Dungeon Helper 5 release notes

Awesome AutoFollow release notes

Awesome AutoFollow 4.0 is a ground-up rewrite of the 3.x plugin that shipped for Dungeon Helper 4. This page lists what is different. For how to use each feature, see the Awesome AutoFollow guide.

In game the plugin is now called Auto Follow on the Dungeon Helper toolbar (it was Awesome AF), and the settings window title shows the exact build number.

Following

• The leader sets the follow distance. In 3.x each follower picked Casual (10m), Melee (5m) or Close (1m) for itself. In 4.0 the leader sets one Follow Distance for all of its followers, from 1.0 to 5.0, and can change it while moving. See Leading.
• Near, Mid and Far presets. Three presets (1.0, 3.0 and 5.0 by default, each editable) have their own hotkeys, so you can pull followers in tight or spread them out without opening the window.
• Left-behind detection is new. A follower that cannot see its leader, is in a different area, is more than 50 units away, or is pushing against terrain without getting anywhere for five seconds flags itself as left behind. The leader sees and hears it. See Following.
• The toolbar icon shows follow state. In 3.x the icon never changed. Now it is blue when not following, green when moving, yellow when waiting beside the leader or paused, and red when the leader is out of range.
• Turret mode is replaced. There is no turret mode or turret hotkey. Instead, a paused follower that has the same target selected as the leader turns to face it. Pause your followers and they hold position and keep facing what you are fighting.
• Explorer journals close on the setting alone. With Auto-Close Explorer Journals on, a character closes the journal whether it is following, paused or stopped. In 3.x it only did so while following.

Rings in the game world

Dungeon Helper 5 lets plugins draw shapes in the game world, so Awesome AutoFollow now marks characters with rings on the ground. None of this existed in 3.x.

• A follower draws a blue ring under the character it follows (Show Ring Under Leader, on by default).
• A leader draws a ring under each follower (Show Rings Under Followers, on by default): green while following, yellow while paused, red once the follower reports being stuck or left behind.
• Each has a Ring Style choice: Flat lies on the ground, Skirt is a low wall around the character.
• Walls hide the rings like any other object in the world, with a faint outline showing through so you can still find a follower around a corner.

Follower bars on the leader’s screen

See Hireling bars.

• Every follower gets a bar. In 3.x a follower had to turn on Show Hotbar on Leader. Now any client following you on the same PC gets a bar automatically. Until you choose a hotbar for it, the bar is a compact one with the name, health, spell points and the pause, auto-attack and stop buttons.
• The leader chooses what each bar shows. Hotbar to Share and Act As Hireling # used to be set on the follower. They are now set on the leader, from the gear button on each bar: pick Off or any of the follower’s hotbars 1 to 10, and which hireling slot (1 to 5) it stands in for.
• A stop button on each bar. The X stops that one follower. 3.x bars could only pause.
• Cooldown timers. A slot that is recharging shows a dark sweep and the seconds remaining.
• Clicky charges and an equipped marker. Charged items show uses remaining, including zero. Equipped items and weapon sets are marked. Stack counts, feat uses, active toggles, slot names on hover and your hireling key on each slot are still shown.
• Auto-attack no longer needs a hotbar slot. Dungeon Helper 5 lets plugins switch auto-attack on and off directly, so the bar’s auto-attack button works even when the follower has no auto-attack icon on its hotbars. 3.x needed one.
• Bars clean up after themselves. A bar disappears when its follower stops, and within about ten seconds when that client is closed.
• New display settings on the Leading tab: Show Follower Hotbars hides all bars without affecting following, Show Name and Vitals on hotbars trims the name and health strip off for a smaller bar, and Follower Left Behind Sounds turns the beep on or off. All three are on by default.

Triggers

The trigger editor is new. In 3.x the only way to drive a follower from the keyboard was DDO’s hireling keys, against the single hotbar the follower shared. See Driving followers from your own keys.

• Hireling keys still work, and need no per-slot setup: give a follower’s bar a hireling number and your DDO hireling keybinds fire its slots.
• You can now also bind any of your own hotbar slots, any DDO action you have a key bound to, or a custom key combination to any slot on any of the follower’s hotbars 1 to 10, not only the one shown on its bar.
• One slot can have several triggers, and one input can fire slots on several followers.
• Triggers are saved per leader character and fire only while that character is leading.
• Dungeon Helper 5 lets plugins fire a hotbar slot directly, so a triggered slot is used at the follower’s own current target, as if the follower had pressed it.

A press that reaches a follower while it is in the middle of another action can be lost. 3.x behaved the same way.

