Hi I'm a newbie sharing some tips. I started on MQ a few months ago and there was much to learn. A lot of it works by itself but some stuff you gotta figure out as you go. Luckily there seems to be an answer to everything already on this forum, but this might help other newbies save some time.
Prerequisite:
Use EQBC, it makes everything so much better. You turn it on in your ini files for each character in the part that says EQBCOn=1
1 is on and 0 is off for a lot of things in these ini files. With this you can have your characters talk to each other and tell you important stuff and give them commands from any character. I use it all the time.
Search better!
You can search the forum for answers to everything with the search box in the top. But if you want to find something on a big page like this, press CTRL F and you can search for a word or phrase on that page and it will jump right to it. Once you start editing your character ini files, you will probably want to use this a lot. Say you added a new spell called Flaming Bolt and the character isn't casting it. You can just open your ini and do CTRL F for Flaming and it will jump right back to that part so you can fix it.
What is MQ2 and KISS and how do I use it?
MacroQuest2 is like the machinery in the background that makes everything work. KissAssist (KA) is like the front interface that easily lets you make your characters play by themselves. You can get other 'macros' instead of Kiss which will run your characters for you, check out the Resource link at the top of RedGuides. This guide is for KA which popular because it is very advanced and can run every class in the game. I love it. It works so well that you could go afk and your characters will play themselves like real people. On EQ Live you are not allowed to do this, you have to be at the computer, but technically Kiss is good enough to run characters by itself.
They will cast buffs/heals/nukes in a smart way. They never go afk or get stressed so they play really well. But they can't think for themselves, so you have to set exactly what they should do, and when. This takes time to setup, but you only need to do it once, and then they will work great forever!
There is a kiss beginners guide which you should bookmark and check it every time you want to know something. And there is a Kiss Manual which tells you even more. My guide here covers some basics. The beginner's guide will help you get setup, and then you start work on tweaking your .ini file for each character you want to automate. It looks complex at first but you learn fast. The best way is to copy other peoples files from here. You might need to change some of the spell names and things to suit your character if it is a different level. Usually you can just copy the whole file, but I recommend trying to read other peoples files to learn how it works. That way you can make your own file do exactly what you want.
Start small and take your time, go to a newbie zone so there is no danger, and start by getting the characters to buff you automatically first. Then set up some heals and dps, and you can injure yourself on purpose and check that they heal properly. Then pull a mob back to the group and check they start fighting it and using spells. In time you will be able to perfect the ini file so that they can play by themselves perfectly.
Don't try to do everything from the start. You don't need characters to auto pull while you are getting started, or auto travel somewhere, or send you gmails or whatever. Just start simple and do more advanced stuff later. Healers should keep you alive, and nukers should blast stuff down without stealing aggro. And if you have a mezzer, they should take care of adds.
How do I make my party follow me?
Type /chaseme from your main character and your other characters to start following you. To turn it off, from your main you can do /bca //chase which tells everyone to stop following you. This basically just turns on and off the ChaseAssist=0 part in the top of your character's ini files. You can set chase distance in there too. It works fine, but sometimes characters will get stuck on obstacles if you travel through a busy room or area. A better way is to use this:
From your main guy you can now type /afollow and the characters will follow you. But with this version, they will follow your exact movements! So if you are running through a zone and you sidestep some rocks and trees, the following toons will follow those exact steps. This uses mq2advpath which comes as standard in Very Vanilla. It might make it look obvious you are using MQ2 though so if you are paranoid, you are best to use the first option (/chaseme) whenever you are near people, because it looks like regular autofollow. Away from people I use the /afollow because it is better.
There are other useful controls that might help too. If /afollow doesn't work, you might need to enable the plugin first, you can do that like this:
Edit your MacroQuest.ini file and and under [plugins] add MQ2AdvPath=1
ALSO, there is a whole other movement plugin called MQ2Nav, which is amazing. You have a mesh covering the floor of an entire zone and characters can travel anywhere in the mesh. People can tweak the mesh to avoid obstacles etc. The Very Vanilla installer will now let you download meshes made by other people for any zone. And you can tweak them or even make your own. The plugin works great anyway, you can be on the other side of a zone and type a command and characters will find their way to you.
How do I start and stop it all?
