Help with Bardness.

[Munt]

I've made a bard and everythings going pretty well, I can twist songs, kite mobs etc. But I was wondering if anyone knows a way to automate the switching of weapons to instruments with hotkeys. It would save a lot of time mid-fight.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Voronwë]

you cant.

[Sionistic]

have you tried going to eqdiva.com i think it was. Great bard site.

[Munt]

Yeah, I didn't find it ... (not surprising given that you cant do it)

I'm not a big fan of EQDiva, seems a bit incomplete.

[Voronwë]

concert hall has some good info.

[Munt]

Cheers

[Vaemas]

While you can't do it with hotkeys, you can make it pretty quick if you hotkey your primary/secondary slots and two general inventory slots for weapons. Or just one inventory slot for your weapons/instruments.

Always worked well for my twink.

[Claritin-CT]

OK... here it is...

You can't do it... we wish you could.... we also wish there was a way to auto twist without being busted for 3rd party software....

HOWEVER....

I wrote this UI bag mod a while back.
http://www.dangermice.com/bagmod.jpg <--- Picture
http://www.dangermice.com/claritin-container.zip <-- The mod

Top 2 slots are your top 2 base inventory slots.
2nd 2 slots are weapon slots
the rest is a regular bag.

This is used for quick instrument/weapon switching and using right click items like potions that you don't need to equip but can not be stored in a bag.

The only flaw - If you have a bag in the top 2 base inventory slots... and you try to pick it up from inside the top 2 slots in this UI... you will crash to desktop. EQ gets fooked up because it thinks you had a bag inside of a bag which isn't really true which is what causes the crash.

If you want to try a bard-friendly whole UI
http://www.dangermice.com/ClarUI.zip
Basically smaller spellbook (I wrote),
Container Mod (I wrote),
decent buffwindow,
Hot keys with inventory on the side,
2 line 4 gem spell casting bar with integrated spell casting timer (I can't find a place to currently download this anymore it requires modifying EQUI.xml after each patch I think the programmer got pissed after 3rd patch... but I fix it each time),
Nice % based targeting windows and group info.

EQdiva website + The Concert Hall forum are the 2 best places to go... if you want to hear about Bardic problems also check out
http://www.afterlifeguild.org/Thott/index.php
Thott is the Bard version of Furor (Warriors) he also has his own UI.

[Munt]

Cool, at the minute I just keep my primary and secondry in the top 2 hotkeys and all my instruments below them with one free slot for switching purposes ... tis a pain in the hole, but playing a Bard has been some of the most fun I've had on EQ recently.

[Fallanthas]

To expand on Claritins idea, there is a bag mod available on eqinterface that puts you weapons slots, range slot and one other at the top of the bag.

Pop all of your weapons and instuments into one bag, then open the bag and position it next to your hotkey bank. Gives you a total of twelve slots to rotate weapons and instruments. The only down fall is having to reopen the bag each time you zone.

Do it this way and you don't have to leave empty general inventory slots.


A word of warning, I don't think I have ever met a bard who 'juggled' (bard term for instrument and weapon swapping) and didn't end up with repetitive stress problems. I avoid juggling like the plague. Luckily I finaly finished my epic and don't have to swap unless it's a faster/harder hitting weapon for situational purposes.