npcscan Archives - HuntsmansLodge.com

NPCScan

May 23, 2011 By Garwulf 19 Comments

While working on my post about Madexx, I figured I’d make a little more fuss over NPCScan. It’s truly an awesome addon, which probably every WoW player should be using.

Even if you don’t play a hunter (in that case, wtf are you doing on my site?!), NPCScan is a great addon to have. It alerts you to rare spawn mobs that are nearby – including the targetable Mysterious Camel Figurines in Uldum. With NPCScan, you rarely miss an opportunity to find what you’re after, or to find what you didn’t know was there. 😉

As long as a mob’s within targeting range of NPCScan (which has a pretty huge radius), the addon will sound an alert and display some on-screen notifications – including a clickable portrat of the mob that it’s discovered. It also places a raid target icon on the rare mob, making it extremely easy to spot.
[Read more…] about NPCScan

Getting Your Tame On: Addons

February 3, 2011 By Ancksanura 47 Comments

A few people have been having difficulties with getting NPCScan to work, so I decided to write up a visual guide (because pictures say 1000 words) to try and help hunters get it working. In addition to that, I’ve also included some info for another great alternative to NPCScan.

Vista Users: WoW’s active Addon folder may be located in: User/Public/Games/World of Warcraft, instead of your install location. Supposedly some users have been having issues where the addons weren’t showing up because the addons in the main WoW addon directory weren’t being called up by the game – because it was using the ones in the User/Public/Games/World of Warcraft one. [Read more…] about Getting Your Tame On: Addons

Oozeworm

July 30, 2009 By Garwulf 7 Comments

Time to add another notch to the ol’ belt of rare spawn taming conquests. 😉

As I ‘d mentioned last week, I planned on grabbing Grubthor again since my 5th stable slot wasn’t being occupied by a Worgen any longer. Well, after 5-6 patrols of Silithus and still no sign of him, I figured I’d fly over to Dustwallow and see if this guy was around. According to the official World of Warcraft Atlas, Oozeworm is one of the rarest pets in the game with a respawn timer of up to two days.

Knowing how rare he was, I didn’t really expect to find him. There were also half a dozen players questing in the area as well, which made the likelihood of finding him even less. I flew into Mudsprocket then rode past two of his spawn areas with no sight of him, until I came to the third one by the Dragonkin camp – that’s when NPCScan did it’s thing.

He’s fairly easy to miss because although he’s the only worm in the area, he doesn’t really stand out. He’s not a vibrant color, nor is he big like the worms in Silithus or Maraudon.

While it wasn’t nearly as exciting as taming say… Loque’nahak or King Krush, it was still pretty cool. It’s always fun for me to tame a pet I haven’t ever tamed before.

So what does the rare worm in Dustwallow have to do with Grubthor, the rare worm in Silithus? They’re the only two worms in the game with a golden skin. There is a third worm model like this in the game, but it’s in Ahn’Qiraj and it cannot be tamed.

Most BM Hunters will go for a Jormungar in Northrend because they’re already level 80 and the skin is more sophisticated looking. Not me though… I like the nostalgia of the old world models, plus it’s fun to be the only Hunter on my server running around with a giant yellow inchworm. Of course, unlike one of the more attractive and uncommon pets like my Grimtotem Spirit Guide or King Krush, no one has ever said, “Oh wow… where did you get that worm..?! I gotta have one!” 😐 Still, he’s unique, old school and extremely uncommon, so that’s why I chose this particular model for my worm pet.

Ah… but now I have to level him to 80… Nope! Already did it. It was pretty quick and painless too. Since my favorite pet leveling spot has now become overrun by Hunter, Death Knight and Warlock bots, I’ve had to find new ones. It’s pretty absurd actually. When I first discovered the spot there was one Warlock bot there. A few months later and now there are five regularly farming the area.

After trying out a few different places in the Storm Peaks, I happened upon this one…

This cave is near the Harpies in Bor’s Breath right by one of the places where the Time Lost Proto Drake supposedly spawns. It’s full of Iron Dwarves who go down like chumps and drop Relics of Ulduar like candy. Within two nights of grinding in here, I had Oozeworm up to level 80 and was able to send my level 73 Death Knight 288 relics to give him a head start on the shoulder enchants once he hits 80.

Call me crazy, but I actually enjoy the five level grind from 75 to 80. It’s a nice therapeutic break from everything, plus I usually make a considerable amount of gold in the process. For me it seems like a breeze anyway, having leveled many a pet back in the old days way before the new system of having newly tamed pets only five levels below you.

Did I ever tell you about the time I tamed Humar when I was level 60…

I Acquired Crabs in Desolace

April 30, 2009 By Garwulf 13 Comments

When I made the switch to Survival, I needed a new pet, so it was off to Desolace.

Why Desolace, you ask? Well, that’s because I needed a crab.

Now I bet you’re wondering why I didn’t just grab some random crab off the coast of Northrend and save myself the trouble of traveling all the way to this god forsaken land. The answer is simple.

No pet is worth taming if I don’t have to work to get it. I’m a freak when it comes to pets. If they don’t have a silver dragon around their portrait, then I don’t want ’em. The only excpetion to the rule here would be my ghost wolf, but that’s the only exception.

