[Dual-Boxing] Beginners questions!

[Reiya]

The urge to dual-boxing has been grasping me more and more that I actually want to try it out. I got referred via Google to this site and I've been reading different stickies already but the problem is, I don't really understand what exactly the use is of each explanation, of where to start and where to end. It's like being thrown in a mixer. Therefore I have some beginners questions before I start dual-boxing, else I might waste my money on a second account. Unlike Illidan claims every week to me, I'm actually always prepared!

To start off the first question, if you're dual-boxing, it's possible to have practically any two different classes to dual-box without any problems? I have a lvl70 Hunter & Priest, and I'm aiming to do 2vs2 arena's & bgs as well as doing dailies. Hunter pewpew and would be the main, while the healer is the slave who would heal herself, me or my pet, as well as some pewpewing whenever no need for heal. The point is here to gather myself some pvp gear & gold more quickly, one reason being to prepare myself for WotLK.

The second question, continueing from the last sentence, if you're dual-boxing to level up, does that actually go faster or slower since mobs tend to give half the exp if you're in party? The purpose would be doing quests, since with only two I can't go into dungeons, and I'm not that rich to pay for 5 accounts (and I rather not, my ingame focus is still to raid, not to multi-box, but dual-boxing should be fine). Not only to know if 70-80 goes faster if you're with two, but also to start some alts.

Third, Keyclone is hopefully not needed for this? I sure want to believe it's worth the money except I just don't feel like paying for that when it's just dual-boxing. I have readed here and there about Octopus & AutoHotkey, would they fulfill the role of helping me dual-boxing fine enough?

To be quite honest, even though I did readed most of the stickies about dual-boxing and macro's, it's still a bit hard to understand how I can force my slave to heal me if I press on a button while being on my Hunter. Care to explain how exactly it works? If it helps to explain better or to know what way I should go, I have one pc that should be able to handle two WoWs at one time totally fine, I have only one pc but I have two monitors (the second is more to leave open vids to watch to while raiding, etc.). I also have two keyboards connected to the pc altogether, however I never used the second so far.


Hopefully one is nice enough to spend time making clear answers for me, I would be truly thankful for that since my knowledge about all this stuff is still very mediocre. But hey, everyone starts off like this, isn't it?

[Enti]

The urge to dual-boxing has been grasping me more and more that I actually want to try it out. I got referred via Google to this site and I've been reading different stickies already but the problem is, I don't really understand what exactly the use is of each explanation, of where to start and where to end. It's like being thrown in a mixer. Therefore I have some beginners questions before I start dual-boxing, else I might waste my money on a second account. Unlike Illidan claims every week to me, I'm actually always prepared!

To start off the first question, if you're dual-boxing, it's possible to have practically any two different classes to dual-box without any problems? I have a lvl70 Hunter & Priest, and I'm aiming to do 2vs2 arena's & bgs as well as doing dailies. Hunter pewpew and would be the main, while the healer is the slave who would heal herself, me or my pet, as well as some pewpewing whenever no need for heal. The point is here to gather myself some pvp gear & gold more quickly, one reason being to prepare myself for WotLK.

The second question, continueing from the last sentence, if you're dual-boxing to level up, does that actually go faster or slower since mobs tend to give half the exp if you're in party? The purpose would be doing quests, since with only two I can't go into dungeons, and I'm not that rich to pay for 5 accounts (and I rather not, my ingame focus is still to raid, not to multi-box, but dual-boxing should be fine). Not only to know if 70-80 goes faster if you're with two, but also to start some alts.

Third, Keyclone is hopefully not needed for this? I sure want to believe it's worth the money except I just don't feel like paying for that when it's just dual-boxing. I have readed here and there about Octopus & AutoHotkey, would they fulfill the role of helping me dual-boxing fine enough?

To be quite honest, even though I did readed most of the stickies about dual-boxing and macro's, it's still a bit hard to understand how I can force my slave to heal me if I press on a button while being on my Hunter. Care to explain how exactly it works? If it helps to explain better or to know what way I should go, I have one pc that should be able to handle two WoWs at one time totally fine, I have only one pc but I have two monitors (the second is more to leave open vids to watch to while raiding, etc.). I also have two keyboards connected to the pc altogether, however I never used the second so far.


Hopefully one is nice enough to spend time making clear answers for me, I would be truly thankful for that since my knowledge about all this stuff is still very mediocre. But hey, everyone starts off like this, isn't it?Question 1: Correct, you can do any combination you want, some work better than others but you can do any possible one. I myself do a rogue/mage.. very odd yet can deal with it and do pretty well.. as for pvp with it.. you might run into some issues.. that's not as easy because of the enemy actually having a mind of its own :P

Question 2: Typically it's almost the same speed for leveling.. 2boxing is a LITTLE bit slower due to the 1/2 xp gained per killed rather then if you were solo.. however you kill twice as fast & can solo group quests a lot easier.. so it's about the same as solo leveling.. but the outcome is 2x 70s instead of 1 :P. I myself have done instances with dual-boxing. Depends on the classes really and your skill.. I did it mostly with 2x mages so it was easy.. just dpsed the same mobs and binded different keys for a different sheep for each toon.

Keyclone isn't needed.. but is recommended.. There are free alternatives to it but they aren't even close to as good. Octopus & autohotkey can do the job.. just definitely not as well. It's well worth the little money it costs m8 :)

Well you would set a macro on your priest to either target your hunter.. or use your hunters' target. That way if you are on your hunter.. and target yourself.. it would heal ur hunter.. if you target hunters pet.. would heal hunters pet.. etc. etc.