The first time you run kiss it will make ini files for each character. Then you edit those files to cast the spells and do whatever you want. You can copy other peoples ini files from the Resources section to help you learn how it should be typed in. Once you have the ini looking good, you can make a hotkey to have all the characters start the macro. So on my tank I have a hotkey that does this:
/bcaa //target Bobbythetank
/pause 2
/bcaa //mac kissassist
The bcaa thing is an instruction to all your logged in macroquest characters, then you need two // to do slash commands so it tells everyone to do /target my tank. Then the pause gives them a moment to get the target done. Then it tells everyone to run the kiss assist macro. So with one press of this button, my team starts working automatically, I let them buff up, and then I'm ready to rock. If I want to end the macros, I just have another hotkey that does /bcaa //end which tells them all to stop. I am a bit paranoid of people spotting me using obviously automated characters, so I always do this whenever I go near people like in PoK.
You can also use /mqp which is to pause instead of stopping the macro. It doesn't seem to make much difference to me but I guess on slower computer it would be faster to pause and unpause the macro instead of starting and stopping it. Anyway, to tell everyone to pause you would do /bcaa //mqp and to tell them to unpause you would do /bcaa //mqp off
It is hard to read the ini files.
You get used to it in time and it becomes a lot easier to read. But also you can put your own spaces in and it works fine. You can even do colors and change the font sizes and stuff, there are examples on this forum. But for me I just like to have a space between each section and it is easy for me to read now. So an example of my ini files is like this:
[SpellSet]
LoadSpellSet=1
SpellSetName=1
[Buffs]
BuffsOn=1
Buffs1=Echoing Loop of Ryken
Buffs2=Daggerspike Shoulderguard
[Melee]
AssistAt=99
MeleeOn=1
FaceMobOn=1
MeleeDistance=75
StickHow=front
AutoFireOn=0
UseMQ2Melee=1
etc...
p.s. Also, reduce the size of your sections with the size part. Most sections have the option, for example in dps it says DPSSize=25 which tells that section to have 25 dps lines. But you can reduce this for however many you need. No point having 25 dps sections on a Cleric that only uses 1 dps or maybe none at all. In that case just turn it to DPSSize=1 and this will make the files shorter and easier to read.
My computer is lagging like crazy!
This one confused me because on PEQ I was boxing 19 characters at once on the same PC. But when I started on Live a few months ago, I could barely even run 5 characters.
First thing to do is open EQ's graphics options and set background fps to 30 and foreground fps to whatever your monitor can handle. There is also a plugin that can do it for you, if you run /bcaa //plugin mq2fps this will turn the plugin on, and then type: /bcaa //fps 10,40 this will tell the characters to all have 40 fps when you are viewing their screen, but 10fps when they are in the background. This really helps! You can tweak these numbers how you like but so far for me, this looks nice. Personally I just used the EQ options which did the trick.
There is also a plugin called MQ2viewport which you can run the same way and it will reduce the graphics of background characters. Really helps!
And another plugin called MQ2cpuload which will help the game spread over different CPU cores. You can also do this in your eqclient.ini file by setting cpuaffinity to -1. Personally I found that both the plugin and the affinity thing didn't work very well, my first core was 100% and the others were free. So I used MQ2cpuload to manually move each of my characters to another of my CPU cores, and I kept an eye on my cpu monitor. When I found the perfect balance, I now knew how to set each character in the cpuaffinity part of the eqclient.ini and now they all login to their correct core. I am now boxing 42 characters on my one PC and it works great. MQ2CPUload isn't needed anymore but it helped me get to this point.
p.s. There is also a new addon called MQ2eqWire which is amazing. You have to buy it for $10 and it gives you it for a year. It replaces MQ2viewport and MQ2fps and is better than them both. It makes it so that all your characters besides the top window, don't even render their graphics at all. They are still running so will receive commands, but they don't render anything so it saves a lot of memory, cpu, and graphics card usage.
another p.s. Once you have the game working smoothly, you should try to increase the "background fps" in the EQ client (or in the eqclient.ini file) to be as high as your pc can handle. My screen can only do 60fps anyway and I use vsync to lock it at that, so I have my background fps set to 60. I think this lets them work a bit faster in the background and I saw an older boy talking about it in discord so it must be true =) But even at 30 it was good for me, at 60fps they react faster than I could react so what more can I ask!
