Discussion - The earliest bug or exploit you remember (4 Viewers)

[Multichar]

What's the earliest bug or exploit you remember running into? For me it would be pathing, but those are too numerous for my mind to really focus in on just one, so instead it's the fish in Erudin. The ~lvl1 fish used to drop lvl49 words back in the day (to make spells with). Totally tripped into it, killed one of them and went 'Wait....that's an odd drop.'

 

[Tapout]

For me it was arrows. Could buy the stuff to make arrows and sell them to the merchant for more than it cost. First macro I ever put together as well to do it quick. That was during macroquest before the 2.

 

[LamahHerder]

For me it was arrows. Could buy the stuff to make arrows and sell them to the merchant for more than it cost. First macro I ever put together as well to do it quick. That was during macroquest before the 2.

Yup, and really it was bow cams! I recall mq1 and early mq2 days trying to optimize movement routes and such for making cams, was only 10s of thousands an hour if i recall but it was a big deal back in velious/luclin days

Early days of EQ and most all of the expansions all had huge bugs. Either to dupe, tradeskill for $$, wrong loot tables, low hp or dps mobs, pathing issues etc...

Earliest bug i remember was pathing bugs like the cave entrance to runnyeye you could AE mobs that would never be able to climb up to you (which is main reason we have summoning mobs!)
Similar pathing bugs as well for necros was fun times, move a few feet and the npc would run a loop or long route to get back to you, so you could med for a few seconds and dot up a mob and let it run around.

One of the dupe bugs during velious/luclin era.... while camping your toon was still in the world for <1second after logout and database save, so you would get a toon to super low HP and use druid nuke (faster the ice comet so easier to do timing) and if you time it right you get back to char select with all your gear, then log back in and loot your corpse and repeat

Various insta/fast spawn mobs or mobs with low hp for their level so you could powerlevel either solo or group content for first few weeks of expansion till they were fixed.

Various new expansions bad loot table stuff, or items that get removed from game....so the first week or two you could get gear, so it was critical to take time off work to farm the first week or two of expansions instead of rushing to max level.

My favorite long time running bug that was never fixed (maybe it is now) on red servers you could proc weapon procs (like avatar weapons!), or skillup melee/spell skills by attacking corpses

 

[Wassamassaw]

Back when I first started playing, there was an exploit where if you dropped and picked up an item fast enough it would make a duplicate of it. A guild on my server duplicated rubicite armor for all their members in one day. The entire guild was banned. Many of their members were leveling up in Unrest, and one day they all had matching red armor on. I asked where it came from, and not only did I find out about the exploit, but I also found out there were other dungeons other than Unrest!! I'm not really sure which one shocked me more.

 

[Multichar]

For me it was arrows. Could buy the stuff to make arrows and sell them to the merchant for more than it cost. First macro I ever put together as well to do it quick. That was during macroquest before the 2.

I think I remember one where you made bricks for pp. Can't remember the actual item name though.

 

[bauber]

Anyone remember the bank bug? Where you could turn copper into plat?

You could put platinum to copper and then back to platinum and the ratio of copper to plat was 1 to 1. People got banned quick on this one.

 

[da Man]

manastones on will-o-wisps instead of lightstones. I don't remember the specifics but there were 2 merchants side by side you could buy a gem and sell it for more on the other.

 

[microscope]

I never came across many, just a few pathing bugs. I remember being in Lower Guk in the room with the frog that drops the black mace, I think Cavalier or something. There was a fire pot in the corner of the room and if you stood on it the mobs would ignore you. We had been camping there in a full group for hours and I never saw anyone use the fire pot, but a GM showed up and just stood in the middle of the room. There were people coming through from other rooms and my group all stood looking at the GM half in awe, and half confused. The entire group ended up wiping because respawns were happening and nobody was fighting, they were busy looking at the GM. I was a bard so I couldn't do anything, no invis undead, no gate, no feign, etc, so I backed up and stood on the pot because I figured the GM caused this wipe, the least he can do is let me not die. But he said GET OFF THERE I WONT ASK AGAIN! So I got off and got insta ganked by 10 frogs. I never understood that.

