Getting Started in ESO (or WTF is the minimap?)

Alrighty, so you bought the ESO box, you've installed, downloaded the 25gb or so of patches, made a toon, did the tutorial and now you're out and about and hitting m every 5 seconds because you don't have a minimap! Also, you might have some guards after you because you mis-clicked and stole something. Well, I'm here to help!

No, there is no way to enable a mini-map, you need an addon for that. But, the addon system is very user-friendly, and heck, there's even a program like curse for wow to keep track of 'em and install them for you. It's called Minion and you can find it here. It's pretty self-explanatory, go to find more to find addons, installed is the addons you already have, ect.

If you don't want an addon-manager, you can download addons from such sites as esoui (I've gotten a couple from there, no horrible doom thus far). Download 'em, unzip into Documents/Elder Scrolls Online/live (or liveeu)/AddOns  (path is for Win 8.1 and default install, your path may vary), and load up the game.

Once you've got the game going, just go to the addons option in the main menu. From there you can enable and disable individual addons, enable out-of-date ones, all the normal things. If you want to change the settings of a particular addon, you want to check in settings, not addons (that threw me a bit at first).

Now, the most important part, what addons do you want? Well, I can't read your mind, but I can tell you what I'm using, starting with the two that solve the no mini-map and stealing issues.

First off, we have No Accidental Stealing, which does what it says on the tin. Or, to be more specific, you can't steal unless you're already sneaking (and you probably always want to be sneaking and hidden when stealing unless you like running from the guards).

Second, MiniMap by Fyrakin. Yes, now you have a minimap! And you can even mess around with transparency and make it look all pretty.

Beyond that, there's a ton more. I have Foundry Tactical Combat, Esohead, Lorebooks, SkyShards, Wykkyd's Quest Tracker (love this one!), Inventory Grid View (another highly recommended one because the default inventory is not so good), AI Research Grid, and a bunch of others. See...

As you go along, you'll likely find things you think could be made easier to manage, and hey, there's probably an addon for that, just like in WoW! (And I have no economy addons because I have no reason to, not because they don't exist).

So go forth and play! After all, if you don't like the addon, you can always uninstall it, no harm no foul.

Aura Addon Ideas

This is another in my very occasional series of posts of semi-useful things. Today, I thought discussing ideas for using such addons as Power Auras Classic or Weak Auras might be useful. If you're curious about what I've been up to in WoW (and in general), that'll be after the useful bit.

So, aura addons. They can do so many things that it can be very overwhelming. Here's a few ideas...

1) Resource alerts. One of my most used auras was Lyl's "hey, half mana!" one. It gave me a heads up and let me start thinking about cooldowns without being obtrusive. You could easily do this for health, mana, energy, or whatever.

2) Cooldowns. Especially good for short cooldowns in combat (and yes, you can make auras that are only active in combat, or raid, or when flagged for pvp...)

3) Debuffs/Buffs. Trinkets, time warp, diseases, other power increases/decreases. I had one for when my wolf howled (and gave my hunter an attack power boost)

4) Combos. How about having a "ACK!" alert when your health drops below a certain point and your self-healing button is available to hit? Your healers will appreciate it.

5) HOT/DOT timing.

6) Proc alerts. Combustion, shadow word: death, devouring plague, all that sort of thing.

And if that's not enough, many excellent aura packages can be found on the web. Even if you don't use all of them, they can give you some ideas. I generally start out with a premade package, then tinker with it and make it my own.

Anyway, this is what I've been up to...

1) Race-changed my shaman from goblin to panda. I never liked her as a goblin, and look, her hair streaks match her eyes! I'm hoping she'll be more appealing to me to play now, since I like shaman, I just don't like being short.

2) Rolled a belf monk and a panda mage, and tried some pet battles. I love the monk, but low-level mage is PAINFUL. Frostfire bolt has an almost 3 sec casting time, it's really slow and boring. Needless to say, the mage will be going away. 

3) Leveled Lyl. She's almost done with Jade Forest (a couple of orchard quests and the drag food monastery quest to go for the loremaster achieve in the zone). I did get bored with the zone after a while, but I do have to admit that some of the story lines were great. After one, I wanted to renounce both Horde and Alliance and go be an honorary panda instead.

 4) Got a ridiculously stupid hat. Good stats though.

 5) Took a huge amount of screencaps. Gotta hand it to Blizz, the Jade Forest is gorgeous. I'll be uploading my screencaps (unfiltered) via picasa, and I'll post a link (bear in mind that unfiltered means every screencap including the automated ones)

 6) Killed an elite with guildie help (and that's where the stupid hat came from)

7) Started working on both the Tillers and getting cooking maxed.

8) Ran brewery. Had no idea what was going on.

9) Maxed mining. JCing is pretty close, but leveling only via research is rather slow.

