World of Warcraft: A Dual-Boxing Dynasty

[dubb93]

So I've decided to get back into WoW, however raiding and PvP just won't do. I'm ready to take on the ultimate single player adventure...well actually two adventures, I am going to dual box.

For those who don't know dual boxing is basically playing two characters at the same time. The purpose is twofold:

1. It allows me to complete tasks which I would otherwise have to wait around and find a group to complete.

2. Allows me to level two characters at the same exact time with the 300% XP bonus given from recruit-a-friend.

There are players who are able to solo raids with this system. In reading into dual boxing I found a crap ton(relatively speaking of course) of players who have their own 5 man groups. They pay for 5 accounts and run them all at the same time. This allows them to log on and basically solo heriocs by themself.

Much more rare are the players who run 10 versions at the same time, however I found a guy who has naxx on farm by himself and is in the process of progressing through Ulduar...and he has the videos to prove it. This isn't my goal, however it may be possible if I ever get the hang of dual boxing.

For the purpose of this dynasty I will be using a program called Pwnboxer which I purchased from pwnboxer.com. The video on the site sold me on the program, so beware if you have any interest in dual boxing at all, if you watch the video you will most likely be buying the program after watching .

I will be running two characters at the same time, Brourk a male orc shaman and his daughter Jutra a female orc warrior. My alliance version of this test is a druid and a rogue, but it is currently on hold for the two orcs.

Here are pictures of the two characters in their current form(I am working on video, however the video recorder I downloaded to use for recording crashed my two WoW's I had running. Any suggestion on a video recording would be great.)

The Warrior Princess Jutra



And the old man Brourk

[The Jackal]

Interesting, will be curious to see how this works out for you.

[dubb93]

Originally Posted by The Jackal

Interesting, will be curious to see how this works out for you.

I choose this server for the dynasty b/c of all my servers I play on this one is the one where I have the most resources available to me. Scorchen is a money making machine and has a huge amount of gold on him which will help ease these two characters into the world nicely. Other than that I need to download some mods(just got back from vaction a few days ago and find out today when I log on they dropped the patch while I was away.) Once I get the mods downloaded I will look into some video recording software again, hoping someone has some suggestions before it comes to that. Should be ready to get this started Sundayish.

[The Jackal]

What is your preferred money making strategy? Recently started characters on Shattered Hand and been selling stacks of copper for 5 - 9 gold, which bodes well for future resource selling.

I only recently hit 80 with any character so I haven't even begun to devise money-making strategies at high levels aside from dailies and my mining.

[dubb93]

Originally Posted by The Jackal

What is your preferred money making strategy? Recently started characters on Shattered Hand and been selling stacks of copper for 5 - 9 gold, which bodes well for future resource selling.

I only recently hit 80 with any character so I haven't even begun to devise money-making strategies at high levels aside from dailies and my mining.

The economy on Altar of Storms allows me to buy the mats for enchants and then turn around and sell the enchant on the AH for profit. For instance I'm able to buy the mats for Titanweave for 90g and turn around and sell the enchant for 175g. Other enchants run the same way, I have a core of 8 enchants I sell daily and one of them nets me nearly 400g profit(some of the bigger profit ones ofcourse don't sell daily like the rest of them). Of course I will absolutely not discuss my big profit enchants for the risk of losing my business.

I'm also able to buy the mats much cheaper b/c I buy in bulk from two set guys who are my suppliers. They make money off of me and I use the mats they sell me to more than make my money back. They send me a certain amount of mats in the mail each day cod at a set price we agreed on. This keeps my costs down even lower while guaranteeing the suppliers sells their chanting mats daily.

[dubb93]

If I can get a video to upload that doesn't look like complete crap I will upload the one video I shot today that crashed my game out. It is without mods and with very limited broadcasting at the moment, but it will atleast give you all an idea of what my screen looks like while I'm dual boxing.

[dubb93]

It looks like poo but you get the idea. This is my full screen with just the very bottom cut off so I could hit the record button, this is exactly as I see it while I am playing:

[dubb93]

Here is a list of the mods I will be using to run these two characters:

Dominos - Customizable action bars

Gatherer - Remembers things you have gathered and marks them on the map.

Jamba - The ultimate dual boxing mod. Along with Pwnboxer allows me to control Brourk without ever actually clicking over to his screen.

Mik's Scrolling Combat Text - Basically self explanatory.

Omen3 - Allows me to see how much threat Jutra and Brourk have on the monsters of the world. The goal is to keep the monsters attacking Jutra and off of Brourk.

Pitbull 3.0 - Customizes the unit frames. I like to see numbers rather than just bars. This allows me to do that.

QuestHelper - Walks you through nearly every quest in the game.

Titan Panel - Coordinates and so much more.

[dubb93]

So, how in the hell do you do combat with two characters at the same time? I know you have split screen, does that mean you have to click over to the next game and click the button on each character for each attack you want to do?

