Dual-Boxing 101

[lesiu]

switching windows with pad is great couse you can lay back in bed and dont have to alt tab all the time on keyboard

Jast ~Ramuh

[Despain]

I usually dual box NIN or THF + RDM, sometimes I even 3box a BRD, depending where I'm at... sometimes one of my windows ends up crashing because of lag. I set my windows up on separate areas of my monitor, and I alt+tab through them very frequently. I never really focus on just one, and I keep track of my buffs and shadows quite easily. The key is spell cast. I tend to be very fast when it comes to typing, so I don't use macros unless I need to gear swap for sleeps, etc.

[ShinseiRyu]

Multisend is awesome. You can use it to easily send commands to another character on the same computer or over a network. If you use a controller, FFXI Switch Monitor is handy to tab between FFXI screens with the push of a button. I found both in the approved programs section on the Windower forums.

This (multisend) plus spellcast. Add certain things in spellcast like when you switch to idle set on either character the other character will go to autofollow and when one character engages you can have the other /assist then /a on or just stop autofollowing.

[Mojo]

Two computers are not necessary and most people probably don't have access to two computers very conveniently anyways. I usually just ran two windows side by side and tabbed through them, but there are other solutions. PL Assist is alright but you lose control this way (which is why I preferred to use two windows.) A system of windower macros through tells (or some other network control solution) is a very good choice. You're going to need better control over your RDM for clutch situations so I recommend choosing that as your main character and then using your DRG as a 'pet' of sorts.

[sciezka.]

if you are usin windower then just have both character screens up at the same time. if you shrink each screen a lil bit then you can put 1 char on the top left and the other on the bottom right. i usually put the PL on the top left cuz then even though i had part of the PL screen overlapping, i could see the HP of everyone in the party on my other char's screen. i also always had the PL tank, so once i had hate handled, then i could focus everything on the normal char and do all the necessary JAs and what not.

[Shinryuu]

I'm not a very good dualboxer usually (not very used to it, and my second account is inactive for now) but the OP reminded me of my situation. I've done exactly that, DRG and RDM in exp. For instance, in Aydeewa at 60 (usually one of the harder camps on the healer). I did more than fine alttabbing 2 fullscreen screens. A couple of tips:

- Invite yourself first. The party order will then be the same for both characters. I highly recommend making your own party anyway.
- Yarnball on the RDM
- Main focus on the DRG right after fight until engage
- Main focus on RDM during the fights, while checking your DRG's TP on the RDM's screen
- Jumps is something you're going to get used to.
- Haste all the melee right after eachother, so there's like 2 minutes of time you don't have to cast Haste. That time is your resting time if you need to rest.
- I always made 3x melee, RDM BRD X parties. X is hopefully a COR/DNC, can be a BRD/WHM, a DNC simply makes your RDMing so much easier but isn't optimal killspeed-wise, and the worst option is a 4th melee (and even that is more than doable).
- Don't panic. Nothing in exp is capable of downing a melee ridiculously fast (barring MJSP merits which are horrible anyway). Incinerate? You're overhunting, don't, you make the parties.

[Killo]

Thanks for all the help everyone!

[Deimos]

Almost everyone is still doing this the hard way.

Get MultiSend or DualSend (I use DualSend personally) from the Windower forums. Then you can write macros on your main character that cause the dualboxed character to do something, without having to switch windows. The syntax is very simple, it's really easy to set up. For example, my dualboxed character is named Moonie, so I have a macro that looks like this:

//send Moonie /ma Haste Deimos

Pushing that macro will cause Moonie to haste me, no alt-tabbing needed. Further, I use a G15 keyboard, so I have the extra G15 "macro keys" down the left side of the keyboard all assigned to various commands for Moonie. This way all the dualbox commands don't encroach on my normal macro space at all.

[Bakthi]

Multisend does make it a lot easier. I used an inherited RDM account to cure several of my melee jobs while they beat down goblin pets. The only time I ever had to switch to the RDM's window was if I screwed up and he had to sleep the goblin (and really, I could have avoided that too had I wanted). I actually don't need it most of the time, though.

I've played with one character on my laptop and one on the PS2. It wasn't fun. Even without Multisend, 2 characters on my laptop is much better. I've gone up to 3, all tiled. I set my main at 1024x768, and the other 1-2 at 640x480. On my laptop screen, these fit plus a Foobar2000 window without overlapping at all.

I did a lot of PLing parties with my mule on my way to Maat's Cap, plus the aforementioned pets. Chaperoning myself through Eldieme and Uggalipeh (I'm crazy and have full AF for every single job). Doing quests, getting WS points, farming keys, farming belts in MMM. I 3-boxed BLM, SMN, and BRD for MMM boss fights. I use him as a feather mule/extra cures for Einherjar. I bring him for Refresh/sleep/grav/cure in sea. I go into Campaign Battle as WAR + RDM. And of course, some Astral Flow parties.

