GUIDE: How to configure a party - Cleric & 4 Control Wizards

NOTE: This is the evolutionary predecessor of Never-Boxer. Although good for understanding how to set-up your own configuration from scratch, if you are looking for a "ready-to-play" configuration, check out Never-Boxer at this thread: viewtopic.php?f=45&t=4198

Cleric & 4 Control Wizard - Offtank, Healz, CC & Firepower:

This Devoted Cleric & 4 Control Wizard (CW) setup allows me full control of the party leader (SLOT 1), my cleric (Sylverangel), to Off-tank and control healz while using the striking power and OP CC (Crowd Control) capabilities of the CWs to manage the fight. Currently I've got all 4 CWs following and assisting my cleric with the full range of Q, E, R, 1, 2 and mouse attacks. Additionally I have them set up to selectively deliver full salvos of attacks for massive damage or round-robin for CC's and selective takedowns - both options always available on the fly.

If you're completely new to all of this then you need to understand a few things first. (Experienced readers should skip to the next paragraph...) Several things are required to be done to set up ISBoxer and Neverwinter before you can go off into dungeons and smash some monsters. First, you will need to make a file to hold all of your in-game keybinds; aka what define what each key you press into in-game actions. For example, I press 'M' and a map appears. M is keybound to the map. What you do is decide what key you want to do which action and then create a file with Windows notepad and put those binds and actions into it. The actions are usually some kind of in-game codes that control things, so type /cmdlist to see all of the codes in the game. Only some of them are useful for what we are doing here though... targeting, attacks, etc. Secondly, once you've decided on what keys correlate to what actions you want in-game, you must go into the mysterious ISBoxer and create entries that connect your keybinds in special ways to make complex actions occur. A keybind performs a simple action (ie; targeting), but ISBoxer can make combinations of them that do wonderful, compund actions like, assist my tank, target his target, CC his target and then nuke his target all in one command. This will take time to learn, so just read what I and others have written, try things out, BACK UP OFTEN, and have fun seeing what you can make ISBoxer do.

The setup used in this guide is meant to be straightforward to understand, replicate and use. The vast majority of the hotkeys/binds are of the type "AlwaysOn" to minimize the amount of explanation required (ie; AlywaysOn, Non-Combat & Combat) and to eliminate any potential for confusion. There are, of course, many better ways to do some of these things, but they require understanding of dynamic macros and concepts that may require knowledge of programming/coding, which not everyone feels comfortable with or has the proper skillset.

IN GAME BINDS:

Since I use F1-F5 for the Q, E, R, 1 and 2 keys in my control scheme I started all of my binds at F6. The binds are stored (in my particular setup) in a file named BINDS.TXT located in the ...\Cryptic Studios\Neverwinter\Live folder. The "<-- blah blah blah" you see at the end of each bind line are my code comments and SHOULD NOT BE COPIED AND PASTED INTO YOUR BINDS FILE).

Important to remember is that once you log each character in, you must use the /BIND_LOAD_FILE command to load in the binds before ISBoxer can use them. So I type "/bind_load_file BINDS.TXT" for each character at login. I'll be adding a menu button or hotkey sometime soon to automate the whole thing across the party (low priority at the moment).

F6 "HardTargetLock 1 $$ Target Sylverangel" <-- Lock on to and target SLOT1 aka Sylverangel; this is 2 commands in one concatenated with the '$$'
F7 "Follow" <-- follow current target
F8 "Assist Sylverangel" <-- assist SLOT1
F9 "HardTargetLock 1" <-- turn Lock onto current target
F10 "SetFollow 0" <-- turn off following; you want this if you are using ranged characters to make them stop in place before attacking, otherwise they follow you right into the heat of the battle and promptly get crunched
F11 "HardTargetLock 0" <-- turn off Lock

I reserved F12 to toggle SweetFX on and off. I have my own SweetFX setup, but Google it to learn more about some cool SweetFX configurations in Neverwinter or just check out this link (has instructions and examples): http://gsngaming.com/topic/9614-neverwi ... eetfx-v14/

GAMEPLAY KEYSTROKES:

I came up with the idea of using F1-F5 (with shift) to mirror my broadcast comands across the party. They are conveniently located above their normal Q, E, R, 1 and 2 counterparts and make playing with them easier because you simply move your hands up a little bit on the keyboard and are used to control the party (ISBoxer implementation shown later on):

F1 = Broadcast 'Q' attack to "all others"; which is everyone except the SLOT1 party leader. This allows for a full-party salvo attack for maximum firepower
Shift + F1 = Round-Robin version of F1 (above). This allows rotation through the team for selective damage attacks, or more importantly, Crowd Control (CC).

