What are the recommended precautions one can employ when botting in Classic WoW?

[Lafawnduh]

So I realize that any form of botting comes with some level of inherent risk. I get that.

However, I'm coming in cold to the botting scene, and want to be using it in Classic WoW for what I hope is a relatively low risk purpose. What I'm looking for are any suggestions from those who have botted substantially in Classic WoW over the past 8 months, as to how to best protect myself here.

Some background:
- I currently have two BNet accounts - each with their own WoW account. I will call them Acct-1 and Acct-2. Acct-1 is my main account, but I wouldn't want to lose either as I have geared 60s on both. My primary goal here is to not put either of these two accounts at risk with any of my planned botting activities.
- I have two desktop PCs at home. My newest PC, which I will call PC-1, is my main PC. And my old PC, which I will call PC-2, is a spare PC I have lying around.
- Acct-1 has only ever been run on PC-1, since Classic WoW launch. (However, Acct-1 was used on PC-2 in 2013-2016 for playing WoW retail at the time, as I hadn't yet built PC-1)
- Acct-2 was used on PC-2 for the first couple months of the August-September timeframe, but for the most recent 6 months, I just run two sessions of BNet on PC-1 and run both of my active accounts on that PC.


Here is my plan (with some questions sprinkled in):
- I would create a third BNet account (which I'll call Acct-3), with it's own new WoW subscription - using a fake name/email, and simply loading it with 30 days of playtime from game time I buy on a 3rd party site.
- I would only ever use Acct-3 on PC-2, which has recently been completely reformatted with a fresh install of Windows 10.
Question 1: Does using PC-2 cause any risk of associating this new Acct-3 with either Acct-1 or Acct-2 based on their previous history of being used on PC-2? Meaning, if Acct-3 were to worst case get banned, does Blizzard have a history of ever also banning other accounts that at one time were used on that IP/HW ID? Even if that usage was months or years prior?
Question 2: Would using a VM on PC-2 be recommended as a means to obfuscate this association? If so, would you recommend VMWare or VirtualBox?
- All I need my bot to do is to allow a parked character out in the world be anti-afk and auto-relog (in the event of random D/C's) for 4-6 hours at a time. In an effort to go unnoticed, I would be leaving my character in ghost form - so I'd only have to worry about other player ghosts spotting me.
- In my research so far, either Lua unlocker (EWT or Luabox) should have anti-afk and auto-relog capability built-in. I'm leaning towards using EWT, due to the cheaper cost. It would be used in Safe Mode, as my understanding is that is basically a requirement for it to work with Classic WoW for more than 5 minute stretches.
Question 3: For my usage needs, does anyone have any reasons why I should steer away from EWT? Should EWT work with either VM choice above (VMWare vs VirtualBox)?
Question 4: Has anyone had any problems with EWT in the past couple months with Classic WoW? And do the anti-afk and auto-relog features still work? My understanding is that Classic WoW has increased sensitivity to going afk to combat all of the queue dodgers, so I want to make sure the anti-afk will actually still work for 4-6 hour stretches. Anyone with direct experience doing this in Classic WoW in the last month or two would be good to hear from here.
- Then the last piece I'm considering is using an addon like AFKGuard or the Z Whisper tool that I've read about on these forums, which would allow me to externally get notified when people whisper or say anything near me. This way I could reply to those people remotely, which would hopefully combat the risk of getting manually reported by other players while I'm afk.
Question 5: I assume using any tools/addons beyond EWT adds additional risk, correct? For my usage, do you think it would be better to use the addons so that I can whisper people back remotely? Or would it be lower risk to just allow myself to be manually reported, but EWT would be the only software I'd be using.
Question 6: If Acct-3 were to ever get banned while used on PC-2 (which is a risk I'm willing to take as it won't be the end of the world for me to lose Acct-3), does Blizzard also flag the IP or HW ID of PC-2 at that point forever? Meaning, would any future accounts attempted for botting be insta-banned or at least more easily trigger a ban - effectively making PC-2 unusable for future botting attempts?

I think those are all my main questions for now! Any insight or comments are appreciated!

Assuming I end up going with EWT+AFKGuard inside a VM on PC-2 (pending everyone's insight), I'm also willing to pay someone to help me set up everything. If you have experience with those tools and botting in Classic WoW and would be willing to offer your services, please DM me! We could do a screen share and voice chat through Discord.

[Zamasu]

im curious too