My Mage stops casting when my tank is injured?! :/
Change the part in your mages ini file to say CastingInterruptOn=0 instead of 1. I am not sure if this starts enabled as default but for whatever reason, it was on for my mage and it kept stopping him. With it turned off he just spams his nukes like a good boy. But you should have that interrupt set 1 on your healers because you want them to stop whatever they are doing and heal the tank when he is injured.
How do I have my healer heal the correct people?
You can do more advanced things with conditions, but even as standard there are some things you can put after your heals to make them only get used on your tank or on everyone except the tank. So this is what I did, it makes my cleric only use his big heal on my tank, and other characters get the small fast heal.
[Heals]
HealsOn=1
Heals1=Pious Light|70|MA
Heals2=Pious Remedy|60|!MA
The first one is telling the character to heal the MA (my tank is my Main Assist) if he gets to 70%. The second line says if anyone except the tank gets to 60%, then heal them with Pious Remedy which is the fast heal.
What is MQ2Melee and should I use it?
This is some code that comes as standard with kiss and very vanilla, it tells every class to do certain useful things for that class. So on warriors for example it tells them to use taunt and bash or whatever, on other classes it does a few things like tells them whether to use banestrike or not, but it doesn't do much else for them. I think it also helps characters with positioning and stuff too. But if you have your KISS ini files set up well and especially if you start making good conditions to do what you want, then you likely will want to turn this MQ2melee off because you don't want it trying to overrule your hard work. I have it turned off on all my characters but for the first few months before I got my ini files perfected, mq2melee helped.
My mage only gave 1 weapon to his pet?
You can tell the mage to give 2 weapons and you can even tell them exactly what weapons to give. For me his ini line looks like this:
PetToys1=Grant Spectral Armaments|Summoned: Spectral Shortsword|Summoned: Spectral Iceblade
The first part tells him what spell to cast to create the bag full of weapons. Then the after the first | it tells him what weapon to give him first. And then another | and it tells him the second weapon to give. You can use the same weapons if you want, I just like to give him a spectral blade and an ice blade.
My character was working and now it is not :C
I have screwed up my characters many times, but it is only ever one small thing you recently added to the ini file that breaks them. My first tip is to always leave the ini file open in your text editor. So when you make a few changes, save the file but leave it open, now tab back into the game and run the macro again and test it out. If something is wrong, you can tab back to the text file and just press Ctrl Z and it will undo anything you did. Also whether you do this or not, it is worth just trying to remember (or make separate notes) of things you change. So if it was working and now it is not, you know exactly what things you have changed and you can change them back so it works again. Now redo the changes one by one, to figure out which one is causing the problem. And again, I recommend backing up your ini files in a separate folder somewhere, just in case you permanently mess them up somehow. (It happens). I have 2 backups.
How do I have my tank use his area taunt? (Or any character use their area stuff like area slow etc)
I was being a noob and trying to use this in his DPS section with conditions. But there is already a section which handles this perfectly with no hassle. Scroll down the characters [AE] part in their ini file and put the abilities or spells in there, and then just tell them how many mobs there should be nearby for it to trigger. So for my warrior it looks like this:
[AE]
AEOn=1
AECOn=0
AESize=5
AERadius=58
AE1=Wheeling Blades|3
AE2=Area Taunt|3|Mob
AE3=Resplendent Glory|3
AE4=Rallying Roar|3
AE5=NULL
So in this case if 2 mobs come, he just fights as normal and my mezzer will take care of the add. If 3 mobs come, the tank uses a few useful area aggro grabbing abilities. So far he hasn't ever woken up some mezzed mobs so it works well. He uses it before my mezzer has a chance to do an area mez which is perfect, the tank is best to aggro them all and then the mezzer takes care of the adds without being beat on. And you can use this section for any class you want, so shammys can AOE slow, enchs can AOE tash, wizzies can drop their little totems or whatever you want to do.
My mage/wiz keeps stealing aggro:
Learning how to edit the inis to make them spam their nukes quickly is exactly what you want. But sometimes they do it too efficiently and grab aggro. There are a bunch of ways to prevent this but I'll give you the 2 ways I use which I think are probably the best ways. First off, there is already a specific [aggro] section in the ini files. On my Wiz he can use some good wiz anti-aggro spells like his concussion spell in there. On my mage, so far I don't have anything to use except the AA called Silent Casting. Depending on your level, these inis can look very different but how they work is the important thing. So my mage's aggro section is like this:
AggroOn=1
AggroSize=4
Aggro1=Silent Casting|82|>
Aggro2=NULL
Aggro3=NULL
Aggro4=NULL
This tells the mage to nuke happily until his aggro meter gets to 82% or higher, and then he will activate Silent Casting.
