Quick Guide to saving and loading your EverQuest II User Interface Settings

Version 2.02 Revision 1.02

By Aeries Silvarlight of Nektulos

Contents

Basic window position and settings................................................................................................... 4

Hot Bars............................................................................................................................................. 6

Chat Colours...................................................................................................................................... 7

Key Bindings...................................................................................................................................... 7

A more accurate approach............................................................................................................. 7

Some tips and tricks and a few bugs to be aware of............................................................................ 8

A note on Macros............................................................................................................................... 8

Digging deeper into macros............................................................................................................. 10

Frequently Asked Questions............................................................................................................ 12

Revision History............................................................................................................................... 13

Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................... 14

Contacting me................................................................................................................................. 15

Do you know the feeling of accidentally dragging off a Spell from your Hot Bar in combat?
Are your keys sometimes messing up so they do not respond (happens mostly to people using non-US Keyboards)?
Do you wish you could save your UI window settings without locking the windows?
Do you wish there was a fast way of changing hotkeys temporarily (i.e. to hotkey a potion) only to have it revert back with a single click?

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters (sorry, I got carried away!)

If you can say yes to one or more of the questions above, this guide may give you just the answers you are in need of.

I have set up my User Interface to divide chat into several tabs (i.e. raid, tells, combat spam, damage etc.). Also I have joined a number of chat channels which I expect to join in a certain order, or I end up talking in the wrong channels. All of this can quickly be changed, either on purpose or by mistake.

In the earlier days you could not lock the Hot Bars and many people found it frustrating to suddenly sit with your Heal Spell stuck on your mouse cursor when you were trying to cast it on the now dead Guardian. Today you can lock the Hot Bars but a number of people do not use this function. They may not know it is even possible to lock the bars or they may want the option of easily dragging down gear, spells and potions just prior to combat.

Suddenly missing your Heal Spell may turn the tides of battle and leave you with a bad feeling of not being able to save the tank because your settings got messed up.

It is very easy during a busy fight to accidentally drag off spells or move around your Chat Tabs. Lag or a computer locking up for just a second can greatly improve the risk of missing spells as the game may believe you have been holding down the mouse button for too long, thus moving around the spells and bars.

Hopefully this Guide will help you with some of these possible problems and give you new ideas on how to set up your Hot Bars and spells.

Basic window position and settings

Let us start with window positions, chat filters, -tabs and -channels. All of this can easily be saved and reloaded by a single command.

/save_uisettings [File Name]
/load_uisettings [File Name]

The File Name has to be in the following format: SERVER_CHARACTER_EQ2_UISETTINGS.XML (i.e. Nektulos_Aeries_eq2_uisettings.xml) but SERVER and CHARACTER can be replaced by optional names.

With Game Update 51 Sony changed the format of the files from Binary to XML. This means that your old files can still be loaded but if you save with a file name that is not in the format specified here, EQ2 will crash if you try to load it again.

I prefer naming my UI files so that SERVER is replaced with RAID, GROUP or SOLO, and CHARACTER reflects the Character I used to save these settings (i.e. Raid_Aeries_eq2_uisettings.xml) so the files have a unique name for each character and the role they are playing.

Set up your windows (even your bags in inventory and bank) as you want them to be saved and make sure you are in the right channels. Before saving my UI settings for the first time, I prefer to leave all channels and re-join them in the order I want. To leave all channels at once, type:

/leaveall

Join the proper channels, set up any chat tabs and filters (if any) and type:

/save_uisettings ui.YourCharacter

This will save your window settings for all windows (including their “locked-state” if you later unlock or lock windows) and also your chat settings (filters, tabs and joined channels).

Now you can always revert to the saved settings if you accidentally move a window, delete a chat tab or changed your filter settings by mistake. To revert back to your saved settings, type:

/load_uisettings ui.YourCharacter

Using these two commands, you can easily copy user interface settings from one character to another and have different presets. Save the settings on one character and load them on your other character(s).

There is one little issue with using these two commands. As already stated above, they will save and load chat channels joined when the settings were saved. That means that any evil or good aligned channels saved in the presets, will be applied to characters of the other alignment. If you joined the conjuror channel and load in the settings on your necromancer, the channel will keep showing up as a channel you cannot leave, but you can't join it either. Removing that channel will require a few computer skills as you may have to modify the binary-saved settings file manually. Just make sure you have not joined any character or alignment-specific channels when you save the UI unless you will only use it on the same character. In that case there are no problems at all.

Remember that these two commands do not save your Hot Bar contents. They will save the position and number of open Hot Bars, but not the actual spells and combat arts assigned. Read on and see how to save and load Hot Bars.

Hot Bars

"But I want to save and load the Hot Bars?" you may ask. So let's take a look on how that is done.

There are two commands for saving and loading the Hot Bars (also known as Hot Keys). These commands will save the spells, combat arts, gear and macros assigned to the current Hot Bars. The actual contents of the macros (which you edit in the Macro Editor from within EQ2), is not saved using these commands. The content of your macros is saved on the server and cannot be saved locally.

