New to Multiboxing - Justing starting off...
I wanted to say hello and share my first experiences with Multi-boxing.
I started about 4 days ago with a holy-trinity group (Paladin Tank, Priest Healer, and three Mage DPS'ers). I've spent most of my time standing around perfecting my macros but once I got started it was pretty straight forward. I chose humans since Trial accounts don't allow creation of Draenei characters and the Human racial Diplomacy will help with the reputation grind in BC.
The biggest pain has been with the Collection quests (E.g. Bring Bob 20 pig livers). How are there so many Pigs running around with no livers?? I found the best way to deal with that was to collect the items on each toon one at a time (E.g Kill mob, follow main, move my main up to and to the side of the corpse, move cursor over to the appropriate client window, and loot it. Rinse and repeat until each toon has all their Quest items. Its very important that you move your main to the side of the corpse rather than straight up to it because when you go to loot it, your entire group will be bunched up on the corpse. If you've positioned your main correctly, you should have a clear view of the corpse on each of your clients making it easy to loot without having to hunt for it. The Broadcasting software I'm using allows you to setup a Virtual KVM which allows you to use the mouse on one PC and control both the local cursor as well as the cursor on the remote machine. Its important to set the "Follow mouse" or some-such setting so you don't have to click in each client window to interact with it. On items that can be looted by multiple toons at the same time, I used a /sript SetView(2); macro which I would press before looting which would align the viewing angle of my secondary clients allowing me to click once to loot items for each toon.
For Interface and Dialogue navigation I set the resolution on all of my secondary clients to the same resolution and use Mouse Button broadcasting. Since the resolution was the same on my secondary clients the Quest Dialogues, Rewards, and Buttons are in the same place. I would highly recommend setting that as a "On Hold" (E.g hold down a key and Click a Mouse Button) action rather than a Toggle as you might forget to toggle it off and you never know what a miss-click might do, especially if you don't have all of your clients visible at one time.
My setup:
Dell XPS 410 Desktop Computer (2 Clients) & Dell XPS M1710 Portable (3 Clients).
I chose to use Octopus as my Key Broadcasting software. I know the Author recently stopped all development on this program, but it seems to work just fine for what I'm doing and best of all its Free.
Both of my machines run at 1920x1200 Resolution natively. I have my main screen set to 1280x1200 Resolution and all my other clients set to 640x1200 (I know it sounds weird but it works just fine). That was the optimal setting for me as I couldn't really deal with a really small main screen and I wanted to see what my other toons were doing without having to Alt-Tab. This also allows me to see all of my clients at a glance for things like Quest dialogues and Reward selections. I modified the in-game settings as well as the Config file in the WTF folder for best performance at the loss of Quality. Graphics Quality doesn't matter to me as I won't be watching my other screens often. Same goes for sound, there is an option in Octopus to disable sound per-client or you can set it in-game.
Questing was a bit monotonous especially the various collection quests. For example, I had to loot 100 Red Bandanas from some Defias NPCs and the drop rate wasn't 100%. Needless to say that took a while as did all the other collection quests. Even though it was slow, I still think that questing and looting was the best way to get to 18 rather than Grinding mobs and I would be grinding mobs for most quests anyway.
At level 16 I attempted to run Deadmines. I got to the first boss and was easily pummeled to death. All my toons were out of mana and he was still at 45% Health. I made a second attempt which proved to be even more fruitless. My Tank only had 450 Hit Points and the boss was crushing me for 150 to 200 damage and my DPS wasn't high enough to take him down before going OOM. I was a bit stuck as I had completed all the quests in Elwyn Forest and what I thought were all the quests in Westfall. I forgot about the quests in Eastern Dun Morogh (Amberstill Ranch and Quarry) and Loch Modan! I also forgot about the Lighthouse quests in Westfall and the Hunter's Lodge and Plane Crash quest hubs in Loch Modan. After doing those quests I was able to level up to 18 and made a second attempt at Deadmines.
