11 Tips for safe Botting

[Maccer]

Since I've been botting for almost 2 years now and still haven't got banned, I thought I'd share my tips on how to not to get banned.

Here we go.


11 Tips for safe Botting
by DanzaKuduro



1. Don't bot over 8 hours.
You may have heard this a lot, but trust me, you really shouldn't.
Let's say you bot 12 hours and play for 5 hours.
12 + 5 = 17 hours - Where's time for sleep, job or school, real life etc. ?


2. Try not to bot with more than 2 characters.
It may seem a bit suspicious for Blizzard that you're doing quests with your orc shaman in Hellfire Peninsula,
Playing BGs with your worgen hunter while gathering with your NE Drood all by hand.


3. Monitor your bot with your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Android if you have one.
Now this one helped me a lot, I'm in my room, studying, and instead of going to the computer, I check it
via TeamViewer, and oh boy that feels good.
Teamviewer download here


4. Start discussing with your guildes in some random discussion when you're around.
Just to avoid being reported by guildies and prevent being inspected by GMs.


5. Ask or comment on something while your character is in town and you're around.
To avoid being flagged.


6. Organize your actions bars.
GMs can easily check your action bars, so just take few minutes of your time to organize them.


7. Always join a guild.
This may seem stupid, but it isn't. As long as you're low level nobody will ask you to go to PVP or raid with them, and you wont get those

Wanna join my guild. It level 2 and gonna get much perks.

messages


8. Don't mix bot + hack(s).
This might seem tempting, but don't do it, you never know if you're gonna pass by someone with that speedhack
or water walk hack.


9. Fake your chat.
If you have a friend who knows you're botting, ask him to talk with you while you're watching your bot,
this is to prevent looking suspicious.


10. Do a dungeon every now and then.
If you're botting by questing/grinding/PVP you should do a dungeon every now and then manually.
Talk with your group a bit, and then if you don't want to stay till the end, just abandon the group and continue botting.



11. Do a duel every now and then.
It'll take you a minute or so and it might prevent a GM from inspecting you, also,
if anyone requests duel, you should a accept it, and comment on it like: "lol" or "good fight" .




That's it, they may seem like a common sense, but lots of people don't actually follow (some) of these.


Thanks for reading.

[ally4821]

Nice guide, after botting in the title there is a random 'f'
+rep

[QtDemon]

Thanks a lot for this, didn't know GM's could see the setup of action bars and whatnot. <3

[Maccer]

Nice guide, after botting in the title there is a random 'f'
+rep

Hmm, where did that come from.
Thanks for both rep and correcting me.

Thanks a lot for this, didn't know GM's could see the setup of action bars and whatnot. <3

Enjoy.

[Holyinc]

Nice Guide (:

[k4ne]

thank you for your contribution but point 1,2,6,10,11 are a bit useless to me.

Point1: Blizzard don't check time spend on character per day, they only check people that play more than 24h WITHOUT any logout (botters all know that this never happen, your bot will bug before). Know that because a friend of mine got a 72h ban and call blizzard and they answered him that his char was log for more than 24h that's why he was banned (after looking at him playing ofc). Chances to be ban for botting 2h or 24h are the same, you are botting in every cases and if someone wanna follow you, whisper you, they can.

Point2: Blizzard don't check for that too, most of botter have 3-4-5 or more char running at the same time and have never been ban. Got 3 games on the same bnet account, botting on 2 and raid at the same time on the 3rd.
Point6: Seriously, do you really think blizz check for such things ?
Point10/11: Same as point 6.

Point12: use profile changer (change zone every 2-3 hours).
Point13: If you see 4-5 other botters with the same profile, change it because, even if you don't ninja their nodes, don't tempt them to report you because they want all the nodes for them.
Point14: Don't answer to people that whisper you for botting 30min after they whispered you and don't panic (don't stop botting) because most of the time they won't report you.
Point15: Use an auto reply plug in with many keywords ofc (most of the time people are asking you to guild them or to help them with quest etc... be imaginative or keep all your logs and look for redundant words for human like replies).
Point16: Don't spam the ah with herbs/ores AND don't undercut other people too much because they will become angry. ("omfg, i farmed 5 hours nodes to make some gold and these ****ing bots are undercutting me all the day :@").
Point17: adapt your botting style to your server (botting on a PvE and a PvP server is really different).
Point18: Don't send too much gold between your account by mail (no more than 10k per day i would say). For example, i just sold a poseidus for 126k, won't send all money to my main because Blizz IS looking for such things.
Point19: People that whisper you for botting are botters too so don't take care about them.
Point20: use a plug in to auto logout if someone follow you for more than "x" seconds.

