DDO character action bars information

[yavool]

Hail *NOR/!

One of the amazing things about DDO is that each character has a TON of skills, spells, and actions that it can take. Each class has its own unique skill sets, most that are fairly simple to grasp, but challenging to master. The drawback of this veritable cornucopia of skills, spells, and abilities is that it can get a bit burdensome to have them all up and available on the user interface.

I wanted to make sure that everyone in DDO knows how to customize their action bars and user interface:

1) /ui layout save <name> and /ui layout load <name>
DDO has a function that allows us to save any action bar layout. To make a layout, "ctrl + plus sign" locks and unlocks the action bars, when unlocked, the arrow on the left side of the bar adds or removes bars (you can add up to 20), and the turn symbol rotates the bar 90 degrees. It is important to have bar number 1 as your main bar; to do so, once all of your bars are in position, hit ctrl + 1 to have bar 1 highlighted as your main quick key bar.

The command, as stated above, is "/ui layout save <name of layout>. I usually use the name of the character that I originally made it on; so for me, it would look like "/ui layout save Yavool" (note: the capitalization is important). These layouts are saved to your Dungeons and Dragons Online folder, which can be located at: This PC/Documents/Dungeons and Dragons Online/ui/Layouts.

To load a layout on another character, the most important thing to first do is to open up all of your 20 layout bars. This helps to ensure that the bars are available to move around once the layout is loaded. Once the bars are out, type "/ui layout load <name of layout>" and hit enter. This will rearrange all of your used bars in the same order as the saved layout. Once done, minimize any unused bars, hit ctrl + 1 to highlight bar 1, and ctrl + plus sign to lock the bars. Voila!

2) Using F keys as shortcut keys
By default, F keys are used in DDO to select teammates. While this is helpful (especially in raids), the F keys are much more useful when re-bound to make a second bar of shortcuts. To change the F keys to shortcut keys, go to the "&" symbol in the bottom left of the UI, then Main Menu/Options/Key Mapping/ and about halfway down, use the F keys for "Shortcut Bar 2, Slot 1 - 10." On the bar itself, it will show in the top right corner of each bar slot any unique key that it is bound to rather than its standard 1-10 slot number (see the attached picture for an example, bar 2).

I hope that this gives everyone some insight on how to use the bars more effectively!

-yavool