How hard is it to box melee crew (6x) exp'ing and such...

Just wondering how hard it would be to exp'ing melee crew considering the melee range being fussy.

Seems like it is hard, just to pull a single mob to a single melee range.
Kind of wondering what kind of mess I could get into with 6 box with 3 BER, 1 Bard, 1SK and 1 SHM.

Are there some tricks to them?

It's a pain the behind, just to play one melee, I can't imagine try to satisfy several melee toons in a group. I figure I will over or under pull the spot where I need to be.
And I can see myself going crazy try to adjust the darn mob to a spot where I need to be.

EQ1 was not designed as a boxing game, the interface and control-scheme is designed for a single character. Boxing is supposed to be hard.

If there is a trick that makes it easy, it is probably not allowed...

That said, even hard challenges gets easier with practice..

I've boxed 6, and it is easy until it isn't due to the situation that has developed.
It's hard unless you have a very high ability to split your attention & a reasonably high degree of manual dexterity.
There are ways to make your boxing easier legally;
If you Multibox on several PC's - with a multiscreen setup that puts all of your machines screen in front of you, along with multiple number pads.
If you Multibox on one PC - using 3rd party software that splits your screen display to allow you to mouse over each screen.

And then there are the options that can get you a ban, I'd avise steering clear of those for sure, aside from the potential of earning a ban they will not help you be a better boxer, they are a lazy fix for those who cannot be bothered to do it the hard way & learn to box properly.

I'd advise boxing just 2 to begin with using Mercs until you get comfortable prior to adding boxes one at a time & getting comfortable, boxing is definitely something you can learn to do but everyone will have a level at which they can do so comfortably &/or start to get stressed out from the demands of it, and playing very stressed for very long periods is not healthy, give yourself time to adapt.

There are in game macros, pauses and very low actions per minute. The trick is, play smarter, and that is allowed.

The trick is in how you position and use follow. For example, I am using a SK, BRD and RNG. The bard has instant cast invis. The BRD follows the SK, the RNG follows the BRD. The SK runs past the mob, turns around and attacks. The BRD that was behind the SK is now behind the mob and attacks. The RNG that was following the BRD, not the SK, is in Bow range. If the RNG is too close, 4 box, doing a little train of SHD followed by BRD following by SHM followed by RNG. Now RNG is far enough to use the bow and SHM is not in any ramp range.

If in a static camp, put all the melee in 1 spot. Get aggro with SK and pull over your melee. Stop so the mob has it's back the the melee. Turn on melee with your 5 action hotkey. Cycle through your 5 melee toons each activating 1 hotkey with appropriate pauses each pass.

Don't position your melee every mob. Use the SK to put the mob where you want it so the melee don't need to move. Then they work more like casters fighting a mob that is a belly caster.

SHD has great AE hate. If you have multples, AE them, then take a step back, they will pile up in front of your melee.

Casters are easier, but Melee works fine.

I box: War / Mnk / Zerk / Bard / Cler / Sham

It isn't difficult, and there are definitely tricks such as a multibind with a button that uses:

1. /xtar 1
2. /attack on

With that said, I use 4 computers:

1. War / Brd
2. Monk / Zerk
3. Cleric
4. Shaman

I could potentially get away with playing on 3 computers if I did the following:

1. War / Monk / Zerk
2. Cleric / Bard
3. Shaman

In this setup, I would not be playing the bard at all, it would just sing to the group.

I cannot imagine playing a 6 box melee team on anything less than 3 computers.

The current Box-Father is Tucoh. He writes up great posts about his experience 6 boxing. I mostly stick to two boxing a mage and enchanter, but he has great strategies for boxed characters.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/tucos-setup-critique-welcome.240258/

Thanks for coining my new favorite word... "Box-Father"!

Haha, yes Box Father. I've given him props a couple of times.