Botting 24/24 with gathering bot or Archeology bot is pretty safe because you are always moving AND most of the time other players in Uldum/Twilight H are botter too and don't really care.
Botting in PvP on the other hand is risky because too many people are watching you playing and if you are stuck in some background element (tree, etc...) you will be reported and GM are pretty fast for PvP botting request (did that when i wasn't botting and 15min after my request a GM was looking at the player i reported).
Botting in instance is... well ****ing stupid

People are just paranoid about botting, maybe because they can't offord to lose their account ? So don't bot then

Most of the people are banned for the following reason:

#1: Sell gold
#2: PvP botting
#3: Too many auction per day (very server dependant: on pvp server people don't really care about the AH, but on wellknown PvE servers where some people try to make gold with AH, flooding AH and undercut them make them angry > report)

and that's all...

People are banned because they got reported not because Blizzard is monitoring their time played per day, or nodes per day.
Since there are only botters in uldum and other cataclysm zones, there is no reason for beeing banned, moreover most people don't know about bots.

Nah, the real thing you should focus on when you are botting is how to get your account back (use vpn client, change mac adress, etc... there is a good post on thebuddyforum.com ).

Again, blizzard is NOT monitoring time spend on account or nodes gathered per day (or keybinds or such), blizzard just focus on player that make REAL MONEY with bots (yeah, they don't really like it, look at starcraft 2 hacks: public free hacks are still running while paying private hacks are tracked like beasts) and other people that got banned are from other player report.

I can say that because months ago, when i was not botting, i reported many (5 to 10 per day) player in Twilight Highland with ****ing many informations given to blizzard: number of quest at level 85:0, no dungeon, full BoE gear, etc... and they are still botting, why ? because no one report botters (if someone /w for botting then he is a botter too).

Talking about common sense: do you really think Blizzard have time to look for: nodes per day, time played per day, action bars, duel, instance per day, if you talk or not ? No, they just wait for X report from other player to watch you playing then /w you...

Dude, you have a BOT, just profit and bot 24/24 !!! if you don't sell gold, flood ah or pvp botting you are "safe". Btw, botters don't care about their account, if you are botting it's because you are tired of the game With Blizzard working on their new mmo they will take of bots less and less on WoW.

One last thing: if you read every bot forum, you will notice that proportion of people banned for botting 6h/day (or less, doing dungeon, talking, dueling etc...) or 24/24 per day is the same... Botting like a human (from 18h to 24h) for years and still not banned doesn't mean your method is the good one, other player bot 24/24 for yearsand are not banned too.

[daffy82]

Nr.2 is utterly useless... how about ppl playing from there collage dorm? 10 - 20 accounts from same IP.

[ally4821]

Nr.2 is utterly useless... how about ppl playing from there collage dorm? 10 - 20 accounts from same IP.

Every system on your network has a different IP address.

[imtakinusrs]

Here are a few comments. Some you may like, some you may not. Nothing personal, just my opinion.


1. They used to check that. Not anymore.
2. Family members playing, much?
3. THIS.
4. Or, as an alternative, create your own guild.
5. Ie: troll trade chat.
6. Was valid in the Glider days. Doesn't matter anymore as most bots can adapt to your action bars and keybinds, instead of going the other way around.
7. Or, as an alternative, create your own guild.
8. THIS. Just like you don't mix alcohol and crack.
9. If that's the case, then Blizzard should ban me as I don't talk that much in-game while I play normally. I honestly don't see it as a credible pointer to determine botting.
10. Or, as an alternative, bot dungeons using an 85 to powerlevel you through it. And yes, botting this from both the 85 character and the original bot is entirely feasible with enough creativity. Dungeons achievements always look good, as other players will most likely go "oh well, seems like he's playing it legit" if they have suspicions.
11. See #9 about that. I always refuse duels and flat ignore duelers that stalk me when I play normally.


Here are a few of my own:

- Make sure your botting tool's profile structure allows for multiple paths, and if so, take advantage of this when creating profiles, especially gathering profiles. You could even "repath" the same path differently a couple of times so the bot won't always go from A to B the exact same way.

- Schedule what you do with a bot. Some bots allow for quite complex setups, in which you can potentially have a bot follow a given profile for a certain time, and the switch to another. Therefore, your bot switches activities every now and then. Makes the "player" more human in the sense that "he" wanted to do something else than just farm, so he went PvPing, and then three hours later, he went gathering, and then 1 hour later, back to questing, etc. Very complex to setup, but quite nice when it works.

- BG botting: Those can get you stuck at times, and once you are stuck, forget it; it's one more AFK/deserter. And don't think Blizz don't track them when they're frequent enough. And don't think some players won't add you as a friend only to report you AFK right when the BG starts because they saw you in 10 AVs standing at a GY flag doing the same gimmick. Therefore, try to use profiles that DON'T focus on objectives, and that makes you fight a lot. Worst that will happen is you'll be called bad by the bg chat complainers. Big deal.

