ADD-ONS

Not everyone gets along with addons, and certainly there are some whose purpose seems baffling when World of Warcraft is entirely playable on its own. There are some we Future Tense members have come to swear by though, and so here are some easy-access recommendations. They’re all downloaded via Curse, which also offers a nifty client to help notify you of updates.

How Do Add-Ons Work?

• In the first instance you must download the add-on, unzip if it needs be, then drag and drop it to your World of Warcraft installation folder while the game is not running. Place the add-on folder in ‘World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns’.
• Nothing else needs doing, as the game will now recognise it when you start up, log in to the character select screen and click ‘Add-Ons’, in the lower-left of your screen.
• Some add-ons are flagged as ‘out of date’ by the WoW client. Assuming you have the latest version of each, you may need to tick the ‘always load out of date add-ons’ option and manually enable them before starting play. Note that this option tends to reset when a new patch is released.
• The add-ons may then load a fancy new palette on your UI, or affix a button to your radar. You can often control them with text commands, such as “/recount show” for Recount, or by right-clicking the HUD icon, but these commands vary.
• Many add-ons will also feature in your ‘interface’ menu. You can reach this by hitting ‘esc’, choosing ‘interface’ and finding the ‘add-ons’ tab near the top.

Add-Ons

Altoholic

Offers a pretty vast toolset, all relating to your many characters and their items, skills and abilities. Through a menu modelled on the auction house’s own you can:

• Browse through or search your characters’ items, be they equipped, held in banks or the guild vault;
• See at a glance just how many of a given item you may have and where, through tooltips over your bags or even in your trade recipe windows;
• Paste trade links for all your alts. into chat – useful for showing your alt.’s jewellery designs or your selection of glyphs;
• Check talent points and achievements across any characters you have stored;
• Share account information with trusted friends, allowing you to do all the above with their characters.

Altoholic works via a radar icon.

Atlas

A library of dungeon and raid maps, accessible via a handy minimap button. Useful if you find yourself lost in one of the pre-Wrath of the Lich King dungeons!

Atlas works via a radar icon.

Auctioneer

Quite a comprehensive piece of kit again, somewhat useful in aggregating all the auction house results you come across. Auctioneer can use this information to determine how much of a bargain a set item is, and how much you should expect to sell your wares for. It also streamlines the auction house window into something much more practical.

Auctioneer works via the ‘interface>add-ons’ menu, and the game’s own auction house palette.

Gatherer

A superb map and UI radar add-on with which you can track ores, herb nodes and treasure chests. Every time you interact with a node, be it on an alt. with that skill or not, Gatherer logs that position and allows you to track it and others nearby on radar. Better still, it shares this information over the guild, party and raid chat dialogues, meaning you can receive data from other players too! You can also then search your library to find zones with a certain resource.

Gatherer works via a radar icon.

HealBot Continued

Healbot allows you an accompaniment or replacement to the party portraits we see day-to-day. Each player is represented by a health bar, which can be clicked in a number of ways to cast different spells upon them. Heals cast by this add-on will show up on your fellows’ Healbot bars, to spare you from crossing paths with another healer. Healbot also warns you of any afflictions your wards may have, and displays any temporary buffs so that you know when to top them up.

HealBot works via a radar icon and text commands: “/hb o”.

Postal

Pretty useful for bank alts. and anyone who deals with the auction house. Postal allows you to empty a mailbox, automatically retrieving items and money to your inventory and deleting the blank letters as it goes.

Postal works via the ‘interface>add-ons’ menu.

Reagent Tree

Similar to Altoholic’s handy tooltips, Reagent Tree helps you deal with useful reagents but in reverse – it’ll tell you if any of your characters can use that material in a recipe, how much of it they’d need, and whether it’ll earn guaranteed or chance skill points.

Postal works via the ‘interface>add-ons’ menu.

Recount

Mostly a tool for show, Recount tallies up the amount of damage and healing you deal and receive, and will generate those much-touted ‘DPS’ (damage per second) figures. It can then announce these figures to your guild, party or open chat. Quite useful in gauging the effectiveness of your spell rotations when fighting bosses and target dummies.

Postal works via text commands: “/recount config”.