FAQ 2008-11-01 [part 2 of 5]

(Available on the web as http://www.icynic.com/~don/EQ/age.faq.htm)

3. Questions about How to Play

3.1 Q: What do all these acronyms and jargon mean?

A: There are various glossaries online that can help you understand some of
the odd terms you'll see both in the game and in the newsgroup. Here is one,
though it's considerably out of date: http://tinyurl.com/2qnmb

On the other hand, if you just want a short list of terms that are most
commonly seen, try section 9 of this FAQ.

3.2 Q: What is the best race/class combo to play?

A: To answer this question you have to ask yourself what is important to you.
If you're familiar with other RPGs and games of this nature, you probably know
that each character will have his or her strengths and weaknesses, and that no
single class/race combo will give you all the good with none of the bad. The
question to ask is not what race/class combo is the best, but which is best
for YOU. The best way to answer this question is to learn about all of the
classes and races, and make your decision based on that knowledge.

The biggest factor will be your choice of class, since that determines most
(but not all) of your abilities and thus your typical role in a group. Your
character's race mostly determines your starting city (not a big deal these
days since it's fairly easy to travel), and some abilities (night vision,
sneaking, more initial agility or strength or intelligence, etc.), and may
affect how some NPCs react to you, but its main effect is that each class
can only be played by certain races, so again your biggest decision will be
which class to play. Section 3.20, grouping, has a brief description
of the roles of many classes.

3.3 Q: Can I change which deity I worship, or become Agnostic?

A: No, sorry. The only way you can "change" your deity is to delete your
character and start over. Even that may not help, because some races have a
limited choice of deities. What you see on the character selection screen
is what you get.

3.4 Q: What are the Priests of Discord for? Can I become a PK on regular
servers?

A: The Priests of Discord (PoD) will give you a Tome of Discord if you talk
to them and follow their prompts. If you return the Tome to them, you will
become a "player killer" (PK) and your name will now show in red. Becoming a
player killer has grave consequences that you may not understand completely
from reading the tome. A player killer can engage in combat with other
player killers, but cannot kill or be killed by non-PK players (except in a
duel). More importantly, if you are a player killer, you will NOT be able to
receive most forms of aid from other players, nor will you be able to aid
them. This means that you cannot be healed or "buffed" by anybody who is not
a player killer. Since more than 99% of the players on normal servers are
not player killers this totally ruins your ability to get in a group beyond
level 15 or so. If you want to be a player killer, play on a PvP server. If
you do turn in a Tome and later change your mind, there is no guarantee that
you will be able to change back to normal status, so only do it if you are
certain that you want your character to live a solitary life.

With the release of the Omens of War expansion, the Priests of Discord also
provide the means to access the new OOW zones. Hail one to learn more.

3.5 Q: Can I transfer a character from one EverQuest account to another?

A: Yes, you can, but it will cost you real money. You can also move your
character to a different server, though not all servers can be transferred
to/from. Full details can be found at SOE's web site:
https://store.station.sony.com/eq_char_moves/index.jsp

3.6 Q: It would really be helpful if I could use Notepad or the web while I'm
playing. How can I switch out of EverQuest to a different window
(Alt+Tab) and return to the game?

A: EverQuest can run in either full-screen mode, or in a window. To switch
modes, press Alt+Enter. Alternatively, open the Options window (Alt+O) and
click "Switch to Windowed" or "Switch to Fullscreen" in the Display options.
(If you use both methods, you may find that the Options window shows the
wrong setting, but the button there will still switch modes. You may have
to wait a few moments for the screen to settle down, so be patient, and don't
switch modes in the middle of combat!) In Windowed mode, you can minimize
the window EQ is in, or use Alt+Tab to switch to other windows and run other
tasks, surf the web, or even open another instance of EQ if your machine can
handle that and you have another account on which to play.

It used to be, after switching to Windowed, you had to type Alt+Shift+R to
make EQ relinquish control of the mouse pointer, but that is no longer true.

3.6.1 Q: How do I get Alt+Tab to work for Windows XP?

A: (From the EQ Live FAQ, with some modifications owing to the dead link
they provide): Windows XP keeps a list of program compatibility
information. Up until recently, EverQuest was not built to allow Alt+Tab,
and so our executable ended up in this list explicitly preventing the Alt+Tab
functionality. Obviously that has changed. We are working on getting that
changed. But in the meantime, if you are using Windows XP and you would
like to enable Alt+Tab, there is a way to get it to work.