Another one I saw was in Sol B, there was a spot where you could use levitate and float over some lava and the mobs would stop pathing to you. So Necros would use DMF, sit in that spot and stack all their dots on Lava Duct Crawlers and stuff and watch them die without needing to struggle to keep them rooted. They patched it pretty soon though.

One other thing wasn't really a bug but someone figured out how you could start a new character and then just sell their starting rusty sword and maybe the food too and get a few silvers. So someone setup a serious manufacturing process of creating, sell, creating, sell, and made a bunch of money. After that they patched in all starter gear to be non sellable. The old game was fun. I remember when duels would announce the winner to the entire server, so during buggy periods when the game was new I used to see stuff like, "COMMONSENSE HAS DEFEATED VERANTSUPPORT IN A DUEL TO THE DEATH!"

 

[da Man]

oh forgot this one, mistmoore levi all the way to the top of the castle and rangers would shoot the piled up mobs at the valley below. that led to summoning mobs and many ranger tears

 

[surfdog21]

Karnor's Castle during Kunark release, aggroing through the wall to pull the hand downstairs. I remember people getting in trouble for that. This was the first exploit I remember. I was bad. I remember shooting arrows down the "well" in Blackburrow just to aggro the mobs below, zoning out as thousands of gnolls came up. Then zoning back in lmao at the poor groups below!

...and then there were the good old days when there was no emote on who broke the chanter's mez.... /ducks

 

[microscope]

I just remembered another thing, not a bug or exploit, just an overpowered thing that the devs nerfed. Necros used to go to a big named mob like the Frenzy room in Lower Guk by themselves, when even full groups used to struggle to hold the room. You could charm the named and then feign death, and the charmed pet would slaughter the others, and if the charm broke early you were already feigned anyway. You could just stand up charm the strongest one, and let it finish off the others. They nerfed that pretty fast, made it so that charm would break if you FD'd.

 

[taz6two]

I remember early on you could put an item in a backpack, open a trade window, the receiving person would hit trade and you would both zone and you would both have the item on the other side.

There was a similar one trick with Anarchy Online, people would sell space ships in a bag, you would trade the money for the bag, by the time you realized the bag you bought was empty, the seller would run off, drop the loot on another toon and delete the seller. I got ripped off like this once.... once.

 

[Allurex]

Used to be explicit in nexus I think where u could get on top pillars and range mobs to dealth and they couldn't reach you

 

[Restina]

When they put item linking into game there was a 2" finger bone from Kurns that when linked it would crash the zone because it would be "2" finger bone" and it didn't like the triple quotes.

You could do a lot with repopping zones but they patched it fairly quick.

 

[nookiecookie]

I remember Skilling up on jumjum beer and finding out it cost 1 pp to make but you can sell it back for 10 pp. Me and buddy spent time making it at a time I did not know about mq2 so lot of clicking.

 

[tarquinn]

Drop an item on the ground, back away, then click the item to start moving back to it to pick it up and right as you pick the item up, you click an item in your inventory and drop it on the ground. If you timed it right, you duped the item.

Oh wait wrong game.

 

[Marnan]

There was a brief period you could put no-drop gear in the shared bank and switch it to another toon on same account.

 

[Saffron]

Going through locked doors with illusion. I still miss that.

 

[Zebadiah]

I remember the City of Mist and the black reavers.. you had to have a rouge or bard who could lockpick the very top door to get the key for the elevator... The trick was if you had a small toon he could put his face to the wall and see inside enough to be able to target or send in a pet .... Either cast a DD spell or send pet and then pull him back outside the door and the black reaver would follow..

