Improved Oversell Protection

We have just deployed an oversell protection improvement (see here for the original article).

The Oversell Protection let you choose the names of the bots that will be affected, as well the "width" of the oversell threshold: "4x of a card among all the bots", or "just among the chain?". You can now easily destroy a rule by clicking on the "delete" link or remove a single bot by clicking the "x" close to each name.

The concept of "active/unactive" rule has also been removed and now all the listed rules are active - this should make the page easier to read, especially when multiple rules are created. Having the bot name listed makes also clear who is affected, and by which rules.

MTGO Library Bot 6.41

We are proud the announce the second release of the year, ML Bot 6.41.

We continued the work began with 6.40 and improved the speed of the bot. Again we focused in particular on the trade opening phase and cut this time down of another 2 seconds. Your bot will be able to format the trading interface and accept commands in no time even on slow a computer.

We also fixed a MTGO freezing problem. Sometime MTGO just freezes: the cpu goes to 100%, everything is stucked, the bot and all the other softwares are still alive and works but they cannot do anything because all the computational power is drained by MTGO. In fact they can do something, but everything they do is very slow.
When this happens, ML Bot 6.41 just kills mtgo and restarts it. The detection of a freeze is somehow a "delicate" thing, so the bot waits 130 minutes before a restart, in order to be totally sure it's a real freeze and not "something temporary", such as a window stucked in front of the interface, an antivir request or a windows update request.

MTGO Library Bot 6.40

We are happy to deliver the first major update of the year, ML Bot 6.40. What is new ?

•  First of all, we increased the overall speed of the bot and in particular the accepting trade phase. Now the bot will be able to setup the trading interface and be ready for accepting a trade in 5 seconds (it used to took 10-15 seconds). This results in a better customer experience (and possibly a returning customer).

• We also coded a couple of smart "withdraws" to save time when a trade cannot be performed. This happens, for example, when a buddy opens trade and has no credit and no cards available for the trade: the bot will prompt a nice message and abort the trade some seconds later: "I cannot find any card tradable. Please make more tradable and REOPEN trade". Analogously the bot withdraws when it cannot find any interesting cards for sale and it is a "solo buyer" - it won't go back to the main menu but it will directly abort the trade.

• We also reduced the number of advertisement messages. Older versions used to adv mtgowikiprice and mtgolibrary.com: we saw this was too much and now the bot will show zero or one message.

Trade Duration in Trade Log

Starting right after the downtime, all the ML Bot 6.20 and 6.21 users will be able to view trade duration in the Trade Log.
The feature has been requested for a long time and it's finally there! Now you'll be able to see who keeps your bot always buys :-)
Withdraw are timed as well.

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

MTGO Library Bot 6.02

ML Bot 6.02 has just been released, introducing the support to 20+ "special buddies".

This is done via a file named "SpecialBuddies.txt", located in the bot folder. The file has lines with the following syntax:

//buddyname;sellcorrection;buycorrection
//goofey;+10%;-20%
//george;-20%;+10%
//these are just comments

where "buddyname" is the name of your customer, "sellcorrection" is the % correction you apply (with a + or a - sign) to the selling prices and "buycorrection" is the % correction for the buying prices.

You can enable/disable the loading of the file with the checkbox.

ML Bot automatically reloads the file every 60 minutes. You can  replace the file even without stopping/pausing the bot and the changes will be taken.

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

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 

Finally! ESXi Finale

Last time we wrapped up the virtual machine requirements that are needed to optimally run Library.  What we have not discussed so far as how does it perform?  What has my experience been like?  What advice do I have for others who wish to delve into this?

What has my experience been like?  It’s been better than I had hoped for.  Not only have I been able to remove the virtual machines from my wife’s desktop and place them on their own dedicated server; something I have been meaning to do for quite awhile now; management of the bots is much easier.  With VMware, whenever I need to make a change to one of the bots, I need to physically go to the machine and peer inside each window and make the changes.  With the VSphere tool, I can remotely do those functions.  This has the benefit of being able to run my bots in a “headless” fashion.  By headless, I mean without a monitor.  I could also run it without a keyboard theoretically.

What advice would I give to others?  First off, get a license key.  There are various free and paid versions of VMware products.  For some reason the key I had would not work with this version of ESXi. 

Tip: Get a 64-bit version of ESXi.  I am running the 32 bit version and there is a maximum of 3.5 Gigabytes which can be allocated.  This is enough to run two (2) bots.  The hardware I received can not be expanded so this is not a problem for me.  But for those who have twenty bot amalgamations and can build a 24 Gigabyte machine to house their bots, 32 bit will not be sufficient.

