever it is for the
time you could not play. Also, SOE will bring down the servers with little
or no notice if they learn of a bug or exploit they consider to be major.
You can check on network status and scheduled downtime by going to:
http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/network_status.vm
(though the information on that page is notoriously slow to update).
Scheduled downtime is usually accompanied by an estimate from SOE as to when
the servers will be available again, e.g., "Going down at 4am PST, estimated
downtime is 8 hours." If you try connecting shortly after the servers are
due back up, you might not succeed. This could mean the downtime is taking
longer than they expected, but it could also mean that the servers are back
up and are trying to handle the flood of players all trying to reconnect at
the same time. Patience, grasshopper!
3.17 Q: Why did I get chewed out for inspecting someone?
A: Many people feel it is very rude to inspect someone without asking first,
akin to walking up to a woman and pulling down her pants to read the label on
her underwear. Others feel it's no big deal, and that people who make a big
deal out of it need counseling, or a long flame session, or something equally
useful. Regardless of how you feel about the matter, if you want to do your
best to get along with your fellow EQ players, it is best simply to ask
before you inspect.
If you find you keep inspecting people by mistake (e.g., because they're
standing too close to the banker you meant to click on), you can turn off
your ability to click-inspect players by typing "/toggleinspect off". (To
re-enable it, use "/toggleinspect on". And even with it turned off, you can
examine someone's gear by targetting them and typing "/inspect".)
3.18 Q: How can I send a message to my friend on another server?
A: ";tell servername.friendname message". For example, to send to your
friend Giggals on the Karana server while you are playing on The Seventh
Hammer, you would simply type: ;tell karana.giggals Tag! You're it!
Note that you must NOT include a forward slash ("/") when you do this; start
the command with a semicolon (";") instead of the customary slash.
3.19 Q: Can I ignore someone on another server?
A: You betcha. If it turns out that Giggals simply hates tag and is now
threatening to kill you, over and over again, type /ignore karana.giggals.
This also can be used to stifle people who are being pests in any serverwide
channels you might be in.
3.20 Q: What is grouping about? What am I supposed to do in a group?
A: This question warrants a rather detailed answer, so it's being put into a
separate document, which is also posted to the newsgroup and on the web at
http://www.icynic.com/~don/EQ/grouping101.htm
It talks about some of the different types of group, the various roles that
group members must fill, and which classes are better suited to each of
those roles. It also discusses some typical group tactics and etiquette.
3.21 Q: All those expansions, plus regular free patches that have tweaked the game... I've heard that EverQuest's game balance has changed a lot since it first came out. Is that true, and if so, how so?
A: Yes, definitely. EQ has been adjusted fairly continuously from the
get-go, in ways big and small. The developers have always said that the
game would never be frozen in time, and they've meant it. Here is a very
brief summary picture.
The initial learning curve has been eased, a lot. It's easier and quicker
to get a character up to level 10 (or even 20-30 now), and the game has many
more helpful hints and clearer directions on what to do.
The developers have regularly adjusted the powers of the various classes,
trying to keep them balanced. Several classes are now significantly more
or less powerful relative to each other than they were at various times in
the past. As of mid 2008 there isn't any particular class that is really
widely seen as in need of being "nerfed" (reduced in power) or boosted, but
the game is dynamic and that will undoubtedly change.
The consequences of dying in EQ have been made much less severe, though once
you hit level 6 death does cost you experience (but several character classes
have spells that can "resurrect" you, restoring most of the lost experience).
As of 2008 you no longer need to find your corpse to recover your gear, and
there are summoners you can pay to fetch the corpse for the resurrection.
Dying in EQ is still annoying, but it's not much more than that except in a
few unusual circumstances.
Traveling around in Norrath is far easier and quicker than was originally
true (even though the game world is much larger). One side effect of that
is that racial faction is less of a factor now -- being a dark elf or troll
used to have a pretty severe downside in terms of moving around the world
without NPCs attacking you on sight. They added an in-game player market
(the Bazaar) which made the in-game player-to-player market of gear and items
much more efficient and therefore more ubiquitous.
While the developers have drastically eased the game for newbies (old-school
players call it "training wheels EQ"), they've also repeatedly extended and
broadened the endgame. In any game there is a point at which a player
character has seen it all, done it all, and advanced in power to the point
of there being no challenges left. EQ began with a level cap of 50, that
jumped to 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, and now 85; "alternate advancement" levels were
added, then deepened; "leadership abilities" were added as yet another way for
characters to advance. More high-end zones have been added, many with big
tough "boss" mobs that can be killed only by large parties of high-end players
(called "raids"). Entire tiers of such zones, called the "Planes", now have
a complex lengthy "trials" process for which reaching the level cap is just
the start. In general, hard-core players now tend to view the level cap as
just the first step towards becoming "uber".
In 2004 the Lost Dungeons of Norrath ("LDoN") expansion added a fundamentally
new way to play the game, using "instanced" zones where a group or raid gets
its own copy of a part of the world, working toward a goal without the risk
of interference by other players. The LDoN content itself has since grown
dated and is rarely visited these days, but later expansions have added their
own instanced content.
The Seeds of Destruction expansion in 2008 added the ability for players to
hire "mercenaries", NPCs who act as party members as long as the hiring
players continue to pay for them. The cost, paid in 15 minute intervals
after a larger one-time hiring fee, scales with the level of the player and
the skill and "confidence" of the merc. Mercenaries provide an alternative
for players who may find it hard to form a group at some levels as server
populations decline.
3.22 Q: What is a "guild"?
A: The word "guild" is used two different ways in EQ and they have nothing
to do with each other. In the game's cities there are buildings called
class guilds (the warrior guild in Kaladim, say); not every city has a
guild for every class. In each guild are NPCs you interact with: one or
more guildmasters where you train your character's skills, and vendors
where you can buy your spells and some other stuff.
The other form of guild is player guilds, which are voluntary associations
formed and managed by players themselves on each server. The name of the
guild displays in the game under the character's name, and guilds get their
own private chat channels in-game and access to the Guild Hall, a special
zone with amenities suited to guild-related activities. Many guilds have
websites with discussion forums and schedules of group outings in the game.
3.23 Q: What is being in a player guild like?
A: It's like being a member of any other self-directed voluntary
association: as good as the people in it. The best way to find a guild is
to chat with players you've grouped with repeatedly in the game and enjoyed
playing with, and at some point mention that you've thought about joining a
guild. If they're enjoying playing with you, you may receive an invitation.
Guilds that run around randomly inviting players they haven't even met tend
to end up about as cohesive and enjoyable as any other group of complete
strangers thrown together.
Player guilds fall into about three categories at the moment, these being
completely unofficial but widely recognized. First, each server has some
high-end "raiding guilds", which can include hundreds of players, focus on
lengthy well-planned raids of high-end zones, and have increasingly stiff
prerequisites for membership (you must have reached a certain level in the
game). In some expansions the top zones are "instanced", so each raid
gets its own version of the target; for non-instanced content, the raiding
guilds sometimes agree on unofficial schedules to make sure everyone gets a
shot at targets that may take hours or even days to reappear.
Next, there are newer/smaller guilds that aspire to become raiding guilds; at
any given moment most servers have several of these. Such a guild might have
anywhere from 30 to 60 active members, and be recruiting players who either
have reached the top levels or appear serious about getting there quickly.
Since serious raiding requires playing for many hours at a stretch, such
guilds tend to include mostly people who are single, not raising kids, don't
have jobs that require a lot of travel, etc. These guilds are trying to
build up their strength (numbers of top-level seriously-equipped players of
enough classes) so they can join the top-end raiding rotation of their server;
some make it and some don't.
Finally, there are "family guilds". This phrase isn't literal; it refers to
guilds of more casual players who aren't strongly aspiring to the high-end
raiding. In practice this often means players who are married with children,
etc. These guilds tend to have fewer than 50 active members (maybe a lot
fewer), though they can be much larger. They may do some raiding of older
high-end content; two family guilds may band together for the occasional
joint raid. Mostly these guilds do regular "experience grouping",
single-group missions in LDON, DoN, and later expansions, and usually some
small raids for each other's "epic" quests. Some family guilds were started
by longtime EQ players who had been in raiding guilds but burned out on that
or found that it wasn't actually how they most enjoyed the game.
All guilds, even the raiding guilds, act as a ready source of friends to help
each other out in various ways: finding people to fill out a group, casting
buffs or resurrection spells, doing high-level trade skill combinations, etc.
3.24 Q: What is autosplit and why is it unfair?
A: This question is the source of much angst, and isn't as simple as it
might seem on the surface. Autosplit is something each person turns on or
off (using the /autosplit command, or /au for short). If the person looting
a corpse has it turned on, any cash found is split evenly among all players
in the group (even those who have it turned off). (This doesn't apply when
a player loots their own body, of course.) Sounds fair, doesn't it?
The catch is, it's implemented in a logical way in a roleplaying environment,
which is to say it splits the COINS you get, instead of splitting the CASH
VALUE of those coins. It doesn't make change. And it does this separately
for each type of coin. If, as is often the case, the coins can't be divided
evenly, the game gives any left over coins to the looter. So suppose a mob
drops 5pp. In a two-player group, the looter gets 3pp and the other player
gets 2pp. In a three-player group, the looter still gets 3pp and the others
each get 1pp. In a six-player group, none of the 5pp can be divided evenly,
so the looter keeps all of it! Even when there are some coins given out to
the rest of the group by this method, the looter is more often than not
getting twice or three times as many coins as the rest.
The innocent (such as yourself) will loot freely, thinking they are being
fair. They will also happily allow others to loot, thinking that they are
getting a fair share. The unscrupulous will arrange to do most of the
looting while allowing the uninitiated (such as yourself) to think they are
getting a fair share. And of course, if someone in your group is looting
with autosplit on, you can't know if they're innocent or unscrupulous, which
can lead to some bad feelings. What's worse, if you try to work around the
problem by looting with autosplit OFF, planning to split the money later
(preferably after selling off any vendor trash items as well), the innocent
may get upset because they think you're planning to abscond with all the
money (which has, alas, been known to happen also).
The best compromise seems to be to have the group choose one person to be
"main looter" (ML), and that person is responsible for selling the items
and splitting all the cash when the group is ready to break up. This still
gets awkward if some people leave the group early and/or other people join
partway through, but it's still a lot more fair. Another approach that is
sometimes used is "open looting" (also called FFA, or free-for-all), where
everybody is free to loot (usually with autosplit ON), which works well if
the group is killing lots of mobs so everyone gets lots of opportunities to
loot some.
3.25 Q: What is "stat food" and how do I use it?
A: Stat food is food that adds to your character's stats, such as HP, MANA,
or STR. There's also stat drink. Most stat food/drink items are crafted
by players using the Baking and Brewing skills. If you don't feel like
making your own, you can usually find stat food for sale in the Bazaar.
The trick to using stat food is that you don't actually want to eat it.
You get the benefits of the food if it is the first food in your inventory,
and thus is the food that will get eaten if the game decides you're hungry
enough to need to eat something. You can see if it's in the correct place
as soon as you put it in, by seeing if your stat(s) change.
Since stat food can be expensive, some players are careful to munch ordinary
food and drink often enough that the game never has them "automatically" eat
or drink the stat items. (Note that explicitly eating/drinking means the
items consumed stave off hunger and thirst for only half as long as they
normally would.)
3.26 Q: What are the different languages used for in the game, and how do I learn them?
A: EverQuest includes at least 25 different "in game" languages, ranging
from player race tongues (Halfling, Iksar, Troll, etc.) to monster languages
(Gnoll, Dragon, etc.) and languages used in ancient writings or other
specialty tongues (Dark Speech, Thieves Cant). You can learn to speak (and
presumably read) any of these, but doing so has almost no effect within the
game, except on the role-playing server, Firiona Vie. It appears there
used to be quests that required learning languages, e.g. to translate bits
of writing, but those writings can now be read by anyone.
Unless you are playing on Firiona Vie, you normally speak Common; a language
everyone in the world can speak and understand perfectly. If you want to
speak another language, the command is something like "/lang 4", after which
everything you /say, /groupsay, /tell, /guildsay, /ooc, or /shout will all
be in that language. If you don't speak that language very well, it will be
garbled so nobody will ever read it perfectly (but depending on your actual
skill and their ability to puzzle things out, they might be able to work out
what you mean). Similarly, if they don't speak that language well, they
might not understand you even if you are flawless at it. Maximum skill in
any language is 100; until you reach 25 in a language it will be described
as "an unknown tongue" when someone speaks it to you.
