Useful Tricks of the Trade!Follow

As a druid I haven't quad-kited in a long while, since our aoe spells did not keep up with content. But recently EQ seems to have decided to revive quadding since our 92-100 spells include 4 aoe spells, and these hit 5 mobs at a time. So I'm back to enjoying the "benefits" of killing 5 mobs real quick!

"Quinting" (as aoeing FIVE mobs is called) reminded me of the "Trick of the Trade" that I call the "Quarter-Turn."

Most players know that when a caster moves to a spot, stops, and then goes quickly to cast there's a good chance that his spellcast will be "interrupted", even though he stopped moving. This is because the EQ server doesn't "see" the stop yet and considers the caster to be still moving, and except for insta-cast spells we can't cast while running. This is a BIG problem during a quad/quint because the essence of that technique is to run around a pack of mobs nuking them down. The "trick" is to do a "quarter-turn" right after stopping. This just means using your mouse or movement keys to turn slightly to the left or the right just after stopping. I usually turn left and then immediately back to "straight ahead." This sends a position update to EQ's server which informs them that you are not in motion right before you cast a spell.

I'm sure most experienced players have run into this but it could be useful info for noobs and long-time returnees. I do the quarter-turn instinctively now, even when I'm just fighting at a fixed camp in a group and I have to move a short distance for any reason.

Anyone else got some useful "tricks" to pass on? I will post more as I think of them and find time. Even "obvious" tricks aren't always obvious to everyone.

Yeah I never quad mounted. It used to be a big deal but with mana pools being so big and ordinary regen, even during combat, so good, it doesn;'t seem to matter much anymore.

The first few weeks after the introduction of mounts there was no slowdown/speedup when mounted so mounted quadding was incredible. Then they nerfed being mounted with the slowdown/speedup effects and it became far too inconvenient to quad while mounted.

Now, that's the kind of "tricks" I'm looking for! LOL. I've played 15 years and I didn't know THAT! :)

Does the animation line up with the server tick or you just have to figure it out. The regen on the tick usually only works for 1 partial, then it quits working if you continue to do stuff, like /stand then immediately /book again after the first time doing it and getting the benefit of medding for that first tick. At least that's how it used to work, I too haven't tested it for years. So you can get one tick every once in a while, but not chaining them, even if mostly sitting / medding, if you're also standing or moving during each tick.

I'm with ya, it's to much trouble for the most part, and doesn't work while meleeing or casting or moving, and why most people only use it in groups to get extra med time between casts, and during pulls, and the like. Plus with out of combat now, you can extend it.

It does help a little bit, 'cause whenever you're not fighting or casting or moving, you are getting med rate (2x normal combat rate) mana regen; Not the super fast out of combat regen though.

And I guess I was thinkng more of root rotting than actual kiting, at least for myself. I hate kiting with passion. Last time I enjoyed it was in EQ2 kiting hard named reds so I could solo them.

EDIT: Bah, I meant to ask about the icon matching the server tick to use it time when to run past see invis mobs. I've been lucky several times to get past them every once in a while, but without knowing exactly when the server tick it's more of a guessing game.

Yther Ore.

Edited, Sep 12th 2013 2:06pm by Yther

Oh one questio,n Yther menioned "box" and I see people talking about "boxing character"- what does this mean to "box"?

Oh, Yther. As far as I know, the animation does line up with the update ticks. At least it used to. I remember using this a lot back in the day. You'd wait for the animation, then stand, cast, then sit. If you completed that before the next animation you'd get med regen for that period of time. I'm not sure if they've "fixed" that now, but I absolutely know that this used to work. Since you had the inventory window up, you also were looking at the numerical values, and no one had much in the way of regen or FT items, so it was an easy matter to just watch the numbers increase and see that you were getting sit regen.

And yes, this should work on running past mobs as well. The server checks certain stuff on that tick, and initial agro check is one of those things. Used to do this all the time to run past certain mobs. As far as I know, it should still work.

It's entirely possible that they did "fix" that somehow, and it makes sense that it would have happened when they put in the ooc regen stuff (take something away and give something back). And let's face it, give any of us a choice between the ooc regen and being able to sneak med time in between ticks and we'll take the ooc regen every single time.

I do think the "running past mobs" stuff should still work. Since I've come back I still notice the same delays before mobs first detect you, and have run past mobs without them agroing. So you should be able to time that.

It is possible to get a top speed mount using Gold Tickets that you can get from loyalty points (Crowns). There is pretty good info here: https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=25424#m1309882640120722447

Frankly, unless you are into houses (or are Gold subscribed so you can use the Bag of Platinum) there is very little I care to use my Loyalty points for. Maybe the bags. So, I took all the Silver accounts I have access to and converted all the Crowns to Gold Tickets one a time (they are Lore but tradeable) and farmed Glowing Back Drums for all my characters.

I didn't think it would matter, but they are fast! and I find myself using them for travel everywhere and I end up kiting on them, often.

In my experience (never tried the /follow trick) if you let off the "forward" button and do a spin, the mount keeps going away (in a big mushy turn). No amount of spin will prevent the interrupt. You have to wait for a complete stop. Also, it's frustrating that you can't move "down" while mount (I am basically always Levitated so this bites me, often). But the speed is so nice!

It's not easy, especially in the beginning. However, there are tools (allowed by SOE) that can make it easier. For example, picture-in-picture makes it easy to "see" through the eyes of all of your characters being played at that moment. Clicking a window makes that character active so you can cast/use skills before moving on to another character.

No idea if this is still viable but back in the day, it was possible for a rogue to score backstabs even while tanking a mob, before Chaotic Stab became available. It involved using the old FPS circle-strafe. You don't have to be fully behind a mob to be in backstab position. You only need to be not in front of the mob. Using a 360 degree (circle) view with 0 degrees being right in front of the mob, if you're in the area between 91 degrees and and 269 degrees, that's backstab territory.

Edited, Sep 13th 2013 12:29am by Remianen

Most players know this by now but not so much noobs (/looks at broonsbane). You can open most general utility windows from anywhere in the game now. These include:

/bazaar
/barter (to see what people want to buy)
/LFgroup
/LFguild (saves a trip to the Guild Lobby and the recruitment boards)

There may be more, those are what come to mind. You cannot enter selling info (/trader) or buyer info (/buyer) other than from the selling and buying platforms in the Bazaar, which makes sense, altho it would be nice to be able to enter prices and amounts while passing time at a camp somewhere. I haven't looked too deep into it but I think you can edit prices from "anywhere" by opening the related text files in your EQ directory but not sure you can add new items since EQ probably needs to validate you actually have the item in your trader bags (for selling purposes.)

Edited, Sep 18th 2013 10:46am by Sippin

Gonna post this, its a long list of things people have found in game (The old DID YOU KNOW? thread), some may be relevant this late in the game, some may not be, I'll let you choose which.


https://everquest.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=1&mid=1332475122275942362