F2 = Broadcast 'E' attack to "all others"; which is everyone except the SLOT1 party leader. This allows for a full-party salvo attack for maximum firepower
Shift + F2 = Round-Robin version of F2 (above). This allows rotation through the team for selective damage attacks, or more importantly, Crowd Control (CC).

F3 = Broadcast 'R' attack to "all others"; which is everyone except the SLOT1 party leader. This allows for a full-party salvo attack for maximum firepower
Shift + F3 = Round-Robin version of F3 (above). This allows rotation through the team for selective damage attacks, or more importantly, Crowd Control (CC).

F4 = Broadcast '1' attack to "all others"; which is everyone except the SLOT1 party leader. This allows for a full-party salvo attack for maximum firepower
Shift + F4 = Round-Robin version of F4 (above). This allows rotation through the team for selective damage attacks, or more importantly, Crowd Control (CC).

F5 = Broadcast '2' attack to "all others"; which is everyone except the the SLOT1 party leader. This allows for a full-party salvo attack for maximum firepower
Shift + F5 = Round-Robin version of F5 (above). This allows rotation through the team for selective damage attacks, or more importantly, Crowd Control (CC).

** NOTE: I also like to put a CC spell in (for example) the 'Q' Encounter Power slot of the SLOT2 party member and fill the 'Q' Encounter Power slots of SLOT3-SLOT5 party members with damage spells. This has the desirable effect of placing a CC on a mob and having the next 3 party members follow up with DPS on that target. This is particularly useful in knocking out mobs streaming/swarming towards the party - it's not uncommon for me to have several mobs dangling and being nuked to death mid-air before falling to the ground dead. It's a really nice touch!

V = Broadcast of F6 & F7; this causes all other party members to Lock onto and follow the SLOT1 party leader.

Shift + (3, 4 & 5) = Broadcast '3, 4 or 5' to all party members. Basically an 'Oh SHIT' method of making everyone gulp a health or other potion when things get desperate.

Shift + 6 = Broadcast '6' to all party members. Useful for mounting your entire party on horses to quickly navigate the party across the maps. Press 'V' after using this and the whole party then gallops off into the sunset following their SLOT1 party leader.

ISBOXER CONFIGURATION:

Now for the ISBoxer portion. To bring our desired keystrokes and binds to life in the game, go into ISBoxer and create new 'keymaps' to match the actions and keystrokes you planned out and identified in both your BINDS.TXT and your game keystroke setups. Here are the in-game 'Q' attacks that are bound to F1 and Shift + F1 that I explained above.

This first screenshot is the in-game "Q" key attack via a press of the F1 key. This attack is really 4 commands all glued together (using 'steps' and 4 sub-'actions') to make a compound action comprised of:

- Assist SLOT 1 (The F8 in-game keybind we manually loaded in from BINDS.TXT when we started the game)
- HardTargetLock SLOT 1 (The F9 keybind we manually loaded in from BINDS.TXT when we started the game)
- SetFollow 0 (The F10 keybind we manually loaded in from BINDS.TXT when we started the game)
- Have all other party members iInitiate their in-game 'Q' attack by sending the character 'Q' to all other windows besides the one currently being used; aka 'all other'



This next screenshot is remarkably similar to the one used above for 'Q', except for one thing - this is the 'Shift + F1' combination I'm using in my control scheme and the ONLY real difference (besides holding the Shift key lol) is that the checkbox for 'Round-Robin' is selected in the keymapping action. That's all there is to it! So there you have Round-robin actions de-mystified.



All of the other Keymappings are very similar in that they simply broadcast out a keystroke to all windows; ie - your characters. You can see the Shift + 6 below... 3,4 & 5 are identical in nature. That's the simplest way to get all of your characters to do the same action at the same time. I hope that helps explain how some of this works.



So congratulations! You have now created your keybinds file and set up ISBoxer to use them - go forth and conquer:!:

One recommendation that I have in testing your setup is to choose a foundry quest and do it there. My favorite foundry quest is right in town next to the vendors and I don't have to go far from them, the mailbox, bank or auction house. When you're equipping, supplying and moving a party of 5 characters around, this can be a big time-saver. Foundry quests are also nice in that you also get free astral diamonds for completing your daily foundries and simultaneously testing your setup this way.

