Rules on Mules? Does anyone know the rules on Mules? Or, more specifically, how do I lift the expiration timeout on a character? In my brief play on expansion, I've seen "Mule Parking" games with a bunch of lvl 1 guys sitting in Rogue. This makes me think that there's a certain amount of time that you need to play to get your char out of probation mode. (I don't think there's a lvl requirement though) When leveling normally, the expiry just goes away, but I've never studied it too closely. I just got back into my accounts after a trip and found that most of my mules had expired. I'd like to avoid this in the future. Can anyone chime in?
A character needs to be played for two hours in the first 10 days or so of its existence to get made permanent ("permed") meaning that it won't expire for 90 days more. So "Mule parking" games are full of characters just created, standing around in town while the player is away from the computer for a few hours. You should be able to tell on your character screen if the mule character has been permed- if it says "expires in 10 days" then it hasn't been played for a total of two hours yet.
does anyone know after how much time is an "inactive" game closed by battle.net? by inactive I mean a game where none of the players moves his character, or uses the run-block glitch
Side note: Trying to perm a mule by yourself isn't easy. Just standing there while you go eat lunch won't work. If you stand still for to long, Blizz boots your game and you go back into chat channel. I heard stories that opening your chest or inventory and leaving it open would fool Blizz into thinking you're doing something, I tried this and it didn't work. I believe, it works on movement, perhaps changing patterns in the game. I found getting "stuck" worked. What I mean is, sometimes when walking around town or in game your charectar can get stuck on stationary objects, such as a wall or rock or tree. Your charectar stands there sort of shaking or running back and forth. At this point, you can walk away from the game, eat lunch, sleep, whatever, and the game will stay up, and in two hours perm your mule. Getting stuck on purpose is tricky sometimes, but with enough effort it can be done. Some people just join games like "Act 1 NOW" or something similar, but you never know how long those games will be up. Oh, and going public so someone might join and perm together works, to a point, but in classic we have those lovely game killers with nothing better to do than come kill D for you, which of coarse ends the game for us. Classic got the crap end of the stick on that one. You could put restrictions on the game such as lvl restrictions. No ones killing D in a lvl 10 only game. That would work, IF someone was perming at the same time you were and at lvl 1~10. Kev
I made a private game, and made/permed 3 mules over the weekend, and never got booted. (this from my laptop) funny, cause I will from time to time get booted during active game play, and the dreaded FTJ (fail to join) when actively playing, MFing, raiding and/or rapid fire CS running. Saturday night, I created a fresh mule account/char made the game around 11:00 pm EST. when I got up to play/xfer some items in the morning before breakfast, the game was still up/running. *shrug* I'm not so sure it's a "timer" issue, but perhaps various people's server connection/latency issue coupled with server load/demand? (after midnight on east, even on a weekend, there's not a ton of games running)
Yeah, it's hit and miss with me. One time I joined an "Act2 Cube GoGo" or something game and had to run off for a while. I came back and my char was still standing there gently rocking back and forth in the wind. Other times I've come back to the default game select screen.
I've found that staying outside of town prevents the game from getting closed. For example, just find a nice corner in act1 Blood Moor and make sure no monsters follow you. I'm not 100% sure this works but the 6 or 7 times i've permed that way, the game has stayed up for at least 8 hours (overnight). However, as Goomba said, it could have also worked because of low server load/demand that late into the night...
I just permed 3 Mules overnight using the open-the-stash method. The game was open for a good 12 hours before my Internet, not D2, decided to boot me. - Akukami
I haven't found any hard and fast rules for perming mules either, but I've tried things that mostly have worked: 1. having two characters in a private game with an open trade window (works pretty well) (requires two computers but lets you perm two mules) 2. having a character in an empty part of the Blood Moor casting some skill (book on mouse button) (works pretty well) (requires a book) 3. standing around in town in a "mule parking game" while other people joined and left (works ok, not always) 4. clearing the Den of Evil then standing there (works ok, not always)