First, you'll need the Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/app...y/toolkit.mspx
(if that URL wraps around, try http://tinyurl.com/9bf1).

You'll need to download and install the toolkit. Then:
* Open the Compatibility Administration Tool.
* At the top go to Search - Query.
* Search for EverQuest.
* Double click the item the search finds.
* Right-Click the EQGame.exe entry and choose Disable.

3.7 Q: What is a hotkey?

A: A key that is customized to perform an in-game function. Most often this
refers to the keys 1234567890, because typing one of those keys will perform
the action(s) associated with the corresponding button on your "Hot Buttons"
window. (If your Hot Buttons aren't displayed, type Alt+H to show them.)
There are actually 100 hot buttons, in ten sets of ten. You can change which
set of ten is active (and thus what will happen if you type a number) by
hitting shift-1, shift-2, etc., or using the little arrows in the Hot Buttons
window. Often you'll tie a hotkey to a "social" (see Q3.10), but you can
also make hotkeys for spell gems, skills, and inventory items (but not items
inside containers).

For those who find it awkward switching between sets of 10 hotkeys (or, more
likely, who forget to switch back and later invoke the wrong hotkey!), the
game added three more banks of hotkeys in late 2005, so now you can have up
to 400 separate hotkeys, with up to 40 of them "available" at any time. If
you want to use Hotkey windows 2-4, however, you must either use the mouse
to click on them, or use the Keys tab in the Options window to set up for
yourself what keys (or combinations of keys, such as shift-alt-#) you wish
to use to invoke the additional hotkeys.

3.8 Q: How do I make a hotkey?

A: Press and hold down the left mouse button on the spell gem, ability, or
item that you want to make into a hotkey. After a few seconds you should
get a hotkey button on your cursor. Click on the desired hotkey box to
place it. (If there was already a hotkey there, it'll pop onto your cursor.
You can place it in another hotkey box or click on the ground to discard it.)
Some windows (for instance, some of the skills in the Skills window that you
can get to from the Inventory window) let you click a button to create a
hotkey, which again you then place by clicking on a slot in the Hot Buttons
window.

If you want to make a hotkey for an item inside one of your bags, you're
mostly out of luck; only top-level inventory slots (including worn gear) can
be made into hotkeys. But if the item is a stack of potions or something
else with multiple charges, and its item window says "Potion Belt Enabled",
you can put it on your Potion Belt. Open the belt using Shift-P, then drag
one or more of the stack into a slot in the belt. (Only the first two slots
are available until you spend AA points to unlock more.) As long as you have
some of the item in your bags, you'll be able to use it via the potion belt.
You can also use the Options>Keys>Commands window to set key combinations for
invoking items in the potion belt.

3.9 Q: How do I make a spell a hotkey?

A: Left-click and hold down the button over the spell gem until the spell
icon appears on your cursor. Then drag that icon to your hotkey window and
left click to drop it into the slot that you want. (See section 3.8.) Note
that if you change which spell is in that gem, it'll change the hotkey.
(The same is true when you make an inventory item a hotkey; the hotkey will
invoke whatever item is in that inventory slot, not the item that was there
when you made the hotkey.)

If you want to invoke a spell as part of a more complex hotkey, for instance
to have a key that announces the spell being cast, you must create a "social".
Within the social, the command to cast a spell is /cast 1, /cast 2, etc., with
the spell gems being numbered from the top down.

You can also cast a spell by pressing the corresponding gem number while
holding down the ALT key (alt-1, alt-2, etc.).

3.10 Q: What is a social?

A: A social is a way of doing up to five typed commands with a single press
of a button. Typical commands include casting spells or using skills (via
/cast, /doability, and /discipline commands) and saying predefined phrases.
Socials are often made into hotkeys to make them easier to invoke.

One important thing to know about socials is that you can't invoke a social
if you already have one that hasn't finished. So if a social takes a long
time to do its thing (e.g., because it includes a slow action such as casting
or fishing) you won't be able to invoke other socials until it's done.

3.11 Q: How do I make a social?

A: In the Actions window, press the rightmost tab; or just type ctrl-O.
Either will get you the Socials window, which has several buttons with
pre-made sets of commands. You can modify a social by right-clicking it.
To edit a line of a social, just click it and start typing. You can edit
the name of the social in the same manner, and can also select what color
the name shows up as. Note that there are actually 120 socials available;
you can find blank ones by clicking on the arrows in the Socials window.