But I also use another way which is to use conditions. Conditions may seem like an advanced pro thing but they are not too complex and they are so powerful. They can do anything, and make characters behave in a much more intelligent way. So my mages dps section is like this:
DPSOn=2
DPSSize=5
DPSSkip=1
DPSInterval=1
DPS1=Malosinete|99|once
DPS2=Ruinous Servant|98
DPS3=Twincast|97
DPS4=Shock of Argathian Steel|96
DPS5=Spear of Magma|95
Then at the bottom of the ini file in the [KConditions] section you change ConOn=1 and now you can have rules for the spells/abilities you use.
For Ruinous Servant
Cond1=${Target.PctHPs} > 65
(This only uses it if the target is over 65% health, otherwise it is not worth wasting it.
For Twincast
Cond2=!${Me.Buff[Twincast].ID && ${Target.PctHPs} > 70 || ${Target.Named} || ${SpawnCount[npc radius 60 zradius 10]}>1
(This only uses Twincast if it is ready to be used, and the mob is over 70% health, or it is a named, or you are fighting more than 1 mob. So Twincast wont get blown on 1 measly mob, only if it is named or for multiples.)
For nukes
Cond2=${Me.PctAggro}<77
This says to only cast that spell if your aggro is less than 77%. My wizzy's nukes are so strong that being 80% aggro and casting 1 big nuke can be enough to tip him into 100% and steal aggro. So less than 77% seems a good limit. If his aggro is higher than that, he will just wait before casting the nuke. Once your tank gets good gear and AAs, aggro should never be a problem. Also casters get things to lower their aggro, but this condition is a good backup plan.
And then in your dps section (or buffs or anywhere else) you can tell each one to have any condition you want. For example
DPSOn=2
DPSSize=5
DPSSkip=1
DPSInterval=1
DPS1=Malosinete|99|once
DPS2=Ruinous Servant|98|Cond1
DPS3=Twincast|97|Cond2
DPS4=Shock of Argathian Steel|96|Cond3
DPS5=Spear of Magma|95|Cond3
So it is the same as it was above without any conditions, but you can just add the |Cond part after anything that you want to have a rule. And use different number conditions to do different stuff. In this case Malosinete doesn't need a condition. The Ruinous Servant uses cond1 which makes it only get used if the mob is over 65% to not waste it. Twincast uses condition 2 which tells it to save it for nameds or bigger fights. And the two nukes check that the character's aggro is not too high before using it.
Note about EQ Emu
I wrote this for EQ Live which worked perfectly and now I am playing on EQ Emu which also works perfectly! I was worried that various things wouldn't work and I saw a list of problems on the forum, but so far everything has been great for me. The only thing to mention so far is that conditions which check a mob for buffs wont work until you get some Leadership Abilities points and buy the show mob buffs upgrade. I also tried Muleassist briefly which worked too although that is in heavy redevelopment at the moment so I am sticking with Kiss for now. But I may switch to Muleassist sometime as it has some really nice features. Although there is also Kiss12 beta which seems amazing too. Plenty of options
What is left?
There is a lot of great stuff left that you can do with MQ2 and Kiss. I think once you have these basics down, you should get MQ2Nav running and download the meshes from the launcher. This lets your team navigate that zone really well and even go to other zones. You can also make your own meshes if you want to perfect one for your favorite zone. With MQ2Nav and MQ2EasyFind you can be on the other side of a huge zone and tell your characters to come to you, and it works! They can even travel to other zones you specify, or find their way to an NPC you tell them to get to.
Also maybe spend some time to get MQ2AutoLogin setup. If you only play a few characters then maybe you don't care, but if you box a whole group or more then it is really nice to log in everyone with 1 click!
Also if you ever go AFK and leave your characters fighting, you really need to have MQ2Posse set up. I recommend getting the GTFO.mac macro which will set up posse for you, and also lets you do a bit more.
Also you might like MQ2Hud, there are a lot of components and customization you can do to them and it gives you so much useful information any time you want. How did I live without it?!