It means that you can create a macro and assign it to a Hot Bar. Saving and loading the Hot Bar will remember the position of the macro but if you change the macro (i.e. change the description or add a new command) it will not be saved and loaded with the Hot Bar commands.

The syntax for saving and loading is:

/savehotkeys [File Name]
/loadhotkeys [File Name]

I prefer naming my Hot Bars keys.myCharacter (i.e. keys.aeries) so I have unique files for all my characters and don't risk overwriting existing files.

Set up all of your Hot Bars as you want them to be saved. For convenience you may want to make sure you have at least one spot for a new macro in your Hot Bars. In this slot I would make a macro with the following contents:

/load_uisettings ui.aeries
/loadhotkeys keys.aeries

Save the Hot Bars with:

/savehotkeys keys.aeries

Imagine being in a fight where you are busy tanking, healing, nuking, singing or any other action you are doing in that fight. Suddenly one of your vital keys disappears and gets stuck on your mouse! Panic! You have maybe 2-3 seconds to click that key, but it's gone! Simply click your newly created hotkey and your Hot Bars get restored instantly!

Just make sure you don't drag off the hotkey loading your hotkeys ;) If that happens, you can always locate the macro you created by opening your macro window and activating it from there.

Chat Colours

"My chat colours aren't saved?” There's a specific command for this as well.

/save_colors [File Name]
/load_colors [File Name]

As I prefer all channels being in the same positions on all characters, I also prefer having the same chat colours. Therefore I pick "colours.ui" as a global name that is not tied to one specific character. Sometimes you may have to log out and back in if you load in new chat colours.

Key Bindings

The final command, which most of the US/UK based players may not ever need, is a command to save your key bindings.

I often have a problem where a few keys are not responding or assigned differently when I log in. I am tired of having to go into options every time to change my keys so I use the following commands:

/save_keymaps [File Name]
/load_keymaps [File Name]

Here I just use my name as the file (in my case "Aeries" which is my original main character). I use the same name for all my characters since I use the same keyboard layout regardless of the character I play.

There is a small bug when saving the Key Maps. I have reported it to Sony but they haven't fixed it yet. For some reason, the first line in the file is always being ignored. Typically that would be the last spell or combat art in your first Hot Bar. A tad vital I should say if that doesn't work. However, this is easily fixed.

Open your EQ2 installation folder and go into the folder called "Keyboards". There you will see the file you saved with "/save_keymaps". Open the file in Notepad (or double-click it and tell windows to use Notepad to open it with). Make sure the file begins with a blank line (hit the ENTER key as soon as the file opens if the first line is not already blank). Save the file and you can load the Key Maps from EQ2.

A more accurate approach

I have found a more accurate, but also more advanced, approach to save and store your key settings. Start by logging into EverQuest 2 and customizing your keys as desired.

Now save your key maps as “eq2_keymap_custom.ini” by typing

/save_keymaps eq2_keymap_custom.ini

Now open the Options (ALT+O) and select “Other” from the Keyboard Drop-Down List and log off EverQuest 2.

Browse to the “Layout” folder (located under your EQ2 installation folder) with your Windows Explorer and make a copy of the file “EQ2-OtherMode.cfg”. Name the new file “EQ2-CustomMode.cfg” and open it with notepad.

Change the following contents in the File (or insert the lines if missing):

name=Custom
options=
uisettings=
colors=
keymaps=eq2_keymap_custom.ini

Save the file and then open the file called “eq2_recent.ini” and make the following change in the file:
Change “cl_configuration_file EQ2-OtherMode.cfg” to “cl_configuration_file EQ2-CustomMode.cfg”

Proceed by saving the file and log back into EverQuest 2 to verify that your key bindings are still working without having to reload them. You may also want to verify that it works after restarting your PC.

When saving the files from Notepad, please make sure you select “All Files” in the Drop-Down List when asked for a File Name, or Notepad may automatically add “.txt” as an extension, in which case the file will be ignored by EverQuest 2.

Some tips and tricks and a few bugs to be aware of

I have created a macro to load in my Key Maps, UI Settings and Hot Bars so I can revert to my old settings with a single button at any time. This is very helpful in those panic situations where I am in a fight and suddenly move my spells around. I can lock my Hot Keys so it doesn't happen, but then I can't easily drag down potions and other temporarily required functions that I need for a specific fight.

If we are to engage a mob requiring me to self-cure with potions, I find an easily accessible hotkey that I don't need in this fight and replace it with my potion. When the fight is over, I click my restore-hotkeys button and everything is as it was before.

During raids I replace my invisibility with my ability to lower hate and my harvest hotkey with Cure Arcane. Therefore I have saved another hotkey setting which I called ui.aeries.raid. With another button I quickly load the raid version of my hotkeys. No messing around with spells needed in raids but not in groups.

Loading the UI settings (not a problem with hotkeys, just the UI settings) while having a bank or broker window up, will close the window but keep you in bank/broker mode. There are two easy ways to solve this. Zoning or camping will fix this. You can also move a little away from the broker/banker. When you are far enough away, you will be out of range and the bank/broker session closes automatically. Then you walk back and initiate a new session with the broker or banker.

