NPCScan

I posted a very similar post in my other blog Find Aeonaxx devoted to finding the rare spawn Aeonaxx in Deepholm. I cannot stress enough that NPC scan is an absolute necessity if you plan on hunting rare spawns. I have tried other addons with the same purpose, but I always come back to NPCScan. You can download it from Curse.com. I also highly recommend downloading NPCScan.Overlay as well. (NPCScan.Overlay adds an overlay to your map which displays where rare mobs patrol.) In the screenshot below you can see an example of this. The colorful areas are where different rares can be found, and in the bottom left hand of your screen it will tell you the name of the rare spawn using a nice color code to tell you which mob patrols in each area. When a rare is found you will be able tell the approximate location that it has been found right on your map because a small, almost transparent circle will appear in the color associated with the particular npc. As you can see below I found Shok'sharak in the western spawn location in Promontory Point.

 

What NPCScan does is track rarely seen mobs in the game by proximity. When a rare npc is found npcscan checks your creature cache and the mob becomes "cached". It is extremely important that you clear your cache often. Npcscan will NOT be able to find a cached npc again until your cache has been cleared. Although kind of annoying, clearing your cache is relatively simple.

To clear your cache:

1. Exit World of Warcraft.
2. Delete the “Cache” sub-directory inside your World of Warcraft folder.  For example on a standard Windows XP installation, you would delete the folder “C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Cache”.
• Advanced users can delete “C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Cache\WDB\enUS\creaturecache.wdb” specifically to improve log-in times, where enUS is your language code.

When npcscan finds a rare spawn it will alert you with a loud sound. (I prefer to keep mine on the default setting.) Your screen will also pulse red and an animated button will appear displaying the name of the rare spawn and a small picture of it. When you click on the animated button npcscan will attempt targeting the rare spawn. I made a short fraps video testing the found alert below.

VIEW DISTANCE:

Make sure you have your view distance set to "ULTRA" when possible while hunting for rares. If your video card can draw an npc your NPCScan will go off. If your settings are too low you could potentially miss rares you would have otherwise found.

When you're ready to begin the hunt for rares NPCScan should look just like the one in the screenshot below. Notice how there are no red x's under the cached column. If you see a red x next to the particular mob(s) that you are looking for, follow the steps above to clear your cache.

Here is an example below that has several cached npcs, also notice the green check marks under the "Done" column. Those check marks show that you have killed those particular mobs required for the Frostbitten and Bloody Rare achievements. After you clear your cache, the green check marks will still remain but do not effect whether or not NPCScan will go off if it finds a rare.

Remember, DON'T FORGET TO CLEAR YOUR CACHE!! If a rare mob spawns, is within range of  you and has been cached, NPCScan will not go off.

One Other very important piece of information I'd like to add is IF YOU TAB OUT OF THE GAME YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO HEAR NPCSCAN IF IT GOES OFF IF YOU ARE NOT IN WINDOWED MODE. Even if you have "Sound in Background" checked off in your options menu. If you're planning on sitting your character on a spawn point or patrol location of a rare and then tabbing out and browsing the web, this is not an option. I learned this the hard way when I was camping for Aeonaxx on my husbands toon. He had tabbed out of the game to research something on the web. When we got back into the game Npcscan's animated Aeonaxx button was right there in the middle of his screen, the alert was going off, his screen was flashing red and general chat was all about who downed Aeonaxx. We won't make that mistake again... In windowed mode however, you will be able to hear it if your tabbed out, it's in the background, and it does go off.