Tip: Make certain your hardware is compatible with ESXi.  The first time we attempted this project, ESXi did not like the network card we were using and the only network card which was compatible with ESXi and the motherboard we were using cost over $150 US.  Since money was tight at the time, this was an expense I was not willing to incur, especially on donated and unknown hardware. 

Conclusion: This has been a worthwhile project for us.  We’ve learned a lot and this will help us professionally.  While ESXi is not exceedingly difficult to install or use, it can be daunting for those who are uncomfortable with installing and configuring operating systems or get squeamish whenever things do not go as planned.

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

Remote Control of the ML Bot

We host a series of articles from our friends blog http://www.mtgeconomist.com , a blog dealing with mtg and mtgo economics.

You can read the original article here: 

http://www.mtgeconomist.com/en/mtgo-library-control-remoto-del-bot-parte-6-3/


Previously we took a look at all the settings of the bot. The main problem is that you have to be in front of the computer which is running the bot in order to make any changes in their behavior. To solve it, in this article I will explain how to view the status of your robot, statistics from sales/purchases and even how to make a remote control of the bot.

Control panel on the web

MTGO Library provides an additional service to the software that controls our digital cards store. This control panel can be accessed through our session on the bot website. Upon entering, you will see a page like the capture below.

This section is the “Dashboard” or main desktop where you can access to all available information remotely. As you can see there are 3 different areas:

• Top menu: Access to all bot updates and its price list, as well as the renewal of the licenses (Lite and Pro). 
• Side menu: Mainly displays performance statistics of the bot, however you can also make some changes from here. These options will be discussed in a future chapter because it is more related to strategies when creating your own chain of bots. 
• Main section: Here it is shown the corresponding section selected from one of the previously commented menus. 

Within the left side menu options, firstly there is a series of display options with both, bot information and statistical data:

• Dashboard: Displays a screen capture with the operating system of the bot. Below it is a bar with connection status of that computer. On the right side you can see a summary of the following information from bot: bot status (online/offline and if it is with a customer); status of the Magic Online client (online/offline); 
• Transaction fee or commission due to the bot transactions; date and type of the last transaction; license type (Free/Lite/Pro) and expiration date; and the total value of the collection managed by the bot.
• Trades log: on ​​top of this page there are diagrams with the latest sales statistics representing the total value of trades, number of trades of the most frequent customers, percentage of buyings against sales… Afterwards, there is an advanced search engine transaction, and below there is a list of the transactions for the last 24 hours. In the summary of each transaction you can see its mode (buy/sell/trade), total value, customer name and its date. If you want to see the details, you just have to click on the bar of the transaction to see the following information: 
• List of cards exchanged with their individual price 
• Total value and the value without the customer accumulated credit 
• Tickets received 
• Previous and current customer credits 
• Tickets available on the store after this transaction 
• Fee generated by this transaction 
• Total fees after this transaction (debit to MTGO Library) 
• Links to screenshots generated just when the bot confirms the transaction

• Cards Log: This section is very useful when you want to track the benefits of a specific card. After searching a card, this section shows all its buys and sales with their values attached. The site also summarizes the profit or loss made by this card. Thus, by using this information you can decide, for example, to change the prices of a particular card. 
• Collection History: Summary of the total value of your collection divided by rarity. It is updated every 24/48 hours and, although it is useful to get an idea of ​the value for your stock, often these data are not very accurate. For example, there are some days that I have had almost no sales and my collection changed its value around +-200 tickets. 
• Transaction Fee: List with each renting fee generated and deducted by one of the official MTGO Library accounts. These accounts remove fees by taking tickets from your store every time its the renting fee exceeds the value of 1 ticket. 
• Multimonitor: Current screenshot from each of your bots. It also shows their online status and the commission generated by each one independently. Remember that for every bot you have to pay the fees generated by their respective transactions.

Below these statistics options there are some sections which modify the data the bot works with:

• Credits: Displays the available credits for each client who has done transactions in your store. Each customer on the list offers an option to show all his transactions, as well as the possibility to edit their credits for any reason. 
• Messages: Allows you to change the text of the advertisement shown in the “classifieds” section on Magic Online. This option is very useful if you want to remotely change your advertising. Changes are made every hour, so it may take you a bit to see the update of your advertisement. 
• Sharing Credits: If you have more than one bot, from here you can make to share the credit between themselves. This means that a customer will have available the same credits in your entire chain of bots. 
• Blacklist: Finally, your session on MTGO Library website allows you to add users to a blacklist. Thus, a client on the blacklist cannot trade cards with your bots. You must be very sure to add someone here, and you should only do this if that customer has persistently abused from your stores. This explanation covers all the options you can handle from MTGO Library site to control your stores without being in front of the computer which runs the bots.

