Gaming – Page 162 – A Pixel Nomad

EVE? Sure!

Like clockwork, every year I seem to return to EVE Online. I get excited about a new project, or friends are playing, or a new campaign starts. No exception this time. I don’t remember what all I was working towards, but I’m getting myself situated easily enough and already thinking of activating my second account.

First? I needed an R&D agent that handled graviton physics, because my old one hates me. Not sure how I messed up my faction, but there you have it. I’m still doing a lot of drone crafting and these datacore help me out a lot – though I hear there are other ways of getting them now.

I’m looking to what I want to fly next. I’ve got my orca as support for mining, and my tengu for most combat. I want to swing back into PI and hopefully make weekly trips to Jita to sell. A bunch of friends are playing and I think that’s awesome. I’m excited for them.

A lot has changed with the UI since I played last. I forgot I had to hit the journal to find the agents I’m working with. There’s a lot more hand holding for those who want it. In true EVE fashion you’re welcome to play any way you want, but it’s nice to have some guidance if you’re new or returning.

I know people tend to waffle around and next week we may all be playing something new, but it sure is nice to be flying the skies again.

Multiboxing Goals Accomplished

As of this post, my team of 5 are level 35, and still doing random dungeons. The bonus you get for joining a dungeon queue is pretty nice, especially since there’s still 100% bonus. It could be a lot faster but I’m still learning – and man do I have a LOT to learn.

Yesterday I spent some time watching YouTube videos on how to set up VideoFX within ISBoxer. This is a pretty simple concept and it’s how most multiboxers fish, if you’ve ever seen that happen.

You set up one person (or multiple, if you wish) as a source, and then you create a little source area that covers a portion of their screen. In my dungeon case I’ve covered my grid area, where I’m using clique to heal. Basically just a rectangle with my group. When I mouse over the rectangle (while on my druid healer) and use a hotkey, she’ll heal. Left and right mouse and center are all bound to heals.

Then I set up a viewer window. In this case I’m using my main account on my main monitor, and 4 other accounts on my secondary monitor in a tile layout. Anyway, with a source, and a viewer, the rest is simple. It simply broadcasts that small portion of the healer onto the main window I’m playing on. Even if I swap characters. This is a feature in microsoft that ISBoxer makes use of, and it means I can be on my tank, tanking, and then mouse over that grid/clique area and use my hotkeys to heal without having to actually turn on broadcast, or swap to my healer.

It makes things a LOT easier. Of course my druid also only has a handful of heals at 35, so I’m still learning, and I haven’t hotkeyed everything – but I feel like I’m making some pretty good progress.

Aside from the levels, I also set everyone up with a guild so they have a place to stash goods, and I got everyone some engineering. I’m not convinced I need even more tailors at this time, I might set them up as tailors for now just for extra cloth and then we’ll see later on. I’m also planning on moving most of these characters to my main account once they’re leveled up. Blizzard makes it pretty simple for players to pay to transfer characters between their own bnet, so I’m not expecting any issues.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Multiboxing some Dungeons

I don’t really enjoy leveling up in World of Warcraft these days because I have done it so many times in the past (I have all classes at 120 for alliance, and most for horde). Thing is, if you want to unlock heritage armour (especially for allied races) you have to level up. Not boost.

That’s where the decision to create a dungeon team that I could level up with came from.

I made a vulpera monk, vulpera warrior (just because), a mag’har orc mage, a highmountain tauren druid, and an orc hunter (I haven’t unlocked all of the horde races yet). I multibox all on one PC thanks to some upgrades (5 is pretty easy, I typically do 8) and I use a few addons like EMA, Dejunk, GSE, and one 3rd party software called ISBoxer. ISBoxer has been around for ages, and before anyone asks, yes, it’s completely safe to use and doesn’t violate the TOS for Blizzard. In fact the ISBoxer community is some of the friendliest and dedicated bunch I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking with. Their discord is filled with multiboxers of all ranges, from beginners to those so well versed they’re running mythic+ with their teams. It’s a passion, just like gaming.

Anyway, I haven’t optimized ISBoxer yet because honestly even though I’ve been playing 5 accounts for a while I’ve just never taken the time to set it up properly. For dungeons, you REALLY want to set it up. You want hotkeys so your healers actually, you know, heal. At the beginning this isn’t a big deal. I have a very simple macro my healer spams to heal the tank. That’s it.

Later on I’ll want her to cycle through the group, and I might even swap my tank from the monk to the warrior and then have the monk do both dps & backup heal. You can get REALLY creative with things. I’ll probably want to get more heal addons like clique or healbot, and I need to keep learning ISBoxer because it is just amazing what you can do with profiles.

The team went from 20-24 last night with 2 dungeons. I didn’t bother doing any quests as I wanted to learn the ropes. I had an absolute blast though and finding little challenges like this to do always gets me so excited to play.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Shadowlands Goals

Looking at the bigger long term picture there’s some definite things I want to get done before Shadowlands comes out. I’ve been trying to put them on paper so I have a little bit of direction, even if I don’t accomplish it all. It’s just meant to give me a bit of a ‘hey why not work on this’ feeling, not a strict rule or anything.

Level all of the crafting professions on my main account (so far I only have tailoring, enchanting, inscription, and engineering finished, and only two of those are on my main account).
Unlock the rest of the allied races (I’m very close on this one at least).
Level up a warrior.
Obtain the monk class mount (for some reason I’m struggling with this, I can’t seem to get the chain for it working properly since I swapped to and from alliance/horde a few times).
Work on getting a few pets I still don’t have (some TCG, quested, etc).

There’s more that should be on the list, but I can’t think of it right now so I’m going to move forward with what I have and perhaps add on to it as time goes on. We’ll see. Hopefully I at least get the crafting portion done, because that is something I really want out of the way. I imagine once BFA is done I will have very little desire to ever craft that stuff again (especially not having Rk3).

Super Squirt Coming Up

May 3rd is the next Super Squirt day for North America and I’m hoping to get the last few pets I have leveled up. I still need to turn a good portion of them rare, but that will take me a lot longer. I’m really proud of my collection, it’s one thing in world of warcraft that I really enjoy doing and working on. I’ve been collecting the trading card game pets for some time now, and I only have a few more left to get.

Happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!