ARCbots getting-started tutorial

Before you start

• Buy the (bot) power from the powers store or a trade chat first — xat requires it before a bot can connect. One bot per chat at a time (excludes the gamebot).
• Bots cannot trade powers, transfer xats/days, or assign powers to a chatroom.
• Never share your email, passwords, or details with anyone. ARCbots will never ask for your personal information — except your username, email address, and BOTids.
• Don't know the commands? See /info/commands.html. Trouble? See the FAQ or ask in the ARCbot chatroom.

1. Website registration

Go to arcbots.com and click Register. The form asks for:

• Username — used to pay for your bot and to log into your ARCbot account.
• Password — set one (avoid reusing your xat password).
• Confirm password.
• E-mail — a valid address (gmail recommended).
• Security question + security response — used for future account recovery.
• Check the "I agree" terms box.

On success the account is created; log in at arcbots.com.

2. Initial bot creation (setup wizard)

After first login a setup wizard walks you through:

1. Assign a bot owner.
2. Assign a chat room to your bot.
3. Update bot power and give the bot main owner.
4. Add bot time (your trial time).
5. Confirm your new bot in your chat.

You can skip step at any point to move on without finishing the current step.

• Step 3 note: enter the password to your chat group (the password used to reset the chatroom or change its background) — not a personal password.
• Final step (critical): the bot owner or main owner must confirm the bot in the chatroom within two minutes (120 s) of it entering. Miss the window → restart the bot and try again.

Once running, the bot uses default settings. Other available chatroom tools (beyond this tutorial): Song Ratings, Chat User Activity Logs, Chat Message Logs, Game Bans + high-score trackers, AI auto-chat, Responses, Custom Commands, Keywords, Promotion filters, and more.

3. Manual chat configuration

If you used the wizard correctly this is already done; do it manually otherwise:

1. Assign the (bot) power to your chat — type (bot) in main chat, click the power smiley, click Assign.
2. Edit Your Chat → Extra Features.
3. Find the bot power, tick its checkbox to activate, click Edit on the right.
4. In the window, enter 1510151 in the bot id field. Do not enter anything in the appbot field.
5. Click OK, scroll down, click Update Settings.

4. Working the dashboard

The dashboard (panel homepage) shows one block per botid with remaining time and the assigned chat. From it you can:

1. Start & Restart — green start button. The bot can take up to two minutes to join; errors are reported after clicking start.
2. Stop — red stop button.
3. Add time — see Payments below.
4. Freeze bot time — freezing switches the bot from the premium server to the free server; frozen time does not decrease until unfrozen.
5. Edit bot settings — blue button.

Adding time

Bot time is in hours (1 month = 730 hours). After buying time (in the ARCbot chatroom or the buy page), enter the number of hours in the bot-time area for the matching botid and click Add Bot Time.

5. Editing bot settings

Click Edit Bot Settings under a botid to reach the settings home page. The left nav expands with: profanity filter, response manager, command manager, text replacements, staff lists, moderation settings, and the full control panel. Each settings category is a drop-down; tabs can be edited independently and saved without leaving.

5a. Bot appearance

Customise name, homepage, avatar, pcback, status, and hat. Do not put name decoration codes (nameglow, namecolor, namegrad, nameflag, namewave, etc.) in the "Bot Name" field — put them in the Name Decoration area. A premium bot is required for the appearance features to work. Generators are linked for name color/grad/glow.

Variables can be embedded in name/status/messages and are auto-replaced (e.g. status Latest Power: {lpname} shows the newest power). See the full command & variable reference.

5b. Chat / language settings

Controls the chatroom, the pool the bot joins, and the bot's language.

• By default the bot joins the first pool xat assigns (usually MAIN). For busy chats set Pool 0 (Main Chat) so it always joins main; any other pool can be chosen too.
• Translation: leave "include translations in brackets" OFF to fully translate the bot; ON shows English original alongside the translation (like xat's translator). ARCbots uses human translation; anything humans missed can optionally fall back to Google Translate by switching that toggle ON — but Google Translate delays responses by 1–5 seconds.

