Hotkey to swap dragon scales?

[Kerech]

Since my RoP is about done (hopefully tonight *fingers crossed*), I'm going to get back to working on my lair for a bit. I'm in the process of making some teched crafting scales, one set with crafting techs and one with lairshaping techs.

The other day in-game someone was talking about making a hotkey that allowed him to swap scales in and out as he was making items. I didn't catch all the details though, so I'm wondering how this could be done.

Here's an example of what I want to do:

Equip crafting scales with mining/smelting techs and make a batch of metal bars. Then swap to lairshaping scales to make the imbued bars.

Is there a way to set up a hotkey (or probably 2 hotkeys) to help do this?

[C`gan]

Right click on a blank hotkey button (or one you want to change). Select "Edit Hotkey" from the menu. You are given a bunch of different options of what actions the hotkey can take. The one you'll want is "Equip Item". Then, drag a scale into the equip item box. Hit the "+" button. Repeat the equip item with all the scales of that set. There is also a command for create item and you drag the specific item form from your knowledge window into the window. At the bottom, you can put in a little icon to signify the hotkey and give it a name, then hit Save.

Also a good thing to do is use the "Wait" command. That gives the system a delay between actions. So, if you want to make sure the server is accepting the switch in scales before making anything, put in a wait of a few seconds between the last scale equipped and the create item.

[Kerech]

Thanks for that info. Is there then a way to make it activate the craft skill too?

like "use dragon smelting" or something?

[Deth]

You can set them up to Swap out the scales then use the "Use Ability" option drag in the craft ability and save it. They there is one more, that I can not remeber the command but you should be able to figure out which it is, to open the master form or the spesific form if your working onr resource for a long time. So that I.E. It would
Swap all your current scales to Smelting Scales
Activate Dragon Ability: Smelting
Then Open the Expert Metal bars form.

All at the click of a button. You can not tell it to craft the bars for you as they changed that long ago due to exploiting.

[Kerech]

Thanks everyone, that sounds like what I need to know

[Justa Mirage]

Ok words to the wise for macro creating (Macro 101 class)

If scales you have either worn or are swapping, increase or decrease your health in any way... your macro will stop, and you will have to click the same macro button 2, maybe 3 times if you have a lot of scales that change your health (Word of note...) this is because it was Horizon's way of fixing the macro system to keep people from making UCM's (unattended Combat Macros) from being written. There are ways around it now, as these macroers still are around... all it would take would be an external keyboard macro to activate the "hotkey" in the game to re-activate the broken macro.

<EDIT>: Also some people will tell you to "Control-click your scales and drag them to a hotkey." Use caution when doing this, as it does NOT equip, but "toggle" the items. This will get you in trouble if you have the scales already on, or a mix of scales, and you click the button, you could end up with only 1/2 your scale set being worn. A good example is if you have a set of Velocity scales and you put them on... then hit your crafting scale button... all of your crafting scales will come off, and the velocity scales will get replaced with crafting scales, leaving you with only 2 scales being worn. Equip item is the better way to go.

Here is the following method for easy crafting:
Put all of your "tools / Dragon abilities" for crafting on 1 toolbar (or more depending on extra schools / dragon abilities you frequently use) remember the hotkey bank number.

Find a blank hotkey bar and edit the first one (let's do metal bars)
(depending on what level you are able to do, Beginner / Journeyman / expert / master metal bars is the formula you will be using. (your best one)

Edit the hotkey (right click, select edit hotkey)

Execute Hotkey (bank, tool) "bank = hotkey bar with tools" "tool=the button number with your tool" and press the "+" key on the panel (in this case Smelting ability or Smelting tongs)

Open Formula: (Open the item creation panel, find resources, uncheckmark the "show products" on the lower right, and find your best formula for Metal Bars (as described earlier) and drag that formula to the hotkey editor and drop it.

Wait 10 seconds (press the + button on the panel) 'you can increase or decrease this amount depending on how fast you mouseclick'

Execute Hotkey (Bank, tool) "the tool being Mining ability or Mining pick" and press the "+" key on the panel

(Optional)
Text Command (type into the text command) /closelastwindow and press the "+" key on the panel

choose a fancy picture for your hotkey, and press "SAVE"

What this does is the following:

Selects "smelting tongs or ability" to make bars
Displays a list of the bars you can create for you to select from
Gives you 10 seconds to select the bar, click the "create maximum" and the <create> button
re-equips your ability to mine more ore
(Optional) closes your crafting window. (if you click on another window impatiently, that window will be the one that closes.)

You can do this with any crafted item or resource and it only takes up 1 hotkey for all your resources.

Your macro should look like this:

Execute Hotkey (bank, button)
Open formula: <Crafting formula>
wait 10 seconds
Execute Hotkey (bank, button)
textcommand: /closelastwindow

The reason you use a bank to hold your tools instead of using the hotkey editor "Use Ability" or "Equip Item" is the fact that when you level, it is MUCH easier to replace the tool or ability in the hotkey, than to go edit every one of your macros every time you level to the next tier of crafting.