AltBot

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AltBot is a World of Warcraft 3.3.5a (WotLK) addon for playing with mod-playerbots bots on an AzerothCore server.

Most playerbots addons are built around running raids with wild (random) bots. AltBot is built around something else: questing and levelling with your own altbots - your own alts (twinks) on the account, played by the bot AI while you lead them. One character, the master, leads them; the addon gives you a stats board, an action bar and a set of per-bot windows (bags, armory, strategies, quests, spellbook) and takes care of forming the raid, polling the bots, unloading their bags, reviving them and so on. That focus shows: the quest log compares the quests of the whole team, the armory and bags let you look after each altbot separately, Farm mode keeps a levelling team busy on its own. Wild bots work perfectly well too - type a class word into the roster and the addon recruits and tracks them like any other bot (only their data is not kept between sessions).

Everything goes through ordinary whispers and group chat - no server changes and no extra bridge addon are needed. If a command works when you type it to a bot by hand, the addon can send it.

• Requirements · Installation · Quick start
• The action bar · Screen space · Keyboard shortcuts · Modes · The stats board
• Per-bot windows · Settings and chat control
• Vendors · Trainers · Saved data · Limitations
• Development · Credits · License

Requirements

• A WotLK 3.3.5a client and an AzerothCore server with mod-playerbots.
• The bots must be able to answer plain whispers (stats, items, who, spells, quests all, co ?, nc ? ...); this is the default behaviour of mod-playerbots.
• Optional: GearScoreLite (the armory window then shows the same GearScore as the native frame).

Installation

Copy the AltBot folder to World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns/, so that Interface/AddOns/AltBot/AltBot.toc exists, and restart the client (or choose the addon on the character screen). The spell, quest and zone tables are embedded in AltBot.lua; the addon has no dependencies.

Quick start

1. Log in with your master character. A small AltBot icon appears at the minimap; left click shows or hides the stats board together with the action bar, right click shows or hides the board only.
2. On the action bar click the Roster button (the beast-taming icon). Type the bots' names into the text box, separated by spaces, and press Save:
   • Kora Nora Xora - three named bots;
   • a class word, English or Russian (warlock, dk, воин, жрец, дк...), asks the server for one wild bot of that class (.playerbots bot addclass); two such words mean two bots;
   • your own name may be typed too, it is simply ignored;
   • a word starting with - is a comment and is skipped.
3. Pick a mode with the buttons Quest Mode, Farm Mode or Solo Mode (see Modes). The addon invites the bots, converts the party to a raid when it can and prints one line, e.g. Quest mode, 8 bot(s).
4. When the raid is formed the stats board appears: one frame per raid group, one column per member.

A raid needs the master and at least one bot of level 10 or higher (a server rule); below that you get a plain party of up to 5.

The action bar

Left to right (the first six only exist in Quest mode):

Button	What it does
Attack	the group attacks your current target
Follow / Stay	every bot follows you / stands still
Aggressive / Defensive / Passive	the bots' combat reaction
Quest Mode	summon the roster and let it follow you
Farm Mode	let the bots roam and grind on their own
Solo Mode	disband: put every bot away, you play alone
Roster	open the roster box
Gear	open the AltBot settings
empty grip icon	drag it to move the bar

Follow/Stay, the reaction and the mode are account-wide: whatever one master sets is what the next master logs in with, and the raid is put into that state once it has been formed.

Screen space

The board is meant to be easy to get out of the way (not everyone plays on a 4K monitor): right click the minimap icon to hide or show the board alone, left click it to hide or show the board with the action bar; both can also be bound to keys (see below). The Board scale slider in the settings shrinks the board down to 50 %, the hide ... checkboxes remove rows you do not need, and every frame can be dragged anywhere.

