This is a direct response to a blog posted earlier by Salos5, He posted some really great tips on how to keep your account extremely safe while botting part time. After reading his tips, I started thinking... and I decided to post my method of botting, which is a bit more "hard core" method using multiple accounts. After reading this guide (combined with the other half of it to be posted next week) you should be able to farm mats using any bot of your choice on one (or more) accounts, and then safely transfer them to a "MAIN" account for use in crafting or obtaining gold etc.
This method has been extremely profitable for me personally... I know there are people out there who bank a LOT more gold and/or cash than me, but I dont put much time into this method. Once I got it setup it has basically kept itself running for over a year now with only about 1-2 hours/day of hands-on effort by me.
You should go check out Salos5's Blog on safe botting which can be found HERE
but if you prefer a bit more in-depth method, one that has allowed me to bot pretty much 24/7 for over a year with no bans, while still allowing me to enjoy my "main" account that has never even got as much as a warning or a funny look... then read on
STOP AND READ BEFORE PROCEEDING
***DISCLAIMER***
Though I have had an exceptional level of success using the botting methods you are about to read, and I would swear by them to be among the safest methods out there for using a bot and not getting banned... I do not want to give anyone the impression that these methods are fail proof. It is NEVER 100% safe to dabble in the game of botting... there is always a chance that you will get banned, my goal is simply to reduce that chance as much as possible so I can enjoy my main account with all my epicness, while still having the perks of being rich from botting. BOTTING WILL GET YOU BANNED IF YOU GET CAUGHT. BOT AT YOUR OWN RISK. However, if you have made the decision to start botting already- the methods described below will reduce your chances of getting busted by a fairly large percentage.
That being said I take NO responsibility for anyones account getting banned... so please dont PM me raging on me if you do get banned.. if it happens you either did something wrong.. or you are amount the small percentage of people who just happened to get busted anyway.
ENJOY
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HOW TO GREATLY REDUCE YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING BANNED WHILE BOTTING
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THIS PARTICULAR METHOD DESCRIBED BELOW HAPPENS TO USE 5 ACCOUNTS
YOU DO NOT NECESSARILY NEED 5 ACCOUNTS TO CONDUCT THIS METHOD, THAT
JUST HAPPENS TO BE THE NUMBER I USE AND HAVE FOUND TO BE MOST PROFITABLE
You do, however need multiple accounts for this guide to be of much benefit to you... if you are strictly a one-account botter.. you would probably benefit more from Salos5's blog post which can be found HERE
The tips in his blog were spot on, and if you were to follow the tips you would have an extremely LOW chance of a ban, they do however decrease productivity by quite a bit (which is totally fine for some people who just want to boost their income a small amount, without cutting into their play style too much). This is in no way a bash or a challenge to Salos5's blog post.. it is if anything a compliment... he even got my +6rep because the tips he posted were really great for a particular type of botter. But it inspired me to write the following, a guide.. or more or less an explanation of how I handle my botting ritual personally... it has been very profitable for me. DO NOT try this method without knowing a safe and solid way of transferring mats back to your main account though. I have developed one that has worked excellent for me (no bans for a year on my main account, and only 1 ban on a "bot only" account about 6 months back). I WILL BE RELEASING THAT METHOD in a few days, I am in the process of writing it up right now... so if you enjoy this post, keep your eyes open for the rest of it COMING SOON....
but anyway.. without further ado.... err... AD DO... err.... WAIT! (I cant spell)
ENJOY!!!
