ACT Setup Guide

This article will guide you through setting up ACT and making sure the exceptions it needs are created properly so it can run without any issues!

Getting Started

Start by downloading ACT Here. You want the setup file at the top. Once downloaded, right click the installer and click on "Properties" swap to the compatibility tab and make sure to select "Run as Administrator" click the "Apply" button and run the installer. It will prompt you to select a folder you wish to save it to, the default is just fine but if you want to save it to a different drive or just create a folder inside your XIV folder you can.

Once the installer finishes, go to the folder you saved it to and find the "Advanced Combat Tracker" executable, right click it and do the same as you did for the installer itself, make sure "Run as Administrator" is selected and applied as the default. You don't necessarily need to run ACT as an admin, but it does not cause any issues to do so.

Firewall Exceptions

When Dawntrail launches and deucalion injection being the default recommended setting this is no longer necessary, as there are no issues with firewalls using it. If by any reason you cannot use deucalion injection, proceed to set these up just in case.

Open your start menu and type "Firewall with Advanced Security" and select it. Right click "Inbound Rules" and click "New rule":

Once here, click the "Program" rule at the top and proceed to find the ACT executable as you did earlier and select it:

After the correct file is selected, just click proceed, leave all the boxes checked and name it accordingly. Once that's finished, do the exact same thing for the X86 ACT executable. This is how both should look once you're done:

If you still run into issues even with the inbound rules, do the same steps above for the "Outbound Rules" section. If it still fails, try turning off any firewalls while doing this setup.

Act Wizard Setup

Once you run ACT for the first time, you'll be prompted if you want to continue as an administrator, click "Yes" so the program opens. It then will prompt you to run the setup wizard, do so and click on "Next".

Make sure the correct parsing plugin is selected the number on the plugin shouldn't change but it can change occasionally, so make sure the name is correct when installing it. Click on "Download/Enable Plugin" button on the right side and let it finish setting up.

You will be prompted with a question if ACT will be used for Final Fantasy XIV, click yes and proceed with the next step, check the box that says "Auto-load recently changed log files" as seen below and proceed with the "Next" button once again:

Make sure the "Auto Version Check" is selected and click on the close button at the bottom right.

Setting up the Overlay Plugin

Now for the fun part, setting up the Overlay for your ACT parser. Navigate to the "Plugins" tab and at the top right there should be a button called "Get Plugins" select that and let the plugin list load:

Navigate to find Overlay Plugin click "Download and Enable" at the bottom right and let it install. Keep in mind that the installation process may take a while, but once it is finished you should be prompted with the message below:

Once that's done, you should be able to select the Overlayplugin.dll window in your ACT, like this:

You can also enable an Overlay Plugin functionality that handles ending encounters instead of relying on ACT to do so. What that means is it will prevent long cutscenes or forced downtime in encounters to end your combat in ACT prematurely. It does not affect the log file itself, it is mostly for the overlay meter to properly display DPS values on any fights with said issues.

Information on how to set this up is Here.

Now, you will want to add a preset skin for your DPS meter. Here you can pick whichever one you like best, I will be going with MopiMopi because that's what I prefer to use, but all of the skins are great and it's all personal preference!

From this point, you can look up how to customize a meter in any way you want and even add background images to them. Since this is a guide just for setting up ACT to work with our website, I will be skipping this step.

Updated for 7.0/Dawntrail prep

Setting up Deucalion Injection, and what does it mean

What is Deucalion?

Deucalion is a library which is injected into the game, allowing for more direct capture of game combat data.

What is injection?

Injection means loading third-party code into the game process. This can lead to less game stability. Deucalion was written in a more memory-safe and stable language called Rust to prevent as many issues as possible. Injection is the same thing that XIVLauncher/Dalamud do.

Why should I not use Deucalion?

Deucalion requires injecting code into the game's process, which is a line that Ravahn has previously not wanted to cross. Deucalion is a new technique which has not been tested as extensively as previous methods of capturing game combat data. The process of injecting Deucalion appears to offend some antiviruses, in particular Bitdefender.

IF YOU USE BITDEFENDER DO NOT USE THIS, AS IT WILL CORRUPT YOUR FILES

Why should I use Deucalion?

Deucalion does not require starting ACT before logging in to your character. And as stated prior, Deucalion does not require running ACT as an administrator, except when using the official launcher immediately following a game update.

Without injection, if you drop any packets at all during gameplay, or have any instability issues with your internet or anything that is beyond your control, ACT will completely stop working and you will have to log out and back into the game. This is due to changes in the network compression FFXIV has been using since patch 6.3.

Deucalion will likely be enabled by default once FFXIV patch 7.0 / Dawntrail is released

Turning on Deucalion Injection

To do so, just navigate to your FFXIV ACT Plugin menu in the "Plugins" tab of ACT and select "Inject and use Deucalion for network data"

It should look like this:

Testing and troubleshooting

You should be good to go, but to make sure everything works, we'll go into the game and test. Just find a striking dummy and if everything went well, it should show your damage being registered in the overlay of your choice:

If for some reason nothing gets registered, double check to see if your connection is working by going to the FFXIV ACT Plugin tab in and clicking on "Test Game Connection":

If everything is properly set up, you will get a prompt at the bottom right of your screen showing you it was successful.

If any other issues show up, or you'd like to set up additional plugins, I recommend going to the ACT Discord server, they're very helpful and there are tons of resources for whichever issues you may run into.

Here's a link to their Discord Server.

Contact Us

As always, we love to hear your feedback. Please join us on Discord to share any feedback and suggestions, or to ask any questions.

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If you have any support questions, please reach out to our support team at [email protected].