Mimicking the leader

• NPC dialog options 11 and 12. 3.x followers answered a dialog by pressing their own choice keys, which could only reach the first ten options. Dungeon Helper 5 lets plugins pick a dialog option directly, so followers now copy any of the twelve options, and no longer depend on the follower’s own key bindings or mouse position.
• Use What I’m Using. A new hotkey makes followers use the object the leader has selected, whatever the followers themselves have selected. Dungeon Helper 5 lets plugins use an object without selecting it first, which is what makes this possible. It obeys Mimic Object Usage and Allow Trap Disabling like Ctrl+Use does.
• Dimension Doors. New in 4.0. Use Dimension Door on Leader Command (on by default) makes followers step through a nearby Dimension Door when the leader presses the Use Dimension Door hotkey. Auto-Use Dimension Doors (off by default) makes a follower take any door that appears while it is following. Neither changes what the follower has selected.
• Eveningstar Keys are mirrored. 3.x mirrored the Commemorative D12 and expansion teleport items. 4.0 adds the Eveningstar Key. Each follower uses its own copy.
• Teleport items and mounts can be on any hotbar. A follower’s D12 had to be on hotbars 1 to 10 in 3.x. The D12, the Eveningstar Key and the follower’s mount are now found on any of its 20 hotbars.
• Jumping is mirrored between clients on the same PC directly, as well as by the follower seeing the leader jump, which is still how it works across two PCs.
• Ctrl is needed for collectables. In 3.x a follower with Mimic Object Usage on would also use a collectable or similar simple object when it saw the leader use one, without Ctrl. In 4.0 followers use objects only when you hold Ctrl or press Use What I’m Using.

Loot

Dungeon Helper 5 lets plugins reassign chest loot directly. In 3.x followers passed loot by clicking through their own chest window, one row at a time.

• No row limit. Pass One Item used to work only when the item was among the first few rows of the follower’s chest window. It now works for any item reserved for that follower.
• Passing Style is gone. The Reliable and Fast choice was only needed for the old clicking method. Every pass now waits for the game to confirm it, for up to a second, and retries an item up to three times.
• Items that cannot be passed are handled. With Auto-Pass Loot to Leader on, the follower takes its own guild renown and its own unpassable ingredients, so they do not sit in the chest. With it off, it leaves them alone.
• Items the game does not let you reassign are never passed. Loot the game reserves for each player individually stays with its owner, by the automatic pass and by both pass hotkeys.
• A pass stops when the chest closes. Closing the chest or opening a different one ends the pass at once.
• Pass Selected Item is no longer experimental. It is now Pass One Item, and like Pass All Items it works whether or not the follower has Auto-Pass Loot to Leader on. That setting only controls the automatic pass when a chest opens.

Hotkeys

There are twelve hotkeys instead of seven. They are still shared by all your characters and all start unbound. See Hotkeys.

The [Un]Turret Mode Followers hotkey is removed.

Settings window

• The window is rebuilt with four tabs: Following, Leading, Hotkeys and Logs. Options are on/off switches and save as soon as you change them.
• Leading is new. It holds All Follow Me, NOW!, All Stop Following, the follow distance and presets, and the display and sound options.
• Logs is new. It shows what Awesome AutoFollow is doing as it happens, with Clear, Auto-scroll and a Save Logs button that writes the log to a file in the plugin’s folder and shows you the path to copy.
• Follower settings and leader settings are saved per character. Hotkeys are saved once for all characters.
• All Follow Me, NOW! starts every Awesome AutoFollow client on the PC. 3.x skipped clients that could not see the leader.
• The status line from the 3.x panel is gone. Use the toolbar icon, the rings and the Logs tab.

Coming from Dungeon Helper 4

Settings do not carry over. 3.x kept everything in one settings file. 4.0 does not read it. Set up each character’s follower options again, rebind your hotkeys, and drag your follower bars back into place.

Run the same version on every client. Leaders and followers only work together when they’re on the same Awesome AutoFollow version, so update all your clients together.

Removed, or not back yet:

• Turret mode and its hotkey. Pause your followers instead: they face the target they share with you.
• Default Targeting. The per-character list of preferred leaders is gone, and the leader is no longer picked for you when it comes into range. Choose it under Player to Follow, select it and press the Follow hotkey, or use All Follow Me, NOW! on the leader.
• I’m using a Gamepad.
• Passing Style (Reliable or Fast).
• Show Hotbar on Leader, Hotbar to Share and Act As Hireling # on the follower. The leader sets these from the gear button on each bar.
• Follow Distance on the follower, and the 10m Casual distance. The leader sets the distance, up to 5.0.

Renamed:

Defaults. The options that existed in 3.x keep the same defaults. New options start as follows: rings under the leader and under followers on, follower bars on, name and vitals on, left-behind sounds on, Use Dimension Door on Leader Command on, Auto-Use Dimension Doors off. A follower’s bar shows no hotbar until the leader picks one.

Behaviour that may surprise you:

• Party invites are accepted from anyone. With Auto-Accept Party Invites on, 3.x accepted only from the character being followed or one on the Default Targeting list. 4.0 accepts any party invite, following or not. Turn the setting off on characters where you do not want that.
• Airship invites are accepted from anyone while following.
• Quest shares are accepted only while following. 3.x accepted them at any time.
• The Follow hotkey does not stop following. See the hotkey table above.
• Followers do not pick up collectables on their own. Hold Ctrl when you use one.
• Followers with auto-pass on take their own guild renown and unpassable ingredients from the chest.
• Bars appear without the follower opting in, and a stopped follower’s bar disappears.
• Two PCs: a follower on another computer can still follow, jump with the leader and accept invites, but it stops at the closest follow distance whatever the leader has set, and gets no bar or ring on the leader’s screen. See Good to know.

Awesome AutoFollow guide and download · ← Dungeon Helper 5 release notes