Anarchy Online

[evilution]

I've been running a team of 6 (enf, doc, fixer, mp, crat, trader) using ISBoxer and a couple PC's working my way up to 220 (with research and AI). Using 1920x1200 resolution with swapping enabled on each pc.

Some general problems I've run into.



The new client crashes randomly / all the time. Very frustrating.
The game is a CPU/GPU hog. Running 6 clients on my i7-4970 with a 4.7OC results in 95-100% CPU usage. It also maxes out my GTX970.
I have not found a good way to make all client's camera's sync up and reset. Supposedly there is a way to save a position (num-7) and the reset to that position (num-5) but it is never consistent. This makes interacting with quest NPC's on all clients harder than it could be.
Starting attack on multiple client's if their weapon does not have a special is tricky since the start attack key acts as a toggle and you can only assist characters that are in combat.
Old inferno missions result in multiple client crashes. I have not made it through even an entire floor without at least 1 crash and often the whole team crashing at different times.
Sometimes the client will not crash but just lock up. It will show 0% CPU use and be unresponsive leading to you having to kill it in task manager.


Now what i've found that works.



New inferno missions were made for multi-boxers it seems. Very easy if very boring.
Doing LE missions for AI seem stable. Best tactic i've found is to run my enforcer through the entire level and train everything back to the team for cleanup (even hard 220 missions are cake)
The prisoner daily is one to do, takes 15 minutes.
It's probably worth the 5 bucks to get the SL teleport item off the store so you can warp between inferno and RK. Cartographer-1 lets you get back to RK once an hour. Good enough to do a couple inf missions and then warp back for RK daily's.


And finally looking for some discussion on multi-boxer friendly missions, raid encounters, layouts, and tactics. For instance I've tried Lord of the void daily but he just wipes the floor with my enforcer (who is decently geared / 219). A doctor's heals at 200 are laughable. Setting XP to 90/10% SK/research and going to try to catch the doctor up just for the better heals.

What's the best way to farm AI experience when you're running a full team? LE missions are ok.. but slow. I was thinking about going into arid rift and just killing stuff but my doc needs 201. Will probably try it tonight.

Anyone else running a team of 6 or more with some success?

[evilution]

A inferno new tip that i found works well for me.

I pull new inferno hards and let 2 of the NPC's die. that way you can just stand at the "left" NPC and everything comes to you.

Inferno mediums are actually better xp/hr but hards have a chance of spawning an Albtrum wave before the last wave which gives you loot from Albrtum as well as symbiants from the last 2 bosses to make some credits.

Next if anyone out there is running a multibox "raid' crew what is your ideal group setup? Would it be possible to "solo" S42 with 12 toons?

It makes ZERO sense to be putting this much $ into a 15 year old game but for some reason I'm enjoying the challenge.

[evilution]

So all of my group is now 220. Working on AI levels and research. Most of the toons are working on level 10 researches and the AI 20-30 grind.

Arid Rift is a "good" place to grind... really the only place if you just want to mindlessly press your attack key while you watch TV. Doing AI daily's in your 20s is definitely a better time/xp investment. The aliens leash too easily so it's hard to really get a good stack.

Killing Dreadloch boss's is fairly easily doable, I've been farming Assault Commander Pax trying to get my doctor and crat some guns. Sometimes it goes sideways because the adds do not seem to be tauntable and if the doctor gets agro healing gets hard.

Tried to do Pandemonium and wiped on the first pull. Need to develop some skills outside of tab, q, mongo mongo mongo heh.

[evilution]

Was able to go around pande finding my way around, the respawn is pretty quick so you need to keep moving. I think I know how to get to TNH now so I an try to get some belts to make getting alpha's on easier... Just need to do it.

Finished the DB quest line, wiped a few times because the final NPC you're supposed to protect 1-hit kills you if you tab target him (oops!!) and again because I didn't notice the boss NPC spawn and 2-shot my doctor.

Going to try to focus on mitar and ipande now.

