July Waypoints

Q: What did Han tell Luke at the July 4th barbecue?
A: May the fork be with you.
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Hello Darq Siders! By all accounts the new Origins server is a big success with players. Daybreak and Darkpaw have largely accomplished their goal of reviving a near-opening day gaming experience for their biggest fans (minus shard runs and WORTs). Anashti Sul is bulging with new and veteran players, and General chat is a nonstop scroll every day with players reminiscing and diving into dungeons with friends old and new.

There hasn't been much time for me to work on my brand new characters, but running around on the starter island and in all the old neighborhoods has been the definition of a blast from the past. I'm looking forward to going back and retracing my steps like it's 18 years ago.

I would characterize the rollout of DarqUI v3.1.3.6/v3.1.3.7 during the first week as mildly rocky, but I think we've got 99% of our players up and running with DarqUI and EQ2MAP. This month's newsletter is something of a progress report. I'll offer some pointers if you are still experiencing issues, and we've added some new updates on the premium server that I want to tell you about.

Utility

The current version of the DarqUI utility is v3.1.3.7, although you should expect to see v3.1.3.8 not too long from now. Even though the newly expanded Quick Setup grid was tested on literally hundreds of characters, a few errors and edge cases popped up as more players began using the utility.

If you expand the v3.1.3.7 Quick Setup grid (click "All data") you'll notice that not all fields are quite ready for prime time. But thanks to reports from Darq Side members and other players, we've finally got it nailed. I think you're going to enjoy having extra ways to organize your characters as well as the ability to save a complete character report in either text or CSV format.

DarqUI Notifier

Since the utility was the main focus of attention over the past few weeks, updates to the DarqUI Notifier/URL Helper got thrown onto the back burner. If you are using the notifier to check your Live game installation for DarqUI and EQ2MAP updates, you probably aren't seeing any issues. But the notifier doesn't "know" about the Origins server yet, which affects background reporting of EQ2MAP updates on Anashti Sul. It's an easy fix, and a new version of the notifier will be published soon.

We're also looking at the potential for the notifier to check for updates in two independent game installations, to accommodate players who are now running EverQuest II from Live and Origins folders separately.

Spell Names

You've probably noticed that in many cases spells and combat arts on Anashti Sul have acquired their original names from long ago before the big spell revamp. In those cases you'll want to manually rename the Group and Raid spell icons so they'll cast properly. This is easy to do in-game or with the utility. We don't have access to the old names on Census, so building an automated spell suggestions list with the O.G. spell names is going to be a fairly heavy lift.

On that subject, a recent thread on the official EverQuest II forums mentioned the availability online of the Prima Official Guide for our favorite game, circa 2004, conveniently digitized. If you really want a blast from the past, check it out on this page at archive.org.

I downloaded the PDF version from the list of options, and sure enough it's the original 300+ page strategy guide loaded down with lore, quest walkthroughs, class, race and character creation guides (and original spell names!) Every page is heavily detailed and decorated in full color like some kind of 13th century illuminated manuscript. Origins players will definitely want to grab this historical tome.

Tooltips on Stats

As of this writing it looks like the game designers have finally updated stat tooltips on the Origins Character window and XP Bar to reflect how the various base stats affect your character. So I no longer need to report on that. :)

Origins Characters

It was surprising to see how easy the game developers made it to convert your Live game installation to an Origins server without any options or explanations from the LaunchPad. If you took this route, you probably ended up with a mix of Live and Origins characters on your Character Select screen and in the utility.

If you want to clean up the list to show only your Origins characters, log out of the game and find logincache in your main game folder. You may have similar folders named logincache-us or logincache-eu.

Delete any of these folders and then use the LaunchPad to log in to Character Select for each of your EverQuest II accounts. You don't have to log in to individual characters, just hit PLAY and you'll end up at Character Select. This will recreate the logincache folder and populate it with fresh character files. Once you've done that you'll only see your new Origins characters when you reopen the utility, and on Character Select when you restart the game from the LaunchPad. Easy!

Editor's Note: Origins characters will not be listed in the dropdown box at the top of the LaunchPad window, even after you follow these instructions. You will still see your Live characters even though the LaunchPad is configured for Origins.

EQ2Origins

The Prima guide is not the only place where Anashti Sul players can find some old-school love. Darq Sider Maergoth has taken the monumental step of building a wiki site just for Origins that mirrors the de facto standard EQ2i Wiki at fandom.com. Meet EQ2Origins!

Fast fact: Not counting the Wikipedia site, did you know the EQ2i Wiki is something like the 10th largest wiki in the world?  That's a lot of pages!