Personally I have 5 accounts currently active (1 of them is just a vanilla account with pretty much nothing on it thoughâŠ. That is explained later on in the thread)
Account 1: My MAIN account... this is the account that I acctually play on, has my best characters on it and I would NEVER bot on this account... itâs far too epic to lose. It is however, rich as hell as a result of botting :-)... and here is why.... on this account I have an Inscriptor, Blacksmith, Alchemist, Tailor, and JewelCrafter (all maxxed out... account has 3 MAIN 85 toons on it these are the ones I acctually play) All the mats from the following accounts get safely filtered over to this one (through secret safe methods that I am choosing not to disclose just yet.. but I have had bot accounts banned before and my main account has NEVER been detected or assumed connected to the bot accounts)
Account 2: My FARMING account... This account has 2 level 85 toons on it. One of them has Mining/Herbalism; the other has Skinning/mining. This account is basically botting farming herbs 20 or more hours a day. But isnât that high risk? Yes and no. It is certainly VERY high risk compared to someone who would use the methods described in the OPs post, but I do take as many precautions as I can given the circumstances. The main reason I am not really too concerned about it is... 1- The mats I am farming on this account are completely removed from it and safely transfered over to my main account on a daily basis, and 2- I really DONT care if this account gets banned. I consider it a risk of doing business. I donât WANT my farm account banned but in all honesty it is worth it to me to make as much gold (and in turn IRL Ca$h) as I do. If this account were to get banned I could have another farming account created, botted to 85, and have professions maxxed within a couple of weeks. This account has no vanity items or special gear etc, so if it does get lost all I am really losing are whatever mats I hadnât had a chance to transfer over yet. And considering that this account has been running 20+ hours a day pretty much constantly since WOTLK was released... itâs probably due for a ban TBH. I have had bot accounts banned many times in the past and I just get another one started immediately thereafter. Itâs a cost of doing business.
Account 3- This is another botting account, however it hasnât been running for farming purposes much lately as I havenât been going to the extreme of having 2 farmers going at once (have in the past.. but Iâve gone more "part time" in the last month or so) This account has 2 level 85s as well. One of them has Mining/Herbalism, the other has Skinning/mining (all the gathering professions just like the other one) in case I want to dual farm all day like I was before. This account also serves a couple of other purposes. 1- Its REALLY nice to have a spare botting account already good to go just in case account 2 does get banned (yes I could get another one up and running fairly fast as I said.. but this way I can have this one running almost immediately after the dust settles and I know its "safe" to bot again... while in the meantime I would be botting up a replacement for account 2) 2- This is also my PvP account. I am not a hardcore PvPer so none of the stuff I have would be devastating if lost. But I do spam bot BGs on this account so both of the characters are in full bloodthirsty gear, and have multiple PvP mounts. I also repeatedly max out honor on this account for the purpose of buying gems, heirloom gear, etc. And itâs nice to have 2 fairly decently geared PvP toons just in case I get in the mood to pwn some BGs or something on a weekend. but again there is nothing on this account that I canât afford to lose, and that I canât replace with little to no effort in a fairly small matter of time. Another disposable account that would be considered a cost of doing business if I were to lose it to a ban.
Account 4- Iâm not gonna go into quite as much detail on this account as itâs really nothing special (to the naked eye). The highest level toon on this account is 40ish (was used to farm parrots at one time... otherwise he would probably still be level 1). This account is currently my "bank". There are 3-4 active toons on it each with their very own guild bank with 4 tabs each. This account is where mats are (safely) transferred too, once they reach one of these bank toons they are then either A- Transferred to my MAIN account to be used to craft something, or B- auctioned off in smallish lots at a time if they are not needed at the moment. While they are waiting to be auctioned, or transferred for crafting they are stored in one of my guild banks that are all pretty much filled with high priced mats. That is one key point the OP hit dead on. DO NOT get rid of mats too fast because if THIS account were to get banned (in my case) I would be pretty upset as this is where a majority of my value is stored. Also, crafted items that I create on my MAIN account are NOT auctioned/traded etc from my main account... they are transfered to this account to be sold/stored etc. I have 4 bank toons on this account, and none of them have more than 20 auctions going at any given time. So yes I do end up with a massive abundance of things (hence my 4 full guild banks). But it is worth the wait, selling them too fast causes a couple of main issues... 1- it floods the market so your items (and everyone elses) arent worth squat anymore), and 2- it GREATLY increases your chance of a ban.
