Hello Everyone,
I apologize in advance for the long post and will do my utmost to prove that there are stupid questions.
Hopefully someone new coming in will also be able to find answers here as well.
I found my way here from Almar’s (did he stop playing EQ?) guides while I was looking up the best zones for certain level ranges on Live servers. At one point it was pretty much highly recommended to look into multiboxing as that would make the game much, much easier and enjoyable. Mercs fall off quickly and the server will be barren until max level. All Live servers are pretty much top-heavy.
I went through some of his multiboxing guides and he seemed to use Isboxer combined with MQ at the time. The gist was if you want to have maximum efficiency, you would need to manually box. If you want to be lazy, use kissassist, and then be really bad at the game with horrible performance and DPS. Maybe the middle would be to semi-manual box? Have kissassist handle things out of combat and you would take over in-combat events?
1. History
I played EQ back in 1999 as a little kid and then again when Kunark came out in 2000. It was my first MMORPG and for some reason I still vividly remember some crazy moments (and sounds/BGM) I’ve had considering I did not spend that much time with it. I spent about a month with release, then another month with Kunark. The downtime (I think 15-20m after each fight as solo?) and insane grinding was what actually got to me (and not being able to find groups). I did try most classes to level 20 in that time span. I’ve been around and played most MMORPGs like Asheron’s Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, FF11, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, and FF14. None have lasted me more than a month except for EVE Online (about one year) and FF14 (6 months though could’ve (and should’ve) completed main quest in under a month then move on).
In spite of this, for some reason EQ has always held some special place in my heart. I recently came back last week and had a “blast” leveling a Wizard to level 50. Unfortunately, this is where the fun ends unless I subscribe or multibox.
I have a group of questions that hopefully someone will be able to answer.
2. Multiboxing and MQ PC requirements.
My laptop is from 2013 and is a Clevo 151SM1.
The specs are:
Intel Core i7-4700MQ
16 GB DDR3 SDRAM Dual Channel 800MHz
GeForce GTX 770M
I plan to have 6 boxes on a single PC. I’ll tweak 5 boxes to the lowest possible settings and memory usage. The main box will be on one SSD and the other 5 boxes will load from another SSD. Both are Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB, mostly empty. I heard load times are shorter if you split boxes on two or more drives. I also read that multiboxing EQ is CPU and memory intensive, not so much on GPU.
With the above information, will my laptop be able to handle multiboxing with MQ smoothly?
3. Live Server vs Test and AA System
Membership is almost $15 nowadays so if I were to have 6 boxes, that would be around $90 per month. EQ is mainly a social game where you interact with people and multiboxing pretty much turns it into a singleplayer game with the occasional chat. I don’t see the merit of paying $90 per month if I’m just going to do things “solo”.
I pretty much narrowed it down to FV or Live for the reasons stated below.
FV is populated, pretty much all top-heavy, and you have access to the bazaar. Unfortunately, everything is insanely hyper-inflated and a new player can’t afford anything. But it’s a Live server, not Test, so maybe more stable? My AA will be limited to maybe silver and I won’t have access to higher ranking spells. No social interactions until I reach max lv and then maybe a raid or two per week if I manage to join an active guild.
The Test server is pretty empty with a few guilds that do raids once or twice a week. There is no economy. You can buy anything from the bazaar for 0-1 plats however the bazaar is mostly empty and things go out quickly. One major advantage with Test is you get gold which unlocks the AA system and spell rankings.
According to Almar’s guides, your character(s) will be severely limited without AA starting level 50 (or level 80 if silver). I checked further into this and some agree with this, while some say otherwise. Those who say otherwise claim that earning AA is a waste of time and one should go straight to level 110 then earn AA points extremely quickly with bonus on high lv mobs. You earn points lightning fast as the exp points from these high lv mobs is substantial relatively speaking (relative if you started earning AA at lv 50 etc). The guild I joined on Vox also claims that I will see negligible differences until level 100.
This leads to my next question:
I do not want to be nerfed since I won’t have access to AA (and higher spell rankings) if on Live. Will there really be a huge difference at higher lvs for those who earn AA and those who don’t?
If the game will be empty until I reach max lv for both FV and Test, is there a point to be on FV? FV seems to be as populated as Test if that’s the case (I’ve only played on Vox, yes everything was empty but I only went up to level 50).
