Newbie, setting up and looking for advice/comments

[Triss]

Hi all

I just decided to try out dual boxing and want to make sure I'm heading down the right track. Having read through as much of these forums as I can get away with at work, I'm now extremely impressed but a bit overwhelmed by the options and possibilities!

My needs aren't all that complicated. I'm not really interested in going more than 2 accounts at a time. Briefly, what I want to be able to do is a) use a high level character to help level lower level chars with quests and instances (I'm an alt addict!) and b) have both my high level characters do their dailies at the same time. I've got a holy Paladin and a Prot warrior, awesome for raiding and when my guild needs me for anything, not so good for doing dailies. The warrior has a pretty good dps set but could do with a healer (repair bills somewhat defeat the purpose of doing dailies) and while the paladin doesn't die much, she takes forever to kill anything, or if she's in her dps gear she has no mana pool and has to drink after just about every kill. Together however I think things would be much easier. If I don't prove to be completely unco

Firstly, hardware. I'm using a single PC so my first task was to upgrade my poor old AMD 3500. It served me well for 3 years but it really was time for an upgrade. Now have an Intel dual core 3 GHz with 4 Gb memory. Wasn't looking to spend megabucks and I'm seriously happy with the increased performance. I've also got an 8800GT vid card and 2 monitors.

So far so good, I now have 2 copies of WoW in separate folders on the PC, and have transferred 2 of my characters (the warrior and my 52 hunter) to my second account. I've now managed to set both games up in windowed mode (one with resize disabled) so I can get one to appear full screen on my main (widescreen) monitor, and the "slave" account is maximised (but not fullscreen) at 1024x768 on my old 17" CRT. Ok it's a little fuzzy and I have to drag it over and maximise every time I run the game, but what the hey, it does the job. It allows me to switch quickly and easily to my second screen if I need to.

Now for the fun part. Software. I'm debating what to use. I'm looking at free solutions for now because I am just starting out, I may switch to one of the paid apps when I figure out what I'm doing or if I want to take this idea further. For now I'm considering using MultiboxerV2 and Autohotkey. Having my second character auto accepting quests and taxi rides and following me would be extremely handy. Or is there a better solution out there to Autohotkey and Multiboxer that I haven't considered? Most of the tools I've read about seem to be for multiple computers and that's not what I'm running. As mentioned at the start I got a bit overwhelmed.

Anyway... how am I doing so far? I only finished setting up the second game copy last night but then I had a raid to go to so I didn't get to play with it. Planning to get the boxing software sorted tonight if I can before server maintenance. Can't wait to give it all a try!

(Edit: Dang, sorry if this is TL: DR, I have to learn to type less! 8| )

[Klamor]

i personally like AHK... it's great because i only use two accounts and i'm not really sure if i have enough money or am happy with multiboxing enough to make it worthwhile to get all that other stuff...

if you're looking for some gold, you prolly already figured this out, but you can have your holy pally follow your warrior around with the daily quests... just make two macros for your pally to target your warrior and use either a flash heal or a regular heal and bind them to unused keys

you've got the right idea with everything and i hope all goes well for you

[Triss]

Thanks Klamor! And yep, having the pally following and healing was pretty much the idea. Just hoping I don't lose her whenever I hit charge. Guess I'll wait and see how that works

[Tidomann]

Autofollow's range is still far enough for charge.

[ThisIsDrakul]

I like HotKeyNet. It is more user-friendly than AHK and very well supported. It is also very functional. There is nothing I want to do that I can't do with HKN

Katharis has done some very cool stuff with running multiple windows on 1 PC (using HKN) He has arranged it so there is a 'hole' in his main's WoW window so that he can see the minimap of his slave and his main for gathering purposes.....VERY COOL. I am almost tempted to redesign my setup to try this!!

Might be worth you having a quick play with HKN.....it also has a very light footprint, and easy to install/uninstall.

[Triss]

Thanks so much for the tip about using HotKeyNet Drakul, you're right, it's sooo much easier to set up than AutoHotKey which I just couldn't get working at all.

Sadly by the time I switched to HotKeyNet I had just enough time to set up my first few basic macros when the server shut down. :cursing: X(

So now I can't wait to get home and have another crack at it...

[ThisIsDrakul]

Great. Glad to help......If you have any questions don't hesitate to post

[Ghallo]

If you have the time to look into it, I would really recommend Octopus. I use version 1.3 and it works great. It works fine on a single box (you don't "HAVE" to have multiple boxes). You can set it up to the point where it will open each window on the correct screen, ready to go (full sized, or custom sized). I even have it configured so that each toon runs on their own processor, and when WoW launches it has the correct toon selected. You can disable mouse broadcasting if you want - but I love it for selecting the FP/Quest givers on both screens at the same time. I also use MBV2- great little app.

A note about Octopus - set it to Blacklist at first, and only broadcast specific keys to your alt. It is easier that way when you have established toons.



For addons, I would HIGHLY suggest getting Trinity Bars 2.0 - the ability to set buttons to type "Macro" means they are not stored server side - so that when you want to take your pally raiding again you don't have to re-arrange all your bars.

[keyclone]

howdy Triss and welcome to the forums!

up until recently, i was on an amd 3500+ single core with 3G of memory and an 8800GT OC. i was able to 5 box on it and get 5/25 fps ... all using keyclone.

i have not found a need for more then 1 folder, unless you have multiple drives. even then, if you have a SATA drive, it should be fine by itself.

if you use keyclone, check out the maximizer... it really makes the game screens look awesome (don't forget to auto-hide your system-tray)



(and yes... it works across multiple screens). you also get the pip capability... which comes in real handy if you lose one of them.

if you have any questions about setup (or would like a walk thru)... please feel free to drop me a note.

have a great night and welcome to the addiction

Rob

[Valgorite]

For addons, I would HIGHLY suggest getting Trinity Bars 2.0 - the ability to set buttons to type "Macro" means they are not stored server side - so that when you want to take your pally raiding again you don't have to re-arrange all your bars.

This has been a pain in my side forever! I know this isn't an addon forum, but could you elaborate on this a bit. I'd love to do this for diff specs of classes too wehre you change your buttons (until your next respec back). Feel free to PM me if that's a better option. THanks!

I currently use trinity bars..just never tried/used the macro button types. Wanna make sure I completely understand what yer sayin here =)