Let’s
take a step back from talking about multiboxing for a minute to discuss
workflow. I have alluded to workflow in earlier posts when discussing
my stable of alts and mentioned it in my post on crafting.
It
is a depiction of a sequence of operations, declared as work of a
person, a group of persons, an organization of staff, or one or more
simple or complex mechanisms. Workflow may be seen as any abstraction of
real work [1]
In
playing the auction house, it is the path that a craftable material
takes from raw form to being sold on the auction house or in trade. One
of the best ways to illustrate a workflow tied to a specific raw
material is the shuffle. This is where you take elementium, prospect it
for gems, make the gems in into jewelry, disenchant that same jewelry
into shards and dust, and lastly make enchanting scrolls with the
materials. To really maximize the ore shuffle, each step of the way you
can sell off materials to cover a wide variety of markets. While it
possible to have enchanting and jewelcrafting on the same character, it
would be more convenient to break the steps into different characters.
Another
tradeskill that can benefit from setting up a workflow is inscription.
To be a competitive player in the inscription market one should the
majority if not all of profitable glyphs for their server. This can
lead to a character having thousands of glyphs, even with large
tradeskill specific bags this leads to lots of inventory management.
For
the inscription market I I have set up one auctioneer specifically to
sell glyphs. This auctioneer is kitted out with tradeskill bags
allowing her to stack up a vast amount of glyphs. My scribe is another
character on the same account. I have set my workflow as follows. The
auctioneer dedicated to glyphs searches the auction house for cheap
herbs and inks below a specific threshold. She then checks her mail,
downloading 16 stacks of herbs and as many stacks of inks as she could
find. 16 being the size of the standard backpack. When the bag is
filled, I step away from the mailbox reseting it and hit my button to
automail the herbs and inks to my scribe. I then equip my scribe with
two herbalism tradeskill bags and two inscription tradeskill bags. Next
I start opening mail and begin milling everything in my bags. Once I
have stacked up great deal of ink, I check my crafting queue in
Tradeskill Master and see what inks I need to visit the ink trader for.
While there i pick up two stacks of each paper for glyphs. (I find I
cannot use the auto trade function for the paper vendor as I will fill
my all of my bag slots with paper.) Then I craft glyphs until I run out
of space or materials. Each time this happens I visit the mailbox
sending the glyphs off to my auctioneer using the auto mail function in
Tradeskill master. The reason this workflow works very well is I use
the mailbox as a staging area, having absurd quantities of herbs glyphs
moving back and forth between the two characters.
But why two accounts?
I have two main reasons for having two accounts to use when playing the auction house.
The
first is to have access to more tradeskill slots on more characters. I
have access to three max level alchemists all specialized for
transmute.
The
second reason is I can be posting on two accounts at the same time.
Typically I stagger it so one is opening mail and the other is posting
auctions on the Auction House. I just use my multiboxing setup which
lets me switch from PC to PC and account to account by just sliding the
mouse from screen to screen.
This
helps me keep my daily gold making routine to 15 minutes or less a day.
Often done in the morning before I leave for work.
Showing posts with label Multiboxing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Multiboxing. Show all posts
22 August 2012
20 August 2012
My setup
I
am going to explain how I went about setting up multiple accounts
allowing me to play both accounts at once. My method is a bit different
than much of what you would find on http://www.dual-boxing.com
. Which by the way is a great resource for all things multiboxing.
The site has sections devoted to software and hardware that helps you
cascade keystrokes allowing you to have the synchronized shaman
lightning spam that makes multiboxing so infamous.
Essential Addon
First I would suggest an addon called Hydra - multiboxing leveling helper. http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/hydra this addon allows you to automate as many tasks as possible allowing you to focus on controlling your main character and swapping to your second character only when needed. My main purpose for it is the significantly improved follow command. Basically you set up one character as the leader, create a macro that tells the party to follow you and your other characters follow. Doing it this way keeps you from losing your second character as much as you would otherwise.