To see which languages you know (even one point of skill will do), type
"/lang help". This will list all the languages you know, and tell you their
numbers so you can use the /lang # command to switch to them. Common is
always /lang 1 for everyone, so using that to switch back to the universal
tongue always works. Alternatively, you can right-click on the title bar
or type-in area of a chat window, and near the bottom of the pop-up menu is
a "Language" item with a submenu of choices.
Note that, if you have multiple chat windows, the /lang # command affects
only the window you type it in. You can click on a chat window to make
typed commands (such as /lang, /say etc.) go to that window. Each window
can have a different language selected. Commands that speak text as part of
a hotkey will use the language of your "Main Chat" window. This can be
tricky to keep track of, because you always see your own speech ungarbled,
with no indication what language it's in. (Just as your speech always looks
clear even if you're intoxicated, or if you use a term that gets garbled by
the "bad word" filter.) You can type just "/lang" by itself in a window to
see which language you've currently selected for it. Be warned, however,
that the response telling you what language that window is using, may itself
show up in a different window! What matters is which chat window you are
typing into, not where the response appears.
Few people bother to learn other languages, and they are of little practical
use in most situations, although it can be amusing to chatter away, say
gnome to gnome in a party of big people for instance. There are still some
reasons to learn languages; for instance, the Tainted Heartstone is a charm
that gives rather nice stat boosts if you master several uncommon languages.
On Firiona Vie, there is no "Common", and you'll have trouble communicating
with anyone outside your own race at first. Few people ever learn the more
obscure languages like Gnome, so you'll need to learn Elvish at a minimum,
and Dark Elvish will also help a lot. Oddly, Human is rarely spoken. Even
there, on a "role-playing" server with no official common language, few
bother learning more than the minimum; you'll see everyone from Trolls to
Iksar to Vah Shir all speaking blithely in Elvish . . . because if they
don't, half the people in their group, guild, or zone (depending on which
sort of chat they are using) won't be able to understand them.
You can learn languages from your NPC trainers (guildmasters), but that's
an inefficient use of training points (and plat), plus the trainers won't
even offer to teach you certain languages until your character has reached
a high enough level. So most language training is done with other players.
To learn a language from another player, you must be in the same group. If
someone in your group talks to the group in that language (which means they
must have at least one skill point in it so it shows up in their /lang list),
your skill will gradually improve, even if you start with zero skill in that
language. High INT (and possibly WIS) seems to help you learn faster. Even
if your skill is higher than theirs, your skill can go up (to the max of 100)
from listening to them! If you're in different zones, though, then only the
speaker's skill can improve (and it seems like the speaker's skill must be at
least 2 to get any skillups from cross-zone group chat). So you can train
up your language skills by grouping with friends who are AFK in the Bazaar!
3.27 Q: What is "Fabled" all about?
EverQuest originally launched in March 1999. On its five-year anniversary,
Sony held a month-long celebration during which, among other things, certain
named mobs from the original game were beefed up as Fabled versions. For
example, in Najena, where Drelzna used to drop JBoots, the Fabled Drelzna
would occasionally appear in place of regular Drelzna, and dropped Fabled
JBoots. Fabled mobs are usually far tougher than the non-Fabled versions,
and the drops are correspondingly better. The term "Fabled" is often used
by itself to mean "Fabled mob(s)".
As EverQuest has celebrated its 6th and later anniversaries, Sony has added
Fabled versions of mobs from whichever expansion is turning 5 years old;
thus Kunark mobs in 2006, Velious in 2007, etc. Many Fabled from earlier
anniversaries have reappeared in later years. Fabled exist over a wide
range of levels, from Fabled Fippy Darkpaw to what were once end-game raid
mobs (and, with the Fabled beefing up, are again).
The Fabled mobs are only in the game during each anniversary month, which
runs from mid-March to mid-April.
3.28 Q: The game keeps crashing! How can I fix it?
If your EverQuest window keeps crashing -- going away completely -- chances
are some of your files have gotten corrupted somehow, e.g. if something went
wrong the last time the game was trying to update them. Sometimes you can
fix the problem by telling the launcher to do a "full file check", which
means it checks more thoroughly for errors in those files that are normally
left unchanged once downloaded. Often, though, the problem is with a file
that does get modified as you play the game, and a full file check doesn't
cover those.
If you crash only when logging into a particular character, try renaming the
UI files for that character (charactername_servername.ini and
UI_charactername_servername.ini) and see if that fixes it. You'll lose your
hotkeys, window layout, and other settings for the character, but you can
then try copying back parts of the files to see where the problem was.
If that doesn't fix it, or if the problem happens for multiple characters,
the problem could be with the zone those characters are in. Pull the map
files for that zone out of your EverQuest\Maps folder, do a full file check
to restore the default map files, and see if that does the trick. Again, if
it works, you can then examine the map files to try to locate the part that
was confusing the game client.
Finally, if you are using any custom UI elements, try switching to the
default UI (by removing the mention of your custom UI folder in your
characters' UI_charactername_servername.ini files). Sometimes when new
UI elements are added, custom UIs need to be modified.
4.1 Q: How can I increase my frame rate to make the picture move more smoothly?
A: Add this to the file EQCLIENT.INI in your EverQuest folder, under the
[Default] section:
UseTnL=False
VideoModeBitsPerPixel=16
Note: This may not help all systems. Use at your own discretion.
Other things you can try: In the game under Options (Alt-O pop-up window),
choose lower settings for spell and environment particles, and/or lower the
setting for the far clip plane (how far away you can see). The less the game
has to draw, the better it can keep up. Paradoxically, it may even help to
LOWER the frame rate Options setting, because the game may keep up better if
it's not trying to generate as many frames.
You may also want to turn off Luclin character models (more detailed
appearances for player character races, added in the Luclin expansion). To
do that, turn off "AutoPlay" in the Patcher window when you're starting the
game. When it finishes downloading any updates and offers you a big "PLAY"
button, click further down on "Game Options". It will fire up an application
to edit various options, including which races to use the "detailed" models
for; turn some off. Some of the other options may be worth tinkering with
also, such as turning off "Social Animations".
Even if your machine keeps up most of the time, you may find you need to turn
down some settings during raids, where there are lots of characters present.
(Disabling the detailed character models may be particularly useful in such
situations, but is awkward since you can't change it from within the game.
Plan ahead!) See section 8.1 for more tips on improving system performance
for raids.
As Sony adds more complex graphics to the EQ world, older machines may have
trouble keeping up. Sometimes there are new options in the Display tab
of the Options window (or the "Advanced" subwindow off the Display options)
that let you reduce or turn off the new graphics. If you're seeing a lot
of "lag" in areas that used to be okay for you, try turning off some of these:
Sky Type Complex, Use Advanced Lighting, Radial Flora, Shadows.
Also, the /shownames command has several different levels to hide/show parts
of names such as titles, last names, and guild names. Showing less of each
name helps frame rate in crowded situations. Some people like /shownames 1,
which shows just the first names of characters. Type /shownames alone to
get a list of the levels, and then try /shownames 1, /shownames 2, etc. to
see what each level does.
Finally, if you're having trouble in a crowded area such as the Bazaar or
Guild Lobby, it may help to change your camera angle so you're not trying to
see as much. Use "Page Down" to angle the camera slightly toward the
ground, or use F9 to find an overhead view.
4.2 Q: How do I change the colors of the text?
A: While in the game, bring up the Options pop-up (Alt-O) and go to the
Colors tab. Click on the category of text whose color you want to change,
then click the button at the bottom and adjust the color to your liking.
(You may have to scroll a bit to see all the text categories.)
4.3 Q: How can I see where I'm going when my map window fills so much of my screen?
A: The map window, and in fact any window, can be made transparent by
right-clicking on its title bar to open its menu, then hovering the cursor
above the first option, "Window". This will show another drop down menu.
Move the cursor over "Alpha" and left-click on "Faded Level". (This is for
making the window transparent a few seconds after the mouse moves out of the
window. To make it transparent always, select "Normal Level".) You'll get
a box in which to enter a value from 0 to 100. 0 will make the window frame
and control elements, but not the contents, completely transparent, 100 will
make it completely opaque, and 50 will make it semi-transparent. Note that
you cannot generally click on or target things through a transparent window.
You can also obtain smaller map windows from the eqinterface site,
http://www.eqinterface.com/.
4.4 Q: What's the key that opens the such-and-such window? Or whatever? And can I change it?
A: To start with the last part, yes, if there's a key to do something,
you can almost certainly change which key it is. To find out what key does
something, or to change it, you start by opening the Options window, either
via the EQ button or by typing alt-O. One of the top-level tabs in that
window is "Keys", under which you select a category of keys. For example,
in the UI category you'll find that "Alt U" toggles (opens and closes) the
Tribute Window. Each action can be invoked by up to two different keys,
and keys can be "modified" by any combination of Shift, Ctrl, and Alt.
To change the key(s) that invoke any given game function, find the entry you
want in the Options/Keys list and left-click in that row under the Keypress
or Alternate column. The next key you press, together with Shift/Ctrl/Alt
keys that you hold down while pressing it, will become one of the two ways
to do that function. (To avoid making any change, type the Esc key, which
thus cannot itself be assigned as the key to invoke anything else.) Some
actions do not have any keys assigned by default, but you can set up keys
for them in the Options window in the same way.
If the Options window shows a key in red, it means the same key (including
any Shift/Ctrl/Alt shown) is also being used to perform some other function.
This can work; tying the left arrow key to both "turn left" and a hotkey is a
traditional way to improve one's skill in tracking, foraging, etc., by making
you invoke the skill every time you turn left. But if it shows in red and
you don't know why, look through the other key settings. (The other use of
the key will be easy to spot since it, of course, also shows as red, though
you may need to check other Keys categories or go to Keys-->All.)
It is a good idea to periodically take a few minutes and just browse through
the key assignments to see what's available. Not only does it change from
time to time, but you may find something that seemed useless in the past, but
that you now find important enough to assign a key to it. You might also
want to remove some key assignments, to make it harder to accidentally
turn off essential UI elements.
One last caution: Changes made in the Options Keys tab, like many other
Options tabs, affect all characters played on that computer, even using
multiple accounts. And if you go to a different computer, your key
settings won't be there.
4.5 Q: What else can I change about the User Interface, and how?
A: Quite a bit, depending on how much you're willing to fiddle with.
Note: All of the things listed in this section and the next are changes
that get stored on your computer, so if you go to a friend's house and log
onto your EQ account from there, your changes won't be there.
Within the game, you can rearrange the size and locations of the windows,
and can set their "alpha" levels to make them become more transparent. (But
be aware that you generally cannot click to target things that are covered by
a transparent window.) You can split up your chat messages across multiple
windows (per question 5.7) so the important stuff is easier to notice and
doesn't get pushed off the top of the window too quickly. The Options window
(accessed via Alt-O) has many settings you can adjust; the Keys options in
particular let you change which keys invoke various functions. Browsing
the rather long list of available functions may give you some ideas of ways
to make the game play more smoothly for you, e.g. by making shift-F9 and
control-F9 switch directly to certain camera angles rather than having to
hit F9 repeatedly to cycle through all the cameras. (Note: Changing which
keys do each function will affect ALL characters played on that computer.)
If you're a bit braver, you can edit various files in your EverQuest folder.
This can be an easier way to fine-tune window locations, alpha settings,
etc., or to copy your favorite socials from one character to another. Be
careful to save a copy of the file before changing it, in case you screw up
and need to change it back. Also, changes might not take effect until the
character involved changes zones. The files most likely to be worth looking
at are:
- eqclient.ini
- stuff that affects all characters played on that computer, including
key mappings and text colors, as well as pre-login stuff such as
whether to use more detailed character models and whether it's time
to bug you again about buying the latest expansion
- charactername_servername.ini
- hot buttons and socials, action/skill/combat buttons, and the text
people see when they "inspect" you; friends/ignore lists used to be
stored here and you may still find out-of-date versions in these
files, but the real lists are stored by the server now
- UI_charactername_servername.ini
- everything else specific to the character, including window positions
and alpha levels, chat filters and autojoin list (and lots more, but
those are the main things you might fiddle with)
If you want to make more sweeping changes to the UI, see question 4.6.
