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Question - Returning after nearly 20 years (1 Viewer)

Hawk7

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 6, 2021
RedCents
989¢
Hail adventurers!

I last played EQ back in the early 2000s. Mainly back for nostalgia reasons and to see and do things I didn't do before.
I mained an enchanter back then and highlights off the top of my head were:
- completing the shawl questline
- breaking into the plane of fear, wiping, panicking about retrieving my corpse
- mezzing 3+ unexpected adds and keeping them controlled while the team beat down the immense hp of the Kunark(?) mobs and ending the fight completely oom but victorious
- charm soloing mobs that can 1-shot me (Velious I think)

I also remember 30min+ corpse runs and logging in - LFG - *crickets* - log off an hour later.

I played a few chars through Gloomingdeep just to get a feel for it again. The old zones though, really hitting me in the feels. Getting lost in Neriak, walking around North Ro. Got me all misty eyed.

So...
Played WoW for a long time. Ended up 5-boxing in WoW, the classic 5 shaman line-up but I also did a Pally,Priest,Warlock,Wizard,Hunter team to dungeon with. WoW peaked for me in Lich King, didn't play much after that and I heard they pretty much killed off boxing.
My boxing setup was a single box with AHK for broadcasting keystrokes to all instances. Each character had custom macros on the hotbars and WoW gave us really cool tools at the time to make things easy like Wait commands that made it possible to set up tank/dps/heal rotations on a single keypress.

My plan now is to really experience more of EQ and rediscover memories (I keep bugging my 10yo to share rediscoveries). I am not in a rush and want to explore a lot of the classic world. I created a F2P account and some characters on Bristlebane I think. Next step is to add 2 more accounts, get MQ and KissAssist running smoothly and then probably ramping up to 6 accounts (may stick with 3 depending on how well 3 functions with the mercs).

So questions:
1. From what I can tell Bristlebane should be fine, right? It is only TLP and Truebox servers that have boxing specific limitations.
2. KissAssist seems like it automates characters, so heals/dps/cc trigger automatically on the "slaves", correct? Similar to mercs but obviously with a lot more flexibility.
3. Good 3/6 class compositions? I'll probably ignore all advice and just make something like 1x gnome with 5x ogre for shits and giggles.

Looking forward to crawling through Upper Guk!
 
1. BB is a good server and popular.
2. KA requires a bit of configuration for the most part. The CWTN plugins are very turnkey with zero config really needed.
3. SK/SHM/BRD/BST/ZRK/ZRK is popular, WAR/CLR/ENC/MAG/MAG/RNG. Really a good core would be TANK + HEALER + CC + DPS

Tank being SK/PAL/WAR
HEALER being Shaman or Cleric, I have a 115 druid doesn't heal good enough as shaman or cleric. Cleric being by far the best healer.
CC being bard or enc. Id say melee group grab a bard and caster group grab a enchanter. I have both at 115 and they seem about equal.
Anything else works fine for DPS. I ran SK/DRU/SHM/MAG/BRD/BST for the longest time, but druids are shit. So I have been trying to fill that hole with something new.

Also as many people have said before F2P characters > mercs by far.
 
I ran SK/DRU/SHM/MAG/BRD/BST for the longest time, but druids are shit. So I have been trying to fill that hole with something new.

Interesting, was loosely thinking something similar to that lineup with a DRU/WIZ. So to cover ports, cc and movement a DRU+ENC or BRD+WIZ.
 
I love thinking about class compositions but its all about what is fun for you.

Something at least close to "optimal" would be (WAR/SHD)/SHM/BRD/BER/BER/BER for melee group or (WAR/SHD)/(CLR/DRU)/ENC/MAG/MAG/MAG for caster group. I ran the former melee group but now I do WAR/SHM/MNK/MNK/MNK/MNK and to me it is more fun to automate all kinds of fd/pulling/off-tanking shenanigans.
 