A final parting discussion point is what pets/companions to use in conjunction with the setup. Since the pets cost gold and it's 4x the cost (one for each CW), there's a significant outlay of funds required to try them out. My main already has the Dire Wolf, Ioun Stone (my fav), Cleric, Man at Arms and Wizard. The added damage and CC from the wizard companion might be nice, and I know that the Dire Wolf (and dog) do a nice job of knocking back your foes, but the Man at Arms does an excellent job of holding the enemy at bay long enough for the CWs to "nuke" them to death. I'm leaning towards a team of 4x Man at Arms to help keep mobs busy while the CWs nuke and CC and while I'm dragging ads, healing and offtanking with my cleric. Since my goal is end-game dungeons, I'm of the opinion that in the long run, it will be the better buildout. End game dungeons require a healer, and if you're not controlling it as a main and dodging the ads, it's probably not going to go too well. If someone proves me wrong, that will be a good thing.

I hope that you, the reader, find this useful and educational. As was my original goal, I've tried to keep it straightforward and simple to follow in hope of helping you comprehend how keybinds and ISboxer setups work for multi-boxing Neverwinter.

[Norrin]

Again excellent work. Very well written.
I especially like the extra advice about using the foundry quests to help get setup and going.
I was doing that as well, but it never occurred to me to share it.

THANK YOU for such an amazing and extremely helpful post! I have a few questions if you wouldn't mind helping me try to straighten them out .

Although there were no screen shots for how the f6-11 binds are set up, I figured they were simple "> >all other" implementations and seem to have them working fine. However, how do you have you're at-wills set up? Currently I set them up the same exact way (action order) as the qwer12 binds, but the characters attack before they assist meaning they are always a target behind unless I click to target then click again to attack. Is this a problem with me binding it directly to the mouse key where as the others are keyboard keys maybe? Just seems strange that all the other binds assist before attacking but not the mouse clicks.

One other question I had is in regards to playing 2 melee characters in a team with 3 cw. What would your suggestions be for keeping the second melee character on top of your target? I was contemplating a follow/auto run method to keep him constantly going at them but it just seems sloppy.

Thanks again for your guide, it has been a life saver for someone like me who is getting into isboxer for the first time!

[lax]

I edited the title of your thread because "automate" is sort of a dirty word and gives the wrong impression about the guide.

THANK YOU for such an amazing and extremely helpful post! I have a few questions if you wouldn't mind helping me try to straighten them out .

Although there were no screen shots for how the f6-11 binds are set up, I figured they were simple "> >all other" implementations and seem to have them working fine. However, how do you have you're at-wills set up? Currently I set them up the same exact way (action order) as the qwer12 binds, but the characters attack before they assist meaning they are always a target behind unless I click to target then click again to attack. Is this a problem with me binding it directly to the mouse key where as the others are keyboard keys maybe? Just seems strange that all the other binds assist before attacking but not the mouse clicks.

One other question I had is in regards to playing 2 melee characters in a team with 3 cw. What would your suggestions be for keeping the second melee character on top of your target? I was contemplating a follow/auto run method to keep him constantly going at them but it just seems sloppy.

Thanks again for your guide, it has been a life saver for someone like me who is getting into isboxer for the first time!

You are most certainly welcome! I'll be adding more to this guide, and creating additional ones to explain more in the future. I am a KISS person (Keep It Simple Stupid), so I try to keep my setups, guides and writeups logical and easy to digest... so from your feedback it sounds like I hit the mark - which really means alot, thanks!

That being said, I didn't include my "at-wills" because I'm currently experimenting still with the best way to make it work. The way the game mechanics are set up, the mouse buttons don't work well with ISBoxer (don't know if lax can do anything about that or now - maybe add a 'Neverwinter mode'?). So what I'm using is my tried and true Lineage 2 "machine gun" setup under Autohotkey (AHK) that I replicated from my old Nostromo N52s. I'm working on moving it to ISBoxer, but it's not to the point yet that I feel comfortable recommending it for everyone to use. Basically it machine guns down everything you do an "at-will" at, but unless you are really careful about where you are targeting, you can inadvertently draw too many mobs. Its okay when they are small (die quickly), but later on when you have larger HP mobs, it can get ugly. I'll make sure to post it once I tweak it all out.