Hydra also allows you to cascade whispers to your second character and can be set up to allow the second character to accept group invites from the leader. This is very helpful if you are running two copies of wow on the same machine and one screen is behind the other one. With this setup you could log into two copies of World of Warcraft. Invite the second account to a group. Hit your follow me macro, and take off to the instance. Another neat feature is Hydra will automatically have your second account mount up if you mount up on your leader. It will also chose a flying mount if your leader does. Making things very convenient.
Necessary Software
Another bit of software I cannot live without is Input Director http://www.inputdirector.com/ Input Director is an application that allows you to control multiple computers with a single keyboard and mouse. Think of it as a sort of software KVM. On my desk I have two monitors, one keyboard and once mouse. Under my desk I have two computers. Both are running flavors of windows. One runs Windows 7 and the other is running XP. Hopefully both will siib be running Windows 7.
Basically when I move my mouse from one screen to the next, I go from controlling the first computer to the second computer. Input Director hides the mouse pointer on the first computer when you are controlling the second computer. I find this setup so convenient that I now always have my desk set up this way regardless of what I am doing, gaming or what not. It is particularly helpful when you need to move files between shared locations on the network.
There are other software options that function in a similar way to Input Director. The others I have tried all seem to suffer to mouse look issues. Basically they work perfectly when on the Windows Desktop, but when you are in a game suddenly your character will start spinning around like you are mouse-turning on speed. Additionally the author of Input Director, Shane, is incredibly helpful. Many years ago he provided me a custom built debug version of the application to allow me to troubleshoot a self inflicted network issue that was making input director behave oddly. How many software publishers would do that for you for software provided for free?
Essential Addon
First I would suggest an addon called Hydra - multiboxing leveling helper. http://www.curse.com/addons/wow/hydra this addon allows you to automate as many tasks as possible allowing you to focus on controlling your main character and swapping to your second character only when needed. My main purpose for it is the significantly improved follow command. Basically you set up one character as the leader, create a macro that tells the party to follow you and your other characters follow. Doing it this way keeps you from losing your second character as much as you would otherwise.
Hydra also allows you to cascade whispers to your second character and can be set up to allow the second character to accept group invites from the leader. This is very helpful if you are running two copies of wow on the same machine and one screen is behind the other one. With this setup you could log into two copies of World of Warcraft. Invite the second account to a group. Hit your follow me macro, and take off to the instance. Another neat feature is Hydra will automatically have your second account mount up if you mount up on your leader. It will also chose a flying mount if your leader does. Making things very convenient.
Necessary Software
Another bit of software I cannot live without is Input Director http://www.inputdirector.com/ Input Director is an application that allows you to control multiple computers with a single keyboard and mouse. Think of it as a sort of software KVM. On my desk I have two monitors, one keyboard and once mouse. Under my desk I have two computers. Both are running flavors of windows. One runs Windows 7 and the other is running XP. Hopefully both will siib be running Windows 7.
Basically when I move my mouse from one screen to the next, I go from controlling the first computer to the second computer. Input Director hides the mouse pointer on the first computer when you are controlling the second computer. I find this setup so convenient that I now always have my desk set up this way regardless of what I am doing, gaming or what not. It is particularly helpful when you need to move files between shared locations on the network.
There are other software options that function in a similar way to Input Director. The others I have tried all seem to suffer to mouse look issues. Basically they work perfectly when on the Windows Desktop, but when you are in a game suddenly your character will start spinning around like you are mouse-turning on speed. Additionally the author of Input Director, Shane, is incredibly helpful. Many years ago he provided me a custom built debug version of the application to allow me to troubleshoot a self inflicted network issue that was making input director behave oddly. How many software publishers would do that for you for software provided for free?
17 August 2012
Dual boxing on a budget
The
easiest and cheapest way to multibox is to open two copies of World of
Warcraft on your PC. To do this you need to have two accounts. You
have a few decision you have to make concerning how you set up your
second account.
If you want to multibox to give you easy convenient access to old raids that you intend to solo for fun and profit, all you will need is a trial account that has been leveled up to at least level 10. The character on the trial account will have to be added to the party by the character on the main account and the party will have to be converted to raid. This will conveniently give the main account access to solo an old raid.
If you want to be able to participate in trade and form/join guilds you will need to have access to a full account.
