ML Bot for Mtgo v4 switchover

Hello botters,

As you probably already know, mtgo v3 will be retired soon and mtgo v4 will be the only official mtgo client. The announcement from Chris Kiritz can be found here and gives July as a date, right before the release of M15.

Our plan is to release the ML Bot client for mtgo v4 two weeks before the switchover so everyone will have the time to update their bots. This will not be a "beta", testing is no more required - this will be the official "first version" of the bot for mtgo v4.

In order to make the transaction smooth, we will be online 24/7 on LiveChat and on Skype (our account is "mtgolibrary.support"). You will probably need to add more ram to your virtual machines because Mtgo v4 needs more ram than v3 (2gb per machine are recommended). We will provide some virtual machines in case you need a good starting point. Please make sure you can install and launch Mtgo v4 on your machines and that it runs without crashes - we are in fact aware of some users unable to load Mtgo v4 properly.

We will run some v4 bots next week (we'll give the names), feel free to trade with them and write us the feedback.

14 days free trials

Starting from tomorrow, all the new accounts will enjoy a 14-days free trial instead of 7. ML Bot is a complex software, more than in 2007 when we started, and we thought that 7 days were not enough to fully evaluate it.

If you started a new bot this week, please write us (staff@mtgolibrary.com) and we will extend the free trial.

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Classifieds Advertisement Part 2) Part 19

Classifieds Advertisement Part 2 (Formatting):

Last week I talked a bit about Keywords you should use (and not use) in your Classifieds ad. This time I'm going to talk a little about how many bot owners choose to format their messages.

Classified ads vary a lot from bot to bot but a lot of them follow a pattern similar to this for Pro bots:
(|Open|)(Icon)(Header)(Icon) (BUYING)/(SELLING): (Card|Price| (Card|Price| Card|Price|....)
And something along the lines of this for Lite bots:
(|Open|)(Icon)(Header)(Icon) (BUYING): (X Common/X Uncommon/X Rare for 1 Tix) (SELLING): (X Common/X Uncommon/X Rare for 1 Tix)
(Ignore the Parentheses , these are to split the message up for the example)

Status Prefix:
The |BUSY|/|OPEN| prefix is automatically included if you check the box called "Automatically prefix | BUSY|/|OPEN| to the Classified message." inside the Messages Tab of the bot interface.
I prefer not to use this setting and have written my own (Busy Trading) message in the "Busy Class. message" Box in the bot UI instead. I'm not sure what's the best way to go about this but I find it unnecessary to waste your limited characters (255 max) on writing |OPEN|. If your bot isn't busy and a classified message is posted it should be fairly clear that it's open. But this is all up to you. It might be good to use simply because most bot's do, for the sake of consistency. But then again, it's always good to stick out from the crowd.

The Header:
The "Header" is replaced by the name of your chain. Often surrounded by (icons)(I'll explain how to use these later) to make it stand out from the crowd and also lets people easily know which bots are part of the same chain, and therefore shares credits.
It might not be very important if you have consistent names like BotBot, BotBot2, BotBot3 and so on. But it's very important for chains that don't, like the Supernova chain for example that have completely random bot names.

Prices For Pro Bots:
Pro bots usually include Individual card buying or selling prices prefixed with a "BUYING:" or "SELLING:" in their Classifieds ad.
These prices can be automatically inserted by the bot using different macros that I will go more in depth about next week.

Price For Lite Bots:
Lite bots often include "BUYING:" followed by the amount of each rarity your bot buys for one(1) ticket. And then "SELLING:" followed by the amount of each rarity your bot sells for one(1) ticket.

You don't have to include all information you want your customers to know though, as you can write messages in the message tab that the bot can post when a trade is initiated instead.

That's all I had for today, next week I'll talk some more about Classifieds advertisement.

Until then, have fun botting!

-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Classifieds Advertisement Part1) Part 18

Classifieds Advertisement Part 1 (Keywords):

In my last post I explained how you can use the PersonalPrices.txt file to set personal prices for individual cards. This week I'll talk about what you should think about when customizing your Classifieds ads.

First thing you need to know is that this ad is your face towards customers.
Some more experienced users will use the wikiprice site to find bots but most will just search the Classifieds, so it's crucial that you write a good ad that includes the right keywords so new customers can find you.

Keywords:
Keywords are words that you should use in your bot's Classifieds message that are words people often search for. As far as I know Wizards haven't released any statistics on this so we'll have to guess which words these are.

Good keyword usage:
Some words are pretty obvious, words like "Buying", "Selling", "Common", "Uncommon", "Rare", "Bulk", "(Popular card's names)" and so on.

These are words you should try to include in your bot's Classifieds messages where they fit.
For example: Rarities and "Bulk" only applies to Lite bots and "(popular card's names)" mostly applies to Pro bots. I would suggest writing real messages like "Now buying Theros" instead of just cramping them in randomly.

A different approach:
Some bot owners choose to include a bunch of random keywords at the end without spaces, just to cramp in as many as possible.
Example: uncommonraremythicbulktherosthsfoilstandard

While this definitely will yield more search hits it looks very messy and a bit unprofessional. I prefer writing real messages containing keywords since I think it looks better and more personal, but it's up to each of you how you want your chain to be perceived.

Bad keyword usage:
Some people choose to include keywords that doesn't even relate to their bot just to get more hits.
For example bots using the keyword "Casual" or "Human" which are usually reserved for humans wanting to sell or trade cards using the classified by hand and not use a bot.

Some even include names of other big chains to pop up when people search for these.
For example search for "Supernova" which is one of the larger bot chains on MTGO and your search will yield something around 120 hits even though the Supernova chain only consists of eight(8) bots.

