This is a guide to multi-boxing World of Warcraft. WoW is a very fertile terrain for MMO multi-boxing due to the large number of dungeons, strong macro system, and steep gear/power curve.
Five-person dungeons in WoW are too easy for a full group but perfect for boxing. Plus, you can start any number of free trial accounts and try boxing for free up to level 20, including dungeons.
I am currently three-boxing Burning Crusade (first expansion) dungeons around L65 with three characters at once on three accounts, beating those dungeons on-level without any special gearing efforts.
Simple tank-DPS-heals three-boxing, without a large amount of extra software and add-ons, will be the focus of this guide. The techniques described can equally be applied to other types of boxing through modification of the scripts.
This guide was written in January, 2012 for the new boxer who wants to learn, but it also may contain useful things for experienced boxers. My goal is to help anyone who wants to explore a fun and challenging gaming activity that is “outside the box”.
~INDEX~
- What is multi-boxing?
- Setting up multiple WoW accounts.
- Setting up hardware and HotKeyNet.
- Setting up your macros and functionality.
- Class selection for boxing.
- Dungeon tips.
- Specific dungeon notes.
- PvE Leveling Strategies
- Troubleshooting, extra info.
- More Reading.
WHAT IS MULTI-BOXING?
There is a lot of ignorance and prejudice against multi-boxing in MMOs today. People think it’s cheating and against the TOS, for example, just on general principle. People may report you, hate you, or call you a cheater, like the person who left a comment to my LotRO boxing guide. The fact is that boxing is perfectly legal in many MMOs and is discussed openly in MMO forums.
At its most basic, multi-boxing refers to running more than one copy of a game at the same time on one or more computers, and using that setup to play more than one character at once in the game. This can be done with many types of special hardware and software schemes. There is a lot of confusion about boxing because while the definition is basic, boxing is really what individual players make of it.
Many players box to win at PvP. They enjoy chaining multiple characters together to one-shot enemy players via key cloning or to assault enemy cities with their own personal group or raid. That’s not what this guide is about, although the techniques used here can be used for PvP.
The focus of this boxing guide is solo PvE in World of Warcraft with your very own party of characters. This allows you to explore great dungeons at your own pace, roleplay and make camp for a while if you want, and generally enjoy the content without being dependent on other players for your enjoyment.
Is this an “extreme” activity for hardcore players? It can be. It doesn’t have to be. If you’re good at three-boxing, most normal WoW dungeons are easy using quest gear without any special effort. The hard part is really in the administration–managing the software, the multiple accounts, the macros, and the key bindings.
SETTING UP MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS
Blizzard makes this easy and cheap, and they throw in some nice bonuses. You’ll want to use the Recruit-A-Friend system. Log into your Battle Net account, click your active WoW account, and click the “Referrals and Rewards” link on the bottom grey bar. Send a RAF invitation to your chosen email address for your new account. (Links removed to avoid another WordPress TOS violation– Ed.)
What will RAF do for you? +300% XP to XP on both accounts when grouped up, plus your RAF account can then grant free levels to lower level characters on your original account. Each of your characters on each account can also summon a character on the other account once every half hour. This makes it a snap to get to dungeons, but if you go for three or four accounts, be sure to chain them instead of RAFing all to one. That way you can chain summon your group to a dungeon (1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4) using each character’s cooldown. You can’t use the random dungeon finder teleport unless you have five.
You also get one free month on your original account when you sub on your RAF account at the end of the free month (if you buy the Battle Chest), and if your RAF subs a second month, your original account gets a free rocket mount. (All of this is accurate at the time of this writing.) Once you have two or more accounts linked, log in, group up, summon your characters together, and you’re ready for the next step (I’ll talk about serious class selection later.)
SETTING UP HARDWARE AND HOTKEYNET
Hardware requirements for boxing aren’t well-known, but I have a very old computer and it runs three copies of WoW easily. I’m running the game off of a second hard drive to optimize load times by dividing the stress away from my operating system drive. Running multiple copies on different physical drives will also particularly result in performance boosts.
