About
I played runescape back when 07 released because my buddies all played the OG game before the game got ruined by updates. I quit after a bit and came back because all my same friends started playing again and had maxed accounts. I remember botting for the hell of it right before I quit for the first time and I was immediately drawn into watching my bot play automatically, even though it was a hands free afkable activity I still found myself mesmerized by the bot.
Fast forward to today and I find myself between jobs with an interesting skill set. I've been working in in Infosec/IT roles for a bit. While I have almost no experience with Java, I have been tinkering with C++ for a while and have been seriously using python, bash/shell scripting, and a few other languages for sys admin/linux engineering roles. Obviously my coding could be much better but with the right resources and API I should be able to write scripts as needed. Additionally, my experience with linux, automation, cloud deployment, security auditing, and programming I can see that while botting now has a high ban rate, with enough knowledge and self-made scripts, it can be quite profitable to run a full blown farming empire. Goals
(x = complete, o = in progress, blank = not started)
[x] Create Golden Image for VPN server allowing for scaleability as needed
[x] Identify 1 niche farming methods for p2p or f2p
[x] Write custom scripts handling farming & muling with redundancy for bans/disconnects/other issues across the supply chain
[o] Do testing for accounts running at various hours and times to identify patterns for banning and max hours per bond before ban
[x] 1 bot running with 1 mule
[ ] 25 bots running at all times
[ ] 50 bots running at all times
[o] Identify more farming methods to diversify income, reduce bottleneck, and reduce ban rate
[x] Farm first 1m
[o] Farm first 25m
[ ] Farm first 50m
[ ] Farm first 100m
[ ] Farm first 250m
[ ] Farm first 500m
[ ] Farm first 1b Journal
9/13/2017 - Began setting up infrastructure for botting. Already own/pay for a bunch of cloud infrastructure so I just spun up some containers with OpenVPN. Experimented with running proxy servers but its honestly not worth the effort so far. Not comfortable running unencrypted connections, and doing ssh proxychains magic isn't something I care to invest time into making stable and fault-proof/redundant, plus the current solutions are not up to my standards. Open for linux-based suggestions if someone has input.
9/17/2017 - Started running ~10 bots off various VPN connections on some Linux machines. Only doing F2P botting with various public scripts to understand ban rate, profit per hour, botting functions, and get a feel for what I'd like to implement and not. Collected decent data on time 2 ban for various duration of time. Strongly suspecting that detection results in a delayed ban, much like Valve Anti-Cheat. Likely core functions of the bot are detect that most people utilize or don't bother to custom make. Will do more testing with my own scripts though. Made my first 1m, but not counting this as its not my script and not using methods I want. Going to put it towards the Bonds buying fund. Beginning to look for methods to make money that are niche.
9/25/2017 - Identified a farming method with profits varying from 420k-600k/hr depending on market conditions. Scale-able to a degree and not well known. Working on my first script and quickly rummaging through some Java references to learn key differences between C++ and Java. (Side note: I've always hated Java and have purposely avoided learning it for years). Must have read almost every single post in the snippets section until I hit mid 2013s. Also looked for open source scripts which give me ideas on how people structure their scripts and handle situations.
9/26/2017 - First semblance of a functioning script coming into existence. Able to move between any locations, define areas, interact with NPCs, widgets, and handle combat. Had script at about 60% today and left it unsaved like an idiot when I went out to grab dinner with my girl. Came back and closed my development VM without thinking losing most of the work. Not discouraged, actually find it kind of funny. I'll remake it tomorrow better and build it more modular so that I can port functions to other future scripts and simply pass parameters as needed instead of hard coding information.
9/27/2017 - Woke up early today determined to make up for yesterday's mistake. Finished my script after a lot of fixing silly errors and babysitting the bot for a few hours. My first bot is pulling in ~500k / hour. Due to limited funds for bonds hopefully this one's profits will allow me to exponentially grow the amount of bots running this method until I can diversify. Working on a second script utilizing world-hopping but don't want to use the API's built in functions for that as I suspect that will have a higher ban rate. Trying to get ideas from other open-source solutions, likely will have to tackle this from scratch.
9/28/2017 - Giving my test bot an off-day while I offload my supply of farmed goods. Hoping for the best in terms of no ban, but if it happens I can dial in on detected techniques and work from there. Can't do much progress today as I have to drive 2 hours out of town to work at a client site that requires Incident Response and some policy work to reduce chance of further breach... I'd much rather be programming today!
9/29/2017 - Just got home, haven't slept in 36 hours of Incident Response work at a work site (Shoutouts to APT29 for being solid adversaries). I checked on my bot and hes not banned yet! Really didn't run the bot much as I ended up staying out of town due to the scale of work I was thrown into. Going to grab some food and crash for a bit, then start this project back up in the morning when I can think clearer.
10/4/2017 - Had to go back to the office for a few days again, had some trouble dumping some of my farmed items on the market so I'll have to rethink my initial money making strategy. I think I can layer it on top of a second one for a boost in income over the duration of the bond. I'm anticipating that with my current rate I will remain unbanned at the end of my bond. Missed a few days of botting here and there but the next attempt I will ramp up the hours and introduce 2 more farming methods. Still not ready to scale up yet. Found 1 new method two days ago for ~200k/hr, might need to add a third method to keep it rotating anyways.
10/11/2017 - Started a new job last week. Significant travel time for significant higher pay than what I was making at my last one. The downside is I have only 2 hours of free time or less per day during the week. By the time I eat dinner and catch a single episode of any show its time to hit the sack. I'll have to move the project to weekend only mode for now until I finish up my lease and move closer to the new job site. Made it through a bond and a half without any bans on the same bot, so I'm doing something right.