Will my limit to ranked spells also nerf my group?
This leads to my next question:
4. My Box Group Config
Paladin
Bard
Berserker
Cleric
Enchanter
Wizard
Will there be any issues with my config above? I was wondering if a Bard and Enchanter in the same group would be redundant for mezzing but maybe the bard could be the backup mezzer. My point is to have fun, not be meta in anything or else I would just go with 5 mages(or ENC)/1 cleric, 6 wiz, 6 necros, etc, and that would just be boring for me.
I tried looking to see if kissassist supports enchanter charm and pets but no success. Will I have to handle that through manual boxing?
5. MQ Useful Utilities
MQStatus, MQRelocate, Sic’s hotkeys, MQAutoGroup, MQAutoAccept, MQYes (think this is now native to MQ?), Almar’s AutoForage, AutoSkillUp, AutoLanguage.
Would be great if there are other QoL plugins to know about!
6. KissAssist Aggro Management
I’ve looked at kissassist and seen some videos of it. The main problem I see is that the program will just spam skills unless you provide specific options/conditions to it.
This is problematic for a group with casters. Simply putting in something like DPS1=Flame Shock|90 will make the Wizard spam cast spells nonstop from 90% health. They will pull aggro and die.
I looked at the aggro section and indeed the caster will try to use their spells to reduce aggro if the program detects the mob has generated a certain threat. Will the caster throw anything from DPS section while detecting they have aggro over the limit or cast spells to reduce aggro?
What if the caster does not have any aggro-reducing spells yet? Use something like DPS1=Flame Shock|50|Once? If the spells fizzles or resists, will they cast it again with Once option?
7. MQ and multiple drive locations, Compatibility with other things
I’ll be running one box as the main with high settings on first drive and 5 boxes on my secondary drive. Can MQ handle opening/running boxes in different drive locations?
I have some custom interfaces (Sparxx) that tweaks the UI. I am also using a custom map pack.
Will there be any compatibility issues?
8. End
Thanks for reading this far! My primary objective is just to have fun and programming your own group seems really exciting. I imagine having your group perform well and accomplish things in the game you couldn’t do yourself feels fulfilling.
I apologize in advance for the long post and will do my utmost to prove that there are stupid questions.
Hopefully someone new coming in will also be able to find answers here as well.
I found my way here from Almar’s (did he stop playing EQ?) guides while I was looking up the best zones for certain level ranges on Live servers. At one point it was pretty much highly recommended to look into multiboxing as that would make the game much, much easier and enjoyable. Mercs fall off quickly and the server will be barren until max level. All Live servers are pretty much top-heavy.
I went through some of his multiboxing guides and he seemed to use Isboxer combined with MQ at the time. The gist was if you want to have maximum efficiency, you would need to manually box. If you want to be lazy, use kissassist, and then be really bad at the game with horrible performance and DPS. Maybe the middle would be to semi-manual box? Have kissassist handle things out of combat and you would take over in-combat events?
1. History
I played EQ back in 1999 as a little kid and then again when Kunark came out in 2000. It was my first MMORPG and for some reason I still vividly remember some crazy moments (and sounds/BGM) I’ve had considering I did not spend that much time with it. I spent about a month with release, then another month with Kunark. The downtime (I think 15-20m after each fight as solo?) and insane grinding was what actually got to me (and not being able to find groups). I did try most classes to level 20 in that time span. I’ve been around and played most MMORPGs like Asheron’s Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Anarchy Online, FF11, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, and FF14. None have lasted me more than a month except for EVE Online (about one year) and FF14 (6 months though could’ve (and should’ve) completed main quest in under a month then move on).
In spite of this, for some reason EQ has always held some special place in my heart. I recently came back last week and had a “blast” leveling a Wizard to level 50. Unfortunately, this is where the fun ends unless I subscribe or multibox.
I have a group of questions that hopefully someone will be able to answer.
2. Multiboxing and MQ PC requirements.
My laptop is from 2013 and is a Clevo 151SM1.
The specs are:
Intel Core i7-4700MQ
16 GB DDR3 SDRAM Dual Channel 800MHz
GeForce GTX 770M
I plan to have 6 boxes on a single PC. I’ll tweak 5 boxes to the lowest possible settings and memory usage. The main box will be on one SSD and the other 5 boxes will load from another SSD. Both are Samsung 850 EVO 500 GB, mostly empty. I heard load times are shorter if you split boxes on two or more drives. I also read that multiboxing EQ is CPU and memory intensive, not so much on GPU.
