[Video] Multiboxing Royal Jelly, and what the heck is down the right-hand path in D26 FSC anyway?

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Nicoya-Kitty's picture
Nicoya-Kitty

First things first (though technically in reverse chronological order), I drag my mist alt down to see The Big Pink. Things go quite well, and I manage to take down the boss in 2:40 mostly just spamming my Silent Nightblade's charge attack, with the occasional fiery atomizer and curse vial to speed things along.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-RtRHm08Q

I also took an opportunity while soloing FSC to record the right-hand path in Ashen Armory that nobody ever takes. It's probably good to avoid if you have a lot of lag since you'll likely find yourself warping onto the spikes unexpectedly, but otherwise I can't really see much reason to always go left.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C3Lz3LHLGE

I'm considering whether I want to extend the multibox series to FSC. I'm definitely not going to multibox the boss stage since that will just be 45 minutes or so of tediously running around polaris spamming. For the rest of FSC it doesn't really change much except for increasing the chances that the slags will survive the spike wheels long enough for me to destroy them first, and decreasing the chances that the silkwings will get trolljan-farted to death in the bottom-right charred court room.

No-Thanks
Zelda

36 zombies on the left

i counted the mobs on the right in ur video, it was pretty much exactly what i woulda guessed
24 zombies + 3 pups + 1 trojan

in ur vid there were 6 green boxes

so in conclusion u have 2 reasons to go left
-less lag/traps
-more monsters(=more crowns)

Notbob's picture
Notbob
Yes, the ultimate reason to

Yes, the ultimate reason to go left is you get more crowns and heat that way.

Lag spikes and general lag issues are the other reason not to go right, given the spike/fire trap corridor.

Guyinshinyarmour
--

I always tell people in my groups that the right hand path is full of pain and suffering and fire. If they get testy, I just tell them it's more traps and enemies, and thus more work for less profit. That shuts them up. :p

The only reason I knew what was down the right path was because the first time I went into the citadel, I did it solo and went right. That wasn't a fun run.

Also, isn't this multiboxing thing a bit of an exploit in line with looping? Don't they ban people for stuff like that? :|

Alice-In-Pyroland's picture
Alice-In-Pyroland
I wouldn't really compare it

I wouldn't really compare it to looping arenas. What makes looping arenas so exploitable is the way in which you can repeat it as much as you want (Well back when you could do it anyhow) where as although multiboxing gets a person more crowns per level it's not as though they they can loop a single profitable level indefinitely, and multiboxing makes the depths harder due to increased mob health while having a dead weight alt.

It may be classed as an exploit, but until Three Rings themselves clarify the matter I don't see any reason people shouldn't do so.

Demonicsothe's picture
Demonicsothe
The reason arenas were

The reason arenas were exploited by looping is because it costs no energy to reach the arena.

Even if one multiboxes, it still costs energy per level. Unless the accounts were split by paying on one, the 100 mist won't be enough for a full run. Nothing is being abused here. The 2x crown gain is misleading. The profit/energy is still the same. Only thing it saves you is time.

Xanafein's picture
Xanafein
Now Explain to me how Viable

Now Explain to me how Viable this is as I am Really Quite Curious

Ufana
The ultimate reason to go

The ultimate reason to go left is that you're boring and don't want me to press all the buttons in the right room to make a giant zombie+trojan electron vortex in the middle.

Guyinshinyarmour
--

Oh please, anyone competent can drag one guy along, so the difficulty is negligible in T2. I dragged entire teams through JK in my time of running it. T3 might prove a bit more of a hassle, but manageable.

As for the profit issue, sure, you could loop one profitable floor over and over, but with multiboxing, you're doubling the profit of every level, even arenas. I'm pretty sure that tips the profit margin higher. I'm sure that dragging 3 guys along and dealing with high HP monsters will result in faster crown gain than 4 separate runs.

You'll never see OOO take a stance on it because it borders on impossible to stop, unlike looping (sure, you could try blocking multiple connections from the same IP, but that's easily defeated and inconveniences roommates/siblings/etc who play on the same connection). Not to mention it would be hard to prove anyone's doing it without an admission.

In the end, while nothing will be done about it, that doesn't mean it's not scummy. :|

EDIT:
@Demonicsothe
But didn't you still have to pay the 10 energy to run the arena? You just skipped all the other levels. Overall, you're still gaining more. Oh, and don't discount time, it's actually a fairly valuable resource. Cramming twice the profit into a run is still an exploit, even if you use up mist or have to put the alts on tabs.