This looks very unprofessional and I would never deal with a bot that uses this kind of strategy but it's definitely going to yield more searches that picks up their bots.

So it's all up to you how you want to use keywords. You should never underestimate how powerful these are and how much traffic they can yield, but always remember that your bot might come off as unprofessional and even shady if you use the "wrong" ones.

Next week I'll talk more about Classifieds messages and until then, happy botting!

-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (MLBot Basics 8) Part 17

Personal Prices:

In my previous post I talked about the PersonalPercentages.txt file.
This week I'll talk about the PersonalPrices.txt file that you can use to customize individual prices for cards.
In this file you can specify selling and buying prices for each individual card, and also buying quantity which will override your settings in the tabs for each specified card you add to this list.

You format this file as followed:
SETNAME;CARDNAME;SELLING PRICE;FOIL SELLING PRICE;BUYING PRICE;FOIL BUYING PRICE;BUYING QUANTITY REGULAR;BUYING QUANTITY FOIL

Example:
5DN;Stasis Cocoon;0.024;0.028;0.003;0.006;8;4

This will make your bot sell the regular 5Th edition(5ED) Stasis Cocoon for 0.024 tickets, the foil version for 0.028 and buy max 8 regular for 0.003 tickets each and 4 foil for 0.006.

Even if you have set your bot to only purchase 4 of each card from the 5th edition(5ED), your bot will now purchase 8 of only Stasis Cocoon as this files overrides everything else.

This is a great way to, for example setting your bot to purchase more of the most popular cards that you will sell all the time. Or maybe adjusting prices that you think fits better than the ones of the CardsMTGO3.txt file.

All you need to do is to add each card you manually want to adjust in a separate line.

Example:
5DN;Stasis Cocoon;0.024;0.028;0.003;0.006;8;4
M13;Bloodhunter Bat;0.034;0.039;0.004;0.008;4;0
AVR;Angel of Jubilation;0.084;0.1;;4;

As you can see you don't have to fill in every part of it. If you leave for example buying price empty, your bot will buy the card for whatever other settings is set inside of the bot interface and/or PersonalPercentages.txt.

Also, remember that if you write "//" before something it turns into a comment which won't be read by the bot. So you can use this to write categories for your own information to make it easier to keep track of your custom prices.

To use PersonalPrices.txt just check the checkbox in the "General" tab of the bot UI.

That's all for this time! I'll be back next week.

-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (MLBot Basics 7) Part 16

Personal Percentages:

Last week we talked about how you can turn a Pro bot into a "Hybrid" bot that buys for bulk prices like a Lite bot and sells for individual prices like a Pro bot. This week I'll go into a little more advanced settings of Pro bots and how you can use them to fine tune your bot's prices.

I've already talked about how you can set your Pro bot's corrections in a previous post.
The corrections tab is a great way of adjusting your prices but there are ways of customizing them even further.
For example you might want to buy Standard cards at +10% since they sell quickly, then you start buying Extended and realize that you don't want to pay as generously for these older sets as there isn't as much demand for these compared to Standard. So, what do you do now?
The answer is PersonalPercentages.txt.

PersonalPercentages.txt and how to use it:
In this file you can specify individual correction percentages for each card and also each set and rarity which is a great way of dealing with the problem I just described.

If you open the PersonalPercentages.txt file that is located in your MTGO library folder, you'll see that it describes how to set it up.

You can write the instructions in this file following this format:
SETNAME;CARDNAME;SELLING PRICE CORRECTION; FOIL SELLING CORRECTION;BUYING CORRECTION;FOIL BUYING CORRECTION

Put to use it'll look something like this.
Example: M13;Elvish Visionary;+30%;+35;-30%;-45%

This will make your bot sell the M13 Elvish Visionary for CardsMTGO3.txt(Pricelist) prices +Corrections%(Corrections Tab) +30%(PersonalPercentages.txt).
So keep in mind that it doesn't override the Corrections Tab's percentages, it adds(or subtracts) to them.


Also note that if you don't want to set a personal value in one of the fields you just leave that one blank.
Example: M13;Murder;-30%;;-30%;

You can also set correctional percentages for each set by switching out the card name to a rarity.
Example: ISD;Uncommon;+10%;+15%;-20%;-30%;

This will affect all Uncommons in the Innistrad(ISD) set and is a great way of tackling the problem I described earlier in this post.

You could use this to stay safe and not buy sets that are soon going to rotate out of Standard for too high prices, as the prices sinks rapidly when everyone wants to get rid of these sets to purchase cards from the next block that rolls into standard.

After you have set up your PersonalPercentages.txt just save it and set the bot in the General Tab to
"Use PersonalPercentages.txt".

Next week I'll go through the PersonalPrices.txt file and how to use it, until then, have fun botting!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (MLBot Basics 6) Part 15

The "Hybrid" bot and how to set it up:

Last week we talked about the Pro bot and some very basic settings.
This week I'll talk about something called a "Hybrid" bot.

A "Hybrid" bot is actually not a version of MTGO Library Bot, like Pro or Lite.
It's a Pro bot that runs with special settings making it buy for bulk prices like any Lite bot but sell using the pricelist just like a Pro bot.

This can be very useful when you want to build your collection and want to have some easily manageable prices so you can stay safe and not waste too much tickets by buying junk for pricelist prices.
At the same time it lets you sell the cards you purchase for their actual value which makes it easy to manage and a great way to start out if you don't want to start with one Pro and one Lite.