4.6 Q: I've heard I can use a different User Interface (UI) from the one that comes with EverQuest. How do I do that?
A: The UI that comes with EverQuest has evolved over the years to reflect
in-game changes. Thousands of players use the default user interface, or
make small changes using the Options window, but many have chosen either to
write their own or to use the clever UIs written by other people.
The largest collection of UIs for EverQuest is at http://www.eqinterface.com/.
You will have to register to get the new UIs but doing so is free.
Once on the site you will see that there are a number of complete UIs that
change all of the parts of your EverQuest world to a specific theme. Other
areas give you the ability to load smaller map windows, tailored items for
specific classes, maps for zones and even the ability to view recipes and
spell lists in your storyline window (via alt-N).
4.7 Q: How do I get the UI I have downloaded to work in EverQuest?
A: In your EverQuest folder (which can be seen in Windows Explorer) there
are a number of sub-folders. If you are changing your complete UI, go to
the "uifiles" folder. You will see one folder there called "default".
This contains the stock standard interface you see on the screen if you have
no other UI loaded. LEAVE THIS FOLDER ALONE AND MAKE NO CHANGES TO IT. In
the "uifiles" folder create a new folder named "me". (It can be called
anything, but simple is good in this case. If you're going to use different
UIs for each of your characters, name each folder after the character.)
Unload your downloaded new UI files into the "me" folder. In the game you
will start out with the stock standard UI provided by SOE. In your chat
window, type "/loadskin me" and hit Enter. For a few seconds your screen
will stop, then it will reappear with your new UI loaded. You will have to
rearrange the screen to suit your style of play.
Some UI elements such as spell lists or maps (which can be downloaded from
http://www.mapfiend.net/) require their own folders or can be downloaded
straight into existing folders. For example, the maps mentioned above are
downloaded straight into your "maps" folder inside the "EverQuest" folder.
Spells and trade skill notes normally appear under the storyline button in
game and (you guessed it) will be under the "storyline" folder in your
"EverQuest" main folder.
Each of the UIs normally carries instructions for its use, either on the web
site or in "readme" files.
4.8 Q: I play a warrior and do not need a caster or mana bar with my character. How can I change this?
A: Most of the complete UI sets include modifications for specific classes.
Warriors can reclaim the space taken up by their blank mana bar, druids and
rangers can find new tracking interfaces, and so on. If you are happy with
the general theme you are using, make another folder in the "uifiles" folder,
call it "warrior" or something else appropriate, and copy all the files from
your "me" folder into the "warrior" folder. Then copy any additional
class-specific files from the http://www.eqinterface.com/ site. In game,
playing your warrior, at the chat window type "/loadskin warrior" and your
new UI should appear without the mana and casting bars. You can have as
many UI folders as you need to outfit the different classes you play; just
ensure that they have all the base files in them first, and then add/replace
the class-specific files.
4.9 Q: My UI does not work after the last patch. What happened?
A: Sometimes SOE changes the files for the way their own interface operates.
Sites such as eqinterface will normally have files to add to your custom UI
after a patch. Download the new file(s) and overwrite the versions in each
of your custom UI folders.
4.10 Q: I want to design and code my own UI. How do I go about it?
A: Sites such as http://www.eqinterface.com/ give you the necessary tools to
do so. Their forum area is also very good for picking up hints on where
to go.
4.11 Q: Sony changed the default UI and I liked the old one better. Can I change it back?
A: As mentioned above, SOE sometimes changes parts of the default interface.
Sometimes (though far less often) they make sweeping changes to the whole UI.
In the latter case, the old UI generally remains available for a while, so
you can copy some or all of it into a custom UI folder if you liked the old
UI better. SOE does not maintain the old UI, however, so over time as new
features get added to the game, the old UI will fall out of date and not
support those features. Still, if you're selective about which parts you
copy, you can probably keep using parts of an old UI for quite a while.
In early 2006, SOE introduced another overhaul to the UI, and many people
disliked some of the new features, particularly the new spell gem and buff
window icons. When the PoR expansion came out soon afterward, the new
features caused more of the old UI elements (e.g., the bank window) to stop
working, so it became harder (though not impossible) to continue to use the
old UI as is. If you're using the new default UI but want to continue to
use the old spell icons, you should copy the following files from your
uifiles\default_old folder to a custom UI folder: gemicons01.tga through
gemicons03.tga, spells01.tga through spells07.tga, and window_pieces02.tga
(so the gem icons fit better in the spell bar). Note that if SOE adds new
spells with totally new icons, those icons are unlikely to be added to the
old UI.
Another part of the same UI change was that hotbutton windows are now 1-by-10
(or 10-by-1) instead of 2-by-5. If the longer, skinnier hotbars don't suit
your playing style, you can keep the old ones by copying EQUI_HotButtonWnd.xml
from the uifiles\default_old folder to your custom UI.
4.12 Q: What are audio triggers and how do I use them?
A: Audio triggers were added as part of the UI introduced in Fall 2005.
They let you set up sounds to alert you when certain events appear in your
chat windows. For example, you might want to be warned when mobs enrage, or
cast Gate, or when you lose auto-follow, or . . . . For many more ideas on
how audio triggers can be useful, try http://www.icynic.com/~don/EQ/triggers/.
That page includes a link to a tutorial covering the basics of how to set up
audio triggers, including adding your own custom sounds.
5.1 Q: What are chat channels?
A: Chat channels are like chat rooms that everyone on your server can
access. Unlike /shout and /ooc, which can be read only by people in the same
zone with you, chat channels can be read by everyone on the server, if they
choose. (Some channels require a password, but you can think of the password
as being just part of the channel name, since you need to know the name to
be able to join it, too.) There are also established chat channels that can
be joined by everyone on EVERY EverQuest server, if they so desire.
5.2 Q: How do I join/start a chat channel?
A: Type /join channelname. For example, if you wanted to join the market
channel on your server, you would type /join market. (Most servers do have
a market channel of some sort, though they might be named something else like
auction, bazaar, or whatever. If you want to find out, ask around or
experiment.) If you want to join a channel that has a password, type /join
channel:password. For example, to join a market channel with the password
of shop, you would type /join market:shop. To create a new channel, type
/join followed by the name of the channel you want to create, and a password
if you think it should have one.
To join a channel on another server, type /join servername.channel:password.
For example, if you wanted to join the market on the Drinal server, you would
type /join drinal.market. There are also channels that are not associated
with any one server; these are named serverwide.channelname. For instance,
the channel for alt.games.everquest readers is serverwide.age:age.
In all cases, when you join you'll see a message in which the number to the
right of the channel name tells you how many people are in that channel at
the time you joined. The number to the left of the channel name is what you
use to talk in that channel: use /1 to talk to channel 1, etc.
In mid-2005, several special chat channels were added, and all players are
automatically joined to some of them. Characters level 20 and under are put
in the NewPlayer channel, while levels 21 and up are placed in the General
channel as well as in class-specific and continent-specific channels. These
channels can be a great source of information, but can also be distracting.
If you decide you don't want to be in those channels, there's a button in the
Options window to disable them; however, as with most Options settings, your
choice affects all characters played on that machine. If you want
some of your characters to join one or more of the special channels, you can
have those characters "autojoin" those channels, as described below.
5.3 Q: How do I leave a channel I have joined?
A: Type /leave Channel#. For example, if you have only joined the drinal
market channel, it will be channel 1. To leave it, you would type /leave 1 .
In general, the channel number is the number shown to the left of the
channel name when you joined.
5.4 Q: Can I automatically join a channel every time I log in?
A: Yes; this is called "autojoining". If you know that you want to
participate in a certain chat channel every time you are online, type
/autojoin channelname (or /autojoin channelname:password if there's a
password). If you want to autojoin more than one channel, then type it
like this: /autojoin channelname:password, nextchannel:nextpassword, and so
on. For example, to autojoin both the NewPlayer channel and the serverwide
alt.games.everquest chat, type "/autojoin NewPlayer, serverwide.age:age".
Note: autojoining channels sets them to be joined the next time you log in,
not for the session you are in. If you want to be in the channels you have
set in your autojoin list that session, you must join the channels manually
by using the /join command.
5.5 Q: How do I stop automatically joining a channel?
A: You have to type the /autojoin command again, leaving out the channels
you no longer want to include (but listing all the ones you want to keep).
(Some people claim you can just type /autojoin for a channel that's already
on your list, and it'll un-autojoin you, but experiments show this not to be
the case. In fact, that will un-autojoin all the OTHER channels and leave
you autojoining only the one you were trying to remove!) If you don't want
to be in any channels, you can either type "/autojoin , " (slash, autojoin,
space, comma, enter) or go into the file UI_charactername_servername.ini in
your EverQuest folder and edit down the autojoin list as it is shown there.
5.6 Q: What are some current serverwide channels?
A: Here are a few. Others will be added as they are discovered.
- serverwide.age:age (chat channel for this newsgroup)
- serverwide.beastlords:beastlords
- serverwide.bards:bards
- serverwide.cleric:cleric
- serverwide.druidsgrove:password (main druid's chat channel)
- serverwide.eqlive:tnz (The Newbie Zone; official Sony EQlive Forum)
- serverwide.enchanter:enchanter
- serverwide.eqdruids:eqdruids
- serverwide.eqtraders:eqtraders (trade skills, not character trades!)
- serverwide.magicians:fluffy
- serverwide.paladins:paladins
- serverwide.ranger:ranger
- serverwide.rangersglade:glade
- serverwide.sk:sk (shadowknights)
5.7 Q: I've joined too many channels and now the text is flying by too fast! What should I do? Can I have separate chat windows?
A: Chat windows allow a player to use separate windows for specific chat
tasks. For example, if you are on a guild raid you can have all your say
and guild text in one window, and your raid and battle spam in another. You
can create as many windows as you like, but most players opt for at most two
or three, as the screen gets too busy.
Right click on the black title bar of your main chat window where it says
"Main Chat". The second option down on the list is "New Chat Window". Left
click on that to bring up your new chat window. The new window will appear
over the top of the main chat window, and can then be dragged to another
location and re-sized if you wish.
In the new chat window, right click on the title bar and choose "Filters".
Another menu opens which allows you to choose which types of messages go
into the new window. You can continue customizing these windows with the
filters to split the different types of chat among the windows.
5.8 Q: How do I find out how many people are in a channel and who?
A: Type /list #, where # is the number of the channel. For example, if you
are in serverwide.age:age and it's the only channel you joined, type /list 1.
Typing /list with no number lists all the channels you're in.
5.9 Q: Can I send text to a channel without knowing the channel number?
A: Yes. This can be useful for hotkeys. E.g., suppose your guild uses
channel "uberraid" for communicating during a raid. (There's also /rsay, of
course, but often a raid wants to have one channel for essential orders, and
another for chat, or healing messages, etc.) The channel number will vary
depending on how many other channels you had open when you joined the raid.
If you have a hotkey that includes sending a message to the channel, you'd
rather not have to modify the channel number each time you raid. To send
to the channel by name, regardless of number, use "/chat #uberraid blahblah".
That's a real number sign (#) before the name. You must have joined the
channel for this to work.
Similarly, you can make a channel be the default place for text typed into a
chat window (the place a message goes if you type ENTER, blahblah, ENTER).
The command for changing the destination for messages typed in that manner is
/channel; direct it to a chat channel using, e.g., "/channel chat uberraid"
or "/channel chat serverwide.age". (You can also set the default channel for
a window using the chat window's menu, under "Channel".)
6.1 Q: I posted one innocent little question, and got flamed. Why?
A: alt.games.everquest has an established community, and several long-time
residents have strong personalities. We also have a steady influx of new
readers here, many of whom make no effort to do any research at all before
they ask questions. This combination seems to bring out the flame-throwers
on a regular basis. We also have several here who enjoy long, repetitious,
self-imploding discussions laced with personal attacks and expletives. If
you do find yourself getting flamed, probably the best reaction would be just
to shrug it off, and not reply in kind. It is very useful to have a thick
skin in AGE, and a little common sense and perspective aren't a bad idea,
either.
