ACT, short for Advanced Combat Tracker, is a damage meter for multiple MMOs, with plugin support to extend the range of games it can support. It's widely used in FFXIV to keep track of your DPS and the DPS of other people, as well as other stats, such as HPS and emnity. This isn't all that ACT can do; ACT has a wide variety of function because it can be extended with plugins, so it can also do things such as make personalized callouts for the fight you're in and even add UI elements for certain job mechanics that didn't exist before.
Needless to say, ACT is a useful and powerful tool, but it can be a bit intimidating to set up at first. A lot of effort has recently gone into making it easier to install ACT and get the relevant plugins installed, but given that this still might be confusing to some, this guide will serve as a resource for how to install ACT, as well as how to set up plugins such as Cactbot and Triggernometry.
It's worth noting that this guide is only pertinent to Windows. If you play on Mac or Linux, then it's unlikely that you'd be able to set up this application.
Once you've installed ACT to an appropriate location, navigate to the location you chose to install it, and right click on the file Advanced Combat Tracker.exe and click Properties. Go to the Compatibility tab and select Run this program as an administrator. You can then press OK to exit out of the Properties. This is required because ACT needs administrator privileges to generate log data from FFXIV; failing to do this will most commonly result in ACT simply being unable to log combat.
After you've done the above, simply double click the Advanced Combat Tracker.exe file to launch it.
From this point forward, all you need to do is confirm each of the boxes that appear and press Next, and finally Close when you can proceed no further. None of the options that appear past the Parsing Plugin tab are something that you would need to edit in most use cases.
After this point, you'll end up on a screen that at first glance seems extremely complicated. If you aren't familiar with ACT, then this will seem a bit overwhelming, but it's important to know that ACT has a lot of features generally used for other MMOs or for more advanced use cases, something that you don't need to worry about. The the time being, if you're confused, don't worry about messing with anything other than what this guide states. None of the options that aren't brought up in this guide are necessary to touch.
Next up, we're going to set up OverlayPlugin. This plugin is what's used to enable overlays to be shown over your Final Fantasy XIV instance, which is a requirement for both damage meters and any plugin that adds overlays.
Start by going back to the folder where you decided to install ACT. In this location, you should create a folder. You can call it whatever you want, but I suggest that you name it Plugins. This will be the location that you will install any plugins that you decide you want over the course of this guide, but it's also the location that you'll put the overlay plugin, which is most likely what you want most.
Download OverlayPlugin from this link. It's irrelevant whether you choose the .zip or .7z file; just download whichever one you know you can extract. Once you've done so, extract the archive. You'll see a folder named OverlayPlugin; drag this folder into your Plugins folder. After you've done so, go back into ACT, and go to the Plugins tab near the top of the application's window. Press Browse, navigate to the Plugins/OverlayPlugin folder, and select OverlayPlugin.dll. After you've done this, press Add/Enable Plugin, which should be directly below the Browse button.
After the plugin has finished setting itself up, you'll see a new tab appear near the top. You can ignore this for the time being, as there's some setup we need to do first.
Go to the FFXIV Settings tab, and ensure that the dropdown labeled Parse Mode is set to Network. If it isn't, set it to that. Afterwards, press the Test Game Connection button. If ACT is properly able to detect network traffic from the game, then you should receive a positive response when pressing the button. Otherwise, you'll receive a message stating that ACT was unable to detect network traffic from the game. This happens most frequently when ACT isn't run as Administrator, when ACT isn't allowed through the Windows Firewall, or simply because the game isn't open or you aren't logged into a character. Double check all of these and try again.
You can ensure that ACT is allowed through the firewall by doing the following;
- Open your Start Menu and type firewall. The first option should be Windows Defender Firewall, open this.
- Your control panel will open. Press the text Allow an app or feature through the Windows Defender Firewall.
- Press the button labeled Allow another app... Navigate to where you've installed ACT and select Advanced Combat Tracker.exe, then press Add, and OK.
- Go back to ACT and press Test Game Connection again.