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[WoW] Dual-Boxing for Fun, Triple XP, and Profit: A How-To Guide
meatflower
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
In case you didn't know, Blizzard has created this dastardly brilliant friend referral program as of late. This is how it works:
1. You invite a friend to try World of Warcraft, they receive a free 10 day trial that is linked to your account for 90 days.
2. During that 90 days (or 10 if you don't upgrade the trial account) you and your friend will receive triple XP while grouped for both kills and quests. In addition, friends can summon eachother every hour through the friends list. The triple xp stops at 60, as does the summoning. Also, for every two levels your friend gains, they are able to gift one level to a lower leveled character on your account.
3. If your friend upgrades to a full copy after the 10 day trial, you receive a 30 day credit on your account. If your friend pays for three months of gameplay, you receive an exclusive zhevra mount.
Now you might be saying, "I have no friends crazy enough to do something like this!" or just "I have no friends." Either way, you're in luck! Through a technique called multiboxing, you can play multiple (or in this case two) characters from the same machine.
The first question on your mind might be "Isn't this against the TOS"? or "Will I get banned/banished to another dimension for doing this"?. The answer is no, no, and thankfully no. This blue post on the official forums should qualm any fears about whether or not this is allowed or against the spirit of the game. Yes you can multi-box on the same computer using third party programs to control all of them simultaneously. As long as every action is initiated by a keypress, *not* automation, then it's kosher as far as Blizz is concerned.
Handy How-To Guide:
This following should help you get a two character setup running on the same machine with an investment of ZERO DOLLARS for the first ten days. This way you can try it out and see if it's your thing without losing any money.
Prerequisites: A beefy computer. Dual-core is good, >2 year old graphics card, at least 1GB of RAM and 2 if you're on Vista. You will be able to find out if your computer can indeed do this in a few steps.
Some of this information has been taken from Dual-Boxing.com's excellent wiki and it will be indicated when it has.
Step 1:
Send a friend referral email to an alternate email account you have created via the account page at the official site. You will see a link on the account management page for the deal they're running now, click that and sign up your "friend". Go to that email account you've set up and create a new account with it's trial key.
Step 2:
Make a copy of your World of Warcraft directory and a new shortcut to the second WoW.exe. I called mine "WoW2".
Alternatively:
Step 3: Start up each copy and log in to your main account and new trial account. Get both into windowed mode at something like 800x600 or whatever you need to get both on your screen simultaneously at your desktops resolution. If you need to, lower the settings so it runs better. If it's a shitfest at minimum on both you'll need to get a second computer to run the trial account or something. I'm not going to be covering that in this guide until another revision as I haven't done it myself. Close out both WoW's.
Step 4:
Download Octopus. Install and launch it.
If it won't run you need to install .NET 3.5 and VCR 2008.
VISTA USERS: Octopus cannot save its settings unless you are on an admin account or UAC is disabled.
Now to setup Octopus. This is going to look long and scary but I promise it doesn't take more than 10 minutes.
Step 5:
Start up your WoW's as before and open up Octopus. It should be down in the system tray. Under the client list you should see two World of Warcraft's listed, this means it's working.
Step 6:
Make characters of the same class, race, and server on each account to do a trial run. Try jumping on one of them, if the other characters jumps then you have succeeded. If not, go back through steps above and make sure everything is as it should be. Also, make sure key broadcasting is toggled on by hitting Pause. I have found that it is a little laggy, and if you hit pause break just lightly or right after some other keypresses it will have no effect so wait a second and then give it a good press. Also, you could assign a wav file to that toggle as described in the steps above.
Step 7:
Now it's macro time. Your first goal is movement, if your team can't move together than you're not going to get much accomplished. This is done through the follow mechanic so you should decide now which character is going to be the leader. A lot of the tutorials you'll read for macro setups are assuming you're running a 3-5 box setup, which makes this a lot more complicated as you'll need to set focuses in your macros. Since this guide is intended for a two-box triple xp set up, I'm going to give you simplified macros that will work for just a two character system.
On the alt:
Follow macro:
Basic spell macro:
Step 8:
Congratulations! You are now in command of a basic, yet functional, dual-boxing setup. Your toons can move together and kill mans. As you play you will inevitably find the need for more complex and class specific macros. A great wealth of information is located here. Remember, if you hold down TAB (or whatever you used for Click Broadcasting) you can mirror your mouse input to the other window. Use this for accepting and turning in quests, trainers, looting, or whatever both characters need to click.
