Level 29 - Darkshire

Only played a bit since the patch came out. I had some difficuty getting all game clients patched correctly. I ended up doing a clean reinstall of everything and setting my characters up again with new macro's and key configurations. I'm happy with the layout now and this thould do me for some time going forward. I have moved the team to Darkshire and started that chain of quests. I really enjoy grinding on Worgen. They not only drop some good loot but you can skin them too. I need to build up my stocks of leather so that my leatherworker Sgt can craft me a good set of level 30 armour.

One of the Funniest Things I have Seen in Ages

I was over at the BigRedKitty blog and happened read a few comments on one of his articles. One poster called stillsmall has his own blog and had a link to this graphic on his site. It is one of the funniest WoW related gags that I have seen in some time. Check it out.

Problems with the /assist Command

For some time now I have been having some problems when using the /assist command to send in all five of my pets to attack a target I have selected. I originally had my main character put a macro on Key 2 for attacking a target. This macro would cast Hunter's Mark and then have the pet attack the target. All of my other characters would also have a macro on Key 2 that was set to /assist the main. I would then just select a target with the mouse, hit the Key 2 button and Keyclone would ensure that all characters hit the Key 2 button at the same time. In theory this would result in all 5 pets attacking the same target that I had selected.

I practice however, I would often get three pets attacking the target I wanted and one or two would attack another target that was in range but that I was not interested in. On more than one occasion this resulted in me pulling far more mobs than I wanted. Causing a wipe. This has been the cause of some anguish as I have been making my way around Azeroth. On investigation, this problem is caused by the interaction of the game client and the servers.

When I select a target and attack it, the game must send data reflecting this action to the game server. The server then has to send that confirmation data back to my client and notify all other clients with characters in that area, telling them of my actions. The game client must then take this data and update the graphics for each client screen and make it possible for each client to react. This of course takes time and on some connections on some occasions, this can take longer than the time it takes you to press key commands at the keyboard.

In order to solve this problem, I now have my pet attack commands spread over two keys (Keys 2 & 3). On the first I have /petattack for my main character's pet with nothing for the support characters, and the second key is only used by the support characters to /assist the main and send in their pets. I also ensure that the autoattack on /assist feature is disabled to ensure that they don't start firing at the target until I am ready. By doing this I ensure that there will always be enough time for the support character clients to know which target I am attacking. They will then be able to assist my main character by attacking the right target.

Since doing this I haven't had a single instance of one of the pets attacking a different target than I wanted. However, it does take up two buttons on the primary attack bar and it is a bit slower to get attacks started. But this is still a much better solution overall.

Credit for this information must go to the Dual-Boxing.com forum members. They have encountered these problems before and their discussions between each other on this issue was of great help. Thanks for a great resource guys.

Levels 26 - 28 Wetlands

I managed to get all members of my team up to level 28 by doing the Wetlands quests. Still haven't done the final three 'Group' quests yet. I will either do them tomorrow or come back at level 30 to do them. I encountered the Dark Iron Dwarves on the quest 'The Dark Iron War (Group)' and they hit pretty hard. There is another quest in the same area to kill an elite warlock called 'Longbraid the Grim' for the quest 'A Grim Task'. Apparently he is very difficult to get to as he has a lot of elite dwarves guarding him. Other quests didn't pose much of a challenge. I have done them before so I was able to get them done fairly quickly.

PVP Starts

I moved the Squadron into Ashenvale for some questing. And almost immediately started to get some attention from the gankers. All were skulls to me, but I had some success. I managed to kill a Level 40 Plus Warlock(with a Felguard minion). Just sent in the kittens and started blasting. He stayed at distance and was relatively easy to finish. He disappeared after that and didn't come back for more. A while later I was down at Zoram Strand taming a couple of Clattering Crawlers for Claw 3. I was just finishing off a couple of Naga to get this skill when I got jumped by a Druid in cat form. Again, skull to me so I couldn't know his level but I managed to get him down to a whisker of his health twice before he ran off and healed. He eventually finished off all the team. It might have been a different story though if I had my full strength pets with me.

Lastly, I got one shotted from behind by Dahater , a level 70 Hunter on my server. I didn't even see him coming up behind me and I wasn't even able to get a shot off. Once my main is down I have some difficulty in working effectively with the other characters. This is something I am going to have to work on over the next couple of weeks. In the meantime Mr Dahater is now on my payback list for later.

Levels 22 - 26 Loch Modan & Redridge Mountains

I managed to get all members of my team to 26. I have completed all quest lines in Loch Modan and Redridge Mountains. Very easy to do most of the quests, especially the bosses. Only the gather quests are a bother. I can see these being the bane of my existance till level 70. Off to Westfall tomorrow. Three Days, eleven hours, thirty nine minutes played time.

The Deadmines

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours moving through The Deadmines. I took the Saber Squadron through at levels 21-22 and cleared all the way to Mr Smite. I managed to complete four of the five quests. After getting wiped by Mr Smite and his stealthed rogues I called it a night. The confined spaces do trouble me and as soon as the mobs enter my dead zone I start to have difficulty finishing the mobs off. I got wiped essentially by trying to rush things a bit rather than taking my time and progressing steadily.