So, what will you find when you visit EQ2Origins? Quests, Zones, Mobs, Gear, Recipes... everything you expect. But tailored to the Origins EverQuest II experience. The regular wiki has evolved along with the Live game over the years, so EQ2Origins seeks to roll back to 2006 with accurate information for quests, gear, classes, spells and everything else unique to Anashti Sul.

And the best part, because it's a wiki, we players get to participate! Not unlike The Darq Side, the new EQ2Origins wiki site thrives on crowdsourced ideas and observations. After all it's our game and our obsession, and the official wiki is a great place to share and build this valuable information source for each other.

So check out your brand new info site and jump in anywhere -- even if it's only to confirm the accuracy of a wiki article in the upper right-hand corner of any page.

And because EQ2Origins is the perfect custom lookup site for Anashti Sul, we've added EQ2O shortcut buttons to:

• Examine Item (Normal and Wide)

• Examine Spell Effect (Normal and Wide)

• Examine Recipe

• Tradeskill Crafting item

• Tradeskill Experimentation item

• Quest

• Completed Quest

• Group Quest

• Active Quest (Quest Helper)

And because it's a valuable new online gameplay resource, EQ2Origins now has its very own spot on the DarqUI Browser Presets page

Bank

Not every DarqUI feature is a big game-changer like Gear Buff Macros, Loadouts, Heroic Opportunities, Icon Bar or Maintained Spell Monitor. The premium UI is also tricked out with dozens of little conveniences and quality-of-life improvements here and there. Saving mouse clicks and eliminating frustration is what we're all about here at Darq Side HQ.

Member Kattster pointed out recently that visiting a bank rarely involves the Character window, even though it's programmed by default to pop up whenever you open the Bank. With as many bags and bank boxes as we have these days, the Character window just clutters up an already overloaded game window most of the time.

If you want the Character window to stay closed when you visit a bank, use this nifty new control. It's easy to pop open the Character window any time you need it with the [C] shortcut, or from the Start menu. I've been using the new setting for a few days, and it's one of those little features I never realized I needed until I had it. Thanks, Kattster!

Editor's Note: After this post was published the Guild Bank window was outfitted with a similar control. Check it out here!

Pre-Loadout

The Loadouts window is fairly new but it has quickly become popular, in part due to its extreme versatility. You can stack all of the various steps together or just a few, but Darq Sider Furiousone needed just one more small addition to make his Loadouts window complete.

For raiding and grouping, you might use a loadout to swap gear, AA specs, buffs or temporary adornments on the fly, depending on the situation. Furiousone needed a way to announce to his party or to a chat channel that he needs x-number of seconds to execute a loadout. There is a generic Command option at the end of each loadout, but it's no bueno to use for an announcement since it comes after all the steps that take extra time.

We came up with a Loadouts tweak that I think you'll like. If you create a command file that has the same name as the name of the loadout, it will run just before the first configured step. In Furiousone's example, he created a command file with a /raidsay announcement that comes right before the actual loadout. Pretty smart! And he tells me it's working great.

So, what's a command file? It's a simple .txt file written in Notepad, located in your main game folder. Inside the file is a simple list of commands to execute, nothing special, one command per line. Don't include a / slash, and make sure the command(s) are instant-cast or they may interfere with the rest of the loadout.

For example, if your loadout is named "adventure" then name the file "adventure" without the .txt extension. You can also come back and rename your loadout "adventure.txt" if that's easier. Either way, the two names must match exactly.

Tradeskill Auto-Equip

The premium Tradeskills window has gotten a bunch of improvements, one of which is the auto-equip feature. It loads up a tradeskill-oriented gear set, mount and familiar when you begin crafting, and then swaps in your adventure gear/mount/familiar when you are done. Darq Sider Alils is a dedicated tradeskiller who uses the auto-equip feature.

Alils suggested, correctly, that other things besides gear/mount/familiar can be beneficial when starting a crafting or experimenting session, and so the logical answer was to include Loadouts as an alternative auto-equip mode. So now you can choose the three presets mentioned above, or a more complex loadout as your auto-equip method.

For example you could configure Loadout A as your Adventure loadout, and B for Tradeskills. Using loadouts you are no longer limited to equipping just the gear set, mount and familiar. Immediately before crafting or experimenting, auto-equip can automatically cast a list of spells or commands, change your AA spec, run a gear buff macro, and any of the other steps in your loadout in addition to swapping out gear, mount and familiar. Give it a try and I'll bet you never go back! Thanks to Alils for the suggestion, testing and feedback.

Thank You

I want to welcome a bunch of new Darq Side members who joined us this month, and express our sincere thanks to current and returning supporters. We could not do any of this without you. I'm excited to jump onto the new server with you, and looking forward to turning your brainstorms and great ideas into more amazing crowdsourced UI features. We've already got a long list of member-submitted improvements on the boards now, and I can't wait to see what else we come up with together. Thank you for choosing to be a part of our journey.