Account 5... Vanilla only, has about 3 or 4 level ones. This account is never "played" and is used only as a middle man account for transferring goods from my "bots" to my "bank" or "Main". I will get into this method in detail in next weeks article.. so be sure to read that or you are much more likely to pull a ban.
Accounts 1 and 4 I DO NOT want banned, and I would be pretty upset if either of them was banned... for that reason I do not bot on either of these accounts, I also do not communicate or trade directly between these accounts, nor with either of the bot accounts. All transfers are done by means of a guild bank and yet another account that I use for transfers only, sort of like a "middle man" that happens to possess a guild bank (but no items, gold etc are stored there... and that is only a vanilla account)
all said and done I have had characters gold capped on 9 or 10 separate occasions, I can afford pretty much anything I want in-game at any given time, my MAIN characters have all the best Enchants/Gems/BoE Gear ETC the second the first one goes on the AH. I also make a pretty decent amount of money selling gold, runs, BoEs etc for REAL LIFE CA$H.
So yes I pay for 5 accounts every month. But the accounts fund themselves... I EASILY make and sell enough gold to pay for all 5 of my accounts every month just in a fraction of my gold sales (plus I often just trade gold directly for gametime cards).
So all-in-all I think that Salos5 has some really great points about how to keep 1 account safe and sound while botting as much as you can. And I think if you do only have the means of possessing one account, and you still insist on botting, then ALL 10 of his tips are ones that you should follow. I however have a much different approach to botting and as soon as I read his thread I wanted to share that with you guys. There are many ways to go about your botting, but personally I REFUSE to bot on my main account even for a second. I donât care how âsafeâ I think I am being, I wonât even risk my main account or my bank account for a second. There is FAR too much time and value put into them, especially my main account considering that I am an active raider so I usually have some of the best gear available, and I am also a vanity pet and mount collector⊠many of the items I have cannot even be obtained anymore (Amani War Bear, Swift Zulian Tiger, Mimiron's Head, The Naxx proto drake etc).
So the moral of my thread is basically thisâŠ.
-IF you are more of a casual player and you donât have a lot to lose on your account, then go ahead and bot it and use the methods mentioned in Salos5's thread to keep it as safe as possible while doing so.
ButâŠ.
-IF you are a more hardcore player like me, and you have WAY too much to lose to even consider botting on your main account then you can certainly still profit from botting without putting your main account at risk. It doesnât have to cost you an arm and a leg either, I purchase ALL my gametime with money obtained by BOTTING⊠and I have purchased all my CD keys (aside from the first set) with money obtained from bottingâŠ..and if you arenât in it for the real life cash you can always trade your gold to a gold selling site as well. MOST gold selling sites will give you a decent amount of store credit and you can take that credit and use it to buy time on your existing accounts, OR more CD keys so you can have an account (or 5) designated specifically as BOT accounts.. That way you NEVER have to worry about losing your main account, and all your hard work or priceless items, all because you enjoy the perks of running a BOT.
On that note I would like to bring this thread to an end with some of my own TIPS for safe bottingâŠ
1- When possessing multiple accounts like I described in my thread, NEVER link them all to the same battle.net account. The reason for this is because if you do unfortunately get a bot ban on one of your accounts... you certainly donât want any of your other accounts connected with that banned account. Blizz can ban all the accounts on a bnet even if only one of them is caught botting (though they often donât)ž BUT even if they donât ban the connecting accounts at this time, you can bet your bottom dollar they will be keeping a close eye on the accounts that they left open.. This means no safer botting for you! Moral of the story? Create a new battle.net account EVERY TIME you make a new WoW account. Also if you have other Blizz games connected to your battle.net account... always link them to the account that you DO NOT plan to bot on. Though Blizz most likely wouldnât ban your SC2 account when you get busted botting on WoW⊠I have seen it happen, so better safe than sorry.
