first time 5-boxing

[tldr]

I finally went for it today and set up 3 additional accounts so I could try five-boxing. My team is 4 hunters and a pally (dwarves all), and I'm using a dual-monitor setup with my main on a 1920x1080 screen and the four slaves on a 1280x1024 screen. Key rebroadcasting with HKN and of course using Jamba (don't multibox without it!). Sent RAF invites from my two original accounts to two new ones, and another from one of the new accounts to yet another new account. Upgraded the new ones to panda-land (the price was right) and tacked on 60 days of time on each. Annoyingly, in game the accounts still are marked as trial accounts in some respects, even though I could add the new ones to my guild. I can't remember what, specifically, it wouldn't let me do because it thought the clients were still trials.

Fun trick that I'm sure others have tried but I haven't run across in HKN yet: have a set of keys defined that resize/move your windows around so you can change which one is the large window. I'm thinking I might also try and have it change the master or something as well. I did this when one of the four hunters fell behind and I had to level her for a bit to get her to 15 so the group could hit Deadmines. Which brings up the subject of the dungeon finder. WoW would NOT let me start Deadmines because my "group was not viable". Nevertheless, I walked out there and cleaned up the place. I only struggled with the giant mechanical boss. I might have played too conservatively, running away every time he telegraphed something, and as a result there were some deaths - luckily not my pally, though it came REAL close. That's another place where Jamba really shined - group heals and resurrections. One click did the right thing.

Along the way, I was accused of botting once and in Westfall someone said "three accounts? that's sad". I suppose I should have said "what's said is that you can't count to five". L'esprit d'escalier.

I'm currently using a focus set-up and having spent the evening with it, I can understand why the FTL has appeal. Several times, focus was implicitly cleared on my slaves (getting into a vehicle or on a gryphon does it, for example). It'll probably take some doing to figure out how to get FTL to work with HKN, assuming it's even possible. My preliminary searches haven't turned up a lot at least in google. Haven't yet used the forum's search to dig.

I'm sure I'll continue to refine everything as I continue to play. Like changing my paladin (master) "1" key to do something that doesn't automatically target the nearest mob when I press it, while the hunters /assist /cast Arcane Shot. That has resulted in a few fights I didn't intend.

[Khatovar]

Annoyingly, in game the accounts still are marked as trial accounts in some respects, even though I could add the new ones to my guild. I can't remember what, specifically, it wouldn't let me do because it thought the clients were still trials.

It can take up to 72 hours for new accounts to upgrade from trials.


Fun trick that I'm sure others have tried but I haven't run across in HKN yet: have a set of keys defined that resize/move your windows around so you can change which one is the large window.

That's rather easy to do to. The ResizeAndPosition command that you use to originally set the locations of the windows can be called in any order. For example, my launch hotkey looks like this


<Hotkey LCtrl LAlt w>
<if WinDoesNotExist WoW1>
<LaunchAndRename Local "G:\WoW\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" WoW1 PASSWORD>
<endif>
<if WinDoesNotExist WoW2>
<LaunchAndRename Local "G:\WoW - Slave1\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" WoW2 PASSWORD>
<endif>
<if WinDoesNotExist WoW3>
<LaunchAndRename Local "G:\WoW - Slave2\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" WoW3 PASSWORD>
<endif>
<if WinDoesNotExist WoW4>
<LaunchAndRename Local "G:\WoW - Slave3\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" WoW4 PASSWORD>
<endif>
<if WinDoesNotExist WoW5>
<LaunchAndRename Local "G:\WoW - Slave4\World of Warcraft\Wow.exe" WoW5 PASSWORD>
<endif>
<ResizeAndPosition WoW1 WoW2 WoW3 WoW4 WoW5>

You can change the order that the windows lay out just by changing the order in which they are listed.


<ResizeAndPosition WoW2 WoW1 WoW3 WoW4 WoW5>

That will move WoW2 to the large window position and WoW1 will shrink and move to WoW2's old position. There's a snippet of code at the bottom of my post here (http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/47027-HotKeyNet-and-setting-screen-resolution?p=359845&viewfull=1#post359845) for using hotkeys to call it.