When you finish (press Accept), you can invoke your social by clicking on
it, or you can make it into a hotkey by pressing and holding down the left
mouse button on it. When you activate the social, it executes whatever you
typed in on the lines of the social key. For example, you can make a social
that looks like this:

/afk
/groupsay I'm going away from keyboard for a sec, guys.

If you activated this social key, it would flag you AFK, and you'd tell your
group "I'm going away from keyboard for a sec, guys." Any "line command"
(command that starts with a slash) can be used in a social. There are even
a few commands that are specifically intended for use in socials. For more
information on these commands and others, read eqmanual_supplement.doc in
your EverQuest directory.

You can also create a new social by typing /ho somename /blah blah. (The
/ho is short for /hotbutton.) This particular example would create a social
named "somename" that invokes the nonsense command "/blah blah". The social
is left attached to your cursor so you can drop it right into your hotkeys.
If you want to include a space in the button name, put the name in quotes.
(But note that the name can't be very long since it has to fit on a button.)
When a hotkey is tied to a social (either using /ho or by dragging it from
the Socials window), you can right-click on the hotkey to modify the social,
just as though you were in the Socials window.

3.12 Q: Where can I get an up-to-date list of commands and/or emotes?

A: Type /help to get a list of commands. You can also try the
eqmanual_supplement.doc file in your EverQuest directory, though it tends
to be out of date. Also, if you visit http://everquest.allakhazam.com/ and
scroll down for the links to "Commands & Terms..." you will find 3 links:
Emotes, Game Commands, and Chat Terms. These are again not necessarily
up to date, but will give you a good base to work from. Another site
that seems to be more current is http://www.jaburt.com/eq/eq_commands.htm.

If you want to put an Alternate Ability into a social (to make it part of a
more complex hotkey, or just to give it a more meaningful name), you can use
"/alt activate ###", where ### comes from the list generated by "/alt list".
(Veteran reward AAs are listed only if your character has claimed them.)
Similarly, melee disciplines can be invoked via "/disc blah" where blah is
the first part of the name of the discipline, e.g. "/disc Fearless".

3.13 Q: Where should I hunt given my level/class/race?

A: The following sites have good level-based charts on this:

http://www.eqatlas.com/huntguidelevel.html (only the first few expansions)
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zlvlchart.html

Race tends not to matter too much, unless you're kill-on-sight to high level
guards (e.g., at Highpass Keep). Some classes prefer fighting vs. undead,
or prefer fighting in spacious outdoor zones, etc., so you might use class
considerations as a way to choose among the level-appropriate zones listed.

3.14 Q: How can I make money to buy spells and armor and stuff?

A: Kill things, loot them, sell the proceeds, repeat. Some of the items
found on "newbie yard" critters sell for a few gold to NPC merchants (the
famous Plague Rat Tails used to sell for 2 plat, but got nerfed in mid-2006),
but the best way to raise money at low levels is to find items you can sell
to other players in the Bazaar. Many items whose information windows
show "This item can be used in tradeskills" are needed in large quantities,
and higher-level characters are happy to pay you for them rather than spend
their time "farming" the stuff. Spiderling silks, spider silks, bone chips,
and various pelts can all be sold to players for considerably more than
merchants will pay for them. Check the prices these are going for in the
Bazaar and you might be pleasantly surprised.

Before you set out on low-level hunting with a level one character, however,
you should consider going through the Tutorial. You might not want to hunt
there, but you should at least get the Kobold Skull Charm and fully activate
it (by visiting all of the Tutorial NPCs). If you do skip that, you can
get the charm later by doing the first assignment from either the elven or
dark elven "Armor Quests" NPC in PoK. It's a very nice item for many levels,
and you can't beat the price!

Also, if your character has the Forage skill, you can forage many things to
sell in the Bazaar that higher level players need for trade skills. Even
common forages like vegetables may sell for a few plat each, depending on
what new trade skill recipes people are trying out.

3.14.1 Q: That's taking too long! How about I just beg some money?

A: Sure, there are tons of fabulously wealthy people walking past you. And
if you beg from them, there is a fairly good chance that some of them might
give you something. But DON'T do this. Many people get angry at beggars,
considering them to be the lowest form of life in the EQ universe. You will
damage your reputation, end up on ignore lists, and stand a good chance of
being insulted with varying degrees of venom. Also, if someone is trying to
beg from you, feel free to ignore them. Not giving them money does not mean
that you're a bad person, any more than not making an effort to feed
cockroaches makes you an animal hater.