Note to self. I have got to get better at co-ordinating the team. This trip through the deadmines does give me some hope for the instances end-game though.

Hate the sound of Gunfire.

I recently trained up the Squadron to use Guns. But the racket it created when all five of the team were firing at once was doing my head in. I then remembered a post on one of the Hunter Forums for a mod that changed the normal gun sound to one of a silenced gunshot. After a bit of digging, I found the forum post and it provided a download link to the file. I have been using it ever since and it sounds just great. It kind of makes you think your one of those super-duper special forces guys with their fancy weapons.

If you want to save your ears from those loud gunshots give it a try.

Grinding Mosshides from lvls 19-21

There is a Mosshide Gnoll Camp in the Wetlands (Location 55:74). It's just as you come out of the Dun Algaz tunnel on your right. The gnolls here have a wickedly fast respawn time and you can spend hours here grinding them. They drop lots of cloth (Silk,Wool & Linen) a few greens and bits and pieces of other stuff. In the past I just came here to quickly complete a quest. I didn't try to farm them for cloth as the respawn rate was too high for me to fight and loot the corpses after. However, I took the squadron there to level and was able to kill the mobs fast enough that I had plenty of time to loot as well. I managed to fill all the bags of the team and rise two levels before I had to go back to camp to get more ammo and empty my bags.

The Leggy Blonde of Darkshore

I don't know how many times I have doen the "Washed Ashore" quests in Darkshore, but I still get a kick out of doing them. They consist of the two quests given by Gwennyth Bly'Leggonde called "Washed Ashore" and "Beached Sea Creature". In addition there are another 9 called either Beached Sea Creature or Beached Sea Turtle. These quests are (all) obtained by finding the remains on the shore and clicking on some feature of the remains to get the quest.They are excellent for Darnassus reputation and experience. I found them very easy to do with my team of 5 hunters.

Why Saber Squadron?

Well what else would you call a team of 4 Nightsaber's and a Ghost Saber as leader. I just had to go with high damage pets and the saber family look great, They also match fairly well with the racial mounts used by Nightelves. I think they look pretty spiffy.

16-17 Darkshore

I now have all 5 toons up to level 16-17. I am currently doing quests in Darkshore. Most quests are no problem with 5 characters. One shot kills are quite frequent. However, the gather quests are what takes the most time. 5 Moonstalker pelts times five equals a bloody long time grinding Moonstalkers. Just been logged out for realm maintenance, so time to get some rest.

My Setup

Looking at the multiboxing site, you will see that most of the multiboxers have gone the hardware route. That means multiple PC's, monitors and specialised hardware to connect the keyboards and mice to the PC.s. You need to be able to send a single keystroke to multiple PC's and their copy of WoW that is running on them. The Hardware route is by far and away the best route to setting up a multibox system, but of course the most expensive. More recently a multiboxer has written a small program called keyclone that will allow you to send a single keystroke to multiple windows on a single PC. This will allow you to play and control 5 instances of WoW on a single PC even though only one window can be active at any time. It is this program that makes it possible to easily multibox on a budget. My hardware setup is as follows;

OS Name Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Home Premium
Processor AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+,
Motherboard ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe
Memory 4,094.50 MB
Hard Drives 3 * 250 GB
Graphics Cards 1 * Geforce 7600 GT
1 * Geforce 8600 GT
Displays 2 * 19" Widescreen LCD Monitors

I can effectively run on the above setup, however I am limited to having a single window open at any one time. Any more than one and the program slows down. I usually have my main character's screen open with all the others minimised. I will maximise each other window to my second monitor when I need to interact with an NPC or loot a corpse. The 5 WoW programs tend to use just over 3GB of available RAM and with only one screen open my two cores will run at 65-75% of capacity. Once two or more screens are open then both cores start to operate at 100% and things really slow down. If I were to buy new equipment now, I would probably go for one of the new Intel quad core CPU and a Gigabyte motherboard. Still with 4GB of memory. I am seriously considering upgrading in a few months time.

Multiboxing - Playing 5 WoW Accounts at once.

Saber Squadron is my new WoW project. I have been playing WoW for about two years now and have done very little instancing. I have levelled one hunter to 70 and many others midway just by doing quests. I haven't bothered doing many instances because getting a party together can be a pain at times. Joining a guild to go after the best items has also been an issue for me in that I go away to work (2 on/2 off) so I disappear from play for two weeks at a time. It makes it hard to stay as part of a regular raiding group. So overall I have just done solo quests and stayed away from instances. Just recently I came across a website on multiboxing . This site aroused my interest and it offered the opportunity to build my own team of 5 to tackle the various instances throughout WoW. I would also be able to keep all the best items for myself. No more rolling for the phat loot. This blog is intended to be a running record of my progress on the path of getting 5 hunters to level 70.