Pwnboxer allows me to broadcast certain keys across both games I am running. This means I am playing Jutra like normal, however there are certain keys that when I use them will do an action not only on Jutra's version of the game but also broadcast on Brourk's game as well without me even clicking over.

I broadcast the following keys:

f1-f12
Q
P
[
]
3

P, [, ] are just out of the way keys that I have binded to Brourk's self buffs and Brourks rez. They do nothing for Jutra when I press them.

Q is binded to nothing for Jutra, but tells Brourk to drop his totems. It is macroed for Brourk to drop all of his totems with 1 button press.

f1-f12 are all of Brourk's heals and attacks. All of these are macroed, for instance f3 is the following:

/assist Jutra
/cast Flame Shock

Basically it tells Brourk to target the same monster Jutra is attacking and cast his highest level version of Flame Shock.

f5 does the following:

/target Jutra
/cast Healing Wave

Basically that is telling Brourk to target Jutra and heal her. f6 is the same except it heals Brourk.

3 tells Jutra to perform a heroic strike and tells Brourk to cast a lightning bolt.

When I go into combat I use the following rotation. I press 1 to have Jutra charge, Q to have Brourk drop his totems and f3 for a Brourk Flame Shock. At this point Jutra will have built up enough rage for a heroic strike and Brourk will have come to a stop just behind Jutra so I push 3. 3 does two things, it tells Brourk to cast a lightning bolt and tells Jutra to do a heroic strike. Normally at this point the fight is over, however if it isn't I can just spam 3 for heroic stikes/lightning bolts or push 1-12 for a Jutra ability or f1-f12 for a Brourk ability.

At the conclusion of combat Jamba forces Brourk to follow Jutra automatically without me having to click over.

If anyone has any questions I would be more than willing to go into more depth.

[aran]

Have you used Carbonite before? It replaces QuestHelper and gives you a significantly better map. One of the most professional and well-done UI mods I've ever seen for a game.

[dubb93]

Chapter 1

Long Journey to the Barrens

Jutra and Brourk make the long journey from Orgrimmar(capitol city of the Orcs and the Horde) to the Barrens. The Barrens is exactly as one would expect, a vast desert wasteland.

Once in the Barrens Brourk obtained his fire totem by completely a quest chain that sent him back to Durotar. Upon completely that long quest chain my plan was to head to the crossroads and rack up a bunch of quests and then go out and complete the ones that make the most sense to complete(hey I am getting +300% xp here, not like I'll be doing every quest). Instead I met this guy:



Bucker was a level 11 rogue who I quickly learned was new to the game. So new infact that he was on a trial account. I met him just north of the crossroads and he explained to me he was having trouble killing the monsters. He asked for my help, and being the nice guy I am I spent the next 2 hours assisting Bucker with his quests.

This was not how I planned my gaming session, but what the heck, was a fun day of gaming anyway. At the end of the day both Brourk and Jutra are now level 17.

[dubb93]

Originally Posted by aran

Have you used Carbonite before? It replaces QuestHelper and gives you a significantly better map. One of the most professional and well-done UI mods I've ever seen for a game.

The short answer would be that I started using QuestHelper back when Carbonite was a subscription based program and QuestHelper was free. Since Carbonite has become a free program I have not had any issue with QuestHelper that has given me a reason to try Carbonite out. Maybe one day I will check it out but for now I couldn't be happier with QuestHelper.

[dubb93]

Chapter 1(continued)

Top of the Food Chain

Later in the day Jutra and Brourk meet up with a Tauren druid named Tonga Runetotem in The Crossroads. She informs them of disturbances that have been going on in the nearby oasis's of the Barrens. Ever eager to help, Jutra and her father Brourk agree that they must get to the bottom of these disturbances. A quick investigation of the forgotten pools turns up nothing of note, however once the magnificent duo are dispatched to the Stagnant Oasis on a mission to collect turtle shells they come face to face with a stunning site. Gesharahan, a three headed level 20 elite-rare hydra has made the oasis her home.



The fight itself was a huge learning experience for me. A level 20 elite is no walk in the park, even for a level 17 and a level 18. The first attempt I treated the fight exactly as I would any other non elite and quickly Brourk ran out of mana and was unable to heal Jutra when it was needed. This resulted in a wipe.

I decided that I needed to change some of Brourk's controls around, I moved his lightning bolt from 3 to f2 and made sure Brourk had nothing bound to 3. The reason for this change was so Brourk was not wasting mana casting a lightning bolt everytime Jutra used a heroic strike(which is basically spammed). Binding both of those to 3 works well for quickly killing non-elites, but I had just found out Brourk just doesn't have the mana to both dps and heal a longer fight against an elite.

So the second attempt was on after clearing out a few more turtles and this time Brourk was just going to be healing.

The fight itself went much smoother and at the end the beast was slain. I was now in possession of a brand new sword, The Shiver Blade.



The blade will most likely find its way to the auction house, it just isn't a big enough upgrade over Jutra's 1h sword to justify losing the shield. Following the fight the two returned to The Crossroads for a well deserved nights rest.

Jutra and Brourk are both now level 18.