Keyboard shortcuts

Every action-bar button can be bound to a key: open the game's Key Bindings window (Esc → Key Bindings), find the AltBot section and assign keys to Attack, Follow, Stay, Aggressive, Defensive, Passive, Quest Mode, Farm Mode, Solo Mode, Roster and Settings, plus Show / hide the board and the action bar and Show / hide the board. A key does exactly what a click on the matching button does. The combat buttons (Attack, Follow, Stay, the three reactions) work in Quest mode only, as the buttons do. The bindings file is read when the client starts, so restart the game once after installing or updating.

Modes

• Solo - the roster is removed from the world and nothing is polled. The board is hidden. The mode is remembered, so the next character on the account starts in Solo too.
• Quest - the bots follow you. The addon keeps the roster grouped, resets every bot's strategy to the default and applies your saved Follow/Stay and Aggressive/Defensive/Passive.
• Farm - the bots grind on their own (nc +new rpg,-follow). Every 30 s each bot is asked for stats and rpg status; a bot that is not grinding is sent grinding again. A bot with full bags is summoned, sells (s *, or s vendor if the sell vendor setting is on) and is sent exploring again; a dead bot is revived by a summon. Clicking the top row of a bot's column (the line with the hourly XP gain, e.g. +2%) parks it next to you (summon, reset, sell) and clicking again puts it back to work.

The stats board

One independent, draggable frame per raid group (a single frame for a party). It is shown only after the raid has been formed. The master is a column too, in the place the raid roster gives him. Each column shows, top to bottom: the XP gained this hour, the class icon, the name, free/total bag slots, gold, XP % and level. A thin grey strip at the bottom lights while that bot's stats reply is awaited. Data is saved, so the board is full right after a /reload; "wild" bots are not saved and show ? until their first reply.

Click on...	Bot	Master
class icon	armory window	character window
name	strategy window	strategies of the whole group
bags row	bags window	all bags
XP %	quest log window	the native quest log
level	spellbook window	the native spellbook
top row, the hourly XP gain +N% (Farm)	park / release the bot	-

Right click anywhere on a column opens a menu under the cursor - Summon (park the bot next to you; shown in Farm mode only, and Free for a parked bot), Armory, Strategies, Inventory, Questlog, Spellbook, Cancel - with the same actions as the clicks above (for the master: the standard game windows). Dragging a column's body with the left button moves the whole frame.

Moving members between groups: drag a column by its class icon onto another group's frame. If that group has a free place the member moves there; if it is full, drop onto a member to swap places. (Needs raid leader or assistant.) While dragging, the first empty group is offered as a target.

Per-bot windows

All of them are independent, remember their position per bot and open instantly from saved data while a fresh request runs. Shift-click on an item, spell or quest puts its link into the chat.

• Armory - a native-style paper doll built from per-slot queries (who plus one query per slot, about 20 whispers), with the model, GearScore, iLevel, spec and talents. Closing it while a query is in flight is "fictive": it turns invisible and really closes when the last query is answered, so the trade window the bot opens is still suppressed. It works at any distance: the bot does not have to be near you (or even in view), because everything is read from its chat replies, not by inspecting it. Only the 3D model needs the bot in view once per session.
• Bags - the bot's inventory from its items reply. Left click does the action chosen in the footer (Sell or Trade, click the left or right half), right click opens a menu. The window supports selling (to a vendor the bot stands at), trading (item moves to you through a trade window), equipping (the bot puts the item on), depositing to the guild bank and destroying, plus a Wowhead link; items can be dragged to reorder. Free slots come from stats. These operations work in Quest mode only: in Farm mode the bags window is view-only (the exception is a bot you have parked, see Modes).
• Strategies - the combat and non-combat forms in the style of CleanBot (dropdowns, checkboxes, a delay slider); changes are sent as co ... / nc ... and the window follows commands typed by hand too. Clicking the master's name opens the same form for the whole group: every change goes to all bots (the Role dropdown is disabled there; a checkbox that is on for some bots only is shown white with a *). A Find dropdown (None / Herb / Ore) keeps the Find Herbs / Find Minerals tracking on.
• Quest log - unfinished quests grouped by zone, completed ones last. Columns: quest id, [N] (how many raid members, bots and the master, have the quest), the quest link and its Russian title. Right click drops the quest on that bot. The master's native quest log shows the same raid-wide [N] instead of the group-only number.
• Spellbook&&Spec - the bot's spells in five groups: its three talent trees (English and Russian name), Professions and Other. Left click makes the bot cast the spell, right click creates a macro /w <bot> cast <spell> and puts it on your cursor, so you can drop it on an action bar and fire it at the right moment of a fight. The first line is the bot's specialization dropdown (see Talents and specializations).