It really is more fun than just playing 1 character once you get the hang of it. It's more demanding, of course, so sometimes I just want to play my main.

[Myrna]

The G15 keyboard is my greatest help. Load g15binder on your 2nd acct's FFXI and then set profiles. Makes it real easy to control.

If you plan on using it in groups, the actual g15 with 18 keys helps more IMHO. Set each key to cure a party member, or alliance. Makes healing trivial in dyna.

[diemos]

The G15 keyboard is my greatest help. Load g15binder on your 2nd acct's FFXI and then set profiles. Makes it real easy to control.

If you plan on using it in groups, the actual g15 with 18 keys helps more IMHO. Set each key to cure a party member, or alliance. Makes healing trivial in dyna.

THIS^

You have no clue how easy it is to PL with this. You can have your mage window in the background and just hit your G15 keys while keeping your focus on your melee char. You just have to get used to/memorize the keys. Then after that you're good.

[trinironnie]

Any settings to improve dual boxing @__@?

[cdgreg]

I use an "old" G-11 with 3 sets of 18 gkeys. I dual box PL'd 2 jobs to 75 with it. I set a few cures to gkeys which means I can cure myself without having to flip to the RDM PL screen. I just put myself on /follow and loaded blinkmenot so I wouldn't slingshot my PL on gear change and went to town. Worked like a charm in east rona S to let the RDM PL tank after the first Cure IV bomb. I also had haste/refresh/SS macro'd so I could rebuff the PL without switching screens. This obviously wouldn't work as well if the job I was leveling actually had access to these spells but leveling rng + cor was easy as hell. As with drg you should have np.

[Myrna]

I match my resolution and background in the registry, takes away a lot of lag from special effects. I also turn off music on one char.

That's just me tho.

Windows vista or higher will let you render the window on both screen if you dual screen as well, it helps.

EDIT!
Also, it's not obvious at first but the graphical effects (espeically in wotg) are whores and will kill your framerate if you have two clients running. I have a 9800 GTX (it doesn't seem to matter tho) and some high end AMD cpu I can't be bothered to look up right now.

[Argettio]

DualSend (0.92 beta) : A tool for Multi-Boxers! - Windower

I haven't done much dual boxing in FF, but did a bit on WoW private servers.

In FF I would use a combination of spellcast, dual send and maybe autohot key (although this gets close to 'obvious' botting).

With enough keyboard binds/macro pads/g15 you could nearly completely control the second char from the keyboard of the first.

Personally I don't use ctrl/alt 1-9, I use X-keys 20 Key Desktop Programmable Keyboard, with each of the keys either assigned to ctrl +X or as a direct command.

The combination of two layers on the xkeys pad, the 10 pages of macros we get and windower binds I never run out of macro space.

[Amastacia]

PL Assist and DualSend are both godly. I generally use the former, but I don't do much complicated with my 2nd account, so being able to see HP/MP bar is great.

[jurjur]

was looking my whole FF life for something like this

Jast ~Ramuh

FFXI Switch Monitor

[Alvinho]

How do you go about opening a second window though? I'm a total n00b when it comes to stuff like this, and was hoping I could dual-box extra accounts to farm more maze monger marbles. >.> Are you supposed to open up another instance of POL or something? My PC isn't exactly awesome either, but runs one window fine; could I run 2 windows on an Athlon XP 2400, 1.5 GB RAM, GeForce 6200 (512MB) and still be able to play normally?

[Greatguardian]

You'd have to play them on low resolution with effects off, but you could experiment with it and see how it works for you. In order to open two windows on the same PC, you have to be using Windower on both. Simply launch Windower twice, or launch Windower while another Windower is open. They'll be completely separate instances, and you can log into an account on each window.

I dualbox pretty safely on my machine, running an AMD Athlon 3800+ x2 2.0Ghz, 3GB RAM, and a Nvidia Geforce 9400GT 1GB with Win7 x64. 3-box Becomes a hassle, though, and I have to start cutting out background applications and killing FFXI resolution and effects. But, because I have both a desktop and a laptop, I rarely have to 4-box anyways (Which would mean 3 on my Desktop, as Laptop can only load 1 at a time).

[Fistandantilus]

That Dualsetup thing looks amazing, I always have 2-3 windows running so this is a huge help. Question though to anyone who uses it, I tried using the Alias thing that is suggested on the download page but can't seem to get it to work.

Right now I have it all working fine if I don't use the alias, I do //send Ikorose /ma haste Ikorose and she casts haste on herself easily enough. The page said that you can make it so instead of having to type all that out, you can alias it so that I could just type //iko /ma haste Ikorose. All my other aliasing works for regular windower macros but I can't seem to make this one work, any help would be great.

Basically, how do you write the alias for Dualsend?