Am I the only player with just one account?

[Calabar]

Okay, that’s not exactly a baking question. But it does relate to baking. I keep reading posts where people have characters on separate accounts that help with their baking, especially when it comes to Halas Pies or Misty Picnics. I seem to spend a great deal of time trying to keep my bank and packs cleaned out enough to do big combines like those. And at the moment about three fourth of my baker’s bank box is filled with materials to make Halas Pies. In short, baking with just one character can be messy at times.

Do most players, especially those who do trade skills, have more than one account? I’ve thought about doing that, but even if I managed to pay for two accounts, I’d still have to have two PCs with internet access. I’m not sure I could manage to set up two PCs. And if I did I’m not sure how I could get them close to each other. So what are the pros and cons of doing this? Is it really worth it?

[elvirra]

I am embarrassed to say my husband and I have four accounts between us. We each use an account with our "main" characters - his main is a baker (56 druid), my main is a brewer (55 wizard). The other two accounts are used for alts and trader mules to sell in the bazaar while we play our mains. One alt account has the 54 cleric (in case our mains need a rez) and his trader mule, the other has the enchanter (for clarity and jewelry combines), the ranger (for foraging) and my trader mule. Did I forget to mention we have more than one computer (11 of varying vintage)?

As I type this I realize how crazy this may sound to outsiders...but I'm sure all of you who frequent the EQ Traders boards will understand completely. And somehow we still manage to have time for a regular life of jobs, home, kids. etc.

Happy tradeskilling!

[kiztent]

So what are the pros and cons of doing this? Is it really worth it?

It's worth it.

Even aside from the ease of powerlevelling alts (*cough* enchanters *cough*) for speciality tradeskill functions, aside even from the addition of 8 extra bank accounts to pack with garbage, the ability to have a trader on full time while doing single box activities is nice (e.g. I can farm velium while selling the velium from my previous farming run). Because of synergistic effects, you can farm more effectively once you get the hang of 2 boxing (e.g. the main thing limiting my shadowknight in many functions is an inablity to heal himself - adding 2nd cleric will allow farming more than twice as fast). Or adding the cleric to the ranger to speed up tracking and farming activities (sow for cleric! yay!). A necro or bard twitching/manasonging the enchanter for vial runs doesn't hurt either (I have neither of the second now).

Alternately, once you have 2 PCs set up, should you only have one logged on, you will be able to do research on the first without logging off.

The major disadvantage I've found is that people don't know which box you are watching, even if they see you logged on (assuming they know you 2 box in the first place). So, for example, my cleric will get endlessly harassed for rezzes, and, oops, I'm not paying any attention to the cleric. Or someone will "know" my trader and only carry on conversations with them, which can be very annoying if you don't want to watch that screen full time. Although trying to carry on a conversation when I'm banking can be really annoying, since I have to move things from account to account before depositing them on the proper character ("Um, so the shadowknight has all this and no bank space so I need to put it somewhere, and I need to move this to the brewer who's in Kael from last night, the baker is in thurg, so that's ok, but the tinker is on the same account. He's here, but the trader here on the other account has no room. Where can I put this junk?").

Certain people feel that it's ok to give you grief paying for 2 accounts (and I'm on SH, so I hear it double). Lastly, until you get used to it. moving 2 PCs around somewhere where you are KoS is not trivial.

[Corii]

Well I only have one account too, and my bank space is usually taken up with brownie parts, meats and veggies (especially since I can't forage)
However my husband is always willing to store things on his account(alts) so I guess if I really needed a dough mule to follow me around I could use him after he's gone to sleep. :roll:

[Krazick]

Personally I have one account. And my main is a 56 Monk. And I dabble in lots of tradeskills:

Jewlery 4X
Tailoring 63
Smithing 143
Baking 156
Brewing 190
Pottery 203

And I work on these as my mood takes me. And I also hang on to various quest items as well. Whenever I get around to tradeskilling mode, I switch equipment to up my Wisdom (168 when tradeskilling 188 -or so- with KEI). And I buy two 8 slot large sewing kits for space. And I rarely have more than 3K in the bank.

Slow and steady is my motto. My current target is Brewing to hit 200 then Try the Tainted Avalance Ale.

[Calabar]

Two accounts are sounding very tempting. I can run a hub from my network outlet, so that shouldn’t be a problem, but finding the room for two monitors, keyboards and mice will be challenging, to say the least, in my limited space. But it sure would be nice not to spend hours drop trading items between all my characters. I’ve been very lucky and nobody has wondered into my “secret” trading spots, but even if that luck holds its still a pain to do.

