Questions/looking about botting

[Looserthanyou]

I've only botted in one other game, which had a built in proxy. Does wtfast also works as a proxy/vpn? How can I protect my accounts from being linked?

I'm not looking for anything sophisticated. Just a decent grinding bot to farm mobs. I've looked into the bots/etc subforum, but there are so many to choose from, and a lot of mudslinging between the creators. I don't mind paying for one if there is less chance of getting banned.

Thank you.

[Hauntmachine]

Any answers for this?

[pcphantom]

There are a lot of bots out there. Most Aion bots do not need a proxy setup. Keep in mind I play NA, so I don't know as much about EU other than they pay. Your accounts are more or less linked when you pay for them with the same card. Now, if you do things to get one account in so much trouble they are looking to ban more than the account that you got in trouble on, they can do as much as check all accounts that have used that IP address. Though I doubt botting and even hacking will get you IP banned... gold selling will however.

That being said, I've tried a lot of bots and give you my best and honest opinion on the ones I've tried. I'll put pricing but keep in mind, euro are quite a bit more than USD, you'll have to convert the math yourself or let PayPal do it when you pay, but roughly €5 is about $7ish.

1. Free Bots - I've tried many, if you're worried about protecting your accounts I've never seen a free bot I'd trust to be afk for 8 hours. They are usually basic grinding bots and have a use, but don't really have a lot of extras like security implemented. Keep checking back on them to see how they progress as they are usually only betas when free. When they go pay, that's when the dev thinks they're "done" enough to charge... then see what they do. Keep in mind if you never want to pay for a bot, you will dedicate yourself to a life of beta testing and always switching just as a bot gets good.
(Price = Free, cheapest way to go but don't have high expectations, keep in mind, if the bot looks good and develops fast, it will eventually be paid.)

2. MMOViper: A overall good bot, very safe, lots of security features. It's has some great qualities to it but it has to be run in active window, must run game in 1024x768 or something like that, it cannot multibox or run in background, it is very hard to setup if you are new to botting and it's not very well customized to Aion. It's a bot you'd really want to run on a separate PC from the one you use daily. On the good side, if you game hop a lot this bot works for tons of games. It also has a very smooth movement and probably the best waypoint system I've ever seen as well as good security features. They are working on features to make it better for specific games and easier to use but imho they are still a long ways off and said features could likely cost extra. I was also very dissatisfied with their support and was left with the feeling this developer cares more about adding more games to their bot portfolio than improving any of the bots directly. Their "support guru's" seem less than knowledgeable at best and their advertisements seem very misleading. It's a good bot, but make sure you know what you're getting into first.
(Price USD = $29.9x/year or $100/lifetime, Scripts may cost extra, 1 license = 1 bot/pc on 2 computers at a time *New Change* though can be moved to different PC once per 3 hours roughly. No refunds or trials)

3. ImmonsAionPlayer: It's a young bot by a single developer but he is very active. He listens to his players and adds features they want as long as they make sense. His bot can do a lot of things and some combinations that other bots do not have. Example his bot can Aether tap and run in party as like a healbot to follow and heal you or assist each other if running 2 bots in multibox so your bots are much less likely to die and level faster. Very handy to fast / safe leveling of bots. Besides, I doubt many GM's are looking for bot groups. There are occasional bugs that pop up or problems that go wrong, this happens when a bot is in development as it does with any program and you'll have to have patience. Setup isn't very hard at all and there is a support group that will help you out. The only thing I can say with this bot that I don't know how you'll feel is that it does not have security features such as logging out when a GM appears. This bot does work in background mode and can be multi-boxed. If you want to multi-bot a party on a single computer or solo instances with a bot following you and healing you without needing a 2nd computer, this is the only bot that can do it. If you want features added you don't see in another bot, this is the guy to talk to and I know this because I'm the one that asked him for party support, and he added it! I've watched this bot develop and though I believe it still has room to grow, I've watched it improve and it is a very good bot.
(Price EURO = €15 first month and €5/month after for VIP. 1 license = 2 bots on 1 computer. You can buy extra license for €15, does not cost more monthly. Non VIP is grinding only, 1 bot 1 computer.)

4. RuBot: They seem to be one of the more active big bots lately though honestly, I've heard a lot of mixed feelings towards them and my own feelings were mixed. They have most of the features of Immons and some extra security such as GM logout (they do not support party/healbot). Also, I felt the controls were on the lower side of development. For the most part, the bot works and works decent and it's not too hard to setup either. I can't really say anything bad about it except for the price I felt a bit underwhelmed. I would figure a bot with that price tag would be extremely polished as for the most part they are the most expensive bot out there.
(Price Euro = €10/30 days or €19/60 days. 1 license = 1 computer, it seems as though as many instances of Aion as you can run on that PC, though I never tried to verify this.)