In contrast, it's not unusual to see people asking for spells to be cast on
them (such as SOW -- Spirit of the Wolf -- which makes you run faster, or
Temp -- Temperance -- which makes you tougher to kill). Though some spells
do cost money to cast (because of physical components being used up), many
cost "only" time and mana, so people are often willing to cast them for you.
Even so, the people able to cast such spells are often deluged with requests,
and they may prefer to get on with their own business, so always be polite,
even if nobody will cast the spells for you. Also if it's within your means,
it's common practice to offer a few plat to the caster (who may decline to
take your money, in which case you should be especially grateful).

3.14.2 Q: Well, how about just buying plat then?

A: You've seen the banners and advertisements at various EQ sites, and it
does seem to be a quick way to get the plat/item you're lacking. Should you
do it? Well, there are a few different schools of thought on this matter.

First is hell yes, we need your business and all your friends are doing it
and you can't play without it and give us your freaking credit card number
already!

Second is more laid back. Some people think that buying plat is a
personal decision, and if someone has enough real life money to spend it
this way there's no harm done.

Third is perhaps the most common, or at least has the most vocal proponents.
They feel that EQ plat buyers/sellers are doing a Very Bad Thing, and they
have several reasons for this that many find to be compelling:
* It is against the End User License Agreement (EULA). You know, that thing
you click past every time you play EQ. When you do that, you are in effect
agreeing to what is written there. One of the things it says is that you
won't do this. You're not a scummy liar, are you?
* That plat and those items are "farmed", and farmers hurt the honest folk
who are trying to play the game. Are you trying to earn your very own
Shiny Doodad of Awesome Wowzer, but some guy named Eqpharmer always seems
to be at the camp where the Enraged Snow Pea that drops it spawns? You
pay the same money to play EQ that he does, so you should have a chance to
earn the item same as he, instead of being shut out because he has to sell
it to support his on-line porn habit. Same thing for good money camps.
* People that buy their equipment/plat/characters are not really learning
how to play the game, and thus are more likely to hurt the poor saps that
have the misfortune of being in the same zone (or group) as them when they
blunder through, causing trains and mayhem.

Soooo.... should you do it? That is up to you, of course. Just know that,
if you do, a great many of your fellow EQ players -- including many who
frequent alt.games.everquest -- will think less of you because of it.

3.15 Q: Why can mobs hit through walls?

A: You were happily trading inside a vendor's shop, when suddenly you got
smacked by a Griffon for 300 points... Loading, please wait... WTF? Mobs
and other NPCs in EQ are controlled by a computer AI, which is no substitute
for a (supposedly) intelligent human being controlling an avatar. Monsters
all behave according to strict rules on pathing, aggro-range, etc., and don't
really employ sophisticated tactics and strategy in the same way a human
player would. To avoid unbalancing the game, mobs are given some "unfair"
advantages: they can hit through walls, they ignore the z-axis of 3D space to
hit from a long way above or below a player, and generally have the ability
to hit back from seemingly unreachable locations. This is to avoid exploits
like getting easy experience by raining down spells or arrows on a mob from
a location which that mob (because of its programmed pathing) cannot reach.
Pet-using classes may gain some satisfaction from knowing that their pets
have the same unfair advantages as other mobs, and can hit back at that pesky
monster whacking you from under the ground.

There are other things NPC monsters are immune to that would be good for you
to know: NPCs and monsters can't drown, take falling environment damage, or
be burned by environment lava. They can also "warp" (teleport instantly) to
you if they get stuck in the world geometry.

3.16 Q: Hey, I can't even play at all! The servers are down! What gives?

A: SOE is ripping you off, the sons of bitches. Well, that's the sarcastic
answer. Actually, EverQuest is an evolving game, and it requires periodic
maintenance known as patches. Patch time is also when various changes to
gameplay are made. SOE does not promise you'll be able to play 24/7/365.
SOE will not compensate you the 40 cents per day or whatever it is for the
time you could not play. Also, SOE will bring down the servers with little
or no notice if they learn of a bug or exploit they consider to be major.
You can check on network status and scheduled downtime by going to:
http://eqplayers.station.sony.com/network_status.vm
(though the information on that page is notoriously slow to update).