Going with a melee team first. Ran a SK/BST/SHM through Gloomingdeep with 3x T2 merc healers and using some of the KISS INIs. Planning to add 2x BRZ and CLR.
5x Ogre and 1x Dark Elf for cleric.

Thinking of guild name:
- Ladies of the Night
- Rallos Zek's Angels
- Dark Elf Sandwhich
- Snow White and the Ogres

Team2 will be caster team.

Also some questions:

Is there a way to do group quests once for every character or do you need a kill for each quest item loot? I vaguely remember that way back we needed to convert groups to raids for certain quests.

I am thinking about getting the class plugins, so thats $80 for 4x classes excluding the main. Are they effective from low levels or should I wait till I am 50+?
Also another $80 for a caster team, PAL/ENC/MAG/MAG/WIZ/CLR.

Also EQ subscriptions, if I end up playing for a while I will probably subscribe at least 1 account. Is it possible to fund some of the other accounts by buying Krono with pp?
 
Also EQ subscriptions, if I end up playing for a while I will probably subscribe at least 1 account. Is it possible to fund some of the other accounts by buying Krono with pp?

Yes, you can farm stuff and earn plat and then in turn buy Krono off other players. Most servers have players selling thru general chat since the bazaar has a plat limit and Krono will usually be higher than that depending on your server.

Right now players are buying/selling for around 2.5 mil plat on Tunare.

So you will need your subscribed account to be in General Chat, or a Silver account. F2P cannot see or join general chat.
 
Welcome back! There is a lot of good information on the boards and a lot of folks that will help you with any questions or advice in this community.
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Ventured into Blackburrow today. Pathing disaster haha. One char drowned, one pathed very weird at some point and ended up far away while the rest was fighting 3+ mobs and more just kept adding. Need to setup a social to stop everything so I can easily take manual control when needed.
 
Druids are visitile, it can make the hard to automate, but they can fill a lot of niches including ports as mentioned, ports are a tad less important in modern EQ but still can be handy.

That said, druids are passible healers, they can be backup Crowed control, they are great DPS, and do good ADPS particularly for caster groups. but they take work to get the AA's needed and take time to get setup and running well for your setup; particularly leveling with them.
 
Ventured into Blackburrow today. Pathing disaster haha. One char drowned, one pathed very weird at some point and ended up far away while the rest was fighting 3+ mobs and more just kept adding. Need to setup a social to stop everything so I can easily take manual control when needed.
Stay out of dungeons until you get the hang of movement. It will only discourage you. I’ve been here a year and i still don’t like dungeons. Good luck and welcome back!
 
Stay out of dungeons until you get the hang of movement. It will only discourage you. I’ve been here a year and i still don’t like dungeons. Good luck and welcome back!

Thanks! I've boxed before so movement issues are not new to me. I am having a lot of fun. Additional dungeon problem right now is being an ogre. Having to crouch to get through some areas (even underwater?!?!).
 
Thanks! I've boxed before so movement issues are not new to me. I am having a lot of fun. Additional dungeon problem right now is being an ogre. Having to crouch to get through some areas (even underwater?!?!).
Hah! When I saw your post about 5 ogres I cried a little for you. But then I saw you were making a shaman so at least you can make your own shrink pots eventually.
 
Team is up to 37. Highlights:

- shammy Shrink spell was a life changer for dungeon crawling
- BlackBurrow conquered
- Throne room camped in Warrens (King/High Shaman respawn is loooooong)
- Permafrost Keep was a disaster!
- Sol A was fun! Killed pretty much everything in there.
- Mistmoore I got to entrance but high level monk was camping entire thing

Other things:
- after adding new lvl 30 ini files - shammy proceeded to cannibalize herself to death and cleric didn't lift a finger. eyebrows were raised
- hunted some hill giants and cyclopses for lols

Taking a break from dungeon crawling now and doing the Blightfire 30+ quests. Buying new spells every 5 levels and updating INI files is the biggest pain for me atm.
 
use pokscribe.mac and try RGmercs and never look back..... =)