Once you are working well with Kiss, this guide might help you to do some extra stuff at the press of a button.
Prerequisite:
Use EQBC, it makes everything so much better. You turn it on in your ini files for each character in the part that says EQBCOn=1
1 is on and 0 is off for a lot of things in these ini files. With this you can have your characters talk to each other and tell you important stuff and give them commands from any character. I use it all the time.
Search better!
You can search the forum for answers to everything with the search box in the top. But if you want to find something on a big page like this, press CTRL F and you can search for a word or phrase on that page and it will jump right to it. Once you start editing your character ini files, you will probably want to use this a lot. Say you added a new spell called Flaming Bolt and the character isn't casting it. You can just open your ini and do CTRL F for Flaming and it will jump right back to that part so you can fix it.
What is MQ2 and KISS and how do I use it?
MacroQuest2 is like the machinery in the background that makes everything work. KissAssist (KA) is like the front interface that easily lets you make your characters play by themselves. You can get other 'macros' instead of Kiss which will run your characters for you, check out the Resource link at the top of RedGuides. This guide is for KA which popular because it is very advanced and can run every class in the game. I love it. It works so well that you could go afk and your characters will play themselves like real people. On EQ Live you are not allowed to do this, you have to be at the computer, but technically Kiss is good enough to run characters by itself.
They will cast buffs/heals/nukes in a smart way. They never go afk or get stressed so they play really well. But they can't think for themselves, so you have to set exactly what they should do, and when. This takes time to setup, but you only need to do it once, and then they will work great forever!
There is a kiss beginners guide which you should bookmark and check it every time you want to know something. And there is a Kiss Manual which tells you even more. My guide here covers some basics. The beginner's guide will help you get setup, and then you start work on tweaking your .ini file for each character you want to automate. It looks complex at first but you learn fast. The best way is to copy other peoples files from here. You might need to change some of the spell names and things to suit your character if it is a different level. Usually you can just copy the whole file, but I recommend trying to read other peoples files to learn how it works. That way you can make your own file do exactly what you want.
Start small and take your time, go to a newbie zone so there is no danger, and start by getting the characters to buff you automatically first. Then set up some heals and dps, and you can injure yourself on purpose and check that they heal properly. Then pull a mob back to the group and check they start fighting it and using spells. In time you will be able to perfect the ini file so that they can play by themselves perfectly.
Don't try to do everything from the start. You don't need characters to auto pull while you are getting started, or auto travel somewhere, or send you gmails or whatever. Just start simple and do more advanced stuff later. Healers should keep you alive, and nukers should blast stuff down without stealing aggro. And if you have a mezzer, they should take care of adds.
How do I make my party follow me?
Type /chaseme from your main character and your other characters to start following you. To turn it off, from your main you can do /bca //chase which tells everyone to stop following you. This basically just turns on and off the ChaseAssist=0 part in the top of your character's ini files. You can set chase distance in there too. It works fine, but sometimes characters will get stuck on obstacles if you travel through a busy room or area. A better way is to use this:
From your main guy you can now type /afollow and the characters will follow you. But with this version, they will follow your exact movements! So if you are running through a zone and you sidestep some rocks and trees, the following toons will follow those exact steps. This uses mq2advpath which comes as standard in Very Vanilla. It might make it look obvious you are using MQ2 though so if you are paranoid, you are best to use the first option (/chaseme) whenever you are near people, because it looks like regular autofollow. Away from people I use the /afollow because it is better.
There are other useful controls that might help too. If /afollow doesn't work, you might need to enable the plugin first, you can do that like this:
Edit your MacroQuest.ini file and and under [plugins] add MQ2AdvPath=1
ALSO, there is a whole other movement plugin called MQ2Nav, which is amazing. You have a mesh covering the floor of an entire zone and characters can travel anywhere in the mesh. People can tweak the mesh to avoid obstacles etc. The Very Vanilla installer will now let you download meshes made by other people for any zone. And you can tweak them or even make your own. The plugin works great anyway, you can be on the other side of a zone and type a command and characters will find their way to you.
How do I start and stop it all?