Scheduled downtime is usually accompanied by an estimate from SOE as to when
the servers will be available again, e.g., "Going down at 4am PST, estimated
downtime is 8 hours." If you try connecting shortly after the servers are
due back up, you might not succeed. This could mean the downtime is taking
longer than they expected, but it could also mean that the servers are back
up and are trying to handle the flood of players all trying to reconnect at
the same time. Patience, grasshopper!

3.17 Q: Why did I get chewed out for inspecting someone?

A: Many people feel it is very rude to inspect someone without asking first,
akin to walking up to a woman and pulling down her pants to read the label on
her underwear. Others feel it's no big deal, and that people who make a big
deal out of it need counseling, or a long flame session, or something equally
useful. Regardless of how you feel about the matter, if you want to do your
best to get along with your fellow EQ players, it is best simply to ask
before you inspect.

If you find you keep inspecting people by mistake (e.g., because they're
standing too close to the banker you meant to click on), you can turn off
your ability to click-inspect players by typing "/toggleinspect off". (To
re-enable it, use "/toggleinspect on". And even with it turned off, you can
examine someone's gear by targetting them and typing "/inspect".)

3.18 Q: How can I send a message to my friend on another server?

A: ";tell servername.friendname message". For example, to send to your
friend Giggals on the Karana server while you are playing on The Seventh
Hammer, you would simply type: ;tell karana.giggals Tag! You're it!
Note that you must NOT include a forward slash ("/") when you do this; start
the command with a semicolon (";") instead of the customary slash.

3.19 Q: Can I ignore someone on another server?

A: You betcha. If it turns out that Giggals simply hates tag and is now
threatening to kill you, over and over again, type /ignore karana.giggals.
This also can be used to stifle people who are being pests in any serverwide
channels you might be in.

3.20 Q: What is grouping about? What am I supposed to do in a group?

A: This question warrants a rather detailed answer, so it's being put into a
separate document, which is also posted to the newsgroup and on the web at
http://www.icynic.com/~don/EQ/grouping101.htm
It talks about some of the different types of group, the various roles that
group members must fill, and which classes are better suited to each of
those roles. It also discusses some typical group tactics and etiquette.

3.21 Q: All those expansions, plus regular free patches that have tweaked the
game... I've heard that EverQuest's game balance has changed a lot
since it first came out. Is that true, and if so, how so?

A: Yes, definitely. EQ has been adjusted fairly continuously from the
get-go, in ways big and small. The developers have always said that the
game would never be frozen in time, and they've meant it. Here is a very
brief summary picture.

The initial learning curve has been eased, a lot. It's easier and quicker
to get a character up to level 10 (or even 20-30 now), and the game has many
more helpful hints and clearer directions on what to do.

The developers have regularly adjusted the powers of the various classes,
trying to keep them balanced. Several classes are now significantly more
or less powerful relative to each other than they were at various times in
the past. As of mid 2008 there isn't any particular class that is really
widely seen as in need of being "nerfed" (reduced in power) or boosted, but
the game is dynamic and that will undoubtedly change.

The consequences of dying in EQ have been made much less severe, though once
you hit level 6 death does cost you experience (but several character classes
have spells that can "resurrect" you, restoring most of the lost experience).
As of 2008 you no longer need to find your corpse to recover your gear, and
there are summoners you can pay to fetch the corpse for the resurrection.
Dying in EQ is still annoying, but it's not much more than that except in a
few unusual circumstances.

Traveling around in Norrath is far easier and quicker than was originally
true (even though the game world is much larger). One side effect of that
is that racial faction is less of a factor now -- being a dark elf or troll
used to have a pretty severe downside in terms of moving around the world
without NPCs attacking you on sight. They added an in-game player market
(the Bazaar) which made the in-game player-to-player market of gear and items
much more efficient and therefore more ubiquitous.

While the developers have drastically eased the game for newbies (old-school
players call it "training wheels EQ"), they've also repeatedly extended and
broadened the endgame. In any game there is a point at which a player
character has seen it all, done it all, and advanced in power to the point
of there being no challenges left. EQ began with a level cap of 50, that
jumped to 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, and now 85; "alternate advancement" levels were
added, then deepened; "leadership abilities" were added as yet another way for
characters to advance. More high-end zones have been added, many with big
tough "boss" mobs that can be killed only by large parties of high-end players
(called "raids"). Entire tiers of such zones, called the "Planes", now have
a complex lengthy "trials" process for which reaching the level cap is just
the start. In general, hard-core players now tend to view the level cap as
just the first step towards becoming "uber".

