How Edit Fixed Keys in AO

The well dressed Dyna Hunter Baba at level 138, click for larger view.

Baba managed to hit level 138 this past Monday evening. On his way out to Perpetual Wastelands from Newland City, he stopped several times along the way to pick off a few Dynas. The first Dyna was one he has taken down before and has never had trouble with. Tonight it gave him quite a drubbing before Baba’s Panther eventually cut it down to size. While Baba sat healing up afterward, and wondering what went so wrong, he checked his running nanos. He found that he had neglected to cast his absorb nano. Without it, he immediately started taking damage when the fight started. He figured later that the absorb has a very strong effect at the start of a fight when the mob is strongest. By the time the absorb has been used up, the mob has usually been weakened enough that it is no longer needed. He won’t be taking his absorb nano for granted again. The Gird for Punishment nano gives 436 absorb layers.

When Baba arrived at the PW dunes area, he found no one else there, and the Borg looked to be about 90% repopulated. He still had to clear the main dune area and work his way up the ‘Pinch’ towards the Helipad in order to finally level up to 138. After he hit 138, he jumped back in his Yalm and headed south towards the Player City owned by ‘Jacks Violent Crew’ that is situated just south of the Borg’s main mine complex. While passing over the section of road between the mine complex and the military base, he spotted a high level player kiting a rather large number of Borg. A list command indicated that there might be a team in the area, but all he could spot was the single kiter.

HOW TO EDIT FIXED KEYS

After Baba got back to Newland City and after he arranged for Tireen his trader friend to fence the loot, he chatted with Ohtizz our rather new adventurer. Ohtizz was complaining about the HUD interface not allowing the re-assignment of what it identifies as “FixedKeys” This puzzled Baba, because he has his Brawl key re-assigned from the default. He went back and studied his config files and found that he had made some custom edits to his Login.cfg file that re-assigned the Brawl key. The Login.cfg file lists all the HUD actions and the corresponding hot keys identified by ASCII character decimal number. Fast attack for Baba is listed in this file as KEY_BUTTON_FASTA 87 which Baba has re-assigned to 87, the hex EBCDIC code for the letter ‘g’. Baba uses this handy table that can be found here to find the appropriate hex code for any key .  The Login.cfg file is found in your Prefs directory. Be sure to make a back up copy of the file before you start editing it, just in case you hose it up somehow.  Baba has his fast attack and brawl keys re-assigned to be close to the other keys he uses.

While talking to Ohtizz, Baba also passed on another tip to the newbie. The social tab in the HUD can be used as a sort of extra backpack. Baba showed him how it can be used to free up space in your open inventory for more loot collection. Items that need to be in your inventory to use, like hacked boosted grafts, special rings, etc. will also activate from a hot bar key if placed in the social tab. The only limitation/consideration is whether it is something that shows up if you have settings that cause social tab items to display. This does not apply to rings, but does to back items and armor items.

Baba hits level 138 in Perpetual Wastelands. Click for full view.

Baba spent some time doing research on the net concerning the Pained Panther weapon. This two handed edged weapon is the next step up from his current Panther axe. He was happy to see that he will be able to equip one quite easily. His fast attack, brawl, and dimach skills meet the requirements, while he will need a 131 wrangle plus a few other buffs to meet the 2 hand edged requirement of 1001. He had been around level 90 when he purchased his Panther. The Panther and the Pained Panther drop off of mobs in the Crypt of Home dungeon.

The Crypt of Home is one of Rubi-Ka’s stranger dungeons. Everything about it is a bit odd. First of all to enter it requires two or more people acting together to throw two switches at different places. So unlike the Subway, Foreman’s or even the Temple of the Three Winds, a solo player can’t just simply waltz in and hope to pick up a team once inside. The few times we have been to the exterior, it has been deserted, it is not a gathering place like the other 3 dungeons. The mobs and bosses are said to be in the 90 to 110 range, however, players over 110 cannot enter via the entrance. Players above 110 can be warped in by Engineers. Another odd bit about this place is that almost all the boss loot is free from being NO DROP. Several pieces are Unique so that a player can only have one in possession at any time. In addition to the Panther line, the Cenobite Shadows also drop 3 other prized weapons, the Blackbird line of sub-machine guns, the Howlet line of two hand blunt weapons, and Chiropteras, one hand edged weapons. These are very popular weapons which are amost always in demand.

Inventory, Attack Rating, and HUD Tweaking

Sunrise at PW Dunes, click for larger view.