Talents and specializations

The server spends talent points on its own at a level-up for random bots only, never for your alt-bots, so AltBot does it for them, always (there is no switch).

Default specialization. There is no setting for it, it is fixed in the code: the first PvE damage-dealer specialization of the class in the order of the server's talents spec list (the first one of a paladin is holy, of a priest disc and of a death knight blood, so those are skipped): warrior arms pve, paladin ret pve, hunter bm pve, rogue combat pve, priest shadow pve, death knight frost pve, shaman ele pve, mage fire pve, warlock affli pve, druid cat pve (feral DPS). It decides only where the first talent point of a bot goes:

• it is given at the moment a bot reaches level 10 (the level-up that takes it from 9 or lower to 10 or more);
• bots that are already level 10 or more are not touched, with one exception: a bot with unspent talent points (below);
• from that moment the bot has its own choice (below) and the default no longer matters for it.

Unspent points. The server does not spend the points of an ordinary bot by itself, so a bot that has no choice of its own can run with fewer points than its level gives (a level 27 bot has 18 points, not 13). When the raid is formed such a bot is asked who; if it has spent fewer than level - 9 points, AltBot picks the PvE specialization of its class that is the nearest to what the bot already has (a bot whose points went into the second tree stays in the second tree), or - with no points spent at all - the default specialization of its class. That specialization becomes the bot's own choice, is applied with talents apply <link>, verified, and from then on applied at every level-up. A bot with all its points spent is left alone.

One bot - the first line of its Spellbook&&Spec window: a dropdown of the specializations the server itself lists for that bot (its answer to talents spec list, with the points per tree, for example bm pve (54-12-5) or surv pvp (0-16-55); PvE and PvP ones). Choosing one sends it to the bot at once and keeps it for that bot: it is applied at every level-up from level 10 and checked as described below. This is also the way to fix any border case (a bot that passed level 10 while the addon was off or the game was closed, a bot that already has other talents, ...). There is no "reset" entry: pick another specialization or clear AltBot_SavedVars.botTalentSpec[<bot>].

What is sent. talents apply <link>, where the link is the Wowhead talent-calculator string of the chosen specialization (the part after the class in https://www.wowhead.com/wotlk/talent-calc/<class>/<string>), taken from the premade specs of mod-playerbots, one string per milestone level (60 and 80, for some classes also 40, 65 or 70). The nearest milestone at or above the bot's level is used - a level 30 bot gets the "60" string, a level 62 one the "80" string. The server resets the talents for free and learns them again, the biggest tree first and from the top down, until the points run out. A specialization name the addon does not know (a server with its own premade specs) is sent as talents spec <name>. After either command the bot resets its strategies, so the addon puts back what it had set (the farming strategy, follow/stay, the combat reaction).

Verification. After a command the addon asks the bot who and compares the talents it reports (a/b/c) with the chosen specialization: the same main tree and every available point spent (level minus 9). On a mismatch the command is sent again, up to 3 times (each a few seconds after the previous one); if the bot still does not match it is named in the chat in red. The same check runs when the raid is formed, so a command that was lost or a manual respec is put right.

