What are some major bugs that Tibia experienced?

Question

I am curious to hear stories of what bugs Tibia has experienced in the past. I was intrigued by this because of the history of the Dread Doll I read in an article recently in which I paste my sources below. I am in no way trying to glamorize bugs or bug abuse, nor should any responses. I just think that this would be an interesting read to see how many outrageous things had happened and what was the outcome or resolution to fix said bug.

Unfortunately, the summer update also came with two bugs that caused plenty of discussions, sweat and bug fixing rounds for CipSoft employees: Out of nowhere, one of the fansite items simply kept on spawning in the Thaian temple, and it did not take long before the once pretty rare dread dolls were owned by many players.
The other bug allowed players to illegally receive experience points. Even though a rollback of the servers could be prevented, the word "rollback" was probably the most dominant in our forums during that time.
Also in July, a new feature for the Beta Flash client was implemented. Maps from the stand-alone client could finally be imported.

Due to a map bug with Update 9.1 that took place in Thais Castle throne room, it spawned during 2 days after server save, which led to some players from all game worlds briefly obtaining this fansite item. With that mistake reported, CipSoft later turned it into a Doll (Dread) - as can be read on this news article and this Auditorium post - for some months, and then was changed into a Fan Doll of Queen Eloise. The original Dread Doll was reintroduced and given back to the original fansite contest winners in Update 9.2.

Sources:

https://tibia.fandom.com/wiki/Dread_Doll

https://www.tibia.com/news/?subtopic=newsarchive&id=1893&fbegind=1&fbeginm=1&fbeginy=2000&fendd=23&fendm=2&fendy=2020&flist=11111111

Comments

Haha! Thanks for bringing the memories back :) I remember that bug, though I have only heard of it, never saw the actuall Dread Doll.

Answer 1

I really think that the story (almost sounds like a fake tale similar to creepy pastas) of Px is the most curious and problematic thing that ever happened in a MMORPG.

The name of the character with a particular bug was Px. Weirdly enough, his name was that back in the early 2000's (you were allowed to own such names back them). In short, he discovered that typing "ae" (yeah, ae only) in the chat of Tibia would deliver to him random username and passwords (!!!!).

Yeah, the case is an absurd itself, but it really happened. There is a lot of discussion about this

The guy who had this char told everything about it here. "ae" is a common thing to say between the Brazilian community, but somehow the word ae posted by the char px was a combination that led the system to deliver to this char two messages from two players with their account numbers and passwords!!! He realized that every time he posted ae on trade channel, he would receive new accounts and passwords!

There is no explanation about why it happened. The owner of this char explained all of it here in a long livestream:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDp6p8H6aZc

There are a few videos about him, but only in Portuguese! You can ask to the former owner of Px in the link above if you wish, I really recommend because there is no content in English about him.

This guy can be potentially the sole cause of the famous "mass hacks" from 2 decades ago, where people got robbed several times without any explanation or reasoning at all.

Here is a full text from an official fansite article about the case (in Portuguese too): https://portaltibia.com.br/o-curioso-caso-de-px-mais-uma-lenda-tibiana/

Px was a player from Eternia, and the whole case started in 2003. I wasn't a Tibia player back then, but I wonder if people outside the Brazilian community knows anything about that. The player used to steal account in Cyber Cafes, with crowds of people behind him and also made a lot of money selling items from Tibia.

Nowadays, the character is long gone due to a Tibia investigation that started after sometime that the whole incidents reached the peak of hackings. Px apparently hacked more than thousands of accounts according to him! He did this without any fear or remorse and was only stopped much later due to an investigation led by Cipsoft directed to him.

I really can't even imagine how this can be credible or viable, but the guy got a lot of sources to sustain his claim. Here is an old image from his personal photo blog with his first hack (got from the article posted by PortalTibia):

(no link to the original photo post as far as I know)

Why I posted it since it seems so absurd to believe on it? Well, a good amount of people from Brazil knows this case and tells everyone that indeed we had such problem in the past. I am shocked due to the fact that nobody else talks about it nowadays. The youtuber claiming responsibility showed a lot of evidence about the case.