A "Hybrid" or a Lite bot will usually not yield you a lot of valuable rares (unless you have very high buy prices) but it will stock you up with the junk for prices you can afford and also occasionally brings in some more valuable Uncommon and Common cards like Young Pyromancer and the like.
The only downside with the "Hybrid" bot is that it's not common and therefore might confuse customers, so make sure to explain that it buys for bulk prices and sells for individual prices.

Setting up a "Hybrid" bot:

• Start up ML Bot and set it to Pro.

• Set up all the settings in the General, Collection,
   Buyer, Administrator and Messages tab.
   (I've explained how to do this in previous posts.)

• Go into the Corrections tab and set it to whatever
   corrections you want in the "selling" fields
   and +100% in the buying fields (yes you read
   that right, 100%).

 •  Lastly go into the Limits tab and set your 
    "Buying price limits" to the prices you want to    
     bulk purchase cards for. For example 0.005 for
     commons (200 per ticket) and so on.

That's it, now your bot will buy cards for the prices you set in the limits tab and sell according to your corrections and pricelist.




That's all I had for today, I'll be back with a new post next week, until then, happy botting and good luck!

-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (MLBot Basics 5) Part 14

The Pro bot and it's secrets (Part 2 of 2):

Last week I posted the first part of this post about the Pro version of the ML Bot.
Here's the second part where I'll go through how corrections work and then give a "safe" example of settings a new botter could try.

Corrections explanation:

In the "Prices" tab you can find corrections you can set. In here you can set your bot to buy and sell a certain percentage higher or lower than the price list.

Here's an example:
In the pricelist the Blood Artist from Avacyn Restored have a sell price of: 0.249 and a buy price of: 0.137
If you set the corrections of Uncommon to buy them for +100% your bot will buy Blood Artist for 0.274 (0.137 + 100%) and if you set the bot to sell them for -50% your bot will sell it for ~0.124 (0.249 - 50%).

You can set these prices by hand, individually for each card in the PersonalPrices.txt file or individual percentages in the PersonalPercentages.txt in the bot's folder (I'll go more in depth into this in later posts), but the pricelist is pretty accurate and a great way of starting out.

Recommended corrections:
I would suggest you to start out "safe", buy for low prices and sell for fairly low.
Here's some settings you could try and some pointers to keep in mind.

Buy Mythic and Rare for between +10% to -10% and slowly work your way up as you build your collection.

Don't rush it or you will end up depleting your tickets.
No one wants to do business with a bot that doesn't have any tickets. As your collection gets bigger and your ticket count grows you can start buying for higher prices.

Buy Commons and Uncommons for around 0% to -20%. Most people won't care much about commons as there aren't many of really high value, especially not in Standard and will just buy or sell them for whatever not too crazy price your bot suggests.

It's the good prices on Mythics and Rares that will bring people to your bot with the help of the http://mtgowikiprice.com site and your classified advertisement.

Sell Rares and Mythics for between 0% to -10%. In the beginning it's important to start building a customer base so you don't want to be too expensive. Later on when you have built up a big collection and you've increased your buy prices you can increase your sell prices as well.
A lot of people won't mind buying a bit more expensive if the bot they're dealing with have everything they need rather than have to scavenge tons of bots for each card.

Sell Commons and Uncommons for 0% possibly slightly lower.

Limits tab: 
You can use this tab to set a limit so your bot won't buy (or sell) over (or bellow) a certain price.

It might be a good idea in the beginning to limit buying prices so your bot doesn't buy a playset of Voice of Resurgence for 28.14 tickets each which might leave you without tickets to buy other cards for.

That's all for this week, next week I'll talk about the "Hybrid" bot which is a mix between Lite and Pro.


Until next time, have fun botting!

-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (MLBot Basics 4) Part 13

The Pro bot and it's secrets (Part 1 of 2):

Last week I wrote about some basic Lite bot settings, and as promised, here's the first part of two about the Pro version, next part will be posted next week.

Pro bots buy and sell cards using a price list that you can download for a fee from MTGO Library.
This list is updated every 2 hours and is a good way of making sure your prices are up to date with the current value of cards as it can dip and rise in a very short time.
In the bot's interface you can set it to buy and sell a certain percentage higher or lower than the price list.
You don't want to buy too high, but you also at the same time must have competitive prices so people actually want to use your bot.

What to buy:
I would recommend starting out with buying only from the sets that are currently in Standard in the beginning unless you have tons of tickets to invest.
Standard cards will be bought very frequently and it's easy to find buyers for those high value cards that will deplete your tickets fast.

Older sets however might take longer sell and while it's still worth selling you might want to wait to buy these sets until later on.

You can set which sets you want to buy in the "Collection" tab in the MLBot Interface.

Remember that you can still sell cards that you haven't chosen in the "Collection" tab, for example cards your Lite bot supply your Pro bot with.

If you want to buy Foil cards I would suggest buying only standard and for a very low price in the beginning for the same reasons why I recommend not buying anything else than standard when you're starting out.

Basic lands can easily deplete your tickets so only buy these extremely cheap if you want to purchase them.

Profit from Boosters are mainly in the form of "Float", which is the leftover credits that users don't end up spending on your bot. Boosters are bought with a very small margin and sell prices are almost identical to the buy prices. I wouldn't recommend buying them in the beginning unless you buy them very cheaply.

Avatars aren't worth much and only a few are actually worth buying for any decent price. The Momir Vig, Simic Visionary Avatar is used for the Momir Basic format and is frequently bought but most of the other ones are rubbish.

This was all for today, next time I'll post the second part of this post where I go through some basic settings.

Cya then!