In 2004 the Lost Dungeons of Norrath ("LDoN") expansion added a fundamentally
new way to play the game, using "instanced" zones where a group or raid gets
its own copy of a part of the world, working toward a goal without the risk
of interference by other players. The LDoN content itself has since grown
dated and is rarely visited these days, but later expansions have added their
own instanced content.

The Seeds of Destruction expansion in 2008 added the ability for players to
hire "mercenaries", NPCs who act as party members as long as the hiring
players continue to pay for them. The cost, paid in 15 minute intervals
after a larger one-time hiring fee, scales with the level of the player and
the skill and "confidence" of the merc. Mercenaries provide an alternative
for players who may find it hard to form a group at some levels as server
populations decline.

3.22 Q: What is a "guild"?

A: The word "guild" is used two different ways in EQ and they have nothing
to do with each other. In the game's cities there are buildings called
class guilds (the warrior guild in Kaladim, say); not every city has a
guild for every class. In each guild are NPCs you interact with: one or
more guildmasters where you train your character's skills, and vendors
where you can buy your spells and some other stuff.

The other form of guild is player guilds, which are voluntary associations
formed and managed by players themselves on each server. The name of the
guild displays in the game under the character's name, and guilds get their
own private chat channels in-game and access to the Guild Hall, a special
zone with amenities suited to guild-related activities. Many guilds have
websites with discussion forums and schedules of group outings in the game.

3.23 Q: What is being in a player guild like?

A: It's like being a member of any other self-directed voluntary
association: as good as the people in it. The best way to find a guild is
to chat with players you've grouped with repeatedly in the game and enjoyed
playing with, and at some point mention that you've thought about joining a
guild. If they're enjoying playing with you, you may receive an invitation.
Guilds that run around randomly inviting players they haven't even met tend
to end up about as cohesive and enjoyable as any other group of complete
strangers thrown together.

Player guilds fall into about three categories at the moment, these being
completely unofficial but widely recognized. First, each server has some
high-end "raiding guilds", which can include hundreds of players, focus on
lengthy well-planned raids of high-end zones, and have increasingly stiff
prerequisites for membership (you must have reached a certain level in the
game). In some expansions the top zones are "instanced", so each raid
gets its own version of the target; for non-instanced content, the raiding
guilds sometimes agree on unofficial schedules to make sure everyone gets a
shot at targets that may take hours or even days to reappear.

Next, there are newer/smaller guilds that aspire to become raiding guilds; at
any given moment most servers have several of these. Such a guild might have
anywhere from 30 to 60 active members, and be recruiting players who either
have reached the top levels or appear serious about getting there quickly.
Since serious raiding requires playing for many hours at a stretch, such
guilds tend to include mostly people who are single, not raising kids, don't
have jobs that require a lot of travel, etc. These guilds are trying to
build up their strength (numbers of top-level seriously-equipped players of
enough classes) so they can join the top-end raiding rotation of their server;
some make it and some don't.

Finally, there are "family guilds". This phrase isn't literal; it refers to
guilds of more casual players who aren't strongly aspiring to the high-end
raiding. In practice this often means players who are married with children,
etc. These guilds tend to have fewer than 50 active members (maybe a lot
fewer), though they can be much larger. They may do some raiding of older
high-end content; two family guilds may band together for the occasional
joint raid. Mostly these guilds do regular "experience grouping",
single-group missions in LDON, DoN, and later expansions, and usually some
small raids for each other's "epic" quests. Some family guilds were started
by longtime EQ players who had been in raiding guilds but burned out on that
or found that it wasn't actually how they most enjoyed the game.

All guilds, even the raiding guilds, act as a ready source of friends to help
each other out in various ways: finding people to fill out a group, casting
buffs or resurrection spells, doing high-level trade skill combinations, etc.

3.24 Q: What is autosplit and why is it unfair?

A: This question is the source of much angst, and isn't as simple as it
might seem on the surface. Autosplit is something each person turns on or
off (using the /autosplit command, or /au for short). If the person looting
a corpse has it turned on, any cash found is split evenly among all players
in the group (even those who have it turned off). (This doesn't apply when
a player loots their own body, of course.) Sounds fair, doesn't it?