In any case, all you need to do is start up the game multiple times and log into your different accounts on each copy. You don’t need multiple installations of the game, but you can’t log into the same account twice, which is why you need multiple accounts for boxing.
There are a number of software solutions for multi-boxing multiple WoW accounts, including ISBoxer, Pwnboxer, and HotKeyNet. I use the last option because it’s basic, free, and functional. For me, these are good things. Download HotKeyNet and read a little bit about how to use it on the HKN website.
Using HotkeyNet requires a few very simple steps: start the program; load a script that tells HKN what to do; rename your WoW windows to match the coding in the script; activate a pre-determined toggle key (Capslock or Numlock) to tell HKN when to pass your keystrokes to the game windows. That’s pretty much it.
Go ahead and try a simple learning exercise. Start up HKN and two copies of WoW with two accounts. Copy the simple cloning script (#1) from this page into a text file in notepad or another text editor. Save the file and load it into HKN. The script should load with no errors.
This basic script has three blocks/paragraphs of code. Block one defines a set of keys from your keyboard using a format that HKN can understand. “KeyList” tells HKN you are making a key list. “MainKeyList” is what you’re naming the list. Then you have the list of keys. Block two informs HKN that you will have three windows (two will also work just fine, and you can remove the references to the third if you like) called WoW1, WoW2, and (optionally) WoW3. Go ahead and rename your game windows to match the script as pictured here.
The third block of the script says that when CapsLock is on, the MainKeyList keys will be sent to the code labels w1, w2, and w3, which correspond to WoW1, WoW2, and WoW3 windows. Go ahead and put one of your characters following the others and test the script. When CapsLock is on, the keys in the MainKeyList should be sent to multiple windows. Your characters will do the same action at the same time.
Will this work for a dungeon? No. You need tanking, healing, and DPS all acting separately. So now that we kind of understand script #1 (hopefully–if not, seek more knowledge at HotkeyNet, and experiment), let’s look at script #2. This is the same script except it defines three key lists instead of one, and sends each list in different ways to the three different windows.
The DPSkeylist is F1-F12. On your DPS character in the WoW3 window, you’ll want to pick some skills and keymap them F1-F12 on a hotbar devoted to boxing. (These will need to be macros to target correctly–that’s the next section.)
The MainKeyList is for your tank. This list excludes, or excepts a lot of keys. You don’t want all of your characters to do everything the tank does, like open quest log, look at character sheet, jump, open the chat box, etc.
The AllCharsList will be sent to all windows, as you can see in the last block of code in script #2. These are my key picks for the commands you’d like all characters to use at once. These are Numpad decimal, which I’ve macroed on each character to follow their focus target; Numpad minus, which when mapped instructs all characters to mount up; and Oem3 is the unmodified tilde key, or `, which tells everyone to stop following immediately. This can be important sometimes. Refer to the macro section next.
It should be noted that mouse clicking isn’t going to get it done for boxing. You need to be a keyboard fiend, and you need to map and macro everything to get the job done. Here is my setup, including all windows and keymappings. I use the Numpad heavily. In battle, I have one hand on ASWD and the other on the Numpad. My tank mostly uses Numpad 0-9 and Shift-Numpad 0-9, while cntrl Numpad 0-9 keypresses are sent via HKN to my healer. This means I can switch fast back and forth between sending commands to tank and heals.
Needless to say, HKN does not obey WoW’s global cooldown. It will send commands almost as fast as you can hit them. You can shoot commands to different characters between GCD’s and healing inductions. So let’s look next in more depth at how to follow, unfollow, and set up your macros for boxing.
The HKN use and scripting is really the hard part, and I can’t really handhold through this. You either “figure it out” at some point or you don’t. If you have specific questions or want to add something, feel free to discuss in comments.
Once you’ve learned and gained some experience, you’ll see that the scripts I’ve outlined here can be expanded to include four or five WoW windows or more with small additions to the code. You could combine script #1 and script #2, for example, so you could have a five-group of tank-heals-DPS with three cloned DPS instead of just the one.
