Gatherer
The final major component of the Auctioneer suite we're going to look at is Gatherer.
Gatherer is, in short, a tracking system for ore, herb, chests, and other special items in the game. It has a few limitations - mainly that it doesn't show nodes in instances because there is no in-game instance maps (although several different addons provide these, the core world mapping engine does not include instances).
In the early days of World of Warcraft, Gatherer would not only show you where previously-harvested nodes were, but whether those nodes were currently 'live'. This functionality was removed because Blizzard considered it a cheat. However, the basic functionality to track node locations so that you can return to them later is still here, along with several other excellent tools.
I highly recommend downloading the WOWHead database and importing it, as this will give you a very nice head-start on collecting data. That said, the WOWHead DB is incomplete, and should not be relied on as a sole source of node locations - keep an eye on your minimap and the world around you.
One of the first changes you'll notice with Gatherer is that node locations appear on your minimap.
In this shot of Winterspring, we see a previously-harvested node that is out of range of the minimap (green box), several unharvested nodes that are also out of range (red box and elsewhere on the map border) and an unharvested node that is out of range of the Blizzard locator tool, which will show a yellow dot for a live node (yellow box). Not shown: A known node that is not live will be indicated by a circle on your minimap. Using the configuration screen, you can set the distance at which nodes are detected as well as various color, opacity, and other settings to suit your particular needs. You can also set Gatherer to show or hide node types that your character can't use; for instance, the character this screenshot was taken from is a Miner, so Herb nodes are not shown. While it can be difficult to discern, the nodes actually do indicate what particular type of recource is visible, through the use of the icon for that resource (i.e. a Sungrass icon for Sungrass, or a Felweed icon for Felweed).
In this graphic we can see the various different herb icons, as well as the placeholder (gray circle that the player icon is pointing toward) for known nodes that are not live. (Note: The square minimap, clock, and coordinates are from a different addon that I'll review another time.)
Gatherer also adds the nodes to your main world map, as seen in this clip of a my herbalist's map of Tuurem:
Again, the different types of nodes (
Terocone,
Felweed, and
Dreaming Glory in this example) are represented by their respective icons. The nodes will also show in unexplored areas of the map, although of course the actual map data around them won't. In addition to the nodes themselves, Gatherer adds a tooltop with some statistical information, including how many times you (or your guild members, if they have Gatherer set to share their data) have harvested a particular node. This tooltop shows up (in slightly different formats) on the minimap and on the regular map.
You can see the first tooltip (from the minimap) gives you slightly different information, including the distance to the node, how many times you personally have gathered it, and when the last time was you visited the node. The main map tooptip on the other hand will show you what sources the data came from (the second, distorted value in that graphic is the name of a guild member who harvested the node while using Gatherer and shared their information) The numbers are indicative of the node type, rather than the particular node, and show you, on average, how many of each item were harvested from that type of node. This is a percentage expressed digitally; for instance, about 4% of the Terocone I have gathered also had a Fel Lotus.
Another very useful Gatherer feature is the Heads-Up Display (HUD) that shows you much of the same information in a 3-D format in the main game screen. Here's our miner in Winterspring again:
This data moves along with you, so that instead of 'up' being 'north,' 'up' is always 'straight ahead.' You can see above that I've got a Thorium node very close in front of me and slightly to the left; farther ahead are a Mithril node, a chest, and two Thorium nodes that are known to yield Arcane Crystal. The HUD is, again, highly configurable, including it's size overall, the front-to-back 'tilt' angle, maximum distance of nodes displayed, and (indicated by the bright purple spots in this image) a path tracker showing where I've been for the last several minutes.
And here we see part of the HUD configuration, giving you an idea of the level of configurability this excellent add-on has available.
There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of configuration tweaks and minor tools in Auctioneer that I haven't covered here. I personally have been using it since shortly after I started playing three years ago, and it's been an absolute necessity every since. From the time saved in posting and pricing auction items, to simplifying the processes of farming materials and deciding whether to disenchant, auction, or vendor a given item, Auctioneer will improve your game and increase your time spent actually playing, versus fooling around with price checks, searching for ore and herb nodes, and trying to figure out exactly which items will give you which enchanting mats when you shard them.
Installation is a snap, and the instructions, along with more comprehensive how-to's, are available at the official website, linked at the top of these articles.
Previous: Enchantrix
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