-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

On the previous chapter I briefly introduced that the machine you were to run your Magic Online stores on was one of the largest initial investments. Thus, I think it is important that you only spend the money you need on this so important device. In this chapter I will give a few tips on how to decide what elements are the most appropriate ones for a computer to install bots Magic Online according to your needs.

Step 1: Shall I use an old PC or a new one?

If you do not have enough money to afford a new one as I discussed in the previous chapter, you can recycle an old one. For me the only advantage is the short-term savings, but some of the drawbacks I see include the following:

• It is more likely that an old PC gets suddenly broken in the short term. Typical desktop systems are used to be voluminous and make a lot of noise due to de forced convection (fans). 
• They have a higher power consumption.
• They are not fast nor they have enough memory to run some Magic Online bots at once. Memory can be easily substituted, but this does not happen with the CPU.

If you have no other option you can use an old PC, but this article will probably not be of much interest for you. However, my suggestion is to buy a dedicated PC. If you choose this option, we will continue evaluating which features your new computer should have.

Step 2: Intel or AMD?

AMD CPUs are significantly evolving over the last years, with up to 12 real cores per processor at the professional range, and APU for the domestic sector. All this new technology is offered at a relatively competitive price compared with Intel, its main adversary.

However, I would choose an Intel processor for a computer which has to run Magic Online bots. The most important reason is the relation between performance, number of cores and the power consumption. It is clear that we always want the fastest speed possible and in this respect both AMD and Intel do a good job, but it is the relation with the power consumption and the number of cores what makes the difference.

Each CPU core will be configured to run a store, so the more we have the more bots we can install on the same computer. It is more likely that you initially only open 1-2 stores, but for a small extra charge I think it’s a good idea to overstate this device, as it is the most expensive and difficult to replace in the future (brands switch the socket of the new CPUs, you have to change the motherboard…)

I want to say that I have had personal experience of AMD CPUs and they usually break sooner than the Intel ones. I guess this is because they consume more and therefore heat up but I could not contrast this assumption with any specialist. With this I mean that although initially AMD could be cheaper, eventually you will have to change it sooner than an Intel. Of course this is my personal experience and maybe some of you have had just the opposite.

Step 3: Barebone as the basis system

The computer will be on 24 hours a day, so one of the main goals consists of minimizing its power consumption to save money on electric bills. Fortunately you do not need the ultimate in performance because you are not going to use the computer for playing. Thus, the best choice for the box+motherboard set is a barebone.

These computers usually lack of fans and overheating because consumption is very low, and they are also smaller than traditional desktop PCs. This is an additional advantage for zero noise (you can place it in the hall and, for example, use it to watch movies on TV) and lower accumulation of dust inside the computer itself.

Although there are many models on the market, I will show you a small list of what are the ones that I would consider buying when replacing my current computer.

Model	Technical Features	Estimated Price
Gigabyte Brix GB-XM1-3537	Dimensions: 29.9×107.9×114.6 (mm) CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-3537U (TDP 17W) Memory: Up to 16 GB DDR3 (not included) Hard Disk: mSATA (not included) Connections: 1x mSATA; 1x Wi-Fi; 1x USB 3.0; 1x HDMI; 1x Mini DisplayPort; 1x Ethernet RJ45 Operating System: Not included	539 €
Intel NUC Kit DC53427HY	Dimensions: 39x112x117 (mm) CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-3427U (TDP 17W) Memory: Up to 16 GB DDR3 (not included) Hard Disk: mSATA (not included) Connections: 1x mSATA; 1x Wi-Fi; 1x USB 3.0; 2x USB 2.0; 1x HDMI; 2x Mini DisplayPorts; 1x Ethernet RJ45 Operating System: Not included	378 €
Shuttle Slim DS61	Dimensions: 43x190x165 (mm) CPU: Intel® Core™ i3/i5/i7 (not included) Memory: Up to 16 GB DDR3 (not included) Hard Disk: mSATA (not included) Connections: 1x mSATA; 1x Wi-Fi; 2x USB 3.0; 4x USB 2.0; 1x HDMI; 1x DVI-I; 1x Ethernet RJ45; 1x SD Card Reader Operating System: Not included	200 €
Mac Mini	Dimensions: 36x197x197 (mm) CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-3615QM (TDP 45W) Memory: 4 GB DDR3 (optionally up to 16 GB) Hard Disk: 1 TB 5400 rpm (optionally SSD 256 GB) Connections: 1x mSATA; 1x Wi-Fi; 1xBluetooth 4.0; 4x USB 3.0; 1x HDMI; 1x Mini DisplayPort; 1x Thunderbolt; 1xFirewire; 1x Ethernet RJ45; 1x SD Card Reader Operating System: MacOS X	849 €

Prices may have big variations depending on the content. For example, the Shuttle Slim does not include CPU whereas the Mac Mini has RAM and hard drive included, in addition to some extra connectivity and the host operating system license. As I said, I recommend any of these computers with an Intel Core i7, but if you do not have plans to install many shops on the long-term it may be better a barebone like the Intel NUC due to its lower price.

I have not talked about the graphics card because it is not a top requirement to install bots on Magic Online. Besides, you usually do not have to watch the screen of the computer where you install your stores, so it is not something to worry about. In fact, the less this device consumes the better because you will save more energy. The only minimum requirement is to accept a resolution of at least 1280×1024, which almost all current graphics cards of the market allow.

Step 4: RAM memory

Each store will use a minimum of 1 GB of RAM if run under Windows XP , although it is recommendable to have at least 1.5 GB. Each of your stores probably will work with virtualization (we will see what is virtualization in the next chapter of this series), but all virtual systems are managed by another host operating system.

