The Mysterious Bot Army

There is apparently some scheme where you can game the system involving the Unity NPC. On Shiva there is a veritable army of bots that run a pattern between the NPC Defliaa and the child Mithra Unity NPC near the mog house in West Adoulin. There are about ten of them dressed alike and /anon and they're out every morning when I login to strong arm Rewardox into giving me everything but stuff I want. I sent a tell to one this morning an within a minute or two they had all hit the waypoint to go to another area and logged off.

Any clue what they're doing?

selling sparks then going back to their camp.

Yeah I see a ton of botters doing spark sells but these guys were hitting up the Unity NPC. Someone suggested they're npcing prize powder so that's probably it.

I'm guessing Shiva isn't the only server where bots seem to be 90% of the population?

The dragoon (why drg?) army is prevalent on Bismarck too. Always flee-hacking in Yahse, sparks farming.

Hi Qualo!

It's a problem on Quetz as well. A full alliance of Sparks DRGs mass farming one small area with several mules strategically placed within range of all the camps.

They seem to be doing all 3 Yahse Hunting Grounds mob RoE (kill 5 of a certain mob) and also the Wind Crystal RoE (10 wind crystals). Considering the fact they're in a full alliance, they AT LEAST get 4-5 crystals per kill which would add up very quickly.

And as for the Prize Powder, how much does that stuff NPC for?

botting or at least some level of selling/invent moving automation would be about the only way to make prize powder worth it... I tried it awhile back and the gil to points ratio is similar to sparks... the problem is instead of grabbing a few 3k items like you do with sparks powders are like what 10 points or something? Forget exactly but using up capped accolade would completely fill my inventory and then like another 50 slots and a few trips iirc. Time it would take me to sell them off I could've made more getting more sparks and still gotten some unm materials or at least keys

IIRC, its somewhere in the 100~200 mark. Only costs 10 accolades. Taking the lower average, 120 accolades/stack. Would give you somewhere around 830 stacks if you're capped at 99k acco. That's probably somewhere around the 1mil range in terms of selling it to NPC. Obviously much higher if my estimates are off (i'll check today). So 1mil from sparks, 1mil from accolades, x18 characters = 36mil a cycle.

I tried doing this myself when I found out about Prize Powders. Its absolutely the most cumbersome ***I've ever tried doing. After one full cycle from around 80k accolades, I was so burned out, I didn't feel like it was worth the time buying, selling and running back in between the NPC. Obviously if you're RMT, you have no real gear and large amounts of inventory space.

Now if there was a script that auto filled my inventory with prize powders with every NPC encounter, then it may be worth it...

I imagine because they can use Healing Breath for whoever needs it. I was wondering about it the other day, myself, and it was the only conclusion I could come to.

Might be the only job that can hit for 500 easily on piercing weak enemies in Yahse with Sparks gear.

It is interesting that they went this route instead of other options. I have not seen them on Lakshmi.

is this more a question about the bots or how to do it yourself?

It was just curiosity. Back in the day when botters were pretty much hated by all of us we would collaborate on ways to disrupt them. Its second nature I guess to figure out what they're doing so I can plot their demise. Really what I wonder about now is their motivation. With such a tiny server base are they still doing it for the purpose of selling gil or is this one guy with too much disposable income accumulating funds to build up his epeen?

Wow, this is still a thing? The 18 DRG bot alliance was on Fenrir early-ish 2016. 24/7 for probably 3 months before they all disappeared. Their bots weren't very smart and were easily lead into walls and unable to reacquire their path by claiming their target and running it around a corner.

Just checked.

Prize Powder: 10 Accolades
Resale Vendor price: 100 g
so x10 the resale value

99,999 (accolades) x10 = 99,990 G for capped accolades (with 9 left over).

NPC allows you to buy 960 Prize Powders at once, which comes out to 80 stacks. It would take at least 11 trips to the NPC (assuming you had 0 items in your inventory and everything in your wardrobe) to buy all of the prize powders from accolades and convert to gil.

