Professions

Map Route

How would you like an addon that:

1. Put EVERY known spawn point of every type of ore/herb on your map? (not just ones you've gathered)

2. Put a tiny ore/herb indicator on your minimap which showed what type of ore/herb it is?

3. Had the minimap indicator turn into an empty circle when you're close enough to see if there's a spawn there or not?

AND

4. Drew a route on your map and minimap that most efficiently took you to visit every spawn point?

Welcome to Cartographer Routes!

Move over 'Gatherer Addon'....there's a new mod which will do more than replace Gatherer. It reduces the time it takes to find ore/herbs.

Here's what to do:

1. Go to http://www.wowace.com and get the WoWAce Auto Updater. http://www.wowace.com/wiki/WowAceUpdater

2. Once you've installed it, you can choose which Ace addons you want. Choose and install:

* Cartographer
* Cartographer Data
* Cartographer Herbalism or Cartographer Mining or both, depending on your Professions
* Cartographer Routes

3. Once in the game, you should see a small 'Screw' icon on your minimap. Click that and choose Cartographer from the list of addons (other Ace addons will appear if you have them installed).

4. Configure Herbalism/Mining to display how you want it. You'll know it's working correctly if you open your map and see a ton of ore/herb symbols all over the place. (Unless you're in a city, obviously....then just chose a zone that should.)

5. Add and configure Routes from the Routes screen. I walk through that below. Before you do, I recommend you change the global setting of the Route size to the minimum (I think it's 10). The default is like 35 and puts quite a thick line on your map that can actually block you from seeing the spawn points.

Routes:
1. From the configuration screen (which you get from clicking the Screw icon), choose Routes, Add.
2. Give your route a name. Start with something like "Netherstorm Ore All".
3. Choose the zone of the map the route applies to. (ie: Netherstorm for the example)
4. Click the Data dropdown, and then check on all that you want to find. For now, let's start with all of them (Fel Iron, Adamantite, Rich Adamantite, Khorium). If you can see your map, you'll see that it basically draws a line from every spawn point to every other spawn point. Not very helpful. That's why the next step is so important.
5. Optimize! I choose the 'Extra Optimized' option, and optimize in the fore-ground. (doing it in the background lets you keep playing WoW while it calculates the route...I just prefer to let it get the route done faster.)

TA-DA! You should have the most efficient (shortest) route that will circuit the map and hit every spawn point along the way!

Now you can just fly along this route (you don't have to stick exactly to it), and you will fly over every point on a given zone.

I haven't timed it yet, but later this weekend I plan to run a few circuits to test out how long it takes and how much I earn in a given circuit.

The other thing you can do is create shorter routes based on fewer spawn points. Don't choose EVERY type of data, but instead choose just one, such as Adamantite. Let the route be built on Adamantite only. Maybe you're only interested in Adamantite because it sells better on your server than Fel Iron. You can shorten your route a bit...and you can still see Fel Iron if you happen to fly over it. You just won't go out of your way to check a single Fel Iron spawn point.