EQMac.com

Welcome to EverQuest!

You may be thinking to yourself "OK, great. i've made this character, and chosen a great name. I'm standing in a room, with all these windows.....

NOW WHAT?

don't panic.

Here is the quick 5 minute introduction to getting around in EQ.

When you first enter EQ, your screen will look something like this


First, let's get rid of the RAID window. ( see the glossary at the end for term definitions of underlined words)
Click the "X" to close the RAID window:


You can also close the Help window for now -- you can always re-open it by clicking on the '?' button at the top of the screen in the Window Selector. There is a lot of information in the Help section, and i really recommend you read through it when you get the chance.


And now - you're ready to go!

well, sort of.

First thing you need to do is get some better armor, weapons, clothing, spells, etc. Open your inventory by pressing the "i" key. Click on the weapon in your inventory, and drag it into the large blank rectangle to the left, and click again to "auto-equip" (i.e. have EQ stick it in the slot it goes in) the weapon.


There should be a note, or a scroll in your inventory ( there will be 3 if you are a magic user). right-click on the note to read it. Or, control-click if you have a one-button mouse. The note will tell you who to talk to first. Just hover the mouse over each scroll or inventory item, and you will see pop-up text describing the item. Find the one that's a note.

Find that person, and give them the note (depending on the race/class you choose, sometimes this person is a little harder to find than for others. you may need to look around for a bit) Just click on the note in your inventory, and then, with it on your cursor, click on the NPC. A window will open, with the note in one of 4 slots, and button that says "Give"


Some NPCs will give you quests. Just click on them, and then press the "h" key to Hail them. IF anything they say is in square brackets, then that is a keyword. Ask them about it. You don't have to do a quest right away. You can always come back and do it later. Also, some quests may be for higher level characters, but you will still get the quest anyway. Just come back later when you can complete it.


Dealing with Spells ( melee characters can skip this)
If you are a magic user, you will need to scribe and memorize your spells.
Click on the little book icon on your spell gem window. ( shortcut is command-b )


Open your inventory, and click on a spell scroll, then click on a blank slot in your spellbook.


Once you have finished scribing the spell, you need to memorize it for use. The spell book holds all your spells, but you can only have 8 spells memorized at one time. You will only need to scribe a spell once. However, you will need to re-memorize the spells in the "Spell Gem" window after your death.

Click on the spell icon in your spellbook, and drag it to a slot in your spell gems window.




Once you've memorized the spell, it is ready to use. Just target something, and then click on the spell gem. There are also keyboard shortcuts for spells. Default is the option key, and then the number for the spell. In this cast, Lifetap is spell number 1. So pressing option-1 on the keyboard will cast the spell. Spells are numbered 1 to 8, starting with 1 at the top.



How to figure out what is safe to attack
One of the most important commands you need to know is how to " consider" somebody - this tells you your chances of winning against them in a one on one combat

Just click on the NPC, and press the "c" key on your keyboard. Pay attention to the color of the message, and also what the message says.

The color will tell you what your chances are if you were to attack the NPC or mob.
RED = don't even think about it. you're gonna die.
YELLOW = you might be able to win the battle, if you're lucky.
WHITE = they are the same level as you. it's an even fight
DARK BLUE = they are a lower level than you. You should be able to win this fight, with some effort.
LIGHT BLUE = you may still have some difficulty, but you should be able to kill them fairly easily.
GREEN = they are much lower in level than you. You should not have any problem with this.

At Level 1, everything will be WHITE, YELLOW or RED to you. at level 2, you will see some DARK BLUE /cons. The higher the level of the mob you kill, the more experience you will get (XP). If something /cons GREEN to you, then you will not get any XP at all.

The other thing to pay attention is what the /con message says.






If something is "Ready to Attack", we refer to that as KOS (Kill On Sight). If you get close enough to them, they will attack you. If they are "Threateningly", then they will most likely attack, but sometimes they won't.

In either case, If something /cons RED and "Ready to Attack", you should avoid them until you are a higher level.

How to attack something
So - how do you attack something? simply click on the mob you want to attack, and then press the "a" key for "auto-attack". make sure you are close enough to the mob. You will get a message saying you are too far away if, well... you're too far away. If you are a spellcaster, then you can also cast spells by clicking on the spell gem, or using the keyboard shortcuts.

All about you and your enemy
In the top right of your screen, you will see a window with your name, and 3 colored bars.

