RedSorc - I tried boxing DDO about 6 or 7 years ago iirc. Its very fuzzy in my memory, but I seem to recall lots of alt-tabbing to toggle targets and actions, even with a gamepad to control one character and keyboard/mouse for the other. What is your method for handling targeting/movement simultaneously with both?Originally Posted by RedSorc
I am 3-boxing Lotro now (used to do 6-box a while ago but then took a long break), since many dungeons in Lotro had been reworked to have an option to do them in small fellowship (3x) in addition to regular 6x mode. The game does not have a macro system, and its combat abilities key-press system is very clunky, as 1 key-press will start (queue) an ability, but second key-press will cancel it if you hit it while it is still queued and not committed. That said, there is an awesome plugin called "Sequence Bars" ("SB") https://www.lotrointerface.com/downl...uenceBars.html, that takes away most of the multiboxer's pains on slave characters. The game is allowing plugins to use fairly large API surface, so in building you rotations with SB you can use build-in constructs like "if then", or "if else" with checks for certain game events or states like debuffs, your or target hp, hunter focus, block response, whether the skill is off cooldown and many others, all from within the plugin UI from selectable drop-downs (or even use direct LUA scripts if you are so inclined). So you can craft fairly advanced rotations with nested "if elses". SB also alleviates the above mentioned deficiency of double clicking a skill and cancelling it. It requires mouse clicking one of the slots on the bar to advance it, which is not key-bindable, but with IsBoxer or AHK it is easy to do for slaves, but still awkward for my main character (which I prefer to play mostly normally anyway). SB has user events built-in, which are key-bindable - and can be used to control which bar is active. It also has a feature of snapping under the mouse when a configurable event(s) occur - like user event or change of target, start of combat etc. - so as I said it works really great for slaves, however many you have.
World content and story is what most play Lotro for, and there's tons of it. Many quests have "click x objects", but those objects are targetable and interact-able via keybind. Follow/Assist etc - all work well too. You can also configure in-game options like movement assist, where character with turn to face target if combat skill is pressed or run up to target if melee skill is being used and the distance is wrong, or skill forwarding which makes your toon to use his harmful skills on target's target (like your main's target), so those features are quite boxer-friendly. Lotro is pretty expensive though if you want to go past free content, each expansion is like $40, and some dlcs are not free either. You can earn some of the currency you can buy stuff with in-game while competing achievements (deeds), but still something to be aware of. On the positive side - once you own a piece of content, you have it for life, no need for sub or anything, so you can take a break at any time and then come back and resume where you left off, this works great for my play style. Like in battle-net, you can have one account with sub-accounts for all your characters.
My 2 cents.
Last edited by akourbat : 11-07-2020 at 07:54 AM
LOTRO is pretty boxable and has a reasonably large community.
The main issue I have with investing in it is the amount of money it costs. It's supposedly "F2P" but everything is locked behind a pay wall. If you don't unlock the expansions the quest and dungeon content is extremely limited and to unlock everything will cost like $150 per account. If you want a full fellowship (party) that's a pretty significant investment.
Yes, this is true. There was a summer give-away event in Lotro (covid related) where you could get most quest packs for free and some expansions for nearly free, but it is gone now. Still you can get away with slow progression and doing most if not all deeds in the zone before leaving it, which gives you almost enough LPs (currency) to unlock next zone and so on. Besides, deeds also give you virtue XP, which boost your virtue traits (read combat stats) - so it is something you'd need to do anyway if you want a well-rounded character. But yeah, the money grab is there, and a lot of players complain about it. My main is life-time VIP (cost me $99 at a time and was my best game investment lol), so that helps my team some, as VIP gets monthly free LP allocation that paid for all expansions on that sub-account. I still need to spend money on my other 2 sub-accounts when I want to go to new expansion zones etc. This is also one of the reasons I cut-down my fellowship from 6 to 3.
Most people would buy some content to allow progression to say lvl 60 or 70 - like Moria expac, and then spend LPs they accumulate from deeds on additional content when it is on sale.
Last edited by akourbat : 11-07-2020 at 08:40 AM
Yeah, I would use caution before investing too much in boxing FFXIV, as dungeons got progressively more difficult to box with each expansion due to mechanics on boss fights (there is good thread here with videos/walkthroughs if you wanna have a look what it looks like in dungeons https://isboxer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=41111#p41111). Besides, the game now has a "Trust" dungeon system where you can complete most of latest expansion's dungeons with a party of game's main character NPCs and some beginner dungeons too (up to lvl 60) with a squad system (also NPCs).
Last edited by akourbat : 11-07-2020 at 09:10 AM
That could be a long answer, but I'll try my best to cram it into a length that doesn't derail the thread!
Basic Controls. The general principle is that I use my keyboard for one character, and an MMO mouse (specifically this one) to control the other. I primarily use ESDF as movement keys to guide the left-hand character, and I have the righthand window generally focused so that I can use the side buttons on the mouse to move while using right click and drag to steer.
In this setup, I have the two clients in two windows split-screen with a vertical divide on one monitor, rather than giving one character a single monitor. I do this because I find it easier to watch both characters at the same time when their windows are closer together.
This takes getting used to, but over time I've gradually become comfortable moving two characters around simultaneously. If I have to do precise movement (like a platforming section or dodging through traps) I'll usually do it one character at a time.
