Using Your Keyboard

The most difficult part of playing the Monk class is in organizing your toolbars to allow you to implement your finishing moves during play.

The Monk isn't the usual fighter with a weapon that deals the bulk of the damage as the player occasionally activates a stance here or uses a Cleave there. If you are serious in playing your Monk, you must design a way to chain up finishing moves from your input device in a way that makes sense to you, and then attack without breaking the finisher chain.

There are many ways to do this, so the Book cannot focus on every option. To help you get started, we'll note a few tips, from simple to advanced.

Place attacks on toolbars. Memorize finishers by number.

Experienced players realize that moving the mouse around during battle can be inefficient or even dangerous. Without good organization of your toolbars, you'll often flail your mouse about in confusion during a fight as you try to find the attack or stance or item you need.

One toolbar is all that's needed to hold one set of elemental finishers.

On Toolbar 1 in this example, pressing 5-6-5-7 on your ordinary keyboard generates the Aligning the Heavens finisher for a Light Monk (Water attack->Fists of Light attack->Water attack).

A second toolbar can hold Monk stances and special abilities such as Meditation. These can be clicked, or you can add keyboard modifiers for faster switching or use, avoiding the use of the mouse (see next section).

A third toolbar can hold general stances, standard character abilities such as Sneak, Sunder, Auto-Attack, Trip and the like.

Other toolbars can have clickable ways to don weapons and gear. I recommend that you orient these toolbars vertically.

Use the game's keymapping abilities extensively.

In Options, you can use the versatile game keymapping to assign key combinations using Control, Alt, the Windows key and others to use special attacks or abilities.

Teacher Sabastianosmith illustrates and describes his way to use keymapped toolbars extensively. While his mapping comes from much experience with Monks, this should illustrate a use of modifier keys for faster, efficient gameplay that you can adapt for your needs.

Use a better keyboard (or mouse).

Most of us won't just run off to an electronics store to pick up the advanced keyboards designed specifically for the avid gamer. But if you have the cash, the extra keys and their layout can allow you to assign common moves to keys for consistency.

Logitech makes several keyboards that could help here.

A mouse with multiple buttons keeps you from moving the mouse about when fighting. Once you lock on a target in auto-attack mode, all you'll need to do is apply the finisher combinations. A multi-button mouse could have the finisher completion button, special attacks, or map to a modifier key that switches focus from one toolbar to another seamlessly allowing a diversity of attack modes.

If you have a numeric keypad, consider how you might leverage its smaller footprint. Can you toggle it between arrow keys and numbers?

Don't use a keyboard.

• G1, G2, G8, G10 (Upper left): Mapped to Ctrl-Shift-7 through Ctrl-Shift-10. Used mostly for Epic or occasional abilities. I reserve Toolbar 10 for this.
• G4, G10, G11, G12 (center top): WASD movement keys (default).
• G3: Key 8, Toolbar 1. Normally mapped to Stunning Fist for Shintaos. For melee ninjas, it can be Quivering Palm if Stunning Fist isn't trained.
• G5: Key 9, Toolbar 2: The special attack key. Elemental ki strikes such as the bluffing Unbalancing Strike go here. For my Epic Zen Archer, the Shiradi Champion's Pin goes here.
• G6, G7, G13, G14: Form ki strikes Earth, Wind, Fire and Water in that order, from Toolbar 1. Quick way to generate any finisher without reserving macros.
• G15, G16, G18, G19 (Fourth row): Mapped to Ctrl-Shift-1 through Ctrl-Shift-4, toolbar 4. My common special attack or defense keys. Ctrl-Shift-1 often is mapped for Abundant Step, while Ctrl-Shift-2 gets Flash Bang for ninjas or one of the Jade strikes for Shintao. Ctrl-Shift-3 might have a cleave attack or Improved Sunder for Shintaos or Manyshot for the Zen Archer, or Ten Thousand Stars. Lots of flexibility here.
• G17: Sneak, on Slot 1, Toolbar 1. I want to use it often and always on ninjas and most other Monks.
• G20: Push to Talk. (Default: F)
• G21: Slot 10, Toolbar 1. Reserved for healing. In Heroic, it's often for potions. By Epics, once some Primal Avatar training is done, Rejuvenation Cocoon for most characters.
• G22: Jump (Default: Space bar)
• Small Joystick/Left and Right: Target. Normally for my ranged characters to allow quick and selective targeting. I don't normally run with auto-Attack so I can size up my opponents first from a distance.
• Small Joystick/Down: Block. I will Tumble if I press a movement key.
• Special Key 1 (Left of small joystick): Originally Slot 6, Toolbar 1. My "philosophy" ki strike, Fists of Light or Fists of Darkness. I wore out that key now, so I've moved its function to a Logitech gaming mouse.
• Special Key 2 (Below small joystick): Originally Slot 7, Toolbar 1. Activates a finishing move. As with Special Key 1, I've moved its function to a Logitech gaming mouse. For non-Monks, like my Rogue Assassin, key 6 gets Execute and 7 is Assassinate.