I don't actually use hotkeys right now, I use the Windows buttons+Mouseclick to swap windows. The Left Windows button swaps the selected slave to the main screen, the right Windows button just enlarges the selected slave on the slave screen. This way if I swap a slave to the main screen, the master screen shrinks down - useful if I need to do something on that slave screen for a while, but still need to see everything else on monitor 2, like if I'm writing a macro or reforging, but still need to see my browser or chat windows, or in your case, if I need to change masters for whatever reason, I'd use that.

The other one is for when I need to do things on both the master and a specific slave at the same time, such as enchanting gear, crafting, trading. Then I have 2 large windows to see what I'm doing.

I also have a region set up in the Left Windows key that enlarges all the windows and sets up a PiP mode for Item Comparison. I blogged about that here (http://www.dual-boxing.com/entries/38-What-Keeps-a-Khat-up-At-Night) a while back. It was originally set up just for loot comparison from mobs, but I've since enlarged the PiP swap region trigger so I can use the Item Compare on Quest Rewards, too.


//* Loot Compare and Swapping - Item compare and PiP over defined region or swaps slave to Mon1 outside it
<UseKeyAsModifier LWin>

<Hotkey LWin LButton>
<If MouseIsOverWindowRect WoW1 20 220 385 495>
<SetPip WoW1 WoW2 WoW3 WoW4 WoW5>
<Wait 100>
<SendLabel w1, w2, w3, w4, w5>
<KeyDown Shift>
<Clickmouse NoClick>
<Else If MouseIsOverWindow WoW1>
<ResizeAndPosition WoW1 WoW2 WoW3 WoW4 WoW5>
<Wait 20>
<TargetWin WoW1>
<SetWinRegion none>
<SendLabel w1, w2, w3, w4, w5>
<KeyUp Shift>
<Clickmouse NoClick>
<Else If MouseIsOverWindow WoW2>
<ResizeAndPosition WoW2 WoW1 WoW3 WoW4 WoW5>
<Wait 20>
<TargetWin WoW2>
<SetWinRegion none>
<SendLabel w1, w2, w3, w4, w5>
<KeyUp Shift>
<Clickmouse NoClick>
<Else If MouseIsOverWindow WoW3>
<ResizeAndPosition WoW3 WoW2 WoW1 WoW4 WoW5>
<Wait 20>
<TargetWin WoW3>
<SetWinRegion none>
<SendLabel w1, w2, w3, w4, w5>
<KeyUp Shift>
<Clickmouse NoClick>
<Else If MouseIsOverWindow WoW4>
<ResizeAndPosition WoW4 WoW2 WoW3 WoW1 WoW5>
<Wait 20>
<TargetWin WoW4>
<SetWinRegion none>
<SendLabel w1, w2, w3, w4, w5>
<KeyUp Shift>
<Clickmouse NoClick>
<Else If MouseIsOverWindow WoW5>
<ResizeAndPosition WoW5 WoW2 WoW3 WoW4 WoW1>
<Wait 20>
<TargetWin WoW5>
<SetWinRegion none>
<SendLabel w1, w2, w3, w4, w5>
<KeyUp Shift>
<Clickmouse NoClick>
//+
//* Window Swapping - Max Slave on Monitor2
<UseKeyAsModifier RWin>

<Hotkey RWin LButton>
<Toggle>
<If MouseIsOverWindow WoW2>
<SlavePosition WoW2>
<Else If MouseIsOverWindow WoW3>
<SlavePosition WoW3>
<Else If MouseIsOverWindow WoW4>
<SlavePosition WoW4>
<Else If MouseIsOverWindow WoW5>
<SlavePosition WoW5>
<Toggle>
<ResizeAndPosition WoW1 WoW2 WoW3 WoW4 WoW5>





Which brings up the subject of the dungeon finder. WoW would NOT let me start Deadmines because my "group was not viable".