6.2 Q: So does that mean that I can't ask any questions here at all?
A: Not at all. There are many people here who are very knowledgeable about
EQ and are happy to share what they know. It would be helpful if you were to
do some basic research before you ask questions that may have been asked many
times before. The fact that you're reading this FAQ is a good sign, but the
FAQ can't cover every recurring question. One thing you might try is going
to http://groups.google.com/groups?q=alt.games.everquest and checking the
"Search only in alt.games.everquest" radio button, then typing in some key
words from your question. But if that doesn't help, by all means fire away.
If you get flamed for it, refer to question 6.1.
6.3 Q: What is top posting, and why is it so hated here?
A: Top posting is the act of posting your reply on top of quoted material,
that is, ahead of the text to which you are responding, rather than placing
your response either at the bottom of quoted material or interspersed
throughout it. AGE is a newsgroup that on the whole feels strongly about
top posting, and the feelings are not warm and fuzzy. The discussions in
AGE are often complex and wandering, and having to scroll to the bottom of
a post to see what the heck a person is replying to is awkward and annoying,
and breaks the flow of the post. You might prefer top posting and that is
your prerogative, but if you insist on using it here you can expect to be
flamed and to land on a lot of folks' Kill Files. And please don't try to
skirt the issue by just not quoting anything at all, either. People are
not going to go back through the thread playing detective to try to figure
out what the heck you're responding to. Similarly, if you're responding to
a long post, don't quote the whole post; try to quote just the part relevant
to your response, or the first part if you're making an overall response to
the entire post. In other words, when someone reads your post from top to
bottom, they should first see enough of the older post to remind them what
the context is, and then see your response.
6.4 Q: I've noticed a lot of unfriendly posts coming from the same people. This newsgroup sure has its share of jerks, eh?
A: It would be hard to find an active newsgroup that doesn't. However,
many of the more virulent posters we have are basically right in what they
say, once you look past the rudeness of manner of their presentation. They
may be enthusiastic in going after people who post facts or opinions that
they dispute. But if you can get past that, you might find that they can
teach a lot about EQ. If you can't get past it, no worries. Just ignore
them or place them in your Kill File. Endless arguing with them will not
generally make anyone think you are especially clever, or put them in their
place, or do whatever it is you are hoping to do. Also, if you make some
clever misspelling of a regular's posting name in an effort to win an
argument, you automatically lose that argument. /nod
6.5 Q: Will everyone hate me if I make an off topic comment or post?
A: No, not everyone. Almost every active newsgroup out there experiences
some degree of topic drift; you have about as good a chance of stopping it as
you do of stopping continental drift. AGE is a fairly active group, and the
drift is quite noticeable at times. If this annoys you then it is best just
to start ignoring a thread when it goes from talking about the best offhand
weapon for a halfling ranger to the best way to make nachos. If you are
starting a new thread that is clearly not related to EQ, it is a good idea
to give it a subject starting with the letters OT (off topic) so that those
who want to avoid such threads can do so from the start.
6.6 Q: I posted something I heard was true, and then some guy jumped all over me for being wrong! Why did he make such a big deal over it?
A: Because that's something that is important to several posters here. In
this place, a.g.e., we do check facts. We will google while we post, and we
will google and research other people's assertions if we feel they are in
error. And we do ask for and expect cited sources. This might be viewed as
both good and bad. Bad, because we can come across as niggling, harsh, and
overly intolerant to dubious statements. But also good, because if you read
a fact here about some aspect of EQ, you can be fairly certain that if it
isn't correct at the start, it will almost certainly be corrected quickly.
Of course, in many instances the "facts" aren't really available, and it
might even be questionable whether anyone at SOE knows the answer. Then you
will get a long, drawn out discussion, usually with flaming, where people
will discuss their opinions on the matter at hand. Once you get used to the
place, and learn the standards to which we hold ourselves and others, you
might find that it is well worth the effort.
6.7 Q: What else should I know about newsgroup etiquette?
The following are a couple web sites regarding common etiquette techniques
for newsgroups. (Note that, in case it's not obvious, the "emily" page
is written tongue-in-cheek, giving exaggerated examples of what NOT to do.)
Quoting Style in Newsgroup Postings:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wijnands/nnq/nquote.html
General Net Etiquette:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/emily.html
Here is a brief, generic Netiquette guide. You can take most of this to
almost any newsgroup you go to.
- Newsgroups are like self-governing communities; there are no "Newsgroup
Cops." Instead, posters regulate themselves. Below are some simple rules
of newsgroup etiquette to understand before you venture into a newsgroup.
Think of these as a set of guidelines that will keep you from making
mistakes and will make you look and sound like a veteran newsgroup poster.
- This is not a "binary" newsgroup, please do not post binaries (images,
programs, etc.).
- Do not post in HTML. Many people still read newsgroups as "plain text".
Posting links to web sites is fine.
- Lurk. Read the newsgroup without posting for a few weeks. This is known
as "lurking," and it will give you the flavor of the newsgroup.
- Read the FAQ. Find and read the newsgroup's FAQ (list of Frequently Asked
Questions and other important information). It can answer questions you
didn't know you had, and is the quickest way to learn about a newsgroup.
- Stay on-topic. Know what's on-topic and what's off-limits. Every
newsgroup is a little different in what it talks about, and how it does
the talking.
- DON'T SHOUT. TYPING IN ALL CAPS IS CONSIDERED SHOUTING. It's easier to
read a mix of upper- and lower-case letters.
- Never, ever post "MAKE MONEY FAST." It doesn't work, it gets people
really mad, and no matter what it says, it's probably illegal.
- Everyone hates commercials. Don't post advertisements or commercial
messages. They also get people really mad.
- Ignore "trolls." Some people get a thrill from posting "flames" (really
obnoxious messages) just to get a rise out of people. Sad, isn't it?
Such people are called "trolls". (No relationship to the troll race in
EverQuest!) Don't feed the trolls. Witty responses can sometimes be
amusing, but they are really aimed at other readers and are not attempting
to reply to the troll.
- Don't "spam." Spam is posting the same message to dozens, even hundreds
or thousands of unrelated newsgroups. No matter how important you think
your message may be, it's not worth it. Think about it: If everyone
posted about every topic, and posted copies everywhere, no one would be
able to find anything.
- Be Original. Don't over quote: Copying a long post (more than 20 lines)
just to add "I agree" or "me too" is considered bad form. Make clear who
and what you are replying to.
- The Golden Rule: Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.
Remember, every expert was a newbie once.
7.1 Q: What is this EverQuest II game that I hear about?
A: EverQuest II is another MMORPG by SOE, released in November 2004. It
is set in the world of Norrath, several hundred years in the future, after
the planet has suffered some major cataclysm that destroys much of the known
world. The two games have some superficial similarities (some shared
geography, races, etc.) but quite different rules and user interfaces.
7.2 Q: Does this mean that the EverQuest I am playing is ending?
A: EverQuest II is not meant to be a replacement for EverQuest Live. The
two games have different development teams (the Dragons of Norrath and
later expansions for EQ Live came out after EQ II launched), and SOE steadily
maintains that it means to maintain both games for as long as there is enough
of a demand to keep them both going. EverQuest is currently a very popular
title, and it has managed to remain so despite challenges from other MMORPG's
that people were certain would mean its decline. That said, few things in
life are guaranteed, and if EQ drops in popularity for whatever reason to the
point that is no longer profitable, it is unrealistic to expect that SOE will
continue it. Still, the day when they do pull the plug on EverQuest Live
seems to be remote at this time.
7.3 Q: Can I post about EQ II on alt.games.everquest?
A: If the post pertains only to EQ II, it would be better to post it on
alt.games.everquest2, or on Sony's EQ2 forums. Posts comparing EQ II to
EQ Live are fair game, just like comparisons to any other MMORPG. If you do
post here about EQ II, it's considered polite to include EQ2 somewhere in the
subject to make sure people know which game you're talking about. If you
don't, you should accept your inevitable chastisement. For a while, some
folks marked posts about EverQuest Live (the "original" EverQuest) with "EQ1",
but this practice dropped off once most EQ2 traffic moved elsewhere.
Note: If you do put "EQ2" (or "EQ1") in your subject, don't immediately
follow it with a colon (as in, Subject: EQ2: Newbie questions). It seems
some news-reading tools (e.g., Outlook) assume anything in front of the colon
must be the equivalent of "Re:" in some foreign language, so the EQ2 part
might get discarded from the subject when people reply to your post.
7.4 Q: How can I find out more about EverQuest II?
A: This FAQ does not include anything about how to play EverQuest II.
There is a section in the links portion at the bottom of this document that
will lead you to EQII websites.
8.1 Performance / Raid settings
Here are some tips for helping your computer keep up during a raid or in
other situations where there's lots of stuff going on on the screen. See
also section 4.1.
8.2 Spellcasting
If you're casting a spell and need to interrupt it (for instance, to cast
a different spell), you can duck (type the "d" key) rather than trying to
run or jump. Ducking interrupts casting immediately instead of waiting
until the casting time finishes. Another way is to type shift-S, which
does a /stopcast command.
Neither ducking nor /stopcast works if you're riding a mount. If you use a
mount, you might want to make a "social" (see Q3.10) that does a /dismount
command followed by /stopcast. Alas, if you try to make that social into a
hotkey it won't help, because you cannot invoke any hotkey while casting.
However, you CAN click on the social button directly in the Socials window
(ctrl-O); it's not a perfect solution, but it's the best anyone's suggested
so far for a fast way to interrupt casting while mounted.
"/target xxx" targets the closest thing (within 50 feet) whose name starts
with "xxx". This works on both players and mobs. So suppose there are two
players named Fred and Fredrick on the raid, neither of them in your group,
and Fredrick needs healing. Type "/tar Fredr" and if Fredrick is within 50
feet of you (forwards or backwards, doesn't matter) she will get selected
to be your current target. If you type "/tar Fred" you'll target whichever
of Fred or Fredrick is closest, if within 50 of you.
"/tgb on" lets you cast group spells on another group without having to be
invited.
"/rt" targets the last person that sent you a /tell, provided they are
within range (very handy when someone asks you to cast a spell on them).
By default, typing control-T also sets up a /rt command.
Pressing a number key while holding Alt (Alt-1, Alt-2, etc.) casts the
spell in the corresponding numbered gem.
The left/right arrow keys flip through the pages of your spellbook if you
have it open.
"/book #" opens your spellbook to the given page #.
Right-click on a empty spell gem will bring up your spell list menu.
Right-click on the "open spell book" image at the bottom of the gems window
lets you manage "saved spell sets". "/memspellset blah" changes your gems
to contain the spell set named "blah". You can have up to ten saved spell
sets (so you might even devote one set of ten hotkeys to them, if you have
many saved sets). If you save a spell set that includes some empty gems,
those gems won't change when you /memspellset that set.
As of late 2008, your spell gems stay set up when you come back from dying.
You are still stripped of all spell effects, though, so you'll need to get
new buffs before dashing back into battle. Spell sets can provide a
quick way to do this.
If you need to cast after running, tap a short turn before casting to
avoid having an interrupted spell. (This forces the server to update
your location so it doesn't think you're still running.)
If you are any type of caster, go somewhere peaceful every few levels and
practice your spells until you max out your casting skills for that level.
That will reduce the chance of "fizzling" as you try to cast tougher spells.
Get a mana regen buff if you can, load up your cheapest, fastest casting
spells for the skills you wish to raise, and cast them on yourself. Note
that de-buffs and damage spells cannot be cast in non-combat zones such as
PoK or the Guild Lobby, not even on yourself (nor on your pet).
Cure disease will cure Slow. Cure poison will cure Tash.
If the cleric has Divine Aura on, or the bard is playing their Divine Aura
song, they will not teleport with you nor will they succor.
8.3 Corpses and other Targets
Make an /assist key (a hotkeyed social that does "/assist"). This is very
important in groups. The /assist key will place your target's target in
your target window. For example, you target me, Teapray. I have a nearby
wolf targeted. You hit your /assist key. Now you have that very same wolf
targeted. This is useful in many contexts, such as when there is more than
one mob attacking the party, and it's important to get all or most of the
party on a single target to make it die faster; you all target the "Main
Assist" (the person whose job it is to pick the target) and then use /assist
to target the selected mob. The /assist key can also be used to /consider
mobs if you can't get close enough to target them; I target the mob, you
target me and assist, then /con to check the level and attitude of the mob).