How to make a remote access to your bot

As you can see, although the control panel of MTGO Library website has many functions, it may happen that you wish to directly manage any of your bots for pausing, restarting, changing the custom price of a card… There are many methods to solve this problem, however I will explain in detail the one I use: LogMeIn.

Why I use this service? There are many reasons, but the most important are:

• Its basic version is offered for free 
• Very fast and easy-to-use interface 
• Easily manages a lot of computers from a single place. It may be used from different platforms (PC Windows, Mac, iPhone and iPad) 

The last point is very important for me, as it allows the remote control of the bot from your phone when you are far from home (obviously you should have an internet connection).
The steps to start using LogMeIn on the computer you install your bot are the following:

1. Create an account at LogMeIn
2. Login to your account on their website and, from the “Home” section, select “add computer” 
3. Download their application (Free version) and install it on the computer which runs the bot. It will ask you the computer name and if you use a proxy for your connection. 
4. That’s it! In order to use the remote control of your bot, go again to your “Home” section and you will see your computer on the list. Click over it and type the username and password of the user of that computer. 

Conclusions

With these tools you have a complete remote control system for your bot, so you can manage its behavior at any time. This feature is very important because sometimes you have to fix prices of cards, pause the bot, perform maintenance tasks, know the sales/purchases of your store…

The next chapter of this series will show you some of the most common strategies to create your own chain of bots.

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

Finally, ESXi Part III

Last time I gave a breakdown of the server that I am using ESXi on:
1 physical CPU being split into 2 virtual CPUs
3.5 Gigs of memory
An 80 Gig hard drive. 

I put two (2) bots on this machine and some time has passed.  How does it perform and more importantly, what resources are required to run each individual virtual machine?

Fortunately for us, ESXi has a plethora of tools available which can give you more information than is required.

As you can see from the above graph, this bot is consuming about half of the CPU resources.  This is not surprising as there is one physical core being split into two (2) virtual processors.  It also indicates that we need approximately 1.6 Ghz for a virtual machine.  My best guess was that 1.5 Ghz would be sufficient to run a bot.

The above graph shows disk usage.  As you would expect, there is not a lot disk read/writes during idle time and even during a trade event, there is not a sufficient drain on resources.  I should throw in a caveat here.  The hard drive in this machine is an older 5400 RPM drive with an 80 Gig capacity.  It is enough for a two (2) bot setup.  If one is desiring to run an eight (8) bot chain, there is going to be more disk activity as you would expect.  There is going to come to a point where simultaneous trade events will start to over-lap and start to degrade the smoothness of the trade, possibly damaging potential sales.

One could mitigate this by using an SSD drive ot a Hybrid drive and putting MTGO files in a folder and then networking that folder thereby minimizing disk access drive.  This procedure has been detailed in previous entries.  Next time, we’ll continue our exploration of ESXi.

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Setup 1) Part 8

Putting together the pieces:

This article will go through some things to keep in mind and some basic instructions on setting up your botting server. I can't go too in-depth as things like installation of hardware and operative system will vary a lot depending on what you have purchased.
I'll assume you've decided what hardware to buy and now it's time to set it all up and get it ready for botting. I will also write this focused on helping you install Windows 7 as this is the operative system I would recommend for someone with basic to no experience. You can find more information on available operative systems in my previous article.

Installing your hardware: 

First of all you obviously need to put your hardware together and get the computer running. You don't need any special tools other than a normal screwdriver.
Your hardware should come with instruction manuals that I would recommend you to read.
I would also recommend searching Google and Youtube for articles and videos on how to set up each part.
When it comes to building a computer, as long as you have purchased parts that are compatible with each other it's very straight forward and you can't really do it wrong as most(if not all) cables only fit in one slot, it's almost as easy as building a jig-saw puzzle. Just make sure to read the instruction manuals before you start building.

When building a computer a good idea is to wear an antistatic wrist strap that you attach to something grounded like a sink or a radiator.
This is a safety measure that prevents you from discharging static electricity built up in your body into sensitive computer parts, which could potentially break them.

These straps can be purchased cheaply at shops that sell computer hardware.

If you're hesitant to build your computer yourself there are plenty of computer shops that offer to build it for you, but these often charge quite a lot. You could always ask a friend or acquaintance that have more experience to build it for you. I would however say that anyone that can read and follow simple instructions can build a PC.

Installing your operative system: 

Remember to install your OS on your SSD if you decided to purchase one for your bot.
There are two ways I would recommend when installing your OS.

First one is the most basic, simply install it using a DVD that will be included if you purchased a physical Windows License. If you purchased a digital version simply download the .iso file from your digital distributor and burn it onto a DVD.

