December Waypoints: DarqUI v3.1.3.5 (Patreon)

A new version of the DarqUI Utility is available at eq2interface.com.

If you are unsure about how to install or upgrade DarqUI, take a look at this video.

Important: The first thing you want to do after installing or upgrading your utility is check at the top of the Updates page for the black-and-white Patreon logo. If you don't see it, or if it's all gray, you'll need to reapply your premium key on the About page. If you need your key re-sent to you, please message me here or DM me in Discord.

It's been eight months since the last utility was published, which I believe is the longest gap between versions in our history. Here's a look at what's new. Some of this will be a review of recently added features that now have utility configuration pages, with additional notes about your new ideas that will be looked at this month.

Who-o-o, It's Expansion Time

I want to first comment on the new Ballads of Zimara expansion, which according to every player I've spoken with is getting strong early reviews for the artwork, zone and mob design. And I agree, the artists have outdone themselves this time around with the expansion's overall look and feel.

For the small amount of questing I've been able to do, the story and lore have been enjoyable and engaging as well. Flight in the overland zones can be enabled fairly quickly by doing part of the tradeskill quest line first. With new experience levels and new places to see, Ballads of Zimara is giving us some great reasons to spend time in our favorite game, and I'm looking forward to digging in more deeply.

Recently added features that now have utility support:

Loadouts: Command List Mode

This feature update was shown off in the November Waypoints newsletter, and it's in the game right now if you've downloaded the latest files. (If you haven't taken a look at Loadouts yet, I encourage you to do so. It's a big, highly-customizable feature that will most likely amaze you with what it can do.) Now instead of casting up to 18 buffs and spells in sequence, you can choose to cast up to 18 commands instead:

You can tap Census with the globe icon to quickly look up IDs for spells, Ascensions, AAs, temporary adornments, painlinks, etc. Use the eyeball icon to do a reverse lookup and verify your selections against Census. You can also put snacks on the command list.  ;)

The new mode can also be used to apply a list of temps to your gear, and I promise I'll make a post soon explaining how that works. In the meantime, there are plenty of tooltip [?] help icons in-game, and the Help window has lots of info about the feature to get you started.

Enemy List: Command Bar

Also mentioned was the new Command Bar for enemies -- the evil twin of the beneficial spell buttons in Group and Raid windows! Each of the five command buttons can contain any targeted spell, command or Icon Bar macro. You can look up spell icons just like you do with the Group and Raid windows, or in the case where you're using the buttons for macros, roll your own!

This window is great for tanks generating aggro, support classes debuffing and locking down adds, raid leaders tagging enemies on the fly, and of course DPS classes mowing down their victims. Loads of flexibility here.

Be sure to read up on the Enemy List help page about how to triple-click to efficiently target and apply spells to your enemies. And if you prefer one of the compact display modes, not to worry, you can use the new command buttons with those as well.

Bag Colors

In days gone by DarqUI v2 had a Bag Color feature, but it used an older technology that was very processor intensive, and so it was dropped from the feature set years ago. Recently Leejin and Kattster asked that we give it another look, and the result is a lightweight feature that you will find useful as a visual organizing tool, or if you just want to spruce up all the bland container groups.

Other components with utility support for new features include:

• Icon Bar (borders and backdrops setting, expanded Census lookups)
• Maintained Spell Monitor (TimerPct progress bars)
• Tradeskills (focus crafting search box)
• Gear Buff Macros (Recast time controls)
• Stat Monitor (ACT Statter controls)
• Start Menu (custom slot icons)
• Clock (Earth/Norrath time, timed commands, "repeat" setting, backdrop)

Utility improvements include:

• Added Zarrakon to internal server cache
• Added confirmation dialog when Set Up button is clicked in Quick Setup (Ombrette)
• Added Quick Setup for a single character in context menu (Rosyposy)
• Spell line suggestions are updated through level 130 for EN DE FR languages
• Spell level suffixes up to 20 (XX) are recognized. Spell lines are now contiguous through the entire line instead of the highest levels being detached from the rest
• MaintMon TimerPct bug fixed in spell grid (Kammelle, korpo53)
• Gear Buff tile size can be increased up to 84px
• AA and regular spells will no longer return an incomplete list in Icon Bar lookups due to too many results returned (Maris)
• Added a Guild Buff shortcut to Icon Bar lookups (Maris)
• Icon Bar can now look up potions, elixirs, temp adornments, etc.
• Composite icons (e.g. Renewal of Ro: Domination) are now shown with correct foreground and background images (Maris)
• Fixed a bug preventing Gear Buff Macro custom tile colors from being saved (Argent)
• Added ability to download files to absolute locations in \gameroot
• Added Cadman Roman font and ability to download/maintain files above UIPath folder (Baratan)
• Added Overseer Bag to Bag profile viewer
• Added Overseer Bag to Inventory and inventory reports
• Inventory: added "Alphabetize by slot" to Wardrobe grid (Unseelee)
• Added event slot (plume) to Inventory
• Corrected profile viewer for Windows UI scaling greater than 100% (Inaasubi)
• Many census lookups can now be done with a partial search string, not just the first part. ("Di'Zok" will find Di'Zok Minion's Elixir of Thorns as well as Fury of the Di'Zok)
• Help window can now display help text size to match selected UI size
• If you have skipped a file, resizing the entire UI with "All Large" or "All X-Large" won't un-skip it
• When new files are presented for download, they will be offered in your preferred UI size based on other file sizes (Alils)
• When reverting Extras to default size, the Manage Extras list is cleared
• Added routine to clean up excess RewardPack entries (uisettings) when downloading L or XL Extras package
• Group and Raid spell lookups handle Ascension spells more gracefully (Jadabo)
• Using the Copy context-menu command on Icon Bar and Gear Buff Macro icons will also create a formatted listing on the Windows clipboard
• Changed three-dot Edit buttons to more appropriate glyphs throughout the utility
• Tooltips are easier to read
• You no longer need to be online to rebuild your Account Camp list
• In Beta Tools you can now rename characters to their Beta-amended names (Darqxxx for example)
• In Beta Tools you can now rename uisettings files to their Beta-amended names (Darqxxx for example)
• Beta Tools now gives a helpful message if you are configuring for Beta while the game is running

Upcoming improvement Requests

Here are some member requests and ideas that will be explored in December. As always, there is no guarantee that an idea can be implemented. And if your idea doesn't appear here, that doesn't mean it was forgotten.  :)

• A Favorites List on the merchant, primarily for Stanley Parnem to list only specific daily Overseer missions (Alderin)
• Auto-track shinies -- automatically track the nearest shiny when opening the Track harvestables window (Naviaz)
• Make cure buttons on Raid and Group windows only execute gsay/raidsay/etc after the cure spell begins casting (Replay, chief, bellessimo)
• Make Large Plat Presets on the Broker save preset values up to the 50M maximum price (Naviaz)
• Automatic save of house layout when exiting house, similar to inventory logging when exiting game
• Automatic save/load option for a common Friends List on login/switch characters (chief)
• Maintained Spell Monitor: choose one spell to be auto-recast at a certain percentage (wards e.g.) or time remaining (alakazzam)
• Review all stat displays for overflow due to larger stat values from level increase
• Rework all favorite lists to have multiple "pages," to increase number of saved slots but also to allow organizing frequent search categories onto different pages (Kattster)

Thank You

We've covered a lot of ground with this new version of the utility, and there's been a ton of testing from all angles. But if you find anything that's not working like you expected, please message me here in Patreon messages or in Discord and we'll get it ironed out. The goal is for everything to work as advertised, 100% of the time.

Everything you see above was made possible thanks to you. Quite a few players around the world are benefiting from your fresh ideas, your inspired feature suggestions, and your continued support for the DarqUI project. Thank you!