- More BG botting: if you're heal/tank specced, avoid AV. You'll get whispered tons asking to tank or heal for Drek, and if you don't respond and won't focus on objectives, those players will get suspicious. If you're doing AV, spec DPS and people won't give a damn what you're doing as long as you're doing something. Worst case scenario, they'll call you names over bg chat for not defending towers, and your bot software may be a bit butthurt over it.

---------- Post added at 01:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:08 PM ----------

Every system on your network has a different IP address.

They do. However, it could be private (as in 192.168.x.x) if a LAN NATs over to the internet using a router, for instance. From Blizzard's perspective, they'll only see the public address your ISP has provided you, and won't be able to see the private IPs beyond your router/switch. However, it is rumored that they take note of physical (MAC) addresses of network devices, so if your router has a functionality to spoof that MAC address, it may be wise to use it once in a while to change the address.

[Maccer]

thank you for your contribution but point 1,2,6,10,11 are a bit useless to me.

Point1: Blizzard don't check time spend on character per day, they only check people that play more than 24h WITHOUT any logout (botters all know that this never happen, your bot will bug before). Know that because a friend of mine got a 72h ban and call blizzard and they answered him that his char was log for more than 24h that's why he was banned (after looking at him playing ofc). Chances to be ban for botting 2h or 24h are the same, you are botting in every cases and if someone wanna follow you, whisper you, they can.

Point2: Blizzard don't check for that too, most of botter have 3-4-5 or more char running at the same time and have never been ban. Got 3 games on the same bnet account, botting on 2 and raid at the same time on the 3rd.
Point6: Seriously, do you really think blizz check for such things ?
Point10/11: Same as point 6.

Point1 - You can't know what Blizzard is checking and what isn't. I used pure logic for this one, read it again.
Point2 - I'd call that luck + they can't know for sure if that's all of your characters or if that is family members playing.
Point6 - Action bars are stored on Blizzard's server, that's possible.
Point10/11 - Again, very much possible, just check your stats if they suspect that you're botting.

Here are a few comments. Some you may like, some you may not. Nothing personal, just my opinion.



1. They used to check that. Not anymore.
2. Family members playing, much?
3. THIS.
4. Or, as an alternative, create your own guild.
5. Ie: troll trade chat.
6. Was valid in the Glider days. Doesn't matter anymore as most bots can adapt to your action bars and keybinds, instead of going the other way around.
7. Or, as an alternative, create your own guild.
8. THIS. Just like you don't mix alcohol and crack.
9. If that's the case, then Blizzard should ban me as I don't talk that much in-game while I play normally. I honestly don't see it as a credible pointer to determine botting.
10. Or, as an alternative, bot dungeons using an 85 to powerlevel you through it. And yes, botting this from both the 85 character and the original bot is entirely feasible with enough creativity. Dungeons achievements always look good, as other players will most likely go "oh well, seems like he's playing it legit" if they have suspicions.
11. See #9 about that. I always refuse duels and flat ignore duelers that stalk me when I play normally.

2. Possible.
6. I'm not referring to bot's functionality, rather on Blizzard checking your action bars which is possible since the data of your action bars is stored on their server(s).

I partially agree* with the rest of those.
Thanks for posting your owns.

[k4ne]

Point1 - You can't know what Blizzard is checking and what isn't. I used pure logic for this one, read it again.
Point2 - I'd call that luck + they can't know for sure if that's all of your characters or if that is family members playing.
Point6 - Action bars are stored on Blizzard's server, that's possible.
Point10/11 - Again, very much possible, just check your stats if they suspect that you're botting.

1. I know because i bot 24/24 like many other player and i have never been banned. Logic is just useless in WoW, some players farmed FL trash for like 20h per day, others farm ores/herb for 10h for REAL. WoW is a crazy world, that's why blizzard don't check for time played/ores per day. Logic is useless in this game.

2. Answered before by imtakinusrs
6. Blizzard UI automatically add the 12 first spell in action bar, that's enough to don't care about it. Moreover, why to look at action bars when you can see the guy playing and whisper him to know if he is a bot or not ?
10&11. Blizzard will never ask you how to play that's why they will never check for such things. I never duel and i never do any instance on my pvp reroll. Again, most of the point you listed are useless because you try to put logic everywhere. Why should you talk ? why should you have a guild ? Do a random dungeon, 90% of players don't talk, do pickup raid, 90% of players don't talk. I never talk, i only use skype, etc...

Really, if Blizzard want to know if you are a botter, they just have to wait for many players request (and that's what they do, they don't have any kind of monitoring that will alert them if you play x hours per day or mine x ores per day), watch you playing, try to talk to you, and if you don't answer, ban.