SETTING UP YOUR FUNCTIONALITY AND MACROS
Open the macro tool in WoW either via the bubble on the side of the chat box or by hitting Esc and selecting the system menu option. The arts and rules of making macros are beyond the scope of this guide, but I’ll try to hit the high points. Here is a basic rundown at WoWWiki. You can search and find much more information. Your main goals with boxing macros are: forward your skills via macro targeting commands to the correct character or monster target, and make things as easy as possible on yourself.
First, you want a macro that will let you press a key and follow someone. Then you’ll map that macro to Numpad decimal, as in my script #2, or other key that will pass via a HKN script to your windows 2, 3, 4, etc. In my group, I will set the focus target of each character to the character I want that character to follow (by right clicking the portrait and clicking “set focus”, which will stick throughout the dungeon.) Then I’ll trigger the following macro via HKN for all characters, and the characters will all fall in line with one keypress.
/follow focus
That’s the macro. Drag the saved macro to your hotbar and correspond that hotbar location to the key you are sending. Now you’ll want to make your party stop following your tank on many occasions, so they are in strategic position. There is no stop follow command in WoW, so we’ll just send a movement command to WoW2, WoW3, etc. via HKN, such as step back, which will break follow with one keypress for all your characters and leave your tank free to operate.
My selection was the ` key (Oem3 in my HKN code–see the end troubleshooting in reference to Oem). I just went into the key binding controls of my following characters and added the ` key as “Key 2” for “Move Backward”. Add Oem3 to your script (it’s in script #2 already) and you’re good to go. Now you can make your party follow and stop following with single keypresses.
Now you mainly need to be able to macro heals to go to from your healer to your tank and to forward your DPS skills to the monsters. I target directly in this case by character name. (You could also target by focus if you’re sure of which characters will be focusing which other characters.) So an example healing macro on your healer’s bar would be:
/target Portiah
/cast Greater Heal
You then map a key to this macro on your bar to WoW2 via HKN, and you’re good to cast heals from your healer while playing your tank. It’s also important to be able to heal each member of the party individually. I have one macro that allows the priest to heal herself in an emergency, and another to heal my DPS for example:
/target player
/cast flash heal
/target Jaheira
/cast flash heal
Groupwide heals don’t need to be targeted, of course. For DPS, you can use various ways to target the monsters through the tank. You can research them and use your own methods. If the DPS has the tank set as focus and is following the tank, you can use /target focustarget to target the monster, then cast a damage skill. I use a hunter as DPS, and if the hunter follows the tank, she is usually too close to attack with a bow, so I have my hunter following my priest. So I’ll use the following line in my macro to Wyvern Shot a mob via the tank Portiah directly:
/target Portiah-target
/cast Wyvern Sting
The command /assist (YourTankName) should also arrive at the same target. Macros can only trigger one cast command, but commands that do not trigger a GCD (Global Cooldown) are “free”. One type of free command is using a trinket. Another type of free command is using petattack. Here is an example of the most complicated macro I’m currently using. I have it mapped to F1 on my hunter’s rightbar (image again) and transmit the F1 keypress via HKN while controlling my tank. I use the macro at the start of a battle, and/or to send in the pet ahead of my tank in some cases. For example:
#show Hunter’s Mark
/use Essence Of Erankus’ Shade (any trinket–I don’t really use this one.)
/target Portiah-target
/petattack
/cast Hunter’s Mark
The #show command will just make the macro show the Hunter’s Mark icon instead of the trinket icon. Usually you’ll just use WoW’s handy auto-show feature when making a macro, by selecting the (?) image in the icon selection when you make your macro. The game will then show whatever the /cast spell is. So. Speaking of hunters, let’s talk class selection now for multi-boxing in WoW.
CLASS SELECTIONS
As I said at the outset, I’m not really a veteran, so I haven’t tried all combinations and classes yet. I have tried some that have worked well, and I have some experience. My focus is also on three boxing the Tank-DPS-Heals holy trinity for running dungeons for challenge and profit, and not PvP. These class selections will be personal preference, but you might find some wisdom in them. Part of the fun of boxing is trying out different combos for yourself.