You can even /assist a mob to see which party member it's beating on (e.g.,
so you can heal that person).
If you know who the "Main Assist" is, you can make a hotkey that immediately
targets that person's target, instead of needing to target the "MA" first.
Just use "/assist Teapray" to select Teapray's target, for example.
If autoattack turns on when you type /assist, and you'd rather it didn't,
either type "/assist off" or go into your EQClient.ini file and change
AttackOnAssist=TRUE to read FALSE. (Note that, by either method, the same
choice will affect all of your characters.)
Pressing F1-F6 targets the respective person in your group, F1 always being
yourself and the others in the order listed in the party window. Pressing
the same key again targets the individual's pet, if they have one.
F7 targets the closest player in view. F8 targets the closest NPC in view.
(The game's idea of what is "in view" may not match yours, so always check
the name in your target window or look for the target ring or flashing name
to make sure you've got the target you wanted.) If you look in the Keys tab
in the Options window, you can set up keys that will cycle through all the
PCs or NPCs in your view.
If you target a corpse (yours or a mob's) you can type /loot to loot it.
This is especially useful in conjunction with /target, especially if a mob
leaves its corpse inside a wall (or atop a player corpse) where it's hard
to click on it. E.g., since many mobs have names starting with "a" or "an",
you can make hotkeys that do "/target a_" or "/target an_" plus "/loot".
(Note the underline, which is treated as a space by the /target command.
This keeps you from trying to target players or NPCs whose names start with
"A".) For pet classes, your pet will always have its last target's corpse
targeted if you haven't cleared its target or given it a new attack order.
So if a mob dies inside a wall, assist your pet, go next to the wall, and
type /loot. Mercenaries also work like pets for this purpose.
If you /con a corpse you can find out how much time is left before it rots.
Usually this is used to check how urgent it is to get someone to loot the
corpse, but it can also be used on a fresh corpse to see if it has any loot
at all. If a corpse has no loot or coins it will vanish in 30 seconds;
otherwise it stays for 8 minutes (or sometimes 30 minutes).
Combining the above, here's a handy trick if you're the "Main Looter" in an
area where many corpses have no loot, if you or anyone in your group has a
pet. When a mob dies, hit the appropriate F# key twice to target the pet,
then press your /assist hotkey to target the corpse, then "c" to see if the
corpse is decaying in under 30 seconds. If it is, you know it has no loot,
so you can ignore it and go back to medding until the next pull.
Another handy trick that makes it easy to target a fresh corpse is, sometime
during the fight when you have the mob targetted, type TAB to target yourself,
then TAB again to switch back to the mob. After the mob dies, you can type
TAB to target yourself, then TAB again will target the corpse.
When you are looting, right-click on an item to /autoinventory it.
To find a corpse that is missing, make a hotkey with "/target playername" and
run around hitting the hotkey. (If it's your own corpse, make it /target
playername' (including the apostrophe, short for "playername's_corpse"), or
you'll just target yourself!) When you are in range of the corpse, you
will see the name appear in your target window. Then type /corpse to
summon it.
If you're in a group when you die, and you're soulbound in another zone, the
rest of the group can find your corpse using the "X" on the map if they have
the "Group" button turned on (see general tip, below), as long as they
don't zone out and you don't zone back in until they've found it.
A feature added in 2004 is the ability to drag up to two corpses without
having to repeatedly type /corpse to keep summoning them. To begin dragging
a corpse, target the corpse and type /corpsedrag. To stop dragging, target
the corpse again and type /corpsedrop. (Or hit Esc to clear your target,
then either /corpsedrag or /corpsedrop drops all corpses.) You do not have
to keep hitting /corpse or any other hotkey, the corpse(s) automatically
follow at your feet, stopping wherever you stop.
It used to be that your items remained on your corpse when you died, and you
had to find (or summon) the body to get your gear back. And if you looted
all the items, the corpse would vanish and you could no longer resurrect it
to get back the experience lost when you died. That is no longer the case;
the corpse sticks around until rezzed, and you keep all your gear so the only
thing the corpse is needed for is the resurrection for experience.
You only get one resurrection per corpse; you can't get a 96% rez and then
ater use the veteran reward 100% rez on the same corpse to get back the
last 4%.
The /hidecorpses command lets you avoid seeing bodies that you can't or don't
want to loot. You can still target them with /target if you need to, or
you can make them visible again with "/hidecorpses none".
The /consent command lets you give permission to another character to drag
(but not to loot) your corpse. You can even give consent to a character who
isn't logged in at the time, even to another of your own characters! Also,
instead of naming a character, you can use the commands "/consent raid",
"/consent group", or "/consent guild", even before you die, to let anyone in
your raid/group/guild drag your body should tragedy strike. Use "/deny
raid", etc., to remove the consent. There are also buttons in the Options
window that, if set in advance, will activate /consent raid/group/guild
automatically for any new corpses you drop.
Since items no longer remain on players' corpses, you can no longer use the
trick of leaving "Temporary" items (formerly called "No rent") on a corpse
to keep the items from vanishing after you log out.
8.4 Socials and Speaking
"/ttell", or "/tt", sends a tell to your current target. It can send a tell
to the owner of a corpse. It works for the living, too. Ever had trouble
typing someone's name in order to talk to them? Target them and use /tt.
/rsay or /rs talks to the raid channel. /g talks to your group.
/gu talks to your guild.
Pressing a digit (1, 2, ..., 0) on the main keyboard initiates the
corresponding hotkey. See section 3.11 for more about hotkeys.
You can invoke skills and combat abilities in socials (hotkeys) using
"/doability #", or "/do #" for short. Abilities 1-6 are general abilities
(the second tab in the Actions window, displayed by ctrl-A) and 7-10 are
combat abilities (the third Actions tab, displayed by ctrl-C).
If some lines of your hotkeyed social aren't taking effect, try adding
a small pause to each line using the "/pause #" command. (The # is in
tenths of a second.) Note that, even though the /pause is added at the
front, the pause takes place AFTER the other command on that line. (Go
figure.) For instance, to get multiple lines of /auction to appear:
/pause 3, /auction Look what I've got for sale today:
/pause 3, /auction This
/pause 3, /auction That
/pause 3, /auction and the other Thing!
When writing hotkeys, you can use some special notations to fill in parts
of the command based on your current target. You can use either upper- or
lower-case letters.
- %t becomes the name of your current target
- %r becomes the race if your target is a player character (or "NPC" if not)
- %s becomes the subjective pronoun (he, she, or it)
- %o becomes the objective pronoun (him, her, or it)
- %p becomes the possessive pronoun (his, her, or its)
- %m becomes your pet's name
Thus the puller might press a social that says
/g Incoming, %t! Kill %o and take %p stuff!
and call out, "Incoming, a giant rat! Kill it and take its stuff!"
' (apostrophe) is a shortcut for /say
: (colon) is a shortcut for /emote
You can shorten any command to just the letters required to make it unique.
Some common commands also have explicit shortcuts. Examples of shortest
unique commands are /shown (/shownames), /tt (/ttell), and /tar (/target).
Examples of explicit shortcuts are /t (/tell) and /g (/gsay).
After you hit the "r" to reply to the last person who sent you a tell, you
can then hit the "tab" key to cycle through all the people that have sent
you tells (up to 10, I think). Useful if you are talking to several people
at once. If you overshoot, shift-tab goes through the list backwards.
The "tab" key also works to cycle through the choices if you use control-T
to do a /rtarget (targetting people who've sent you tells). Also, if
you camp one character and log in another, the "r" key will still reply to
whoever last sent a tell to the previous character (until someone sends
you a new tell).
If someone's bothering you with tells, shouts, etc., use "/ignore Soandso".
You will see nothing from that person from then on. This can be very useful
when people get abusive and you just don't want to deal with it.
If you need to submit a /petition and the text in one of your chat windows
is relevant (e.g., you fell for 20000 damage due to a bug in the game, or
you want to complain about someone harassing you), you will need to use the
/report command to send an official record of the chat window text. Scroll
back if necessary to make the relevant text visible in the window, then type
"/report yourcharactername". If you have multiple chat windows, click
first in the one with the important text, so that the /report command will
capture the text from that window.
8.5 General
Hold shift down and hit pageup or pagedown and you will scroll your current
chat window (whichever you last clicked in) up or down 1 page at a time.
Hold shift and the up/down arrows will cycle through the commands you have
typed. You can press Enter to do the currently shown command again, or you
can modify it first. This comes in handy when someone has missed your tell
or reply, or when you're doing a quest multiple times and need to repeat
something to an NPC.
If you're typing a long message or other command and change your mind about
sending it, shift+delete will erase the entire line. This also works with
other kinds of type-in, such as the /bazaar search window. Shift+home
moves the cursor to the start of the line; shift+end moves it to the end,
and shift+leftarrow/rightarrow move the cursor within the line.
Ducking significantly reduces falling damage when running on hilly terrain.
(Actually, anything that makes you move more slowly will reduce damage,
because you won't move as far between falls and thus the ground won't have
dropped as far. Just don't think that because you've ducked it's safe to
jump off a cliff!)
Though everyone now starts out with maxed skill in Sense Heading (this was
not always the case), it may still be useful to know that:
- Dropped swords/daggers point north.
- Clouds always move east to west.
- Moss only grows on the north side of trees.
To stop moving quickly while on a mount, just click off the mount icon.
Sitting (except on a mount) causes Agro with mobs. This can work to your
advantage if the mob doesn't summon. If you need to keep a mob off the tank
for a moment, sit; as it comes towards you, stand back up. This is known as
ping-ponging the mob. The mob will go back and forth between you and the
tank.
The minus key on the numberpad is the default key for taking a Screen shot.
Screen shots are stored in the screenshots folder in your EverQuest folder.
Control-click picks up a single item from a stack (or a single coin from
your inventory or bank). Shift-click picks up an entire stack of items or
coins. This also works when you are purchasing/selling items. To buy only
one of a stackable item, hold the CTRL key and click BUY. To buy a stack,
hold the SHIFT key and click BUY. Do the same thing with the SELL button
for selling single units or whole stacks. This also works when clicking on
the Donate button at the Tribute Master.
/autoinventory will take whatever is on your cursor and put it in your
inventory. This used to be very useful for tradeskills, but the new UI for
tradeskill containers has its own Autoinventory button. The command is
still useful in hotkeys, e.g. to stash whatever your fishing or foraging
hotkey has turned up. Even for tradeskills, a hotkey (invoked via the
keyboard, not the mouse!) may be faster than moving the mouse back and forth,
especially if the recipe yields more than one thing on your cursor (the hotkey
can do /autoinventory several times).
The "u" key performs the command "use center screen". (You can change which
key does this in your Options window, under Keys -> Commands.) If you
play with your camera view pulled back this will mostly just select yourself,
but if you play in a first-person view it will do many useful things depending
on what's in the center of your screen, including:
- opening a door
- opening a merchant or banker window
- looting a corpse
- activating a PoK book or similar portal
- giving the item on your cursor to an NPC or PC
The last feature in particular can save you from accidentally dropping the
item on the ground. And if you're giving many stacks of something to an NPC
one item at a time (such as for a "faction" quest) you may find it faster to
control-click on a stack, u, control-click, u, etc., instead of moving your
mouse back and forth between your inventory and the NPC or the Give window.
Better yet, set up control-U as an alternative key for "use center screen";
then you can hold down the Control key while doing click, u, click, u, etc.
Other single-key commands include "c" to /consider a mob, "r" to /reply to a
tell, and "h" to hail the selected NPC or PC.
In mid-2006 a "Group" button was added to the map window. Turn it on! Now!
It puts X's on the map showing the rest of your group in the current zone.
You'll be amazed at how useful that is. (And if you move the mouse over an
X, it'll show you that person's name.) When you're running across a zone
with others autofollowing, the X's show you if they're falling behind. If
you get separated you can see where the rest of the group went, and they can
see your location and perhaps give you directions. Among the unexpected
uses: locating corpses, because the X continues to mark the corpse on the map
for the surviving party members until they zone out or the dead character
zones back in. (You have to have been in the zone and in the group at the
time of death, though.)
The X's are currently green, but if you turned them on when the feature was
first added they might be black. In either case, if you'd rather they be
some other color, edit the UI_character_server.ini file in your EQ folder,
and modify the values for GroupColor.red, .blue, and .green in the section
for [MapViewWnd]. (Do this when EQ is not running.)