 And generally ran around, fished a lot, and had relaxed fun. I've gotten bitten by the bug again, so I'm hoping to get Lyl max level and ready to raid by the end of the month.

Raiding. Easier than heroics? Also, 3 of my favorite addons.

The Baradin Hold boss certainly is. Whee, stacking, running in circles, then loots!
On the other hand this guy...

Well, he's a bit tricker. Not quite Deadmines with a drunk tank level, but pretty hard.

In other stuff, I've been profession-leveling, toon-leveling, and heroic-running. And no, I have not forgotten about the UI series. I just got distracted by...

a confused dog in way too much snow. So much snow that it basically shut down my city for 4 days. Not that I'm shocked, mind you. We have about 1 dumptruck with a plow attachment per million people. Yup, gotta love Hothlanta.

But I do have some addon stuff for you. Three great addons that really have nothing to do with each other, but I love all 3.
First-> Archy. You can see it in the below shot. It lists the artifacts I'm working on, the dig sites I have (and identifies which type they are), prompts me when I have enough pieces to finish one, and gives me a little distance indicator. Best of all, I can make it vanish with just a click.

Second->MarketWatcher This is an AH addon. You tell it stuff to scan for, scan occasionally, and it keeps track of prices for you. You can even mouse over the items and it'll show you a nifty graph. I use it to keep track of gem, ore, and herb prices, so I can find deals and get a sense of when it makes sense to post cut gems and when I should just wait. It's also keeping track of Shadow Dust for me, mostly because otherwise I forget to look for it.

Third-> Buttonfacade. This is a UI addon that allows you to skin your buttons. See, here's default...

Here's another skin (dream)

And here's Zoomed (what Lyllea's currently using)

I tend towards subtle skins, but there's a ton out there. Just hit Curse and look. Caith's quite popular, I know, so is Gears.

ButtonFacade also works with many other addons. For example, Satrina Buff Frames, so your buffs can match your action buttons. It's a nice way to keep a consistent feeling, plus I think the skins look nicer than the default.

There you have it, 3 of my favorite addons.  Now back to farming for the shale pet. IT MUST BE MINE!

How I Make A UI Part 1: A Starting With Bartender 4

This is just a walkthrough of how I get some of the addons I use to look the way they do. We'll be working with bartender 4, shadowed unit frames, vuhdo, align, sunn viewport art, sexymap, and DS Graphics Sunn Viewport Skins.  This section starts with bartender, since it's the first addon I configure in a new UI. Originally  I was going to do them all in one big post, but well, that would have been a REALLY big post, so I split them up. Next time will be Sunn Viewport Art and Shadowed Unit Frames. Here's a nice picture with the addons all labeled so you can see what is what. It's also a good example of what you'll see when you first log in with all these installed.

Now to configure!
First off, we start with our action bars. So type in /bt and hit enter. You see...

We're going to go to the Blizzard Art Bar option and disable it. I don't particularly like that art. That gives you...

Now, enable bar 2 if you want. I like to have bars 1-4 enabled, but it does depend on how many bars you want.

Then type in /align in chat. That'll put a grid on your screen so you can line stuff up. Then you want to uncheck the Lock box in the bartender window, then close the window. Don't worry, you can get it back any time by using /bt, and this way we have space to move bars around. Move the bars where you want. I go for bars 1 and 2 centered at the bottom of my screen, but that's me.

Now, not only does bartender let you move bars where you want, you can also change the scale of a bar (I shrink my bag bar and micro menu, since I don't need them as big as the default has them), change the number of rows (allowing you to make an action rectangle instead of a bar), and even change the number of buttons per bar.  You can also do cool things like having bars faded out.

Once you're done moving things around, lock the bars. I ended up with...

That's bars 1 and 2 in the middle, and 3 and 4 on either side. 3 and 4 have been scaled down a bit and also made into 3by4 rectangles. The micromenu, stances bar, and my bag bar hang out neatly on top.

Now, I know you're thinking..."But I don't want to configure bars for all my alts. That's such a hassle!"  And with Bartender, you don't have to.  All you need to do is...

Log in on the alt.
/bt
Go to Profiles
Select Copy from
And copy from the toon you just set up.  See...

Here I'm copying my previously setup hunter's bars to my warlock. And it looks like....

And there you go, you now have customized action bars and you know how to use bartender 4.  And remember, you can always reset the profile if you hate what you've done. Oh, and set your keybindings if you need to.

Addons I cannot live without

I am a HUGE addon person.  In fact I run with 90 of them, though I should probably clean some of them up.  I have my custom ui ones, and then I have quality of life ones and class-specific ones.  I figured I'd share some of my favorite quality of life ones with you...  and the best part is that most of these require little or no setup.  Just install and enjoy.