I should note that in the beginning I considered a Feral Druid, Shaman, Hunter combo because I could service all of those classes with a leatherworker. Since reaching the higher level dungeons, however, there is something to be said for your characters all having different armor types to maximize your usage of looted gear. If you’re crafting, you might want to determine your die-hard, most set-in-stone class (I chose my priest) to do Enchanting, allowing you to disenchant all of that Bind-On-Acquire dungeon loot that doesn’t fit your characters and would otherwise go to waste.
If you’re doing a Recruit-A-Friend chain scheme for your boxing accounts like I am, you might also consider which account will have the DPS, tank, and heals for most flexibility. Because of the level-donation benefit for referring accounts, you can chain-donate levels back to your original account, resulting in multiple leveled characters. For example, I liked multiple DPS options with one main tank and healer, so my original account (which benefited from all of those chain-donated levels) ended up being my DPS crew. It’s complicated, but something to consider.
Tank: DPS is a weakness for small-group boxing, so when I started, I wanted a tank that could contribute DPS. Some hard encounters in dungeons are classified, for example, as “DPS races”. If you can’t DPS, you lose. Looking at the WoWWiki tank comparison table for the DPS race category, I see some logic arguing for the Death Knight and the Druid.
Since these classes also have in-combat resurrection skills, don’t use shields (I hate shields), and have passive power regen (if you let them sit and switch to controlling your other characters, your DK or Druid will be ready to burst when you get back) these were my two picks. The Feral Druid benefits from being very simple. You spam a few skills over and over, giving you time to throw in skills from your other characters.
At this time, I like the Death Knight more than the Druid because the Druid rage bar is painful. I don’t like entering combat with my skills all greyed out. It’s a creative but frustrating class design in my opinion. The Death Knight enters combat with all of her skills charged and ready to use, plus has a full set of strong gear coming out of the start zone at L58 (A DK starts at L55).
One drawback of going for a DPS-strong tank is trying to DPS too much with your tank. The tank should be holding aggro and soaking damage. I like my Death Knight, but one place I could personally improve as a boxer is to improve use of my DPS character.
Note that you can’t make a Death Knight until you get one character on your account to L55, so you’re basically forced to experiment with other tanks. This is good.
Healer: I started with a Shaman and had great success with Druid and Shaman dual-boxing Scarlet Monastery. The Shaman offers lots of passive buffs and passive healing, which is a benefit to a boxer because it’s a good ratio of high power to low maintenance. Shamans also offer self-resurrection in case of a wipe, and you’re going to wipe if you challenge yourself. A Shaman can also take some decent punishment due to mail armor. This is good. A problem with boxing is handling the big crowds of monsters that can threaten your back rank.
A Druid has excellent heals over time and can move while healing, which is said to be important in some later encounters in WoW. A Druid is more difficult due to the fact that heals-over-time require more maintenance. I really wouldn’t recommend a Druid as a main healer. You might try one though if you’re looking for a character that is super-flexible, because Druids can offer some strong DPS and can also tank. A Resto Druid can cast a hurricane for extra AoE DPS when healing is not needed, and a Moonkin/Balance Druid is a very interesting choice for your DPS character.
I’ve found that a Priest is very squishy, but makes up for it with amazing heals, especially the ability to hit some big heals or shields quickly. When you’re managing a party all by yourself, these fast reactions can save the day. I’m now using a Priest while keeping a Druid in the wings as crafting support with potential to heal later. My druid has found a niche on my team as a pro gathering alt using cat stealth and flight form. I may try a Shaman again if I do another play-through in the future.
DPS: There are a lot of ways you can go here. I think crowd control via off-tanking is pretty imperative for a small-team boxer. There are too many cases where your tank is taken out of commission and the mobs rush the rest of the group, such as the final boss of Upper Blackrock Spire, the troll witchdoctors of Lower Blackrock Spire, the troll boss of Sunken Temple, and the dragon boss of Sunken Temple, to name a memorable few.
Yes, you can macro Dispel Magic and handle some of these things with your priest if you’re quick, but you’re almost certainly going to suffer if you have nothing but two cloth-wearers standing there when the tank goes to sleep, gets turned into a frog, or becomes mind-controlled. I would strongly suggest a pet class, then, which also offers not only spot off-tanking but also passive DPS in the form of the pet–DPS that you don’t have to push skills to get. This means a Hunter or a Warlock.