The catch is, it's implemented in a logical way in a roleplaying environment,
which is to say it splits the COINS you get, instead of splitting the CASH
VALUE of those coins. It doesn't make change. And it does this separately
for each type of coin. If, as is often the case, the coins can't be divided
evenly, the game gives any left over coins to the looter. So suppose a mob
drops 5pp. In a two-player group, the looter gets 3pp and the other player
gets 2pp. In a three-player group, the looter still gets 3pp and the others
each get 1pp. In a six-player group, none of the 5pp can be divided evenly,
so the looter keeps all of it! Even when there are some coins given out to
the rest of the group by this method, the looter is more often than not
getting twice or three times as many coins as the rest.

The innocent (such as yourself) will loot freely, thinking they are being
fair. They will also happily allow others to loot, thinking that they are
getting a fair share. The unscrupulous will arrange to do most of the
looting while allowing the uninitiated (such as yourself) to think they are
getting a fair share. And of course, if someone in your group is looting
with autosplit on, you can't know if they're innocent or unscrupulous, which
can lead to some bad feelings. What's worse, if you try to work around the
problem by looting with autosplit OFF, planning to split the money later
(preferably after selling off any vendor trash items as well), the innocent
may get upset because they think you're planning to abscond with all the
money (which has, alas, been known to happen also).

The best compromise seems to be to have the group choose one person to be
"main looter" (ML), and that person is responsible for selling the items
and splitting all the cash when the group is ready to break up. This still
gets awkward if some people leave the group early and/or other people join
partway through, but it's still a lot more fair. Another approach that is
sometimes used is "open looting" (also called FFA, or free-for-all), where
everybody is free to loot (usually with autosplit ON), which works well if
the group is killing lots of mobs so everyone gets lots of opportunities to
loot some.

3.25 Q: What is "stat food" and how do I use it?

A: Stat food is food that adds to your character's stats, such as HP, MANA,
or STR. There's also stat drink. Most stat food/drink items are crafted
by players using the Baking and Brewing skills. If you don't feel like
making your own, you can usually find stat food for sale in the Bazaar.

The trick to using stat food is that you don't actually want to eat it.
You get the benefits of the food if it is the first food in your inventory,
and thus is the food that will get eaten if the game decides you're hungry
enough to need to eat something. You can see if it's in the correct place
as soon as you put it in, by seeing if your stat(s) change.

Since stat food can be expensive, some players are careful to munch ordinary
food and drink often enough that the game never has them "automatically" eat
or drink the stat items. (Note that explicitly eating/drinking means the
items consumed stave off hunger and thirst for only half as long as they
normally would.)

3.26 Q: What are the different languages used for in the game, and how do I
learn them?

A: EverQuest includes at least 25 different "in game" languages, ranging
from player race tongues (Halfling, Iksar, Troll, etc.) to monster languages
(Gnoll, Dragon, etc.) and languages used in ancient writings or other
specialty tongues (Dark Speech, Thieves Cant). You can learn to speak (and
presumably read) any of these, but doing so has almost no effect within the
game, except on the role-playing server, Firiona Vie. It appears there
used to be quests that required learning languages, e.g. to translate bits
of writing, but those writings can now be read by anyone.

Unless you are playing on Firiona Vie, you normally speak Common; a language
everyone in the world can speak and understand perfectly. If you want to
speak another language, the command is something like "/lang 4", after which
everything you /say, /groupsay, /tell, /guildsay, /ooc, or /shout will all
be in that language. If you don't speak that language very well, it will be
garbled so nobody will ever read it perfectly (but depending on your actual
skill and their ability to puzzle things out, they might be able to work out
what you mean). Similarly, if they don't speak that language well, they
might not understand you even if you are flawless at it. Maximum skill in
any language is 100; until you reach 25 in a language it will be described
as "an unknown tongue" when someone speaks it to you.

To see which languages you know (even one point of skill will do), type
"/lang help". This will list all the languages you know, and tell you their
numbers so you can use the /lang # command to switch to them. Common is
always /lang 1 for everyone, so using that to switch back to the universal
tongue always works. Alternatively, you can right-click on the title bar
or type-in area of a chat window, and near the bottom of the pop-up menu is
a "Language" item with a submenu of choices.

