Some bots are farming mobs from underground

[Ranaku]

Welcome to XIV, get used to it. They are basically a common thing by now and existed since i started to play which was HW so...no worries. They just teleport through the world and get banned at some point, best to just ignore them.

[Moonlite]

I've seen Bots do that for years, they move underground and then farm on the mobs throughout a lot of ARR areas.

Strangely I never seen them beyond ARR areas for whatever reason.

You can catch them in the act most of the time at Quarrymill too as they're the most commonly seen over there.

The zones are way bigger. But I have seen them underground in HW's zones. But not passed HW's. But think of it this way. Someone was buying treasure maps less 1 min apart non stop. They had to be teleporting, or had armies of map parties. I stopped counting at roughly a 100 maps bought.

[RitsukoSonoda]

The other problem is, they get banned, so another account is made (free trial) and that bot is replaced.

Which is why I mentioned they may just flag the free version bots to mark them then take action when they push it out of free version and start trying to move the stuff it collected in order to try getting to the actual RMT accounts holding or distributing things. Deleting free version bots is like trying to kill an unwanted weed by plucking it's leaves off 1 at a time.

[KageTokage]

The teleporting bots are not on the free trial as they routinely form parties to speed through the MSQ dungeons using non-standard party comps (Usually pure DPS with no healers) plus they need to be able to transfer the gil off their accounts before they get banned.

Perhaps the weirdest thing I've noticed regarding them is the sudden emergence of pure DRG parties when they traditionally have only ever used ranged jobs.

[Voidedge_Ragna]

The teleporting bots are not on the free trial as they routinely form parties to speed through the MSQ dungeons using non-standard party comps (Usually pure DPS with no healers) plus they need to be able to transfer the gil off their accounts before they get banned.

There is 2 categories of bots, the obvious ones that have names that happen when you headbutt your keyboard or play Roegardyn and jump and glitch all over the place, which i believe to be free trial ones.

Also theres the bots which have normal names, likely look like an afk player just vibing in town, those are paid accounts, these are the banks which have the cash.

From just this idea you will have an idea on how futile it is to ban the jumpy broken name bots. To address the Party system, you only need 1 of the 4 to have a paid account, 3 can be free trials as they just need to join.

Here it derails theres 2 imo viable outcomes.

1. SE really only cares about the obvious bots and does not track the money or who they play with, in which case you could make the banks directly play with the free trial bots.
2. SE bans the bots that have direct contact to the free trials bots, in which case you need 3 step process. Free trial > Normal game > Bank.

Regardless of that the 2 weeks cycle is ...

Day#1 Bot is created
Day#2 Bot is reported
Day#14 Bot is banned
Repeat from 1

As to what you could farm with a dungeon party for money ... im not entirely sure even but it would likely be a direct money drop or npcable.

In 2.1 i somehow stumbled into a run when i did my first Wanderes Palace. I loaded in and was alone, so i figured ... okay they prolly need a bit more loading time. Instantly the msg "x will close in 15 sec pops up" ... it did and they killed it fast, same with the 2nd and final boss. At which point all the normal chests seemed to open. Everything was instantly rolled and instantly left before i rolled so i got everything.

A Bizzare adventure to say the least.

[KageTokage]

If the bosses are dying that quickly it suggests they're not just using teleport hacks, which might explain the sudden appearance of the DRG bots.

Assuming they're able to modify their GCD speed and other nonsense DRG would probably be busted given it hits harder to compensate for its lack of a haste buff.

[ICountFrom0]

1. SE really only cares about the obvious bots and does not track the money or who they play with, in which case you could make the banks directly play with the free trial bots.
2. SE bans the bots that have direct contact to the free trials bots, in which case you need 3 step process. Free trial > Normal game > Bank.

The step you are missing is stolen credit cards, or otherwise false money.

A stolen credit card is acquired, thousands of dollars of subscription cards are bought, the cards get shuffled around a few times, so it looks like they are sold to some innocent. Months of subscriptions for all the trial bots are charged to the card, they become "real" for about 72 hours before the card holder can chargeback and those subscriptions get canceled. This lets all the trials unload. The subscription cards are used to keep the normals alive. The gold is sold off at pure profit with no real money ever being spent.

[wereotter]

Underground I've never seen.... but I have seen it start raining fire as I've been out mining and bot thaumaturges were farming open world mobs.

[Mitsuka_Souji]

They went underground because it was too easy to spot and report them when they just floated up out of reach in the air on their cookie cutter template THMs.

They've been doing this since before there was a free trial of the game. Adding the free trial just means they can mitigate some of their risk by not paying for a full version until it's accumulated things to sell. Though apparently free players cannot hold more than 300K gil and have no retainer or marketboard access and I think no ability to trade either.

Its possible they're aware of the bots and just flagging them for action to be taken when they transition out of free version to paid version so they can see who it interacts with at that point in an attempt to trace and remove more of the actual RMT accounts conducting the actual business.

Didn't see them year ago on my world, though.

[Mitsuka_Souji]

Innocent until proven guilty.
And the fourm moderators will remove innocent names from your shaming topic, you'll be held accountable.

Just play it safe, talk about the situation without actually posting pictures of the bots.

The picture below named "Pugilist Guild" and there are no statements or assessments to it.

And you are completely wrong about calling this topic "shaming". It's the topic aimed to resolve in-game issue.