A Hunter offers the pet and a full-duration crowd control skill–Wyvern Sting. Hunter AoE damage is also not hand-targeted–it’s a cone spread focused on the target. This is very good because it’s easy AoE damage by quickly spamming a key. With a Warlock, Mage, or Balance Druid, you get stronger and more sustained AoE, but you have to switch windows and target it by hand most times. It’s a trade off.
A Hunter also has no mana, so will never run out. Instead, she has a focus bar, so like the Death Knight you can ignore her for a few seconds and then spam a few DPS keys for spike damage. Switch again and let the focus build back up while the pet keeps chewing away. The Hunter also offers traps, which can be set up before battle. This is good for you. The more performance you can get without having to get it by many pressing keys all at once, the better. Speaking of this, a hunter will also often auto-attack passively while a Mage or Warlock won’t.
The Warlock offers the flexible pet and passive damage, plus better AoE damage. The big problem with the Hunter is that she can’t function at all in melee range at the time of this writing (the Mists of Pandaria expansion might change things.) If she’s out of position, you’re out of luck unless you throw a Disengage and you’re not fighting on a slope, or next to a cliff or anything (yes, the cliff has happened to me.) A Warlock or Mage has no such problem. Bring a swarm of mobs, and the caster can bring a swarm of point blank AoE damage that doesn’t need targeting.
A Hunter is also pretty useless (again, unless things change with Pandaria) for quick gather-mobs AoE farming, while a Mage or Warlock is much better. A Warlock also offers a Soulstone, which offers a self-rez to your priest or tank. This can be very handy. The drawbacks to a Warlock are squishiness and complicated keying of skills for single-target damage. A warlock’s single-target Crowd Control (succubus seduction) is weaker than Wyvern Sting, but the Warlock has an AoE fear that can be cast back-to-back with priest fear to keep lots of mobs in chaos. I’m currently leveling a warlock to see how I like her.
The Mage offers perhaps the best DPS and crowd control skills (polymorph), but is squishy and doesn’t have much in the way of off-tanking. The Mage does offer group teleports for getting your group around, which is nice. The Mage is on my list of classes to play. I haven’t boxed yet with Mages, other than running two at a time clone-keyed in Elwynn Forest for testing.
The Balance Druid offers off-tanking by way of shapeshifting. I’ve three-boxed Upper Blackrock Spire using a Druid Moonkin DPS and fighting the final boss in Bear form. The Balance Druid also offers a combat rez, mana re-supply via Innervation, and AoE damage via Typhoon and Hurricane. The Druid is a very interesting and challenging choice for your team. The single-target damage for a Balance Druid (where you have to monitor the sun/moon eclipse bar to know what spell to cast) is tricky and requires much more micro-management than the hunter. Again, it’s a trade-off. A Druid can also stealth past mobs and resurrect, which might be situationally useful. If you wipe in a big dungeon like Blackrock Depths, you may run into respawns before you finish as a two- or three-boxer.
GENERAL DUNGEON TIPS
It’s a good idea to study the bosses before you three-box a dungeon of any real difficulty on-level. Otherwise, you’re almost asking to wipe, no matter how confident you are. For trash, use your crowd control. Use corners and line-of-sight to your advantage and don’t hesitate to take your time and park your party well back.
Get your follow macro set up in HKN and your stop follow to make sure your DPS and healer stay out of trouble. As I said in the class selection section, an off-tank is really helpful. So much so, that I usually just run all the time with my Hunter’s turtle. The turtle is considered the best tanking pet for the hunter, and it’s not uncommon that I’m finishing a battle and see the turtle’s shield come up, showing that she’s soaking damage for me. (This is a also a nice visual indicator that the hunter’s pet needs to be healed.) My philosophy has always been to have a strong defense first. Your philosophy may be different.
Runners are a big deal for you as a boxer. Most sentient mobs in WoW like to run get friends. As a Druid tank, you may need to shift to cast a root or damage spell on a runner. If you’re not quick and careful, you might wipe. This is a bit of a challenge. As a Death Knight, you’ll need to manage your Death Grip and Strangulate cooldowns (Strangulate will bring mages running to you). A pet is really handy to run down runners for you on its own, but it can also aggro more mobs.