[Feoni]

Ive only got one account, and omg my poor bankspace :(

That and having to rely on friends to move food to bazaar mule, or move baking supplies around. Granted Ive gotten a lot of them fat from my cooking, but still its hard moving ~400 + of whatever I cooked that day :)

[Seamus]

Hola,
I dual box and I have been doing so for about a year now, since my gf bought a pc and plopped it down next to mine. You couldn't convince me to stop for anything short of quitting EQ. As to whether you should aquire another pc and setup solely for this purpose is debateable. I will say that it makes it quite easy to keep everything you need for tradeskills, as I would have run out of room for recipes 3 times over.

A year ago I started assigning each of my alts a certain tradeskill to eventually GM in. I play all my characters, and until PoP was released I couldn't call any one of them my main. Now I have the ability to GM all of the tradeskills with my druid if I feel like it, although I doubt that will ever happen. Now when I am tradeskilling my druid I use the various alts who also have that certain skill to do subcombines and hold materials.

This, along with picking a druid to GM in, has isolated me from others in the game. I'm not in a guild, I don't group with anyone, I play by myself 99.99% of the time (not always fun). If you like solo action, dual box. If not, I would really recommend finding others who will help you transfer items, or hold onto them while you work. Share your products with them, and in turn help them when they are in need of an extra 8 slots.

I am in no way wishing to discourage you from 2 boxing, nor am I trying to imply that if you do you will become an EQ recluse like myself. It has been highly effective in my playing, being able to not only do tradeskills much easier, but also take on mobs that I normally wouldn't have been able to do solo. What its also done, unfortunately, has changed the way I view the game, progressing from a multiplayer facet to a one player game.

Rambling again, sorry. :oops:

[Yalum]

I can run a hub from my network outlet, so that shouldn’t be a problem, but finding the room for two monitors, keyboards and mice will be challenging, to say the least, in my limited space.
Look for a "KVM switch", they allow you to run multiple computers off just one keyboard/video/mouse setup, you can even find ones that will switch audio and USB if you need. It's also significantly cheaper than buying multiple monitors.

Not the best setup for two boxing, but it's great for mules.

[EristeofInnoruuk]

After I upgraded my current computer, I decided to finally use the left over parts to put together a second computer. Since I'm kind of low on money and room, I sold my X-Box (this would not have happened had I known that House of the Dead was coming out) and used the money from that to buy a used monitor, keyboard, soundcard, etc.

If you're low on space, though, and only going to run a mule on the second account, I would definitely recommend getting a switch.

[tatanka7th]

Similar to another old saying:

"once you have multiple accounts, you never go back!"

It is really nice to have, and even if you only have one computer, it can still be done. If your main system is beefy enough, you can use EQW to run both accounts on one PC (or so I hear =). And now Sony will be supporting ALT-TABbing within EQ, so we may be able to run both accounts on one PC even without EQW. I don't imagine this would work very well with dial-up, though.

Regarding the person mentioning the difficulty of the "wrong" PC getting tells when 2 boxing, I set up hotkeys with AFK messages on them. Just very simple things like: "AFK, please send tells to Tatanka". This way I only have to watch one screen for tells. The one thing to remember with this system is, your "AFK" status gets reset to "not AFK" when you zone. So if you TP or zone, you need to set up AFK again.

Tat

[Idana Phoenixfyre]

Lol when I first met EQ I had a computer that was barely better than a Commodore 64 (remember those? Come on, show your age...) and I was lucky if I knew how to turn it on and... what's an internet connection? As of last year I installed an ethernet card in my second computer, bought a router, hooked it in with my third (cadillac) computer and I dual box to my heart's content. It's like tattoos, you can really never just have one! ;)

Yes you have to pay for two accounts but it is SO worth it to be able to have full backpacks of the ingredients of what you're trying to make and have room for the final product and room in your own bank for quest stuff and next level spells and a spare set of shopping clothes and...

Idana

[Lilosh]

Okay, that’s not exactly a baking question. But it does relate to baking. I keep reading posts where people have characters on separate accounts that help with their baking, especially when it comes to Halas Pies or Misty Picnics. I seem to spend a great deal of time trying to keep my bank and packs cleaned out enough to do big combines like those. And at the moment about three fourth of my baker’s bank box is filled with materials to make Halas Pies. In short, baking with just one character can be messy at times.


I swear to god, I was going to make this exact thread.
Everyone talks about how easy baking is. In the bazaar, in the serverwide channel, even here.

"Just load up your second alt with fileted meat, and jum jum beer, and have him port to PoK , and hand it to your main, while your tracking/foraging alt kills more brownies in LFay"

'Its easy to get yourself an enchanter to level 49. Just load up your level 60 druid on your other PC, take them to...."