Used pokscribe.mac to buy all my spells!! It also bought all the imbue spells... now I am broke.
Tried RGmercs but couldn't get it to work right. No DPS from anyone. Healers healed. Only started buffing after the 2nd pull or so. BST/BER/BER just stood there, judging. This was starting with /rggroup and targeting the tank and starting with /rgstart
 
Used pokscribe.mac to buy all my spells!! It also bought all the imbue spells... now I am broke.
Tried RGmercs but couldn't get it to work right. No DPS from anyone. Healers healed. Only started buffing after the 2nd pull or so. BST/BER/BER just stood there, judging. This was starting with /rggroup and targeting the tank and starting with /rgstart
Dont forget to assign MA and MT in EQ before you do /rggroup (if you do rggroup you dont need to do rgstart)

Can also revommend starting
/plugin mq2status load

And then doing a /status
Then you see if you have the correct assist assigned.
 
If you'd like to give it a go, you can try out some of the plugins we offer on the test server to see if they're the right fit for you. They do cost a bit of RL scratch to use on live but they are an option for Bst/Ber classes. You didn't specify what you were using for healer, but we have CLR and SHM. Believe you can catch some links to them in my sig.
 
Dont forget to assign MA and MT in EQ before you do /rggroup (if you do rggroup you dont need to do rgstart)

Can also revommend starting
/plugin mq2status load

And then doing a /status
Then you see if you have the correct assist assigned.

This may have been the problem. I had MT assigned but not MA. Will give it a go again! Thanks for tip.
 
If you'd like to give it a go, you can try out some of the plugins we offer on the test server to see if they're the right fit for you. They do cost a bit of RL scratch to use on live but they are an option for Bst/Ber classes. You didn't specify what you were using for healer, but we have CLR and SHM. Believe you can catch some links to them in my sig.

Team is SHD/CLE/SHM/BST/BER/BER with me driving the SHD exclusively except when things go south. Or I need to sell. Or I need to rez. KissAssist keeps trying to summon an out of range corpse which is a problem when it is the main healer and it interferes with the healer actually healing and not just standing there oom spamming summon corpse on an out of range corpse.

Not looking at the CWTN plugins yet. Team is entirely F2P for now, just enjoying the memories. When I hit more of a wall or end game content and the F2P limitations becomes a burden I'll decide which accounts to subscribe and will probably look at the CWTN plugins then as well.

I am probably going to level a second team first though, team caster! PAL/CLE/ENC/WIZ/MAG/MAG
And maybe a 2-box low effort BRD + something else for days I just need to chill.

Also, I've been a software dev for a very long time so a little tempted to have a go at writing some plugins or chip-in on some of the existing ones.
 
No pressure, just making sure you're aware of alternatives. The important thing is to have fun.

re: software dev
We'd be happy to help you along if you were interested in working on some of the available projects or just create your own and share with others.

Here is two guides and a utility I did up to help people interested in being part of the creators at redguides.

And here is the original MQ2 wiki for some more in depth information.
and hidden in there is
the list of top level objects which you can select, which should lead you to their members and what datatypes they have access to use.

In regards to writing plugins since your just getting back to the scene it likely would be worth the effort to start trying to create your projects for next as that is what we are gearing up for a transition to use over the normal VV Live that is the default download. While there isn't a ton of documentation on plugin development I'm available to answer any questions you might have to get you started.

There is also Lua as an option for Next, but I'm afraid I don't do Lua as of yet. Also, Next supports ImGui, and while I'm not familiar with that yet either, it's an option if you are. Also, there is likely other open source projects available that should get you going in the right direction with either of those two topics.

I'm fairly certain I enjoy coding things more than I do playing, but as a byproduct I'm able to code and play games. Which works for me as I do enjoy both things.
 
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Team is SHD/CLE/SHM/BST/BER/BER with me driving the SHD exclusively except when things go south. Or I need to sell. Or I need to rez. KissAssist keeps trying to summon an out of range corpse which is a problem when it is the main healer and it interferes with the healer actually healing and not just standing there oom spamming summon corpse on an out of range corpse.

