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General Strategies
This page is a repository for all the general EQ tips I have picked up during my life as a newbie. Anything I think is important will go in here. The listing is arranged alphabetically. For a complete list of all in-game UI commands, go here.
UI (User Interface) Features General help In the words of wise master Yoda, "Polite should you be. Nothing would it cost you!" Or maybe he didn't say that. I can't remember. Anyway, the saying is true in the land of EQ as well. There are a bunch of people out there who will just run up to a Druid and say "sow plz." Many people (myself included) consider this the height of rudeness. If you want something, you gotta ask nice. Instead of "sow plz" why not try "Would a kind Druid be willing to grant a poor traveler a favor and bestow the Spirit of the Wolf upon him?" Or something like that. Yeah, it's cheesy, but it gets better results than the other way. This is an essential thing to do before attacking any mob. It is accomplished by right-clicking the mob or targeting the mob and then pressing the "c" key. The result of this action will be something like "MobXXX glares at you, ready to attack - what would like your tombstone to say?" The first part of this statement indicates the mob's feelings towards you. If it says something like "ready to attack" it will attack you on sight. The mob's feelings towards you are determined by your faction; more info on that here. The second part of the statement indicates the mob's level relative to yours. This is also shown by the color of the message. Green, easy; Blue, upper hand; White/black, even; yellow, gamble; red, tombstone. In general, taking on a yellow or red by yourself will result in you dying. Trust me. That's what groups are for. Greens generally don't give you any experience, and so aren't worth your time. Blues are usually easy to kill, unless the mob has some sort of special ability (poison, spells, etc.). Whites are sometimes close calls, but are in general the best things to hunt solo. Consider any mob before attacking, and pay attention to what it says - this can save your life any number of times. It is inevitable that this will happen to you at least once in your newbie life. You will die and end up halfway across the world from your corpse, naked, with no food, water, or money. Or, you might be only a zone away from your corpse, but it happens to lie in the middle of an Orc camp. What to do? First of all, you have to accept the fact that you can't get it on your own. You will need to turn to your fellow players for help. If your situation is the first case (really far away from your corpse), you will need to get a teleport from someone. Use the /who command and some of its filters to find a high-level Druid or Wizard: something like "/who Dr 40 60" for a Druid of levels 40 - 60. This will return a list of names. Ask everyone on that list if they can teleport you to somewhere near your destination. Be polite; it makes people much more likely to help you. More information on what being polite can do for you here. Anyway, just ask around for a while, and eventually someone will get you where you need to be. If yours is the other case (your corpse is close but surrounded by mobs) you will need to ask for an invisibility or a camo. Use /shout to ask around. Once you have this, head off to your corpse. Once you reach it, you can't loot it right away, as this will dispel the camo/invisibility and the mobs will attack you. So you have to use the /corpse command. This summons your corpse to you from a maximum range of about 30 feet. Start backing away from the camp while hitting /corpse until you're a safe distance from the mobs, then loot and run. In both cases, knowing the loc of your corpse will help immensely; more information on that here. A list of frequently used EQ terms:
AC: Armor class. This is determined by your armor and base attributes.
The higher it is, the less damage you will take from physical attacks. This is a relatively simple concept, but it's very important. Basically, when you kill something, you will sometimes recieve the message "Your faction standing with FactionXXX got better/worse." The first part of the message you get when /conning depends on your faction - if you have good faction, the message will say something like "NPCXXX regards you amiably" whereas if you have bad faction, the message will say "MobXXX glares at you, ready to attack." You can improve or worsen your faction with certain groups by completing quests or killing certain mobs/NPCs. To sum all of this up, just remember that what you kill now will have consequences far into the future. You can find a listing of what factions are connected to which mobs by poking around here. This is a pretty stupid topic, but I thought I'd cover it anyway. Basically, you have to make sure that you always have some food and drink with you. If you don't, you will eventually get the message "You are hungry/thirsty." A short while after that, your health will start dropping, and you won't be able to recover any mana. You don't have to worry about constantly checking your supplies, as you will recieve a warning if you are low on food/drink. Whenever you finish a long travel, it's a very good idea - a necessity, in fact - to get bound at a nearby city. This ensures that you will not have to trek across 5 zones to retrieve your corpse if you die. People will usually bind you for 1 or 2 pp. Just ask using /shout and someone will answer you. I could go about groups for pages and pages, but I think that how to be successful in a group can be summed up in six words: know your role and be coordinated. People will talk about what the perfect group is, what the best camping spots are, what the best group spells are, but knowing your role and being coordinated are much more important. Knowing your role: Basically, know what you have to do in a group. For example, warriors have to attack the mob and keep it off of the casters. Druids have to buff the group members, provide backup heals and nukes, and snare the mob. Clerics keep the group members alive. If you know what you're supposed to be doing, you will be much more effective then just blundering your way through situations. Be coordinated: Have a system worked out. Make sure everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing. If the Ranger thinks he's going to shoot Orc #1, but the wizard thinks he's going to fire off a nuke at Orc #2, and the Druid thinks he's going to Harmony Orcs #1 and 2, then pull Orc #3, you will end up with three Orcs on you instead