The first time you run kiss it will make ini files for each character. Then you edit those files to cast the spells and do whatever you want. You can copy other peoples ini files from the Resources section to help you learn how it should be typed in. Once you have the ini looking good, you can make a hotkey to have all the characters start the macro. So on my tank I have a hotkey that does this:
/bcaa //target Bobbythetank
/pause 2
/bcaa //mac kissassist
The bcaa thing is an instruction to all your logged in macroquest characters, then you need two // to do slash commands so it tells everyone to do /target my tank. Then the pause gives them a moment to get the target done. Then it tells everyone to run the kiss assist macro. So with one press of this button, my team starts working automatically, I let them buff up, and then I'm ready to rock. If I want to end the macros, I just have another hotkey that does /bcaa //end which tells them all to stop. I am a bit paranoid of people spotting me using obviously automated characters, so I always do this whenever I go near people like in PoK.
You can also use /mqp which is to pause instead of stopping the macro. It doesn't seem to make much difference to me but I guess on slower computer it would be faster to pause and unpause the macro instead of starting and stopping it. Anyway, to tell everyone to pause you would do /bcaa //mqp and to tell them to unpause you would do /bcaa //mqp off
It is hard to read the ini files.
You get used to it in time and it becomes a lot easier to read. But also you can put your own spaces in and it works fine. You can even do colors and change the font sizes and stuff, there are examples on this forum. But for me I just like to have a space between each section and it is easy for me to read now. So an example of my ini files is like this:
[SpellSet]
LoadSpellSet=1
SpellSetName=1
[Buffs]
BuffsOn=1
Buffs1=Echoing Loop of Ryken
Buffs2=Daggerspike Shoulderguard
[Melee]
AssistAt=99
MeleeOn=1
FaceMobOn=1
MeleeDistance=75
StickHow=front
AutoFireOn=0
UseMQ2Melee=1
etc...
p.s. Also, reduce the size of your sections with the size part. Most sections have the option, for example in dps it says DPSSize=25 which tells that section to have 25 dps lines. But you can reduce this for however many you need. No point having 25 dps sections on a Cleric that only uses 1 dps or maybe none at all. In that case just turn it to DPSSize=1 and this will make the files shorter and easier to read.
My computer is lagging like crazy!
This one confused me because on PEQ I was boxing 19 characters at once on the same PC. But when I started on Live a few months ago, I could barely even run 5 characters.
First thing to do is open EQ's graphics options and set background fps to 30 and foreground fps to whatever your monitor can handle. There is also a plugin that can do it for you, if you run /bcaa //plugin mq2fps this will turn the plugin on, and then type: /bcaa //fps 10,40 this will tell the characters to all have 40 fps when you are viewing their screen, but 10fps when they are in the background. This really helps! You can tweak these numbers how you like but so far for me, this looks nice. Personally I just used the EQ options which did the trick.
There is also a plugin called MQ2viewport which you can run the same way and it will reduce the graphics of background characters. Really helps!
And another plugin called MQ2cpuload which will help the game spread over different CPU cores. You can also do this in your eqclient.ini file by setting cpuaffinity to -1. Personally I found that both the plugin and the affinity thing didn't work very well, my first core was 100% and the others were free. So I used MQ2cpuload to manually move each of my characters to another of my CPU cores, and I kept an eye on my cpu monitor. When I found the perfect balance, I now knew how to set each character in the cpuaffinity part of the eqclient.ini and now they all login to their correct core. I am now boxing 42 characters on my one PC and it works great. MQ2CPUload isn't needed anymore but it helped me get to this point.
p.s. There is also a new addon called MQ2eqWire which is amazing. You have to buy it for $10 and it gives you it for a year. It replaces MQ2viewport and MQ2fps and is better than them both. It makes it so that all your characters besides the top window, don't even render their graphics at all. They are still running so will receive commands, but they don't render anything so it saves a lot of memory, cpu, and graphics card usage.
another p.s. Once you have the game working smoothly, you should try to increase the "background fps" in the EQ client (or in the eqclient.ini file) to be as high as your pc can handle. My screen can only do 60fps anyway and I use vsync to lock it at that, so I have my background fps set to 60. I think this lets them work a bit faster in the background and I saw an older boy talking about it in discord so it must be true =) But even at 30 it was good for me, at 60fps they react faster than I could react so what more can I ask!
