The FAQ

Sorry, but there is nothing like this available at the present time. Given that this site makes barely enough money from ads anymore to keep it alive, the possibility of something like this (which would essentially suck up a ton of bandwidth without making any ad revenues) is highly unlikely in the near future. I am working on a PDF of the entire site that I hope to have out soon.

Could you please fix the formatting of page <insert page name> so that it doesn't print on more than one page?

There are a few general points to web printing that could help most people out here. The first is that most browsers make awful printing tools. I'm looking into some scripting methods that will make a more printable version from these pages, but currently haven't worked this through yet. Most browsers will try and fit everything on one page. Barring that, they kind of give up and just spread them out over however many pages there are. This is the reason that some maps (Karnor's comes to mind) will sometimes print on 3 pages, with a title on one page, map on the second, and text on the third. There is nothing I can do to fix this, short of making all of the maps themselves much smaller. I may go through and change the font sizes at some point, but that's a major undertaking at this point, so it's low on the list of things for me to do. You can also change the font size in the browser on your own before you print, and (depending on the browser) this might make it smaller too.

The best single method for doing this (which I mention below) is to select the area you want to print with your mouse (usually the area below the ad, not including the bottom text) and when you go to Print be sure to choose Selection, and it will print just what you have selected.

Why do I get garbage characters for the images when I print?

In March 2002 we installed mod_gzip on our server. What this does is it compresses on-the-fly all content that we send to people, which is decompressed when they receive it, speeding up download time significantly for slower connections, and decreasing our bandwidth usage significantly (around 30% is industry average). Most browsers released in the past 3 years support this type of compression.

This doesn't come without some problems, however. Some older browsers (specifically Netscape 4.0x) do not support this. If you're using these browsers, it's about time you upgraded anyway don't you think? :-) The other problems are a bit more technical. Browsers need to accept HTTP 1.1 in order to do this. In Internet Explorer 5.5, Microsoft "wisely" disabled HTTP 1.1 when you request a page through a proxy server. That means that if you are doing this with those versions of IE and through a proxy, you might be seeing garbage. This is usually fixed by going to Internet Options under the Advanced tab and checking 'Use HTTP 1.1 through proxy connections.'

Other fixes are not so easy. The first step you should do is to upgrade your browser if it's out of date. If your browser doesn't accept HTTP 1.1 then it *should* download an uncompressed image to you, which you can then view normally. Try finding in your settings on your browser what HTTP it is accepting and change the setting (if it's 1.1 swap it to 1.0, or vice versa) and redoing the page. The hardest to solve problem occurs if you are getting your pages through a proxy server that is screwing up. Most proxy servers should just pass information through them, but some are not configured correctly and will screw up the headers on all the files, resulting in it receiving gzip'ed content from

What about faction x? What about quest x?

I don't include information about either factions or quests on this page, as it changes too often, and is extremely complex (I wouldn't know it even if I tried). Check out Allakhazam's, as he has information about these things on his site.

Has this site gone to "pay-for" status?

No. There is no section of EQ Atlas that requires you to pay anything.

Allakhazam's site has placed some of the more intensive searches in a Premium Service which you can read about on that site. One of the searches that I link to from my site (the Equipment by Zone search) is part of the Premium Service and you will not be able to access it if you have not signed up for the Premium Service with Allakhazam. Being part of the Premium Service will also allow you to view EQ Atlas without ads.

How do I log in and out of Allakhazam's Premium Service?

You can login to the Premium Service by using this address: http://www.eqatlas.com/cgi-bin/login.cgi. Logout after signing up by clicking on that link and then selecting the Log Out option.

Why do I have to print the ads? They take up a lot of ink.

The ads are part of the page, which is why they are printed when you print the page. Again, I am looking into some methods to print the page without this, but haven't fully figured it out yet. The reasons the ads are on the page are because, unless you live under a big rock, the internet bubble has faded and advertising is paying an all-time low, requiring us to use as many ads as possible in order to keep the site alive.

There is one way to do it though that works on some browsers, which is that you can select the area below the ad, and then choose Print... and then choose to print only the Selection, which will print without the ads.

Your map for page <insert page here> doesn't seem to come up, but all the other maps do. or
Your map for page <insert page here> doesn't print even though I can see it on the screen. or
Your page for <insert page here> doesn't print in Netscape.

Again, this is a fun thing about how web browsers work and print, with Netscape being the worst culprit (or the one that deals with it the worst). Basically, when you print a web page, the page is requested again from my site, instead of simply using the page that you're looking at. Sometimes if there is some web hangup during the time you try to print, the browser won't be able to redownload the image or ad or something else on the page and, especially in Netscape, this can cause either that part of the page or the whole page not to print.