 

[jande]

Brief time about a week you could put notrade items in a bag, drop it and someone else could pick it up.... May have flagged a few people like that for VT /duck

 

[Cannonballdex]

When a person would die and leave a corpse, if you pulled your plug on the internet like going link dead you could loot the persons entire corpse and then plug back in and own a copy of everything on the corpse.

 

[Multichar]

I remember the City of Mist and the black reavers.. you had to have a rouge or bard who could lockpick the very top door to get the key for the elevator... The trick was if you had a small toon he could put his face to the wall and see inside enough to be able to target or send in a pet .... Either cast a DD spell or send pet and then pull him back outside the door and the black reaver would follow..

I was a necromancer, dark elf, so I would send my pet in, let them come running out, FD, keep FDing until I had 1, then go toe to toe lifetapping one. You'd be happy to have it chain and give you a chance at another jade axe (which were quite valuable at the time), but if it chained too many times I couldn't keep the lifetaps going forever and I'd end up FD'd right next to a reaver that would never path anywhere else, knowing the moment I stand one round of autoattack could take me down. If I remember right sometimes it would chain spawn multiples - like 1 would die and 2 would pop up, that's usually what got me.

 

[LamahHerder]

manastones on will-o-wisps instead of lightstones. I don't remember the specifics but there were 2 merchants side by side you could buy a gem and sell it for more on the other.

Just reminded me of the unlimited charges on items bug!
If you had 2 of a chargeable item (like the rez stick) you could sell the one with 0 charges to vendor, then sell another one with full charges, then buy both back with full charge!

Oh and semi useless one but still active today.... hold autorun then turn left/right and hit enter to go to chat, your toon just sits running in circles and all the raid people think you are still there! but you are really afk! (atleast i think they think that i am there.... p.s. swimming skillups!)

 

[LamahHerder]

On red servers when you could loot a corpse at one point they made it so you couldnt loot weapons..... but you could disarm weapons and pick them up off the ground (like manastones!)

 

[SBS1141]

For a while you could /duck or click off illusions to get through locked doors

 

[da Man]

I think the running while entered is a "feature" instead of a bug/exploit. all those relative long straight runs like commonlands east and west. and the north to south run of the karanas it came in handy

 

[playj]

My favorite bug in the early 2000s was the unlimited pets trick with Eye of Zoom.

You could cast Eye of Zoom then use pet leave command and then keep making new pets.

You could have 50 pets on a single char. 49 of them would be like old chanter pets which you could not control, but they would protect you.

So you could go aggro stuff get hit and own zones. Of course back then pets did not zone with you...

 

[Saffron]

Not really an exploit but I remember looking for out of the way spots so I could drop money on the ground and quickly switch characters to loot it. Shared banks were a big deal when they hapoened.

 

[microscope]

My favorite bug in the early 2000s was the unlimited pets trick with Eye of Zoom.

You could cast Eye of Zoom then use pet leave command and then keep making new pets.

You could have 50 pets on a single char. 49 of them would be like old chanter pets which you could not control, but they would protect you.

So you could go aggro stuff get hit and own zones. Of course back then pets did not zone with you...

That must have been so much fun! Laying waste to a whole zone by yourself with your own army.

 

[wired420]

You could pick your platinum up on your cursor then crash your client while zoning on the boat to OOT. When you logged back in if you didn't have a druid there waiting for you, you had a LONG ass swim but your doubled your money at least lol

 

[Clevinger]

For me, it was when a low level npc in Qeynos Catacombs would drop Stanos' Head. It was sometime during late SoV/early SoL when Stanos was still formidable, and I believe the loot table bug only existed for a short period of time. I did a quick google search and couldn't find any reference, but it was a great bug that allowed easy access to a pretty exclusive piece of loot back in the day.

 

[Multichar]

For me, it was when a low level npc in Qeynos Catacombs would drop Stanos' Head. It was sometime during late SoV/early SoL when Stanos was still formidable, and I believe the loot table bug only existed for a short period of time. I did a quick google search and couldn't find any reference, but it was a great bug that allowed easy access to a pretty exclusive piece of loot back in the day.

