Free Candy For Everyone

Hi folks! I’ve been kinda busy playing too much World of Warcraft for a change, sorry for the lack of updates! Patch 3.0.2 introduced us to the joys of achievements and between that and the second account I started (long story I’ll share another day), I’ve been putting in maybe a few extra hours gathering and exploring. Most recently I’ve been spending my energy trying to get as many non-combat pets as possible.

There’s no real point to them, they just follow you around and look cute. But they no longer take up space in your inventory and if you can get 50 of them, you get a special skunk pet! Woohoo!

Here’s a cute little rabbit - the Alliance can just buy him from a vendor, Horde have to get it from the cross-faction auction house.

it's a little bunny!

Right now, there’s a special event going on for Halloween (OMG, my first in-game Halloween was in 2005) and if you defeat the Headless Horseman you can win this adorable little fellow.

Mean Mr. Pumpkin

After all my efforts, I still need more pets!

15 to go...

Lastly, what fun is having these pets if you can’t use them? I wrote a little macro anyone can use to randomly summon any pet. Should work for all characters, as long as they have at least one pet!

/script CallCompanion("CRITTER", random(1, GetNumCompanions("CRITTER")))

For a very long time, my co-workers and I had been playing the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game at lunch. It has, however, been dethroned from its place of honor. For the past few months we have been playing Race for the Galaxy in an obsessive, addicted, just-one-more-game sort of way.

It’s a card game, not collectible, just pick it up an play. The quick description is San Juan in space. And for those of you that doesn’t help, it’s sort of a card game version of Puerto Rico. And if that still doesn’t help you then you need to go check out some board games! Just kidding.

In all three games you select from a pool of different roles that let you acquire resources or build things. You are trying to get the most points and the ending point is when the point pool is empty or enough buildings have been constructed. While I really like Puerto Rico and San Juan they just don’t compare to Race for the Galaxy in how they hold my interest. As my friend Brian said, as soon as we finish a game we just want to play another one. How many games can you say that about?

I’d say we’ve been playing an average of three or four games a day for the last two or three months. Every game is still different and interesting. There are many different strategies to victory. Luck plays a factor in the game as the cards in your hand determine what you can do but there’s also skill in looking through what you’ve been dealt and formulating a strategy from it all.

There’s an expansion pack due out sometime in the next few months and we just can’t wait for more ways to play. I continue to be excited about playing this game every day. And in just a few short months it has infiltrated the top ten games on Board Game Geek and that is an impressive feat. This is the list board gamers use to find what’s good. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it continue to rise in the ranks, it’s just that good.

A long time ago I wrote a post on the addons I was using in World of Warcraft. Well, it’s coming close to two years since I wrote that post and I’ve made some changes to my addon packs. A friend who has been playing WoW for a long time is finally ready to try to sully his pristine interface with some of these things and wanted some tips on what to try so I thought I’d update my online list as well.

First we’ll start with the things that haven’t changed.

Auctioneer
I still use this. If you want to play the auction house game and make sure you buy low, sell high, you need to know the standard market prices on your server. This lovely tool does all the remembering for you. Scan the AH every day and build up a database of prices for everything, then whenever you mouse over anything it tells you how many times you’ve seen it at auction and what it goes for. It’s really amazing how much prices differ from server to server and this addon ensures you don’t have to keep track of that. This has become even more useful to mean now that I regularly play characters on two very different servers.

Autoprofit
Adds a button to every vendor to autosell all trash items. Yes! Makes life so easy! The main difference is that I’ve switched to using and Ace version of this addon. What’s Ace? Well, it’s a set of libraries that share memory and are optimized and blah blah blah. The main thing I care about is that there’s a handy-dandy updater application you can download and install. Then you just open it up, tell it to look for updates and install them. I don’t have to worry about keeping any of my Ace addons up to date anymore. A word of caution however, it installs the newest of new versions which is sometimes a beta and buggy. But it’s worth the convenience, in my mind.

Scrolling Combat Text
I love seeing details on everything that is damaging me or my enemies. I love seeing who healed me or how much I overhealed someone else. This one is great. Note that there are two addons, SCT and SCTD (d is for damage). Get them both for the most options! Note that I stopped using Cosmos which came with too much crap I didn’t want. I just download this one straight from the source.

CTMod
A collection of simple addons, I use it for the parts that let me see health percentages next to my party’s health bars and let me see all buffs and debuffs on party members. I don’t really raid so RaidAssist doesn’t get much use and I disable most of the bar mods. But for the few pieces I use, it is essential.

Ok, now for the new!

FuBar
This replaces TitanPanel. I basically switched because I wanted to be able to use the AceUpdater, no other reason. It puts a bar at the top and/or bottom of your screen for quick information. Time to level, gold, bag space, clock, current coordinates, anything you want really! It’s actually a framework for addons so you can find all sorts of plugins for FuBar if you search around. I actually just installed this directly from the AceUpdater, as with all the Ace addons. I installed the updater first, then checked off everything that sounded interesting and let it do the heavy lifting.

Bagnon
This replaces AllInOneInventory which broke and went kabloom. One window to see everything in your bags, one window for everything in your bank. I don’t love this addon - the windows don’t interact properly with normal WoW windows, so trade skill and character pages happily come up right on top of these. I just haven’t found something that is simple and works any better. Happy to take suggestions! But I definitely recommend an addon of this type, no more searching to find WHICH bag some item is in.

Fizzwidget’s ReagentCost
Using data from Auctioneer, this adds the market cost of the materials to craft something to all your tradeskill windows. Crafting is mostly a money losing proposition. With this addon you can at least make sure that when you’re leveling up a skill you’re making the most cost efficient items (ie the ones that sell for the closest to their crafting cost). I like the Fizzwidget addons in general and am currently also testing out Adspace which adds a tooltip to recipes that lists all the vendors that sell it. Since I like to make my money by buying patterns and selling them at auction, I hope people don’t install this one. LOL. Just kidding! Kinda.

These next addons are really not required, but they add info that can be fun or helpful.

LightHeaded
The ultimate lazy person’s tool! If you’re like me and have started up at least 30 alts over various points, you don’t care about reading the quest text on something you’ve done so many times. You just want to find the coordinates and get things done. Well this addon embeds Wowhead comments directly into the game. No more alt-tabbing out to read up on what to do for a quest or what the coordinates are! Just see it right there! And if you have a waypoint addon installed (like Cartographer) you can just click on any coordinates and an arrow will lead you there. Yes, I know I’m lazy. But this stuff helps keep the borings at bay when you’re on you gazillionth character.

Recount
This is an uber-damage meter. Not only can you see who in the group is doing the most damage, you can see what skills everyone is using to do the damage. Charts, graphs, pretty colors, what more could you ask for? I found it because I was looking for an Ace damage meter and this one far exceeded my expectations.

Omen
A threat meter, this is nice for grouping but everyone needs to be running it. Let’s you see how much aggro you are drawing and if you’re in danger of pulling a mob of your tank. Gives you a nice indication when you should back off the DPS (or the heals!).

Cartographer
A map addon, this does a lot. It reveals the whole map in a zone so you can always find things - no more waiting to discover areas to see what everything looks like. It gives you zone maps when you’re inside and instance and shows you where all the bosses are. Even cooler, you can click on those bosses and it will show you what loot they drop! That part is super cool.

Ok, that’s all for now. I love me some addons.