Settings and chat control

Click the gear on the action bar. At the top a small chart shows how much memory the addon itself uses (a measurement every 5 minutes, one bar per hour with the hourly average). Under the chart are two sliders: Poll interval (10-100 s, default 30; how often every bot is asked for stats, rpg status and items) and Board scale (50-150 %, default 100). Below are the checkboxes:

• sell vendor - sell with s vendor instead of s *.
• hide gains / icons / names / bags / gold / xp / levels - hide that row of every board column; the visible rows close up, and even with all rows hidden the column stays as a small block you can right-click.
• chat init / stats / farm / inventory / armory / strategies / questlog / spellbook - by default nothing the addon does reaches your chat. Tick an area to watch only that: its commands, the bots' replies and the addon's own messages. init also takes everything that fits no other area (loading, group forming, mode switches, failures). Only the mode line and the supply alarms (a hunter without ammo, a rogue without poison - printed red on yellow) are always shown. Your own manual whispers and chat are never hidden.
• dance - in Quest mode the group is told emote dance every 10 s; the master announces it in /s.
• emotes - in Quest mode, every 5 minutes one random bot makes a random animated emote.
• delete cache - the addon starts every time as if it were the very first run (all saved data is wiped). Meant for debugging.

Vendors

• Opening a vendor window makes every tracked bot whisper-sell its junk (s * / s vendor); the bots near that vendor sell, the others have nobody to sell to.
• In Quest mode, with a bot in your target, an item you click at the vendor is bought for that bot (b <item link> whispered to it, once per lot, with a coin sound): its gold and item count are updated at once and its real slot count follows from the next stats. Without a bot target the purchase is yours as usual.

Trainers

Open any trainer window with the master - a class trainer or a profession trainer - and every tracked bot is whispered trainer. Each bot learns what it can afford from that trainer, wherever it is, even on another continent (it does not have to be near you). It works in Quest and in Farm mode alike (the bots can keep farming meanwhile); only Solo mode has no bots to teach. The addon collects the replies and, when the chat init checkbox is on, prints one line per bot and skill - the skill, its cost and whether it was learned or is too expensive - or nothing to learn. It is triggered only by the master's own deliberate visit to a trainer, never by a bot merely standing near one, so the bots do not spend gold for no visible reason.

Saved data

AltBot_SavedVars (account-wide): the roster text, the mode, follow/stay and reaction, window and board positions, settings, the talent choices (botTalentSpec[bot] - the choice of one bot, talentsLevel[bot] - the level it was last given talents for) and caches (bags, equipment, who, quest lists, spell lists, the specializations the server lists per bot, last board numbers, hourly XP). Caches of wild-class bots are erased at logout. The memory chart is not saved.

Limitations

• It was built against one server's configuration. There the grind and aggressive strategies are disabled, so bots only fight what attacks them while roaming; targeted farming (skinning, picking a mob to kill) and walking a bot to a gathering node are not possible. Bots gather a node only when they pass right next to it.
• Some commands are spelled the way mod-playerbots 3.3.5 builds accept them (b <link> to buy, emote <name>, quests all, spells). On another build a spelling may differ - then the matching feature simply does nothing.
• The addon only checks syntax outside the game; it was tested in the client by its author.

Development

AltBot.lua is one big file; its main chunk is close to Lua 5.1's limit of 200 local variables, so new helpers hang on the NS table. Checks used: luac -p AltBot.lua and the Lua language server (.luarc.json, API stubs in wow-stubs/wow-api.lua). The embedded data tables are generated offline from the sources below (the generator scripts are not part of this repository). playerbot.txt is a Russian translation of the mod-playerbots configuration file, kept for reference.

Credits

• Spell / talent-tree tables: Wowhead (WotLK Classic).
• Quest titles and quest zones: generated from the data of the author's own QuestChromeCraft addon.
• Zone names and their Russian translations: the Questie addon's tables.
• The strategy window follows the layout of CleanBot's strategy panel.

License

MIT. The embedded data tables come from the sources above and keep their own terms.