If you find that you can do this and think it would be fun than give it a try, it's free! If you take into account the free 30 days credited to your main account when the other account upgrades to the full version, it's actually only $5 for the first month.
30 day credit = -$14.95
WoW = $19.99
Total = $5.04 for the first month (new account comes with a free month)
I will attempt to answer any questions to the best of my ability. However, I'm still a multiboxing noob myself, so you might get better results reading the Dual-Boxing.com wiki or forums.
Consolidated thread knowledge:
Macros:
Class tips:
General:
1. You invite a friend to try World of Warcraft, they receive a free 10 day trial that is linked to your account for 90 days.
2. During that 90 days (or 10 if you don't upgrade the trial account) you and your friend will receive triple XP while grouped for both kills and quests. In addition, friends can summon eachother every hour through the friends list. The triple xp stops at 60, as does the summoning. Also, for every two levels your friend gains, they are able to gift one level to a lower leveled character on your account.
3. If your friend upgrades to a full copy after the 10 day trial, you receive a 30 day credit on your account. If your friend pays for three months of gameplay, you receive an exclusive zhevra mount.
Now you might be saying, "I have no friends crazy enough to do something like this!" or just "I have no friends." Either way, you're in luck! Through a technique called multiboxing, you can play multiple (or in this case two) characters from the same machine.
The first question on your mind might be "Isn't this against the TOS"? or "Will I get banned/banished to another dimension for doing this"?. The answer is no, no, and thankfully no. This blue post on the official forums should qualm any fears about whether or not this is allowed or against the spirit of the game. Yes you can multi-box on the same computer using third party programs to control all of them simultaneously. As long as every action is initiated by a keypress, *not* automation, then it's kosher as far as Blizz is concerned.
Handy How-To Guide:
This following should help you get a two character setup running on the same machine with an investment of ZERO DOLLARS for the first ten days. This way you can try it out and see if it's your thing without losing any money.
Prerequisites: A beefy computer. Dual-core is good, >2 year old graphics card, at least 1GB of RAM and 2 if you're on Vista. You will be able to find out if your computer can indeed do this in a few steps.
Some of this information has been taken from Dual-Boxing.com's excellent wiki and it will be indicated when it has.
Step 1:
Send a friend referral email to an alternate email account you have created via the account page at the official site. You will see a link on the account management page for the deal they're running now, click that and sign up your "friend". Go to that email account you've set up and create a new account with it's trial key.
Step 2:
Make a copy of your World of Warcraft directory and a new shortcut to the second WoW.exe. I called mine "WoW2".
Alternatively:
You do not want to do a complete copy of your wow folder to another one. You want to copy part of it, and then symbolic link a few of the folders.
Check out this post for more info http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=6750
Step 3: Start up each copy and log in to your main account and new trial account. Get both into windowed mode at something like 800x600 or whatever you need to get both on your screen simultaneously at your desktops resolution. If you need to, lower the settings so it runs better. If it's a shitfest at minimum on both you'll need to get a second computer to run the trial account or something. I'm not going to be covering that in this guide until another revision as I haven't done it myself. Close out both WoW's.
Step 4:
Download Octopus. Install and launch it.
If it won't run you need to install .NET 3.5 and VCR 2008.
VISTA USERS: Octopus cannot save its settings unless you are on an admin account or UAC is disabled.
Now to setup Octopus. This is going to look long and scary but I promise it doesn't take more than 10 minutes.
Dual-boxing.com Wiki wrote:1. Go to the server tab
2. Click the Keys sub-tab
3. Click the “New” button ADDING KEYS TO THIS LIST WILL BLOCK THEM UNLESS YOU CHECK "Whitelist" THEN ONLY THOSE KEYS WILL BE PASSED
4. Click the Clicks sub-tab
5. Click the “New” button
6. In the box just under the New/Remove buttons, type in a name for this click configuration
7. Click the text that says “enter click combo”
8. Then click all the buttons that you want to be able to send to your alts
General Broadcast Configuration
1. Go back to the "Server" tab.
2. Recommended but not required: Click the “Sounds” sub-tab and configure the sounds for “Broadcast Pause,” “Broadcast Resume,” “Broadcast Keys On” and “Broadcast Keys Off” so you can easily note when Octopus thinks it should be sending keys and when it thinks you have paused it. (Makes debug MUCH easier.) Don't forget to click the “Enabled” checkbox to get them to actually work.