5. MacroGoblin: Very secure, has stuff like the ability to SMS reply to messages in game. Seems to still be running and working but for the most part I think it's Aion bot side seems to be dying. Many forum threads begin with "Banned" which is not the first thing I wanted to see when I signed up. This is sad as it is a very polished bot that seems to be very functional. From what I've used of it I do like it. It's a lot like MMOViper, but seems better written for Aion in some ways. Much like Viper, it does not run in background. One would think with everything they have they would be the most undetectable. I cannot vouch for this being the case though the site still claims they are undetected. I would have kept trying it out on a test account except it was unable to do what I was looking for at the time, so I moved on. This was the bot I actually tried before Viper. Also like Viper, it's designed to be run on many games, thus making it very generic. It is also difficult to setup.
(Price USD = $29.90/year for 4 computers one network, $59.50 for 7 computers 1 network, or $149.50 unlimited computers 1 network, *5 day refund period*)

6. AionGlider (MMONinja): Imho the most polished bot. Very effective, great AI, very smooth. Overall, I think it's the easiest to learn and setup even considering there are a lot of features, thus a lot to learn. It has good security for dealing with GMs, in fact I think Rubot may have "borrowed" this feature from them (though I can't say for sure). On top of it being a fully featured bot, it comes with a set of hack tools that work rather well and seem to be undetectable unless you do something stupid with it and trigger an alert to the GMs. The bot does not support Aether tapping, crafting, or party support so if those features are a must, I don't see this bot getting them all anytime soon. They might get Aether tapping, but my general impression is that I think the dev is playing another game himself right now or dealing with real life. MMONinja works for several games as well and seems to have the best hacks for games available in a bot. It's also very reliable and incredibly easy to use. Personally, I use this bot more than any of the others, though I have a lot of computers and am gradually making use of as many of the licenses I purchased as I can. The reason I use this bot myself so much is if you watch it hunt vs. watching others, you'll see that it's very smooth, doesn't move in suspect ways and has incredible AI so I trust this bot to run my character and not get me banned more than any other. It also has a great quest repeater which combined with it's effective hunting skills causes this bot to be able to level you faster than any other bot I've tried. However, it's lack of Aether tapping & party support prevent me from using it exclusively as those are features I need from a bot and it does not offer them.
(Price Euro = €14.95/month *Eww*, €24.95/3 months or €64.95/year. 1 license = 2 bots on 1 computer, I believe it's not expensive to add licenses though I've never tried)

So those are my experiences with the bots I feel were worth mentioning. There are others, but not worthy of note in my opinion. Keep in mind I’m one person, your experiences may differ from mine. I suggest research, trying, and seeing for yourself.

[lucid]

I agree with everything pcphantom said except the idea that background mode is "more detectable":

Originally Posted by pcphantom

Much like Viper, it does not run in background. One would think with everything they have they would be the most undetectable.

In I mention some reasons why foreground input could be detected while background mode bots would not be detected; the reverse is also true, neither of the two is really better than the other.

Also worth considering are things like the fact that regardless of how users were banned from Aion in the past, new methods could always be adopted. This means the company (NCSoft or Gameforge) could detect cheats/bots many ways: process list scanning/process signature scan, server-side data, frequency of being logged in for 24 hours... all of those are in addition to things which bots might have security features for.

The method which is used to detect bots has a big influence on which bots will be caught. If the pool of bots used are largely homogenous, then a process scan or some way of detecting that single bot would be effective. If injected flags or window state is used, it would target some portion of the offenders.

The bottom line is that nothing is 100% safe, and your own caution plays a big role in your chances of being banned... not everything can be controlled even by the most careful/paranoid bot author. Because of this, I wouldn't really worry very much about security features. Worry more about whether or not it steals monsters from people and how natural it looks... also, as always, try to set your bot up in relatively unpopulated areas, reject party/friend/legion/etc invites, turn invisible mode on, and try to be in a non-standard channel if possible. Of course shorter bot times are less suspicious, but many people like to push the limit (which introduces unnecessary risk). You can't be 100% sure you won't be banned, but you can significantly reduce the chances.

That said... I hardly see any recent effort at all to ban bots or RMT on NCSoft servers.

[pcphantom]

Originally Posted by lucid

I agree with everything pcphantom said except the idea that background mode is "more detectable":

Thank you, I would just like to note. In my wall of text I may have tricked my own eyes into thinking I worded something better than I did or forgotten to put details before important statements.

I wasn't meaning that it would be most undetectable because of the lack of background mode. I was meaning more that one would think they would be the least detected, but more because of their security measures. MacroGoblin has an SMS control center. So say a GM teleports you, the bot stops, when the GM messages you, you get a message and can reply via SMS. They also have some other security stuff as well... I guess my MacroGoblin rant could have been a bit more detailed, sorry for that.

It's hard to think in a wall of text that size I actually forgot to say stuff.

[lucid]

I guess my point about security was more for things like logging off when within a certain radius of a GM, since that's pretty suspicious lol... anyhow, if you can't directly reply (via SMS or whatever) and a GM shows up its probably too late.

[pcphantom]

Yeah, some of them have things that aren't "too" horrible, like faking a lag statement. They probably wouldn't help, but it is what it is. MacroGoblin is the only one I know that offers SMS reply/control which I thought was pretty sick. It's just too bad the rest of it doesn't live up to that one cool feature. There are a lot of bots with really cool signature stuff but I've yet to see one bot that has them all. Probably never will.