I think I need to replace my fixer with an engineer for reflects and DPS and probably replace the MP with another crat (only need the MP once every 8 hours anyhow ;))

[evilution]

Cleared iPande up to the final boss fairly easily. A lot less mobs but they made the "reds" hit like a truck. I will usually get a re-pop or two in the time it takes to kill the side bosses, need to up my new toon's damage.

Took a run at The Beast but killed myself to the reflect shield and didn't try going back. Will give it another go tonight.

Going to try mitaar by putting my doc on the blue and the rest of the toons on the red. Pretty sure the 11k hits are no big deal to heal through. My team has enough damage that it's non-stop spirit spawns, I'll just break the cocoons with the pets.

Probably going to PL 3 new alts, a keeper for 12man, an engineer, and another crat.

[Korruptor]

Good info @evilution! You seem to be doing quite well. It's good to see another AO player into MB'n. I don't have any advice for you but it sounds like you have a pretty good handle on this.

How is /follow working for you? Do you have to spam it to keep them altogether?

[evilution]

Follow works ok..ish. the servers are laggy. I often just take little pauses or stop and jump when I need to make a hard turn. Jumping causes your characters to get closer because follow is just an absolute distance thing.

I started a new keeper, soldier, and engineer last weekend, already 210/8s with research. picked the soldier instead of the crat for I don't know what reason ... I'll probably regret it and level 3 or 4 new tools in a couple weeks.

I've been told keeper ward effect is the key to ez mode beast / raid farming. we will see!

[Korruptor]

I sent you a PM, lets meet up in-game some time.

[Korruptor]

@evilution
Just in case you hadn't seen this behavior yet I figured I'd mention it. I noticed the other day that when you exit the new beta client for AO, the executable remains in memory and they begin to pile up. When you encounter stability issues check the task manager to see how many executables are still present in memory and clear out the stray processes. Maybe there is a correlation? For me the correlation was crappy performance and when I checked I had 5 other instances running.

[evilution]

So back for another update.

My new toons are 220/67/30-ish. Lots of AI grinding done. Tons of +XP gear helped a lot (I think i was rolling with over 100% XP gain with crat buffs). Finished the DB quests. Able to farm DB2 with 4 characters (Enf/doc/keeper/crat). More than 4 is too much to keep track of but luckily with crat debuffs and keeper buffs the boss barely does any damage so you can focus on getting the toons to the cloud to avoid debuffs.

I'm now able to farm Sector 28/13/35. 28 is terrible, HUGE spawn waves because AO is buggy and can trigger multiple instant cast spells all at once (the ambush spawns are triggered by a instant cast spell by an invisible npc)

Mitaar is a snooze. My doctor has to cast a couple of heals before he dies now. Crat init debuffs are silly.

I have also been able to start "farming" The Beast. It's really hard, I usually wipe over and over until I get lucky with a good 2nd spawn and the boss doesn't AE nuke, doesn't clear my HP buffs, and doesn't clear his init debuffs while I'm dealing with the ads. Any advice on dealing with the beast would be greatly appreciated. Hell I'd tip in game credits for some strategy advice. It can take me about 5 hours to clear to him and get em down, so frustrating.

[evilution]

So I've swapped to the old client and HotKeyNet. The stability issues of the DX9 client were just too much to deal with.

It took some work but I've got a script that act's mostly like ISBoxer did for me.

Here is a sample of what I'm using for a 6 man team. Hope this helps get someone started.

I attempted to put the script here but the post was too long, so here it is on PasteBin.

http://pastebin.com/6XA5rcEz

Feedback appreciated!

[Thorsbrew]

Hey there. I played this game off and on for nearly 10 years. Quit a couple years ago though I did do lots of multiboxing. At my peak i was multiboxing 8 accounts but this was only for a couple years, most of my years were spent with 3-4 accounts but i can surely offer some advice.

As for your crashes and inferno mission issues i cant say as my multiboxing took place before the new engline client and using hotkeynet not isboxer as that couldnt be used without DX9. Seems you've fixed your issues by going to HKN and old client anyway though. Thats a shame because the new engine using isboxer was one of the nice features.

Starting attack being an issue as its a toggle? Just use Q hotkey.