To put a comment in your profile that others see when they inspect you, go
to a non first person view (using F9), target and inspect yourself, and type
in the box.
/guildstatus when targeting a person will tell you what guild that person
is in, even if they are "anonymous". It will also tell you if they are an
officer or the guild leader.
If you need help raising your offense and melee weapon skills, go duel a pet
class friend who has gotten the "pet hold" AA. Don't use an arena, where
others might interfere. Just go to any zone other than PoK and duel. This
works for defense as well, as long as the person controlling the pet backs
the pet off instead of killing you!
If someone in your group has a green bar under their red HP bar (in the group
window) it means they have a pet (and shows the pet's HP). This is one way
you can check whether an enchanter or bard in your group has charmed a mob,
especially if you're wondering why you're not allowed to attack that mob. If
you want to verify which mob is the pet, type the F2-F6 key that targets the
group member, then type it again to target their pet.
For tanks, if you expect a mob to start running in its last 20% of health,
turn it around so you face the way you want it to run to. Half-dead mobs
tend to turn 180 degrees and run away from you. (This isn't always true,
though, so don't rely on it.) Even before the mob runs, you should turn it
(by moving around so it turns to face you) so its back is to the group,
especially when you have pets in the group. This is because the mob can't
parry, block, or riposte attacks that come from behind it. Make sure you
tell your group you will do this before pulling, though.
When firing arrows, make sure there are no other NPCs between you and
whomever you're shooting. You will hit them and end up fighting more than
you planned, possibly even an otherwise friendly guard.
Invulnerability spells such as Divine Aura and Divine Barrier cause you to
lose aggro almost instantly if the mob has another on its hate list. DA and
DB also protect you from environmental damage. This is great for reaching
places that would kill you to walk to. DA and drop into the chasm near
Howling Stones; DA and jump off the Highpass ramp in East Karana; jump into
the Hole from Paineel and DA the instant you zone, to resurrect a raid into
the bottom of The Hole.
For another way into The Hole, go down to the bottom where the pond is in
Paineel. When you are in the water, in the upper right portion of the rocks,
there is a hole you can squeeze through. Wolf form helps in doing this (as
does Enduring Breath, of course). Keep trying and eventually you'll make it
through. (You can also buy a key in Paineel, or a lock-picking class can
make the rock swing out of the way.)
8.6 Lost Dungeons of Norrath
8.6.1 How do I earn/spend points in the LDoN camps?
A: You have ONE pool of Adventure Points that can be spent at ANY adventure
merchant. There is no such thing as MM points, or EC points, etc.; all
points earned at any dungeon contribute to a common pool of points. If you
hit alt-V and click on the "View Stats" button you'll see one entry called
"Adventure Points Available", which shows you your unspent total.
When you want to buy something from one particular camp, you are limited in
what you can SEE (and therefore what you can purchase) by how many Adventure
Points you have EVER EARNED at that particular dungeon. The more points
earned at a particular dungeon, the higher up in the list you can see (and
therefore buy) at that camp. However, the points you spend to BUY something
come from that common pool and thus could have been earned at any camp.
For example, suppose you've earned 350ap at MM, 300ap at Tak, 300ap at Ruj,
100ap at Guk, and 500ap at EF, and let's say you haven't spent any of those
points ever. So you have a combined total now of 1550ap. This is the
number that shows up as "Adventure Points Available" when you do Alt-V and
"View Stats". You read somewhere that "Incorporeal Chain of the Spectre"
sells for 1492ap at EF. Woohoo! You've got 1550ap, so you run over to EF
eager to buy it. Unfortunately, because you've earned only 500 of those at
EF, when you go to the EF merchant you're not even shown the chain; you're
limited to seeing only those items that are 500ap, or just slightly above
that. (So you can see items selling for around 650 or 710, for example, so
you'll know what will become available if you earn a few more points there.)
You'll notice that anything above 500ap is greyed out, and items 500ap and
below appear white and selectable. The UI is telling you you have enough AP
earned at that location to buy a 500ap item, but nothing higher.
Despite what many people may erroneously tell you, there is NO WAY for you
to consolidate your points and spend them all at EF to get that chain. You
will never be able to see, let alone buy, items substantially above what
you've earned at a particular dungeon. In order to do that you just have
to buckle down and go out and earn the points at that dungeon. However, what
you CAN do is use points earned at another dungeon to PAY FOR things that you
are allowed to buy.
Let's say you go out and earn another 1000ap at EF. Now you have a combined
total of 2550ap, 1500 of them earned at EF. When you go visit the adventure
merchant at EF you find that you can see everything on his list (because the
prices all top out at 1492). You can now buy that chain. Select it, hit
Purchase, confirm, and you now own the Chain and still have 1058ap in your
pool. Notice that you can STILL see everything on the list at EF, including
the other 1492ap items, even though you only have 1058 to spend and only 8
of those were earned at EF. Once you've exposed items for sale at any
merchant and can see them, you will ALWAYS be able to see them, and you can
pay for them using points earned at ANY camp. You can go out and earn 80
million ap in Guk and spend it all on items offered at EF. Once you've
reached the top of the list and can see everything for sale at a particular
merchant, you are said to have "unlocked" that dungeon.
To summarize: To buy something of cost X at a particular camp, you must
satisfy two conditions. First, you must have a total of X or more unspent
Adventure Points across all camps combined. Second, you must have earned at
least X points at the particular camp. It doesn't matter if you previously
spent X or even more than X points at that camp. If you earn 1000ap at MM
and 100ap at EF, you can't buy any single item for more than 100ap at EF,
but you can still spend all 1100 points at EF as long as no single item
costs more than 100ap.
On Firiona Vie, where almost nothing is No Trade, there's a trick you can use
to get stuff from a camp you haven't unlocked yet. Go to any merchant and
spend your Adventure Points buying a bunch of 100ap NON-LORE augmentations.
Give them to a friend who has unlocked the camp you're interested in. Your
friend can then go to the Gnome at the SRo wayfarer's camp and just give
each aug to the gnome. The gnome will say something like "Ok, you didn't
like that, go buy something else" and will "refund" 100ap to your friend for
each aug turned in like this. When your friend is done turning in the
augs, he can go to the merchant you were interested in, buy the item, and
give it to you. This works on FV, but not on normal rules servers.
8.6.2 What is the Adventurers Stone for and how do I get it to improve?
A: You must get your Adventurers Stone (by following the instructions
that you get when you hit level 15) before you can go on any LDoN missions,
but you don't need to carry the Stone with you. The Adventurer's Stone is
also an augmentation for the Charm slot, which means you can attach it to an
item worn in that slot. If you don't own a charm, purchase a cheap one
from one of the wayfarer's camps. (If you're starting a new character, go
through the Tutorial far enough to get and fully activate the Kobold Skull
Charm; as of Fall 2005 it now has an augmentation slot as well.) Use the
"birdbath" to combine the charm and the stone. The stats you earn upgrading
your Adventurer's Stone work everywhere, even if you put it on a charm that
only works in LDoN dungeons.
If you combine your Stone onto a charm and later get a better charm, you can
destroy your old Stone and get a new one by talking to the NPC in the LDoN
camp just like when you got the first. The new Stone will reflect the stats
you'd accumulated onto the old one. [You might have to talk to those NPCs
as well? I'm not sure; does anyone know?]
To update the stats on the Stone, hail the appropriate NPC after completing
some number of successful missions in each camp. The NPCs, and the number
of wins needed before you can further improve your stone, are claimed to be as
follows, though other claims state that you get "a new piece of information"
every 2 wins and the stone improves after every 5 pieces of information
(hence, every 10 wins). In any event, these appear to be the NPCs involved:
Takish-Hiz:
- 2 wins: Ruanya Windleaf - North Ro Adventure Camp
- 15: Farwein Windrun - South Ro at -2800,+500
- 30: Ruanya Windleaf - North Ro Adventure Camp
- 50: Nifel Faliwae - Greater Faydark at -1960,+2400
- 78: Ruanya Windleaf - North Ro Adventure Camp
Deepest Guk:
- 2 wins: Selphra Giztral - South Ro Adventure Camp
- 15: Bealya Tanilsua - West Commonlands at -455,+2600
- 30: Selphra Giztral - South Ro Adventure Camp
- 50: Deblik Grumblok - Innothule Swamp at -1700,+1150
- 72: Selphra Giztral - South Ro Adventure Camp
Mistmoore Catacombs:
- 2 wins: Vual Stoutest - Butcherblock Adventure Camp
- 15: Henai Silentwalker - Dagnors Cauldron at -1660,-1230
- 30: Vual Stoutest - Butcherblock Adventure Camp
- 50: Elwinn Prelilaen - Lesser Faydark at +700,-580
- 76: Vual Stoutest - Butcherblock Adventure Camp
The Rujarkian Hills:
- 2 wins: Barste Songweaver - East Commonlands Adventure Camp
- 15: Ginehl Wiquar - West Freeport at -19,-861,-187 (entry level of
building that has the Arcstone portal)
- 30: Barste Songweaver - East Commonlands Adventure Camp
- 50: Shumpi Wimahnn - East Karana at +185,-20 (near succor point)
- 76: Barste Songweaver - East Commonlands Adventure Camp
Miragul's Menagerie:
- 2 wins: Teria Grinntti - Everfrost Adventure Camp
- 15: Ubzial Iyeaql - Qeynos Hills at +3300,-500
- 30: Teria Grinntti - Everfrost Adventure Camp
- 50: ?? information needed here
- 68: Teria Grinntti - Everfrost Adventure Camp
When you've reached the maximum level shown in each camp, the stone will
grant +10 AC, +10 to all stats and resists, and +100 hp and +100 mana.
8.6.3 What are some general LDoN tips?
Be careful nobody stumbles into the dungeon zone-in before the group is
ready to start (finished buffing, medding back to full mana, etc.). It's
not always obvious where the zone-in is, especially if it's someone's first
time at a particular dungeon entrance. Once anybody enters the dungeon,
the timer starts counting down on the mission.
If someone has the Eye of Zomm spell, have them use it to scout ahead so
the mobs can be lulled before the pull. If no one in the party has Zomm
then the puller can go to 3rd person view and slowly back up to the doorway.
Then they can see around the corners for adds to be lulled.
Make a hotkey for looting. See question 8.3 for how to do this. The looter
should also be careful to have confirmations turned on for No Trade items
(/lootnodrop always, which means always ask, not always loot!). Though this
means needing to confirm looting each goal item in a "collect" mission, it
may save you from accidentally looting an Augmentation item that should have
been awarded to someone else. (Why the goal items themselves are No Trade is
a mystery.) Oh, and note that the command for setting confirmations is
still /lootnodrop even though the term No Drop changed to No Trade.
The chests you find in a dungeon may have good treasure or fire off a useful
magical effect, but they can also set off area effect poisons that affect
nearly the entire dungeon. Many groups don't feel it's worth the risk to
try for the rare reward; some people would rather not try even if someone
in the group has the appropriate skill or spell to disarm the trap. You
should at least discuss the matter before trying to disarm or open a chest.
9.1 Q: What abbreviations and jargon show up in the game?
There's a lot of terms and abbreviations you'll run into, too many to cover
them all here, but I'll try to describe the ones that get asked about most
often (since this is, after all, an FAQ). Certainly if you see any jargon
used in the FAQ itself and the term isn't explained here, let me know! The
terms here are grouped into categories rather than listed alphabetically.
Generic chat shorthand
Many of these terms are not specific to EverQuest, but show up in chat rooms,
IM, and other places where people type messages to each other. The terms are
often used in lower-case but are shown here in upper-case for clarity.
- AFK
- away from keyboard (EQ even has an /afk command)
- BRB
- be right back ("afk for a soda, brb!")
- BTW
- by the way
- JK
- just kidding
- NM
- never mind
- NP
- no problem
- THX, TNX, TY
- thanks, or thank you
- YW
- you're welcome
- MP
- my pleasure
- WTF
- what the ...?
- LOL
- laughing out loud
- ROFL
- rolling on the floor laughing
- LMAO
- laughing my ass off (also, ROFLMAO = ROFL + LMAO)
- FTW
- for the win; usually preceded either by a key strategic element
("pet hold ftw!") or something accidental that happened to work
("proximity aggro ftw lol!")
