[Guide] Botting Safely, Quickly, but Casually on Your Main Account

[mspropst]

NOTE TO MODS: Don't have access to guide section, so I posted in the main thread what I've learned while using HB.

Hi all,

I've been a player on World of Warcraft since launch day. Needless to say, I've hand leveled several toons to the various level caps over time. However, when starting from scratch on a new server, I made my way to HB, having used bots in various games, decided it was time to bot on my cherished account, but had to do so with caution.


Basic Rules

1. Never bot more than 15 hours a day. This allows for 8 hours of "sleep" and 1 hour of super fast "meals" and "bathroom breaks" (Hours rule)
2. Don't flood the auction house with all one item or an excessive number of items, use your best judgment here... when farming I try to go for something one of my max levels can obtain, but sells for a high gold value per stack so that 10-20 stacks of items make me a lot of money. ("Quality not quantity" rule)
3. Babysit the bot. Doesn't require too much effort. You can watch movies, write a paper, do work, eat, etc. Just don't leave it unattended for extended periods without a way to check on it (1 hour AFK max rule)
4. Install a remote desktop program, TeamViewer is simple enough to use, you can check in and make sure the bot isn't stuck OR you can switch from one character to another. Able to do so from another computer or your phone, phone is extremely slow, but lets you at least switch characters and if you really want to do this, I have after all, move the character somewhere else to get unstuck. It's like watching 10 second screenshots (Your Way to Monitor when AFK)
5. When actually playing or just sitting around and babysitting chat people up a bit, don't have to friend them, probably would rather them not randomly message you, so don't get tooo buddy buddy (Look Human)
6. One account and only one account, period. No exceptions. You're doing this so you don't do the same quests over and over for 11 different classes. If that's not the case, this is the wrong guide for you. If you want more than one for other reasons... please refer to Other Strategies and the Gold Selling tip. (One and Only One Account)

Making Life Easier

1. Have 11 characters, all Horde or Alliance on a particular server. Create them all at once.(11 different alts with 11 different classes = Covering Your Butt for Nerfs and Covering Every Profession at Least Once)
2. All professions should be covered by an alt, once all the crafting professions are covered though, all extra alts should be having their leftover professions in mining/skinning/herbalism and turned on when botting. It will make sure you have enough to max level each crafting profession and then maybe some more leftover for AH. Split up the leftover profession slots evenly between the 3 gathering professions. This means you need to go train them at level 1 on each alt (Getting Professions and Early)
3. Move them all to the nearest starting area inn. It'll take a while for the rested xp to build up so bouncing between alts won't be entirely useful. I'd say just start with your main and get it to level 20. Once level 20, make your way to the capital city and set hearth there. Then switch to the next alt and repeat. As you get higher in levels it gets more beneficial and you can spend a few hours running through the rested xp instead of a few minutes... (Rested XP and Rotating Between Alts)
4. Get a private guild bank, you can participate in another with your main, but I usually have my alts mail to my main and he dumps it into the guild bank. This way you can store and easily access all your mats and level up professions and keep some slots in the guild bank open. This means that once you move all your characters past those materials profession wise you can AH the leftovers. (Guild Bank and Mats)

Method of Leveling

1. Kick's Quest Profiles
2. If you run into an issue with one of Kick's profiles due to expansion or update or whatever else, search around for an as up to date quest profile around the same level range - optional, but have done it before and babysat it
3. If none available, able to try out a grind profile - optional, did it only once when MoP came out on 1 character only
4. Whenever either the alternate quest profile or grind profile get you to the next level range of a Kick profile, switch back to Kick's profiles. They're the most reliable out there by a lot and he's on top of fixing them if something is wrong.
5. Once max level, consider "Other Strategies"

Plugins

1. Talented - May not be what you would pick, but you can reset it when you hit max level
2. Auto Equip - Turn on include enchants, otherwise settings as you would like
3. Quest Aura - helps with quests
4. Drink Potions - obvious reason
5. Anti-Drown - obvious reason
6. Refreshment Detection - obvious reason

Other Strategies

Now that you're max level there are a few other things you may want to consider. Botting could let you have your life back and not be a slave to WoW entirely.

