December Waypoints

I broke up with my video game console, now it's my ex-box.
Nothing personal, it was just time for a Switch.
_____

November has been a busy month in Norrath with a new Live expansion to explore, new Varsoon unlocks, and EverQuest II's 20th anniversary! And now we can look forward to everyone's favorite winter holiday and the release of the dog-gone Splitpaw adventure pack on Anashti Sul.

We've also been busy here at Darq Side HQ, finishing up several new and updated features that I want to show you. Most of the December updates will center around the release of Utility v3.1.3.9 and Notifier v1.2.1.1 which should happen in the early part of this month.

Knowledge Book Favorites

Not too long ago Darq Side member Dr. Pepper (Forestchild) wondered in Discord how to disentangle more than a dozen of his "fluff pets" from the other spells in his Knowledge book. Instead of rebuilding the Icon Bar with an extra row of icons (I'm still recovering from that suggestion), I promised I would revisit an old back-burner idea for a "Spell Favorites" feature.

The result is an overlay page in the premium Knowledge book with 16 slots that, with the help of the utility, can be loaded up with any combination of icons -- fluff spells or otherwise. On these slots you can duplicate pretty much any spell, combat art, tradeskill reaction or Ascension spell from anywhere in the book. Because Favorites are not "real" spell slots, sorting the book won't scramble them up. They'll always be right where you put them.

You can toggle the overlay from any other page using the gold star icon (see above screenshot). If you have certain abilities that don't deserve a hotkey slot but you also don't want to rummage around in your book to find them, Knowledge Book Favorites might be the perfect answer.

Setting up a favorite is as easy as typing the spell or ability name. The utility will fill in everything you need for casting in-game.

Spells that are already in the queue are not cleared when you click a shortcut so you can cast a second spell without waiting for the first to complete, similar to regular spell icons and hotkeys.

Like the Icon Bar, Knowledge Favorites don't have any fancy details like drag-drop, cooldown timers or complex tooltips. But they serve as yet another way to offload spells and commands that you want to keep handy without burning up more of your limited hotkey slots. Forestchild is testing the completed feature right now, and it will be included in utility v3.1.3.9.

Inventory Additions

Housing, and the decoration thereof, is an important part of the total EverQuest II experience. Each character can own as many as 30 (!) pieces of real estate furnished with thousands of items. I don't think I own 30 houses in total among all of my characters but I know many players, like Darq Side member Kiskilla, would be happy to add more to their personal subdivisions.

All who play using DarqUI now have a total of 16 housing slots per character, which almost doubles the previous maximum on the Inventory page.

You can also see in the image below that the quested Harvest Bag has been added to the Inventory page, which means your item searches can now include its contents.

And speaking of the Harvest bag, it's also finally been included on the Bag profile editor. If you're not familiar with this part of the utility, take a look at [this video].

Training is a Shield

Darq Sider Arderath (aka zerodogg -- check out some of his excellent resources here: [1] [2] [3]) recently came up with another clever improvement for those players who run EverQuest II on Linux and Mac machines. Leveraging the premium Mercenary Training Reminder feature, he added a new command to his DarqUI Linux Helper to report on the current training status of your mercenaries.

As long as you set the reminder when you start training a mercenary (just a couple of clicks), you can run Arderath's script any time (get it here) to see which of your mercenaries have leveled up, and how long the rest need to complete the current rank. It's also possible to run EverQuest II and the Linux Helper on a Mac. New Darq Side member Fiora is testing and providing feedback on that.

With some help from Arderath we've incorporated a similar script into the Inventory module in utility v3.1.3.9 for Windows. Click the blue training link and you'll get an up to the minute status report for all of your mercenaries. Nice! Thanks to Arderath for another great idea and for the assistance with pilfering his code. :)

Quick Camp List

Not every EverQuest II player runs around with multiple accounts, so the more complex feature set of the multi-account Login/Shutdown window is not always necessary. We've added some convenience controls to the Quick Camp list on the Shutdown page in the utility for single-account players. Using the right-click context menu you can now fine tune your character list much more conveniently.

One note: If you customize your character list, remember to check the box for "Don't rebuild during Quick Setup" below the list. This will nail down your custom character order until you make manual adjustments again.

Multiple Chat Channel Tabs

Darq Sider DCWarGames was experiencing a common frustration: adding a chat channel to a tab disables it in other tabs. This is the default behavior, but there is a game command that enables chat channels to appear on multiple tabs at once. Instead of fiddling with commands and Notepad and the eq2.ini file, I say the easier solution is a simple checkbox. Click. Done.

LFG/LFM

My crusade to revive the use of the well-designed LFG/LFM interface continues. Yes I know it's easy to use the LFG channel, but newbies and pros alike could get much better results quickly if players would use this default component. On the Origins server there's almost always at least a couple of players in the list, and often there will be a group or two looking for more. But I never get anything but dismal results on Live servers, regardless of time of day.

As an added convenience, and to promote the use of the "purpose" setting, we've included an instance of the DarqUI Favorites® technlogy to this window for all who use DarqUI. Using the dropdown you can quickly add a descriptive preconfigured purpose string to your listing in the window.

Choose any of the presets or replace them with your own terms. If you're already "looking" when you set a purpose, the window will automatically reset your listing to show up immediately when other players on the server perform a search.

Not Lost in the Translation

A couple of weeks ago with help from Darq Side member Marco we added a shortcut to translate web pages to other languages using the in-game browser. It's turned out to be a solid new feature, and hopefully it's improving the gaming experience for our international members.

While in the process of building the translation bridge, we also added a similar function to the URL Helper, which is part of the upcoming DarqUI Notifications app. Using v1.3.1.1 of the notifier, Darq Side members will be able to optionally choose a translation language that will export web links from the game window out to their Windows browser in their chosen language automatically. Viva la URL!

Thank You

As you can see, most of this month's new features hinge upon releasing the next app versions, which right now is scheduled for the first week in December. We have a couple of instances where testers are still AFK for the Thanksgiving holiday, and I want to make sure they have a chance to get back into the game to finish testing and feedback. I'll let you know in an abbreviated post when everything is published. This post will continue to serve as the detailed "patch notes" for the next update.

We never sit still for long here at Darq Side HQ, and it's only because of your support and excellent ideas that we can deliver amazing crowdsourced UI content like you see here, every month. I'm looking forward to delighting you, our other members, and EverQuest II players around the world with more great suggestions and brainstorms from the (very long) to-do list.

I hope you're enjoying all the benefits of your Darq Side membership! An extra thank you for mentioning us to your guildmates and fellow players. Stay warm on the dragon-scarred tundra, and we'll see you in-game!