As for F6-F11, sry - I'm not quite done uploading all the screenshots yet, but you are correct... they are simple "> >all other" broadcasts. I'll try and put them up tonight when I get some time after the baby and wife are alseep.

As for the 2 melee characters, I would investigate using the newest features that lax has implemented in his 'Cryptic Helper'. You could theoretically put your characters in the DPS and Melee action groups and use dynamic macros to have each of them attack in a different way. The Cryptic Helper actually makes individual binds for each character and that would make it so that the DPS and Melee binds would be different but share the same attack. But if you aren't a programmer, prepare to get some headaches with understanding all of the dynamic code.

Therefore a simpler, yet less flexible, method would be to have 2 attack binds. One for melee, one for ranged. If you look at my binds and ISBoxer maps, for example, you will see that I have the ranged characters stop moving and attack at range. You would need to make a different ISboxer map that does not have that code line ("SetFollow 0") in there to make them stop. Then the melee character would continue to charge in next to your main and hack away. Recommend you try that method - let me know if that works.

Again, thanks for the thanks and hope some of what I wrote helps.

You are most certainly welcome! I'll be adding more to this guide, and creating additional ones to explain more in the future. I am a KISS person (Keep It Simple Stupid), so I try to keep my setups, guides and writeups logical and easy to digest... so from your feedback it sounds like I hit the mark - which really means alot, thanks!

That being said, I didn't include my "at-wills" because I'm currently experimenting still with the best way to make it work. The way the game mechanics are set up, the mouse buttons don't work well with ISBoxer (don't know if lax can do anything about that or now - maybe add a 'Neverwinter mode'?). So what I'm using is my tried and true Lineage 2 "machine gun" setup under Autohotkey (AHK) that I replicated from my old Nostromo N52s. I'm working on moving it to ISBoxer, but it's not to the point yet that I feel comfortable recommending it for everyone to use. Basically it machine guns down everything you do an "at-will" at, but unless you are really careful about where you are targeting, you can inadvertently draw too many mobs. Its okay when they are small (die quickly), but later on when you have larger HP mobs, it can get ugly. I'll make sure to post it once I tweak it all out.

As for F6-F11, sry - I'm not quite done uploading all the screenshots yet, but you are correct... they are simple "> >all other" broadcasts. I'll try and put them up tonight when I get some time after the baby and wife are alseep.

As for the 2 melee characters, I would investigate using the newest features that lax has implemented in his 'Cryptic Helper'. You could theoretically put your characters in the DPS and Melee action groups and use dynamic macros to have each of them attack in a different way. The Cryptic Helper actually makes individual binds for each character and that would make it so that the DPS and Melee binds would be different but share the same attack. But if you aren't a programmer, prepare to get some headaches with understanding all of the dynamic code.

Therefore a simpler, yet less flexible, method would be to have 2 attack binds. One for melee, one for ranged. If you look at my binds and ISBoxer maps, for example, you will see that I have the ranged characters stop moving and attack at range. You would need to make a different ISboxer map that does not have that code line in there to make them stop. The the melee character would continue to charge in next to your main and hack away. Recommend you try that method - let me know if that works.

Again, thanks for the thanks and hope some of what I wrote helps.

- Sylver

I look forward to that machine gun method! As for the individual binds, that does seem like it would make the most sense, I'll have to give it a shot. No worries about the programming stuff, I tread code on a daily basis

On a side note, I seem to have ran into a very random issue. Last night I had set up the VFX and noticed that I couldn't interact with the in-game GUI without holding Ctrl (or alt but well, alt makes the game take over the mouse). I was able to set everything up, it worked perfect. But, today I loaded innerspace and none of my clicks are working within the game... unless I hold control, alt, or shift. It seems like the game itself has been infected by whatever was affecting the GUI. Any idea on how to fix this, or have you ever ran into this?

The only other changes I have made since last night were to my CPU controls to better optimize how each window uses it. I don't think that would cause this issue, but who knows!

Nevermind the above question, I am a bit special. I forgot that I was messing around with the "at-wills", which are the mouse buttons, and I had my mouse buttons set to broadcast characters instead of clicks. Whoops!

Thanks a lot man, very nice write up very helpful to understand how you guys manage you 5 man.