Furthermore, depending on the host operating system, it will require more or less memory. You shall usually leave 2 GB of RAM for Windows 7/8 or MacOS (I even would keep this quantity for usual Linux desktop distributions like Ubuntu). However, there are special operating systems that only serve to manage other virtual systems. These special OS, like ESXi, have a very low memory consumption but only work on computers with a very specific hardware due to the limited number of drivers available. You have a very good series of articles devoted to this operating system through this link.

With these assumptions in mind, I would recommended a minimum amount of RAM of 4 GB (2 for the host OS and another 1.5 for the first store), and 1.5 GB per additional store. As each module of 8 GB can cost around 60 euros, I would suggest you to directly install 16 GB of RAM to have no problems in performance. because this component is one of the most importants to run Magic Online bots.

Step 5: Hard Disk

Some users have studied the impact on performance when using fast or slow hard drives, even by installing virtual machines on the RAM memory. The results indicate that the impact is rather small, so this component is not critical for performance, at least with one bot.

Let me explain the final assertion. The study referenced above is based on the use of a single bot. However, when you have multiple stores on the same computer, the hard disk must probably access to different parts of the disc itself that can slow down your system. In this situation it may be preferable to use Solid State Drives (SSD) over traditional hard drives (HDD) . They are more expensive but the difference is not outrageous. There are also an intermediate solution, the hybrid discs, which are being analyzed by another expert user at MTGO Library.

Anyway, as I have said the hard drive is not as critical as the other components so you can save money in this case. In addition, this device is probably the easiest one to be replaced from the hardware point of view, and obviously after backing up all your data.

Conclusions and some future sight

According to everything we have seen on this article, what computer would best fit your needs? In my opinion the Samsung Brix would be at the top in terms of price-performance ratio. Adding the price of a typical hard disk and all the 16GB RAM it supports, you can install up to 8 stores for around 750€, i.e. less than 100€/store. The Mac Mini can be deceptive at a first sight, but the unofficial memory expansion leaves it pretty close to the price of the Samsung Brix. So, if you are a Mac fan this is definitely your choice. In my opinion, the quality of the assembly and component durability of the Mac Mini cannot be compared with the others, of course if you can afford the extra price.

I have not talked about the new micro-computers of very low consumption like the Raspberry Pi, because unfortunately they use ARM processors. Truth be told, some systems allow installing modified Ubuntus that can run virtualization software, but surely the performance of Magic Online would be insufficient and it is not a real option for the moment.

I don’t want to finish this article without commenting you an option that I find rather curious. It consists of installing Magic Online stores on a Windows tablet Surface Pro. This Tablet/Notebook hybrid has all the requirements for our bots: Windows 8 desktop (allows virtualization), FullHD screen resolution and 4GB memory. The main drawbacks I see for the moment are the high price of this system and its low autonomy. However, the advantage of having no extra equipment for your stores if you use only one tablet at home can be very interesting. Who knows which new technologies are to come that will allow us to install our Magic Online bots…

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (MLBot Basics 3) Part 12

The Lite bot and you:

In the last article I described some basics of the ML Bot interface and settings. In this blogpost I'll talk about some simple, basic strategies for botting with ML Bot and how to get your first bot(s) running.

I'm planning on going a little more in-depth(but still very basic) into each basic bot type, Pro, Lite and "hybrid" and I'll start off with a post about the Lite bot, the most simple one. I'll explain the differences and how you can set one up with some simple, easy and safe settings to begin with. More advanced tactics and settings will be covered in the future. Just make sure to read and follow the advice I gave in the previous post before you start with these settings.

The Lite bot basics:
A Lite bot buys in bulk. It buys for a set price per rarity, for example: 500 Common, 200 Uncommon or 30 Rares for 1 ticket. These can be set to anything you feel like.
It's not buying strictly 500 commons, it could be for example 250 commons and 100 uncommon. These numbers are mainly to give an example. In the bot's settings you don't set it to buy 500 common, you set it to buy commons for 0.002 tickets each, which adds up to 500 commons per ticket.

It's a good idea to keep these numbers fairly clean, at least with commons and uncommons.
It's not as important when it comes to rares as these aren't sold as much in bulk as junk commons, and pricing is more crucial as it's easier to make the mistake of buying these too high which will make people fill your bot with junk-rares that you overpay for. 
It's best to start off buying rares at around 40/ticket and after you fill up with crap like Search The City and the like, you can decrease it to 30 or so to make people more tempted to sell them to you.

Lite bots are mainly used to fill a Pro bot with stock. You buy cheap cards for bulk prices and then fill your Pro bot so it always has at least 4 of each.
You can of course still use it to sell cards as well and it's a great way of getting rid of junk commons.
Sometimes people will sell valuable cards to your Lite bot(s) with cheap buying prices so make sure to transfer all valuable cards to a Pro or "hybrid" bot that will sell them for what they're worth.
This is easily done by making a deck-file or "wishlist" containing valuable cards to use when transferring valuables.
Lite bot settings:
Decide which sets you want to start buying.
When using a cheap Lite bot I'd say it's worth buying every set while a Pro bot is better off buying only standard in the beginning. Although this totally depends on how many tickets you can afford to spend to build a stock.
You can set this in the "Collection" tab by simply selecting the sets you want to buy and set the amount of each category you want to purchase.
I would recommend not buying Foils in the beginning, or only very cheaply, just very slightly above non-foil. The same goes for basic lands as long as you're not buying extremely low. I would also recommend only buying 4 of each card in the beginning or maybe 8 if you have a big stock of tickets, as you're better off with a large variety of cards than tons of the same one.