- K
- short for OK (no, really!); also seen as "kk", this shorthand may
have arisen because messages between players sometimes arrive with
the last letter cut off, so "kk" may appear as "k" whereas "ok"
could appear as "o"
- GTG
- good to go, i.e. ready; sometimes confusing because the same
shorthand in a chat room or IM often means "got to go"
- ATM
- at the moment
- OMW
- on my way
- WB
- welcome back
- PST
- Please Send Tell, used when someone uses /ooc or /auction to ask for
or offer something and wants responses via /tell rather than having
the whole zone have to listen to the answers
Money and Economics
- plat, pp
- platinum pieces, the largest unit of EQ currency
- WTB, WTS, WTT
- want to buy / sell / trade
Monsters and Combat
These terms come up in lots of different contexts. Several terms (e.g.,
mob, PvP) are used by players in other MMORPGs as well.
- PC
- player character
- NPC
- non-player character, especially one you might imagine talking to
- mob
- any monster or NPC (short for "mobile object")
- PH, place holder
- a mob that, if killed, sometimes reappears as a rarer mob
- con, also /con
- short for /consider (which by default is tied to the "C" key),
refers to the "color rating" of the mob and how much it hates or
likes you: "What does that con to you?" "Yellow and scowling."
- faction
- most mobs belong to one faction, and your standing with that
faction can affect how the mobs react when you /con them
- KOS
- kill on sight, a /con of "scowling" or "threatening", such that
the mob will attack you even if you don't attack it: "I'm KOS to
the guards at Cabilis"
- gray, green, blue, LB, DB, white, yellow, red
- the color portion of a /con, i.e. the mob's level relative to yours;
the colors for many of the ranges changed in late 2006, so older
web posts (and players) may still use "green" to refer to what is
now gray, or LB (light blue) for what is now green, etc.
- camp
- as a verb, this can mean "to exit the game", but as a noun it refers
to an area where a certain set of static mobs spawns, such that a
group (or solo) can wait nearby and kill the same mobs over and over
as they reappear (see discussion in Grouping 101 document); hence
also a verb "to camp" a set of mobs, or to camp a rare mob by killing
its "placeholder mobs" hoping the replacement will be the rare one
- breaking a camp
- killing all the mobs in a camp but spacing out the kills over time,
so eventually the mobs respawn one at a time for easy killing
- camp check
- also "CC" (though less often since that also means crowd control),
this means someone is asking which camps are claimed so they don't
waste their time going somewhere that other people are hunting
- pop
- a mob suddenly appearing as the game world creates it; can be used
to call attention to an anticipated respawning (often then called a
"repop"), or to warn of a mob appearing amidst the group
- aggro (also agro)
- a mob becoming aggressive; this term is used in lots of ways: "aggro
radius" is how close you can get before a mob notices you, "social
aggro" is when a mob attacks because another similar mob nearby is
attacking, "aggroing" a mob means to make it mad at you, "taking
aggro" means getting a mob to smack you instead of someone else, etc.
- rampage
- a special extra attack some high level mobs get that attacks someone
other than their current target (sometimes an AE vs multiple targets)
- flurry
- two extra attacks on a mob's current target, an ability of some mobs
- riposte
- an ability that (when it works) stops a melee attack from hitting and
bestows an extra return strike against the attacker; the extra strike
may still miss or be blocked (but not riposted)
- enraged
- a mob that is enraged automatically ripostes ALL melee attacks
except those coming from behind it
- train
- lots of mobs chasing a player (who is usually running for the zone
line); it's considered good form to shout a warning (or even to stop
and let yourself be killed) if you think your train might run over
other players
- zone!
- used as an exclamation, this is a warning that you should run across
the boundary to the adjacent zone to avoid being killed (e.g., if
your group is fighting near a zone line and too many mobs appear)
- wipe
- when your entire group dies, or a significant fraction of a raid
- KS
- kill-steal, killing a mob after someone else has aggroed it and
they haven't asked for help, such that you get the experience and
loot; doing this deliberately can cost you your EQ account
- PvP
- player-vs-player (see question 2.8.3)
- hp
- hit points
- xp
- experience points: "these DBs give good xp"
Spells in General
- buff
- a long-lasting beneficial spell, or the action of casting one
(see the list of shorthands for oft-requested spells, below)
- MGB
- Mass Group Buff, a way of casting a buff on all players within a
certain radius of the caster, often done by good samaritans in PoK
- DD
- direct damage, something that applies damage once and is done
- DOT
- damage over time, doing partial damage every 6 seconds
- tick
- 6 seconds (1/10 of a minute), the unit of time for recurring effects
such as DOTs and mana regeneration (i.e., mana regen +3 gives you an
extra 3 mana recovery per tick, or 30 per minute)
- DS
- damage shield, a buff that does damage to anything that hits you
- nuke
- a big DD spell
- AE, AOE
- area effect (centered on a target, usually affecting at most 4)
- PBAE
- point blank area effect (all mobs near the caster)
- HOT
- heal over time
- mez
- mesmerize, the enchanter's specialty, and really annoying when a
mob does it to you
- mem
- memorize one or more spells
- FOM, LOM, OOM
- full of mana, low on mana, out of mana
- med / medding
- meditating, when a caster sits to regain mana faster
- wmp
- when mana permits (a fighter who says "Need DS wmp" is being patient
and polite, and is not calling the caster a wimp!)
- group hug
- the act of -- or a request for -- everyone in the group moving
close to the caster or group leader, so that an incoming group buff,
heal, or transport spell will include everyone (or the speaker could
just be overly friendly); some players use the term "huddle" instead
Miscellany
[Ed: If anyone can suggest ways to organise some of these into new
or existing categories, please do!]
- bubble
- one-fifth of a mana bar, hp bar, or experience bar
- ding
- gained a level, as in "I just dinged 13!" (the proper response,
no matter how trivial the level, is "Congratulations!" or something
of the sort); this usually means a character level, but sometimes
is used to refer to other skills: "Ding! Tailoring 250!" "Grats!"
- ping
- sometimes used to refer to gaining an Alternate Ability point
- trumpet
- used by some players to refer to any event where the game plays
the trumpet fanfare (pinging an AA, completing a quest, etc.)
- lag
- lowered responsiveness of the game, caused by a combination of
network speed, machine power, and how much stuff the game is trying
to draw: "Turn off all spell effects on a raid, it'll reduce lag"
- LD
- linkdead, lost the connection to the game server; this is what the
game tells everyone else in your group when you're looking at a
"You have been disconnected" screen
- CR
- corpse run (or corpse recovery), the act of finding your corpse so
you can resurrect it (and, in olden days, recover your gear from it)
- nerf
- what SOE is said to do when they take a useful (though perhaps
overpowered) feature of the game and make it useless: "They nerfed
that shark that was dropping a million plat"
- twink
- a character with equipment far above what is accessible to its
level; it either got a lot of plat and bought gear in the Bazaar
(a "bazaar twink") or a higher-level character, usually belonging
to the same player, has supplied hand-me-downs ("twinked" it)
- main
- the highest level character a player has, or the one he plays
most often (frequently these are the same thing, of course)
- alt
- other characters of the same player (i.e., other than the "main")
- toon
- character (short for "cartoon"); some people dislike the term
- griefer
- a player who deliberately causes trouble for other players, e.g. by
leading trains of mobs to attack them, or tricking them into giving
away hard-to-replace items, etc.; most forms of griefing can get the
griefer's account banned, but only if a GM catches them in the act
- cyber
- to engage in "cybersex", which is role-playing a sexual encounter via
private tells and emotes
- FFA
- free-for-all, usually referring to looting corpses, i.e., agreeing that
anyone in the group can loot anything they want (often used if the
group is mainly seeking XP or killing "trash mobs" en route to a
larger target)
- ninja looting
- a form of griefing in which a player slips in without permission
and loots a corpse killed by another group (once the timer has ticked
down enough that the game allows it), or if a group member loots an
item that was awarded to another member; some players also consider
it ninja looting if one player is deliberately hogging all the loot
in a FFA looting arrangement
- loc?
- "what's your location?" (type /loc and report the numbers)
- mistell
- Sending a message to the wrong person, e.g. by mixing up /gu and /g
or misdirecting a /tell; telling someone "mistell" says your
previous message wasn't intended for them; also seen as "MT" (which
can also be Main Tank but context usually makes the meaning clear)
- DPS
- damage per second, i.e. how fast is a mob being smacked down
- LDON
- the Lost Dungeons of Norrath expansion, often used to refer to
going on an "adventure" into one of the dungeons in that expansion
- DON
- the Dragons of Norrath expansion, often used to refer to a mission
in that expansion (e.g., "Looking for a tank for a DON")
- MM
- a Monster Mission from the Depths of Darkhollow expansion
- PoK
- Place of Knowledge, a popular gathering spot because it is easy
to reach from so many places; many other zones also have common
abbreviations, but they're too plentiful to list here
- disc
- short for discipline, one of several spell-like abilities available to
melee classes
- lull / pacify
- a spell or skill that prevents one or more mobs from aggroing on you
while you drag off one of their friends
- FD, feign
- feign death, a skill/spell used by monks/necromancers/shadowknights
- GM
- either an NPC guildmaster, or a character run by a SOE representative
- inc / incoming
- the puller's report of what's being brought; a puller should have a
hotkey for "/g incoming %T", or something more colorful but to the
same point: "/g %T followed me home, can I keep %o?"
- RL, IRL
- real life, in real life
- kite
- to get a mob to run after you, either for crowd control (keeping
it busy while the group kills something else) or so something or
someone else can kill it while it chases you; sometimes refers to
getting the mob to flee from you (fear-kiting)
- farming
- repetitively collecting some form of resource at little or no risk;
it could be as low level as a player farming spiderlings for silk, or
as high level as a guild farming the Elemental Planes for gear
- epic
- the reward at the end of a particularly long quest; each class has
available a different set of epic quests unique to that class
- No Trade
- an object that cannot be dropped, traded or sold; if you place
a No Trade item inside a container, the container becomes No Trade
until the item is removed (a frequent source of confusion)
- Temporary
- an item that will go away 30 minutes after the bearer logs out
(if it's a container, it used to be that everything inside also went
away, but early in 2005 this was changed so the container instead
becomes a very heavy non-magical bag, so you don't lose the contents)
- No Drop, No Rent
- same as No Trade and Temporary; the latter terms were introduced in
April 2005, but many old web sites, forums, and players still use
the older terms, as do most in-game messages (e.g. if you try to put
such an item into your shared bank, or try to loot a No Trade item
with /lootnodrop [sic] set to "always confirm")
- Lore
- an item that no character can have more than one of (but if it's
droppable -- i.e., not No Trade -- there can be one in your shared
bank as well)
- Attuneable
- an item that will become No Trade the first time any
character puts it on (you're asked to confirm doing so); attuneable
augments, however, become No Trade when inserted into an item,
even if you don't equip the item; you're asked to confirm inserting
it but that confirmation doesn't warn you about the augment becoming
attuned, so be careful!
- Infusible
- an item that gains (or loses) stats according to
the item (if any) in your "power source" inventory slot; if you wear
more than one infusible item the stats are modified for each, so the
difference can be significant (but drains the power source faster)
- Purity
- an attribute of an infusible item that indicates what percentage of the
modifiers the item inherits from your power source
- PL
- power level, usually by having a high level character provide
buffs, healing and other aid to accelerate a low level's progress
- runner
- a mob that's trying to run away from you, especially if there's
a risk it'll attract attention from other mobs
- warp
- sudden change of location, particularly referring to a mob that
gets stuck trying to chase you and suddenly appears in your face
- LFG
- looking for a group
- LFA
- looking for an LDON adventure
- LFE
- looking for an OOW expedition
- LFM
- looking for a DON mission; can also mean "looking for more" when a
partial group needs more members for whatever it's aiming to do
Commonly requested spells
In crowded places (especially PoK) you'll often hear people asking for and/or
offering buffs and other spells. Here are some of the most common ones:
- KEI
- Koadic's Endless Intellect: adds INT, WIS, and mana regen, but
the target has to be level 45 or higher
- Clarity
- adds mana regen, not as much as KEI but it can be cast on
characters of any level (and can be learned at lower levels, too)
- C1, C2, etc.