3. Click the “Options” sub-tab.
4. Make sure the boxes for “Hook mouse” “Hook keyboard” “Keyclone anti double-key” “Broadcast pausing whilst alt tabbed” and “Share clipboard” are all checked. This is the default, so we're just making sure, here.
5. Click the “Toggles” sub-tab.
6. Click the “Key broadcast” button (says “None”), then press your “Pause” key on your keyboard and click “OK”. The button should now show “Pause” on it. NOTE: Make sure you clear the “Pause” binding from the “Bypass” key before setting this, or set another key, whichever you like.
7. Click the “Click broadcast” button, then press they key you want to use for it (I chose TAB) and then click OK. The button should now show the key you chose on it. Check the box for “State” (may be named “Hold” in later versions) next to it. This means it will only broadcast your keyclicks while you hold down the key (much better, IMO, than having click broadcasting on 24/7 due to targeting/deselecting issues in-game).
8. Click the “Client” tab.
9. Click the “Windows” sub-tab.
10. Check the box for “Auto add windows.”
11. In the “Window title” box, type “World of Warcraft” -- alternatively, you can put the process name in the next box if you'd like (example: the process name for DaoC is “Game.dll” and not “Camelot.exe” as you might think, so it's easier to just add the window title here. If it does not seem to work, check the box for “Substring match.”
12. Click the “Options” tab.
13. Check the box for “Start minimized” if you want Octopus to show up as a tray icon when you run it. You'll have to click the icon in the tray to show the UI if you do this. (recommended)
14. Check the box for “Auto start server” if you want Octopus to automatically set itself up as your “server” and start connecting clients as soon as you run it. (recommended)
15. Check the box to “Close to systray” if you want the program to minimize to a system tray icon instead of exiting completely when you click the “X” button on the main window. (recommended)
16. Click the “X” button to close the Octopus window. If it minimized to a tray icon, right-click the icon and select “Exit” to close Octopus.
17. Launch Octopus again.
18. If you run a software firewall, you may get a popup here asking you to allow Octopus to act as a server or connect to the LAN/Internet. Allow it.
19. Click the “Status” tab.
20. If you have the Options-->Auto start server selected, it should be looking for clients.
Step 5:
Start up your WoW's as before and open up Octopus. It should be down in the system tray. Under the client list you should see two World of Warcraft's listed, this means it's working.
Step 6:
Make characters of the same class, race, and server on each account to do a trial run. Try jumping on one of them, if the other characters jumps then you have succeeded. If not, go back through steps above and make sure everything is as it should be. Also, make sure key broadcasting is toggled on by hitting Pause. I have found that it is a little laggy, and if you hit pause break just lightly or right after some other keypresses it will have no effect so wait a second and then give it a good press. Also, you could assign a wav file to that toggle as described in the steps above.
Step 7:
Now it's macro time. Your first goal is movement, if your team can't move together than you're not going to get much accomplished. This is done through the follow mechanic so you should decide now which character is going to be the leader. A lot of the tutorials you'll read for macro setups are assuming you're running a 3-5 box setup, which makes this a lot more complicated as you'll need to set focuses in your macros. Since this guide is intended for a two-box triple xp set up, I'm going to give you simplified macros that will work for just a two character system.
On the alt:
Follow macro:
Put that on one of their bars and bind it to whatever key you use to run forward on your leader. Also, unbind all of the alts movement keys and switch them to the arrow buttons. You'll want to put forward and back on the Up and Down arrows, and I'd suggest turning as opposed to strafing for the left and right arrows (you'll see why in a moment). Now every time you start walking forward on your leader, the alt will follow, as following will get broken often if you need to move the other character independently or something else occurs./follow [leader's name]
Basic spell macro:
Now bind this macro to the same key that is used for that spell on your leader. Now when you cast Fireball or whatever on a mob, the alt will target that same mob and cast the specified spell. Remember, if the alt is turned around it won't be able to cast the spell. In this case you can try repositioning yourself and hope Follow takes care of it or you can hit the arrow keys to turn the alt in place (see above)./assist [leader's name]
/cast [spell name]
Step 8:
Congratulations! You are now in command of a basic, yet functional, dual-boxing setup. Your toons can move together and kill mans. As you play you will inevitably find the need for more complex and class specific macros. A great wealth of information is located here. Remember, if you hold down TAB (or whatever you used for Click Broadcasting) you can mirror your mouse input to the other window. Use this for accepting and turning in quests, trainers, looting, or whatever both characters need to click.