My Mage stops casting when my tank is injured?! :/
Change the part in your mages ini file to say CastingInterruptOn=0 instead of 1. I am not sure if this starts enabled as default but for whatever reason, it was on for my mage and it kept stopping him. With it turned off he just spams his nukes like a good boy. But you should have that interrupt set 1 on your healers because you want them to stop whatever they are doing and heal the tank when he is injured.
How do I have my healer heal the correct people?
You can do more advanced things with conditions, but even as standard there are some things you can put after your heals to make them only get used on your tank or on everyone except the tank. So this is what I did, it makes my cleric only use his big heal on my tank, and other characters get the small fast heal.
[Heals]
HealsOn=1
Heals1=Pious Light|70|MA
Heals2=Pious Remedy|60|!MA
The first one is telling the character to heal the MA (my tank is my Main Assist) if he gets to 70%. The second line says if anyone except the tank gets to 60%, then heal them with Pious Remedy which is the fast heal.
What is MQ2Melee and should I use it?
This is some code that comes as standard with kiss and very vanilla, it tells every class to do certain useful things for that class. So on warriors for example it tells them to use taunt and bash or whatever, on other classes it does a few things like tells them whether to use banestrike or not, but it doesn't do much else for them. I think it also helps characters with positioning and stuff too. But if you have your KISS ini files set up well and especially if you start making good conditions to do what you want, then you likely will want to turn this MQ2melee off because you don't want it trying to overrule your hard work. I have it turned off on all my characters but for the first few months before I got my ini files perfected, mq2melee helped.
My mage only gave 1 weapon to his pet?
You can tell the mage to give 2 weapons and you can even tell them exactly what weapons to give. For me his ini line looks like this:
PetToys1=Grant Spectral Armaments|Summoned: Spectral Shortsword|Summoned: Spectral Iceblade
The first part tells him what spell to cast to create the bag full of weapons. Then the after the first | it tells him what weapon to give him first. And then another | and it tells him the second weapon to give. You can use the same weapons if you want, I just like to give him a spectral blade and an ice blade.
My character was working and now it is not :C
I have screwed up my characters many times, but it is only ever one small thing you recently added to the ini file that breaks them. My first tip is to always leave the ini file open in your text editor. So when you make a few changes, save the file but leave it open, now tab back into the game and run the macro again and test it out. If something is wrong, you can tab back to the text file and just press Ctrl Z and it will undo anything you did. Also whether you do this or not, it is worth just trying to remember (or make separate notes) of things you change. So if it was working and now it is not, you know exactly what things you have changed and you can change them back so it works again. Now redo the changes one by one, to figure out which one is causing the problem. And again, I recommend backing up your ini files in a separate folder somewhere, just in case you permanently mess them up somehow. (It happens). I have 2 backups.
How do I have my tank use his area taunt? (Or any character use their area stuff like area slow etc)
I was being a noob and trying to use this in his DPS section with conditions. But there is already a section which handles this perfectly with no hassle. Scroll down the characters [AE] part in their ini file and put the abilities or spells in there, and then just tell them how many mobs there should be nearby for it to trigger. So for my warrior it looks like this:
[AE]
AEOn=1
AECOn=0
AESize=5
AERadius=58
AE1=Wheeling Blades|3
AE2=Area Taunt|3|Mob
AE3=Resplendent Glory|3
AE4=Rallying Roar|3
AE5=NULL
So in this case if 2 mobs come, he just fights as normal and my mezzer will take care of the add. If 3 mobs come, the tank uses a few useful area aggro grabbing abilities. So far he hasn't ever woken up some mezzed mobs so it works well. He uses it before my mezzer has a chance to do an area mez which is perfect, the tank is best to aggro them all and then the mezzer takes care of the adds without being beat on. And you can use this section for any class you want, so shammys can AOE slow, enchs can AOE tash, wizzies can drop their little totems or whatever you want to do.
My mage/wiz keeps stealing aggro:
Learning how to edit the inis to make them spam their nukes quickly is exactly what you want. But sometimes they do it too efficiently and grab aggro. There are a bunch of ways to prevent this but I'll give you the 2 ways I use which I think are probably the best ways. First off, there is already a specific [aggro] section in the ini files. On my Wiz he can use some good wiz anti-aggro spells like his concussion spell in there. On my mage, so far I don't have anything to use except the AA called Silent Casting. Depending on your level, these inis can look very different but how they work is the important thing. So my mage's aggro section is like this:
AggroOn=1
AggroSize=4
Aggro1=Silent Casting|82|>
Aggro2=NULL
Aggro3=NULL
Aggro4=NULL
This tells the mage to nuke happily until his aggro meter gets to 82% or higher, and then he will activate Silent Casting.