Boxing 6 is harder than it is fun. Doable, ya of course, if you know the game. Fun? ehhhhhh. For me, boxing more than 1 melee isn't fun at all. I think (quickly skimmed) someone was talking about positioning, and yes, that's not too hard, but I want a lazy box. Otherwise, I won't last long. If I'm constantly switching back and forth. Years ago, I had 3 comps, 3 keyboards and 3 screens. Also once had a KVM switch. This is all almost 20 years ago. I did just fine (mercs weren't invented yet) but it became not fun the harder and farther I got.

Then, even if you are having fun, for me, the way my brain works, I'd hate the fact that I'm really crappy compared to a real group. Like I have toons not even doing stuff, or toons that by the time they even get to attack (if killing fast) the mob is like 40% or lower. But of course, there is different ways, to doing these things.


For me, and it's what I'm doing now for a 3rd or 4th time, the sweet spot is 3 box with 3 mercs. Those mercs are on-point. They are better than you boxing (assuming no 3rd party software of any kind, allowed or not allowed).

So I generally play a melee main. Either a tank, or dps. Ranger is great because he's a little of both, but tanking won't last too long. But he comes built in with snare which is nice. Don't want to have 3-6 boxes die in Seb from a frog with sow on it.

Anyway, ya I play a melee usually, then 2 "buff bots" that sometimes I do more with, like slow, heal, tash, stun, snare, dot.. (rarely nuke) but still provide a lot. Great buffbots include Shaman (Haste/Slow/Buffs/Healing) and Enchanter (Haste/Slow/Tash), Cleric (buffs, but lower utility unless you plan to heal and no cleric merc) or Druid (Snare/Ports/Heals/Dmg Shield), and a Mage bot can be good with just sending a pet in, the main thing is he brings CotH which can be useful. Now also a bard makes a great bot. And this is a "4th Bard to level 60 on Quellious" guy talking, so it pains me to say this, but now with "Melody" a bard bot makes sense. I'm sure you know, but melody has a bard playing 4 songs at once, and like 7 or 8 or more at higher levels.

Tucoh, as stated is the Box-Father, as you read the replies, place extra attention on his comments as he speaks from experience, but of course many do it. My current box set up with Druid Main and Enc/Bard buff bots, and a tank merc, and 2 rogue mercs is doing amazing. Handling big pulls with no CC. We'll see how far I can take it, but for now, it's destroying content up to level 70. It's really going to be all about how long that Tank Merc lasts, because Druid healing mana isn't an issue when you have Enc and Bard mana.

Anyway, this is what I'm doing here the past week, so I could talk all day on it. I made a thread on Newbie zone, talking about it a little. There was a thread or consensus recently that Veteran's Lounge is about live content, like latest expansion, level 100+ etc, so I have stayed quiet in this area.

Edit: Oh, and while there is many hotkeys and macros that with /doability and such can really make your life great. I'm such a lazy boxer, that the only "macro" I'm using is /target (my group leader) /pause 5 /follow

For quick auto-follow.

I try it everyone once in awhile to get the weapon procs in my caster group (pal, cler, ench, wiz, wiz, wiz) but have never been good enough that I don't lose dps while I try to pay attention to positioning and not casting on crawl/moving scenarios. If I'm in a grind camp and pulling to the same spot, what Vumad said works the best for me. Arrange the melee to be in range on a certain spot and position the mob on that spot with the puller/tank. I also have melee out-of-range messages in a tab that is easy to see on each character and will tweak/move the mob with the tank until I stop seeing those messages on the other screens.

