Recruit-A-Friend
I realized after writing the first part of this guide that I mentioned the RAF program but never gave any details on it. If you’re going to be multiboxing a toon, there’s no reason not to sign up for the RAF. If you want to buy another copy of WoW and another subscription, you can, but you can also do the RAF with a free trial account as well. Head over here, send yourself an RAF email, then follow the instructions in the email. You can then create a new trial account and get the RAF XP bonus on both toons.
Just remember, trial accounts are very limited in what they can do: no trades or mail with paying players, and they can’t progress past level 20.
Gameplay
Now that you’ve got AHK set up properly, go ahead and set it to run in the Windows system tray. It does have to be going while you play WoW, but it won’t take up too many resources. Now you can start up two instances of WoW. Once they’re going I recommend setting them to run in Windowed Mode (under video settings) as this will dramatically increase performance. Even if your computer is man enough to run both in full screen, you’ll still save time when you have to Alt-Tab to the other window (and you’ll be doing a good bit of that).
Once you have two windows of WoW going, set your alt character to follow your main and then check to make sure that all of your macros are working. Hit one of your hotkeys on your main character, and make sure that your alt does the corresponding action. If it does, then you’re good to start questing. If it doesn’t, then you probably got something messed up in the script code. Go back and make sure that it’s all correct.
Controlling two characters at the same time is a whole new level of gameplay. It’s strange and disorienting, but also engaging and really fun. It’ll take a bit to get used though, so don’t give up too quickly. When you’re questing, you’ll have to switch back and forth between your characters to make sure that your alt is getting everything too. Accepting quests, talking to NPCs, and interacting with the environment all have to be done from the particular character’s window. There’s no way to accept a quest on your main and have the alt toon accept it as well. It gets a bit tedious at times, but overall it’s much faster.
Once you’ve got some quests and are ready to start questing (bags are clear, you have water and all that jazz), you can head out into the wild. There are a number of things I could tell you about this, but I’ll just stick to the highlights. Most of it you’ll find out on your own easily enough.
1) Set loot to FFA. This will help minimize switching back and forth between characters. When you run out of bag space on your main, trade everything to your alt toon, and keep going.
2) You want to accept every kill quest you can find. These sorts of quests go very quickly and are super easy to do with two characters. Gathering quests are more difficult since both characters have to gather their own set of the loot. I found it was best to let the alt character gather his whole set first, and then let my main toon start gathering. That way anytime you see something sparkly, you know you need to pick it up. You don’t have to switch back and forth to see how many your alt toon has gotten.
3) While in combat, it’s easy to get one toon turned around so he’s not facing the mob. If your alt toon’s back is to the mob, then he can’t attack. Keep that in mind as you run around, and you’ll get the hang of steering pretty soon.
Well, I think that’s pretty much it. Like I said, there is more to learn, but this covers all of the basics and most of the rest you can learn on your own.
Other Resources
Dual-Boxing.com
Wowwiki
Have fun!
Tags: Guides, Multiboxing