If you find that you can do this and think it would be fun than give it a try, it's free! If you take into account the free 30 days credited to your main account when the other account upgrades to the full version, it's actually only $5 for the first month.
30 day credit = -$14.95
WoW = $19.99
Total = $5.04 for the first month (new account comes with a free month)
I will attempt to answer any questions to the best of my ability. However, I'm still a multiboxing noob myself, so you might get better results reading the Dual-Boxing.com wiki or forums.
Consolidated thread knowledge:
Macros:
Fun With Metrics wrote: »a good priest specific one (shamelessly stolen from wowwiki's articl about dualboxing macros with some minor changes) :
Shadow Word : Pain then Wand
/assist [leader's name]
/cast Shadow Word: Pain
/stopcasting
/Use Shoot
it does pretty decent damage and what not, while conserving my priest's mana for heals.
I prefer a melee class as the "Leader" as you don't need to rely on abilities or mana to get stuff done. White damage goes a long to compensate.
Also, a "/cast [target=leadername] Heal Spell" macro is incredibly useful if your puppet has healing spells.
And let's maximize our time by using a puppet with passive buffs. Totems don't count for obvious reasons:
Paladin: Blessings aren't passive, but last long enough and are great way to make up for your gear. Auras are mildly useful, but Imp. Sanc Aura is a nice boost.
Druid: Leader of the Pack is nice and comes with a heal. Mark is another stat-upper. Balance offers Moonkin Aura for casters. While not passive, get Imp. FF and hotkey that for bonus hit.
Hunter: Oh lord. Hotkey pet auto-attack along with Hunter's mark and soak in the free damage. Imp. hunter's mark may be a way off, as BM is the better spec. Still, Ferocious Inspiration is awesome.
Warrior: Lackluster, but the shout is nice.
Mage: AI and Magic Damp are nice. Not much here besides the free food and ports (which are not as needed since you have double hearths).
Warlock: Hotkey curses for armor and spell debuffs. Blood Pact is another stat boost, and pets are more free damage.
Rogue:/
Shaman: Totems are a bit of a pain to use, but hotkey the damage buffers that your leader can use. Unleashed Rage is nice if you want to deal with getting your puppet to melee.
Priest: Fort and Spirit for stats. Hotkey SW: P for Misery and/or Shadow Weaving.
I did this for a while, so let me up this excellent OP with some pointers:
-If you are going to have two different classes, it's easier to have the puppet be a caster. Melee will force you to have the puppet re-follow every fight, whereas casting will not break the follow command.
-Download a good quest mod. There are mods now that track your party's quest progress as well, which means you don't have to check on your puppet all the time. QuestFu is an Ace mod that works great for this.
-Party frames are also important. I suggest frames that include a combat indicator, changing color when taking damage, target frame and casting bar. This allows you to keep tabs on your puppet a lot better. Pitbull has these features, but takes time to set up right.
-If you normally turn off or alter your minimap, keep that shit on. Following actually has decent pathing, but shit happens and you need to know when your puppet has stopped.
-You are not going to be using all your skills with two people. It's a shitton of hotkeys. Spec your puppet to be as good as possible at spamming one or two spells. You can get fancier later, but don't overwhelm yourself.
-Your gear is going to SUCK since you are getting triple experience. If possible, get a friend to run you through instances. That friend will NOT hurt your bonus exp. With a 70 mage, both my characters still got two levels from mob exp in a single Wailing Caverns run. Instancing might not be possible, so you may want to get some token greens out of the AH.