The red bar is your health, the blue is mana (melee characters won't see a mana bar), and the Yellow is Stamina.
If your health gets too low, you will need to heal. If the mana gets low, you will need to meditate, or "med" as we call it. Both can be done simply by sitting. Your health will get better, and you will recover mana faster.

Whoever you click on is "targeted", and their health shows in the target window.

You can judge how well the fight is going by how fast their health drops, compared to your own health and/or mana.

Learning new skills
After a few levels, you will be able to learn new skills, such as "roundkick" for monks, "double attack" for warriors, and "meditate" for magic users.... just to name a few skills. Meditate is very important for magic users, as it lets you regain mana faster, and also memorize spells faster, too. You can train new skills from a "trainer", usually an NPC near where you first entered the game. Right click on the NPC's near where you started. Some will be merchans, at least one will be a trainer.


Death!
ARGH! you died! what now? well, you will come back at your current "bind point". Usually, this is a spot in the newbie hunting area, and NOT where you first entered the game. Spell casters will need to re-memorize their spells after death. While exploring, you may see people called a "Soulbinder". Hail them, and they will tell you thay can re-bind your soul to that spot. Next time you die, that's where you will appear.

Zones
The game is divided into different "zones". When you go from one zone to another, all the windows will disappear for a few moments, and then come back. This can be confusing at first. When the new zone has loaded, you will see something like "Loading, Please wait" in the chat window, followed with " you have entered the Plane of Knowledge" or whatever zone you walked into. If you are attacking something, and losing, you can run to a new zone. The mob will not follow you.


And that's it!
And that's IT! Walk around, talk to people, get quests, go kill some rats and bats and beetles. When you kill something, Right click on it to loot the corpse -- the stuff you loot you can sell to merchants for money. Some things that drop may also be armor. Hold down the option key, and click on an item to get a window that describes the item.

Until level 10, there is no penalty for dying, and you don't need to loot your corpse to get all your stuff back. So - be adventurous! Explore wherever you can! Try stuff.

But please, if you die, right click on your corpse to loot it. Nobody likes to see hundreds of your corpses lying around the place


Leaving the game
When you are ready to quit the game, you need to "camp out". For now, you should probably camp in your starting city. Just click on "sit", and then on "camp". The shortcuts are "command-s" to sit (or stand), and command-q to camp.


TERMS AND OTHER STUFF

mob - mob stands for "Mobile OBject"... basically anything that moves around that isn't another player. Usually refers to creatures that you will be hunting ( bats, Orcs, Dragons, etc.)

NPC - Non Player Character. The "people" that you can talk to, buy things from, etc.

RAID - A raid is a large group of people in smaller groups. Many mobs are too hard to take down with just a group of 6 people. Raids can be quite large, up to 60 people.


HELPFUL COMMANDS

/tell To talk to JoeNoobie, who is in another zone, just type "/tell joenoobie hey there!".
reply To reply to somebody, just press "r", then type your message.
/ooc OOC means Out Of Character. Originally, it's purpose was to say something that wasn't in Role Player mode. However, the OOC channel is zone-wide. anybody in the zone can hear what you are saying. So, we tend to use /ooc as a way to talk to all the people in a zone at once. such as "/ooc hey there! Does anybody need a Rusty Dagger? one just dropped from this Orc here"
/who The who command is very usefull! typing "/who" will show you all the people in the same zone as you. Typing "/who all cleric" (or any other class e.g. Necromancer, Magician, Warrier) will show you all the people, in all zones, that are Clerics (or whatever class you typed). "/who all 2 5" will show you all the characters in all zones that are between levels 2 and 5.

There are many many many more commands, and emotes, and actions, to learn. Spend time reading the online help. Talk to other players, and don't be afraid to ask for help. Most people will take a few moments to give you the answers you need. Just remember that other players are also there to hunt and have fun, and sometimes we may not answer right away because we are busy fighting.

ADVANCED STUFF
The next thing to do is to create a new Chat window. You can have as many chat windows as you want. Each one with different messages there. For instance, You can create a window just for talking to the members in your group.

First, right click on the title bar, or in the text entry area of a chat window, and choose "New Chat Window" from the pop-up list.


in the new window, right click again in the text entry area, and choose Filter, and then Group from the pop-up.


If you also want everything you type in that window to just be for the group, right-click again, and choose Channels, and then Group.


I suggest putting group, ooc, shout, and tell in one window, and everyting else in another window for now. Later on you may want more chat windows, but this is a good start.


