Everquest's Ingame Social Macros (Introduction)
As I am sure you're aware one of the things you're able to do in Everquest is to create a wide variety of macros, also known as socials. These macros let you do a wide variety of different things - you can basically make a macro do anything you want once you learn all the /commands in the game!!
To access your list of Socials/Macros bring up the Actions Window with Alt + M if it isn't already visible. You can also use the large EQ button to do this if Alt + M isn't working. Below is a picture of my Socials Window with a few macros I have for my Wizards.
In order to edit one of the macros just right click on an empty button (or one you're already using) and it'll bring up a small box with 6 lines for you to input information. The top line is the name of the macro and all 5 below that are where you'll input what you want the macro to do.
Now there are a few important things you need to know about macros and how they work in Everquest. I see a lot of people misusing macros which hopefully these guides can alleviate. The first and most important thing is in this game the macro executes the second command on the line first.
Let me explain in more detail with a macro that I use basically every day - my follow macro!
Ok so as you can see above I have two commands on the first line:
/pause 5, /target AlmarsGuides
When I hit this macro the first command it will execute is /target AlmarsGuides then it will pause for half a second before finally moving to the next line and executing /follow. You can only have TWO commands on a single line in macro (and one of them HAS to be pause) unless you're using MQ2 at which point I think? you can put as many as you want on one line.
There's a few more things I want to explain with this macro too. First is the /pause feature. It's sometimes important that you use this feature while making your macros if you plan to have multiple lines. Basically what /pause does is it tells the game to wait that long before executing the next line of the macro.
5 tells it to pause for half a second. 10 tells it to pause for a whole second. So, if you incorporate a /pause in your macro of say 105 it'll tell the macro to pause before moving onto the next line for 10 and a half seconds.
When you create a long macro with multiple pauses it's important for you to take into consideration server lag and hidden cooldowns. For example, when you cast a spell you can't immediately cast another. You're forced to wait about a second and a half or so global cooldown before you're able to cast another spell.
This means if you have a 5 second long spell and you make the /pause 50 it's going to finish pausing before you're able to cast another spell. For a spell that takes 5 seconds to cast I would recommend a pause of 65 - 75 depending on your average MS while playing.
Let's break this whole thing down further by looking at a macro that casts three different spells with only a single key press. Click on the picture below to enlarge it if you need to.
Ok, so. As you can see in the picture below my spell order goes Ethereal Incandescence with a pause of 50, Ethereal Weave with a pause of 45 and then Ethereal Hoarfrost with no pause at all. The reason there's no pause needed for Hoarfrost is because nothing comes after it. If I were to put another ability in this macro I would add a /pause 50 to Hoarfrost much like the first spell with the same cast time.
Hitting this macro a single time will cause all three spells to go off. If you wanted to (assuming you're not using a mount) you could change the macro to look something like this...
/pause 50, /cast 1
/pause 45, /cast 2
/pause 50, /cast 3
/sit
As you could probably guess what this would do is sit your character down after he finishes casting the spells that the macro tells him to cast. You can get macros to do almost anything you want them to do if you know the game well enough, this guide just barely scratches the surface of all the possibilities. If you'd like to continue learning more about Macros I recommend you continue with Part 2 of this guide; the link can be found just below.
Advanced Macros Guide (Part 2 of this Guide)
Return to Getting Started EQ Boxing Guide