Don’t forget your buffs. Know and use your all of your skills. This means things like Dispel Magic and other debuff removals. Traps and Thorns can be cast if you think they are worth it. Anything helpful that you can cast before battle is a small advantage to you as a boxer. You have a lot to remember when you’re boxing, so you will constantly need to remember to use your skills.
SPECIFIC DUNGEON NOTES
Some dungeons in WoW (mainly specific bosses) are simply unforgiving to a small-team boxer. Here are a few notes that I can make–wisdom from someone who has already passed along the way. For level ranges, see Instances by Level. It’s important to note that in the Cataclysm expansion, many of the dungeons were revamped, so many of the older dungeon guides online are serviceable but not 100% accurate.
- Normal Deadmines. The only trouble here is Helix Gearbreaker, which is the second boss. He will grab one of your characters and sit on their head, and meanwhile litter the ground with bombs. It’s a good idea to manually get your characters away from those bombs, or burn him down really fast. Exploding bombs may also interrupt heals.
- Stockades. This should be bread and butter for you on level as a boxer. A fun little dungeon that you can repeat for nice rewards. Wool cloth should also earn you some nice coin on the auction house.
- Blackfathom Deeps. This is a decent good-sized dungeon with some sights to see. Your main difficulty is Twilight Lord Kelris, who will put your tank to sleep and attack your DPS or healer. You need an off-tank, or you need to run your characters laterally away from him until he goes back to the tank. I don’t remember wiping when I boxed this, but I remember dying in a random PUG from it.
- Scarlet Monastery. This dungeon has three wings that can be run at various levels. This is a classic that shouldn’t be missed as a boxer. The Graveyard wing (leftmost entrance) is very easy with only one or two tricky spots. The final boss of the Armory is deadly with his AoE attacks–keep him away from your healer. The library is a lot of fun, and so is the cathedral. These two wings may be your first real test of how well you can handle runners.
- Zul’Farrak. This is a nice outdoor dungeon with trolls who will run. The basilisk boss might cause difficulties. Watch your back ranks. You may need to look up how to handle the stair step battle sequence correctly to unlock the doors and complete. Talk to the goblin.
- Sunken Temple. This is a nice dungeon to repeat for gear. Bring your skinner. This dungeon offers your first really tough situation where your tank is taken out of commission. Jammal’an the Prophet (a troll) will mind-control your tank. Try sending in your pet and killing the Prophet first. My best results were when the pet was controlled. If the Death Knight tank was controlled and didn’t happen to be rooted at the same time, my other characters were in big trouble. The next boss, the Shade of Eranikus, will put your tank to sleep. Here your off-tank (or other durable character) will be called into duty again.
- Stratholme. This was my first real frustration as a small-group boxer, and I was unable to complete the “undead side” of the dungeon. Plan for trouble with Cannoneer Willey on the “live side”. I skipped it after some wipes, but fortunately he was not needed to complete. Much worse will be Baroness Anastari on the undead side. She will take over the body of one of your characters and attack the others. I found this impossible on-level with an overpowered Death Knight tank in a party of three. You may be able to survive if you use more advanced macroed target-switching techniques and come up with some tricks.
- Blackrock Depths, Blackrock Spire (Lower and Upper). This enormous dungeon complex is another do-not-miss as a boxer. You’re in for some great and exhilarating adventures if you box this on-level. Everything is fun and doable, even wild at times. The final bosses of lower and upper spires have some tricks up their sleeves. You’ll need to be ready. Once inside Blackrock Mountain, go down the chain and the central spire to reach BRD. Hop up the chain and around the statue to the balcony with the Spire entrance (it’s easier if you’re flying). Once in the Spire, go down and right into the lower Spire complex and up and left into Upper Spire.