I would recommend settings along these lines:
   • Common buy: 0.002
   • Common sell: 0.005
   • Uncommon buy: 0.0555
   • Uncommon sell: 0.01
   • Rare buy: 0.025
   • Rare sell: 0.0333
   • Mythic buy: 0.03
   • Mythic sell: You don't really want to sell these on your Lite bot.

When you've set up your prices make sure to write a fitting classified message your bot will post that advertises your prices and then you're ready to go.

Next time I'll go through how you can set up your first Pro bot.

Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

Bots: costs and initial strategies

So far in this series of Magic Online bots, you have learned the economic fundamentals of the digital card game. We have also reviewed how to create a bot store that automatically manages your collection so it gets benefits for you. If you decide to start this quest and build your own store, it is important to know some marketing strategies that can determine a great success and a better relation between cost and benefits.

Initial costs and maintenance for Magic Online bots

You should not create a Magic Online stores without wondering how much the initial and maintenance costs will be. Besides, you have to take in mind ​​the benefits you will get from each store depending on what cards it will have in stock. First off, you must know that for every digital store on Magic Online that you are creating, it will have the following rough expenses:

Description	Value
Magic Online account	$9.99
Compatible computer with CPU Intel x86	~$400-$1200
Windows 7 Professional OEM license (allows a Windows XP license)	~$125
Virtualisation software (optional)	$40-$70
Energy consumption for a PC of 100W with fee of 0.2$/kWh	~$15/month
Investment on initial stock	$100 or greater
MTGO Library account and software	FREE
MTGO Library renting fee	2.5% or Lite/Pro license

Except the Magic Online account, all prices are estimations and may vary depending on where you live. With Magic Online version 3 you should use Windows XP as it consumes fewer resources than their successors. The problem is that official licenses for this windows can no longer be officially purchased. The only way is to buy Windows 7 Pro OEM and request a downgrade to Windows XP (this is supposed to be valid until 2014), although I have not checked this because I use my old operating system licenses.

Additionally, you can see that there are some initial fixed costs and others for maintenance. To decide how much you should spend on the computer I will write a sepparate article, because I think it is a very important topic to ensure the smoothness and scalability of your future chain of Magic Online bots.

On the other hand, you can check that I have highlighted the possibility of buying virtualization software. These applications allow you to run more than one operating system on the same computer, and they are the basis to have several Magic Online bots on the same machine. Although there are some companies that offer free versions, sometimes you may prefer to use the payment option in order to gain extra performance. Like the selection of PC, I will make a comparative analysis for a future article that will allow you to choose the program that best suits your needs.

Previous suggestions to plan the setup of your Magic Online bots

As you have seen, the initial cost of a Magic Online bot is relatively affordable. For this reason it is very important that you plan the growth of your business based on the resources you have. Below I give you some tips that may save you some time and money.

1. If you have an older computer, certainly this is the cheapest option in the short term to start testing bots Magic Online. Of course, this PC will probably have high energy consumption problems, it will be outdated and with limited hardware expansion capabilities. These factors reduce the capacity expansion of a bots chain in the long term, but it would be useful for you to take some practice with bots at almost zero initial cost.
2. You might also have the Windows XP license of any old computer you no longer use because probably your current PC will be updated at least to Windows 7. However, if you are planning to setup several stores this initial cost increases linearly. Therefore, you should only create the stores you really need or you will be losing money.
3. For virtualization software, there are some free programs but with the disadvantage of being slower than the payment option. For this reason you should choose it depending on the number of stores that you are going to install on your bots machine. 
4. You will need an initial investment for each store. The greater the value, the higher the growth rate of stock but you will also spend more money. If you make a large investment on each of your stores they may evolve rapidly, but if that investment is low in the short to medium term, then you will spend more money on the maintenance of your Magic Online bots than the benefit obtained, because initially the flow of customer will be low.

The relevance of having a strategy for the future expansion

From the tips mentioned above, I will give my recommendation assuming you want to create a chain of Magic Online bots for the long-term. Everything will mainly depend on how many tickets/cards you are willing to invest for the initial stock of each of your stores. In this way, you have two options:

• Low initial stock (~$100 per store): In this case you should have 1-2 stores. The main one should have a Pro license (buy/sell any card with unique prices) with 2.5% renting fee and buy/sell cards just from the latest expansion available in Magic Online. This limitation is very favourable because that set will be the most drafteable one, so there will be huge quantity of cards at a very good buy/sell rate. If you choose to have a secondary store, it should buy cards in bulk through a Lite license (all rarities at same prices) also with a renting fee of 2.5%. This second store must buy the cards cheaper than the main one, and it should be configured to refill the main stock because clients are more interested on pro stores that are always full of stock. As new sets are becoming available, your store should accept them to slowly go expanding your business. 
• High initial stock (~$500 or more per store): For these quantities the store should not have many problems to grow quickly (obviously with a good marketing). With amounts between $500-$1000 I would start buying/selling standard, and from there I would include Modern and even Legacy. The Professional version is required for these types of stores, but it would also be a good idea to have one or two Lite stores to maximize profits. Use the monthly license fee or better when you move amounts greater than 90 tickets/day (these licenses cost 63 tickets/month or less), and 2.5% commission per transaction otherwise. One strategy that can combine any of the above options is to use, for each store you are planning to create, two stores instead: one that exclusively buys cards and another that only makes sales. As this alternative would double the computation costs of your computer and limits you to create new stores, this strategy is only recommended whenever you have a high traffic of customers. Thus, you avoid your Magic Online bots from being always busy (remember you can only trade cards with one customer at once, so if a customer is waiting for trade he would probably go to another store).