EDIT: Found an English topic about the case from Tibia Royal however this fansite is inactive and the link no longer works.

EDIT 2: The user Bobob from Tibia Royal gave an interesting explanation about it:

It happened, he wasn't the only one hacking accounts and it wasn't due to a bug in the game. What happened was people were using a new cheat program using state-of-the-art methods that had become popular, unbeknownst at the time however was the cheat had a hidden backdoor inside designed to steal their accounts by monitoring the chat for a certain message (ie: "Ae") then private messaging that person the account data. CIP themselves would go on to find out about this cheat's backdoor and subsequently used it as well to find & ban a large number of cheaters which they made a news post on at https://www.tibia.com/news/?subtopic=newsarchive&id=237.

Comments

I've actually never heard of this bug before...Thanks for sharing the English version it was quite a good read and some weird Tibian history that's for sure.

---

It made me scratch my head now: Is it a bug if it was actually most likely a backdoor from oldschool hacking tools? I didn't know the last part of it until I finished the post and searchedo n goolge about an english version! :P

Answer 2

Oh, there were a lot of interesting bugs... for example you could make someones' account frozen (like in case of payments fraud) by forcing on a player a specific sequence of movements. Player tempted with crystal coins lying on the floor made "correct" move, when he wanted to come closer and suddenly dissapeared! Just puffed, for a few days.

Another example which I remember (it took place on Guardia about 3-4 years ago) was throwing a huge ammount of items into the depot and setting up the bot that would get in and out of the depot SQM. It caused crashes of the whole server.

Comments

You mean, items on top of the depot counter? I never heard of that!

Wow, and this payment fraud bug is something new!! I never heard of that before! I mean, how char movements could be connected to the payment system? Kinda of scary tbh

---

1) No, no... he put much more items directly into the depo locker, than it is formally possible. I have no idea how because there is a limit and it should be impossible, but he have found the way.

2) I have no idea neither :D It was the most interesting bug I ever seen.

---

Oh, I got a huge amount of items in my depot, but they are in the mailbox. Indeed, I believe that you can actually go beyond the limit if you insert everything on a bp, send to your mailbox and toss inside the depot slot.

I always wondered if we could break depot limit somehow. Probably not anymore :D

---

Oh my... 3-4 years ago was actually quite recent for something major like that to happen. Thanks for sharing.

Answer 3

The many and varied Item Duping bugs that in the early days of Tibia caused a lot of problems. Item Duping refers to creating a Clone/Copy of an existing item using an exploit.

I really want to talk about the Black Knight exploit but I cant find any reliable sources for it, but its worth the read cause that was huge.

I'll mention the house duping attributed to Messiah on Nova because I was there at the time. Basically you could drop an item in your house less than 30 seconds before server save in your house and it would show up in your house and also in your inventory after the server save....essentially a duplicated item. Interesting when the item was a backpack full of mana potions. Messiah used this to sky rocket their magic level to the highest in Tibia at the time (got up to magic level 76) and I remember all of us on Nova just being amazed at watching Messiahs level just shoot up the charts and how many mana potions they must have been consuming. I had a Sorc in the 50s level range with a magic level around 54-55 and Messiah just shot past me. Messiah was part of a group that terrorized Nova during that time

Item House Duping source

edit - mispelt house

Comments

...wow I can't believe this happened. thanks for sharing. so basically he wasn't playing fair :(

---

Incredible bug this item dumping thing!! Can you give me more information about the "Black Knight" exploit? I've never heard about it before!

Answer 4

I will just add links to bug-related screenshots:

Glitches ver 2.0 - 5.9

Glitches ver 6.0 - 6.9

Glitches ver 7.0 - 7.11

Rookgaard bugs