Dear community,

This post seeks a clarification on the definition of HELMFing and what falls under the umbrella. In my opinion, this rule, as it is written, is vague and should be clarified.

The clarification that I am seeking is this: what activities qualify a character to be "HELMFing"?

Some specific scenarios illuminate the vagueness. In each of the scenarios below, the characters are all in the same household.

1. Character A is fishing. Character B is running around tabbing for a logging point. Character B finds a logging point. Character A stops fishing. Character B proceeds to log. When the logging point is exhausted, Character A resumes fishing. Violation?

2. Character A is fishing. Character B is standing near where a logging point will pop and is spamming tab. The rest of scenario 1 applies. Violation?

3. Character A is fishing. Character B is logged out near where a logging point will pop. Character B intuits when the logging point will pop. The rest of scenario 1 applies. Violation?

I think you get my point.

In my shell, I've received reasoned opinions of both yes and no to the violation question. Which leads to the question of what, precisely, is HELMFing. Is it only the actions between a HELMF command and the production of an item? Or does it apply to all of the activities that facilitate those operations? If there is a wait time that is required before the cessation of one HELMF command and the commencement of another HELMF command, what is that wait time? Five seconds? One minute? One hour? If a character is ready to fish at a body of water, or if a character is ready to use a mining/harvesting/logging point, are they intrinsically HELMFing? When does dualboxing go from serial HELMFing to simultaneous HELMFing?

The rules as they are written don't offer this level of precision when attempting to resolve these questions, and I obviously don't want to receive Nasomi's wrath. Does spamming tab in a logging zone while another character fishes count? Does crafting fishing bait while another character fishes count? Does buying picks and running them to a character who is mining count? Does using an alt to fight monsters fished up by someone else count? Does clearing mobs near a mining point for another character count? All of these questions boil down to the same fundamental issue of defining the meaning of HELMF.

I'm not trolling. This question can be answered with precision. And I'm deliberately not asking this question in IRC for two reasons. First, it is possible that someone has already asked this, received an official answer, and has not memorialized the answer here on the forum. Second, it is a complex question and I want to see if there is some way to simplify the question before taking it to Nasomi if he needs to respond, and if that happens, the answer can be appended here.

Best,

Kanodin

P.S. If I have failed to find a forum thread that has already answered this, please let me know so I can delete this post.

Seems like a legit question to me.

I’ve always just sided with “you’ll know cheating when you see it”, and if you’re pursuing HELMF actions on two characters then you know you’re breaking the rules. You’re probably right, a more precise rule with the server size seems appropriate.

Unless this has been asked before, and I’m not sure it has, there’s only one opinion that matters... and the closest we’ll get to hearing that opinion is Nabutso’s opinion.

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Because of how vague the rules are, a lot of the enforcement happens when you catch nasomi's attention and make him mad. No two characters, even in the same household, may HELM at the same time. So that rule didnt include fishing originally and stands on it's own.

Now when fishing first launched, Nasomi quickly realized that someone fishing on two different characters at the same time was imbalanced. He included fishing in with HELM, at least according to the player base, but never updated it specifically into the rules.

In order to not fall afoul of either of the above things, you absolutely do not want to be:

1. Waiting to engage in HELM while fishing, even if you stop. Running around looking for a helm point or waiting for a helm point, are most certainly participating in HELM.

2. Fishing at all while engaging in HELM, even if that's scouting for points and waiting on them.

I do not believe nasomi will come in here and tell you how to specifically avoid getting caught by him, because then youll have people skirting whatever edges they can and throwing his own words back in his face. If you leave your second character parked by the water, but never hit /fish, HELM away on your other char. Once you want to fish again, either leave the zone or log your other character out. Again, waiting on a point to respawn or running around looking for points is part of HELMing. Just because it's much harder for nasomi to prove youre HELMing, doesnt mean he wont decide you are and punish you.

It absolutely should. Nas has a certain 'way' with words that seems purposefully vague and often leads to misunderstandings.


Violation.


Violation.


Violation.

Sources: precedents set by people being punished in those scenarios.

I realize you are not trolling, but you must understand that you're looking for a very concrete definition when none exists. You could argue "it's been 5 minutes since I did HELMF on one character, I should be able to do it now on another, how dare you jail me!" but nas isn't going to care about your argument. He makes his own judgement. If anything seems even to be edging towards dualbox HELMF then you bet it will be counted against your favor by nas.

Always be on the cautious side with the rules. It makes sense to want to know specifics, but the truth is that there are and will never be specifics for you to follow.

edit: basically, what exe said.

edit2: if it helps, in addition to the current HELMF dualbox rules, nas explicitly stated that you shouldn't even have 2 chars in the same zone if one is doing HELM. Fishing not included (you can, for example, fish up Devil Mantas and kill them on a 2nd char). This is because you could park a 2nd char for knowing where a point is, either by seeing one or through widescan, basically. And he explicitly mentioned online OR offline.

It may all seem silly but nas really wants to make HELMF both worth it (by limiting dualboxing of it) and to limit how much one person can do. It's an economy thing.

Hopefully nas at least allows for 2 people on the same IP to HELMF at the same time. It's a bit silly that it's 1 per IP instead of 1 per person.

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I know you (and others) will read Nabutso’s response and further nitpick and come up with way more obscure and complicated situations...

Just know: those will be violations too. If you’re spending that much time (not you specifically.. you in general) trying to skirt the rules... Nas is going to spend a fraction of that time to jail you.

Source: personal experience ._.

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Good answers, thank you, and it is enough to know this stuff by precedent. That's how case law works.

Well.. this isn't quite a courthouse, but it helps to say that it's been tried and nas didn't like it.

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should we narc on people we see doing it?

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this was funnier before everyone copied me

How do you know they're dualboxing? I can't tell you how many people have been wrong about that. Even my shellholder has mistaken another pearlholder for my alt.

Nas is able to tell when someone is dualboxing better than your LS, lol.

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