Any way of exporting/saving character data?
 

Is there an easy way (using mysql) to export the DB character data to a file then import it back later? I'm often having to re-import the DB due to changes and bugfixes with world data etc. but it's annoying to lose all my characters when I do so. I'm currently trying to play the game properly starting with a level-1 character (a good way of checking that loot, merchant lists etc. are balanced) so this would be very useful. I don't really have much experience with the MySQL command line interface however.

You can use mysqldump.exe to dump just the tables you want, or I found a great tool for managing mysql: DBTools I would subbest that you just write a query to copy the info you want to/from another backup database.

Edit: Use this command line command to backup your account and character data (run from the mysql\bin directory)
where:
eq23 = database name
account = 1st table to output
character_ = 2nd table to output
backup.sql = output file for data

Add more tables if you want.

then use:
to restore the data

Something else that I do that is REALLY helpful is I run Apache with PHP on my computer, which is pretty easy to set up even for a first time user. Then I just run PHPMyAdmin, that tool is extremely useful, lets you empty tables, drop tables, ect. withouting having to know the commands. Pretty much like a HTML version of a GUI =P But if you don't want to do all that. then I would just set it up the way Lurker said.

Thanks, that information on mysqldump was really helpful, it seems to work fine (I haven't tried re-importing yet, but will know whether it works the next time I do a DB reset :) ). I already have DBTools but found that it always truncated the binary "blob" data from the character table when I tried to export it.

or if your lazy, just copy the character_.myi and myd files ( don't remember exact, the 2 other then frm) from your mysql/data/currentdb/ folder. I'm lazy :D

Lol, forgot about that posability Baron. Do you need to stop and restart mysql when you copy the files back?

I've never had too