Znor's Addon Spotlight #3: NPCScan

[Zenor]

Good day everyone!

I'm sure some of you are incredible achievement-whores (like me) and are trying to kill all rare mobs in Outland and/or Northrend. Most people use a macro filled with '/tar <mob>' commands. This addon makes those macro's obsolete.

Note:
The headers of the addons are actually links to the website where you'll be able to download the addon or check for more information.

NPCScan:

NPCScan is a rather simple addon that plays an ominous sound effect and shows a popup whenever a rare mob is near you.

Example pop-up of NPCScan

When a mob is near you, NPCScan will mark it with a Cone of Stupidity (tm) and you can click the popup to target it.

This addon works by checking the new entries in your 'cache' for a rare mob entry, that wasn't there before. I'll give a brief explanation:

Whenever you are near a mob that you haven't seen before, WoW will download the model for that mob and store it in a 'cache' file on your harddisk. So when WoW needs that model again, it can simply load it from your harddisk, reducing the strain on their network.

So all that NPCScan does, is show that popup whenever WoW is downloading a model that belongs to a rare mob.

There are 2 small downsides to this: It doesn't work for mobs that are already in your cache and it also 'procs' on dead mobs, so even though it is dead, it will still be added to your cache file and NPCScan won't show a popup for that mob again.

Luckily, this can be fixed by periodically deleting your cache file. This does not have any significant impact on the way you play WoW. It wil simply force the client to download all models that you encounter again.

You will need to close WoW, before deleting anything. You can either delete the entire Cache folder in your WoW directory, or you can browse inside the Cache folder to find the file 'creaturecache.wdb' and delete that.

NPCScan Overlay:

Ofcourse it's awesome to get a nice popup when you're near a rare mob, but how are you supposed to look for them? You could check WowHead or wowDB, but there is an easier way.

NPCScan Overlay in Netherstorm

NPCScan Overlay does exactly what you would expect. It creates an overlay over your standard map showing you where rare mobs might be. (Also works with Carbonite, Atlas and Cartographer)

If you have already killed a certain mob for the achievement, or if it is already in the cache file, the overlay for that mob will be disabled.


Hmm, I wasn't expecting to be writing such a big wall of text for this...
Anyway, I can sincerely recommend this addon for everyone looking to complete the Bloody Rare and Frostbitten achievements

NEXT WEEK
I will handle a few small but incredibly useful PvP addons.