Character Selection. Choice of character build is important in any multiboxed MMO, but particularly important here, as you want to make your life as simple as possible. Generally, we are looking for characters that do not have many buttons to press and are very forgiving in terms of targeting. In addition, whilst DDO does generally not need a party to have a tank character, it can be very helpful here to have one of your characters be a very durable self-healer that is capable of maintaining aggro, as it means that your other character will not have to dodge and weave so much.
So, I'm looking for a "Tank" and a ranged auto-attacker. My current combo is to use a Enlightened Spirit Warlock as the tank like this (tanks using his crazy refreshing temporary hitpoints, the temp HP also keeps healer hirelings alive, plus almost all his damage is AoE auras and blasts so it doesn't matter which way he points) and a Rogue Mechanic like this (Can handle traps, almost all damage is done through pure auto-attacks and has access to almost all skills as he's INT-based).
If you don't have access to Warlocks (they are a premium class), then the Warlock could be replaced with any two-handed weapon fighting melee character. With the new THF strikethrough rules, THF is effectively an AoE attack so its not so important where you are aiming as long as you get the general area right. A barbarian would work well, a paladin would also be great, a warchanter bard would also be interesting as an option to replicate the ES Warlocks temp HP.
Another strong option in a different paradigm would be to go for two palemaster wizards. Double Death Auras mean double healing ticks to add tankiness, you get two pets for pulling levers and standing on pads, you can give one of them a couple of levels of rogue to do traps, having double necrotic blast removes some of the frustration from fighting undead as one necrotic blast will apply unholy avatar, and the second necrotic blast will obliterate the pack. There are more buttons to press, but you can duplicate those button presses to both characters. The team is also a bit more able to act independently of one another in rare situations where that's necessary (e.g. House C challenges, VoN6, Xorian Cipher).
Targeting. With our choice of characters in mind, allowing us some leeway here, we have a couple of ways of dealing with targeting.
Generally speaking, I have a master DPS rotation button that acts as my team's "heartbeat" using a custom ISBoxer keybind. This heartbeat alternates between mashing relevant damage abilities and targeting enemies. I generally bind it to mouse wheel, so I'm rolling the mouse wheel the entire time I'm fighting.
For the targeting aspect of the hotkey, one approach is to simply mash the "target nearest enemy" hotkey in the heartbeat and be done with it. This is particularly fine for THF melee characters, as attacking something within melee range is about as specific as they need to be.
You can also do an assist on your unselected character. There actually is an "Assist" function buried in DDO's keybinds somewhere. In this case, your ISBoxer heartbeat would do the following in order:
- First Press: Target the character in the presently selected window.
- Second Press: Hit the assist key.
- Third Press: Hit any dps buttons. Do not advance past this step for a second or so.
Note if anyone reading is unaware: In your "Basic Feats" section of your character sheet, there is a toggle-able auto attack ability. When this is toggled on, your character will automatically attack your current target without having to hold down the left mouse button, meaning you only have to worry about abilities.
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There's probably a lot more advice to give, but we should probably get our own thread if I'm going to go on much more than that. If it would be helpful to anybody, I'd be perfectly happy to put together a video to show how to stitch this all together and show how it works in game.
Yes please start a new thread on how to dual-box DDO with video(s) if you can/want to.
DDO is a fantastic game with near infinite progression and play-ability with an amazing amount of dungeons and includes some of the best content ever created in any game.
Not counting leaving alts at entrances or the few "king of the hill" instances where you could park your party at a location and the mobs all come at you I could only ever dual-box DDO and even then I typically just did thing solo with a trapper capable character...
My DDO dual-boxing often leveraged toggling on/off autorun with direction adjustments over time and auto-tab-targeting and wasn't really ideal and yours sounds much better so I would love to see it in action and better understand the details to make it smoother...
If you can put what info you can on which duo you can run in Reaper mode would also be especially appreciated as I stopped playing DDO before reaper became the biggest end game scene and not sure which builds, are dual-boxable or soloable in reaper (especially also being able to do traps/chests and find secrets).
Last edited by nodoze : 11-07-2020 at 10:12 AM
Hello everyone,
lately I have been wow classic and wow boxing (isboxer) I have now moved to the Rizlona server after Everquest 1.
I box 5 magicians and 1 bard for the start. Bard is a girl for everything. 5 magicians with pets are very powerful. And it is a lot of fun. I will probably never play Wow again after what hppened.
So I can only recommend Everquest 1, it is more than just an alternative to WOW.
Maybe I will see you soon in Norrath.
Sorry for my bad english.
Have a nice day
Hi,
Since the nerf to WOW multiboxing I have been multiboxing Everquest 1 on my own private server. I can do 54 boxes on a single computer. Not sure if self promotion is against the rules or not, I only casually follow the forums. I have posted many youtube videos for most of my stuff. This is my intro video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUbxvZjyAmo, and this a video on how to setup a server: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HsoVkokoI0. My channel is here: https://youtube.com/c/hammackj. I found this a lot more enjoyable than mutliboxing World of Warcraft. I hope this might help someone. If you have any questions please let me know.
-Yurd
I've been really wanting to do this with Lineage 2, i tried it many years ago but it was too difficult to get a decent clone server up.
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