of one. This is a very useful feature of the UI. Basically, it allows you to execute commands without typing the whole thing in, cast spells without clicking the icon, or activate an inventory item without digging around in your inventory screen. You will see the hot buttons box in the lower-left hand corner of the screen. There are 6 sets of buttons with 6 buttons each. You can access the sets by holding shift and pressing the corresponding number: Shift-1 for set 1, etc. You can activate individual buttons by pressing its number on the keyboard. You can create a hot button by clicking the desired button (spells, sit/stand inventory, camp, whatever) and holding the mouse button down. The button will eventually turn into a square button that can be placed in a hot button box. You can also make buttons for /whatever commands, such as /who, /loc, etc. You do this by clicking on the "socials" button in Windowed view. You will then be presented with a list of pre-programmed social hot buttons. If you right-click on the button, you will see a screen allowing you to change the command. You can make the command anything that can be typed into the textbox. If you want a button that executes the command "/say Help me!" you can do that. Or how about one that executes /who, instantly giving you a list of all players in the zone? Once the button is created, left-click on it and hold down, then put it in the hot button set. The practical uses of this are incredible and almost unlimited. If there's one particular command you use alot, make it into a hot button using the socials system. Play around with it, and you'll see how useful it can be. It's very important that you know the zone you're heading into before you actually enter it. Know the danger spots, know where the guards are, know where to buy food, know where players gather and hang out, etc. Print out a map of the zone. Knowing where to go if you're in trouble will increase your survivability by about 100% while you're getting used to the zone. After you spend some time in the zone, you will be able to navigate it without the help of a map, but until then, this is essential. This is possibly the most important UI command there is. Basically, it gives you your exact location in the zone at the moment when it's activated. The output of the command looks something like this: -1500, 600. The first number is your alignment on the game's Y axis (north-south). The higher the number, the farther north you are. The second number is your position on the zone's X axis (east-west). The higher the number, the farther west you are. Therefore, if you were in a zone that was 6000 x 6000, with 0, 0 as the center (and 3000 units on either side of that), -3000, -3000 would be the southeastern corner, and 3000, 3000 would be the northwestern corner. Anyway, the reason that this is so important is that it makes finding your body possible. If you hit /loc just before you die, you will know where in the zone you died. Then, once you re-enter the zone, start running in a direction which gets you closer to your goal. You will know what direction you're running in by continually hitting /loc. If the numbers are both heading towards the numbers you want, you're going the right direction. I suggest making this a hot button because you will be using it so often. There is a much more detailed explanation of this here. How well you do things is determined by your skill rating for that thing. For example, attacking things with a Rusty Scimitar would fall under the skill category of 1H-Slashing. If you practice this skill enough (by attacking things) you will raise your skill, therefore giving you a greater chance of hitting the target for more damage. At every level, there is a skill cap that you cannot pass while at that level. The cap is generally (level * 5) + 5. So at level 5, my cap would be 30. Reaching the cap before you level is called "maxing out." It is recommended that you try to max out your skills at every level. There is a very strong and fluid economy among the players of EverQuest. They sell each other rare or powerful items that usually can't be bought at a vendor, in addition to more normal equipment, like armor or weapons. If there's something you're looking for, ask around using /auction. There's a good chance that someone out there will have what you're looking for. The opposite is true as well. If you have an item that you think someone else might want, advertise it through /auction. Eventually, someone will probably contact you. In both cases, you can probably get a better deal from a player than a vendor. Vendors tend to buy low and sell high. A good place to sell and buy is the Greater Faydark. This zone is a sort of marketplace, where people gather to buy and sell. This command gives you the time in Norrath. It's very useful if you can't see at night and need to know when it's time to return to the safety of a city. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of quests across all of Norrath. Most of the quests that are available to you as a newbie will reward you with a weapon or two, some money, faction, and XP. This may not seem like a big deal, but they generally require little effort. Usually, all you have to do is bring a common item to a NPC somewhere. The best place to find quests is at your class guild hall. Hail every NPC you see, and eventually someone will talk to you. I won't go into detail on particular quests because there are so many of them, but there is a very detailed and well-organized Quest Database at Allakhazam's Magical Realm - I highly recommend it. If you are suddenly and unexpectedly attacked by wandering mob or find yourself on the losing end of a close fight (and believe me, it will happen, there are a few things you can do.
This is a very useful UI command. You can give it a bunch of parameters, and it will search the zone for any players matching those descriptions, and give you a list of all players that qualify. For example, say you're looking for a Magician of levels 5-7. You would type /who Mag 5 7. If you wanted to search the entire world, you would type /who all Mag 5 7. It also accepts names, so you could do /who "playername" and it would tell you what level, class, and race that player is. This command is very useful, as it allows you to search for any type of player you want. You can find players for a group, find a high-level Wizard or Druid to TP you somewhere, etc. EverQuest is a Trademark of Sony Corporation. Used without permission. Site design and coding copyright John Lenehan, aka Asfolath. All data, unless noted otherwise, is copyright Asfolath. |