A note on Macros

As stated in the Hot Bar Section, your macro content is not being saved when you save a Hot Bar setting. You only save the link to the macro (i.e. which hotkey on which Hot Bar is assigned to the macro).

This also makes it very difficult to copy macros between characters. If you are playing two similar classes (i.e. a Conjuror and a Necromancer) you may want to place certain spells on the same keys and use the same macros. While you cannot copy macro content from Character “A” to Character “B”, there is a small workaround that may help out.

If you create a macro on Character “A” and assign it to a hotkey before saving the Hot Bar, you can load this Hot Bar on Character “B” and have the macro available. However, you cannot edit the macro as it doesn’t exist on this character. You will have to log in Character “A” to edit the macro, but you will be able to call it from Character “A” as well as any other character who loads the Hot Bar with the macro assigned.

As an example I have a macro on Character “A” that assists a player and tells the group that I am assisting. It has three commands:

/target MyTank
/g Assisting %t
/assist

On Character “A” I assign it to key number 4 on Hot Bar number 1, save it, and load it on Character “B”. Now I can click that very same button to execute the macro but I cannot edit it as it is not created on this character. This will, however, give me an option of creating standard macros for all characters and copy them, while additionally adding character specific macros on each character.

Digging deeper into macros

While this is primarily a Guide to saving your UI settings, I would like to dedicate a little space to more advanced macro creation as I often find that very useful.

Creating a Macro with the Macro Editor in EQ2 is very easily done. But sharing them between characters is not very easy. If your macros are made up of in-game commands only (i.e. /target, /assist, /g Hello etc.) you can chose to save them in an external text file and execute them from within the game on any character. And this they can be edited by Notepad in Windows.

Open Notepad and start writing your macro as you would in the Macro Editor, but do not include the forward slash in front of the commands like you would normally do in the editor. An all-purpose trade skill node-harvest macro would look like this:

target_nearest_NPC
useablility Foresting
useability Gathering
useability Mining
useability Trapping
useability Fishing
useability Collecting

Save the file in your EQ2 installation folder and name it mymacro.txt (you can use any name you want – personally I prefer names like “macro.MyMacro.txt” to recognise the files easily).

You can now execute the macro by typing:

/do_file_commands mymacro.txt

This command can of course be turned into a macro as well. Save the Hot Bar and load it on other characters that will now have this macro available. While they cannot edit the actual macro you made on the Hot Bar, you can still edit the file you saved with Notepad. This one will be available to all of your characters.

Finally you can create an alias matching the newly created macro. If you created the all-purpose harvest macro, you can either hotkey it on your Hot Bar as a macro using /do_file_commands or you can create a new in-game command executing the macro.

For this to work, you need to use the command

/alias [alias]:[command]

In the example above, with the harvest macro saved as mymacro.txt, I would like to create a new command called /superharvest. Type the following command to create your new /superharvest command:

/alias superharvest:do_file_commands mymacro.txt

Go near any harvestable node and type /superharvest to start harvesting.

Frequently Asked Questions

Macros

Q	Can I put in a pause command in Macros so I can add more than just two spells?
A	No, there is no way you can pause a macro. It will unfortunately be limited to two spells (three if the first spell is an instant cast).
Q	I accidentally deleted a macro, can I get it back?
A	The command /savehotkeys will only save a link to your macro but not the actual macro, which is saved on the server. There is not a known way to save your macros and reload them later.

Other Settings

Q	Can I save or copy my list of friends to another character?
A	No. EQ2 is saving your list of friends on the server and you are unable to save a local copy on your own PC
Q	Why doesn’t this guide cover [insert any topic]?
A	I am more than happy to extend this Guide beyond just User Interface Settings. The best way to help me do so is telling me about which topics you want covered and giving me some information on these topics. Just note that this is not intended to be a guide on how to play the game. There are already a large number of guides available for that.

Revision History

Version 2.01 Revision 1.01

- Added section to Key Bindings (Accurate but more advanced)

Version 2.0 Revision 1.00

- Initial Release

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for helping me out with the Guide and for providing me with ideas and valuable information.

Sangraal of Lucan D’Lere for posting useful information on the official EQ2 Boards on how to do a more accurate and permanent save of your key bindings.

Sydda, Velvenia and Miriell of Nektulos for bugging me enough to finally put my knowledge down on a piece of paper

Contacting me

For any further information or questions about this guide, please do not hesitate to contact me in-game or by e-mail. As I can't put words on how much these commands have eased my EQ2 gaming sessions, I am very happy to share my knowledge and help others that may have the same problems that I had with the UI and Hot Bars.

E-Mail: aeries AT aeries DOT dk
EverQuest II Mail: nektulos.aeriel or nektulos.aeries (just aeriel or aeries if you are mailing from the Nektulos Server)

Regards,

Aeries Silvarlight / Aeriel N’Velex of the Nektulos Server