Hotbars and 4 ascensions.

I've seen lots of posts on the EQ2 forums and some discussion in-game on what to do with your hot bars to make it reasonable to swap between 4 ascension types. What I am going to give you is a suggestion on how to swap ascension hotkeys using macros and some in-game hotkey commands. This is advanced-level stuff as it requires locating your EQ2 installation folder and editing text files. If you're not comfortable with doing that, this might not be for you.

Before I get into the nuts and bolts, I am going to review the in-game commands and hotkey storage file format so you can see what is going on.

/loadhotkeys <file-path/file-name> <overwrite option>
<file-path/file-name>
The location of the file with an absolute path or relative path to your EQ2 install folder. If you use a drive letter "C:" at the beginning, it is an absolute path. If you use a file name or folder name, it is relative to the EQ2 install folder. I suggest using a relative path. You can use folders and sub-folders. For example, you can have a folder named "HotKeys" and within it a folder with your character name "Caam" and use that folder for those character's hotkey files. This will help you keep track of the files.
<overwrite option>
If you leave this blank, all hotkeys will be cleared before the hotkeys are read from the file. If you put 0 for this, the hotkeys in the bars will not be cleared. This is helpful as it allows you to use more than one hotkey file to populate your bars.
Examples:
/loadhotkeys Hotkeys/Caam/Base1.hotkeys
Loads the file Base1.hotkeys from the folder Hotkeys/Caam and all hotkeys will be cleared before the hotkeys are loaded from the file.
/loadhotkeys Hotkeys/Caam/Geo1.hotkeys 0
Loads the file Geo1.hotkeys from the folder Hotkeys/Caam and all hotkeys will NOT be cleared before the hotkeys are loaded from the file.

/savehotkeys <file-path/file-name>
<file-path/file-name>
The location of the file with an absolute path or relative path to your EQ2 install folder. If you use a drive letter "C:" at the beginning, it is an absolute path. If you use a file name or folder name, it is relative to the EQ2 install folder. The suggestions are the same as the /loadhotkeys command.

The hotkeys file is a text file which contains data for the hotkeys. The following details are originally from the UI/hotkey discussion forms on EQ2Interface edited for updated details.
EQ2Interface - Othesus World! : Hacking your hotkey files for fun and profit!
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Open the file with your favorite text editor.

The first line must say:

Code:

HOTKEYS 3

Next you have a bunch of lines that look something like:

Code:

0 0 spell 3972280100 20775428 2817723036
0 1 spell 1168997002 20644351 286394793
0 2 spell 4257751881 20644073 2978363936
0 3 spell 3252301068 20644209 926130519

The first number is the hotkey bank number with 0-9 corresponding to banks 1-10.

The second number is the slot number with 0-11 corresponding to slots 1,2,3 ... 9,0,-,=.

Your normal spells are shown with the three numbers.

Some abilities are written out like autoattack:

Code:

1 0 command attack

My Manastone clicky is:

Code:

1 6 inventory_hotkey 111645115

and 111645115 happens to be the item ID for the Manastone in the item database.

The clicky for my primary weapon slot is:

Code:

2 4 equipped primary

The interesting lines come when you see your macros like:

Code:

6 8 macro 20512925 1 7 EMERGENCY!
/pet backoff
/autoattack 0
/target_self
/yell
/useability 554779222
/target_previous
/useability 1571882540
6 9 macro -65524 2 5 Call For Help
/pet backoff
/autoattack 0
/target_self
/yell
/target_previous
6 10 macro -65536 2 1 browser
/browser
6 11 macro -64899 0 1 Gratz!
/gu Rrawr! Gratz!

For a macro the code is:

Code:

(bank number) (slot number) macro (icon number) (icon type) (number of macro lines) (macro title)
[macro line 1]
[macro line 2]
etc.

The icon types I have seen are 0, 1, and 2.

• 0 is an item icon-- any icon that you could drag from an item
• 1 is a spell icon-- any icon that you could drag from a spell
• 2 is an old style macro icon-- the ones you get from clicking the arrows in the macro window

The first macro line that has a command like:

Code:

/useability 554779222

gives you the spell that will determine the shading of the macro for the recast timer, out of range, etc. You can now choose which spell determines these things in the Edit Macro window, but this information isn't saved to the hotkeys file and isn't loaded with the hotkeys file.

The fun part comes where you can grab icons from spells and items that you wouldn't have otherwise. Just make sure to grab the (icon number) and the (icon type) right after it.

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Now that you see the comands and how the macro files are set up, the basic idea is to create a hotkey file with your whole set of hotkeys and separate files that contain just your ascension hotkeys. I suggest using a single hotbar for this to keep the location consistent.

The first step is to save your whole set of hotkeys to a "base" file that can be reloaded.

Code:

/savehotkeys Hotkeys/Caam/base1.hotkeys

Once you have saved the base file, that file can also be used as the starting template for the ascensions that you currently have loaded. So copy and paste that base file in that folder and rename it to "ascension1.hotkeys" or "elementalist1.hotkeys" or "geomancer1.hotkeys" or any name that will remind you which class of ascension the hotkeys are for.

Once you have that second file, open it in a text editor such as notepad. You will need to find the lines which contain your ascension hotkeys. Once you find them, remove all the other hotkey lines from the file so the only lines that remain are the first line "HOTKEYS 3" and the hotkey lines for your ascension spells. Save that file as is with the same name.

It should look something like this:

Code:

HOTKEYS 3
8 1 spell 2443321790 20775144 3000287740
8 3 spell 846512750 20644896 1939793193
8 4 spell 1615654345 20579365 3321129858
8 5 spell 4182097011 20513830 3740717083
8 6 spell 3325814397 20644903 525035801
8 7 spell 60610803 20513825 1009718572
8 8 spell 2593491273 20775970 1552365057
8 9 spell 1606518226 20644905 2461763966
8 10 spell 2783695687 20644900 1970181196
8 11 spell 1773743787 -64764 1355905338

Now you need to create a macro to load your hotkey set. This is done with 2 commands, one to load your base file and one to load the ascension hotkey set. Note the "0" at the end of the second command. This prevents the second command from clearing all the hotkeys loaded by the first command.

Code:

/loadhotkeys Hotkeys/Caam/base1.hotkeys
/loadhotkeys Hotkeys/Caam/geo1.hotkeys 0

Once you have this done, swap your next ascension set into the hotbar. Once that is done, save the whole set as "base2.hotkeys" (in the same folder) so you do not overwrite your original "base1.hotkeys" file. Copy that file to a name similar to your second ascension set. Edit the file as before to remove all of the hotkey rows so only the ascension hotkeys remain.

Create a macro similar to the first one to load this set after the base1 is loaded.

Repeat this for all of your ascensions and you can then swap ascension hotkeys using macros.

If you decide to change your base hotkey layout, simply save it as a new base file and use that base file instead of your original base file.

Don't be afraid to mess around with the hotkey files. If you get lost or your hotkeys get messed up, all you need to do is load your base file and you are back to where you started.

 

Feldon, if you see any layout improvements that you feel would help, feel free to adjust this post. My hope is that this is useful/helpful so anything that can help is welcome.

Everyone, if you have any ideas/suggestions/comments please post them. I'll do what I can to make this more useful.

Thanks!

 

I'm gonna have to try this out but I might actually use it to copy the hotkeys from myself to my other Warden alts (they are mainly crafters so I kept the adv class the same as my main).