A former goldfarmer's perspective on how randoms affect bots.

People on this subreddit have, recently, been suggesting re-introducing randoms to combat bots, either in F2P, or below a certain total level, etc.

People respond, "Oh, but bots can complete randoms!" Etc.

I'd like to give my PoV, as someone who has, in the past (until about 6 months ago), farmed/sold gold. You may rag me for that if you like.

Randoms do affect bots. They do not affect bot clients but they do affect bots. Here's what I mean.

Bots in bot clients render the graphics differently, so I can use commands such as

Entity iron = Entity.getNearest(rock);

I need a bot client for this to work. I just do. In these types of clients, random solvers are BUILT IN. The bots will (almost) never fail to solve a random. Randoms make no difference to this type of bot. The problem with these clients is that they are easy as fuck for Jagex to detect. If you were to use this type of bot to try and farm Lobsters in F2P, you'd get banned within a couple days, max.

I know how good Jagex's current detection is, and I do see green dragon bots with near-maxed stats, so I know that it's good but not amazing, but I do know that for F2P, your bots get banned FAST.

But not all bots use bot clients. Many, MANY bots use color detection, or other types of bots like ones made crudely from AHK. These bots are absolutely 100% stopped by randoms. Without a doubt.

Now why would I use this type of bots instead of a bot-client? They're inferior in almost every way. The answer: they're harder to detect. Of 100 Woodcutting bots leveled to 70 Woodcutting by powerchopping Willows, maybe 2 got banned with an AHK Colorbot. Maybe. With a bot-client, it was 30+. Huge improvement. And for something like power-chopping Willows, or power-mining Iron, or Fletching in the bank (for a main), this type of bot is 90% as effective as a bot-client bot, without randoms.

As a minor note, I would like to say that I have seen several threads complaining about how the camera moves slightly over time- this is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL, otherwise you could make AHK bots to do almost abso-fucking-lutely everything.

As another minor note, I would like to remind people that mandatory randoms completely stop splashers.

Randoms do not have to be complicated. It can be as simple as a random that you don't right-click and dismiss will bring up an interface that you have to click an X on to close, that X being in a random position and be a random color. This will stop AHK Color-bots, splashers, autoclickers, and bots made with other non-client programs.

That's my take on the situation. Personally, I think randoms should be mandatory in at least the form I said. Sorry for any garbage formatting.

EDIT: I feel it necessary to mention that re-entering randoms in some yet unidentified form would NOT SOLVE THE BOTTING PROBLEM BY ITSELF. Not even close. Most of the bots stay. The color-bots mostly would shift to bot-clients. The advantage of this is forcing goldfarmers to use bot-clients from the get-go, or at the very least have to watch their bots a bit more carefully early, which allows Jagex to detect them much more quickly, at early levels, before they go on to get the stats to kill Green Dragons, or the level to chop Yews.