- C1 is Clarity; C2 is Clarity II, which gives a bit more mana
regen but only works on characters level 41 or higher; C3 is another
name for KEI, and C4 etc. refer to still higher-level spells
- SOW
- Spirit of the Wolf, increases your running speed
- Temp
- Temperance, adds a lot of HP and AC
- V
- Virtue, adds even more HP/AC, but works only on levels 46 and up
- HOV
- Hand of Virtue, group version of Virtue for levels 47 and up
- Kitty Crack
- Spiritual Light, a beastlord spell that gives HP and mana regen
to an entire group
- Port
- Transport: druids and wizards can transport other characters to many
locations, so you may see someone asking for a "port to Iceclad" or
other similar requests (often using abbreviated destination names)
- rez
- resurrection, a spell that restores you to wherever your corpse
is and (at higher levels of the spell) returns some fraction of the
experience lost when you died
Here are some other spells that come up often in discussions, especially of
raid tactics:
- CH
- Complete Heal (which heals 7500 hp but takes 10 seconds to cast)
- COTH
- Call of the Hero: a magician spell that transports a groupmate to
the mage from anywhere else in the same zone
- Evac
- A group port, which might be to certain zones that don't have normal
group ports, or might be to the zone line; under calm circumstances,
this is simply a transportation mode, though even with a "group hug"
the spell line has a chance of leaving some people behind, and you'll
definitely get left if you are running Divine Aura or Harmshield
- EVAC!
- as an exclamation, this refers to the use of an evac, almost always
to the current zone's "succor point", to escape impending disaster;
used by the porter, it is a call for a group hug, and to go to all
lengths to keep aggro off the caster so the spell can go off; used by
others, it is a call for the porter to cast her evac spell; used in a
group with no porter, it is a call to make out your will (see "rez")
Roles in a group
These terms are described in more detail in the discussion on grouping, at
http://www.icynic.com/~don/EQ/grouping101.htm.
- Puller
- The person who goes out and gets mobs (hopefully in manageable
numbers) to follow him back to the group to be killed
- MA
- Main Assist, the person that tells everyone else what to kill
- MT
- Main Tank, the person whom you try and get a mob to hit
(sometimes also used as shorthand for "mistell")
- ST
- Secondary Tank, backup for MT if stuff happens
- SA
- Secondary Assist, backup for MA if MA goes down or MA misses something
- CC
- Crowd Control, keeping extra mobs busy (rooted, mezzed, chasing
someone around, whatever) while the group focuses on the MA's target
- OT
- Off Tank, person who is tanking a mob that the main force is not
trying to kill at the moment; off-tanking is a form of crowd control
- DPS
- someone whose role it is to do lots of DPS (see above)
- ML
- Main Looter, the person who loots all cash and droppable items for
later division (see question 3.24)
9.2 Q: What other abbreviations and jargon show up in the newsgroup?
Though some of these terms sometimes come up in game, they tend to be seen
more often in the newsgroup.
- AC
- Asheron's Call, another online fantasy role-playing game
- AGE
- alt.games.everquest
- CIHYS
- Can I Have Your Stuff; made in response to an "I quit EQ" post
- CoH
- City of Heroes, a super hero comic online role-playing game
- EQ
- EverQuest (also called EQ Live or EQL, esp. to contrast with EQ II)
- EQII, EQ2
- EverQuest II
- LOTRO
- Lord of the Rings Online, a MMORPG set within Tolkien's books
- MMORPG
- Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Game
- NG
- News Group
- OP
- original poster (the person who began the discussion topic)
- OT
- Off Topic
- PLONK
- Please Leave Our Newsgroup - Killfiled; a claim that your posts will
be ignored from now on
- PvE
- Player vs. Environment combat; i.e., you vs. the game
- PvP
- Player vs. Player combat
- RPG
- Role Playing Game
- SOE
- Sony Online Entertainment, the people that bring us EQ
- SWG
- Star Wars Galaxies, another MMORPG
- UO
- Ultima Online, another MMORPG
- Vanguard, VSoH
- Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, another MMORPG
- WoW
- World of Warcraft, another MMORPG
Official EQ home page:
http://www.everquest.com
Official EQ information site (news, status, forums, etc.):
http://eqlive.station.sony.com/library/faqs/faq_index.jsp
For information on a wide range of topics including character creation,
quests, zones, maps, classes and equipment, check out:
Maps:
About maps: If you have the Legacy of Ykesha expansion it is a real good
idea to get all the maps from mapfiend and load them in your EverQuest
maps folder. EverQuest is a HUGE game with over 200 zones; in game maps
help you to get around. Here are a couple map tips:
- If you pull up the maps and can't see anything then zoom the map out by
clicking on the "-" button near the upper right corner of the map. You
may have to click this button many times. Alternately, if you have a mouse
with a scroll wheel, you can hover your mouse pointer over the map and zoom
the map in and out with the scroll wheel. Also, turn off the height
filter to make sure you're seeing all the lines on the map.
- If the map is hard to see because the lines are too light, right-click
on the title bar of the map and change the "Alpha" (normal and faded)
levels to lighten the background of the map. This allows you to see the
map and the screen behind it so it doesn't block your view. This is why
so many maps are drawn with grey lines.
EverQuest Terms Glossary (from year 2000 but still has some use):
http://web.archive.org/web/20030604092025/http://amtgard.pinkpig.com/everquest/eqglossary.htm
Tradeskills:
http://www.eqtraders.com (general)
http://plurpage.com/everquest/aug.php (OOW Augmentation Generator)
Factions:
http://eqbeastiary.allakhazam.com/factionlist.html
http://tinyurl.com/3mgkl (Anezka's guide for Iksar)
Odds and Ends:
http://home.stny.rr.com/jazzmanian/wedding.html (the Wedding FAQ)
http://tinyurl.com/269yf (a grouping FAQ by John M. Clancy)
http://cloud.prohosting.com/~talone/HasteData.htm (Compendium of Haste)
http://www.cardplace.com/eq/ldon/list.cgi (LDoN Merchant Sorting Script)
http://www.phantomraiders.org/members/data/ldonvendor.htm (LDoN items)
http://plurpage.com/everquest/original/don.php (DoN merchant search)
For specific class information, check the forums and other material at
these sites (last verified as of mid-2007):
Bard:
http://www.eqdiva.com/
Beastlord:
http://www.beastlords.org/
Berserker:
http://www.goberserker.com/
Cleric:
http://www.eqcleric.com/
http://www.eqclerics.org/forums/index.php
http://membres.lycos.fr/niphreedil/aa.htm (Cleric Alternate Abilities)
Druid:
http://www.thedruidsgrove.org/eq/
Enchanter:
http://www.therunes.net
Magician:
http://eq1.eqsummoners.com/
Monk:
http://www.monkly-business.net/
Necromancer:
http://www.necrotalk.com/
Paladin:
http://crucible.samanna.net/
Ranger:
http://www.eqoutrider.com/
http://forums.interealms.com/ranger/
Rogue:
http://www.thesafehouse.org/
Shadowknight:
http://www.evilgamer.net/
Shaman:
http://crucible.samanna.net/
Warrior:
http://www.thesteelwarrior.org/
Wizard:
http://www.graffe.com/
For where to hunt at a particular level/class/race (see section 3.13):
http://www.eqatlas.com/huntguidelevel.html
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zlvlchart.html
Server Community Forums
There used to be official per-server community Forums as part of the Sony
forums, but those seem to be gone. Many servers have unofficial forums;
here are links to several. (These have not been verified recently.) Note
that the Zek forums are still named for the individual server communities
that got merged to form the current Zek. Likewise, many of these links
are for servers that were merged during April/May 2005, but the forums for
the individual original servers may well still be active.
- Antonius Bayle
- http://www.antonius-bayle.org/forum/
- Ayonae Ro
- http://forums.ayonae.ro
- Bertoxxulous
- http://www.berthall.com/forums/
- Brell Serilis
- http://www.brellrants.net/brell/
- Bristlebane
- http://www.bristlebane.com/forum/
- Cazic Thule
- http://cazic-thule.net/forums/index.php
- Drinal
- http://pub40.ezboard.com/bdrinal28133
- Druzzil Ro (need registration to see)
- http://www.druzzilro.com/board/vbindex.php
- E'ci
- http://eci.ofasoft.com/
- Erollisi Marr
- http://www.erollisimarr.com/forum/
- Fennin Ro
- http://pub247.ezboard.com/ffenninrochroniclesfrm8
- Firiona Vie
- http://pub94.ezboard.com/bfirionavie
- Innoruuk
- http://pub142.ezboard.com/binnoruukserver
- Kane Bayle
- http://pub34.ezboard.com/bkanebayleforums
- Karana
- http://pub76.ezboard.com/bkarana89215
- Lanys T'vyl
- http://pub130.ezboard.com/beqasylum
- Luclin
- http://pub106.ezboard.com/bluclin71335
- Mithaniel Marr
- http://www.mmdn.org/HOME/modules.php?op=modload&name=PNphpBB2&file=index
- Morrell Thule
- http://pub169.ezboard.com/bmtboards
- Morden Rasp
- http://pub119.ezboard.com/bmordenrasp80173
- Povar
- http://pub23.ezboard.com/bpovarservermessageboard
- Prexus
- http://pub140.ezboard.com/bprexus81531
- Quellious
- http://pub54.ezboard.com/bquelliousquaterstherebirth
- Rallos Zek
- http://www.ralloszek.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?Cat=0
- Rodcet Nife:
- http://vnboards.ign.com/board.asp?brd=5024
- Saryrn
- http://pub40.ezboard.com/bthesaryrntavern
- Solusek Ro (must register to access)
- http://www.solusekro.com/eq/news.asp
- Stormhammer (Legends)
- http://www.stormhammer.org/forums/
- Tallon Zek
- http://tallonzektimes.org/bb/index.php
- Terris Thule
- http://pub19.ezboard.com/bterristhuleserverboard
- Test Server
- http://www.l33tgeek.com/testserver/index.php
- The Nameless
- http://www.namelesstavern.org/phpBB2/index.php
- The Rathe
- http://www.rathetravelagency.com/phpbb
- The Seventh Hammer
- http://pub148.ezboard.com/b7thhammer
- The Tribunal
- http://pub101.ezboard.com/bthetribunaldotorg
- Tholuxe Paells
- http://pub222.ezboard.com/bsacredomen
- Torvonnilous
- http://pub173.ezboard.com/btorvboard
- Tunare
- http://pub13.ezboard.com/btunare
- Vallon Zek (must register)
- http://pwned.inf7.net
- Vazaelle
- http://pub41.ezboard.com/bvazaellecommunitycenter
- Veeshan
- http://veeshanvault.org/forums/
- Venril Sathir
- http://www.venrilsathir.com
- Xev:
- http://pub228.ezboard.com/bxevserverboards
- Zebuxoruk
- http://www.zebuxoruk.com/phpbb/
EverQuest II Links:
http://everquest2.station.sony.com/ (Official Website)
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2 (Official Forums)
http://www.eqii.com/phpbb/index.php (esp. check out the Moorgard index)
EverQuest Comics:
http://www.wtfcomics.com/index.html (WTF Comics)
http://www.gucomics.com/ (Woody's GU Comics)
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/robin/zander/translationmainframe.htm
(Under the Sky of Norrath)
http://www.foxeye-art.com/ (AGE member art site with some EQ-related art)
EverQuest Parody Video:
http://home.att.ne.jp/surf/mirage/agent_sinzan_2.html
(Celestial Healing chain)
Sayonara Norrath (a long-time player's farewell video):
http://home.att.ne.jp/surf/mirage/sayonara_norrath3.html
Funny EverQuest Stories & Stuff:
http://ancarett.com/eqhumour.html (well worth the trip)
http://www.geocities.com/zinphandelchianti/burnedwoods.txt
(more on the Burned Woods story)
http://www.notacult.com/fansythefamous.htm (Fansy the Famous Bard)
http://pub148.ezboard.com/f7thhammerfrm24.showMessage?topicID=6.topic
(Linvarwen, 7th Hammer's Favorite Son)
http://web.archive.org/web/20051231092415/http://www.somethingawful.com/eq/newbieguide/
(Funny Guide for Newbies, now available only via archive site)
Stories from the Top:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nebula/8828/monual/
(The Fantastic Adventures of Monual)