Demonicsothe's picture
Demonicsothe
Thats part of what I was

Thats part of what I was saying. You constantly pay 10 energy for one arena, while people who don't loop have to pay for the floors before it, or join a random party and potentially skip it. Multiboxing makes you pay twice the energy per floor, for twice the crown gains.

All i know is that OOO doesn't like people abusing energy bypass without paying. I have no idea on their stance about time spent on the game.

Nicoya-Kitty's picture
Nicoya-Kitty
Three rings has come out

Three rings has come out strictly against "effective multiboxing", which is using some sort of software to repeat keystrokes to both clients. However, the only mention they made towards "ineffective multiboxing"/corpse-dragging was that any sort of exploit to get around mist sharing would get you banned, but that you're free to make use of as many paid accounts (with the associated unlinked mist) as you like.

If I've misinterpreted anything the GMs have said, I'd be happy to be corrected.

Chris's picture
Chris
Having alts afk with you is

Having alts afk with you is technically against the rules I believe. I would be careful posting these videos here.

Guyinshinyarmour
--

@Demonicsothe
Hm.... You know, I never thought of it that way. This would have no effect on OOO, in that energy would still be used up at the same rate (discounting skipping to terminal). If anything, it'd use up energy faster, though bring in crowns faster too.

However, it's still iffy on the player side of the equation. No one has infinite time. No one. Time is always a factor. Multiboxing lets you still cram in twice the profit in the same timeframe. Not to mention that you *could* invite an alt at arenas as you come across them for more profit; in effect doing what looping did, but only for 1+x runs, x being how many alts you bring. Hm...

Mirei's picture
Mirei
Well, now I'll never wonder

Well, now I'll never wonder why people always go left. My first FSC run, my "guide" told me "always go left, the right side is hard," I guess I understand why. If/whenever I get to where I can solo FSC, maybe I'll do that side.

As far as multiboxing, I heard they don't support the multiboxing in the sense where you have set it up so that both toons use a single keyboard to do the same commands. I can understand that, have you seen those crazy 10-25 multiboxers in WoW... It's pretty messed up.
I don't see the issue with some dead-weight alt, because you have to manually make your alt go die, but maybe that would be a question to ask OOO?
OOO says they didn't mind alts, but they would get on your case if you somehow were playing 24/7 or were using it as a means of exploiting. I'd say it's no different if you played one toon then played the second after you used up your energy on the first toon.

Nicoya-Kitty's picture
Nicoya-Kitty
I sent a GM request for

I sent a GM request for clarification, hopefully they'll be able to respond on this particular issue.

Guyinshinyarmour
--

@Mirei
Hm. I must admit, I've only inferred what multiboxing is from how Nicoya has used it, but now I'm actually informed.

AKAIK, most games have a loot system that splits drops, but each monster drops only so much. In this game, the monster drops so much, and the loot is duplicated for each party member (except for mats). As such, multiboxing has a much different effect on this game than others. Scripted boxes don't work too well here either since very little could be botted, and duplicating commands to other boxes means that if any of the boxes are desynched, they're rendered useless (say, one is flung farther than the rest after a nasty attack).

However, the big thing is how crown drops are duplicated instead of split among the group. The game is designed and balanced to have one person per party helping out. If you rig it so all the knights in the party funnel wealth to a central account, it kinda breaks how the game was intended to run. You do slightly more work for up to quadruple the raw crown drops.

Mat drops are unaffected.

Also, this is far from doing 2 runs back to back. This is doing two runs at once. You save a vast amount of time, spending only half the time it would take for two runs, but getting the profit of two runs. And remember, time *is* a resource. No one has an infinite amount of it.

Frankly, if OOO wanted to implement this, why not allow us to pay 10x energy per elevator and get x the crown/heat loot, depending on how many party slots are open?

Juances's picture
Juances
"why not allow us to pay 10x

"why not allow us to pay 10x energy per elevator and get x the crown/heat loot"
Because multiple alts= multiple mist pools = mist energy is free = not actually paying anything

Useless. It wont change anything and is actually a waste compared to multiboxing.
It'd help free players that cant multibox, but free players wont have much resources to waste like that anyways, they'd be at the same disadvantage as they are now.

Darkbrady's picture
Darkbrady
S'interesting that you should

S'interesting that you should comment on the path in FSC. My first FSC run with my gf a few days ago we chose the right path and did it easily enough. Later on, we tried the left path so we'd know what was down each. Decided that the left path was *so* much easier.

Since then have done a few runs with guildies and realised that absolutely everoney always takes the left path; at l understand why, but it's always nice to try the others just to break the pattern and try different things.

