Compiled by Sere of Blackburrow, this is a must read guide for anyone who plays EQ2.

Want to contribute? Visit the Forum and have your say!

Groups

• Press alt-w to bring up a list of your groupmates. You can then click on them and get a waypoint to their location.
• Using an offensive spell on a group member will cause it to land on whomever they have targeted. Using a beneficial spell on a mob will cause it to land on whomever they have targetted. Likewise, you can target a mob and cast a beneficial spell and it will land on the mob's target.
• You can click a group members name in the group window and you will see their name highlighted in the world, no matter how far away they are in the zone.
• To have a more clear indication of your (groupmates) target and which groupmates your target has targetted, enable 'target arrow' and 'target encounter arrows' in the options menu under "user interface>target arrow"
• To enable lotto as the default loot option for all groups you start, change the corresponding item in the options menu under "group options".
• When grouped, you can see what quests your groupmates have. Press J to get to your quest journal, and on top there will be a tab marked "group"
  
  
  
  Commands

• Use "/mood [mood]" to set your mood. "/mood none" resets it.
• The 'f' key performs a "double click" on whatever your mouse is pointing at.
• You can use %t to place whatever you have targetted in an emote. For example, "/gsay Here comes a %t!" would display "Here comes a skeleton!" to your group if you had a skeleton targetted. Other commands are:
  
  %t - name of current target
  
  %r - race of currect target
  
  %s - gender pronoun of current target - he, she, it
  
  %g - gender of current target - male, female, neuter
  
  %o - gender object of current target - him, her, it
  
  %p - possesive noun of current target - his, her, its
  
  %m - displays the name or your current target's pet. If there is no pet then the word "pet" will be displayed.
• You can also hold your cursor over an effect in your effects bar and use %c to announce the spell effect to your group.
• Once you hit level 20, you can use /lastname to set your last name.
• Use "/friend [name] to put a friend on your friends list. Use "/who all friend" to see which of your friends is online. "/friend" will show you who is on your list.
• /stopeating and /stopdrinking will stop your character from automatically consuming food and drink. You can also right click on your food and drink in your inventory screen and choose to turn off auto-consume.
• If you played EQ1, preordered, or bought the collectors edition, you may have special items or titles waiting for you in-game. To claim these items, type /claim. You should see a big yellow message reminding you of this when you log in. Keep in mind that you can only /claim things on one character! So make sure to do so on the primary character you intend to play.
• To hide your head piece or various other graphics, press the "p" key to bring up your persona menu. From there, click on the options tab.
• You can select yourself by pressing F1. Pressing F1 after that point will toggle between you and you pet (assuming you have one). You can select your groupmates by pressing F2-F6. Pressing F2-F6 as appropriate will toggle between them and their pets.
• If you are in a conversation with an NPC, you can quickly get out of that conversation by hitting the ESC key. ESC can also be used to deselect a target, or close the last bag/bank/inventory window you opened. ESC also cancels the current spell you are casting, so be careful what key you hit.
• /language shows you all the languages you know. "/set_language [language]" will set you to speak in a particular language. "/set_language common" is what you use to speak "human". Note that capitalization is important.
• You can hit F9 to toggle between 1st and 3rd person. If you scroll wheel into 3rd person and then hit F9, it will remember how far you were scrolled if you F9 again.
• Press 'r' to respond to the most recent tell you've received. Press 'g' to say something in groupsay.
  
  
  