So weird how stuff like that happened - could one of the dev's have intentionally wanted an easier way to get something? I mean, they've said that most data is in flat files I believe - which is part of what makes it hard to change things, but that also means that in order to change the loot table of some low level NPC in Qeynos somebody had to go in there, and change that specific file related to that NPC's loot, right?

 

[Clevinger]

So weird how stuff like that happened - could one of the dev's have intentionally wanted an easier way to get something? I mean, they've said that most data is in flat files I believe - which is part of what makes it hard to change things, but that also means that in order to change the loot table of some low level NPC in Qeynos somebody had to go in there, and change that specific file related to that NPC's loot, right?

Got me there - no idea how it happened or how someone originally discovered it. I am sure I read about it in either Safehouse or Realpoor/realfek on Tarew Marr - just remember it was a low level female human somewhere in the sewers and it was quickly patched (but not rolled back).

 

[talwen]

I played on zek and i remember right before you would die you would grab all of your plat and keep it on your cursor and not lose it. FTW pvp tricks

 

[ShinNoir]

A friend telling me that someone hacked their client to tint their armor unique colors before LoY. The story went the person accidentally sent the dyed color so everyone else could see it, and they got banned. I was like 17 at the time, but I just remember how cool that was, even if unplausable.

A buddy showing off his raid buffs he still had on.. noting they never faded. (I guess there was a client-side hack to make buffs never expire).

Trading a blue diamond and a stack of iron rations when luclin came out, NPC saying "I have no use of this item, you can have it back" and getting back 20 blue diamonds. Supposedly a buddy making $30k IRL selling Sceptre of Destructions that were duped via this.

First exploit I remember using (if you call it an exploit) was using the faction bug as a level 50ish bard and soloing scar dragons back when Velious was latest expansion. You could charm a mammoth while ally to CoV, aggro one dragon, kite it near another dragon, and /pet attack the aggro'd dragon. The other passerby dragon would act like a guard and start assisting you killing the dragon you kited. When the dragon started running away, you could /pet attack the guarding dragon, and it's stop pursuing the fleeing one, and you could finish it off while kiting the guard dragon. Good times. Lol.

Tons of other little gems.

 

[Mavalan]

Gold dupe bug/exploit killing sharks on Xev. Some people made 10k's plat.

 

[justAnother]

No drop trade journeyman boots back in original.

 

[ljc]

OH there is quite a few...

Biggest market crashes exploit - One of the patches i forget which, made velium bars in thurgadin sell for more than they cost...

You could claim the starting exp potions that are supposed to be once per account, but it was once per toon so you could just claim it, toss in shared bank, delete toon, and make another (probably had 800 or so exp potions at one point).

There's an NPC in omens that respawns instantly, and you can max out your draniks scar faction (still in the game today) for the BP clickies. Still takes a couple hours to max lol.

Best exploit that has been patched, but went on since Ro - EoK? not sure the exact patch that nerfed it but it wasn't that long ago. - Enchanters (maybe other classes I never really tested it out) could cast their Ward of Bewilderment that defensively procs mezz, or any Ward spell thereafter prophecy of Ro, have a mob that is immune to mezz (giants made this easy) or duel someone who is too high level to be mezzed with the ward, and start casting ANY AA with a cast time like lessons, expedient recovery, when the ward proced to mezz the target, it would fail, resetting the aa or whatever item you casted.

 

[Multichar]

No drop trade journeyman boots back in original.

Trade the actual boots or the old technique of multiquesting after it was made into a quest?

 

[luclinjunkie]

Original Crystal Caverns you could stand on some of the rocks and the orcs would kite back and forth never able to reach you.

Other one was weird and totally useless (plus inconsistent results)... but you jumped on / off the platform in the moat before Halas and unequipped / reequiped your weapon it would bug out and temporarily give you a weapon skin of an open book instead of the weapon.