This guide will be for everyone who has setup their bot and has it working correctly. In-game, your character moves without human interaction and you connect fine to the HB/GB servers. USERS WHO NEED BASIC SETUP - CLICK HERE ------------------------------------------------------------ A little about me: I've been playing Warcraft now since the Friends and Family alpha in 2003. At the time, my college room mate at the time was in an interview process to work for Blizzard and was given access to "test out this new game they were working on". I've been botting since about the time AQ40 was "end-game". Those living essence's sold for oodles of gold! I'm not new to this scene: I've been playing on the same account since then, with no bans, no reports (that I know of) and have worked out any issues and problems that arose by myself, and this guide here will tell you about them, and how I went about to fix them. ####################### # STEP 1: TWEAKING WARCRAFT # ####################### This guide assumes you play on official servers, which at the time of writing this guide, is in Phase 2 of the elemental invasion of patch 4.0.1 (pre-cataclysm). This guide also assumes you're not using a computer that still has a 5" floppy drive, but takes into consideration that not everyone has a $20,000 Ferrari gaming rig. First, we're going to tweak your copy of World of Warcraft. If you have an authenticator, I leave it up to your discretion if you want to remove it from your account to allow the few "auto relogger" scripts to work correctly. See section 3: Addons if you don't want to remove it. Personally, I leave it connected. In-game settings are simple. You don't need max detail and settings on "Ultra" when you bot, so what I would do is copy your config.wtf file with your "Playing" settings and keep it handy. Reset your settings to "Low" and enable either Windowed (Full screen) mode, or just Windowed mode. While this will degrade in-game performance, who cares if you're getting only 15fps, since you probably wont be at your computer. Backup your new config.wtf file, and just swap out the file for when you're playing and when your botting. I play with windowed full screen mode, I find HB plays nicely with Warcraft, and crashes less often. Next, if you plan to leave your bot running for more than a couple hours, to reduce the chance of your computer overheating and crashing, on the advanced options of your video settings, enable Maximum Foreground frame rates, and set it around the half way mark, or about 30 FPS. A common misconception is that the higher FPS the better, however the human eye can only see 30 frames a second, so any more is just burning up your video card faster and making it work harder than necessary. Turn multisampling to 1x, and texture filtering to bilinear. Turn Sun shafts off and water detail to low. Those 4 settings will skyrocket anyone's FPS, and are unnecessary when botting. Particle density and Projected Textures are others too, but that is system situational. ######################### # STEP 2: TWEAKING HONORBUDDY # ######################### Now that Warcraft is running at a nice smooth and easy going "Botting" speed, we now turn our focus to the settings of Honor Buddy, hereby referred to as its nickname, HB. I use the latest release, which is 2.0.0.3210. At the time, no plugins worked, so I found addons (section 3) to do the job of most of the plugins. I personally deleted the bundled plugins to reduce the chance of crashes while it botted for me over night. I also used the most popular profiles for questing, which are linked at the bottom of this post, and custom classes for the specific class I was leveling/grinding with. At the time, Shadowstrike for a rogue, and ShamWOW for a shammy. First, login to the game, and the character you wish to bot. Then, start up HB (with admin privileges if you're on Vista/7). This step seems to always be skipped or done in the wrong order, which results in 90% of the errors people get. Wow first, then HB. Not that difficult. Now, login to HB, and click on Bot Settings. The settings I used were default, and I unchecked any type of profession such as skinning and herbing, because that just slows down leveling. You can always level a profession when you're 80. Next, load a profile. These can be a bit difficult seeing as how there's hundreds of profiles on this forum, however I've gone through most of them, and picked out my favorites that worked just fine for me. Too bad Horde, you smell funny and I don't play you, so Alliance only profiles are linked here Once your profile is loaded, head on over to the General Settings page, and type in your food, drink and mount name. Flying mounts are