Here is an example of a real guy playing that blizzard should ban according to your advices:

1. He is doing bg all the day for his battlemaster tittle, 18hours or more per day.
2. His brother is playing on the same bnet account.
4. Pur bg, he is never talking.
5. Pur bg, he is never talking.
6. He is farming achievement, so in most cases he is a noob and 12 keybinds is enough.
7. Guildless is very possible.
9. Pur bg, he is never talking.
10. Pur bg, no dungeon.
11. Pur bg, no duel.

All your advices are about playing style, that's why blizzard don't look at such things. Real things that can make you ban are like: doing bg/instance/farming nodes and don't answer to a GM. Doing bg/instance and follow players without doing anything or strange things that lead other player to report you (ex1: in bg you are trying to attack someone 100 far away when 5 other players are attacking you, player will report you for this because they will see you running without attacking. ex2: in warsong gulch my bot is sometimes stuck and is just running for mins and got whisper&reported, etc...), selling gold, etc...

Again, don't try to put logic everywhere, aka: "ok so a normal player is playing from 18 to 24, so i should bot from 18 to 24. A normal player is talking and doing dungeon and duel so i should do the same. A normal player can't farm more than 500 nodes per day, so i should do the same." etc... Common sense won't help you to avoid bans because there are tons of playing styles in MMO and Blizzard know it: some guys are playing like bots on alt to farm regent for guild chauldron etc... and it will be a waste of time for blizzard to check for stats, time played, nodes per hours, etc...

[imtakinusrs]

Just one note though: I've read a lot of people saying that instance botting is dangerous. Well it depends, if it's with Dungeon Finder, definitely. If it's with your own 85 towing other newb chars you have on other accounts (RaF, for instance), then it's perfectly safe to loop-bot using an instance profile for the 85, and a profile that will get your newbs in and out of the instance when required.

---------- Post added at 11:14 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:32 AM ----------

why should you have a guild ?

To that, I'd respond: to weed out guild invites and guild-related whispers. Best thing is to have your own. Get 4 sigs and you won't get bugged. It's more of a convenience thing than anything else.

[ZugaR]

Really usefull guide !

I will follow your tips since I'm botting 24/7

Thanks!

[Sklug]

Ok, I bot 6 accounts and I found most of these actually not really helpful. Thanks for putting this together and making it very clean looking, but most of what you bring up is playstyle type of stuff which Blizz doesn't actually monitor. I mean, I know some people that will play non-botting in 36hr stretches and have not been banned lol

Reality is this, if you BOT, there is always a chance you will be banned just out of sheer bad luck and no matter how careful you are.

3,4,9 were the only ones I saw any real value in. In other words, YES, it's not a bad idea to monitor your bot. Though, since you are botting, kind of the idea is so you don't have to check on it much lol, so it's not completely necessary. With a good BOT you can setup relogging for d/cs, fake chat, d/c on chat, auto stop on stuck for too X amount of time and so on. 4,9 are decent because it is good to strike up a conversation every now and then. But, you don't want to do it in a way that draws attention to you, or gets you added to people's friends list. Just occasionally do a /1 lol comment when you are near your PC and people chatting in General. Chatting makes you seem less like a bot. This is only in-case you do get the ban-hammer you can challenge it and say you weren't and to check the chat logs you were there... blah blah...

Doing a dungeon, dueling, and so on are not gonna make you have a less chance of being banned. I have severall accounts I've botted for a couple years now that still don't even have 1 duel, 1 HK, and have only the default spells on their bars, yet no ban. But, I am aware that it could happen. Just have some common sense and don't bot for 24/7 lol, or if you do, take a day off, as it IS likely blizz might send a red flag to a GM to just come observer you if you've been online for 24-36+ hrs lol... But generally, WOW has a lot of hardcore game addicts so 24 hr gaming sessions is not out of the normal for regular players and I still find even that unlikely for blizz to even investigate.

99% of bans happen because you get reported by a player. Why did you get reported by a player? Probably because you ninja'd their node and they whispered you, or you were flying into a wall trying to unstuck. Solution to counter this? Better flying profiles(make your own too, popular ones you end up on same route as others), and a bot that d/c's you if you are stuck for too long. Also, there are some nice bot programs out there that have features to not approach nodes if another player is already by it, thus negating the whole ninjaing issues.

Anyway, good attempt to help, but being a long-time botter lucky enough to never get the ban hammer on even 1 account, I still feel that a few of those things are not really gonna make a difference at all. I like how clean your post looks and I hope you can continue in the future to the community with similarly aesthetically pleasing setups. I'll give some rep

EDIT: I wanted to add that all of the things the OP posted will actually strengthen your argument if you get a ban, and won't hurt. So, they could be of some use. I am just saying that I don't necessarily think they will decrease your chances of getting banned, just because bans usually happen in the moment by someone reporting you and a GM whispering you or watching you to see for themselves.

[Shamrockstar]

Really usefull guide !

I will follow your tips since I'm botting 24/7

Thanks!

/facepalm....