For my FTP team I turned off summon and auto Rez. It was too much to have the SK go down then the cleric try to Rez during battle. Usually the rest of the team died during the cast. I’m not home so I can’t look at the exact KA lines to change.

since you like to code, I recommend you post your KA files as you grow. I’m pretty sure low level .ini files are KA 11.01 and not 12. Post yours for the next old timer who returns and doesn’t know how to code, As the team grows there are fewer and fewer FTP .ini files so it will be helpful to those who enjoy the pain!

best of luck and happy hunting!
 
GREAT thread - I'm in nearly the same position OP started, retired old fart here who played with my wife early 2000's on multiple toons and restarting, BUT new to the Multibox community. Just now testing and setting up, will try a few of the directions here but just using our old existing toons (SK, SHM, DRU, BST, RGR, ENC) and expand from there.

I didn't know about the section to buy Plugins etc, just grabbed a few free Kiss inis, I will search for those but any hints on how to proceed welcome - also an ex-coder so not afraid to dive in but a newb - will be a fun new adventure for our 70's (real life 70's, not game!). Nice to have an alternative to ALT-TAB boxing and socials!
 
GREAT thread - I'm in nearly the same position OP started, retired old fart here who played with my wife early 2000's on multiple toons and restarting, BUT new to the Multibox community. Just now testing and setting up, will try a few of the directions here but just using our old existing toons (SK, SHM, DRU, BST, RGR, ENC) and expand from there.

I didn't know about the section to buy Plugins etc, just grabbed a few free Kiss inis, I will search for those but any hints on how to proceed welcome - also an ex-coder so not afraid to dive in but a newb - will be a fun new adventure for our 70's (real life 70's, not game!). Nice to have an alternative to ALT-TAB boxing and socials!

Happy to see that you're getting some use out of the existing thread.

In regards to plugins, you can go to the Resource section.

That should give you a quick list of the latest updated or added resources.
Then on the left hand side of your screen should be a box that will allow you to quickly filter it down even more.
1631716402448.png

Hit one of those drop downs and select what you're looking for such as "Plugins" then "Private Plugins (Level 2+)"

Not all plugins in this section cost money, most are even included with VV for that matter. But occasionally you'll find a plugin with a price to the right side of it's name. Again, the most recently updated plugins should be first in the list, so you will probably see the ones that cost money in that list as they're updated often to address any issues or to make improvements.

Such as Hytiek's MQ2Grind
1631716521736.png

Or one of the CWTN Plugins.
1631716559013.png

You can then click on the name of the resource which will take you to the overview where the owner of that resource will give you information (and sometimes a video) about the item.

In the case of my plugins if you're on the test server there's no need to purchase them, they come with VV and are free for Test.

If you decide you want to purchase something, you should be presented with a purchase option in the top right corner of the overview screen for that resource.
1631716678352.png

That should indicate both how much the resource cost, and how long the purchase lasts.

If you do decide to purchase a resource and have completed the transaction you'll no longer be presented with a link to purchase, but instead to download
1631716747274.png

Now I know it's tempting to download it from that link, but it's highly recommended that you load the redguides launcher and click on the "plugins" tab on the left, and simply hit install from there as opposed to trying to download it and place the file yourself. The launcher will put it where it needs to go for you.

Once you've purchased it, used the launcher to install it, and get in game, you would be able to load it with /plugin mq2grind load or whatever the plugin name is. To unload it you can use /plugin mq2grind unload

Be sure to check out the resources that are free as well. Lots of really helpful tools at redguides.
 
http://docs.macroquest.org should be the most up to date documentation for TLOs.

You don’t need to know either Lua or Imgui to get started with them (in comparison, no one has any existing knowledge of the macro language before they start with MQ2).

And if you’re playing on Live you can’t build MQ2 for Live without some special arrangement. (You can build MQ for both Live and Test right now using the Next code base).
 