not supported at the moment, so put in your ground mount. DON'T PUT IN A COMBO GROUND/FLYING MOUNT SUCH AS THE X-52 ROCKET. It will crash HB. Check off the "Use experimental pathing" box, and uncheck the other 2. I find the bot can't really differentiate between low level mobs, so when its running towards an objective such as handing in a quest, it will stop to kill that level 50 mob, even though you're 75, which is wasting time and filling your bags with useless loot. Next, click CC Configuration. For my rogue, I turned off pick pocketing, used instant poison on both weapons, and used ambush as my pull tactic. As sub spec, I was 2-3 shotting mobs 2 levels higher than me. However, because ambush is a "must be behind target" move, the bot did occasionally get hung up standing in front of a mob trying to ambush over and over, and it did loop, but usually the mob will eventually see you and attack, pulling you out of stealth. A necessary downtime IMO. ####################### # STEP 3: ADDONS FOR BOTTERS # ####################### Due to the fact that HB doesn't have any plugins that work currently, I had to resort to using in-game addons for things such as inventory management and warnings of messages. All addons can be found on curse.com or by using the Curse Client. GreySeller It automatically sells any gray items in your inventory whenever you visit a vendor. Most profiles will visit a vendor eventually to repair or when your bags are full, and this addon gets rid of the crap for you. Loot Filter A bitch and a half to setup, but once its up and running, everything is good. Automatically filters your loot, and auto-deletes things you specify to keep your bags clean. Excellent for GatherBuddy botters and HB botters farming. Run either bot for about 3 hours, then check your inventory for white quality items or higher for things you don't wish to keep/vendor. Then, add them to the "Delete" list by name in Loot Filter settings. Whenever you pick up an item of that name from now on, Loot Filter will automatically delete it without confirmation. CogFix As of 4.0.1 - whenever that "Cog Wheel" icon appeared on your screen (ex. Clicking a portal, opening a chest, etc), some clients crashed. This is due to an error in the code of Warcraft and tool tips containing only one line of information. CogFix fixes that by adding in a small blank space second line in every single tool tip in game. Dynamically adding this (it doesn't modify your game files), it makes those 4.0.1 crashes never happen. To date, I've not crashed once since installing this addon. AddonSounds Enabler - A MUST FOR ALL AFK BOTTERS!! I personally play with no sounds what so ever, no music, no voices, nothing. I prefer to have a TV on in the background or be listening to music when I play. However, due to a "feature" implemented in 4.0.1, Blizzard disabled addons from making sounds when in-game sounds are disabled. This made things like warning tones being played from a private message not be heard. This addon, dynamically enables in-game sounds when a whisper is received, either battle.net or character, for a specific time. Perfect if you want to sleep while you bot, this will wake you up and give you time to answer that guy asking to group with you for quests. Make sure you use WIM or Prat, and set them to make a noise when someone messages you. BadBoy Anti-spam A simple addon, automatically detects and deletes spam messages such as gold sellers and beggers, as well as some (not all) guild invite spam. Those ads in your trade channel for people forming fail guilds (we have a tabard! and 1 bank tab!), will no longer be seen, and wont trigger any noises from the above addon either. Automatically reports them too, making you seem more legit. ######################### # STEP 4: HOW TO NOT GET BUSTED # ######################### Some simple steps that I have always done, using common sense, and by watching others fail at botting that have stopped me from getting banned. Some are already mentioned on this site, and all credit goes to them. I did not copy this from you, sorry in advance if you think that I did. Guilds First, create a guild, and be the only person in that guild. It's only 5 signatures now, so its easy to do. This will stop a significant chunk of spam and reporters, since most people who report you, will see you running circles grinding mobs without responding to their "join mah guild plz!" messages. If you don't want to create your own guild, join a guild of friends that KNOWS YOU BOT. This way when they're asking you in guild chat to group with them for whatever reason and you don't respond, they know why. PVP / Dungeons / Battlegrounds Don't PvP or join dungeons and