Article by: Erollisi.Blabberpuss
Written on: 3-25-2012
Last updated: 3-26-2012




Have you ever been playing Everquest and someone has had a cool chat message that they obviously had made while out of the game because it contained special text symbols that you KNOW are not available from a standard keyboard? A very common one would be a chat message that contained some symbols such as these: ♫♥♪♀♣☺♂♫. Well now you will be able to amaze your EQ friends with your own edited chat messages by following these simple instructions.

How to make a Macro Key in EverQuest:
In game open up your Socials Page by holding down CTRL key and O at the same time. Find an empty box under one of the Socials pages and right click it. This should open up a window titled Edit Social. Click on the first text line box and type something that you would want to use as a macro, something like: /gu Hello everyone! Then in the Social Name Box give it a title, like Greet and click Accept when you are done. Then log completely out of Everquest.

Edit your Character INI File:
1. First step is to find your character's .ini file. Mine is located on my D:\ drive. You will need to locate where Everquest resides on your harddrive. The default location is at C:\Program Files\Everquest. Once located scroll through all the files in the Everquest folder until you find a file named after your character. It will be something like this: Kikkit_erollisi.ini (this is a name of one of my characters which resides on the Erollisi Marr server). Yours will have your own character's name and server followed by .ini just like I have it listed for Kikkit.

2. Now you will need to open up your character's .ini file in a text editor. The simplest one to use is the one provided by Microsoft: Notepad (Windows XP) or you can download a nice text editor called Notepad++ using this link: https://notepad-plus-plus.org/ did I mention it was free? If you choose another editor, make sure the text editor you choose will allow you to encode the file in UTF-8 format. This is crucial. (Notepad++ has a Toolbar choice named Format. If you click it select Encode in UTF-8. Windows Notepad has a box at the bottom of the Save As window named Encoding. Choose UTF-8 from the drop down arrow.) Open up your .ini file by right clicking on the one you found for your character and selecting Open With. Select the text editor you are going to use and your character's .ini file will open up ready to be edited.

3. Next if you are using Windows XP, click on your Start button, then click Run, a box will open up with a blinking cursor in a window, type CharMap. This will open up the Character Map, select Font: Arial at the top. You can now scroll up and down to find the cool symbols you would like to use in your new macro. When you find what you want click it and it should become larger then choose the Select button to put it into your Characters to copy box. You can add as many as you want, but not all characters will work. Start simple with some of the ones I have listed in the first paragraph above. When you are done, choose Copy this will temporarily copy the symbols you selected into the computer's memory.

3. Scroll down thru your open character .ini file until you locate the Page#Button#Color=1 line that contains the macro that you just created. It should look something like:

Page5Button6Line1=/gu Hello everyone!

4. Once you find the line, move your cursor over to the spot you would like to include your symbols and right click and select Paste. If the format is set to UTF-8 in your text editor program, you should see something like (but of course with your own chosen symbols):

Page5Button6Line1=/gu ♫♫♪♪ Hello everyone! ♫♫♪♪

5. Then save your character's .ini file in UTF-8 format and close the Text Editor. Open up Everquest, find your macro and give it a test!