Happy to see that you're getting some use out of the existing thread.

In regards to plugins, you can go to the Resource section.

That should give you a quick list of the latest updated or added resources.
Then on the left hand side of your screen should be a box that will allow you to quickly filter it down even more.
View attachment 33024

Hit one of those drop downs and select what you're looking for such as "Plugins" then "Private Plugins (Level 2+)"

Not all plugins in this section cost money, most are even included with VV for that matter. But occasionally you'll find a plugin with a price to the right side of it's name. Again, the most recently updated plugins should be first in the list, so you will probably see the ones that cost money in that list as they're updated often to address any issues or to make improvements.

Such as Hytiek's MQ2Grind
View attachment 33025

Or one of the CWTN Plugins.
View attachment 33026

You can then click on the name of the resource which will take you to the overview where the owner of that resource will give you information (and sometimes a video) about the item.

In the case of my plugins if you're on the test server there's no need to purchase them, they come with VV and are free for Test.

If you decide you want to purchase something, you should be presented with a purchase option in the top right corner of the overview screen for that resource.
View attachment 33027

That should indicate both how much the resource cost, and how long the purchase lasts.

If you do decide to purchase a resource and have completed the transaction you'll no longer be presented with a link to purchase, but instead to download
View attachment 33028

Now I know it's tempting to download it from that link, but it's highly recommended that you load the redguides launcher and click on the "plugins" tab on the left, and simply hit install from there as opposed to trying to download it and place the file yourself. The launcher will put it where it needs to go for you.

Once you've purchased it, used the launcher to install it, and get in game, you would be able to load it with /plugin mq2grind load or whatever the plugin name is. To unload it you can use /plugin mq2grind unload

Be sure to check out the resources that are free as well. Lots of really helpful tools at redguides.
Thanks for the reply and info - I've moved ahead and gotten two plugins, testing them and love the work with only one issue so far I posted in BST discussion - can't seem to figure out how to get BST to assist from out of group! If I can figure out my lack of understanding there, will add a SHM and Enchanter and Warrior - getting all you have for our leveled toons as they are avail and will write inis for the rest (e.g. Bard and Hunter and Necro).

Nice work, wish I'd understood it earlier (well not when I raided) - would have saved me mucking with WoW raiding etc when old eq gang broke up!
 
Thanks for the reply and info - I've moved ahead and gotten two plugins, testing them and love the work with only one issue so far I posted in BST discussion - can't seem to figure out how to get BST to assist from out of group! If I can figure out my lack of understanding there, will add a SHM and Enchanter and Warrior - getting all you have for our leveled toons as they are avail and will write inis for the rest (e.g. Bard and Hunter and Necro).

Nice work, wish I'd understood it earlier (well not when I raided) - would have saved me mucking with WoW raiding etc when old eq gang broke up!
you posted in the mq2bst thread about your mq2bst question (before posting the same thing here, which i answered :( ). we don't have out-of-group assisting.
 
Yikes sorry - I overlapped posts yes, think I understand where we are now. Just bought the SHM plugin will try it, tweaking my BST INI to use for out of group DPS - also obviously just learning my way around the forums.

Hope you can excuse my clumsiness - all this is new to me, my idea of boxing was to camp a pocket cleric for raids .......
 
Progress update: team is level 56 now (nothing bought from bazaar so quest/dropped gear only - chain drops have been painfully low, quite a bit of plate dropped though except chest :( )

1632113691664.png

Summary of my learnings:

RGMercs

I initially used KissAssist and would just copy INIs from the resources every 5 levels and update 6x INI files. @Robban suggested I try RGMercs and once I got it running it is super helpful.