If you do not have access to a DVD burner or don't have a DVD reader for your server you can use Win7 USB/DVD Download Tool and follow the simple instructions on the site to turn a USB drive into a bootable Windows installation. There are similar softwares available for other operative systems you might prefer but I won't name them all here.

To install simply insert your DVD into the DVD reader and follow the installation instructions on the screen.
When installing using an USB drive you might have to choose it as your bootable drive do this by going into the BIOS. You can see which button takes you there on the screen when starting your computer (this can vary depending on your motherboard) then choose USB as your bootable drive. You can easily find instructions for this if you search Google using the name of your motherboard and something along the lines of "change bootable drive".


This is as I said earlier, very basic. I would recommend slimming down your operative system before installation using RT Se7en Lite for Win 7 or nLite for Win XP. This could potentially save you tons of computer resources to dedicate for the bots instead of running unnecessary services and other stuff that comes with your OS that you don't need. This will however take some time and can be a bit tricky so I would recommend looking for guides online on how to do it. I will not go through how you should do it mainly because everyone use different components of their OS and also completely different operative systems so this is pretty much up to you how you want it. But there are great guides that will help you slim down your own custom Windows installation that suits your needs.

This was some very, very basic information about setting up your hardware and operative system.
If you have any questions I will gladly answer them in the comment section bellow.

Next time I'll go through setting up some softwares you need and getting your computer ready for botting.
Ta-ta!

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

A comprehensive guide for the aspiring botter (Softwares) Part 7

Softwares:

Now we've come to the time to start looking at what applications to use and which licenses to purchase.
I'll recommend what I think you should use and I'll also try to give you at least one alternative that doesn't require you to purchase a license. I will not give you definite prices or links to where to purchase required licenses as these will vary depending on your location, etc.


First of all you'll have to decide which operative system to use: 

While I think Windows XP is the best alternative at the moment I would still recommend getting Windows 7 even though it consumes more resources, simply because the v4 version of MTGO that should be released shortly will (most likely) not run properly on Windows XP. This will probably force you to upgrade to Win 7 when v4 is released which seems unnecessary.
Now this is not something we're completely sure of, it might very well work on Windows XP but from what we've heard it won't, due to some rendering issues.

Windows 7 costs quite a lot and you will need one license per virtual machine plus one for the host PC.
A virtual machine is considered by Microsoft as being a separate computer and will therefore need a separate license. There are however plenty of ways to get these licenses cheaper than normal retail price.
Consider checking if you can get a student's discount or maybe the family pack of 3 licenses, which is way cheaper than buying separate licenses. You could also try it out before you purchase by using their trial period, this gives you some time to think about which OS you want to use.
The same applies if you decide to go with Win XP, you'll still need separate licenses that you have to pay for so I would say it's better to future proof by using Windows 7.

You might want to use Windows 8 and it should work fine. There are guides elsewhere on the blog that will help you with this but it's nothing I have any experience with.

If you're on a really tight budget and can't afford paying for licenses you could always give ESXi a shot.
ESXi is developed by VMware and was made freely available a few years ago. It only requires 32 MB RAM and uses almost no resources at all. It is however not as easy to use as the Windows operative systems and will most likely require you to follow a guide to get to work. User Thrillski on this blog is writing an article series about ESXi and I would recommend checking out his articles for more information. I myself have no experience with ESXi and can't really help you with this.

Other softwares you might want to check out: 

Virtual Machine:
I would recommend using VMWare Player or Workstation to set up your virtual machines.
The reason you have to run bots on virtual machines is simply because MTGO won't run more than one copy at a time on the same computer and the bot uses the mouse to navigate.
Therefore we install separate, virtual installations of your operative system of choice on the same computer.
VMWare Player is free to use and works well for botting purposes. Workstation however requires you to purchase a license and have a lot more settings that you can use but it's not necessary.

Backup software:
I've been trying out a lot of free backup softwares and ended up using SyncBack Free by 2BrighSparks as I find it to be the most suitable and lightweight of all the backup softwares I could find.

It's always a good idea to back up your virtual machines and/or MLBot settings so SyncBack is a good sollution that won't drain your recourses too much.

I would also recommend running Dropbox if you want to keep files synchronized between your virtual machines and bots. For example you could use SyncBack Free to backup files such as CardsForAdverticement.txt and the like into your shared Dropbox folder where the other bots can use it to update their own files using SyncBack. Sure Dropbox is not the most resource friendly software but it's a breeze to use so I think it's worth it.

Other than these you'll of course need to install .net Framework 4.0 and DirectX9 to properly run Magic The Gathering Online. And then there's the bot and the game to install.

I'll be back with another article next week, and in the meantime feel free to ask any questions you might have in the comment section.

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