A second culprit here is that many people have many different forms of web caching that places, mostly businesses, use to cut down on their web usage. If you are accessing a page from work (bad worker!) you can sometimes have it happen where a map, for instance, consistently doesn't load even though every other map will. This persists even if you hit the Reload button. This is most often because the cache, whether it's on a proxy server at your job or on your own machine (don't ask me why browsers will occasionally not reload stuff even if you hit reload, Netscape calls it a bug, Microsoft calls it a "feature"), is still serving your browser the corrupted image file. You can try clearing the cache on your machine and if that doesn't work, well, you're pretty much hosed until the proxy server updates. There is one way to force the cache to reload as well, which on IE is to hold the Ctrl key while hitting the Refresh button, and on Netscape is holding the Alt key while hitting the Reload button.

Netscape also has an additional problem, where it gives the error "There are no pages to print." This is a corruption of the cache file that it uses to print, and for some reason reloading the page doesn't correct this. The only way to do so is to go under the Edit menu to the bottom to Preferences... Under the Advanced tab is a Cache selection. Choose to Clear the Memory Cache and Clear the Disk Cache (Memory alone doesn't work). The other way to make this work is, under the same area (Advanced/Cache) set the cache to compare "Every time I view the page." This may make your browser slower overall, however, if you browse many of the same pages all day long.

Why no maps of the Planes?

The Planes are unique for a couple of reasons. One is that many people will never see them. The second is that most trips into each plane follow a strict set of movements within the plane to get to where you need to be. While a map of them might help out some people, I think that maps of the other places are far more useful and important. If I ever map out the planes, it will be the last thing I do.

Do you need help mapping?

Thanks for the offer, but I only need a limited amount of help with maps. The actual mapping isn't really a problem for me, but finding out where specific monsters are and what they drop, and what rarities, is. If you have that information, as well as any indepth information on the zone (tricks/tips for hunting there, things to avoid, etc.) send that in. These are things that are learned by spending a great deal of time in a zone and, unfortunately, I can't do that with every zone.

Could you put the legend information directly on the image?

I *could*, but I won't. The reason is that I have a lot of updating to do all the time, and if I were to place the information on the image, it means I would have to update the image every time there was a change. This is very time consuming, and would probably close to triple how long it takes me to make an update. The other reason is that then the images would become very easy for someone to illegally distribute, although that's really not the main reason, just another nail in the coffin.

Why do you have the popup ads? Also, does clicking on your ads help?

The popup ads are in place for one reason only, to make money for the site. Why is that important? Web hosting and spending dozens of hours weekly maintaining this site is a very costly venture. If I wasn't making money doing this I would have to spend my time doing other work that paid money and, frankly, if that ever happens that's what I'll be doing. It's not that I don't enjoy keeping up the site, but it has become a regular job. The ads do pay more money if you click on them, and some ads only pay money if you do click on them, so please, click away!

What server do you play on?

Primarily Bristlebane, although I have a bunch of other characters on other servers.

How do you map out an area?

I run around and get the general "bounding" coordinates. These are the most positive and negative x and y coordinates in the zone, which I use to lay out what coordinate system I need. I then go around and start mapping, hitting /loc for every corner and nook and drawing it on the map. This is all done in pencil. When I finish that, I ink over top of the pencil, erase the graphite away, and then color everything in with colored pencils. I then scan in this raw image, resize it for the page (width of 550 pixels in case you were wondering) and then start plopping in the coordinate system and locations. Once that's done, I throw it up on the page! All of this can take anywhere from about four hours for a simple zone (like Qeynos Hills) to 30+ hours for a more complex or dangerous zone (e.g. Swamp of No Hope, Nagafen's Eye).

Can I put a link up to your site from my page?

Links to my site are fine and actually encouraged. Using materials from my page is not.

Why do you hate Rungupp so much?

Ages ago, like a few months after EQ was released, I tried to kill Rungupp (who was blue to my ranger) several times. Every time he creamed me and took barely any damage. I then grouped with two other people, both higher level than myself, and the three of us tried to take him out. We failed, and had to zone to Erudin. Reason? It was my first experience with a spellcasting NPC with all the buffs that Verant has given them (able to cast while running, no mana limit, etc) and he also popped around a lot. Hunting him with a pet is much, much easier, because the pet can stay on him when he pops around (they're in their own world) so he's easy to beat that way.