I've thought about doing a melee group with the level 100 heroics but don't think I have the patience to work it out for the crawl/move scenarios. A /StickToMob command would be nice! Good luck and let us know how it works out.

takes time and patience for setting up, each toon should have hot keys set up similar and near same screen positions.

goal is to alt tab and hit 1 key each time
on that 1 key should be a carefully tested out macro key with perfectly timed cast/pauses on each line of macro key

game play should be,

Main tank agro macro key
alt tab 1
alt tab 1
alt tab 1
alt tab 1
back to main through alt tabbing
if all your toons are timed right you should be ready to repeat or move on to new macro 2 keys

this will take many hours of testing and perfecting your crew set up

as for moving, set your melee toons in a spot where you can bring a mob to them in the same place each time. and lightly move them during your alt tabbing

I have almost the same group make up. War/zerk/zerk/bard/shm/healer merc

I pull with bard unless I'm doing a camp that I've broken the spawns well enough then the war pulls. The was has grappling strike which helps with positioning. Then I slow/dot/melee with sham, bard auto attack/melody, zerk do their dps thing it's super simple. The positioning is the key for me so it doesn't take a lot of time.

This is a great group for me and once you get the hang of it it's super easy and I don't use software.

I recently started multiboxing and by far I'm worst with the berserker. Kudos to those who pull it off but I can't imagine dealing with three at once.

I 3-box about 90% of my playing time. And I play my zerker often, especially in dps-intensive grinding camps. It's very easy to box a zerker - I have made a macro for the start of the fight once the puller got the mob in the camp and it works great for me: /xtar 1 (where 1 is assigned to group MT's target), then Rabbit Punch -line of attack (it requires to be out of combat to activate), then I BattleLeap to the mob (helps with positioning of the zerker) then "/autoattack on" and the last line the favorite action (sometimes I use "/doability forage" for the heck of it). In about 3-4 seconds the zerker is swinging and aiming the mob from the correct distance. Then I hit the "mash" button and go back to zerker's screen every 12-15 seconds to hit it again (I do not use automation of any kind).
Similarly, my mage has start of the fight macro (with swarm pet and main pet attack) and then "mash" button to press every 15 seconds when swarm pet refreshes.
Same applies to my bards: start hotbutton targets, autoattacks and pushes a couple of AA's, then "mash" button pushed every 12-15 seconds.

I play on ultra-wide 34" monitor with 3 windowed EQ instances: on the right side I have my main character's screen in 1600x1200 resolution, and on the left side of the monitor I have 2 cascaded windows for my 2 boxes at the same 1600x1200 resolution. I just move the mouse to a proper window to activate it and then click the hotbuttons. All my characters have "attack" button assigned to key "1" and my "mash" button assigned to key "2", so I do not get confused what to push for any of my toons. And I use the same "G" button for all my toons' "burn" multi-bind.
So to start the fight I pull the mob with my MT and hit "1". Then switch to 2 other toons with the mouse: Click - hit "1" then "2", click - hit "1" then "2". Back to main screen. Repeat every 15 seconds. Not really intensive boxing.
In my estimation, if macro scripts were, say, 7 lines long, I would use my boxes at 98+% efficiency. With current 5 lines limit I typically get them to 90+% (comparing to what they do if I play those single instance).
Please note, that not all classes are easily boxed. I can attest that mages, bards, zerkers, rogues, rangers, 2H-dps plated tanks can be effectively boxed like I do, but bestlords, shamans, tanking knights require more attention. Can't say much about other classes as boxes (my druids, chanters, wizards, clerics, monks - are not any good at all).

Have your melee toons auto follow the tank. When a mob comes into camp have the tank engage the mob and have the tank turn and strafe behind the mob. Now all the melee are in melee range to attack. I did this with 54 toons.bit works just fine as longbas you computer isnt lagging.

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You going to be active in the next expansion? Bristlebane isn't the same without turning a corner and running into a huge Krushor zerg.

I true box 4. 3 melee and a shaman mostly. What I do is place a campfire so I have a target to pull to and then dont have to always worry about moving all the melee everytime. This works well for a camp. When I'm moving through a zone doing progression I try to step carefully so I'm tanking the mob and the other 3 are behind. Doesnt always work but as an SK I can push mob also, monk can pull mob closer to her, and bard can lure.

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