-If you are nervous about running instances with PUGs or whatever while dual-boxing, just do a run on each character, and then turn in the quests dual-boxed for the bonus exp.
meatflower on
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If you've got both windows on the same screen it's faster in a lot of cases (Anything outside of where the clicking zones are identical on each screen (quests windows, vendors, etc.) to just click in the other characters window. I'm sure there's a more elegant solution to this, I just haven't found it yet.
-If you are going to have two different classes, it's easier to have the puppet be a caster. Melee will force you to have the puppet re-follow every fight, whereas casting will not break the follow command.
-Download a good quest mod. There are mods now that track your party's quest progress as well, which means you don't have to check on your puppet all the time. QuestFu is an Ace mod that works great for this.
-Party frames are also important. I suggest frames that include a combat indicator, changing color when taking damage, target frame and casting bar. This allows you to keep tabs on your puppet a lot better. Pitbull has these features, but takes time to set up right.
-If you normally turn off or alter your minimap, keep that shit on. Following actually has decent pathing, but shit happens and you need to know when your puppet has stopped.
-You are not going to be using all your skills with two people. It's a shitton of hotkeys. Spec your puppet to be as good as possible at spamming one or two spells. You can get fancier later, but don't overwhelm yourself.
-Your gear is going to SUCK since you are getting triple experience. If possible, get a friend to run you through instances. That friend will NOT hurt your bonus exp. With a 70 mage, both my characters still got two levels from mob exp in a single Wailing Caverns run. Instancing might not be possible, so you may want to get some token greens out of the AH.
-If you are nervous about running instances with PUGs or whatever while dual-boxing, just do a run on each character, and then turn in the quests dual-boxed for the bonus exp.
I'd be curious to hear ideas on setups, currently I'm doing two druids. Right now they're still under 10 so it's just spamming Wrath but once the forms start coming in it's gonna get a little different. I'm probably going to spec the main one feral and the other resto with a little boomkin thrown in later on. Then I'll shred up on the main while my other spams wrath from afar and heals me when needed.
I read something about this and it was related to Vista and UAC. You need to have UAC off or be on an Admin account. I'm on Vista 64 with UAC off and an admin account, works great. On the options tab you can click "Backup Config", so this way you only need to put it all in one more time if it doesn't save it the next time you try.
Now the hard part of deciding what classes to make.
Got an undead rogue/tauren druid running through Durotar. Its nice.
Also, a "/cast [target=leadername] Heal Spell" macro is incredibly useful if your puppet has healing spells.
And let's maximize our time by using a puppet with passive buffs. Totems don't count for obvious reasons:
Paladin: Blessings aren't passive, but last long enough and are great way to make up for your gear. Auras are mildly useful, but Imp. Sanc Aura is a nice boost.
Druid: Leader of the Pack is nice and comes with a heal. Mark is another stat-upper. Balance offers Moonkin Aura for casters. While not passive, get Imp. FF and hotkey that for bonus hit.
Hunter: Oh lord. Hotkey pet auto-attack along with Hunter's mark and soak in the free damage. Imp. hunter's mark may be a way off, as BM is the better spec. Still, Ferocious Inspiration is awesome.
Warrior: Lackluster, but the shout is nice.
Mage: AI and Magic Damp are nice. Not much here besides the free food and ports (which are not as needed since you have double hearths).
Warlock: Hotkey curses for armor and spell debuffs. Blood Pact is another stat boost, and pets are more free damage.
Rogue:
Shaman: Totems are a bit of a pain to use, but hotkey the damage buffers that your leader can use. Unleashed Rage is nice if you want to deal with getting your puppet to melee.
Priest: Fort and Spirit for stats. Hotkey SW: P for Misery and/or Shadow Weaving.
a good priest specific one (shamelessly stolen from wowwiki's articl about dualboxing macros with some minor changes) :
Shadow Word : Pain then Wand
/assist [leader's name]
/cast Shadow Word: Pain
/stopcasting
/Use Shoot
it does pretty decent damage and what not, while conserving my priest's mana for heals.
I just upgraded mine a few hours ago but it can take as much as 72 hours for it to take effect. Think I'm gonna try out a new combo in the mean time, see what works best for me. I think a warlock with a pocket shadow priest might be fun.
I'm not looking to buy a brand new account, but I was looking at leveling up a pally soon, and this looks like a much quicker way to do it. Plus since leveling a pally solo is so god awful boring in the first 30 levels, this looks like an easy way to push through quickly.
