Foraging question.

[Soulfiend]

I have to do some hardcore foraging in PoG and ToV, but It is doing my head in, having to press the forage button every 100 secs, and I have failed to make a stable hotbutton that does multiply forages.

The problem I find is that if I type /pause 1000 it seem to time 63 seconds instead of 100 seconds.

Does anyone have a stable hotbutton code for doing multiply forages, I'm not looking for 100's at a time, leave it over night, but maybe 5 at a time.

Can you help?

[Larong_Alsou]

/pause pain

I know your problem.

I got tired of hitting the spell gems or ALT+1, to max out my spell lines after every ding so I made the following.

/pause 30, cast 1
/pause 30, cast 1
/pause 30, cast 1
/pause 30, cast 1
/pause 30, cast 1

this made me cast the spell pretty much on the button as it became available. a little fine tuning was needed for those spells that take a little longer to recycle, but the principle was sound.

Never tried it on Forage, i generally hit it as soon as I see it pop (got so as now I'm hitting the button on the very second that it un-greys... almost) but I guess the pinciple is the same

Also, took this from the online manual at EQLIVE

22.3 Pauses in Socials
You may enter pauses in social batches with the /pause command. /pause takes an argument from 1 to 600 (600 = One minute), with the value being equal to the number of tenths of seconds (i.e. /pause 100 will yield a 10 second pause).

For example, a social consisting of:

/sit off
/cast 1
/pause 100
/sit on

...would cause you to stand up, cast the spell in slot 1, wait 10 seconds after you've STARTED casting the spell, and sit down.

Furthermore, you can also use the /pause command on the same line as another social by separating the commands with a comma. Even though the pause command is specified first, it is executed AFTER the command on the same line.

For example:

/sit off
/pause 100,/cast 1
/sit on

...would have the same effect as the example above. It is important to note that the comma can only be used to separate a /pause command from another, and MUST be specified first on the line.

[splunge]

/doability (forage-hotkey)
/sit
/camp

wait 30 seconds

[Enter]

Repeat.

Forage cycles when you log in. Its much faster to camp out between forages then to wait for it to pop normally.

[Sendar Tocs]

Ok, first lemme say "camping out to character select in PoG or ToV is not something I would consider -ideal-" .... *shudder*boggle*

second lemme say ....

/pause in the documentation, if you read it....

HAS A =600= max pause (60 seconds)

so it's not surprising that 63 seconds is the most you get...

soo....

line 1: /pause 600, /doability 1 (forage, then pause 60 seconds, the max)
line 2: /pause 400, /em waits for foraging to refresh. (command to keep going)
line 3: /pause 600, /doability 1 (second time around)
line 4: /pause 400, /em waits still more.
line 5: /doability 1 (third forage with one hotkey)

I would ADVISE you to make it /pause 550 on each (110 seconds) to ensure you don't try to forage with a greyed/yellowed key.

I would ADVISE you NOT to do this if you have the SLIGHTEST HINT you might want to do ANYTHING ELSE for the next 220 seconds. (almost 4 minutes) Because I don't remember what command you use to break out of a /pause... might be in the doc in your EQ directory.

[Calabar]

You can also have commands linked to your turn arrow. What your really doing is linking one of your hot button slots to your turn arrow. For me it’s the bottom left slot. Any hot button I place in that slot will be linked to my arrow key. When I was practicing my foraging I’d place a forage button there. And every time I hit my turn arrow my character would try to forage. If the button was still gray I’d get a message that I couldn’t perform that action. But if the button was up I’d try to forage. The only problem is you have to get used to food and water suddenly appearing on your cursor. This also works for sense heading. Your skills will increase at a surprising rate this way.

Unfortunately, I set this up over a year ago and I can’t remember exactly what I did. I’m hoping this will sound familiar to someone and they can post how to set it up. But I at least wanted to let you know its possible to do.

[Soulfiend]

Ahhh!!!! 60 secs max

I'll try sendars one

[Sanna]

You can also have commands linked to your turn arrow. ........ This also works for sense heading. Your skills will increase at a surprising rate this way.

I sit in GFay and explain to the noobs how to do this.
This is the first thing I do to any new char of mine.

Some of them protest that I'm 'cheating', but VI wouldn't have made it so easy to 'cheat' if they were going to penalize us for this.

Go to your Options Screen (ctrl O) and go to the Keyboard Tab.
On that little dropdown list, choose 'Macros'.