  UI Stuff
• You can create macros for common things like incoming messages, assisting the main tank, etc... To do this, click on the EQII button, then choose "Socials>Macros". These macros you create can be dragged to your hotkeys.
• You can have up to 3 hotkey bars active. To create a second and third, right click on your main hotkey bar and choose the appropriate option. It has been reported you can actually have more than 3 hotbars active, though there are no key-shortcuts to access those beyond the 3rd. I have not tried this personally.
• You can place links to items in text such as /ooc, /auction, or /g. To do so, open your inventory and find the actual item (note this means you must accept your quest rewards before you can link them to show off to all your friends). Click on the item and drag the icon to the line of text you are writing, and the item name will insert itself. Other people can then click on the name to get a description of the item as if they had examined it.
• Use "/friend [name] to put a friend on your friends list. Use "/who all friend" to see which of your friends is online. "/friend" will show you who is on your list.
• Many things in the game (from UI windows to mobs) have right click contextual menus. If you are not sure what something is, or want more information/options, try right clicking on it. Note that some things may not be activatable via a double click -- in this case, right click and use them through the menus.
• If you place your cursor over something (like a piece of furniture, or a barrel) and it glows, you should right click and examine it. There are MANY quests started this way, particularily in dungeons and outside of the cities, so make sure you cursor over everything you see at least once to see if it glows.
• When you see a person's name in your chat box, you can right click on their name to select options such as send them a tell. This can save having to spell complicated names if you want to respond to someone.
• For those of you who are keyboard averse, you can run by holding down both mouse buttons at the same time.
• Be careful what you double left click on. Be aware that the default double click action for many guards and sentries inside and outside of the cities is attack, not talk. When you mouse cursor over these guards, the cursor will change to crossed swords instead of the usual chat caption. If you wish to talk to them, right click and choose hail from the menu. If you double click on them, you will attack them and they will probably serve you up your butt on a platter.
• If you play in 3rd person mode and would like to be able to select yourself by clicking on your character, you can do this in the options menu under "interface>picking" and choose "allow picking self in third person".
• Consider creating multiple chat windows and filtering the content of each. You can do this by right clicking on your primary chat window and selecting "create new window". You can right click on each of the windows created and filter the content that the window will display. Personally, I use 3 windows. The one on the right displays tells, groupchat, and guildchat. The one in the center displays spells, combat, and considers. The one on the left displays everything else. This makes it really easy to focus on communication or combat as necessary.
• You can use alt-enter to switch between full screen and windowed mode.
• You can lock UI windows to prevent them from being inadvertently moved or closed. To do this, right click on the window, select "window options", and check the "locked" box. I highly advise locking your chat windows, as it's easy to inadvertently close them. If you need to move them around later, you can always unlock them temporarily.
• You may occasionally hit a weird key combination that hides a window on your screen (such as your maintained effects window, your exp bar, the quest journal helper, etc...). To get it back, click the EQII button, choose options, and look under windows. You will see a list of all the keystrokes to hide/unhide the various windows on the UI.
• If the game is too dark for you, you can turn up the gamma on your video card, or buy a torch. You can actually carry two torches, and the light they produce stacks!
• There are specialized chat channels that you can join. Right click on the chat window, go to "chat options", and you will see pre-set channels for your home city. The traders channel is particularily useful if you are looking to exchange crafted goods or find new commissions from other players.
  
  
  
  Spells, Skills, and Combat Arts
• AE skills or spells with green icons will only hit mobs that you have locked in your encounter. AE skill or spells with blue icons will hit everything around you, regardless of whether or not it is engaged. Be wary with these.
• You can upgrade your spells and combat arts. They start at apprentice 1, commonly abbreviated as "app1." App2 skills are sold on vendors in town. App3 and 4 skills are made by tradeskilling players using commonly available materials. Adept1 are found in chests off mobs. Adept2 does not currently exist. Adept3 is made by tradeskillers using rare materials. Master1 drops off raid level mobs and very, very rarely off normal mobs. Master 2 is given at various levels along with racial traits. It is definitely worth your time to try and acquire app4 or adept1 levels for your skills. Look on the brokers to see what's on sale.
• Starting at level 20 and various levels after, you can purchase a "fun" spell that is based on your class. These spells are generally insignificant things that do not affect your efficiency in-game, but are meant to provide humor or an "ooh aah" factor.
• If you're looking for your spells/skills on the broker, make sure you choose advanced search if you aren't looking up a specific spell/skill. Set the level range (if you wish) and choose your class from the drop down box. Also, choose spell scroll from the item type menu. This will display only spells/skills useable by your class within the specified levels.
• The concentration bar is the 5 little bubbles which appear directly underneath your name. As you use abilities that require concentration, these will light up. If you hold your mouse over an active bubble, you will see the name of the spell/effect it is linked to. Right clicking on it will allow you to cancel it. You can also cancel most (all?) of these effects from your maintained effects window. If you lost the maintained effects window, press alt-m to restore it.
• If you are a melee based character, concentrate on upgrading your armor and weapons rather than your skills. Upgrading melee skills adds little effectiveness to your character. If you are a casting based character, concentrate on upgrading your skills -- going from app1 to adept1 will make a huge difference in your effectiveness.
  