- Hellfire Ramparts and Blood Furnace. Both of these modest-sized dungeons are really fun and doable on-level for a three-boxer. Use your crowd control as much as possible. In Ramparts, grab the final drake fast before he torches your other characters, then keep up lots of heals. In Blood Furnace, watch out for summoners who summon succubi–those demons will charm your healer. Kite the mechanists (or whatever they are) away from the bombs they drop. If you wipe, watch out for stealthed orc rogues on your way back in.
- Slave Pens. This Burning Crusade dungeon is a fun and challenging little dungeon for boxing. You reach it by swimming down the pipe in the middle of Coilfang Reservoir in Zangarmarsh. Your group will be subjected to fears and mind-controls. Kill the healers, soothsayers, and rays as fast as possible. Use whatever crowd control you have to manage this. This dungeon was a pain because you’re apparently trapped at the end and need to port out, while at the same time the dungeon is remote and a pain to get to. I used another (druid) alt parked at the entrance to summon my team out using the RAF summon.
- Underbog. Another fun little dungeon at the same location as Slave Pens (go right instead of left in the cave). The last boss, Black Stalker, will throw your healer up in the air, making healing difficult. There are a few difficult trash pulls with patrols mixed in. I was able to absorb and survive these pulls. As far as boxing challenge, this dungeon was notable to me mainly for putting more difficulty on your party healing and positioning.
PvE Leveling Strategies With Refer-A-Friend (Alliance-Focused)
Refer-A-Friend gives you great tools for advancing quickly through World of Warcraft–the +300% XP bonus and the summoning ability. This is a blessing and a curse, depending on your perspective. Don’t forget you can turn on/off XP gains (if you want to) for 10g by visiting Behsten in Stormwind or Slahtz in Orgrimmar.
A good strategy is to make your RAF character a gatherer. Herbs and mining will give very significant XP–so much that your gatherer will significantly outlevel the other characters in your team by around L40 depending on how much you gather as you level.
In fact, you’ll advance so fast with +300% XP that if you’d like to keep up your professions as you level, you will need to make special considerations for that. It’s a good idea then that your RAF account has the gatherer so you can donate the extra levels to your referring account.
If you’re really getting into the boxing with RAF and you’re leveling up a party of characters quickly, you need to consider saving gold as well, and gathering can help with that. Your flying mount skills at level sixty will run 400-500 gold per character unless the character is a Druid (flight form comes out much cheaper).
To take advantage of boxing, ranged DPS is going to get the quests done the quickest. A marksman hunter can burn down mobs very quickly and can tow a lower-DPS tank or healer along. If you’re not worried about creating a dungeon party, two hunters or mages with cloned keys will burn through mobs in no time. Literally.
You can also maximize the use of your summons. Bind one character to the quest hub and the other to the main city. Summon, summon. Always use your summoning strategically to save time.
This has been a basic guide to multi-boxing WoW. If and when I hit level 90 in the coming Mists of Pandaria expansion, I may consider a part two to this guide, boxing in WoW from L65 to L90. I also intend to update this guide as new information comes to me in the coming weeks, and I’m sure it will. Until then, happy boxing.
Troubleshooting
Here are some random bits of info that don’t really fit anywhere else. I’ll add things as I come across them.
Follow will break in WoW if FPS drops below 7. Check FPS by mousing over the computer icon on your hotbar.
If your script just isn’t functioning like you think it should, study the error messages in the main output window of the HotkeyNet window. These will almost always point you in the right direction for a fix.
Oem keys are special character keys on your keyboard that can vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, especially in different countries. If the Oem keys are not working for you, press the desired key and observe the registered key code in the upper right corner of the HKN window. Make sure HKN’s code/name for the key matches up with your script and your key mapping.
More Reading And Tools
Multi-Boxing.com
Jamba Multi-Boxer Assist. This offers advanced tools for multi-boxing specifically in the form of a WoW add-on, with the cost of complexity.
Editor’s Note: as of November, 2018, there are reports that Standing Stone Games has started banning people for using ‘keyclone’ software (specifically isBoxer). They have not issued any official update or clarification of the longstanding stance, however, that as long as a human is pressing a key to activate each skill, they are not botting, and therefore their multi-boxed keystrokes are acceptable.
Kitty Kitty Boom Boom 