Altaholic.  Best addon ever.  I dunno how I'd survive without it.  If you have more than one toon on a server, you want this.  Heck, if you have more than one toon period, you want this. I can check all my toons bags, their professions (including being able to link them in chat), find out if they have mail and when it will expire, and so much more.  Great great addon.

Bagnon.  I have this issue with way too many things in my bags and I can never find what I'm looking for when I need it.  Bagnon's search function saves my arse.  It does share some functionality with altaholic, namely the ability to see what's in other toons bags and banks, so you might want a less fully functional bag addon.  I kinda want the ability to sort soulbound items from nonsoulbound items, but that's not a big deal.

GnomishVendorShrinker.  It's a nice simple little addon.  Just compacts the vendor frame so you can see more at once.  Like most Tekkub addons, it's small and does one thing very well.  I would heartily recommend checking out Tekkub's addons as they're generally simple and do one thing well.

OmniCC.  Yay having a countdown timer on my buttons.  Yup. that's what this does.  

Talented.  Okay, this is a great great addon.  Basically it allows you to import specs from wowhead and the armory, set them as targets (for leveling toons so you can see where to put your points), apply them completely (making respecing a breeze), and you can name them.  I originally installed this so I could label the blood tank and blood dps specs on my death knight, and now I'm not sure how I ever lived without it.  The ability to set a spec as the target makes placing talent points as you level really easy.


I think all of these are beyond great, and well worth investigating.

Happy Chinese New Year and Happy Valentines!

This was my valentines' present to myself. Is it not nifty? Okay, so nine other people helped, but without me the tank would have died much sooner...


Sadly I lost the roll on the drake, but there's always next week. And the Lunar Festival has started, and I love this one. Love is in the Air I can take or leave, Winter's Veil was kinda eh, but yay Lunar.

Oh, and I want to point out a nifty addon called Talented while I'm at it. It allows you to do many nifty things with specs, like importing them from armory or wowhead urls and then using them as templates for leveling or respecing. No more alt-tabing between windows to respec for me! And no more specing a toon, leveling them, and then not being able to remember where the next talent point goes!

Addons for Leveling Professions

One of my major 2010 WoW goals is to have all professions maxed. I figure I'm not the only person who wants to do this, so I though today I'd talk about some addons that might help you get there.

First off, Altaholic. It's not just for profession leveling, but it's really useful for it. I can mouse over something in my inventory and see if an alt or a gbank has some and what alts know the recipe and what alts can learn it. I cannot recommend this addon highly enough, especially if you're trying to keep track of multiple professions on multiple alts.

Second, Gatherer and the wowhead database plugin. Every node wowhead knows about, all displayed nicely for you. Great for leveling or farming.

Third, Auctioneer. Okay, I know you're going wtf, but follow me on this. Not only can you make sure that you're buying and selling mats at a good price, you can also use the Snatch list to grab needed items when they're cheap. Just go look at a profession leveling guide (like this one), see what you're going to need, then add it to the Snatch list. Sadly the only way I've found to add items to my snatch list is to have one in my inventory, but I may be missing something. Plus, while you're there, do a vendor search and grab everything that people are selling below vendor price. Vendor them and yay, instant gold!

Other nice addons:
You need to have a character in the mid60s or so to get their professions to 450. If you don't have enough high level toons, may I suggest a couple of nice leveling addons?
Tour Guide and Jaime's Leveling Guide I've been using these for the various alts, and it does make leveling quicker.

Oh, and one last thing... Cartographer. Sadly 3.3 has borked this addon, but if you disable the look and feel module it still works. If you'd prefer to replace it completely, hit No Stock UI for a nice writeup of your options.

Power Auras Classic, a basic primer

I am no expert on Power Auras Classic, but I can make it do a few simple things. Mostly I've figured out how to make it tell me when I do or do not have a buff.
So, here's how you set it up to tell you you're missing a buff...
Type /powa to get the first config menu. It should look something like...



Now, there are no auras, so you want to hit new. Now you get a window that looks like...

Now, first you can customize what your aura looks like. Change texture and color to something you like (and that will make you think of the buff). In the above case I used red to tell me something's wrong. Basically all the options on the top half of the window are to do with visual customization, so play around till you get something you think will work.

Now for the important stuff, the bottom half. In the above picture I've...
Filled out the name of the buff I want the aura to use (Trueshot Aura)
And told it to tell me when it isn't active.

Here's another example...


Pretty similar, except I've used a different texture and color, and it tells me when Inner Fire isn't active.

Now, Power Auras Classic can do much, much more than just tell you if you're missing class buffs. It can tell you if say, you're missing a particular pally buff in raid, if Lock and Load (or any other action) is ready, if an item is ready, and a ton of other things. Check out these options...