During my second run at Deadmines I was having trouble with my Sheep. My mages would sometimes sheep the wrong target or even the same target rather than the targets I set with the Focus macro. I was also occasionally having problems with them picking a random mob or even a sheep and attacking it rather than the target I was attacking. I found that the problem was latency related and once I started taking my time the macros worked flawlessly. The best piece of advice is to plan out each pull and set your Focus targets before you pull. Also, make sure you give your clients time to target the correct mobs before moving to the next target. Make sure you add a line in your Assist macro that reports back what Mob its targetting (E.g /p I'm Sheeping %f). I found often that when pressing the Assist macro, my Mages would say I'm Sheeping <No Focus> or they targetted the same NPC as the last mage. I hadn't noticed this at first (There's a lot to take in) but I started looking for reasons why the sheeping was being unreliable. Outside of targetting lag, there are range issues as well. If you can target the target its not guaranteed your mage can if they aren't at the same distance as you are from the mob.
Once I figured out the Sheeping issues everything went smoothly. The trick to the first boss is to solo pull him when he's furthest away from the two adds. The higher rank Fire Balls really made a big difference as did the Rank 1 Heal for the Priest. As soon as the boss is down a scripted Patrol will start coming up behind you. Make sure and mana up and move your group to the far end of the room opposite where you fought the boss. This will give you extra time to set your sheep targets and calm down from the Boss fight. The trick to the second boss is clearing the adds first. Make sure and mark the patrols and the boss before you do anything so you can see where they are when out of sight. I was able to pull all but the first two mobs solo which made it very easy. I kept my secondary toons outside of the room and brought NPCs to them. Right before disabling the Mechanical suit, I PW: Shielded my Paladin and had him run the Boss away from my group and kept running accross the room as he went down. That allowed me to drink before engaging Sneed (Big help). Remember there will be another Patrol coming up behind you. Move to the back corner and get ready for them. The next tricky area was the Goblin Foundry. Same goes here as the previous boss. Make sure and mark all patrols and take your time with Sheep marking in order to make smart decisions. Also be aware that the engineers make robotic toys that can do a decent amount of damage. Save your interrupts/stuns for that ability. A 3-man patrol will slowly move down the ramp, move to the door near where the Boss was standing and prepare to handle the patrol. I cleared to Mr Smite and this is were I started running into trouble. The inability to mark the stealthed rogue adds made it difficult to mark as you have to do it in combat. I think we took him down too fast and as I understand it he does more damage the less HP he has. I think next time I'll concentrate on killing the adds first then burning Smite down last. I was able to kill Smite after three attempts but the adds ended up wiping us. I ran back (Don't forget there are several scripted patrols that respawn often) and CCed one Rogue while we burned down the other. At that point it was getting really late and I knew that I wouldn't have enough time to clear the entire boat. I decided to jump in the water and swim over to the opposite side of the boat and Killed Cookie without any issues. Make sure to pull him onto the bridge rather than fighting him on the boat (He runs at low HP).
Well that's been my experience so far. The big take-aways are being aware of targetting lag (Be patient! Even in combat) and learn to handle the Panic that you feel when things go wrong. Once I was able to stop panicking, I was much better able to handle bad pulls or lag issues. If you guys are interested, I can keep posting my experiences as I explore more content and get more skilled in Multiboxing.
US Madoran Server - Alliance
RE: New to Multiboxing - Justing starting off...
Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Joshaze',index.php?page=Thread&postID=91348#post9 1348
The biggest pain has been with the Collection quests (E.g. Bring Bob 20 pig livers). How are there so many Pigs running around with no livers??
I hate this aspect of WoW collection quests, but I guess some body parts aren't found because you destroyed them trying to kill the beast. That's my reasoning for it anyway.
RE: RE: New to Multiboxing - Justing starting off...
Quote:
Originally Posted by '-silencer-',index.php?page=Thread&postID=91419#post91419
Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Joshaze',index.php?page=Thread&postID=91348#post9 1348
The biggest pain has been with the Collection quests (E.g. Bring Bob 20 pig livers). How are there so many Pigs running around with no livers??
I hate this aspect of WoW collection quests, but I guess some body parts aren't found because you destroyed them trying to kill the beast. That's my reasoning for it anyway.
What I wanna know is why are random animals walking around with magical weapons and armor? And where do they hide it? Did the pigs eat some green boots or something? And why do Worgen have money? Do they stop by darkshire and buy some bread???