2- Use different names when creating battle.net accounts for botting. I always use my real name and correct info on my main account that way it can never get scammed permanently, deleted, lost etc. But whenever I make a new account that I intend to use for botting purposes only, I use a bogus name, address etc. This may not be 100% necessary and I donât have any material proof that it even matters... but to me it gives me the peace of mind that blizz has 1 less piece of information to connect my main account to my bot account(s)
3- NEVER get too attached to your âbotâ account. Remember that âbotâ accounts are only there for the purpose of BOTTING, and when you BOT you run a high risk of eventually being banned for it. This is why we have to keep reminding ourselves, that even though it may seem really tempting to gear up that fresh level 80 druid that you created to farm herbs⊠itâs NEVER going to amount to anything good in the end. Getting one of your BOTs banned is a mild irritation, that amounts to about a week or 2 of âworkâ (set the bot and wait lol), BUT losing your âbotâ account that you have decided to gear up, spend 100k on a fancy mount, get rare achievements etc with is WAY more frustrating. Decide what role an account is going to play when you create it (i.e.: Bot account, Main account, PvP account, Bank account etc) and stick with it. Never change the role of an account either. I know this from personal experience, one time back in BC I decided to start playing on my bot account full time. So I started getting all sorts of fancy gear, transferred my gold there, got him an epic flyer etc... And guess what? It got hit with a ban wave over a month laterâŠ. This brings me to my next tip.
4- DONâT EVER ASSUME YOU GOT AWAY WITH ANYTHING. I have seen and heard of accounts being âflaggedâ or âwatchedâ and then not getting banned until days, weeks, or even MONTHS later. So donât assume that just because your account was logged off overnight and it isnât banned that following morning that it is safe. TRANSFER all your goods off before logging out EVERY TIME. You donât want to let too many mats accumulate on a bot account because it can get banned at any time and most likely will at some point. The account is no big deal⊠but if you have a monthâs worth of farmed mats stored on it, it makes it a LOT more frustrating. DONâT leave anything on a âbotâ account that you feel you canât afford to lose without getting upset.
5- It can be a good idea to get into the habit of changing your IP address periodically, but if you choose to do this it is VERY important to go about it correctly. First off I wouldnât get into the habit of changing your IP too often (id say once every 2 weeks is safe... once a week would probably be OK but any more than that is not doing you any good... and I could see it even harming you in the long run). The ONLY way I go about changing my IP address is by forcing a MAC address change within my router settings (there are several guides about this on YouTube and else ware... I can write one up if someone is totally lost). The reason for this is because it changes the IP address, which can get you out of Blizzard's cross-hairs for a bit... but it also keeps it within the same region, and country. You NEVER want to use any sort of proxy system that makes it look like you are logging in from a different country, or even a different area within your own country. For this reason I avoid proxies all together (for WoW at least), there is just too much that can go wrong... if you forget to use your proxy one time or if it doesn't work correctly you will cause your account to become flagged. The reason for this is because Blizzard watches IP changes very carefully specifically in regards to region changes... they do this to bust Power leveling services, as well as detect account hacks (which can acctually work to a botter's benefit when trying to unban a banned account... I am thinking of writing a guide on this subject as well). For this reason you NEVER want to have an Asian IP address (unless of course you happen to live in Asia). Nothing against Asia but that happens to be where 90% or more of the power leveling, gold selling and account trading sites are based out of. Changing your IP address via a proxy to an IP outside your own region, and then changing it back to your own IP (or another IP in an entirely different region) and logging into your account, will almost certainly cause it to become flagged/locked (or even banned). Once an account has been flagged, Blizz will send you an email forcing you to verify yourself, change your password etc... And if this happens I would consider that particular account unsafe to bot on for at least 2 weeks after that.
