It's not punishable at all. The mist linking is there to stop you taking advantage of that, and the ability to unlink mist by spending cash is there to let you take advantage of multiple mist if you've paid cash. I believe there's a limit on how many free accounts you can have and it just won't let you create more after that.

I'll repeat what I said in this thread: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/23308

Based on how OOO has treated Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates players, you use as many paid accounts as you want. by "paid accoutn", I mean you have spent real money buying CE from OOO, not just CE with crowns. OOO limits you to creating 3 free accounts per computer per some period of time, I think around 90 days, and over the years I've made about a dozen YPP accounts.. You can launch multiple clients on the same computer if you want, but of course that will cause them to all share ME.

The need for multiple accounts, especially unpaid accounts, is much less in SK than YPP. If you are using this feature to do bad things, expect to get banned, but that is for doing the bad things, not for using multiple accounts.

I have heard nothing that contradicts my experience with YPP, but I anyone knows of official statements to the contrary, I would love to learn about them.

is it just me or did noone actually answer his question? or mine?

would working around the linking (I'm not going to say how here, but there are methods which don't appear to violate the TOS) be a punishable offence in any way?

basically, if you could create a dozen free accounts, but do something (not paying) so that the mist on them are not linked, would that be in violation of the TOS?

If you play on separate computers probably no

It would seem to me that this wouldn't really be an issue, especially considering that the ability to get the special mist offers on separate accounts (i.e. Battle Pack) would serve as a strong incentive to send more money to the company (which, after all, is the only reason game companies would ever make games in the first place). Even if one argues that doing so goes against the spirit of the rules, it doesn't change the fact that the player with multiple accounts has still paid for a good/service in good faith (barring actual money fraud, of course), and therefore is helping keep the game afloat - he's just going about it in such a way as to maximize his own benefit.

I don't think you have to edit the SK files to get the unlinking ME. If you have a regular SK and a steam SK I believe they are considered to be separate accounts on the same system. I personally can't confirm this though since one of my accounts is actually paid for before I tried this (I mostly wanted to see if I could have a knight check the AH while I was down in the clockworks).

is it just me or did noone actually answer his question?

Ah, yes, I glossed over his last sentence.

The only legitimate way of unlinking mist between two accounts is to either pay real money to OOO on at least one of them, or petition a GM with a really good reason why they should be unlinked. Everything else requires either modifying something on the server (criminal security cracking), or modifying something OOO put on your computer (a violation of the ToS). As I posted in another thread this morning, I strongly suspect that the code used to link mist on accounts is very similar to the code that OOO has long used to detect ban evaders. (Remember, a ban is against the player, not against the knight or the account. When OOO bans you from they game, they mean *you*.) There have been a lot of smart/clever people who have tried to get around bans and as a result, OOO has done a lot of non-obvious things to detect this kind of thing. A file on your computer that lists the linked accounts may well be there as a trap, modify it and OOO knows you are up to no good.

It may be possible to create two accounts on the same computer without getting them linked and not directly violate the ToS, but that is iffy at best.

And, remember, short of going to court, spending tens of thousands of dollars, and winning a court ruling, it really doesn't matter what you argue, OOO can do what they want. Sure, you may argue what the definition of "is" is and try to split hairs, but you will almost certainly lose.

Hi!

As you mentioned your e-mail response here, I would like to contextualize it by letting everyone know that that particular section was in response to a query about a very specific purpose, rather than generally, and that you are still waiting for a response on that more specific purpose. Your e-mail had asked specifically about creating unlimited free accounts and then funnelling them to a main account, so that question was answered specifically. Generally-speaking, if we have programmed something (like, say, limits on free accounts and mist energy) into the game, it's a safe bet that we do not want people trying to circumvent the mechanics. So, well, don't.

To answer the OP, multiple accounts are absolutely fine by us, provided they follow our terms of service and set account conditions. There's a limit on free accounts, but a player could use a hundred paid accounts if they wanted to and that would be entirely fine, though we might be curious as to how such a player managed to go entirely without sleep, rest, food, or offline social contact. ;)

If I'm reading Hyperion's response correctly, it is considered abuse if free accounts are used to funnel resources to a main (free?) account. Is it the act itself or the methods required to obtain extra free accounts abuse?

The specific situation I'm curious about is the concept of a "crafting multi." The concept basically involves using, primarily, the mist energy of secondary accounts to craft 1*-3* items to be sold on the AH (or farmed for UVs). The profits can then be used to purchase more materials while the surplus is sent to the main account.

@Corsa I think the short version is "don't try to use more than 100 mist per day in total across all your non-paid knights/accounts". If you want to make a few crafting alts it's not really that big of an imposition to spend $2.50 one time on each to unlink them.

I think this whole idea of using mists to craft stuff, isn't a big deal for now. Until one of these Gold Farming companies figures out a CLI (command line interface) that could login alternate characters onto servers, do their stuff (crafting, vending, etc) and logout, all without invoking the SK client.

Then yes, a single person can not only master 100 droids. We will be talking about thousands of droids.

OOO, please secure your protocols.

GM!

Hope you get my point by now.

I know what gold farmers can and have done, my point is that they don't need to do go through as much work as you seem to think they need to do. What keeps SK safe is not the security of the protocols and such, but the lack of players/interest in the game.

Oh yea, learn a more modern language. Algol 60 is very, very old.

Algol60 is a language so far ahead of its time that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors but also on nearly all its successors.

Speaking of which, I need to go review some ABNF or an RFC.

There are definitely exploits though. I would explain them, but I don't think OOO would be very happy wih me if I did that. And they're not very practical. They don't involve packet manipulation or game file modification , either.

But seriously, did you find the most obscure thread you could on purpose or something?

I feel like Youth does not fully understand the Alts system many players use.

Look you may notice it so let's skip it and answer this
Do you get charged with three unpaid accounts or 4!