Very easy if you're an RMT and don't carry anything besides the bare minimum. It would take less than 3 minutes to convert sparks/accolades into 2mil. As stated above, 18 members is 36mil a session.

Just wanted to point out that I sold these in my Home Country just now and was able to get 102/prize. Not significant, but every bit adds up.

my home country gives 97g but another nation gives 102 and im capped fame EVERYWHERE ..... huh?! i dont get this ><

Your country must suck! Must be lastok.

this DRG army is now on cerberus too.
3 alliances in ceizak, all /anon.
too bad, it was an easy place.

They are on many servers with the same setup. It looks like they are balyd farming to convert into HPBs.

that has to be the slowest way to farm HPB can spam ambu and get more faster.

Not when you're 18 people on X number of servers. Doing the entire process AFK.

You can call the Cyber Se police you know ;)

I'm all for them spamming ***that has zero affect on players. The day they start hogging up the ambuscade lines or lagging WKRs out will be the day everyone cries and complains. If this is their method of mass farming gil, have at it. This isn't hurting anybody too much.

Besides, dealing with ambuscade mechanics or any end game event would mean they'd have to have top notch gear or team play to make any money. They could just as easily make 18 nirvanas and sell aeonics, but that would take too much time and money for them to invest into. Let them stay over there.

yeah that is true.
still has to be a slow way to farm gil lol i guess it works for them though.

if it is a full alliance, 18 DRGs can easily heal themselves via the rat, if they're hitting the 500 damage every hit, coupled with regional RoE objectives as well as Crystal/Geode/-ite (which work for everyone anywhere in the zone), daily objectives, etc. I imagine they can rack them up at a decent rate, particularly with things like flee hacking etc coming into play, coupled with hitting reives for Bayld. what really helps push it is the 18 people all doing it. at that point, it is just a numbers game, and if they're AFKing to boot, one person needs to check the entire alliance periodically to make sure they're not running into a wall or whatever. it's probably not the most efficient method, but we're talking people using 5/5 Gorney +1, a Homestead Lance or something similar, and zero other gear. no rings, belts, capes (unless they get an Updraft from a Reive. I DID see one wearing one the other day) etc.; it's a low cost of entry all things considered.

Youre talking 18mil gil every couple of hours + whatever accolade items you can sell or Unity drop/pop items. Looking at 36-40mil gil a day easy being mostly AFK.

Not the most efficient in terms of 18 players, but pretty efficient of 1 player playing 18 characters without having to rely on AH sales or other people.

Let them do that vs try and get into Ambuscade queues or clog up shouts for sales or wreck the economy via any other number of things.

Personally i dont think they are doing any bad to the economy. What ive been seem is the opposite of inflaction (that would happen if they were injecting massive amount of cash in market) but a noticeable deflation (prob due to crafts, ambuscade and npc item being constantly sold to players like mog curior items, reforge, etc).

Also they dont do reives or at least i never noticed so they at least try to not get in the way of others.

Probably undershooting their earned gil/day by a large amount.

Take into consideration the stupidly easy ROEs to complete, like Gain EXP, Buff Others (one time thing daily), heal 500 (one time thing daily), vanquish 30 monsters/undead/aquans/etc, Crystals, Geodes, deal 500 dmg etc and if it happens to be double unity accolades earned campaign (which just ended), that all gets doubled.

Note my post above, where capped sparks = 1mil/character, capped accolades = 100~102 gil/10 accolades conversion via prize powders. During a Gain EXP they will make 2mil in about 60 minutes very easily. Per character. If they are fast about it (and I can't see how they would be being a full bot army with near basic gear), thats upwards of 90+mil during a Gain exp window (which I'm skeptical they are pulling off, but its possible). I'm not even considering the basic trash ***that fills up their inventory that they can sell to a vendor, nor the reive bayld they would get which they can convert into hpb.

Now to me that may be a lot of work for the reward. But for an afk person just checking in 2-3 x/hr, that's a hell of a lot of gil for doing nothing.

tl;dr - see waypoint reive farming circa 2015