One important thing to know is... what direction are you facing? Everybody gets a skill called " Sense Heading". Like all skills, the only way to get better is to use it. The EQ interface is very customizable. What we are going to do is bind "sense heading" to the up-arrow key. Every time you walk forward using the arrow keys, you will also be sensing heading. With practice, you get better at Sense Heading, and the compass will stop it's spinning, and show you what direction you really are facing.

Here's how to do it:
Click on the icon second from left at the top of the Actions palette.


Click on the first numbered tile:


Choose "Sense Heading" from the list of abilities


Click and hold on the new "sense heading" tile, until it shows up under your cursor. And move your curser over to the hotbuttons window.


click in an open hotbutton slot. I'm using the bottom right one for this


take note of how hotbuttons are numbered. (I've added the yellow numbers in this picture)

Now, we need to tell EQ that the up-arrow is not only going to take us forward, but also trigger hotbutton 10. Open the Options window


Then click on the Keyboard tab, and choose "Macros" from the pop-up menu


click on the "--------" in the second column on the same line as "Hotbutton 10", and when it says "Press a key" just press your up-arrow key.


That's all there is to it! Close the window, then move forward. You should see either "You have no idea what direction you are facing" or "You think you are facing North" ( or whatever direction ). the Compass will also stop spinning, and point to a direction.



good luck! and most importantly.. HAVE FUN!


--j4e and Kyth

_________________
Gael Shademaser

"there is too much blood in my caffeine system"

Well written, good idea. Would have loved this intro when I first started

_________________
-----------
Retired from EQ, formerly:
Rodgreim Bagmaker, Proud member of SoN and Hafling Tailor

Duuuuude...

Before you have them start talking to an NPC have them re-map their attack key. Otherwise that first dialog window will look something like:
You say, 'Hail, Noxhil V'Sek'
Noxhil V'Sek says 'Blah, blah [blah].'
(you start to type "What blah?", but get:)
You say, 'Hail, Noxhil V'Sek'
You miss Noxhil V'sek
Noxhil V'Sek says 'You've ruined your lands. You'll not ruin mine!"
Noxhil V'Sek hits you for 135
You Die.
Loading, Please Wait...

_________________
Nikolai Lianfyrr,
Khati Sha Feral Lord.
GM Tailor (250), GM Smith (250), GM Brewer (250), GM Potter (250), GM Fisherman (200), GM Jeweler (250), Fletcher (220), Chef (200)

Good point, Nikolai!

Yes... ALWAYS press the return key before you talk to any NPC. This will put you in "text mode". Everything you type will now be text, until you press return again to "say" what you have typed.

Otherwise, you are in "command mode". Most letters are assigned to actions.
"a" - autoatack
"h" - Hail a player or an NPC
"i" - to open your inventory
"c" - to "consider" your target
"e" - to auto target the nearest mob or NPC

there are many others. Look at the Keyboard assignments in the options window ( the same window you opened to remap the "Sense Heading" hotbutton)


--j4e

_________________
Gael Shademaser

"there is too much blood in my caffeine system"

I've never had this problem, but then I never try to take advantage of the "default channel" thing.

If you *always* type a "/" before a command to say something, that's the same as pressing enter. So:

/say what blah?

Gael, I think you deserve some sort of bonus check from SOE.

Few of you (if any) would know this, but I owe much of what I learned in my first days on Al'Kabor to Gael, for he and I met in (or outside of) Freeport and spent many sessions hunting together in North Ro (along with Hotlead's necro, Entropy... Where'd you go, Entropy?). I wish I had a guide like this then, but I'm almost glad I didn't, because I got a chance to learn from/with Gael while enjoying his company and kicking Spiderling butt.

Anyway... Short version: new players just coming to the server should know just what a benefit a guide like this is and how much in-game trial, error and word-of-mouth learning went into its compilation.

Thank you, Gael!

_________________
The Retired 'Ylyu Clan:
Amylyu Rapierwit
Romylyu Fancypants
Khylyu Ulakitlykthat
Voughan Ylyu
Evylyu

The default a = autoattack is dangerous, it is WAY to easy to do accidently (which is why some new folk attack the guy they are supposed to hand their newb-note too).

If i meet a new player, that is the first thing I get them to change.

_________________
Yeniu
Pathfinders of Al'Kabor

I changed my attack key once to the ` key. That didn't last long. I am totally used to having one finger on e and one on a. I got real tired once and targetted a mob I wanted to hail and just hit e then a real fast like I had been doing all night, hehe, had to run to zone.

It is a good idea if you can get used to it, to change the key.

