6 ms·

Seeing this brought back some memories. I used to run farming bots for Diablo II when I was 13-16 years old and had about 20 copies of the game. Bots would run

by gt565k 11y ago

Seeing this brought back some memories. I used to run farming bots for Diablo II when I was 13-16 years old and had about 20 copies of the game. Bots would run all day (while I was in school), and all night. I'd wake up early in the morning. Check the loot and transfer it to mule accounts, then restart the bots and go to school. I'd then try to trade items for general commodity items, like high runes, or certain skill items that were used as a form of trading currency due to their high demand. The bots had some custom features that would let you bypass IP bans by logging into your router's settings, changing the mac address, and restarting your internet connection so you can get a new IP address. One of the bots I used was written in the AutoIt Scripting Language. Since the bot was open source, I was able to see how the code was structured and modify it myself. I attribute my introduction to programming to this farming bot, and I believe is one of the reasons I chose to study Computer Science. The cherry on top was that I made about $600-$700 when I was 14 or 15 years old by selling a lot of farmed items on ebay. Personally, Diablo III was a big disappointment for me. The game felt quite different from a lot of aspects. Common loot was now split into player specific loot, too many crafting recipes, unique items were garbage, etc... I'd be happy to answer any questions regarding Diablo II or even the hacking/botting community around it.

gadrfgaesgysd 11y ago
Can you give a in-depth description of how the bots worked? You can assume the reader has good knowledge of programming, AutoIt and Diablo 2.
- jakobdabo 11y ago
  You may also find this Diablo III story interesting - http://diablo3story.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-diablo-3-story.html http://diablo3story.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-diablo-3-story.ht...
  - gadrfgaesgysd 11y ago
    I have already read that last year. Blizzard really screwed themselves( and the players ) with the Auction House.
- gt565k 11y ago
  Typically you had 2 types of bots: 1. AutoIt bots that simulate human interaction 2. Other bots that manipulate game memory (usually caught by the anti-cheat dubbed 'Warden', more on that later) The reason most bots were PindleSkin bots, is because the PindleSkin unique monster spawns on Act 5 and can be accessed through a red portal. The level generated is always the same, so the path taken to the monster is always the same. 1. AutoIt bots simulate keyboard input and mouse clicks, and can check pixel colors at an x,y location on the screen. This alone allows you to navigate to the portal, enter it, and reach the monster. Enter a predefined number of key strokes and mouseclicks to cast spells and kill the monsters, and afterwards collect the loot. Some examples of usage: Check the health and mana spheres pixel colors. You could estimate what percentage of HP or Mana your character had, by using some basic math, since the HP and Mana spheres were symmetrical. If the percentage was below a threshold, send keystroke 1, 2, 3, or 4 (this tells the game to drink a potion from one of those slots in your belt). Checking inventory space and unloading items into the stash was done in a similar matter. The inventory is a 2d grid of squares, and each square has the same pixel color at the center. You'd count how much space you have by checking the pixels of each square and building a 2d array. You could also figure out how big an item was in terms of inventory space, by checking the empty spaces before and after lifting it off your inventory, and subtracting to get the difference. Collecting the loot was initially done by using a d2loader pick-it hack, which injects into game memory, and uses a predefined list of items you want it to pick up. Now since this modified the memory, it was easily detectable, so when blizzard released the 'Warden' anti-cheat, it became useless. Some guy by the name manus-magnus came around and released a new PindleSkin bot, written in AutoIt, which had a built in OCR. He was able to literally scan the items that were dropped, turn them into text, determine if they are rare, unique, or normal (based on pixel color), and whether to pick them up based on the pre-configured data the user specified. He also took advantage of the ability to modify sprites on the client side, and add colored blocks to key points of interest places on the level. This allowed him to use these colored blocks as markers and navigate to reach the monsters he wanted to kill. All without manipulating game memory. I believe his bot included the 2 other unique monsters on Act 5 (Shenk and something else?) Blizzard had such a hard time catching this bot, some believe it is the reason they added a 20 game / hr limit, and if you exceeded it, you got a temporary 15 minute IP ban. 2. Non AutoIt bots relied on injecting into the game memory, and using a maphack to find the monsters on randomly generated levels. They were a lot more powerful, as they were able receive a lot more information from the game, but were usually banned swiftly. I don't know that much about the implementation details of the non AutoIt bots. If you want to find more information, you can search around the AutoIt forums for a pindle skin bot, or search online for manus magnus pindleskin bot.
fein 11y ago
> One of the bots I used was written in the AutoIt Scripting Language MMBot or Roots Pindle Bot? I was a forum mod and helped folks out with tech issues on the mmbot forums, and was in the community before Manus Magnus released MMBot to our forum admin. I still talk to Nicotine (MMBot siteadmin) every once in a while.
- gt565k 11y ago
  I ran MMBot, but there was another one, can't remember the name, prior to it. MMBot was closed source from what I remember.
  - fein 11y ago
    > MMBot was closed source from what I remember. Up until about the last few years of it's life when the full source was released. The only other autoit bot I was aware of was Roots, which is how I came to be involved with the forum in the first place. I ran D2JSP (YAMB) a lot once I had enough wealth and a good enough cd key hookup to rotate and mule constantly banned accounts and bring up mf hammer pallies fast enough.
    - WesleyJohnson 11y ago
      I authored another Autoit bot: AutoEld. It was shortly after Autoit bots took off due to the Warden making it difficult to run traditional bots, though I don't remember the exact time frame. It wasn't hugely popular, but I had a small following. I stopped working on it when I accidentally updated the build with a configuration file that had my account information in it and someone looted my account. I was so disgusted that the people I was helping by building them a bot would swipe all my stuff, but then I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised considering the target demographic. I don't think I played DII for much longer after that.
ohashi 11y ago
They are actually improving Diablo 3. A big patch came out last month adding even more positive improvements imo. Uniques/Sets matter again. They've come up with a way to deal with special powers they give with their new cube recipes. No auction house anymore, items can't be traded/given away except to people in the game when it dropped and only within 2 hours. So you can play with friends, share loot, but there's no secondary market. They also added greater rifts which allow you to push the end game difficulty indefinitely along with paragon level, which gives infinite 'leveling' via stat bonuses.
- charriu 11y ago
  It's not quite infinite, I think. Each of the stat bonuses is limited to 50 levels IIRC, so there is an effective limit of 800 paragon levels (16 stats * 50 levels each - would take quite a while to reach). It is a much better game now, regardless.
  - ohashi 11y ago
    Not true. Once you get past 800, it's just primary stat/vit upgrades. So power upgrade per paragon is actually higher on average (because you don't need to waste into useless stats like gold)
unethical_ban 11y ago
They killed common loot and put on lots of trade restrictions precisely because of the behavior you participated in with D2. They have brought it back around to more D2-ish style gameplay in the most recent patches.
executesorder66 11y ago
> changing the mac address As far as I am aware, the mac address is burned onto the hardware by the manufacturers, and there is no way of changing it. (Unless you are using a VM and you can give it any mac address you want) How did you change the mac address?
- gt565k 11y ago
  You change the mac address of the router, since it's connected to the modem, and you're not running a direct wire from your pc to the modem, in that case, you'd have to change the mac address of your pc. ISPs assign IP addresses based on the MAC ADDRESS of the device connected to the modem. You're spoofing the MAC ADDRESS, not changing the actual address of the hardware device.
- eru 11y ago
  On Linux you can change the mac address quite easily with most network cards. A quick websearch indicates that even on Windows it's not a problem.
  - executesorder66 11y ago
    A quick web search [0] indicates that it cannot be changed but only spoofed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing
    - SixSigma 11y ago
      Logically, that's the same. The chosen MAC is sent to your next hop and that's that. Some devices store the MAC in some sort of writable NVRAM.