One thing I definitely recommend before getting into multiboxing.. is try it first. Make two trial accounts, start off with that and try it with that before you invest any money into it to see if you like it.

Hope this helps you :)

[Reiya]

I've been playing around with Octopus now but as far as I went through the somewhat vaguely explained tutorials there didn't seemed to be any change... I left it on anyway, opened WoW twice with two different accounts (second being a free trial atm), but I do not understand how the macro's works one bit. I mean, for example:

Priest is the slave, Hunter is the main. This is all one one pc, one monitor, one keyboard and one mouse. This link (http://www.dual-boxing.com/wiki/index.php/Multiboxing_101_%285_Mage_Tutorial%29) says at the Combat part that if I put a macro like assisting focus and casting a spell, and keybinding this macro to every account. I don't understand why exactly the other accounts could react to it, neither does it prove so ingame too, my Priest does nothing.

Simply said, is it actually possible to have my slave cast a spell on a mob I'm attacking with my Hunter, without having to swap windows? Can someone explain this, or give me a link to how everything exactly works, since the tutorials seems to expect you to know everything already?

I'm sure I can understand it, it's just that I'm being thrown in the middle of dozens of texts, I don't even know where to start first.

[Meeo]

Are you use your octopus is passing keys properly?

Do you have an understanding the macros in wow work?

[Reiya]

I'm fairly sure broadcasting keys is enabled in Octopus.

I don't understand yet how macro's work, so I'll start with that for now. Might clear up complications!

[Meeo]

Definetly, may want to take smaller steps, if you can for sure confirm that you able to type things in one screen and see them come up in the second screen then that part is good.

Macro wise.

There are several wikis and several people/DB-Members that macro assistance out there, basically it comes down to thinking about how you wish to setup your slaves.

There are non-focus ways, and there are focus ways, what we mean by focus, is using the /focus command to setup a main point for slaves to relate to and pull targets from, it is also the easiest way to start, imo (which doesnt account for much).

Your macros will work in conjunction with the focus command, and understand the switch/variable statements inside of the macros will help you out in the end and make it easy on your mind.

Start with basic command that has all your slaves target/focus/follow on main, then setup 1 macro either a heal or cast a dmg spell that either a) targets main/casts heal or / b) assist/focus main fast dmg spell is a great place to start.

[Reiya]

Thanks for the explanation, and sorry for any frustration in my post. It gets irritating if you can't get to understand game mechanisms. ^^

[Godsmac]

I have 1 tower and 1 monitor. From what I gather it can be done.

#1 I download Maximizer and it keeps giving me an error saying to make sure these files are in the WoW.exe folder.

#2 If I can not get Maximizer to work could I still use keyclone to get the Job done and map my keys to have it work all the same minus being able to view 2 screens at once?

#3 I registered on the website and I have recieved no email. Nub sauce here so please bare with me. I am trying to get as much info as I can on my own and I keep hitting walls. It seems like I am the only one having these problems =/

[Ughmahedhurtz]

If you haven't yet gotten things working, try the two tutorials in my sig and see if that gets you somewhere (do the Octopus one first).

[Godsmac]

I followed the whole tutorial and towards the end it asks me to close window. When I reopen everything is reset.

Was I supposed to backup config?

Even though I do not have a 2 computer setup I followed the instructions hoping it would help me understand the program. I have 1 computer and 1 monitor.

Are there any tutorials that can show me how to set this up for my current setup?

[Ughmahedhurtz]

If you're talking about my tutorial, see step 3 of the installation section.

[edit] Also, if you're not using 2 PCs, the instructions tell you to skip the KVM section. The rest should all be the same on either single or multiple PC setups.

[Reiya]

I've been trying out AutoHotkey so far but again they skip some steps, like explaining where exactly scripts needs to be saved.

So I go to c:/.../AutoHotkey/Extras/Scripts. I rightclick to make a new document, an .ahk file (it shows up in the menu so I click on it). Then I edit script and enter the following:


WinGet, wowid, List, World of Warcraft

~A::
KeyWait, A, D
#IfWinActive, World of Warcraft
{
ControlSend,, A, ahk_id %wowid1%
ControlSend,, A, ahk_id %wowid2%
}
Return

I save the file, and close it. AutoHotkey is still running as small icon near the clock.

Then I go to my healer slave, and put on "A" a macro to target my hunter (which works btw) and heal. Keybinded to "A".

I go to my Hunter, but no matter how much I press "A", the healer isn't doing anything.


What went wrong?

[Godsmac]

Ok. Gonna try the Tutorial again and Ill post with my results. If it resets again I guess I will try to backup config to see if it saves everything I did. Thx for all the help I appreciate it.

[ThisIsDrakul]

You could do worse than give Hotkeynet a try. It is free, brilliantly supported by a great programmer and easier to use than AHK. With little effort, you can get up and running on multiple toons (across as many PCs as you wish) and with a bit more effort it can do everything you could wish for.

[Reiya]

Small bump, I'm still stuck with my stated problem.

[Reiya]

Last bump trying to find help for my problem. I still can't get it to work.

[Veandalheart]

Ok guys so i want a new shaman, he needs to be dreanei as they look kickass. Now i bought 4 other boxes and i got keyclone. It took about an hour to figure it all out, works nicely but the thing is, levling seems very very slow :(. Is this something that will change after level 10 ? Im am level 7 now with all 5 toons, just running in the dreanei starting area 2shotting furblogs and nagas, i get like 26 exp max. When i kill on my own i get aprox 80+ exp per kill, wtf?

My main purpose for mutliboxing is to level very quickly but at this pace i dont see it going very well. Is there something i do wrong or will it change after level 10?