MORAL OF THE STORY: It is OK (and even advised) to change your IP address periodically... but DONT USE PROXIES when playing WoW (they can be very handy for other purposes, but they really donât have a place in the world (of warcraft that is).. especially in regards to botting), on top of that most of them would cause your bot and your WoW client to lag horribly. Change your IP periodically using your router settings, that way you will get a new IP within your own country and region... this will take Blizz's crosshairs off of your account (potentially) for the time being, and it wonât raise any flags. It is perfectly safe to login from multiple IPs within your own region and I have NEVER seen anyone get banned, flagged, or locked as a result of doing so (many gamers play from internet cafe's on a daily basis... which would mean logging from a different IP almost daily, and that is perfectly acceptable because all of the IPs used are traceable back to the same city/region). I still wouldnât recommend changing it on a daily basis though... firstly because this wouldnât benefit you at all, and secondly because it COULD cause someone at Blizz to draw their attention towards you... you would just be making yourself look a bit suspicious given the fact that this is a botting article and the purpose of the IP change is to take attention AWAY from yourself. Come to think of it I have never met anyone who botted on a daily basis from an internet cafe anyway so that argument may have been a bit off topic in reguards to botting, lol.
6- When creating the characters on your "bot" accounts, that you will be using to bot farm etc, I always like to pick names that are hard for other players to report. The name of your character/guild can be more important that one might think. It is good to use a couple of letters in your name that arent found on a normal keyboard (ā Ăł Ă Ă Ă Ăż are all good examples), these letters can be selected by using the "character map" program that comes with any windows computer. The reason for using these on bot accounts is because if another player happens to run by you when your botting and decides to report you, its likely that he wont even notice that your name has a funny letter in it. For example say I am botting a Tauren Warrior named CĂłwĂull- There is a strong possibility that the player reporting you is going to open up a ticket and simply say "I just saw a Tauren named CowBull, and he is a bot". Now when the GM opens this ticket he is going to do a search for that name and he is going to see nobody with that name logged in all day (or even better he will start checking out an entirely different person who really DOES have that name). Its not a 100% guarentee that the player wont notice... it is entirely possible that he will shift-click your name and report it properly, but it is one more thing to add to the list of precautions you are taking on your quest to not get banned.
I will probably update this thread with more botting tips as I think of them but I wanted to get this up before I turn in for the ânightâ (its 9am now lol).
The point of this article was not to downplay Salos5âs thread in ANY way. I really liked his tips and he even earned +6rep from me. I just wanted to show people who are new to botting, or people who are thinking about going a bit more âhard coreâ with it, that there is a way to have your cake and eat it too. I take precautions when botting, but I also love the luxury of leaving my bot running night and day, weather I am home or not, and to be honest if one of my âbotâ accounts was banned I wouldnât even be upset, It is something that I plan for. I just make sure that blizz has no way of connecting these âbotâ accounts with my âMainâ accounts, and I also make sure that any mats my bots have farmed are transferred off fairly frequently⊠this way if I DO catch a ban (which has happened before and im sure will happen again), all I am out is a couple of CD keys, a gamecard, and about a week of botting to get the replacement âbotâ account back to where it needs to be to continue farming gold at all times.
I hope you enjoy my article on the more âHard Coreâ end of the botting world, But I also hope you check out, and enjoy the tips thatSalos5 posted for us on how to keep your account safe while botting if you choose to just have 1 main account, and are willing to take a bit of a risk and would like to bot on it part time as well. His tips were well thought out, and I enjoyed reading them (obviously enough to write a several page article in response to it lol)
ONCE AGAIN: Salos5's blog post in which inspired this thread can be found HERE
NEXT WEEK: I will be sharing with you guys, in detail⊠my method of transferring mats obtained by botting over to your âmainâ account so they can be safely sold, used etc with virtually ZERO chance of a ban, or even a connection that both accounts are yours. Been doing it since the Glider days and its finally time to make it semi-public. So keep your eyes out for that!
GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY GAMING!!!!
-7itanium
UPDATE:
PART 2 OF THE GUIDE IS UP AND READY TO BE READ!!!
HERE IT IS....
LINK TO PART 2
Thanks for reading... and thank you for all the wonderful questions and comments I recieved in my PMs, as well as in responses to this thread.
-7itanium