Your group isn't viable for dungeon finder because the dungeon finder requires that you have 1 healer-capable characer, 1 tank-capable character and 3 dps-capable characters. You have a pally, so that can queue as either a tank or healer, but you still need another toon to fill a tank or healer role. This is why a lot of people will run with 2 toons that can fill either role, even if they don't actually perform that role. You can still walk into a dungeon, as you see, but you will never be able to use the Dungeon Finder with that setup. If you swapped out a hunter for any healing or tank class, you'd be able to use it, even if you run them as DPS.



Along the way, I was accused of botting once and in Westfall someone said "three accounts? that's sad". I suppose I should have said "what's said is that you can't count to five". L'esprit d'escalier.

It's generally not worth bothering with responding. You'll get whined at constantly and reported at least a few times a week just because you're boxing. People don't care if we're not bots, they hate us anyway and they generally don't want to have the difference explained, they just want you banned. If they can bait you into violating the rules to get you actioned - say by insulting you until they can report you for language, they're happy to do it.


I'm currently using a focus set-up and having spent the evening with it, I can understand why the FTL has appeal. Several times, focus was implicitly cleared on my slaves (getting into a vehicle or on a gryphon does it, for example). It'll probably take some doing to figure out how to get FTL to work with HKN, assuming it's even possible. My preliminary searches haven't turned up a lot at least in google. Haven't yet used the forum's search to dig.

http://www.dual-boxing.com/threads/17555-Implementing-an-FTL-quite-simple-with-templates


I'm sure I'll continue to refine everything as I continue to play. Like changing my paladin (master) "1" key to do something that doesn't automatically target the nearest mob when I press it, while the hunters /assist /cast Arcane Shot. That has resulted in a few fights I didn't intend.

My 1 key doesn't have anything on it for my slaves. My master uses the macro


/targetenemy [noharm][dead]
/castsequence reset=5 Reckoning, null
/castsequence reset=3 Avenger's Shield, Judgment
/startattack
/jamba-follow master melee

This makes my melee toons follow my master while my master is pulling. In the past that key was used to drop totems while my tank pulled, I've had just /assist on it for my slaves. My slaves only attack using one of my spam keys.

[dancook]

Do you not think it'd be easier to pay for isboxer and have all the FTL / screen swapping handling done out of the box? :) compared to the cost of 5 accounts, it's not so much.

Good luck!

[tldr]

I'm in Deadmines with this group a second time and am finding entertaining little things to be wacky. I had set up symlinks between my accounts to make things easier for Altoholic, but the end result has been:
1) my 2nd account, which had been set up to use the same set of directories as the first, had its macros changed around to match the first. So, my focus button was gone entirely and my arcane shot spam macro had been replaced with /cheer. As a result my first fight involved 3 hunters shooting and one going WOOHOO every few seconds.

2) When I fixed the macro on the 2nd account, I had opened up the macro window for the 3rd account to copy its contents back (I'm going to have to learn better macro management soon, methinks). But I managed to leave it open. So the second fight initially involved replacing the arcane shot macro on toon 3 with 11111111111111111111111111111111 but the macro window got closed at some point so now I have three hunters shooting and one saying 1111111111111111111111111111 over and over. I nearly did the macro thing again just now, and to add insult to injury, I found that I had switched off key broadcasting before the next fight.

Regarding earlier replies, thanks :-). Khatovar in particular has been quite helpful in filling in the gaps in my knowledge. I actually did, for the window resize/move exactly as you describe in your response. That example was where I had started from. In fact, I've used it several times already this evening.

The dungeon finder is pretty much what I expected, but it'd be nice if I had the option, with a full party, to run it anyway.

Part of this is me learning to play some of these classes. My main has always been a hunter - I've never leveled a pally past 25 and that was 5 years ago. Lots of learning-by-doing.

[Ualaa]

If you press Enter, on any of the accounts in game...
You start chatting with those accounts so the '1's come up as chat text rather than execute abilities on those hotkeys.
I've had that happen too.

Once you've seen it, you know what to look out for and it becomes easy to avoid.



Start small and build from there.
The more you box, the more comfortable it will get.