On Garetia it tells me when I'm in Aspect of the Viper, when Furious Howl procs, when I'm in Rapid Fire, and when I've got certain combat buffs (mostly related to the pet). On my priest, it reminds me to buff, and does the same for my druid. On my mage, it tells me when my armor spell needs to be reapplied. And that's just barely scratching the surface. Honestly, this addon just makes life a bit easier.

(and yes, these screenshots switch between my bank toon, Garetia, and Lyllea, just in case you were wondering).

Ooh, lookie what I can do! Yup, that is two instances of wow running, and two characters being controlled at the same time. Or rather one character being controlled and one on follow. It's a warrior and priest pair, and so far it's going pretty well. The warrior's a skinner/herbalist, and the main one I'm controlling. The priest just follows along, and occasionally I switch over to her to heal the warrior. She has no professions as of yet, but I'm thinking Inscription/Tailoring. I'm not using any fancy software or macros or anything atm, but I need to find some. I know there's an addon for multiboxing that I need to go looking for, and I have the key cloning software, just haven't figured out how to use it yet. So for the moment, it's the primitive, but effective, window switch.

Quite a change from yesterday when I couldn't log on at all. Of course, I ran the repair tool which removed all my addons, but I've decided to use that opportunity to pare down my addon collection. I think instead of the crapton I have now, I'll stick with the following.
XPerl for unit frames and general pretty
Bartender because if it isn't on a bar I'm going to forget I have the ability
Questhelper cause I like being told where to go
Sexy Map for the pretty
Power Auras Classic to tell me important stuff like Demon armor has fallen off the warlock. I suspect it'll be even more useful with the dualboxing to remind me to keep both characters buffed.
Auctioneer because cash is good
Recount because I need to know my dps. NEED.
Omen, because otherwise how will I know if I'm winning the minigame or not? And yes, I routinely do win despite not being top dps. Stupid bursty mm spec, why can't I quit you?
Deadly Boss Mods because otherwise I will stand in the fire. (okay, so I generally don't, but still good to have)
Altaholic because I am firmly convinced this is the greatest addon EVER. I love being able to see what my alts have and don't have, where their profession skills are and what they can learn, as well as being able to select a recipe and know instantly what alts don't know it yet. Great addon for anyone with alts.

I'll let you guys know more about this multiboxing thing as I figure out more, and
HAPPY 4th of July!

Addons. Can't live without them, probably doomed next patch

So I am a huge addon girl. I love them. And so I figured I should talk about a few that I'm not sure I want to ever play without. I'm trying to avoid the big ones (dbm, cartographer, recount, omen, those) in favor of ones that you might not have heard of.

1. Pawn. Since I am in a guild that wants loot decisions NOW NOW NOW, an addon that allows me to very quickly compare gear is great. It's also nice for leveling all those alts, since I tend to forget what stats I should like. That's what Pawn does. You rate your stats (or find a premade scale for your class or use the hunter dps spreadsheet to generate one) and it gives the gear a number value in the tooltip. Once you have it set up, it's great.
Pawn on Curse
The official Pawn forums, where you can find premade scales, among other useful things

2. ViperNotify. All this little addon does is ding (and put a message on your screen) when you're in Viper and full on mana. That's it. Obviously useful only for hunters, but it's a great reminder so that you don't go through 3 shot rotations on Patchwerk before you start to wonder why your dps is abysmal. And nope, I never did that. You can't prove anything. It was all Gariath's fault. Really. And if you want one that automatically changes aspects for you, Gariath recommends AspectChange. Never used it, but he likes it.
ViperNotify on Curse

3. Autotrack. This addon switches your tracking to whatever you currently have targeted so you get the bonus dps from Improved Tracking. Personally, I'm a little too used to always having Track Herbs on (ooh, an herb), so this addon is a nice one for me. Only problem is that it will switch you even if you kill something while farming/mining, so just remember that. Personally, I'm contemplating a Power Auras Classic reminder (if I can figure out how to make one).
Autotrack on Curse

4. Doublewide. This makes the quest window, gasp, doublewide. I cannot remember how I ever lived without it. Seriously. Blizz, please put this in as an option, PLEASE!
Doublewide on Wowinterface. Sadly, no curse for this one, but it's well worth it

5. Lightheaded. This addon pulls the comments from wowhead and displays them next to the quest in the quest window. Again, love this addon. Saves me having to go look. Probably not the best addon if you're worried about your lag, though.
Again, no curse. Wowinterface only

I run with way more addons then that, but I think these are nice ones that don't change things drastically. They're simple and require no setup except for Pawn.

If you're interested in UI addons, I plan to do those next. I'm thinking of calling it... UI for the raider, or um, does anyone remember what the default ui looks like? I probably don't, come to think of it. I'm so doomed next patch/expansion. Oh well.

(Gariath is a fellow guildie and RL friend.)