by gt565k 11y ago

gadrfgaesgysd 11y ago

Can you give a in-depth description of how the bots worked? You can assume the reader has good knowledge of programming, AutoIt and Diablo 2.

jakobdabo 11y ago
You may also find this Diablo III story interesting - http://diablo3story.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-diablo-3-story.html http://diablo3story.blogspot.com/2014/07/a-diablo-3-story.ht...
- gadrfgaesgysd 11y ago
  I have already read that last year. Blizzard really screwed themselves( and the players ) with the Auction House.
gt565k 11y ago
Typically you had 2 types of bots: 1. AutoIt bots that simulate human interaction 2. Other bots that manipulate game memory (usually caught by the anti-cheat dubbed 'Warden', more on that later) The reason most bots were PindleSkin bots, is because the PindleSkin unique monster spawns on Act 5 and can be accessed through a red portal. The level generated is always the same, so the path taken to the monster is always the same. 1. AutoIt bots simulate keyboard input and mouse clicks, and can check pixel colors at an x,y location on the screen. This alone allows you to navigate to the portal, enter it, and reach the monster. Enter a predefined number of key strokes and mouseclicks to cast spells and kill the monsters, and afterwards collect the loot. Some examples of usage: Check the health and mana spheres pixel colors. You could estimate what percentage of HP or Mana your character had, by using some basic math, since the HP and Mana spheres were symmetrical. If the percentage was below a threshold, send keystroke 1, 2, 3, or 4 (this tells the game to drink a potion from one of those slots in your belt). Checking inventory space and unloading items into the stash was done in a similar matter. The inventory is a 2d grid of squares, and each square has the same pixel color at the center. You'd count how much space you have by checking the pixels of each square and building a 2d array. You could also figure out how big an item was in terms of inventory space, by checking the empty spaces before and after lifting it off your inventory, and subtracting to get the difference. Collecting the loot was initially done by using a d2loader pick-it hack, which injects into game memory, and uses a predefined list of items you want it to pick up. Now since this modified the memory, it was easily detectable, so when blizzard released the 'Warden' anti-cheat, it became useless. Some guy by the name manus-magnus came around and released a new PindleSkin bot, written in AutoIt, which had a built in OCR. He was able to literally scan the items that were dropped, turn them into text, determine if they are rare, unique, or normal (based on pixel color), and whether to pick them up based on the pre-configured data the user specified. He also took advantage of the ability to modify sprites on the client side, and add colored blocks to key points of interest places on the level. This allowed him to use these colored blocks as markers and navigate to reach the monsters he wanted to kill. All without manipulating game memory. I believe his bot included the 2 other unique monsters on Act 5 (Shenk and something else?) Blizzard had such a hard time catching this bot, some believe it is the reason they added a 20 game / hr limit, and if you exceeded it, you got a temporary 15 minute IP ban. 2. Non AutoIt bots relied on injecting into the game memory, and using a maphack to find the monsters on randomly generated levels. They were a lot more powerful, as they were able receive a lot more information from the game, but were usually banned swiftly. I don't know that much about the implementation details of the non AutoIt bots. If you want to find more information, you can search around the AutoIt forums for a pindle skin bot, or search online for manus magnus pindleskin bot.