battlegrounds. Players will report you. Most players are not idiots (and I say MOST players..), and they can easily tell you're botting. Save your honor grind for when you're 80 and actually playing. Making Gold / Farming I know a lot of people will disagree with me here, find out what everyone needs and what everyone is buying on the AH and DON'T FARM IT! If everyone needs something, chances are it comes from one or two specific areas of the game, and there will be other people there farming it as well. Re-read the above statement about PVP if you don't understand why. Farm something everyone needs, but isn't in high demand for. I prefer eternal (element) farming in Nagrand. No one NEEDS them anymore, but they're too lazy to farm them. Heirloom Items If you already have an 80 (or 85?) on the server, buy your alt a heirloom item. This will again stop a good chunk of suspicious messages because you're not level 68 using a level 40 dagger as a warrior. Since the heirloom items level with you automatically as you level, you never need to replace them, or upgrade them. Also, most people who inspect you, will see that you have good gear because "Those Chinese gold farmers wouldn't use heirloom items". AFK / Busy status NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER set your status as AFK. It's just asking for people to report you. This is common sense. However, busy status is OK. Using the keyboard shortcut CTRL-Z, you can turn off all aspects of your UI. Set your busy status as "Farming - UI Off, messages will be read later" or something. If someone questions you on how you're playing without a UI, just tell them you use key bindings and a warcraft gaming mouse. You were listening to music and didn't hear the ping noise it made when you messaged me, sorry! Problem solved Length of Time Playing If friends come online, or people start to question why you're on at 4am, and again at 2pm, and again at 9pm, and again at 4am the next day, and ask when you sleep/eat/poop, time to stop your bot, take a break for a few days and lay low. To cover your ass, just say "Oh, I'm grinding for xxx item, and kinda lost track of time" or "I really wanna get this guy to xx before Cataclysm". Those are common accepted answers. If you do have to use those however, log off and play a different alt, your main or don't play at all. In a few days, people will forget and you can start up again. ------------------------------------------------------------ I hope this guide has helped everyone get the most from their HB subscription, prevent getting banned, and gotten you an 80 of every class. It took me a few hours to write this whole thing up, but consider that my skills are better set writing guides, than writing profiles. Much respect to our community who write profiles to do specific things, your talent goes beyond what most deserve on this forum. I also am going to open the flood gates, and offer any assistance I can, on a basis of donations. If you need help, send me a message, and I'll help you out as best as I can. I'll do this free, but if you want to throw a couple bucks my way (or a game time card, or blizzard store special item code) as a thanks, that's pretty cool too. Christmas is coming, could use some extra cash for presents for the family. Enjoy everyone, and happy botting!
Very good work, but for me most of it is basis of wow/botting. I would actually say this an excellent guide for newcommers to both wow and HB. But really good job. +Rep
This is an awesome guide I do break some of your rules but this would have been great about a year ago when I discoversed HB.
Well, here's to hoping it reduces spam in Boss's inbox about bans and less QQ on the forums.. Of course now we're going to get "TLDR" people.. Thanks all for the kind words
This fails, since in 4.0.1 there is a tap when you inspect people, to see how many people there actually are in the guild. Get an addOn who cancels duels/guild invites/trades. Otherwise nice wall of text I like it! Especially good for noobs.
I'm curious, you claim that no plugins work with HB. What plugins did you try? All the ones I use (roughly 6 different ones) all work perfectly fine.
Alot of plugins work (wish red alert would compile ) i think he means HB tends to crash alot more with plugins enabled.
Heyhow do I go about installing quest paths like this one http://www.thebuddyforum.com/honorb...torder]-horde-eastern-kingdoms-1-60-a-37.html it has more than one XML and labeled folders. Do I remove the xml from the labeled folder or jsut move the folder into the profile. How exactly do I do this, have been wanting to for some time but no one in that thread seems to knwo how to respond, except for works great...