Demonicsothe's picture
Demonicsothe
We can only have two free

We can only have two free accounts per computer. Those two accounts share mist. Doing what nicoya did can only work if one pays for the paid account status. In order to drag three alts, they'd have to pay for three accounts, two of which they won't be on normally, getting the least out of the money they pay. And thus OOO is getting money.

I'm not sure how much they have to pay in terms of server and various other upkeep costs, but they are still getting money. Now, if the cheapest package that turns one account into a paid account is lower than the cost of running one more account on OOO's side, then they might go down if everyone does this.

Nicoya-Kitty's picture
Nicoya-Kitty
It seems that for the moment

It seems that for the moment the GM response is positive regarding dragging alts when they're all unpaid (mist linked), but for paid (non mist linked) alts they said: "I cannot give you a direct answer regarding this just yet - we will reply once we have enough information, or if you have any other questions regarding corpse-dragging."

It's probably going to be one of those things they'll discuss internally before coming up with a final answer. Knowing the schedule of these things it'll probably take a week or two.

No-Thanks
Zelda

i read somewhere that its ok if the profits arent funneled to the main account

but i did it too when i had no elevator pass. not for the profit alone, the profitable playtime seemed way too limited and i had like 1-2 extra hours with my other accs' mist

Nicoya-Kitty's picture
Nicoya-Kitty
The official word from Cronus

The official word from Cronus is:

The intent for the game is for each person to control a single knight through their adventures, not drag their alt along in order to attempt to maximize profit.

Multi-boxing and similar activities that use 3rd party software are strictly against the Terms of Service for the game and will result in disciplinary action.

Using your alt to do nothing while your main fights the levels is not the intended behavior for this game and thus something we frown upon doing. I suggest you try to find something else that makes your experience interesting like using different gear or lower end gear to increase your challenge.

So corpse dragging isn't against the TOS or banned per se, but is generally not encouraged.

Guyinshinyarmour
--

Like I said, it's probably grudgingly allowed because it borders on impossible to stop. I refer to what I said in my second post: "In the end, while nothing will be done about it, that doesn't mean it's not scummy."

Least we got a clarification now. I'll stop derailing your thread. :p

Algol-Sixty's picture
Algol-Sixty
Dragging an alt along makes

Dragging an alt along makes monsters harder and doesn't increase the materials dropped. Sure, you can use mist up twice as fast, but using alts to craft uses up mist in a small fraction of the time.

If I was OOO, I would worry about crafting alts long before I worry about alt dragging.

No-Thanks
Zelda

umm

every alt gets the full amount of crowns
the mist energy on paid accounts is separate
it doesnt take any extra time, its like a solo

and seriously monsters are a joke

Darkbrady's picture
Darkbrady
@No-Thanks: The point is that

@No-Thanks:
The point is that all the alts collect the crowns, which are then given to the main character. And yes, it doesn't take any extra time, it is like a solo...except that you get double the crowns. Whether the monsters are hard or not is irrelevant, that's the crux of the issue that's getting the complaints.

@Nicoya:
Seems as good a threat as any to ask, but what software do you use to record your gametime? Have been wantin' to make some myself for various explanatory/for-show things, but no idea what to go with. Any suggestions, if you will?

Nicoya-Kitty's picture
Nicoya-Kitty
@Darkbrady I use Dxtory to

@Darkbrady I use Dxtory to record my vids. It records very smoothly with little extra CPU usage, and allows me to record my voice separately from the game audio so I can mix the levels afterwards when I re-enocde from the lossless codec to something like xvid for uploading. It does cost money, but there's a free trial you can use to try out that puts a giant blue banner in the video. The other nice feature I like is that it can make recordings of basically unlimited size without splitting the video into multiple files (my raw recordings can be upwards of 20 gigs per run).

I think most people use Fraps, as there's an older completely free version floating around, but it tends to be buggy, doesn't do the multi-track audio that I like using, and splits longer recordings into multiple files that you have to stitch together which occasionally results in sections of blacked-out video.

Whatever you do, don't use camstudio. Just don't.

I use Vegas to mix down the audio and re-encode, though you can also use a combination of audacity and virtualdub (virtualdub by itself can't mix multiple audio tracks).

Fabispieler's picture
Fabispieler
Multiboxing??? I always have

Multiboxing??? I always have known that some people will harm the game...

Stavrosg's picture
Stavrosg
hmmm

@Fabispieler: This isn't something new, I wonder why you're acting surprised.