Some of you may not know this, and more of you may not give a damn, but the only rare crab in the game happens to inhabit the waters off the coast of Desolace. His name is Crusty, and he’s a little red bottom-dweller.

I’d actually tamed him prior to WotLK, but I ended up letting him go due to the fact that I wanted to experiment with, and tame other pets. Well, since I decided to give Survival a whirl for arena, I decided to re-enlist Crusty for his services.

Finding him this time didn’t prove to be very difficult. Although I didn’t locate him during my first sweep of the area, I did manage to target him within moments of logging in the next day.

Catching Rare Crabs Made Easy

Download and install NPCScan
Enter in the name and NPC ID of the crab you want to catch. In my case, this was the Crusty variety.
Swill down an Elixir of Water Walking
Turn on Aspect of the Cheetah
Do laps up and down the waters off the coast of Desolace in Jesus mode.

Eventually NPCScan will go BWWWAAAAWWWMMMM! Along with displaying a little 3D portrait of the little crustacean.

For more info about NPCScan and how to use it, check out this post.

Prior to going after Crusty, my stable contained three exotic pets and two non-exotics. Of my non-exotics, only one of them, the gorilla, was really considered a PvP pet. Pummel is great for interrupting casters, but I prefer the Crab’s 4 second lockdown that affects all classes.

So, of all my pets which is the one that you think I abandoned?

Was it King Krush?

Might it have been Loque’nahak..?

Could it have been Nuramoc?

Was it my wolf..? Hell No!! You think I’m crazy..?! 😉

Or… was it my ape?

Stay tuned for the answer…

Attention: Hunters Who Are Looking To Tame Gondria

April 17, 2009 By Garwulf 116 Comments

Gondria, the New Spirit Beast

As I’d previously mentioned in a comment somewhere on this site, there is a mod available that should greatly help in your search for Gondria, Loque’nahak, or any other rares you may be after. My buddy Blaquespell had alerted me to a mod which he found that makes searching for rare mobs quite a bit easier. He’s been casually trying to hunt down the elusive Time-Lost Proto Drake in the Storm Peaks, and this addon has been helpful for him (even though he hasn’t been lucky enough to find it yet).

The mod is called NPCScan, and is available for download off of WoWInterface. The NPCScan addon pretty much replaces a /target macro, and automates the task of finding rare spawns. It automatically scans the area for any rare mobs that you haven’t encountered, and targets them without the need to mash a macro. Plus, NPCScan has the same range as a targeting macro.

While the addon is active, it will automatically scan while you’re exploring an area and alert you when a rare spawn is found. Basically, it detects mobs that aren’t stored within your game cache. The catch is, once a rare mob is located it will no longer alert you to it unless you clear your cache. Clearing your cache is an easy process and is completely safe.

To clear your cache, just navigate to your World of Warcraft folder, open it and delete the Cache directory.

On a Windows machine: C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Cache
On a Mac: Macintosh HD\Applications\World of Warcraft\Cache

The process is worry-free, because your cache directory gets automatically rebuilt upon your next login. If you were to say, happen upon Loque’nahak’s corpse, you’d need to clear your cache after logging. This would ensure that NPCScan would alert you next time Loque’nahak was spawned.

NPCScan will also provide a “cache warning” when you log in. If any of the listed mobs are ones you’re still searching for, then you will need to follow the steps to clear your cache.

The Catch: Hunters Read This!

Since NPCScan cannot differentiate between tamed rares and rares yet to be tamed, it will go off if a nearby Hunter has tamed a rare spawn, like Gondria for example. By default, it does not account for rare tamable beasts. To fix this however is relatively easy.

The first thing you’ll need to do is get the NPC ID for the mob(s) you’re searching for. To do this, just search for the rare spawn in a database like Wowhead‘s. Once you find it, there will be a number at the end of the url in your address bar, which is the NPC ID.

Browse to the rare mob's page on WoWHead, then copy its NPC ID from the address bar.

Open up the NPCScan options menu by typing in, /npcscan. You’ll see a configuration screen with a list of rare spawns. To enter in a new one, just type the name and NPC ID at the bottom and hit the + icon. That’s all there is to it.

Open up NPCScan and add the NPC ID

NPC IDs For Some Popular Rare Spawn Pets

Gondria: 33776
Loque’nahak: 32517
King Krush: 32485
Aotona: 32481
Nuramoc: 20932
Rak’shiri: 10200
Sewer Beast: 3581

When NPCScan detects the rare spawn, it will alert you with an audible alarm, a targetable icon, a message in chat and flashing red borders around your screen. You’d have to be asleep to miss this. The small NPC icon and target frame can be repositioned on your screen by holding down ctrl and dragging it with your mouse.

NPCScan will automatically alert you when a rare mob is in targeting range.

There are many other options available for this great addon, but I suggest you download and install it to get a feel for things. Hopefully my explanation and short tutorial here will help get you started.

Lastly, here’s an updated map for Gondria’s spawn locations in Zul’Drak.

Map of Gondria's spawn locations in Zu'Drak.

Good luck and Happy Huntering!