Dofus 3 multiboxing on a Mac

What macOS does differently

On Windows, every Dofus client is a window in the taskbar, and one click brings it to the front. On a Mac, Dofus is an application, with a single icon in the Dock, and all its windows line up behind it. Most of the bad surprises start there.

⌘Tab moves between applications, not between windows. It brings Dofus forward, but the window that arrives is the last one you used, not necessarily the one you wanted. ⌘` cycles through the front application's windows in the order you last touched them, an order that changes with every press. Mission Control, with ⌃↑, shows them all at once, but then you have to read the thumbnails to recognise your account.

None of these tools knows that one window is your Eniripsa and the other your Iop. They see windows, nothing more. Everything that follows is a way around that ignorance.

Opening several clients

This is the easy part. The Ankama Launcher can run several instances of the same game: you register your accounts, activate them, and one click opens a client per account. The steps, screen by screen, are in the guide about the Launcher.

You will still come across the old method on forums: open the Terminal and type open -n -a Dofus to force macOS to launch a second copy of the application. It still works, but it dates from before the Launcher managed accounts. It no longer serves any purpose, except making life harder.

Three ways to lay the windows out

Once the clients are open, you have to decide where they go. There are only three possible answers, and each one costs something.

1. 1Side by sideEach client takes a share of the screen. Everything is visible at once, which is reassuring, but every window is small: spells are hard to read, the map is guessed at, and on a laptop the fourth window has no room left at all.
2. 2One desktop per clientMission Control lets you create Spaces and put one client on each. ⌃← and ⌃→ move between them, with a sliding animation every time. The order of the desktops is fixed, which is a quality, until the day initiative decides otherwise.
3. 3Stacked in one placeEvery window in the same place, at the same size, one on top of the other. Only one is visible, full screen, and switching account means changing which one is in front. It is the layout that looks best, and the one that demands a reliable switch, since you cannot see the others.

Switching between them

Each layout dictates how you change account. Side by side, it is a click in the right window, provided you do not click inside the game at the same time. With desktops, it is a macOS shortcut, and an animation to wait through. Stacked, it is the delicate point: the window you want is behind, and you need a dependable way to bring it up.

In a fight, that way has to be fast and predictable above all. Initiative sets the turn order, and that order changes with every fight. A shortcut that lands on the wrong account is a lost turn; a click that misses is sometimes a spell cast on the wrong ally. The question is not whether you can change account, it is whether you can do it without thinking.

The guide on switching from the keyboard details what macOS offers and why its shortcuts stop halfway.

What DofusMulti changes

DofusMulti takes the third layout and makes it workable. Up to eight Dofus 3 clients are stacked in the same place, at the same size, to the pixel: switching account moves nothing on screen, and the map stays exactly where your eyes left it.

• ⌥← and ⌥→ walk through the accounts in the order you chose. The key is caught before Dofus sees it, so it never casts a spell.
• One shortcut per account, if you would rather jump straight there: ⌥1 the healer, ⌥2 the tank. None is taken by default.
• A floating bar shows one portrait per account, with the active one set apart. One click is enough, and the bar never takes the keyboard.
• The order is rewritten by dragging two portraits, without touching the windows. The next switch follows the new order.

And that is all it does. DofusMulti moves windows and brings one of them to the front. It reads nothing in the game, injects nothing, duplicates no key and automates no action; the Limits section of the home page spells it out point by point.

It costs 19 €, once, updates included, for one Mac at a time, and the licence moves to another Mac when you change yours. Everything is on the home page.

Where multi-accounting does not apply

One clarification that saves a disappointment: some Dofus servers run in single-account mode. On Draconiros, Mikhal, Dakal and Kourial, as on the temporary Temporis servers, a player can connect only one account at a time, and Ankama checks. No tool changes that, and DofusMulti is of no use there. The full rules are on Ankama's support site and summarised in the guide on what the rules allow.

Further reading

• Switching Dofus accounts from the keyboard on a Mac
• Opening several Dofus clients with the Ankama Launcher on a Mac
• DofusMulti or Dofus Tabs: which one for your Mac