It annoys me to no end. It also extends far beyond baking, or even beyond tradeskills.

Not all of us have a home LAN and enough money for 5 accounts. Everyone seems to be going around talking about the best way to do tradeskills , and assuming you have more then one PC running simultaneously.

I even had one person, in serverwide channel, tell me that baking was easy because he could GM it in a day or two if he worked hard. I was so upset by this that i just about refused to respond. (Turns out this involved not only multiple accounts, but stockpiling components... just taking a day or two to click combine...)

Am I Jealous of people who have the money to do it? Yes.
Would I, given the PC and money, do it? Possibly.

Do I think it should be the default, assumed method of tradeskilling and playing Everquest?

Not on your life!


Apologizing for what borders on a primal scream,
-Lilosh

[EristeofInnoruuk]

It doesn't have to take a lot of money to set up a second computer/account... the most expensive thing for me was buying EQ again. Many of my parts were donated by friends, and there is a good used computer parts store in the area (I bought a used monitor for less than twenty dollars, with a one-week return policy).

Also, if having a C-64 makes someone old, then I'm really old... I started with a Trash-80 and moved up to C-64s and Apple IIs. :P

-Eriste

[tatanka7th]

Lilosh,

while I agree that multi-boxing helps some tradeskills, it really makes no difference with others.

Yesterday, I went from 23 to 192 in JC, for the 7th shawl quest. It took about 4 hours, and cost a little less than 2kpp. And to tell you the truth, the extra accounts didn't help, jsut did it all on my own. Recently, took baking from 142 to 196. Did Centi toes and steaks to 188, and did it all on one account, no help needed. Did MTP to 193, and extra accounts helped big time! Did Ohabah truffles to 196, and didn't need any help.

Now when I need lots of foraged items that are hard to find for sale, or are outrageously priced when they are available, then having the foraging occur in the "background" while I play is priceless! (Branches of Planar oak, dragon eggs, and Oak barks come to mind).

But Verant drives it a lot I think, when they create recipes like MTP (stupid amount of stuff that needs to be combined), or their silly items that don't stack. It's just stupid that things like bricks of ore and armor molds don't stack. And the fact that you have to "drop" stuff on the ground to swap between chars. In my opinion, players should get one huge bank, accessed by all chars on an account. I remember what a pain it was when I had one account, and started saving lots of items for future trade skill use (tailoring at that time, and pelts/skins didn't stack). Drop, log out, log in, pick up, log out, log in, ad nauseum...

Anyway, don't worry about it, most people exaggerate what they can do with multiple accounts, anyway (like your example, the guy who conveniently forgot to include all the time he spent stockpiling components). Just as long as you have fun, that's what counts.

Tat

[Bennan]

I don't think I would play EQ if I didn't have acces to 2 computers myself. It makes a big difference in just about everything I do.

Its not a *must* to have 2 accounts (or more), but it does make things ALOT easier. Be it storing components, xp'ing, farming, traveling, foraging etc etc...

Its a luxury imo.

[Loralin]

I have 3 accounts (and no, I only run 2 characters at a time).

I have no idea how I would do tradeskills without access to a second account as my druid's bank is almost entirely taken up by no drop or guild items.

[Lilosh]

I have 3 accounts (and no, I only run 2 characters at a time).

I have no idea how I would do tradeskills without access to a second account as my druid's bank is almost entirely taken up by no drop or guild items.

This is what boggles my mind.


You are saying you COULD NOT do tradeskills if you were restricted to only 8 characters per server?


I'm sorry, but that makes ZERO sense to me.

-Lilosh

[Clementine]

I think having more than one account helps a great deal if you're a tradeskiller. My boyfriend and I each have our own account plus one that is not activated most of the time (so that's 3). Storing up baked/brewed items takes quite a bit of space, even with 10-slot containers :? I've created 2 mules on the 3rd account just to hold the various tradeskill items/junk, one is primarily for storing the baked goods meats I'll be making soon and the other is long term stock (meats I rarely find but keep, gems/things of value I've found on merchants, etc..), that account also holds my bazaar seller. Now it isn't to say you can't tradeskill with just one account, because you can, but you'd have to constantly juggle keeping your bank in order.

[Faymar]

There's a difference between "could not do" tradeskills and "could not imagine doing" tradeskills if limited to one account.

The number of characters per server is irrelevant, it is the additional slots on a single character (or, if you are very very sad like me, three characters).

I do not have the bank space to store my baking stuff (my own fault, I keep >everything<), save tailoring bits for tailoring friends, hold on to quest bits (I'm halfway through a million quests, bleah), keep "back-up" armour and make sure my nearest stock of peridots/invis potions/emeralds is never further than my own bank.

