Cheating

Cheating is any type of action that gives a player an unfair advantage when playing the game. Cheating can be done through external programs, such as Macros and Bots, by abusing obvious game errors (bugs), for example one that allows a player to duplicate items or by other methods of unfair advantage like Account Sharing.
Cheating is explicitly against the Tibia Rules and are grounds for immediate banishment and possible account deletion. There is also a high risk of being hacked by using cheat tools or sharing your account.
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== Impact of Cheat Tools on Tibia ==
Various common cheats have caused Cipsoft to revise Tibia to eliminate some cheating. Some of the more prominent examples are listed below.
It is widely accepted that the wide spread use of 'light cheats' (brightening the entire screen so as to remove the need to use torches, candles, casting light spells or any other method of produce light) caused the introduction of the Ambient Light feature of the client. This appears to be because proving someone was using a light cheat was near impossible and CipSoft have then adopted the idea that it is better to remove the illegality of this cheat by effectively providing their own version of it (this is similar to a common argument in favor of the decriminalization of drugs).
It's also believed that the widespread use of macros lead to the introduction of 'object hotkeys' (such as the much famed UH Hotkey). Again, this appears to be an indication of CipSoft's unwillingness to police such matters and instead make their own legal version of it. This update however hasn't stopped people macro fishing or macro rune making, amongst other things.
Other anti-cheating measures introduced to Tibia have had no or negative impact from a functionality point of view. Such measures include the sounds made when consuming food or liquids, which are in place to allow Gamemasters to observe people macro eating/drinking. When initially introduced at the Christmas update 2006 this feature was not welcomed fondly, however seems to have attracted more support as more people accept that it won't be removed and learn the reasons why it was included.
Similarly the limitation of the amount of magic that can be cast in a given period of time was introduced to stop players using cheat tools that could cast spells or using runes much faster than a player not using a cheat tool could respond to them. This has occasionally been called a bad feature as it can prohibit the amount of healing that can be used in quick succession which may cause a player to die.
== Research and statistics ==
According to research by the player Hall of Shame cheating occurs in majority on US servers. The study concluded that 34.6% of cheaters play German worlds. 65.4% play American worlds. 37.6% of the Non-PvP cheaters play German worlds, thus 62.4% play an American world. 17% of the banished cheaters play on a Non-PvP world, and 83% play either PvP or PvP-Enforced. If there were as many Non-PvP servers as there would be PvP servers, 46.3% of the cheaters would play Non-PvP and 53.7% would play PvP. In proportion, the amount of cheaters on PvP and Non-PvP on german worlds is about equal. On US servers, in proportion, the amount of cheaters on Non-PvP is 45% versus 55% on PvP. On PvP Enforced worlds cheating is 15% more likely than on any other world type (37% Inferna, 63% Dolera).
Fortera and Danera were found to be the worlds with the most cheaters. Valoria the world with the least cheaters.
== Examples of Cheat Tools ==
* Auto Logger - A program used to automatically log out a character when another character approaches. Often used by players when they wish to gain the benefits of being online (mana regeneration, etc.), while afk, with less risk of falling victim to a PK.
* CaveBotting - Using a program to continuously reproduce the task of slaying monsters, for various reasons. It is often for experience, however some people do it just for the money. People often even bot chickens in Rookgaard for the feathers.
* Multiclienting - Playing more than one Tibia character at a time. This usually means they have an edited client to allow them to open it multiple times, however using more than one computer is the same concept. It is no longer against the rules to multi client, however the rules clearly dictate that it players must not modify the Tibia client. With the implementation of the flash client it is now common for people to log into a mage on the flash client, and a knight or paladin on the other, then train their skills while making runes. It is possible to multi client without modifying the client (thus without breaking the rules) through the use of a virtual machine such as VMWare or VirtualBox.
* Auto Rune-Maker - A tool that makes a character be able to make runes automatically.
* Auto-Fishing - A tool used to be able to fish automatically.
* Light Hack - A tool used to make the screen fully lighted even in the darkest of caves.
* Auto-Healing - A tool used to heal automatically. Is used often in the Annihilator Quest.
* X-Ray - A tool that allows you to see below and above the floor you are on.
== Winter update 2008 ==
In update 8.4 Cipsoft introduced the anti-botting monsters that can be randomly found at hunting places wandering around. But as a difference compared to normal monsters they cannot be killed and they often have such special abilities like turning Invisible and Self-Healing. In a later update Cipsoft realised the issues that arose from this and reduced the power of these monsters after innocent players were killed by them. They maintained the same appearance as normal monsters, and could go invisible, but they had skills, and their skills incremented the same way that a players would (except much faster), this resulted in complaints by several players and the measures were reversed. In another later update Cipsoft implemented yet another anti cheating measure which automatically detects players who are found to be using cheats, though the operation of this system is a mystery and is not understood by anyone except those at Cipsoft. It is suspected that this system works by looking for patterns, as cheaters will often use tools which do things very methodically (e.g every 100ms walk 1sqm, or every 180 seconds exactly cast a spell, and so on). Cipsoft has announced, in yet another update, that complaints about this type of banishment are in vain, and all accounts which are detected in such a way will be deleted automatically. On several occasions, however, Cipsoft banned several people who in fact had not cheated, and reversed the banishments, adding premium time to compensate for any lost days.
== BattlEye ==
On CipSoft announced it would integrate BattlEye, a client-side software which tries to detect if users are using cheating software while playing, into Tibia. This integration started on , at which point the BattlEye software started running in the background of anyone with a standalone Tibia client, but only to gather data would be necessary for the full anti-cheating software implementation.
== External links ==
*Where Will Cheaters Go From Here? - Tibia.com featured article (Jan 2009)
*Research and statistics about banished cheaters - Research by the player Hall of Shame