Hot Muling

Hot Muling

I want to make sure I did this right (or wrong as the case may be) before I use either item again. I found my first Gheeds Charm last night, decent one with 30% MF. So it's now equipped on my magic finder however a few runs later I find another Gheeds Charm (36% MF), what odd luck :grin:

Anyway, obviously I can't hold both on the same character. While keeping the game open I used ATMA to move the 30% Gheeds to a stash and then went back to DII. Oddly enough the Gheeds I "muled" was still on my character, odd. I dropped that charm, picked up the 36% Gheeds and ended the game. I haven't played the character since and have not equipped the stashed Gheeds either.

Now my question is, was that a legitamite thing to do or does it fall in the "shady" side of things for the SPF. I wasn't sure but since I've never found the Gheeds charm before I didn't want to throw one away if I could help it (I have two magic finding characters). Could someone let me know if I can keep both or if I should be deleting the 36% one as what I did was not considred legal. :undecided:

Thanks.

 

You could have sorted it prior to opening the game by saving your character data in ATMA when taking the charm off.

But as you just dropped it on the floor and thereby deleted it, there's no problem as there arent any copies of the same item.

If in doubt please just email it to me and I will put it to a 100% secure use.... namely, on my character!!!

 

You did it right. You mule one charm of the char (without saving char in ATMA while it's in game, that could corrupt it IIRC), drop it in game, pick up the one with better stats.

SPF considers this legal, your charms are safe. I personally consider that cheesey, but lets stop at this, there was kinda heated debate when last time this came up :smiley:

 

Oops - I clearly missed that you were actually still in game while doing this.... I did kinda wonder what the "hot" part of your title was!!

 

Hot muling is equivalent to duping your gheeds when you first find in... quarentining the dupe somewhere out of use... and the getting your dupe out of quarentine once you delete the original by leaving it on the ground in a game.

Yes... it's cheezy. Since it stands up to the "I could do this on battlenet by..." arguement it's passed our "cheating" test. I hate the "I can do this on Bnet" arguement by the way.

 

Some SPF members frown upon this; to the extent they aren't too happy with trading with people who do hotmule. Just declare it in your trade profile, same as you would with HF rushing.

 

There's some odd discepancies here these days - it's ok to do things like HF rushing but saving 30 seconds on muling can stop you from trading??....... Ok, I will shut up as I am sure that it will crack open a can of very old worms!!!

As long as there's only 1 left anywhere on your HDD at any given moment in the game, I think you are probably sorted. As it's all a matter of trust and honour anyway, it is down to your honour to make sure you drop it. Personally, I would always leave the game to mule on or off anyway.... just because I wouldnt want to risk the items or character.... in fact, I hadnt even thought about it until you mentioned it!

 

Yes, it is shady, as it's arguable, but no it is not defined as cheating. The 30% Gheed's is supposed to stay on your character, by the way, there's nothing odd with that. Finally, you used the common and most trouble free method of Hot Muling.

@Spearthrower: I think the issue needs clarification, especially since you've been away from D2 for quite some time. Gheed's Fortune is a unique grand charm. A character cannot hold more than one copy of the charm, unlike other uniques. In this situation, the original poster has found a Gheed's while still carrying an older Gheed's. Normally, only one can be kept on the character. So, Mursilis opens ATMA, saves the old Gheed's by putting it on a stash, drops the already saved old Gheed's and picks up the new one, resulting in 2 (different) Gheed's Fortune unique grand charms by the time the character is saved and exited. That is the cause of debate on Hot Muling Gheed's.

 

It's not that bad. Just browse though the trader profile list over at the SPTF. You'll count only a small handful of traders that frown upon this practice.

 

I don't remember anyone refusing to trade with someone who hotmules. I don't like hotmuling but I trade with people who do it.

 

Yes, same here. I'd not trade for a hotmuled item though (either Gheeds in this case).

 

Hhhmm, I didn't even realize that hot muling could corrupt my character file. If I did I would never had attempted it :undecided:

I do understand both sides of the hot mule argument, as what I did I could easily do on Bnet, but this isn't Bnet after all. Along with that, while I haven't traded yet, I may want to do some trading in the future and if hot muling would prevent me from trading with some people then perhaps I shouldn't. I also would not want to corrupt someone else's characters by forgetting to mention this incident.

Therefore I think I will delete the 30% MF Gheeds from my stash and leave myself with only the 36% MF Gheeds to avoid any problems down the road. Also I think I'll have to agree that it is a little cheezy for SP (but not for Bnet). I just got a bit carried away with the fact I found two in one night.

Somewhat reminds me of the night I found two Andarial's Visage helms...

 

In case there's a confusion, the two examples of "character corruption" you mention in your post are totally different things. Corrupting your own character has nothing to do with the morals of the issue, it's completely technical about two sources trying to save different things on the same file at the same time. That is why, as a general of the thumb, loading an in-game character in ATMA is a no-no.

 

Thanks Llathias - that makes a lot more sense as to why people would be more... picky.... about this. And thanks for explaining so clearly to a veteran noob like myself! :thumbsup:

The powers that be never did do much with SP in mind in this game, it was an uphill struggle all the way to get things remotely possible in SP that were easily doable in MP. While I am now on a HC non-twinked drive, I can still remember the frustration I used to have before I could mule in SP so, for me, I can't really hold an action like this against anyone.

 

You can corrupt your char if you modify it with ATMA while it's open in game (adding items, saving char, etc). You cannot corrupt it if you just mule item from char.

Damn, now I feel like we scared you. You don't have to delete it, some of us dislike hotmuling but forum policy is that hotmuling is allowed. You decide. If you decide to keep it just state so in your profile in SPTF.

 

Yes sorry Llathias, guess that could be confusing.

I don't believe I corrupted my character file in a physical sense so the character is still usable :undecided: That's type one.

But I also wouldn't want to corrupt someone else's character by giving them a tainted item. Their character would be usable but have a "tainted" item on it, therefore making it corrupted. That's type two.

But no worries about the second type, as I will when I get home erase the other Gheed. I will be a bit annoyed if I corrupted my character file, but would just have to revert to a backup so not the end of the world.

 

There is really no need to delete the Gheeds if you personally find hotmuling acceptable. As long as you state in your traders profile that you have hotmuled, you can't taint anybody.

I, for example, would trade with you in general, but would not accept a deal that included any of your Gheeds. I think most of the members that are not hotmuling have a similar opinion.

Don't worry too much. :smiley:

 

Now, I'm not trading with anyone, nor am I likely to do so, but I'd be interested in the answer to this.. I always save every usable item I find with ATMA, not because I want to dupe it, or keep the item on multiple characters (neither of which I do), but because I want to have a backup of the item if anything bad happens to the character somehow ("hotmuling", therefore, isn't needed). Would this be frowned upon if I at some point did want to trade?

 

If that means that you have two copies of everything (one on a char and one in a stash) then yes, it would be frowned upon. Technically, its not all that different from just making a file backup of your chars but the oportunity for mistakes (trading an item off a char but not deleting it from a stash) is enormus. It would give most traders the willies.

 

I don't think I correctly understood what you're asking, Are. There's nothing wrong with using ATMA stashes, this Gheed's case is special because it basically tricks the game by using a 3rd party program, and creates a dupe for a short time. There is also nothing wrong with keeping backups of both your stashes and your characters. However, if you're keeping the identical copy (ie. dupe) of an item that your character is using in an ATMA stash, that might cause some discussion. I personally think it's not necessary and has a high risk of mistakenly duping items or selling dupes for extra money. Keep your save folder in a different location if all you want is backups.