With the guide above, it gives you pretty much all of the concepts you could need for playing EQ. Especially the binding of hotbuttons and how to create them. They are super useful!!!

_________________
-Kirrmarr Kherrai, Vah Shir Champion
Master Smith, Master Brewer, Master Warrior

I changed my autoattack to the number pad +. Easy to get to but not where you would type it accidently.

And autorun to the numpad enter.

_________________
Yeniu
Pathfinders of Al'Kabor

I use the tilde for my attack key so i can hit it with my pinky while still turning or running.

_________________
Duchess Lana Mercyhand
Lord Protector of Destiny
Grandmaster Baker/Brewer
Tanks for the memories
~moejoe chamois, 65 shaman~|~cambria silverfir, 65 druid~|~magella summner, 55 mage~

I've got autoattack hooked to my CAP LOCK key but when I tried to remap it on a Mac, it wouldn't work.

But, that's where mine is.

_________________
Rezz, Ranger of Prexus
Nameless Order

And that's actually where the initial EQ walkthroughs say to map it, but yes, as you said, it doesn't work on the Mac.

_________________
The Retired 'Ylyu Clan:
Amylyu Rapierwit
Romylyu Fancypants
Khylyu Ulakitlykthat
Voughan Ylyu
Evylyu

It's probably easier to remap keys on a Mac if you have a Mac.

_________________
[65 Wizard] Zorblak (High Elf) <Temerity>
And while I'm dreaming, I'd like a Drogmor.

Well, I'm fairly certain he meant someone else's Mac. Or maybe your sarcasm is a little too subtle for me.

_________________


Blackfell, Outrider of <Destiny>

Thank you guys for this post, this is a wonderful starting point. I was thrilled to have a person explain this to me in my beginning days (thank you Null ), and in turn I spent much time in gfay teatching exactly the same things listed here over and over. Now I will just point people to eqmac !


Another important aspect of learning the game for beginners is about writing socials. The following post looks long because i give several examples, but the concepts are very simple and will be useful to you through your career on Norrath. This is about creating socials to simplify your life in eq, and also contains some base group dynamic info to get you started on the good foot.

--------------------- About Socials -----------------------

A social is a hotubbton that can may contain commands, text, and use game variables. They allow you to simplify gameplay by taking care of repetitive, tedious tasks, and or declaring your actions to your group with the use of a single button. All the commands used in socials are standard everquest commands, and you can just type them in chat to evaluate their effect.

---------------- creating a social -----------------

Open your action palette, as shown in the first post in the part about sense heading. Select the 4th tab. You will see a page with preset socials, and arrows at the top. Click the right arrow to go to an empty page. right click an empty button. You have now opened the window to create a social. Give it a title and enter your commands on the separate lines. When you are done, close this window. The button you clicked to open the social window now holds the social name. left click it and hold it until it sticks to your cursor. You can now drag it to on a free slot on the hotbutton palette, then open the option palette-keyboard-macros to assign a secondary key of your choice. I have set up all my hotbutton on the keypad, with wichever social I use all the time on the zero, it works well for me. (just need to change the keypad default assignments if you do this). Remember that you can use many pages of hotbuttons, I have 4 pages full of socials and swap them off on the first page depending on my style of gameplay at the time.

---------------- Examples ----------------

Here are several examples, going through the process of a group of players hunting together, and how socials can benefit them.

----- For pullers -------

Lets start with the pulling social. If your job in your group is to pull mobs, you may want to let your buddies know what to expect. (You will find that it is expected from pullers to declare the pulls).

on the first line of the social, write something like this:

incoming: %t

The %t attached is the target variable. it will declare whatever you have targeted at this time. The result, for example in paludal cavern bandit camp will be

incoming: A recondite subduer

There are a few variations on the same theme. If you pull in a dangerous place where you might get ads, it is good karma to let know your group how many mobs are incoming. Uber ranger Kinuvdar uses something like this:

incoming: Avatar of War, one per message.
incoming: Avatar of War, one per message.

This way we know we have two Avatars of War incoming to our xp group and the fight will be a little harder than expected.

--------- For tanks ------------

Taunt social

If your job is to tank, you want to crystallize the agro of the mob to facilitate the job of the healers and protect these weak caster type while they damage the mob. Keeping agro is a science, uses more than taunting, and my knowledge is inexistant so I will let people who know what they are talking about give you details, but here is a setup from our guild's warrior forums (one command per social line, apart the pause command, on the same line as "/attack on," :

/doability [taunt]
/attack off
/doability [beg]
/attack on, /pause 60
/doability [taunt]

This means that everytime you will hit your social button, you will first taunt to regain the top of the agro list, then beg to increase hate from the mob, then resume attacking, and taunting again after 6 seconds, when your taunt ability will be available again. Doing this frequently will also of course raise your skills in taunt and begging as well. You can also use other agro generating abilities such as bash, slam, disarm, kicks, depending on your class, race and level.