Players on Starter Edition game licenses have the following restrictions:
http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/world-of-warcraft-starter-edition-account-faq
These restrictions are there to limit the unscrupulous gold sellers from taking advantage of the starter edition accounts.
How do you make use of this second albeit limited account? The main purpose I can see for this sort of account is where you log into both accounts, on your main you invite your secondary account to a group. Then you convert your group to raid and head on into the instance. The advantage is you can do this anytime you want without having to ask anyone else to help you out.
A second account with all the “flair”
What if you want to do more with your second account? Maybe you want to boost a few characters through some content, or maybe you want a bigger challenge of playing two characters at once and seeing how far you can get through a dungeon. Or you want to use two accounts to streamline your manipulation of the auction house.
It seems I periodically see offers either on the loading screen for World of Warcraft, on one of the community sites or mentioned on twitter discussing a cheap ways to get friends into World of Warcraft. This can be taking advantage of a christmas sale for the Battle Chest or using refer a friend to get main account a cool new mount.
Regardless of how you want to use your account and what type of account you have for your second account, you will need some addons and potentially some other software to make the best use of your second account.
If you want to multibox to give you easy convenient access to old raids that you intend to solo for fun and profit, all you will need is a trial account that has been leveled up to at least level 10. The character on the trial account will have to be added to the party by the character on the main account and the party will have to be converted to raid. This will conveniently give the main account access to solo an old raid.
If you want to be able to participate in trade and form/join guilds you will need to have access to a full account.
Players on Starter Edition game licenses have the following restrictions:
- A level cap of 20
- A maximum of 10 gold
- Trade skills are capped at 100 ranks
- Unable to trade via the Auction House, mailbox, or player-to-player
- In-game access to public chat channels unavailable; players are limited to communicating using only say, party, or whisper
- Characters will be unable to create or join guilds
- Characters are not able to send whispers to other characters unless they have been added to the characters' friends' lists or have received a whisper from a character first
- Characters will not be able to invite other players into a party
- Characters will be unable to disable experience gains
- Voice chat is disabled on Starter Edition accounts
- Realms experiencing login queues will prioritize players who have full, paid accounts
- Starter Edition accounts are not eligible for character transfers
- Real ID features are disabled on all Starter Edition Accounts
http://us.battle.net/support/en/article/world-of-warcraft-starter-edition-account-faq
These restrictions are there to limit the unscrupulous gold sellers from taking advantage of the starter edition accounts.
How do you make use of this second albeit limited account? The main purpose I can see for this sort of account is where you log into both accounts, on your main you invite your secondary account to a group. Then you convert your group to raid and head on into the instance. The advantage is you can do this anytime you want without having to ask anyone else to help you out.
A second account with all the “flair”
What if you want to do more with your second account? Maybe you want to boost a few characters through some content, or maybe you want a bigger challenge of playing two characters at once and seeing how far you can get through a dungeon. Or you want to use two accounts to streamline your manipulation of the auction house.
It seems I periodically see offers either on the loading screen for World of Warcraft, on one of the community sites or mentioned on twitter discussing a cheap ways to get friends into World of Warcraft. This can be taking advantage of a christmas sale for the Battle Chest or using refer a friend to get main account a cool new mount.
Regardless of how you want to use your account and what type of account you have for your second account, you will need some addons and potentially some other software to make the best use of your second account.
This image was tweeted by Jim Younkin of Power Word: Gold
15 August 2012
Multiboxing
Many have heard or encountered a multi-boxer in game. On many public forums you see people crying foul, and accusing the multi-boxers of somehow cheating.
Most have seen if not in game, on youtube one of the many groups of multiboxing shamans all named with an identifiable theme or pattern, all working together in perfect unison to spam shock your character to death. Here is one of many videos showing multiboxing shamans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-5ScJAsHLA
Actually it is far from cheating any more than considering a pre-made PVP team to be cheating as it steamrolls over random teams in their battle group.
Multi-boxing comes in several forms, with different software and hardware requirements. I would like to introduce the concepts and tools involved in multiboxing and show how it can be used in enhancing your gold making endeavors.
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