It's a fair question. I've been wanting to do TLP for a while, but as a Live-player I've always felt that personally boxing characters was a violation of the intent of Truebox in that they didn't want people to box but couldn't totally stop them so they just added truebox to mitigate it, so I never really considered TLP. This view may or may not be true, it's just something I didn't consider. I view Aradune as an intentionally designed 2box server, so I figured now was a good time to do it. I'm choosing Aradune instead of Rizlona because I'm not interesting in doing more than 2boxing and there are quite a few people I want to play with. The difference between this setup and one without a remote-desktop is actually pretty small. I'm using a Logitech G13 wired to my laptop to transmit key presses. Not to get into it too much, but my boxing philosophy is that anytime I move from my main to a box as evidence of a mistake and as I refine my boxing setup I minimize this. For TLP this means I want to do ALL actions through my G13. So, losing remote-desktop would mostly mean I'd switch monitors up and have a bezel between the two views and wouldn't be able to record my characters simultaneously.
The line I highlighted above should be all you have to say to anyone that says you are not trueboxing. You have a keyboard connected to your second computer that you are using to run the second character. That IS trueboxing. Why anyone is insinuating that you are circumventing truebox is beyond me because you are NOT. You are doing EXACTLY what the devs said has to be done on a truebox server.
Pretty confident that any type of Remote Desktop is against truebox rules, but I don't suspect it's going to get you nabbed. Other than that, your setup looks kosher to me. From the videos I've seen of you playing your 6-box on live, this will most definitely be a boring walk in the park. Your cleric will rebuff every 45mins, CH your pet every 5 mins, and splash heal your enchanter during pet breaks. The enchanter will rebuff every 45 minutes, haste pet as needed, pull, tash, slow(if needed), root mob, and sit. A couple unsolicited tips for EZ mode charming: Keeping the mob rooted prevents you from getting double-teamed when charm breaks. GINA (or in-game) audio trigger for charm break is mega important - recently I've noticed on Mangler that charm will break up-to 5 seconds or so before the charm buff token on the mob disappears. So the pet will still show up in the pet window...while beating on you. When charm breaks, have a hotkey that makes the cleric target the pet and cast stun - it's usually easier than just PBAOE stunning with the ENC because the pet beating on you can cause spell interrupts. This is a bit less important before the ETW becomes available as mobs don't hit very hard <20. Rune is largely unnecessary on the enchanter, but some prefer the safety blanket. CC is definitely your friend - I usually pull 4-5 mobs at a time and try to lock them all down with long-duration mezzes before doing anything else. The only real threat you have is a pet break during a pull - having all mobs asleep but 1 (rooted hopefully) makes it way easier to deal with a rogue pet. If you have a druid in the group, using ensnare on your pet can be helpful - makes it super easy to re-charm. This will impact DPS a bit as the pet will take longer to get to the mob, AND it won't be able to chase down fleeing mobs. Give your charm pet only 1 weapon. If you give it 1 wep, it will quad NPCs, but not PCs. If you give it 2 weps, it will quad both NPCs and PCs. When charming L53 critters (max level charm at L60), they can quad for 218 and with max haste, can take you down in about 4-5 seconds. You get nearly twice that time if they only have 1 weapon. Be careful giving them stun whips or DD proc weapons - stun whips for obvious recharming reasons and DD proc weapons because they will break root (my preference is to keep mobs rooted). Also, the DPS add from procs is basically 0 anyways. Definitely give charm pets -MR items and armor - their AC sucks normally, but with a full set of banded, they tank great (and have 4x the HP of a regular tank). Don't eat high fiber or spicy food prior to long stretches of fighting - you can max mezz for about 100s if you want to take a break - so #2 breaks are out of the question! Other than that, enjoy EZ mode.
A couple of things I've learned over the years and I'm sure others may disagree 1 - don't worry very much about slow / incapacitate on mobs, unless your cleric can't keep up with the healing which should be chaining CHs. Save your mana (if needed) for charms and stuns. Exception to this is if you can't take a hit with two mobs beating on you. Plan to get hit a lot and keep defensive skills up. 2 - always tash your charmed mob before charming it 3 - charisma does seem to help, keep the buff up (but don't worry so much about it on gear .. on gear you want HP/AC/INT) 4 - use stuns, particularly pbae stuns before attempting to recharm .. this will usually buy you enough time to get a charm off without being interupted 5 - always audio trigger charm breaks (sounds like you have this covered though) Like I said others may disagree, but I've also done this over and over again and will be doing so again on Rizlona. I've been asking for a server like Rizlona for years, so it's time to play on it! Even though I still plan to continue playing on Live as well now that I'm starting to catch up there.
It's xfinity. Something around 80mbit down, 10mbit up. Plenty of bandwidth for EQ. My ping times are nominal. I'm not sure if it helps but when I six-boxed I set the chat filters on my boxes to minimal amounts. I've never verified that it has an impact on network traffic. The laptop and PC are connected on a LAN via a gigabit network switch, my modem/router provides local addresses to them via DHCP. When I looked at the network traffic it was only a few mbit but I didn't test it while moving around in a high image-detail environment where I'd presume the bitrate would increase.
If you're ever not happy with multiplicity, try parsec, it's free and has performed excellently for me. Also I'm dying at the 'RDP violates truebox!' folks. It's true box not true monitor.
There was a conversation involving daybreak games community managers and what seems to be guild leaders regarding TLP a few months back when Holly was still the community manager. Dreamweaver is involved as well. This will give you insight as to what darkpaws stance is as far as 3rd party tools. The post that I found that references it is [COLOR=var(--text-link)]https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/youve-ruined-your-own-lands-youll-not-ruin-mine.265584/[/COLOR] Someone seemingly involved in the conversation linked to the actual conversation at https://pastebin.com/DSPXxrg0 From what I gather, DPG only really cares about cheating like warping etc. . and automated afk play. As in scripted characters with no need for a human to monitor its actions.
My advice is just to minimize mouse usage on, and looking at the box screen. I wont get into the remote stuff, I haven't had the need for it. You'll be faster, and ergonomically it is better to just look at one screen, even if its squished into one monitor. I totally ignore my other pc's monitors except when looting upgrades or climbing ladders. You know extended target, that's the main trick for healing the pet. Make friends with a bard that can mez your pet, or paladin that can root your pet while you use the toilet. Truebox has false positives if you get too aggressive with your button mashing. It boots you out immediately out of combat like old time LD's used to, but it's more annoying because the in-game login doesnt work anymore. You can make a batch file to kill everquest and launch with the patchme option for a quicker recovery. If you're taking a day off to level, do it 1 or more days after launch.
It's actually way more immediate than LD. Your characters immediately drop from the world the instant it happens... This can be useful if you get a bad pull or something happens out of your control and you need to clear aggro fast. Pound 2 on both keyboards as fast as you can and you'll be safely camped out in about hallf a second.
Yea, I was trying to be subtle. I wouldn't mind if they fixed this loophole if it meant less false positive boots due to loosening whatever apm restriction they have in place.
Me too. I figure as long as they leave it as is, people deserve to know how it works and how it can be a benefit, to compensate for how it so often randomly screws you.
All the way to live, baby! But seriously, I have no idea. I figure I'll play it off and on for a while.
Good advice, but I never used stuns. I just used the fast-casting, short-term mez. That spell is good for quite a while.