With the above information, will my laptop be able to handle multiboxing with MQ smoothly?
3. Live Server vs Test and AA System
Membership is almost $15 nowadays so if I were to have 6 boxes, that would be around $90 per month. EQ is mainly a social game where you interact with people and multiboxing pretty much turns it into a singleplayer game with the occasional chat. I don’t see the merit of paying $90 per month if I’m just going to do things “solo”.
I pretty much narrowed it down to FV or Live for the reasons stated below.
FV is populated, pretty much all top-heavy, and you have access to the bazaar. Unfortunately, everything is insanely hyper-inflated and a new player can’t afford anything. But it’s a Live server, not Test, so maybe more stable? My AA will be limited to maybe silver and I won’t have access to higher ranking spells. No social interactions until I reach max lv and then maybe a raid or two per week if I manage to join an active guild.
The Test server is pretty empty with a few guilds that do raids once or twice a week. There is no economy. You can buy anything from the bazaar for 0-1 plats however the bazaar is mostly empty and things go out quickly. One major advantage with Test is you get gold which unlocks the AA system and spell rankings.
According to Almar’s guides, your character(s) will be severely limited without AA starting level 50 (or level 80 if silver). I checked further into this and some agree with this, while some say otherwise. Those who say otherwise claim that earning AA is a waste of time and one should go straight to level 110 then earn AA points extremely quickly with bonus on high lv mobs. You earn points lightning fast as the exp points from these high lv mobs is substantial relatively speaking (relative if you started earning AA at lv 50 etc). The guild I joined on Vox also claims that I will see negligible differences until level 100.
This leads to my next question:
I do not want to be nerfed since I won’t have access to AA (and higher spell rankings) if on Live. Will there really be a huge difference at higher lvs for those who earn AA and those who don’t?
If the game will be empty until I reach max lv for both FV and Test, is there a point to be on FV? FV seems to be as populated as Test if that’s the case (I’ve only played on Vox, yes everything was empty but I only went up to level 50).
Will my limit to ranked spells also nerf my group?
This leads to my next question:
4. My Box Group Config
Paladin
Bard
Berserker
Cleric
Enchanter
Wizard
Will there be any issues with my config above? I was wondering if a Bard and Enchanter in the same group would be redundant for mezzing but maybe the bard could be the backup mezzer. My point is to have fun, not be meta in anything or else I would just go with 5 mages(or ENC)/1 cleric, 6 wiz, 6 necros, etc, and that would just be boring for me.
I tried looking to see if kissassist supports enchanter charm and pets but no success. Will I have to handle that through manual boxing?
5. MQ Useful Utilities
MQStatus, MQRelocate, Sic’s hotkeys, MQAutoGroup, MQAutoAccept, MQYes (think this is now native to MQ?), Almar’s AutoForage, AutoSkillUp, AutoLanguage.
Would be great if there are other QoL plugins to know about!
6. KissAssist Aggro Management
I’ve looked at kissassist and seen some videos of it. The main problem I see is that the program will just spam skills unless you provide specific options/conditions to it.
This is problematic for a group with casters. Simply putting in something like DPS1=Flame Shock|90 will make the Wizard spam cast spells nonstop from 90% health. They will pull aggro and die.
I looked at the aggro section and indeed the caster will try to use their spells to reduce aggro if the program detects the mob has generated a certain threat. Will the caster throw anything from DPS section while detecting they have aggro over the limit or cast spells to reduce aggro?
What if the caster does not have any aggro-reducing spells yet? Use something like DPS1=Flame Shock|50|Once? If the spells fizzles or resists, will they cast it again with Once option?
7. MQ and multiple drive locations, Compatibility with other things
I’ll be running one box as the main with high settings on first drive and 5 boxes on my secondary drive. Can MQ handle opening/running boxes in different drive locations?
I have some custom interfaces (Sparxx) that tweaks the UI. I am also using a custom map pack.
Will there be any compatibility issues?
8. End
Thanks for reading this far! My primary objective is just to have fun and programming your own group seems really exciting. I imagine having your group perform well and accomplish things in the game you couldn’t do yourself feels fulfilling.
(mq2grind!)