  
  
  Harvesting and Tradeskilling
• If you can't harvest something, your skill is not high enough. Generally speaking, you need a 40ish skill to harvest in Antonica/Commonlands and a 90ish to harvest in Thundering Steppes/Nek Forest. Note: as of 12/3/04, you now only need a 20 skill to harvest in Antonica/Commonlands. Some zones may require certain skills be slightly higher than others.
• If you find a ? on the ground, left click on it and pick it up. These items are for collection quests and can have some pretty nice rewards if you can collect an entire set. Look on the brokers for the pieces you are missing.
• You can now harvest one, three, or five of a common item. Your other option will be one rare or one rare and eleven common items. This makes harvesting a lot easier and has also increased chances to get rares.
• When tradeskilling, the primary component (which is the first component listed when creating a recipe) determines the maximum quality of your result. If your primary component is shaped, the best you will be able to produce for your final combine is shaped quality. This means if you want a pristine result, you must use a pristine primary component. All of the other components can be any quality.
• You get a crafting exp bonus for crafting new recipes for the first time. When leveling your crafting skills up, it is worth it to see what items have similar components and create one of each. Creating pristine items also grants more exp than other quality levels.
• You must specialize in a tradeskill at level 10. Do to so, you must find the appropriate NPC to speak to. Note that, you will not level up to 10 until you have done one more combine for exp.
• The tradeskill instances have a merchant who sells recipe books for all your tradeskills just outside of the entrance. Inside, you will find a broker and a merchant who sells components that cannot be harvested.
• Tradeskill recipes can be made into hot keys by dragging the icon to your hotkey bar.
• If you want to know which tradeskill recipe books you have already scribed, here is how you do that. Press the "n" key to bring up your recipes. Press the edit button at the top. Use the big scroll bar on the far right to view the last window. This window contains the titles of all the recipe books you have scribed.
• You can check the stats on an item before you actually craft it. To do so, examine the recipe, then examine the icon of the end result in the recipe window. If I'm not mistaken, this is the stats for the shaped level of the item. Stats on other levels may vary.
• There are no longer subcombines in recipes, and so each recipe takes as many units of the components as it needs right at the beginning. Also, the majority of your components will now stack up to 50, and in the case of fuel, 100.
• If you are crafting multiple containers (eg. elm strongboxes, or backpacks), you can put them into an empty bag before taking it to the broker for selling.
  
• To sell on the broker, right click to open up the buy from broker window. Click on the sell tab. Place a container in the allotted slots. You will have as many slots on the broker as you would have in your home. The bigger the home, the more slots from which to sell. Drop your items into the box and set your prices. You can highlight an item you are selling and then click "search broker" to have it automatically pull up all the other items. This makes pricing faster and easier.



Attributes, Experience, and Death

• Drink replenishes your power, food replenishes your health. Always try to have food and drink in your tier. Otherwise, you won't receive the full benefits. Some food and drink have stat boosting qualities. Typically these have less duration time wise than the food and drink without.
• Sitting does NOT replenish your health or mana.
• Your exp debt will go away with time when you are logged off. The longer you stay logged off, the more debt will dissipate. Preliminary reports are that debt disappears at approximately 1/2 percent per hour.
• The attributes in the manual for the various races are wrong. Look on the web site (http://everquest2.station.sony.com) for updated ones.
• When priest classes hit a certain level, they can make an essence which allows other players to revive the priest if the priest dies.
  
  
  
  Combat and Creatures
• When sprinting away from a battle you are losing, press the "Call for Help" icon (it looks like an exclaimation point) or use the /yell command (or /y for short). This will do two things. First, it will unlock the encounter so people nearby can pull the mob off you if they are feeling nice. Second, it will cause you to start regenerating at the rate you normally do when not engaged in combat, and thus prolong your chances of survival.
• Mobs that are naturally aggressive but grey to you will generally not agro you (they know you can kick their butts).
• You can turn off combat experience by right clicking on your exp bar and selecting "disable combat experience". You can turn it back on by doing the same thing. This can be useful when you want an item from a chest and the GREEN conning mobs you are killing are just about to grey out because you're going to level up.
• To get the suffix "Hunter of X" after your name, you need to kill 500 of a particular type of mob. There is a way to check how many of something you have killed -- in North Qeynos, there is a poster near the gate to Antonica. It is hard to target, but it will show you your kill totals. In West Freeport, there is a lamppost at the lower end of the road that leads to the Commonlands Gate. As near as I can tell, killing gray mobs counts in these totals. You get the "Slayer of X" title after 5000 kills.
• Learn how to use Heroic Opportunities (HOs), especially when soloing. They will make your life a lot easier.
• If you are not the main tank in a group, try to attack your enemy from behind. This will prevent the mob from parrying and riposting your blows since they can only do this from the front/side.
• To see if a creature you are running away from is following you, find a nice straight area with no mobs nearby, hit autorun (numlock), make sure you are in 3rd person camera (if you're in first person, mousewheel backwards), hold down the left mouse button (or use the / and * keys), then swing the camera around using the mouse. Your character will keep running forward but you will be able to see behind you. If you are looking in a different direction than you are running, you can change to running in that direction by pressing the forward key (w, arrow up, or 8 on the numpad). Also note, if you have them targeted when running away, as soon as they stop chasing you, you automatically untarget them.
  