Now, that's the way I play. I'm a 63 (argh, no, 62 now, I forgot to rez myself last week, don't ask) cleric in a mid-level guild and I single-box when playing.

I dual-box when tradeskilling, where the second PC has a lvl 1 character holding everything to do with baking and hands me what I need. She has spices, sauces, random meats I picked up along the way (including a number of things for which there isn't a use yet), every cooking utensil I have ever heard of, Cobalt Scar bits, cheese, cream, etc. She's my pantry, that's what her function in life is. And this means that when I'm playing hard, I can throw bits at her to hold "for now" and when I want to relax, she's there with the lizard meat I happened to see at the vendor and the centi toes a friend has asked me to make into stew for him, and the 20 fish I'm preparing to make banquet food to give away, etc.

Now, obviously you don't play that way (you couldn't possibly, on a single characters space). Maybe you only save baking stuff and aren't holding onto various bits and pieces "in case they turn out to be useful." Maybe you always make the time to bake something on the spot when you get the drops. Maybe you play a druid and can always port to where you need to buy your ingredients as you need them.

I dunno, but it's simplya <i>different way of playing</i> as opposed to better or more organised or whatever. IRL, my grandmother would DIE if she saw the size of my (huge, american style) refrigerator. She could not conceive of ever using such a thing, let alone filling it. I'd go insane if I had to use the tiny little 3 shelf fridge she uses. Different strokes....

[Cendorly]

Between my husband and I, both of whom are avid tradeskillers (though I'm the obsessed beyond belief one :D ) we have 7 accounts. The avatars on these accounts range from permanent bazaar mules, to a druid and chanter mule, our mains, a tinkering mule, my baking/celestial/smithing/tailoring mule and of course, cleric and necro mule.

The advantage of having more then one account for doing tradeskills is beyond comprehension in terms of ease, efficiency, and convenience. However, tradeskills ARE possible with just one account - they are just not as convenient. (kind of like owning a car vs. not owning a car - you can still get around, it's just not as easy). Like others have said, I could not imagine doing tradeskills with one account, but, I imagine, if I "had" no other choice, it can be done.

As for the computer setup...My husband is a self-employed software developer/programmer who also builds and refurbishes computers for personal use. As a result, we have a rack-mounted system of an NT server in our house, along with 7 rack-mounted computers (ranging from 10 years old, and can barely run EQ) to my laptop (which runs EQ better then any of our other computers). Our individual computers are connected with KVM switches except for my laptop, which I put on a shelf on my desk. KVM switches are great for moving stuff between mules, and tradeskill work, but aren't that good for duel boxing while actually "playing" (i.e., grinding, etc) unless there is a way to put the "alt" in a safe spot where they don't need to be watched 100% of the time. When doing tradeskills, I find that I use my laptop more to have my alt out on, just for the ease of moving stuff while doing combines, like Misty Thicket Picnics.

As for the costs involved in multiple accounts/computers/etc., it all comes down to how much a person wants to invest in the hobby known as EQ. All hobbies (stamp and coin collecting, baseball cards, antique cars, etc.) have a pricetag with them. Most hobbies can be done at either end of the spectrum, cost wise. Stamp Collecting could be free, by picking up used stamps, and trading with other collectors, or it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars by going to various stamp shows, purchasing old and rare stamps, etc. The same with EQ, it can be done inexpensively (i.e., $12 per month plus computer which most people already have) or expensively with multiple accounts and computers. In the end, it all comes down to whatever works best for the individual.

My personal suggestion would be, IF you can afford to have a second computer/account, and plan on continuing to play EQ for at least another 6 months to a year, then by all means, get a second account. It's one of those things that will make you say "how did I ever get by without one". However, if you do not have the ability to have a second computer/account, then don't sweat it. EQ is still the same game whether you have one account, or 10, and Tradeskills are just as challenging, and fun regardless of the number of accounts you have.

[Engal Soulbender]

With verant recently making the big leap and adding a verant-made-EQW (eqw allows you to run EQ in a window to wich you can run more than one window ie; 2 diff accounts in 2 diff windows on the same pc) you wouldn't have to buy another pc, just another account to have mules with. I personally have 2 accounts and my husband has 1 of his own. I don't only use my characters for tradeskills, like some others my main is full of quest and no drop items. But I also have my tradeskills mule, bazaar mule, alt's that I play together in groups via 2 boxing. I'm a pack rat and cannot get rid of anything! But back to the point, since eqw is no longer "illegal" to use and verant is testing their own version on the test server...this may be the option you were looking for. You don't have to buy the expansions if your just wanting a mule, but you do have to pay another monthly fee for the second account.