5c. Moderation settings

The most important (and easiest to misconfigure) section. Divided into blocks:

Auto-member — 8 ways the bot can automatically member users:

1. Everyone.
2. Only users registered on xat.com.
3. Only registered xat users who are subscribers (have days).
4. Only users who solve a math question (e.g. 5+3=?).
5. Only users who solve a reading/literal question (remove a letter from a message).
6. Only users who have sent a predefined number of messages (you choose).
7. Only users whose homepage matches the bot's.
8. Only users who give a secret code word/message.

Moderation & profanity toggles — turn on message-spam detection (tune thresholds later in the Advanced tab) and the profanity filter.

Letter spam detection — limits the max number of duplicate letters a member may post.

Profanity filter — 100% customisable; detects in names, messages, and statuses; can also filter the bot itself (replaces words with asterisks — useful against !say/!gsay abuse). Enabling it auto-enables the language the bot speaks; add more languages in the bad-word manager. (See §7 below.)

Anti-AFK — set max minutes a user can be idle, the action taken, and which rank it applies to. A user is AFK after no messages/actions; a (tickle) counts as an action (clicking the bot ≠ AFK).

Max kicks before ban — per offense type, choose how many kicks before the bot bans, plus the ban length. E.g. set profanity to 1 → second offense bans instead of kicks.

5d. Bot auto messages

The Messages tab controls:

1. Tickle message — PM'd to users who click the bot.
2. Connecting message — sent each restart (blank = default).
3. Gift announcements — announce gifts sent between users in main chat.
4. New power release notifications — several messages in the 30 min before a release.
5. Game-ban high-score announcements.
6. New song announcements — announce new radio songs; can post in a message, the scroller, or both. Requires !customradio <stream url>.

Welcome messages — each rank can have its own. To limit spam, a welcome appears at most once per user per 10 minutes. Message variables are available (listed below the settings).

5e. Advanced bot settings

Experienced users only. Unsure? Ask in support chat.

• Command symbol — default ! (e.g. !commands). Change it to any symbol; all commands then require that symbol.
• ARCbot staff access — senior trusted staff can access client settings/bots for support. You can revoke this via "Remove ARCbot help staff from being able to edit your bot?" → ON. This does not block ARCbot administrators (Actavus & Nathan) or xat staff/volunteers from accessing the bot in abuse cases.
• Spam filter detection — choose how many messages in a row members may post and how fast before the filter triggers.
• Some toggles are on by default (profanity filter, custom responses, AI in bot PC, etc.). Don't change unless you're sure.

6. Profanity filter (detail)

Multilingual; detects profanity in multiple languages simultaneously and reports which language was matched. By default only the bot's language is filtered (to avoid cross-language conflicts where a word is fine in one language but not another); multilingual chats can enable more.

To access: Edit Bot Settings → left nav → MODERATION → Chat Moderation → Profanity Filter. Turn a language toggle ON to filter it. Click a word, then Edit or Delete (buttons appear at both the top and bottom of the long list).

The per-word editor lets you set: a custom ban reason, the ban length in hours, where to search (messages only, or messages + names + statuses), and the ban type — then UPDATE (or DELETE).

7. Payment guides

ARCbots is not responsible for buying mistakes — verify before paying. No refunds except per the T.O.S.

Pay with xats or days

1. Go to the official ARCbot chatroom and find the bot.
2. Transfer xats/days with your ARCbots username as the transfer message. Rate: 250 xats (19 days) = 730 hours / 30 days. Pay any amount; use !timecheck to see hours per xats.
3. Forgot to include your username in the message? Use !addtime <username>.

Buy page

/tools/buy.html — enter coupon codes from ARCbot staff.

8. Account recovery

Forgot password/username? At arcbots.com click Forgot password.

• Enter your username (entering your email instead displays your username).
• Click Send Recovery Email.
• Check your email. The link works only once; wait 30 minutes between recovery requests.
• Follow the on-page steps.