  
  
  Inventory and Banking
• Elm strongboxes can be fairly easily made via the tradeskilling system and will give you a 7 or 8 slot container you can put in your bank. Fill all the slots in your bank with them and you will be able to hold quite a bit of stuff. They are too heavy to lug around on your character.
• You can not directly move money via the shared bank slot (the manual is wrong).
• Coin has weight in this game. Make sure you go to the bank and convert your copper to silver occasionally, otherwise you will become encumbered.
• At times it can be useful to open all your bags at once. To do this, simply press the "b" key.
• You can pick up an entire stack of items from your inventory/bank by holding down shift and clicking on it. You can pick up a single item by holding down control and clicking on the stack of items.
  
  
  
  Items, Equipment, and Loot
• If you find an item that seemingly has no use, it's generally one of three things: 1) A tradeskill component 2) Vendor trash (sell for cash) 3) An item involved in a quest (particularily if it's marked as LORE). Make sure you right click and examine any strange items you find (especially if they dropped from chests), as they may start quests. Note that some items used for quests will not be identified as such until you already have the quest.
• The game has a trivial loot code. Look at the text in the targeting box. This will say either solo, group, group x 2, group x 3, or group x 4. This does two things. First, as part of considering a mob you can look at how difficult they are. Second, it tells you at what number of allies at which this mob will become trivial and give no chest loot or quest items. 2 for solo, 7 for group, 13 for groupx2, and 19 for groupx3. You will notice a little chest icon with a red circle and line through it (no smoking symbol) when a mob will not drop loot for your group/raid.
• Make sure to attune any attunable items you have equipped, otherwise they will not give you any benefit. This is particularily important with weapons, as you will always miss with an attunable weapon that has not been attuned (and you will not get a warning telling you why you are always missing).
• Mobs that are grey to you will not give you exp or drop chests. However, they will still drop items on their bodies, and you can still use them for any kill quests you may have in your journal.
• If you are grouped with a lower level player, any mob that would normally be aggro to them, will still be aggro to them. You cannot run a lower level player through a zone by greying it out for them.
• If you are lottoing for an item in a group, make sure you have at least one inventory spot open. Lotto items you win will NOT go into overflow. If you have no room for them, they will be lotto'd again!
  
  
  
  Inn Rooms
• If you give everyone friends access to your inn room, random people will be able to come in and rearrange your furniture. Give everyone visitor access instead.
• You can rotate furniture when placing it in your inn room by using the mouse wheel when moving it. You can use this function to line up books, place chairs the correct way under your tables, etc... If you do not have a mousewheel, you can use the + and - keys to rotate your furniture.
• You can take a tour of houses in the cities by right clicking the door and selecting tour. Some of the expensive houses are really cool. Maybe someday you will actually have enough money to live there.
• If you are paying for part of your inn room with guild status, you can reduce the status cost by outfitting your room with expensive/rare furniture. In theory, it is possible to reduce the status cost to 0 status points per week. As far as I know, it is not possible to reduce coin costs.
• Your basic inn room can hold 100 items. To hold more items, you need to move to a bigger room. And yes, books count towards your item limit.
• If you relinquish your basic inn room before it is time to pay rent on it, you can buy another basic inn room for free and get a fresh 7 days. This saves you from having to pay the 5 silver rent. Note that you will have to collect all your items from the inn room (which can be done by right clicking on the door from within your inn room and selecting "collect contents"). Anything you do not collect will be destroyed when you relinquish your room.
  
  
  