fein 11y ago

> One of the bots I used was written in the AutoIt Scripting Language MMBot or Roots Pindle Bot? I was a forum mod and helped folks out with tech issues on the mmbot forums, and was in the community before Manus Magnus released MMBot to our forum admin. I still talk to Nicotine (MMBot siteadmin) every once in a while.

gt565k 11y ago
I ran MMBot, but there was another one, can't remember the name, prior to it. MMBot was closed source from what I remember.
- fein 11y ago
  > MMBot was closed source from what I remember. Up until about the last few years of it's life when the full source was released. The only other autoit bot I was aware of was Roots, which is how I came to be involved with the forum in the first place. I ran D2JSP (YAMB) a lot once I had enough wealth and a good enough cd key hookup to rotate and mule constantly banned accounts and bring up mf hammer pallies fast enough.
  - WesleyJohnson 11y ago
    I authored another Autoit bot: AutoEld. It was shortly after Autoit bots took off due to the Warden making it difficult to run traditional bots, though I don't remember the exact time frame. It wasn't hugely popular, but I had a small following. I stopped working on it when I accidentally updated the build with a configuration file that had my account information in it and someone looted my account. I was so disgusted that the people I was helping by building them a bot would swipe all my stuff, but then I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised considering the target demographic. I don't think I played DII for much longer after that.

ohashi 11y ago

They are actually improving Diablo 3. A big patch came out last month adding even more positive improvements imo. Uniques/Sets matter again. They've come up with a way to deal with special powers they give with their new cube recipes. No auction house anymore, items can't be traded/given away except to people in the game when it dropped and only within 2 hours. So you can play with friends, share loot, but there's no secondary market. They also added greater rifts which allow you to push the end game difficulty indefinitely along with paragon level, which gives infinite 'leveling' via stat bonuses.

charriu 11y ago
It's not quite infinite, I think. Each of the stat bonuses is limited to 50 levels IIRC, so there is an effective limit of 800 paragon levels (16 stats * 50 levels each - would take quite a while to reach). It is a much better game now, regardless.
- ohashi 11y ago
  Not true. Once you get past 800, it's just primary stat/vit upgrades. So power upgrade per paragon is actually higher on average (because you don't need to waste into useless stats like gold)

unethical_ban 11y ago

They killed common loot and put on lots of trade restrictions precisely because of the behavior you participated in with D2. They have brought it back around to more D2-ish style gameplay in the most recent patches.

executesorder66 11y ago

> changing the mac address As far as I am aware, the mac address is burned onto the hardware by the manufacturers, and there is no way of changing it. (Unless you are using a VM and you can give it any mac address you want) How did you change the mac address?

gt565k 11y ago
You change the mac address of the router, since it's connected to the modem, and you're not running a direct wire from your pc to the modem, in that case, you'd have to change the mac address of your pc. ISPs assign IP addresses based on the MAC ADDRESS of the device connected to the modem. You're spoofing the MAC ADDRESS, not changing the actual address of the hardware device.
eru 11y ago
On Linux you can change the mac address quite easily with most network cards. A quick websearch indicates that even on Windows it's not a problem.
- executesorder66 11y ago
  A quick web search [0] indicates that it cannot be changed but only spoofed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing
  - SixSigma 11y ago
    Logically, that's the same. The chosen MAC is sent to your next hop and that's that. Some devices store the MAC in some sort of writable NVRAM.