Observations:

- I initially had only a MT assigned, you absolutely have to assign a MA (right click character menu -> roles -> main tank / main assist / puller / etc)
- I've set my beast master as the MA for now which works fairly well
- I drive the MT who is also puller and just recently got the SK 1h levitate spell which makes pulling in hilly areas (read Skyfire mountains) much easier
- It just works, awesome

Niggles:

- got handed the insta death clicky when I was in PoK, accepted on all chars without really paying attention. RGMercs went into a loop spamming a warning and the state of my CTRL key got set to pressed and I couldn't find a way to unpress CTRL. Managed to get machine restarted without accidentally doing any damage by unintentionally triggering some CTRL+key combo. Once I realized what was going on, destroyed the item in all inventories and got things stabilized again.

- currently maining the SK as MT and puller which allows me to grab adds and basically tank everything, sometimes I use the cleric to pacify for splitting big pulls. I think I would have to be careful FD pulling too close to group as cleric will heal and aggro
Also, doesn't feel overly efficient having the MT and puller the same character
I also do not run RGMercs on the MT (with main loop off) as it unloads MQ2Melee and I like not having to micro manage bash/taunt/melee toggle atm so some commands don't seem to work. Especially target switching.
Case in point: weird glitch in Old Seb where shaman would warp back to spawn at <10% and reset to 30%, would have liked to tell the MA to ignore shaman and switch targets instead of running after shaman

So yeah, with my team setup, still need to find a smooth MT/MA/Puller setup. I've experimented using FD to drop aggro so I can go pull more but didn't feel good either.

PoKScribe

Another suggestion by @Robban and it is awesome! Well, I am broke. Spells are expensive. It does what is says on the box though, runs to all spell vendors and buys all available spells up to current level.

Niggles:
- sometimes a spell is left in inventory or on cursor, not sure if this is when I run out of plat or something funky with my bags/containers. I just manually scribe these spells so no biggie

AutoLoot

Finally got to a point where looting was just way too tedious and I started experimenting with AutoLoot. Works fairly well.

Niggles:
- first time I turned it on it filled up main character, then filled up second character but kept giving drops to second character. The second time I used it all seemed good, filled up 2nd char bag space and moved to 3rd.

CONCERNS!
What will it do with epic quest drops? Is it clever enough to know that it is a cleric epic quest drop and force assign it to the cleric? Would be a little frustrating if I find shaman/cleric epic quest drops in the berserker bags.

PoKTutorial

Another great macro and you get a 10 slot bag!
Tip: you need to have your merc out so you can't do this in a full group
You also need to kill a gnoll for this quest and the macro seems to get stuck when it ports you and it can't find the gnoll (if you do this for 6 characters you will run out of gnolls). Manually killing the gnoll and porting back seems to reset the macro and it continues on from there (just needs to hail npc again I think)

General Comments

- loving dungeon crawling! Latest dungeon was Old Seb, I didn't do crypt as it can only be unlocked by ROG/BRD I think, but did everything else. I usually start dungeons with a mix of blue/white/yellow and leave when mostly just blues.
City of Mist felt a bit sparse for a full group.

- did the level 50 PoK gear quest x3 for all 3 rewards, doing the 55 one next. Probably gain a few levels just doing those.

- being broke hurts a little. Couldn't afford all the Shaman spells (how many spells do Shaman have?). But I haven't really tried to specifically farm plat yet. (fully FTP at the moment so no bazaar trader)

- limited bag space also hurts. Only have 10 slotter from PoK tutorial and an assortment of 6 slotters and other misc 4 slotters / crafting containers.

- feels like I am leveling too quickly, lol, I out level dungeons before finishing an end to end crawl

Edit:
- fixed who suggested RGMercs and PokScribe
- added some thoughts
 
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You should be getting into the area where there are a lot of cash drops now. You can use the vet AA to summon a vendor to sell to, so make sure you’re not leaving stuff around because your inventory is full. Once you have enough money, pick up some extraplanar bags. I usually do two per character and let tradeskill stuff filter into them.

Autoloot doesn’t have logic for sorting, that’s all done in the ini file so if you’re worried about where something is going to go, make sure your loot ini is setup properly.
 
Question - Returning after nearly 20 years

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