Note that, if you have multiple chat windows, the /lang # command affects
only the window you type it in. You can click on a chat window to make
typed commands (such as /lang, /say etc.) go to that window. Each window
can have a different language selected. Commands that speak text as part of
a hotkey will use the language of your "Main Chat" window. This can be
tricky to keep track of, because you always see your own speech ungarbled,
with no indication what language it's in. (Just as your speech always looks
clear even if you're intoxicated, or if you use a term that gets garbled by
the "bad word" filter.) You can type just "/lang" by itself in a window to
see which language you've currently selected for it. Be warned, however,
that the response telling you what language that window is using, may itself
show up in a different window! What matters is which chat window you are
typing into, not where the response appears.

Few people bother to learn other languages, and they are of little practical
use in most situations, although it can be amusing to chatter away, say
gnome to gnome in a party of big people for instance. There are still some
reasons to learn languages; for instance, the Tainted Heartstone is a charm
that gives rather nice stat boosts if you master several uncommon languages.

On Firiona Vie, there is no "Common", and you'll have trouble communicating
with anyone outside your own race at first. Few people ever learn the more
obscure languages like Gnome, so you'll need to learn Elvish at a minimum,
and Dark Elvish will also help a lot. Oddly, Human is rarely spoken. Even
there, on a "role-playing" server with no official common language, few
bother learning more than the minimum; you'll see everyone from Trolls to
Iksar to Vah Shir all speaking blithely in Elvish . . . because if they
don't, half the people in their group, guild, or zone (depending on which
sort of chat they are using) won't be able to understand them.

You can learn languages from your NPC trainers (guildmasters), but that's
an inefficient use of training points (and plat), plus the trainers won't
even offer to teach you certain languages until your character has reached
a high enough level. So most language training is done with other players.

To learn a language from another player, you must be in the same group. If
someone in your group talks to the group in that language (which means they
must have at least one skill point in it so it shows up in their /lang list),
your skill will gradually improve, even if you start with zero skill in that
language. High INT (and possibly WIS) seems to help you learn faster. Even
if your skill is higher than theirs, your skill can go up (to the max of 100)
from listening to them! If you're in different zones, though, then only the
speaker's skill can improve (and it seems like the speaker's skill must be at
least 2 to get any skillups from cross-zone group chat). So you can train
up your language skills by grouping with friends who are AFK in the Bazaar!

3.27 Q: What is "Fabled" all about?

EverQuest originally launched in March 1999. On its five-year anniversary,
Sony held a month-long celebration during which, among other things, certain
named mobs from the original game were beefed up as Fabled versions. For
example, in Najena, where Drelzna used to drop JBoots, the Fabled Drelzna
would occasionally appear in place of regular Drelzna, and dropped Fabled
JBoots. Fabled mobs are usually far tougher than the non-Fabled versions,
and the drops are correspondingly better. The term "Fabled" is often used
by itself to mean "Fabled mob(s)".

As EverQuest has celebrated its 6th and later anniversaries, Sony has added
Fabled versions of mobs from whichever expansion is turning 5 years old;
thus Kunark mobs in 2006, Velious in 2007, etc. Many Fabled from earlier
anniversaries have reappeared in later years. Fabled exist over a wide
range of levels, from Fabled Fippy Darkpaw to what were once end-game raid
mobs (and, with the Fabled beefing up, are again).

The Fabled mobs are only in the game during each anniversary month, which
runs from mid-March to mid-April.

3.28 Q: The game keeps crashing! How can I fix it?

If your EverQuest window keeps crashing -- going away completely -- chances
are some of your files have gotten corrupted somehow, e.g. if something went
wrong the last time the game was trying to update them. Sometimes you can
fix the problem by telling the launcher to do a "full file check", which
means it checks more thoroughly for errors in those files that are normally
left unchanged once downloaded. Often, though, the problem is with a file
that does get modified as you play the game, and a full file check doesn't
cover those.

If you crash only when logging into a particular character, try renaming the
UI files for that character (charactername_servername.ini and
UI_charactername_servername.ini) and see if that fixes it. You'll lose your
hotkeys, window layout, and other settings for the character, but you can
then try copying back parts of the files to see where the problem was.

If that doesn't fix it, or if the problem happens for multiple characters,
the problem could be with the zone those characters are in. Pull the map
files for that zone out of your EverQuest\Maps folder, do a full file check
to restore the default map files, and see if that does the trick. Again, if
it works, you can then examine the map files to try to locate the part that
was confusing the game client.

Finally, if you are using any custom UI elements, try switching to the
default UI (by removing the mention of your custom UI folder in your
characters' UI_charactername_servername.ini files). Sometimes when new
UI elements are added, custom UIs need to be modified.



[End of part 2 of 5]