Help:Gathering Intel

Help Contents

~ Getting Started ~

About EQ2i

Welcome New Users

Where to Begin

When All Else Fails

~ FAQs ~

EQ2i Overview FAQ

Reader's FAQ

Editor's FAQ

Template FAQ

~ Browsing & Editing ~

Searching EQ2i

Gathering Intel

Help for New Editors

~ Policies & Guidelines ~

General Policies

Manual of Style

Just starting this guide. This will be, I hope, a resource for newcomers to EQ2i with some helpful tips on how to gather information in-game in the best way to be helpful here.

Check EQ2i First!

Before you head out to explore a zone, take a look at a few places here first. These categories are designed to help us find articles that are missing one or more pieces of information.

Category:Articles needing more information - There are subcategories here, by Zone. Browse through a few of the articles and look for quests that you are on, NPCs and Monsters you are pretty sure you are going to run into, etc. Make a few notes about what you want to find out before you explore!
Category:Stubs - These are articles that have little or no information on them but were created to avoid redlinks.

These three require no explanation:

Taking Notes

Get yourself a notebook just for EQ2i notes. :) Start a new page for each zone you visit. Note the names of monsters, especially groups of them. Note the level after each name. Add a /loc if it is a named, or a /loc for the center of the area you find alot of them in. When you get a Location message at the top, jot it down, get the /loc and note if you got Discovery Experience for it. If EQ2Map shows a POI at that location, add the UID: to your notes. Here is a recent example from my notebook.

LFay
a sharpthorn prophet (51), stickler (50), soothsayer (52)
a fungusman prisoner (52) (mycozoid)
a fayllan jongleur (51), kibitzer (51) (fay/fairy)
unabating sprouts (food node)
a horse, a stablemaster, Tana (human, searching for something...)
----
GFay
a large slitherer (9) 586,0,338
a rotting guardian (17-19) agro -594,50,151
a coerced ooze (19) -875,136,66 (surrounded by CB oracles)

Screenshots

I cannot stress enough the usefulness of screenshotting everything. Got a new quest? Take a screenshot of the New Quest box. Finished a quest? Get a shot of the Quest Reward box, then highlight each item reward option and screenshot it! That way you gather more info than just the choice you accept!

Watch your guildchat and the guild events window. When you see a link to an item, click the link and screenshot the Examine box!

When you find a discovery location, type /loc real quick then take a screenshot! If you are fast enough you will have the location in your chat window AND the name of the location on your screen! This saves alot of time!

It is nice if you can push up your graphics quality before taking a bunch of mob and NPC pics, but if your PC can't handle it, don't sweat it. Any pic is better than no pic! Take 2 shots: one with the mob targetted so the mob's level and difficulty will show in your UI, and a second untargetted and framed as pretty as you can so you can clip the picture with as little UI in the way as possible. Make sure your mouse is not over the mob so he does not glow.

At the end of a session, if possible, before you go to bed :) run through the pics in your screenshots directory. Edit the filename with general notes. For New Quest and Quest Reward boxes, I use NameOfTheQuest NQ.jpg or NameOfTheQuest QR.jpg . If it is an item, I will use NameOfTheItem.jpg . Then, create folders with the zone names you visited and move all the screenshots to the appropriate zone folder. This helps ALOT the next time you are ready to do a bunch of EQ2i updating.

When you are ready, walk through the zone screenshot folders and open them into a picture editor like PaintShop Pro, or whatever your favorite editor is, and cut the examine boxes of item, pics of mobs and NPC's. Many times you don't need to cut the image at all, just gather some info from it, such as the name of a Point of Interest and the /loc output you very cleverly added to the screen! Just jot it down. Save all your cut images to folders similar to the screenshot folders. You will want to delete the original screenshots as soon as you get all you want from them, as they tend to be rather large.

Log Files

Always keep your LOGGING turned on! Alot of information goes in there that can be useful, including the in-game link code for every item you looked at! Another important thing to look for is faction messages. Note the name of the mob you killed and what faction was affected by it, up or down.

Uploading Images

It is easiest to upload all the images from your session at once, then go make articles for them. Be sure you named your files well. Use the same capitalization and naming scheme as noted in Project:Policy/Naming , with .jpg on the end. This way when an article is created that matches your pic name, the 2 will match up.

Use the Upload file link in the toolbox in the left margin to get to the file upload screen. Use Browse to find your first picture. The filename as it will appear here should fill in automatically. Which leaves us with the Summary window. This is the best place to put category links so you don't have to edit the image page later to add them. Start with {{ss}} on the first line. This adds your pic to Category:Images and Category:EQ2 In-Game Images , and displays a pretty box explaining that SOE still owns the copyright, etc. Next, it may be useful to add a zone link, such as [[Category:Antonica Images]]. Also, I find it helpful to add a personal tag that holds all the images I have personally uploaded, [[:Category:Florence's Images]]. Now you can press Upload file . If everything is cool and your filename was not already in use here, you should see your pic.

Here is the trick to uploading alot of pics here. Press Back and the screen still has all the links you added, so just press Browse , choose another pic (the destination filename will change for you) and press Upload file ! Repeat until you have all your pics uploaded.

Starting a New Page With Florence's Templates

First, go take a look at Category:Florence's Templates . Go ahead... I'll wait...

OK, now that you have seen it, the table at the top contains every single one of the main Information Box templates we use here. Of great importance to you is the last column on the right, the Shortcut. This is gonna save you alot of typing. Also, before you start adding a type of record you have not done before, take a look at the main template page for that record type. There should be a Parameters list there, defining, in some detail, what goes into each field for that template. You may want to keep this page open in a second window for reference.

To create your new page, just do the following:

hit edit to open the edit window.
in the edit window, type {{subst:}}, replacing with the name of the shortcut listed in the last column of the Information Templates table.
hit Save page .
hit edit . do NOT use your browser's Back button!
now fill in the template call with as much information as you have. Information that does not fit in the template may be added below the template call. Be as verbose as you need to when adding notes outside the template! Some template shortcuts will automatically add one or more sections for you below the template call, such as Related Quests , Rewards and Credits . Some of this may be commented out with HTML tags . You may need to remove those comment tags.
Please enter an edit summary in the little line below the edit window. This helps everyone watching Recent changes . If there were any important fields that you had to leave blank, you might note that in the edit summary.
2 little checkboxes between Summary and the buttons can be important here!
- This is a minor edit should not be checked when adding a new page, but if you are editing an existing page and making only a minor correction such as spelling or correcting a /loc, check this box.
- Watch this page should be checked. This adds the page to your watchlist. If you watch your watchlist you can see whenever someone else edits a page you created or are interested in! Pages can also be added to your watchlist by clicking watch in the little tab bar at the top of the page. You can have all pages you create and/or all pages you edit added to your watchlist automatically by checking 2 boxes under my preferences->Editing .
hit Save page and you are done! You have created a new article!

...more to come...