Final thoughts

Although the growth stock of the strategy (a) is slow in time, it is also safer and with a relatively low initial cost. Therefore, this solution is favorable for those who cannot afford high investment and for those who will not spend much time maintaining their Magic Online bots.

Unlike (a), in case (b) the growth is much faster but you have to be careful and keep the prices updated. If you have cash, your stores will be targeted by customers who hope to also make some profit with the most expensive cards. The problem is that those cards leave your store/s without tickets and until sold you do get zero benefit (in fact it is a temporary loss state). The main problem is that those cards can vary greatly over the cheap price and generate losses due to these fluctuations. Thus, with this strategy you must be much more aware of your store to avoid short term buys/sells that may provoke loses.

Now that you have a long-term idea of ​​how you are going to expand your chain of Magic Online bots for profit, in future articles I will comment more technical aspects related to mount your stores, such as the required hardware and software.

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (MLBot Basics 2) Part 11

MTGO Library Bot part 2:

Last time I talked about some basic preparations and basic information about ML Bot.
This time I'm going through the settings tabs of MTGO Library Bot.

Getting started:
First of all you should register your own account on mtgolibrary.com and then log in and click "Register new bot" and register your first bot. If you're going to run more than one bot, go into "Sharing credits" with each bot and add them to the same chain. This ensures that your customers can use any leftover credits on each of your bots.

General Tab:
Now start MTGO Library Bot and insert your bot's name into "Username" and the bot account's password into "MTGO Password" and lastly the password you use on the mtgolibrary site in "Bot Password"

I would recommend setting it to restart every 2 hours or so as MTGO can get a bit sluggish.
Mtgo also has a bug where it believes you're in a trade even though you're not, which will give potential customers a message that states that you're busy even though you're not when they try to trade.
A restart fixes this.

Make sure to uncheck "Make all tradeable". It automatically makes all cards you own tradeable which means your Lite bots will be selling valuable cards at bulk prices.

"Free download mtgolibrary.com prices at update" should always be checked as even Lite bots use the pricelist for certain things, otherwise it won't be able to buy new sets that gets released.

Also make sure to set the Bot type to whatever you're planning on using it for. Some people prefer to have one bot that buys and one that sells, in that case set the selling bot to only be a "Seller" and vice versa.
A "Trader" is a bot that allows a user to both sell to your bot and purchase at the same time.

Most bots have all these checked at the same time and that's what I would recommend.

Collection Tab: 
Here you can choose which sets to buy and how many of each rarity within each set to purchase.
For a Pro bot that is just starting out without a huge collection I would recommend buying only Standard and only 4 of each Common, Uncommon, Rare and Mythic. Foil is something I would recommend buying further down the road, the same goes for other sets. I would also recommend you to not buy basic lands or boosters in the beginning.

You can select set-categories in the "Quick selection" box and then choose rarities and quantities and lastly hit "Submit to collection". This is great for changing a lot of collection settings at once.

Buyer Tab: 
I wouldn't recommend you to change anything here except for maybe "Buyer Search Order", for example if you're not buying Foil you might as well move them down to prioritizing stuff you're actually buying.


Prices Tab:  This one differs depending on which bot type you're using and I'll go through this one for each type in upcoming posts.

Administrator Tab:
Here you can set your own account as Administrator which gives you privileges to execute commands for certain bot tasks as well as setting up automatic transferring of cards between your bots.

I wouldn't really recommend you to use the auto transfer as it's not very good at the moment and I think you're better off spending maybe 5 minutes every day to transfer them by hand.

Messages Tab:
"1st welcome message": Is the message your bot will greet a new customer with.

"General welcome message": Is the message your bot will post to returning customers upon opening of a new trade.

"Additional info message 1,2 and 3": These can be used for anything you would like to tell your customers. For example an email address where they can reach you on, or which bots are part of your chain.

"End of trade message": This message will be posted when a trade is completed.

"Display WIKI price message at the beginning of trade": This one should be checked. It will advertise the wikiprice site where they can find bot prices, but it also reduces the fee you'll have to pay to MTGO Library for each transaction from 3.5% to 2.5%.

"Classified message": This is the message the bot will post in the classifieds tab in MTGO. A good idea is to write either your bulk prices here or advertise cards you have for sale.

"Buy class. message": here you can set if you want to use a different message when your bot is busy. For example you could put (Busy Trading) or something similar in front of your normal classified message.

"Trading room message": this determines what your bot will post in the trading room.

Store and Accounts Tab:
Here you can find some licensing information about your bot.

Next time I'll go through how you can set up your first Lite bot and start botting for real.
Until next time, have fun!

-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5 

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (MLBot Basics) Part 10

MTGO Library Bot:

Last week we talked about VMware and how to set it up. This week we'll start talking about some basic ML Bot information and preparations.
I'll start off with some very basics about MTGO Library Bot and then in later blogposts I'll go through more in-depth stuff.

Bot Versions: 
The MTGO Library Bot has two different versions, Pro and Lite.
The difference between these two is that the Pro bot can buy and/or sell cards with individual prices that it fetches from either a pricelist you can download for a fee, or your own home-made one.

While the Lite bot only buys and/or sells with set prices per rarity. For example 0.002 tickets per Common (1 ticket per 500 commons). These are called Bulk Bots because they buy and/or sell in bulk and don't individually price each card.

Then there's a third basic option other than Pro and Lite known as "Hybrid" which is usually a Pro bot that buys for bulk prices and sells for individual card prices. I'll go through how you can set up one of these later.