/doability # allows you to use one of your abilities, such as taunt, fishing, hiding. Their availability depends on your race, class and level, and so does the corresponding numbers that activates them. The words placed within brackets in my example, such as [taunt], must be replaced by the proper number of the ability. Refer to a specialised class guide to learn wich ability is wich number, or ask our experienced tank classes out there, or just try numbers until you figure them out. The abilities available to you are listed in the ability palette referenced in the first post on this thread.

/pause ## is one of the few commands that can be used on the same line as a previous command, but you must separate the previous command with a ",". The number after pauses uses the everquest tick time unit, one sixth of a second. The purpose fo the pause command is to create a delay before issueing new commands, like having a spell or an ability being available again.

Once the tank is satisfied with the agro, he may call his groupies to the fight. Engaging before the tank has solidified agro puts your group at risk, so it is polite for groupies to wait for the tank to be happy with agro, and it is polite for the tank to let know people when they may start attacking the monster.

engage %t !!

----------- For Everyone ------------

Now is the time for all to jump in the fight. If you go by the book and want to engage in an orderly manner, you should assist the main tank. In EQ land, assisting the tank does not mean giving him help per se, it means using the /assist command to make sure you are hitting the target that the tank has picked. If you get multiple mobs on a pull, the tactic is to kill them one by one by focusing fire, while someone mesmerizes or roots or spplit tanks the ads. So the people joining the fight will select their tank in their group, and hit a social like this:

/assist

It will trigger autoattack on the target of the selected player, ensuring that the whole team is attacking the proper monster.
If you tank all day with the same person, you can put his name straight into the social, so you do not need to select him before engage:

/assist Tankomatic

-------- For healers ---------

Healing social
just like a good puller is expected to declare what is incoming to his group and a good tank declaring to his group when is the proper time to join the fight, a good healer is expected to declare his heals for two reasons: first, reassure whoever is bleeding that you are taking care of them, and second, letting other healers in your group know that it would be a waste of mana to cast a heal since you are already casting one.

for this you will use a two line social (with rare exceptions you can only have one command or line of text per social line)

/cast #
healing %t

where # is the number of the spell gem where your heal is memorised, from top to bottom, 1 to 8.

the result will be, if you have selected your tank before triggering your heal social:

healing Tankomatic

------------ For Pet classes ------------

There are many uses of socials for all the classes out there. For pet classes, it is good to have something like this:

/pet attack

pet will attack whatever you have targeted, unless he is already fighting.

/pet health

will give you a full report on what buffs are still active one your pet.

And in case your pet is on the wrong target, or you need to pull off

/pet back
/pet follow
/pet back
/pet follow

will attempt to disengage and recall your pet from its curent target.

--------------- Conclusions --------------

Plenty of other socials are comonly used. Debuffers should declare their slows and tashs so healers and other casters can evaluate the difficulty of the fight while it is ongoing and make the necessary adjustments. Chanters declare Mesmerizing ads so people know which mobs not to attack to avoid awakening them from their sleep "Mezzing a recondite subduer ! do not attack him !". Other socials can be utility, for example if I have to summon food regularily I would create a social as follow:

/cast #, /pause ##
/cast #, /pause ##
/cast #, /pause ##
/cast #, /pause ##
/cast #

The number after /cast is the number of the spell gem where i have memorized the summon food spell. The number after the /pause command is the total of the summon food spell cast time and recovery time, expressed in 6th of seconds, so that the second cast command will launch once my summon food spell is available again.

This would summon 5 loafs of bread with one keyboard stroke. also very handy for imbuing stacks of gems or metal.


---------------- What not to do ------------------

A social associated with a text message will be repeated over and over during an xp group. Your buddies will read it over and over, so use restraint in your creativity. Longer socials also make the info harder to read, and can make the difference between life and death in certain situations. All socials that do not require to be declared are usually best left silent, such as /pet attack or /assist. You may use a more fantasist social once in a while to lighten the mood of your crew, but remember that good things come with moderation

Enjoy !

_________________
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sillypants Lumberjack, Druidophant, snack for dragons.
officier of Shield of Norrath. Go Shield !