Thanks for this. Good OP.
The trial is limited to level 20, I believe.
Ah damn. I wonder how long I could cart around the trial account toon into higher level zones until it became a huge problem. :P
Double wand'ing
Add a pet for extra free DPS or tanking
These guys have done like 5 quests. Even just taking the kill quests they outleveled the starting and second quest hubs after just a couple turn-ins. That's the only problem I have with this so far. They're in shit gear and not making any money at the moment. Hopefully I can stretch out my main characters gold to keep them twinked out in AH greens until they get to high profit mining/herb levels.
Ok I asked this since I plan on getting a 2nd as soon as I get a game time card and figure out a new account name for it
I am thinking about taking my human paladin from my current one to my new one they will let you as long as you own both accounts
Fuuuuuck.
Ok, that's kind of what I figured. Also, could you essentially level more than 1 character from the referral account during that 90 day triple XP link, and use the levels gained from your "friend" to level any alts you have on your own account?
What I mean is, I have a 51 rogue, 43 shaman. Assuming the referral account gets to 60, I have 30 levels to spread out to other characters. Could I then level a 2nd toon on the referral account to essentially get another 30 levels for other toons I may want/have and want to cheaply level?
Does that make any sense?
Keeps giving me an error, any else had issues like this over the last day or so?
What are you doing that you keep getting an error?
Only the lower lvl person gets triple exp if you're ahead of the other person. You can't "game" the system with just a trial account.
If I understand what you're asking, yes you can. If you level 2 60s on the new account, which I think is what you were saying, you'd have 30 levels per character (might be 29 im not sure) to give to your other characters below 60.
If you are saying can you gift levels from the first 60 to level someone else to 60, then gift levels from them, you can only gift levels from the referred account to the referrer.
According to some FAQs I've read this only makes a performance difference if the two folders are on two different physical drives, which makes sense.
So unless you have multiple hard drives in your computer there's really no reason to bother.
edit.. and the logistics of trying to do this on a PvP server have made me decide against it. Too much hassle involved with random PvP.
Yeah, that's what I was trying to get at, so I think we're on the same page. Thanks
Loving dualboxing 2sham.
It's working great so far, with the exception of the fact that I'm quickly outgrowing any gear I can throw at my chars. I've just about given up at the moment.
I have discovered that the only thing easier than leveling a hunter, though, is leveling two hunters with triple xp!
From the time I sent my trial invitation, to the time I logged off last night, all configuration and setup included, it took about 4.5 hours, and both my hunters are sitting just below 25. Life is good!
I have a shaman and pally in their 20's and they are so spine crushingly boring to play
I'm only level 10 after 2 1/2 hours, but a lot of that was trying to get the dual boxing to work and doing class quests at 10 - class quests are definitely an argument for doing two characters of the same class. I'm heading back to the Draenai starting area now to do all the shaman stuff I've missed.
this now has my paladin at level 7 and the undead at level 5 because even when the paladin is higher level he's still getting full 300% bonus XP. I thought it stopped if you were higher lvl?
Does the triple xp stack with rest xp? I.E. can you get 4x or maybe even 6x if you wait for the rest xp?
I have no intentions of doing this but I'm just curious.
EDIT: That's got to be fake. You'd be hard pressed to even travel to each level zone to get 1-60 in 2 hours, let alone stop and kill things and do quests.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
It's not fake, I could have done it if I got summoned to SM and DM instead of walking for 40 minutes, my priest was in 3 hours. You quest to 10 with someone, then have someone run both of you through DM from 10-20 then SM from 20-30, then you get level bumped from 30-60 by the 60 you already leveled with your friend.
EDIT: Actually, you could do even better. You level to 40 through DM/SM then the lvl 40 grants your new lvl 10 levels from 10-30 then the 60 grants you levels from 30-60. This would be just for a screenshot, though, as it would take the extra hours to level the other characters in the first place.
Or how does that work? Also if I buy an account and use it with my own can both my accounts (my original and my newly created one) give each other levels so they both get new level 60s easy?
You can only grant levels from the referred to the referrer. You stop gaining bonus levels to grant at lvl 60, but you can still grant them no matter your level.