Utilize the World of Warcraft Recruit a Friend Program to Dual Box Two Characters To 60 Very Quickly

Utilize the World of Warcraft Recruit a Friend Program to Dual Box Two Characters To 60 Very Quickly
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The World of Warcraft Recruit a Friend Program (RAF) is a fantastic way for veteran new players and their newbie friends to level up quickly together. Many players are also finding that it is a fantastic and rapid way to level up alts or level two characters at a time.

Sure, there’s a cost associated with it, (upgrading to a full account is necessary because trial accounts are nearly worthless, you can’t level past 20, trade, or receive mail), but many feel the price of a second copy of WoW and a couple months of playtime is well worth the ability to rapidly level two characters to sixty and receive an otherwise-unobtainable mount.

For anyone looking to play a new class and dreading the inevitable grind to 60, we present hints and tips for getting the most out of dual boxing two characters and leveling rapidly.

How to Play Two Accounts on One Machine

Playing two characters on one machine requires no special set up on your part. Simply start one instance of WoW, log in with your first character, then tab out and start another and log in with your second account. Both will run independent of one another and your button presses in one will have no effect on the other.

Benefits of the RAF Program

It’s Always a Good Idea to Travel With a Companion

There are further benefits to the RAF program beyond just triple experience points (which is a pretty important bonus). The ability to summon characters anywhere in the world is incredibly valuable. With this feature, you can pretty much instantly get both your characters to any location in the world where you have stationed another of your characters.

Example: you want to get your Gnome warrior and Dwarf paladin to Darnassus, but don’t want to take the time to ride the tram and the boat to get there. Simply create a level one Night Elf alt and summon the character who is on the other account (form a group and then right click the other character’s portrait to do this), then log back onto your other character and summon him out to Darnassus.

You can perform this trick from anywhere in the world you have stationed an alt, you just have to wait for the summon to cool down before you can do it again.

Get the Most out of Triple Experience

Leveling Solo is no Fun

Keep in mind that your characters must remain grouped and close by one another in order to get the triple experience bonus. This isn’t a huge deal when killing monsters, as losing a couple hundred xp for a kill isn’t a major disaster, but you must ensure your characters are in close proximity when turning in quests.

1,000 experience is good. 3,000 experience is three times as good. Unlike rested xp, the RAF bonus applies to quests as well as mobs. Never turn in quests when your characters aren’t grouped and near one another. The majority of your experience will come from quest xp and you must make sure absentmindedness doesn’t rob you of it.

Efficient Dual Boxing

There are a couple schools of thought for what to do with the levels the referred account is able to give to the referrer’s characters. Some prefer to level to 60 without it and then give the 30 levels earned to one single character. This is a good way to get a free level 30, but gather quests and the like will slow down the progression of your two characters somewhat.

Dual Boxing With RAF Will Have you in Outland in no Time

The second method ensures maximum leveling speed at the expense of these gifted levels. Only the referred account can grant the levels, and only to characters of lower level on the referrer’s account. Keeping this in mind, it’s wise to let the character on the second account be the “lead” character in the group. Basically, whichever character can kill mobs faster should lead. So if you’re leveling a warlock and a druid, as I was, the warlock should lead as he is an unstoppable solo machine.

So, with the leader on the referred account, you do quests as normal, but the referred account shouldn’t worry too much about finishing gathering or item acquisition quests. Quests that ask you to kill x number of a certain mob will go just as quickly for two as they would for one, but quests that ask you to loot x number of items will take twice as long. Don’t worry about completing them on the non-lead character.

This way you’ll level both at about the same speed, and when the character on the referring account falls a level behind, you have the character on the second account simply grant him a level and continue on.

Instance Runs = Fast Leveling

Level Quickly and Feel Like a King

If you’re blessed with a good friend willing to run both your characters through instances, you can level up incredibly rapidly. It’s very possible to get three or more levels running through a level-appropriate instance, even with the xp fall off for grouping with a max-level character.

If employing this method, make sure to grab the quests for the instance as well. You can get amazing amounts of xp when the quest rewards are tripled as well as some very decent equipment.

Helpful Addons for Dual Boxing

TwoBox Toolkit is a fantastic tool for playing two characters as once. You run it on the non-lead character and it has helpful tools that prevent you from constantly having to tab between the two accounts. With this addon, your second character will automatically accept your group invites, pass you loot, relay any whispers it receives, automatically follow you and warn when follow drops, and more. Don’t dual box without it.

AutoHotkey is another very useful program. It’s not a WoW addon, but you can use it to pass keystrokes from one program to another. I mostly used it to assign heal and attack keys for my second characters, but it would be entirely possible to assign an entire hotbar to an alternate set of keys if a player wanted to.

Both these programs are totally legal. The WoW user agreement only forbids botting, but as long as you are actually pressing buttons to make actions occur, it’s not against the TOS. This has been confirmed multiple times in the WoW forums.

World of Warcraft Zhevra Mount

One final note: if you’re after the Zhevra mount for your primary account, keep in mind that you will have to buy both the vanilla WoW client and two months of gameplay on your referred account to receive it. Fortunately, you receive a free month of gametime on your primary account when your second account pays for its first month, so the cost is lessened somewhat.

Utilize these strategies and you will have two characters at level 60 quicker than you ever thought possible. The only downside to this rapid pace is that once you get your characters to Outland, leveling starts to feel excruciatingly slow.