Good evening everyone!

Today we are releasing version 5.5 of the bot, which has long been waited for by some users.
The main point of this version are the changes made by Playa to core functionalities since October 2022.

Dungeons

In particular, to keep the bot future-proof for the dungeons, we had to make some changes to the way the bot gains information about dungeon progress and attacks dungeon enemies.
In the course of this, we have also changed the settings so that you now have to ignore dungeons instead of explicitly enabling them in order to keep up with the inexorably growing number of dungeons in the future.

One of the advantages for us is that the dungeons automatically appear in the settings as soon as they are recognised in the bot and we have to do less graphic work.
For you, this has the advantage that you don’t have to hope for our kindness for new settings – even though the design can certainly be improved (we are happy to accept suggestions on this!).

Game features

Dungeons were a one of the bigger core points of SF’s latest changes on the new backend, others are listed in a thread on the SF Forum.
What looks like minimal small adjustments there, already shows in the game client itself with behavioural changes.
In the bot, we also had to go deeper, as (for us a bit unexpected) game mechanics were significantly changed in quite a few places – actually even simplifying for the future, but still an effort for the present :-D.

For those who don’t want to look at the thread above: The list includes collecting and unlocking/redeeming mirror and mirror pieces, the wheel of fortune, the underworld, the toilet, the scrapbook, the holy grail, the Alter Ego, pet items of any kind, dungeon keys and others.
So if there are any problems here, please report.

Miscellaneous

With this version we have again made a lot of corrections, including some that we had on the list for quite some time. For example, some of you will recognize crashes due to a corrupted bot.dat or the SMART quest settings in the changelog, as well as opening players/guild via the Hall of Fame window.

Pre-Announcement: Migration from .NET Framework 4 to .NET 6

At this point we would like to give advance warning that version 5.5 will be the last version series based on the .NET Framework.
The fact that the first version of the .NET Framework 4, on which the Bot has been based since its migration to .NET in 2013, is now 13 years old and that the .NET Framework version 4.6 has already reached EOL status in April 2022, does have importance for us, too.

Many things that make development easier for us and give the bot more options for maintainability and performance (e.g. a console without dependence on Mono and all the problems behind it that our console users are so familiar with) work better with the newer .NET versions based on .NET Core.
We would therefore like to switch to .NET 6 with the next major version, more details will follow in due course.

Have fun and a nice rest of the week!
Robin

You can find the download links and language packs on the downloads page!
You can find the changelog on the changelog page!

Hello everyone!

With today’s update we want to adjust the bot to some of SF’s recent additions to the game.
The beta version has already included some changes that users could test and for which they could give us feedback.
Many thanks to the testing users at this point!

Most of the changes have also made it into the release version unchanged, including the following that you should read before updating:

• The event system (Attention, changes to the beta)
• Skipping quests
• Hellevator

Event system

We’ve added the new events (the ones you see as little badges in the tavern) as best we can without changing too much of the underlying infrastructure.
So far, we have tried as a transitional solution to match the new events with the old ones and thus keep the former event functionality as equal as possible.
However, this idea turned out to be too unstable/unpredictable for certain functions, so we have now removed this mapping behavior.
With this, we also removed the settings with which you could choose on which events beer should be bought in another amount compared to “normal” days.
We would like to read your feedback on this, especially on how future settings here could/should look. Feel free to discuss this in the forum!

Skipping quests (equal to the beta version)

In preparation for the new feature to skip quests for free during “Piecework Party”, we wanted to give you a useful way to configure how quests are skipped.
Old way: You could only choose to skip quests with mushrooms and/or quick sand glasses
New way: Now you can choose to generally skip quests if it’s free, with the addition of using mushrooms or quick sand glasses if needed.
Note that generally skipping quests for free is automatically enabled if you previously had one of the two skipping options enabled!

Hellevator

The Hellevator has been implemented for beta testing and has not shown any major problems. Nevertheless, we recommend for future Hellevator events to activate the setting for multiple accounts first, if one account had no problems with it.
This is especially useful because SF doesn’t seem to have fully developed the Hellevator yet and therefore may still have problems that the bot can’t compensate for.

Miscellaneous

• Under the category “Miscellaneous” fall some changes with which we continue to adjust the bot to the new backend. We can still only compensate for buggy answers to a limited extent, but please continue to report errors that you notice that might be connected with the new backend.
• We would like to point out at this point that we read all posts and reports in the forum, even if we don’t answer them directly (some would say “or never”). We have extremely limited time (I know, as usual), so we add some things to our internal list that we don’t immediately respond to in the forum as long as there is nothing to report.
  At the same time, it helps us and other users enormously if, before opening a thread, you take a quick look to see if the topic already exists.

Anyhow: Have a nice weekend!
Robin

You can find the download links and language packs on the downloads page!
You can find the changelog on the changelog page!

Quick update: If you still see something like “The given key was not present in the dictionary”, please try to restart the bot.
At the time of publishing (~12:30 UTC), the bot got the wrong dungeon opponent file from the server, which shouldn’t happen now.

Hi there!
Just a quick heads-up: We just published a beta version with upcoming changes in the bot that we want to let you test first before making them available as release version.
Please read the notes below for using this version (at least the bold parts)!

Going back to the roots, this beta version is currently only available as Windows GUI version since that one is the most important from a testing point of view. (= features + user interface to configure them + a good log window)
Also, keep in mind that we try to minimize the work we have to do for beta versions so we can react to problems and changes a lot quicker than in the standard release cycle.

The most important changes are:

• Support of hellevator fights (Account Settings->City)
• Support for the new event system including some adjusted bot-behavior
• Settings for skipping quests were overhauled and unified

You can find the full changelog in the bots’ internal changelog window.
The version can be downloaded on https://download.mfbot.de/beta/MFBot.exe or via the bots’ update channel Beta.

Notes to consider before using this beta version

Hellevator

First of all: On the new backend, we strongly recommend to first join the hellevator via browser client!
Furthermore, the hellevator is a feature that seems to be a subject to permanent change on the side of SF.
Therefore, we only included basic support, meaning that only joining (at the start), fighting and claiming the final reward when it is available.
We’ve seen, even on the browser client, that joining the hellevator “confuses” the game server sometimes and can lead to buggy responses. In case you’re wondering: We have left this part of the feature in, because we’re confident that the game developers will handle the hellevator bugs as soon as they can.
Furthermore, we still are fishing in the dark with some elements of the hellevator, fighting seems to work fine, however, we can’t guarantee claiming the final rewards will work. If it doesn’t, we try to release an update in time.
Please report any bug you encounter so that we can look at any problems before releasing the release version.

Event system

We have included the new events (the one you see as little badges in the tavern) as good as we can at this time without changing to much of the underlying infrastructure.
Like it already has been done in the release version, the “old” events might additionally be recognized/converted from the new ones so that existing functionality based on events doesn’t break.
Please report anything you think is a mistake regarding that!

Skipping quests

In preparation for the new feature to skip quests for free during “Piecework Party”, we wanted to give you a useful way to configure how quests are skipped.
Old way: You could only choose to skip quests with mushrooms and/or quick sand glasses
New way: Now you can choose to generally skip quests if it’s free, with the addition of using mushrooms or quick sand glasses if needed.
Note that generally skipping quests for free is automatically enabled if you previously had one of the two skipping options enabled!

Thanks for testing!

PS: Oh, and there are a lot of translations out of date now. So if you want to translate the bot into a language you know well, don’t hesitate to write us!