1. Time to invite others into your private guild. You've leveled it up by several levels on your own. Using the PimpMyGuild add-on will let you farm mats, while sending out messages and/or invites to un-guilded players. You'll obviously want to store your own valuables in the guild you don't want to share in your alts private banks. Since I want to be more personable, I make a nice message with it, but don't have it send the invite at the same time, if I don't get a rude response back or a simple yes, I chat the player up and manually invite. This lets the guild be more personable since this isn't a purely botting account for you. Also having a bunch of real players in the guild helps it level faster as well as protect you some more when you're doing your botting. Now that you are inviting people into the guild, you need to be always present for babysitting the bot if farming because you'll receive messages (Making Your Guild Real)
2. LazyRaider, will allow you to BG, Dungeon, etc when you're actually wanting to play yourself, but if you decide to play while say... drinking a bottle of wine, it makes you not do stupid stuff. Can also be used in the middle of the leveling process on your main / favorite alt (Bot Helps You Even When You're the One Playing)
3. This may be obvious, but should be stated, you never tell anyone you bot. Except maybe your mom. Unless she plays WoW, then not her either because she may do the old person thing and not realize it's against the rules. Definitely don't tell your significant other, want to see what happens when they realize you spend so much time on this game and then you break up? Hello e-mail to Blizzard or deleted characters, etc. (You're Not a Botter, Even You Don't Know You're a Botter)
4. Buy as many of the pets and mounts on the WoW store as you are able to afford, while I feel this may be just a theoretical practice... I feel like Blizzard sees you're spending money on their game, and maybe, just maybe they'll leave you alone because you're bribing them in a way. (Get Your Bribe On)
5. Don't sell gold on this account. That's the opposite of being safe with it. If you want to do gold selling, multi-botting, use another computer, get a different e-mail address for it, do not RAF/SOR or Invite a Friend to it. It links the other accounts to your main. Never allow the selling accounts to log into the main accounts computer. Even consider running a p-r-o-x-y as an extra precaution. If available, use your neighbor's wireless if it doesn't have a pass or you know the pass for the selling account. Better him than you and he/she may not play WoW (Gold Selling Rules / If You Want Multiple Accounts)

 

[mspropst]

Additionally, if anyone has anything to add to this, please let me know. I may have overlooked something while just thinking this all out. If so, I'll include it above.

 

[Wizper]

Nice guide, maybe you should recommend gathering plugins like: randomebuddy as we wanna keep peoples accounts safe? Also blacklister if people have problem with 1+ mobs, otherwise nice information.

 

[xLegendx]

Additionally, if anyone has anything to add to this, please let me know. I may have overlooked something while just thinking this all out. If so, I'll include it above.

If you have a problem with Kicks. I suggest using Cavas instead of grinding.

 

[britheguy]

I bot a ton on my main account (3-4 years now) but i raid a lot, do dailies etc all by hand. I guess blizz thinks i'm legit this way

 

[razer]

Bot like a Human done... Nice guide btw but its common sense, Ive been botting for over 5 years now with hb....but I only bot when im at my pc doing work or watching a movie. If a profile says its 100% AFK does not mean its afkable on every single toon.

 

[mspropst]

Nice guide, maybe you should recommend gathering plugins like: randomebuddy as we wanna keep peoples accounts safe? Also blacklister if people have problem with 1+ mobs, otherwise nice information.

Will add them on for the as an optional, non-leveling necessary plugins, part of the guide. Since you'll be doing most of your profession leveling by the bot picking up a random herb/ore / ninja it's not doing any sort of set path anyway.

If you have a problem with Kicks. I suggest using Cavas instead of grinding.

I recommended using another questing profile after Kick's, THEN grinding, but said I did note grinding was risky. I will however mention Cava's as I've used them before and found them pretty reliable.

I bot a ton on my main account (3-4 years now) but i raid a lot, do dailies etc all by hand. I guess blizz thinks i'm legit this way

That's what keeps you looking normal. Leveling all day long, and then raiding, or dailies, or whatever. It's weird if someone can do the same set of quests repetitively on all their alts, then do the same thing every day for over a month.

Bot like a Human done... Nice guide btw but its common sense, Ive been botting for over 5 years now with hb....but I only bot when im at my pc doing work or watching a movie. If a profile says its 100% AFK does not mean its afkable on every single toon.

Yeah, it is a lot of common sense, but it's also stuff you notice people going "Oh No BANWAVE! HB Sucks" in the forums. When they were the single ban, and running their character for 24 hours a day doing dumb stuff. More of just a nice refresher course in common sense so you don't have to learn the hard way from your mistakes.


If you liked it though, +Rep it

 

[TurboNerd]

biggest problem with kicks is how many people use it, i've seen prolly 7-8 people who were obviously using it given they followed me step by step, after about the 3rd quest in a row i just logged and called it a day. now i tend to use a combination of dungeons, arch, and questing when i know they're low pop zones (BC/LK are almost always dead zones apart from the occasional bored 90)

suggesting using ONLY kicks is a good way to get flagged, when you've got lets say 1k people across servers following the EXACT same path, it's kind of a give away. change it up, if you're babysitting it anyways try using other profiles, or other methods, break up the pattern