Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Another new add-on

Ok, so the patch broke most of my add-ons, especially the ones I REALLY sort of rely on.

#1 Fubar -I like having certain things known at a glance rather than having to hunt around for them, such as gold amount, number of quests in log, and XP time to level. And not having QuestFu, not having that "Job's done" voice when I complete a quest, geez I almost don't know when to stop now!

#2 Xperl -The default settings aren't horrible, but they are TINY compared to how you can set them with Xperl. It's just the character XP/mana bars that I need to change. My eyes are terrible and I like those bars to be sort of big and easy to read. The default ones are so small, and with the numbers covering most of the bar(just can't play without those numbers there), it's hard to tell when you are getting low on health or mana. That can be bad! I'm trying out a different one until I know Xperl is bug-free, but I just don't like it's flexibility.

That being said, I did manage to find a new add-on that I wish I would have had ALL THE TIME for the past 4 years...

It's called SilverDragon. It is a rare mob spotter. Yes, it will probably help grab those rare raptors(and I hesitated in writing this, the thought of my competition having this add-on scares me!), but I love ALL rares! I actually made a notebook listing rare mobs about 3 years ago, well before Burning Crusade came out. I listed mobs by zone, with coords and descriptions, and I used to spend hours running around with my druid killing every single one I could find. And not just for the fact that they always drop at least a green quality item(sometimes something unique to that mob), but it was the hunter in me I guess.

Of course, Burning Crusade came out and to my delight(and dismay), the rares out there were even rarer and ALWAYS dropped a BLUE quality item! Very nice, but it made them much harder to find. On my server, Alliance side, it seemed like one person had them all covered and were the only ones who would find them-because you could find dozens of the blue items on the AH, all being sold by the same person. It's the same now with Wrath. The blue items are even better, and this same person seems to be able to have them all, all the time.

And with the addition of Wrath came the achievements for killing rare mobs(but only in Outland and Northrend). Now even more people are hunting these mobs that I spent hours on so long ago.

So to this new add-on, SilverDragon. It scans the area you are in for rare mobs, scanning your mouseovers or nearby nameplates, and alerts you when a rare is found. Without messing too much with the setttings, currently what happens when I find a rare is I get a screen flash(similiar to a low health flash), a loud sound(sort of a whammy sound), and a box pops up noting the name of the rare. The box can be clicked to auto-target the mob. You still will have to look around and figure out where they are though. It isn't much different than using a /target macro, except that it checks that for you!

On the surface, it almost seems like cheating. Almost. However, I'm not a raider, and from reading forum posts every now and then from people who raid, it seems to me that there are add-ons that let them know when someone is low on health or needs a disease/curse removed. That sort of sounds similar to what this add-on does. It still doesn't point me to the mob and won't automatically cast a spell on it, but it does let me know one is in the area.

After downloading this, I took a trip around Outland and found 3 rares that I was missing for the Bloody Rare achievement! I only have 3 left to find there.

Just a note, there is another add-on that is supposed to do something similar to this, called Bloody Rare. I downloaded that one first and it won't work for me. It is supposed to create a zone-specific macro that can be used to find the rares, however mine won't update itself at all, so I got rid of it. And SilverDragon is MUCH MUCH better!

So for you rare mob hunters out there, this add-on is a MUST!

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