  NPCs, Brokers, and Merchants
• Use the brokers to see what people have for sale. There is a broker in each major city zone (for Qeynos, this is Elddar Grove, North Qeynos, South Qeynos, and Qeynos Harbor), and brokers in each of the wholesaler tradeskill instances (sometimes near the entrance, sometimes at the base of the stairs).
• Some merchants are greedier than others and will pay you less for things that you sell to them. Check with a few merchants and you will generally be able to tell which ones are greedy and which ones aren't. Merchants in "convenient" locations (such as out in the middle of popular hunting areas) are generally more greedy.
• There is a black market merchant (called a "fence") that will allow you to access the market for the opposing city. The fence charges a 40% commission. The location of the fence is a closely guarded secret, though you can find it in various threads on the boards.
• If you are shopping at a NPC merchant, and accidentally buy something, you can sell it back at the same price as long as you have not closed the merchant window.
• If you try to access your bank or a merchant and get the message "you are too busy", there are generally three possible reasons why. Either you have your attack mode on, you have a trade window up, or you are currently interacting with an NPC. Hit escape a bunch of times, make sure you are not in combat mode, and then try again.
• If an NPC speaks to you, or waves at you as you get near, they may have a quest that they want you to do. Note that they will continue to wave at you even if you already have their quest.
• If you have a burning need to speak to a particular NPC (say the next person in a quest) press "m" to bring up your map. The next NPC you must talk to for the step of the quest you're doing will be marked with a solid orange dot on your map.
• If you need help finding a particular NPC (perhaps to finish off a quest) but have forgotten where they are, right click on a guard and choose "find NPC." Type in the name of the NPC and you will be given a waypoint to that NPC. Note: for some reason this does not always work, but it usually does. Also note that you often do not have to type in the full name. This is particularily helpful when you want to find and NPC with a crazy unpronouncable name.
• If an NPC speaks to you in gibberish (with a symbolic font), you do not understand the language this NPC is trying to speak. In the various starting hamlets, you can find language primers on the scribes for 12s. As soon as you purchase the primer, you automatically learn the language. In the hamlets, most (all?) of the NPCs who require you to know their native tongue give quests. There are quests to learn languages for some non-starting races (like Gnoll).
  
  
  
  Questing
• You can only have 50 quests active at any time. This no longer includes collection quests. You can also sort your quests by zone. This makes it easier to knock out several quests at once, especially in the early levels when running through all of the newbie town quests.
• If you are not getting quest rewards, check to see if you have a green + in the bottom right hand corner of your screen. If so, you need to click it and choose your bonuses first.
• Some quests are repeatable. When you complete a quest, you can find it in your completed quests journal, and it will say "repeatable" if it is. Unfortunately, most repeatable quests are not worth doing more than once.
• Hwal Rucksif is in the Keep of the Ardent Needle. To find it, exit North Qeynos to Antonica, follow the path to your left, and go under the aquaduct. He will be in the keep to your right that is surrounded by a moat.
• Some NPCs have level requirements on their quests. If you speak to an NPC and he has a dialog option that doesn't seem to do anything, you should return when you have leveled up and try again. Other NPCs require that you have completed a particular quest before they will give you a quest.
• You can now betray at any level and as many times as you wish. Please note, however, that your spells will be reset to app1 every time you betray. This will not happen until AFTER you have finished doing the faction quests to move to your new city.



Guilds

• Guilds do not have their guildnames displayed above their heads until the guild reaches level 5. You can get your guild to level 5 by doing city writs and accumulating status points.
  
  
  
  Out and About in the World
• If the zone you are in is overcrowded, try zoning out and back into another instance. If there are 3 or more instances, choose one that is not the first or last instance, as these often tend to be less crowded.
• If you see a "lair" object in the world such as a rats nest, snakes nest, sabertooth tent, etc... with the appropriate type of mob around it, this is probably a dynamic adventure camp. If you kill everything in the camp, the next time it spawns it may spawn harder creatures, named monsters, etc...
• Distressed merchants are NPCs who are sometimes found at a dynamic adventure camp. If you kill all the creatures around them, they will turn into gratified merchants, and you can then buy/sell with them. They offer good prices, and sometimes carry items you can't find elsewhere. Also note that gratified merchants are useable by all players in the area for a short time before they disappear, not only the players who freed them. If you see someone freeing a distressed merchant, hang around until it becomes gratified and then use it.
• Once you leave the Isle of Refuge, you can't return. If you're a questaholic, make sure you've completed all the quests before you leave because you will not have a chance to come back and finish them later. The Isle is also a good place to work up your harvesting skills, as the newbie zones tend to be more crowded.
• Do not forget to use the "Call of Qeynos" or "Call of Freeport" ability to teleport yourself back to your starting hamlet. You can use this once per hour. If you are out in the wilderness, you can save yourself a long run back to town this way.
  
  
  
  Misc
• If you discover a bug in game, use the /bug command and report it. This will help it get fixed faster. Your opinion on game mechanics is not a bug.
• If you have a question, utilize the search option on the message boards. To do this, scroll all the way down and type something into the search box. It is amazing how many questions have already been answered! If you utilize the search box from the main forum listing, it will search all forums by default. If you utilize it from within a specific forum, it will search only that specific forum by default.