Interacting with quest NPC's was indeed always a PITA but i had hoped using isboxer would allow me to have a second screen with my follow toons that i could see when they all got the chat window open and use mouse repeater to click dialogue (which i actually used a mouse repeat function to do that very thing with HKN i just had to swap to every screen individually to first open chat). Alas i left game before that ever became an option. I still kept all my old HKN scripts i accumulated over the years that i can offer you which may give you some insight on all the options (there are many ways to go about getting things to work, i'd still prefer isboxer though).

Before i quit i managed to box mitaar/vortex no problem, sector 35 i did as well, DB1, certain dreads and pretty much all of the instances save for 42. I did get to beast and only attempted him a few times. I got him to 50% many times but always failed on the adds. The aoes and reflect were manageable with crat debuffs but the adds overwhelmed me. If i stayed around longer perhaps i could have found a way. I've heard that trader nano drains can stop his ability to cast debuffs. Doubt the MP could land NSD. (Oh the team i ran for the biggest attempts was...if i can remember right, crat/crat/doc/enf/engi/ma and when 8 boxing i added another doc and engi). Yeah i wanted to have as much DD as possible hehe. The second doc made things a lot smoother.

For mitaar yeah i put doc and crat on blue, rest on red and just snoozed through it.

I've thought about coming back from time to time but i dont have my old accounts anymore and the game is just too low pop for me. Plus the prices have gone just nuts. When i left it had gotten very difficult to be able to find enough people to sell anything to to pay for grace. At this point it looks virtually impossible. Assume you pay the subscription with cash?

I've contemplated giving WoW a try. It doesnt have the same feeling to me as AO had but then again multiboxing was always my main enjoyment and WoW has a rich history of things to make multiboxing a whole lot funner and easier (MUCH easier looting than AO, interact with target and so much more i dont even know about) so i may actually be able to find more fun in it despite the fantasy theme. Not to mention a whole lot more population so it should be a breeze to earn gold for game time.

Good luck!

[Tyralyon]

Hello! Just came across this site/thread through Google and thought I'd share my experiences.
We are not using any program, just good old tabbing between multiple characters, but me and a friend have been running a total of 8 accounts trying to do raids.

We have found, after a lot of trial and error, a strategy that works on the Beast. The problem with the adds is that they attack the docs, so we have a 190 engi permalogged on platform.

Our team consists of Enfo/Keeper/Engi/Crat/2x Docs and the engi on platform.
Every now and then the docs take turns using Insurance Reclaim Beacon to warp to Pande Garden (or any garden as long as they are saved in SL) and the engi on platform warps them back. This clears all built up agg that the docs have made.
The platform engi is in raid team #1 and has everyone anchored. He is also raid leader and can swap docs back and forth to warp. Everyone else is in raid team #2.

We are currently leveling a trader as well, cause we just learned that they can drain Beast's nano. Should make things a lot easier when the enfo doesn't have to recast HP buff all the time :)

Now, a question:
We tried s35 yesterday and failed miserably, any tips on strategy there? We read that enfo can't mongo, which makes it seemingly impossible. There's just too many adds and we couldn't keep all of them off the towers. Is this misinformation and enfos can actually mongo, or is there another better strategy?
It seemed mobs spawned in 3 different locations. We had an idea about using fixer and crat to snare the adds on 2 sides and enfo to mongo on 3rd side, outside range of towers.

[Tyralyon]

For anyone who might stumble upon this thread in the future; We now managed to do S35.
The AOU guide is a little misleading as there's no problem for an enfo to do mongo, and you only need one of the 3 towers to survive.
We had no problems keeping enfo alive, but he needs to be on his toes to mongo aliens off of the tower(s). I think the best strategy is to concentrate on one tower and make sure it survives. Can probably more or less ignore the other two.
The hardest part with S35 is by far the waves of aliens. Once the two bosses spawn, you'll be hard pressed to fail. They are rather gimpy compared to the other sector bosses. AOU suggests two tanks, but that is really not necessary. Kill support boss first, then the marshal. The marshal seemed to still have reflect up a good while after support died, but eventually it disappeared and he went down without much trouble.