Baba’s still working on level 138. Ever since he hit level 136, leveling for Baba at Perpetual Wastelands Borg spots has slowed way down. Where he used to get 90 to 100k for each Borg, it is has dropped down to around 60-70k now, so it is taking much longer to level there than it did before. As a result of having to fell more Borg per level, Baba is amassing quite a decent Miy’s armor collection.

He went to try and organize it some and turned to a program he has used for several years, the Anarchy Online Inventory System from halorn. Unfortunately it does not recognize Miy’s armor and only identifies the quality level, but not the type. As an alternative, Baba tried out the Anarchy Online Backpack Parser found here.

The AOBP is actually more convenient to use than the AOIS because it only requires you to move a bag from the bank to inventory to get the contents. The extra step of having to actually open each back pack is eliminated. When going through an entire bank, this saves a good deal of time. The program also offers quite a few options in terms of output formats, csv, txt, html, etc. What made Baba happy, is that it does recognize his Miy’s armor and another big plus is that it parses the backpack names which makes it easy to actually locate the items.

Baba relied on AOBP to help him come up with his current almost all Miy’s armor outfit. Using AOPB it was easy to copy the Miy’s entries over to a spreadsheet where he could further sort and organize it.

When he was done he had a list sorted by Miy’s type of his collection. He was able then to pick out and quickly locate the highest level Miy’s ranged pieces he had.

The reason he choose Ranged my surprise you. Why not the Tank, or Scary? Tank would be ideal but for one factor. It buffs 2 hand blunt skill, which is useless to Baba. The Ranged is almost identical except it buffs two useless skills to Baba rather than one, but, the equip requirements are Agility and Strength. With Ranged, Baba can equip higher quality levels than with the Tank that requires Stamina and Strength. Baba can equip QL 172 Ranged and QL 133 Tank, so for the time being, Ranged is the better choice since it yields higher buffs and AC protection.

Another detail Baba became aware of during this exercise was how items that buff your primary weapon skills, increase your attack rating. He had been wearing a pair of 130 Rhinoman leather gloves. When she switched them out for some 172 Ranged gloves, his attack rating went down a point. The Rhinoman leather gloves have buffs for 2 hand edged, Fast attack and Dimach which are supported by his current weapon, the Panther. This also highlights one other reason for using the Ranged or Tank Miy’s. They both buff strength and stamina, which have very strong trickle down to his weapon skills.

Since Ranged and Tank Miy’s buff 2 enforcer primary skills, strength and stamina, Baba realized that it would be in his best interest if he cast all his self buffs in order to be able to equip the highest level Miy’s he could. Once he did that he was able to get into pieces ranging from 184 to 168. See his latest set up here.

Baba has also been working on his always engaged HUD layout and made a few more tweaks recently. He moved several attack special rings out an open backpack to sit in his main inventory. The reason for doing this, is so they can be made into hot buttons on his hot key bars. He moved his health kit and nano recharge hot key buttons to a secondary hot bar. He then put the hot keys for the rings into the recently vacated primary hot bar slots. Now when kiting Borg or in any combat, he can use these rings without having to change hand positions or using the mouse. Baba has found, and others report in the forums that mouse control can lag at times, at least compared to hot key response.

Now Baba’s attack specials available to him on his primary hot bar include,

• Flurry of Blows
• Library of Foul Language
• Ring of Eternal Night
• Tattered Flame Ring
• Bloodleech Ring
• Weeping Flesh Ring
• Memory Loss Ring

Baba uses Flurry as often as he can, but due to it’s cool down, it works out to about every other Borg.

He uses the Library of Foul Language only when everything else is on cool down, or when in teams and then it is used to get and keep aggro. Because of their cool down rates, Baba cycles between Eternal Night, Tattered Flame, Bloodleech, and Weeping Flesh, so that he can use at least one in every fight. He rarely uses the memory loss ring, keeping it around for team situations where it could be used to wipe a mobs hate list so Baba can then hit the mob and become it’s new number one on the hate list, and hopefully saving the squishy that the mob may have been attacking. None of these are knockout or even equivalent of an average hit from his current weapon, but they do help shorten the time it takes to bring a mob down.

Baba usually carries 6-7 loot bags currently, so when they fill up, it’s time to transfer the good to our Trader Tireen who fences them for top credit amounts. Recently while feeding loot to the Trader shop terminal in Newland City, another player noticed her Solar Powered Backpack and commented favorably on it. Baba now sees them listed on the shopping channel for 40 million credits. Then just a few nights later, while waiting for Babaente to show up, Tireen spotted a level 50 twink sporting the same back pack. This twink was an enforcer, so the Solar Powered backpack actually grows or shrinks according to the breed that is wearing it. When worn by an enforcer, it appears to be twice as big as Tireen’s.