These are all completely free to use and will only charge you a 3.5%(2.5% if you accept to advertise the Wikiprice site) of each transaction's value every time someone either buys, sells or trades with you.

There are however licenses to purchase for those that would prefer to pay for a one time or subscription based license to get rid of the small fee.
This is something that might be interesting in the future when you're selling a lot and the overall fee in any not so distant future cost you more than a license would.

Which version to choose:
When starting out I would recommend starting with either one Pro and One Lite bot, or if you prefer to start with just one bot I would recommend a Hybrid(Pro) bot, as it will ensure you don't spend all your tickets on expensive cards in the beginning and still sell them for the right prices instead of bulk like a Lite bot would.

Basic Windows preparations for the bot:

Of course first you need to have the bot and MTGO installed. 
After this you should set the screen resolution to 1280x1024. 
Do this by right-clicking your desktop background and click "Screen resolution", then use the drop-down list to choose 1280x1024 and then click "Apply".

Next you need to go to the "Start Menu" of Windows, then go to the "Control Panel" and then click "Mouse".
When in Mouse Properties click the "Wheel" tab and change "The following number of lines at a time:" to 4.

Now it's time to change some settings in MTGO:
First start up Magic The Gathering Online and log on with any account then click the "Menu" tab in the bottom. Then click "Settings" and lastly "Game Play", in there click "Disable Card Tooltips".

Next click "Menu", "Settings" and "Game Play" again then click the "Speed vs. Quality" tab and choose "Prefer Speed".

Lastly go to "Menu", "Settings" then "Display and Sounds" and click "Software rendering".

Now your computer and MTGO is ready to run a bot.
Next time I'll start talking about tactics and how you can customize your bot's settings.

Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Virtual Machines) Part 9

Virtual Machines:

Last week we talked about some basic things to keep in mind when setting up your bot server and installing its operating system. This time I'll talk about setting up your virtual machines.

I assume you've already installed your host operating system on your computer.
First I would recommend you to get the very basics ready, like installing your web browser of choice and making sure you have internet connection and maybe installing an anti-virus software before we start.

Installing your virtual machine(s): 

It's time to install and set up your virtual machine(s), for this I would recommend using VMware Player which is free to use or VMware Workstation. You'll have to purchase a license to use this one though and I think it's pretty unnecessary for what we're going to do.

1. Start by installing whichever version you prefer.

2. Start VMware and press "Create a New Virtual Machine".

3. Choose either "Installer disc" if you have your OS on a DVD or "Installer disc image file (iso)" if you have a .iso file of your OS on your computer.

4. Type your Windows product key and your name and password (you need a password to be able to connect to your botting computer with Remote Desktop).

5. Choose a name of your virtual machine. I would recommend choosing the same name that you're going to use for your bot so you don't mix them up.

Also choose to install your virtual machine on your SSD if you purchased one and make a folder called something like Virtual Machines to keep things organized.

6. Choose how much disk size to allocate for your virtual machine. I would recommend something between 5 and 10 GB and choose "Store virtual disk as a single file", then click next and finish and the virtual machine will start up and start your Windows Installation.

You only need to do this once as I'll show you how to copy your virtual machine later to use for more bots. It's best to do it later when it's set up and ready so you don't have to install stuff like MTGO again.

7. After the installation is done power off your virtual machine just like you power off any Windows installation and then right click it in the list in VMware Player and click "Virtual Machine Settings".
First choose "Memory" and set it between 2-3 GB for Windows 7. This can easily be changed later so you can see what works best for you. This totally depends on how slim your Windows 7 installation is and what applications you choose to run.

8. Next select Processors and select one processor core.

9.(Optional) Then you can delete devices you know you won't use but this is not necessary. I for example disabled the CD/DVD reader as my server doesn't even have one.

Setting up your pagefiles:
 
This is instructions for those who have chosen to use more than one hard drive.

1. Start up your virtual machine.

2. Go into the Control Panel and click "System".

3. Click "Change Settings" to the right Click the "Advanced" tab and then "Settings..." under "Performance" and then the next "Advanced" tab and then "Change..."

4. Now select your C: drive (which should be your SSD if you have one) and then select "Custom Size" and  write 1024 in the initial and maximum size and click "Set". Then select your second hard drive and choose "System managed size" and click "Set".

This will give you two pagefiles, one for the OS (windows requires around 1gb) and then a larger one for the rest of your applications that lies on your second hard drive where it doesn't slow your computer down.


Final installs:

After this you should install service packs and drivers using the windows updater and then you just need to install .Net Framework 4.0 from Microsoft's site and DirectX9 (to be able to run MTGO) and of course install and update the MTGO client itself and the MTGO Library Bot.
After that you should install any other softwares you want to use, a backup software for example and then you're almost ready.

Multiple Virtual Machines:
If you're planning on running more bots you can now follow these short instructions:

1. Shut off your virtual machine and then shut off VMvare.

2. Locate your virtual machine on your C: drive and then just copy the folder and rename it to something fitting.


3. Start VMware again and choose "Open a virtual machine" and locate it on your hard drive. When you power it on click "I copied it" and that's it. Now you have an exact copy of your first virtual machine to use for your second bot, now you can do this for any number of bots you want to use.

This was all I had for today.

Next week I'll talk about setting up your bots and getting them ready for action.
As always I'll gladly answer any questions you might have in the comment section.
Cheers!
-Tom (Sitrec)
Archbot MTGO Store: ArchBot, ArchBot2, ArchBot3, ArchBot4 & ArchBot5