Diablo Keys

[Mina]

sokeys if you get 3 of em can be used in a crafting to help out via uber farming, Long hard process by hard / end game type content.

1 key can sometimes get you a ko-pul, but normaly you need to sell 3 of them to get something decent.

If your purpose is to farm XP then GRs is where to do that. The Nepahalem Rifts are just to provide you with the GR keys to allow you to do that, DBs for crafting, and maybe some XP pools along the way.

So, just to break even at that point, any 4-man group would have to do Nephalem Rifts at least twice as quickly as a solo player just to break even on the keys / time spent. If the solo player can do the runs in 2 minutes each, can the 4-man really do them in 1 minute each?

Keys are dropped by monsters or purchased for a very low price in town. They stack 12 high, and are readily available. Each time you open a locked chest, one of your keys is used, and destroyed. There are no locked doors, and never anything in a locked chest you have to have to advance in the game. They are purely a bonus item, but as locked chests are common, you should be sure to always carry some of these (unless you play an Assassin, who can pick locks).

I read the story on digg: someone accumulated over 4,000 Diablo 2 keys and is now selling them for $5 a throw. That price includes a key for Diablo 2 and Lord of Destruction. $5 is not a bad price for games that regularly still go for more at brick-and-mortar stores. Small sales add up though: if he sells them all he stands to make at least $20,000. I caught up with the man who runs this business endeavor, Frank Lau, and of course I had a few questions.

His first e-mail was intriguing. "... it all started when I had a small shop and was spamming Diablo 2 (at the time it really worked, in 2003). I had hundreds and hundreds of keys muted and banned (note: I don't sell those). Then I started mass buying them in hoping to spam and spam and spam... And then I got even more. And now, well..."

Spamming Diablo 2 mostly means setting an auto-it bot (mostly because it's incredibly easy to do) and then posting in every single channel ever made. Since you can run up to four instances of Diablo 2 on the same computer without any major problems, I used to run no less than two channel spammers, one PM bot (which private messages every player it can find), and one game invader (Join a game, spam, quit, and join another). I ran this for at least two years and had hundreds of keys muted that way. I always needed more keys. But I had at the time a small shop of Diablo 2 items and it really payed off.

Most of them come from trades. I used to deal with huge Chinese companies (the few on earth that have more than me) and traded them for hundreds of keysets at the time. These represent most of the keys I have now. But I have even more, mostly from my old job at EBgames. I bought them [for] $1,000 for 800-900 games, so around $1 per keyset. That was one year ago though ;)

Well, actually, most of my keys are bot-handled; [the] delivery process is 100 percent automated. At one point I was planning to flood eBay with my CD keys, but my auctions kept being removed; it is only recently that I had begun selling them without risk (I was suspended once for trying to sell them on eBay). You can look at my name, stradf. Also, my shop was not nearly as popular and the price at the time, $14.99, discouraged many buyers.

The main problem I had was the huge PayPal fee. Putting it too low would result in fees of around 25 percent (yes, that high) for each the sale. At this moment, I still pay a 5 percent fee, which is kinda ridiculous since I have 100 percent of the risk, but I guess there is no alternative.

Well... I already participate in GoldenGaia, a bot for Gaia Online. Also, I was once selling gold (for Gaia Online), but it caused me so much trouble that I preferred to stop. There were always people selling it cheaper than me. And it seemed that every person I traded with got banned (note: they didn't really got banned, but were ready to do anything to get their money back. I met more scammers in my life that you can even imagine). Also, it was a lot of trouble to manage and wasn't nearly paying enough. As for bigger markets, such as World of Warcraft, I am discussing a possible project with Bill, something to replace WoWGlider. So yes, you could hear from me again ;)

I'm not going to use the CD key; I felt like I was being tipped for the coverage. He's spamming for profit and that's annoying for gamers. Since he's actually turning a profit, I don't think people like him will stop any time soon. Plus, a $5 Diablo 2 key is quite the product to be pushing; it's hard to say no to that price.

Keys are needed to open locked chests in Diablo II, unless you are an Assassin. They can be purchased from NPCs in town in any act, or found outside of the towns. All keys are the same. They can be stacked up to 12 in an inventory square. Any size stack will simply be listed as "Key" on the ground, in the same way as Arrows or Bolts.

@VxE

While your code works, it's terribly inefficient by being based on a loop running at short intervals, and by repeating redundant arithmetic operations. The only advantage to my version is maintainability, by allowing easy redefinition of the movement keys. This should be addressed by using a better language (that supports higher level abstraction) instead of compromising performance. You also managed to make one part both hard to read and slow. Change If ( dx + dy*2 ) to If (dx dy)

I'll test it when I get some time today. I have to do some computer and tech support things today.

Edit: quick question, what version of AHK are you using? Basic or AHK_l? That way I can test it with that version if no one else replies with the solution before I am able to. (im on my phone at the dmv).

3a8082e126