But I also use another way which is to use conditions. Conditions may seem like an advanced pro thing but they are not too complex and they are so powerful. They can do anything, and make characters behave in a much more intelligent way. So my mages dps section is like this:
DPSOn=2
DPSSize=5
DPSSkip=1
DPSInterval=1
DPS1=Malosinete|99|once
DPS2=Ruinous Servant|98
DPS3=Twincast|97
DPS4=Shock of Argathian Steel|96
DPS5=Spear of Magma|95
Then at the bottom of the ini file in the [KConditions] section you change ConOn=1 and now you can have rules for the spells/abilities you use.
For Ruinous Servant
Cond1=${Target.PctHPs} > 65
(This only uses it if the target is over 65% health, otherwise it is not worth wasting it.
For Twincast
Cond2=!${Me.Buff[Twincast].ID && ${Target.PctHPs} > 70 || ${Target.Named} || ${SpawnCount[npc radius 60 zradius 10]}>1
(This only uses Twincast if it is ready to be used, and the mob is over 70% health, or it is a named, or you are fighting more than 1 mob. So Twincast wont get blown on 1 measly mob, only if it is named or for multiples.)
For nukes
Cond2=${Me.PctAggro}<77
This says to only cast that spell if your aggro is less than 77%. My wizzy's nukes are so strong that being 80% aggro and casting 1 big nuke can be enough to tip him into 100% and steal aggro. So less than 77% seems a good limit. If his aggro is higher than that, he will just wait before casting the nuke. Once your tank gets good gear and AAs, aggro should never be a problem. Also casters get things to lower their aggro, but this condition is a good backup plan.
And then in your dps section (or buffs or anywhere else) you can tell each one to have any condition you want. For example
DPSOn=2
DPSSize=5
DPSSkip=1
DPSInterval=1
DPS1=Malosinete|99|once
DPS2=Ruinous Servant|98|Cond1
DPS3=Twincast|97|Cond2
DPS4=Shock of Argathian Steel|96|Cond3
DPS5=Spear of Magma|95|Cond3
So it is the same as it was above without any conditions, but you can just add the |Cond part after anything that you want to have a rule. And use different number conditions to do different stuff. In this case Malosinete doesn't need a condition. The Ruinous Servant uses cond1 which makes it only get used if the mob is over 65% to not waste it. Twincast uses condition 2 which tells it to save it for nameds or bigger fights. And the two nukes check that the character's aggro is not too high before using it.
Note about EQ Emu
I wrote this for EQ Live which worked perfectly and now I am playing on EQ Emu which also works perfectly! I was worried that various things wouldn't work and I saw a list of problems on the forum, but so far everything has been great for me. The only thing to mention so far is that conditions which check a mob for buffs wont work until you get some Leadership Abilities points and buy the show mob buffs upgrade. I also tried Muleassist briefly which worked too although that is in heavy redevelopment at the moment so I am sticking with Kiss for now. But I may switch to Muleassist sometime as it has some really nice features. Although there is also Kiss12 beta which seems amazing too. Plenty of options
What is left?
There is a lot of great stuff left that you can do with MQ2 and Kiss. I think once you have these basics down, you should get MQ2Nav running and download the meshes from the launcher. This lets your team navigate that zone really well and even go to other zones. You can also make your own meshes if you want to perfect one for your favorite zone. With MQ2Nav and MQ2EasyFind you can be on the other side of a huge zone and tell your characters to come to you, and it works! They can even travel to other zones you specify, or find their way to an NPC you tell them to get to.
Also maybe spend some time to get MQ2AutoLogin setup. If you only play a few characters then maybe you don't care, but if you box a whole group or more then it is really nice to log in everyone with 1 click!
Also if you ever go AFK and leave your characters fighting, you really need to have MQ2Posse set up. I recommend getting the GTFO.mac macro which will set up posse for you, and also lets you do a bit more.
Also you might like MQ2Hud, there are a lot of components and customization you can do to them and it gives you so much useful information any time you want. How did I live without it?!
Once you are working well with Kiss, this guide might help you to do some extra stuff at the press of a button.