There's a big list. I haven't looked at it in a while, so i'm doing this from memory...
It should say 'hotbutton key 1, hotbutton key 2', etc etc, and in the next column have the list of What Keyboard Key activated HBK 1, HBK2.

Go down to 10 (if you don't have forage) or 9 and 10 (if you do forage). Not the ones that say Shift 1, Shift 2... that's for choosing WHICH hotbutton page you want.

In the column where it says '9', click that. It will say 'press any key' or soemthing. Press whatever you press to turn LEFT. It will change to say LEFT. With 10, make it be RIGHT.

Now get out of your options, they will automatically save.
I put my sense heading in my RIGHT key (10) and my forage in my LEFT key.

Sometimes yes, it's a pain in the butt... running around Pok I get enough frigging Roots to feed the Library... In Jaggypine I'm always pulling up those NoDrop stuff that I have to delete... But my SH and forage are two of the three things that max immediately when i get a new level (meditate being, of course, the first ^_^).

I wish I remembered who told me this. Because this is the single greatest thing I think I have done to my chars.
^_^ happy foraging!

[OberonMiM]

another question on foragging.

Since im a de and i dont get foragging ive been thinking about making a twink that can forrage

Which would be the better choice (in all honesty)

Druid or Ranger.

I was thinking druid would be nice cause of ports etc but the rangers superior tracking would help a bit in farming too i guess

[Zyrtryx Conjureblade]

If I was creating the alt simply for the purposes of foraging and farming, I'd go with a Ranger, unless you're fine with waiting until lvl 20 for the Druid to get Track to help with the farming.

Get a decent weapon, a good bow and a few stacks of arrows, put a lot of training points in Archery (Track skill goes up fast, so no need to spend a lot of points on that - Just sit down, pick a mob that likely won't be killed anytime soon, like a vendor or guard, and track it for a while), and you should be all set.

I have both a Ranger alt (Halfling) and a Druid alt (Wood Elf). I generally use the Ranger for foraging and farming.

[Craftah]

Just sit down, pick a mob that likely won't be killed anytime soon, like a vendor or guard, and track it for a while.

Really? I thought that you only got a skillup check when you actually clicked the track button. At least that is the way that I maxed tracking on my druid. I don't even remember tracking very many mobs, just click track, click cancel and wait for the button to refresh.

[Morniel]

hrm I thought the check was made when you clicked the button too... I've never noticed a skill increase at any other time on either my 54 druid or my 41 ranger - both of which I have used a >ton< for farming.

Typically for foraging I use the druid, because she can port wherever. For tracking I use the ranger, because, well, ranger track is just far superior!

[Morani]

Skill-up check IS only when you click the track button. I spent MANY trips back and forth on the boat to Sister Island to make Tumpy happy doing little other than fishing, tracking, and Sense Heading. Another flaw in the idea of tracking a "stable" character is that at a low skill you can not keep track of your target for very long. The better your skill, the longer it stays and at a greater distance.

Another idea on how to "skill by rote" is to remap your "sit" to a hotkey macro:
/doability X (what ever number forage is on), /pause 10
/sit
/doability y (what ever number Sense Heading is), /pause 15
/doability z (what ever number track is), /pause 15
/doability y (what ever number Sense Heading is)

One click of the button and you get 4 skill checks for 3 skills (may need to tweak the pause number but I THINK SH refreshes at 30)

[Sanna]

ooh, someone who knows how to macro keys and the like.
is there a command to force a clicky-armor item to click? i know you can drag the item to a hotkey box, but is there a /doitem Chest command, or something?

[Morani]

Sanna, not that I'm aware of but I'll look into it tomorrow if I can....

Just free thinking here, but the /doability is tied to the "slot" the ability is in so you MIGHT be able to drag it to a hotkey slot and write the /doability command into a macro that way... I've not tried it but I can see how is POSSIBBLE. I don't know if that helps any though.

[Zyrtryx Conjureblade]

Just sit down, pick a mob that likely won't be killed anytime soon, like a vendor or guard, and track it for a while.

Really? I thought that you only got a skillup check when you actually clicked the track button. At least that is the way that I maxed tracking on my druid. I don't even remember tracking very many mobs, just click track, click cancel and wait for the button to refresh.

Oops. I forgot to mention the part about using the Track button over and over again. Knew I forgot something.....