User Interface Guide
EverQuest's interface has evolved for more than two decades, and it can feel overwhelming when you first log in. The Legends team has introduced meaningful updates to modernize the UI, and this guide will help you learn the essentials and then show you how to manage and customize your interface to your preferences.
Let's start with the big picture!
Going by the numbers:
- Spell Bar - our currently loaded spells
- Hotbar - abilities, spells and macro hot buttons
- Inventory - press 'I' for inventory
- Chat Window - one social tab, one combat tab
- Player Window - character info and resources
- Target Window - target info and resources
- Menu Window - quick access multi-menu
- Group Window - player party members
- Extended Target Window - active combat targets
This is the default UI, and these windows load onto your screen when you first log your character in.
UI Themes
There are three UI themes currently available in game:
- default
- default light
- default modern
To load a UI theme, press Alt + O, left-click "Load UI Skin", select your choice of skin, then click Load Skin.
Spell Bar
Your spell bar displays the current spells you have memorized. You can cast one spell at a time and some of them have cool downs that make you wait before casting again. To cast a spell, you can left-click the spell press a hotbutton if it is assigned to your hotbar. You can have up to 8 memorized at one time to start, and a few more become available later.
Hotbars
Hotbars are where you can assign macros, abilities, items, socials, or spells. And each of the open slots on the hotbar can be assigned a hotbutton. If you want to change a hotbutton, hold right-click over it to modify or clear it. You can move a hot button to another hotbar slot by holding left-click down on a hot button until it 'sticks' to your mouse, then move it to an empty slot by left-clicking.
Note: Just to clarify the terminology regarding key bindings in-game and the terms used in this guide, the word "hotkey" means the same thing as "Hot button." For the purposes of this guide, I will stick to hot buttons because that is what the game using for hotkeys.
Inventory
Your inventory shows your character gear, bags, stats, and currency. It has a handful of buttons and tabs with their own information and function. It is a very useful and deep system you'll want to become familiar with. Pressing I key opens and closes your inventory. Pressing escape also closes it.
Chat Window
The chat window has two tabs open by default, one for social chat and one for combat chat. You can deeply customize chat and we'll go over a lot of those options later in the deep dive below, but for now you should know that you can change the font size by holding right-click and choosing 'chat size' then selecting your prefered size. You can also right-click your chat window and create a new chat window. Something I usually do early on is set up a couple chat windows where I want them and then right-click the chat windows, mouseover 'window' at the top and choose 'lock' so you don't accidently move, resize, or otherwise mess up your chat windows. While I am on the topic of locking windows, nearly all of them can be locked so, lock what you want!
Player Window
The player window shows your level, your current classes, your current state (i.e., resting), your health, mana, stamina, EXP and AA EXP.
Target Window
The target window similarly shows the targets information, but instead of EXP and AA, it shows their target (often referred to as "target of target" or "target's target").
Multi-Menu Window
Group Window
Extended Target Window
...
Where these windows appear on your screen may vary a little depending on your resolution. All of these windows can be moved to your liking, you can resize some of them, you can open more hotbars, assign more hot buttons, open more chat windows, choose a light, dark or modern theme, and much more!
If you are a minimalist, you can set your UI up that way. If you prefer to fill your screen with several chat channels, hotbars and macros, you can do that too. We'll cover all of that stuff in the deep dive. For now, I am going to focus on the essentials so you can focus on playing, not wrestling with windows.
Oh, and I bet you started seeing tip windows start to pop up not long after you logged in? That's normal - they were designed to pop up when you log in on a character below level 20, when you zone, or when the game detects an action that matches one of its built-in "new player help" triggers. You can turn these off, but I would recommend leaving them on for several levels for your first character.
... there's a few essential hot buttons you should know.
Hot Buttons
First and foremost for hot buttons on your keyboard are your number keys, 1 through =, and are assigned to your primary hotbar. You can open more hotbars and assign more hot buttons and customize your layout, but we'll save those details for the deep dive further down in this guide.
Alt+O opens the options window. With the options window open, click on controls. On the Key Bindings tab you can select all or specific categories to view all the keybind options that are and are not set.
Note: when you assign a hot button to a keybind, it normally toggles a window or executes a command, but not all of them currently function.
Under the Commands category, important keys to know are:
- Q = attack (you can also set it to ~ (tilda key) or your preference)
- B = inventory bags toggle
- C = consider
- Ctrl + S = sit/stand
Under the Target category:
- TAB = should be set to cycle through nearest NPCs.
Under the Chat category:
- H = hail
- R = reply
Under the Camera category:
- F9 = toggle camera view
There are many other hot buttons and some would deem them worthy of putting them here, but that is a quick overview of the most used default hot buttons.
Exaltations
Description.