Monday, June 6, 2011

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.


17 comments:

  1. how do i delete my cache? i didn't understand where to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Go to windows explorer and find your World of Warcraft folder.

    For example, mine is in c:\Games\World of Warcraft

    When you are in the World of Warcraft folder there should be another folder at the very top called "cache". Right click the folder and hit delete. Fini!

    ReplyDelete
  3. ah ok, got it now, thx

    ReplyDelete
  4. Where do you get the other alert sounds? like "you will die" and "war drums"?? i've only got the default sound. And how do you add sounds?? I've installed the sharedmedia just a bit stuck on how to add sounds ^^ .

    ReplyDelete
  5. Go into your interface, then the addons tab. From there go to NPCScan and in the section under Alert Options there should be a button called "test found alert", a box that you can check called "Unmuted for alert sound" and under that there is a drop down list titled "Alert Sound File". That drop down list is what has all the different alert option sounds. I don't have "you will die" available in mine, but I have the "war drums" option. Those came with the addon downloaded directly from curse.com.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I got WinRar when i try to download it i dont know where to put it then when i did put it in a file it didint work inside the game

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You need to extract it from WinRar. When you open up the file with WinRar select all of the folders and then click the "extract to" button. From there you are going to want to make sure it goes into your addon folder. Everyone's is a little different, mine is under c:\Games\World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons. Once you know where your addon folder is just extract it to that location and you should be ready to roll! Hope that helped.

      Delete
  7. Ya thanks it worked another question if im not by the rare monster like aeonaxx and im in stormwind will it still find it for me if it does show up?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nope, you need to be able to "see" the mob, as in your video card needs to be able to draw it in order to find it. The only exception I know of currently is Mobus(NPCScan has been going off when he is up for people all over the Eastern Kingdoms).

      Delete
  8. easy way to always have your cache cleared for NPC scan. assuming US account.
    Step one : create a text file on your desktop
    step two : open the file up in notepad and enter the following lines:

    @echo off
    del "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Cache\WDB\enUS\creaturecache.wdb"
    "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\launcher.exe"

    step three : save the text file as a batch file, call it "wow.bat" for example.
    step four : use the new batch file to start your wow launcher, and your NPC scan cache will automatically be cleared each time you start wow.

    NOTE: change the letter C: to whatever letter drive you have wow installed to.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the tip! I'm going to have to give that a try. =)

      Delete
    2. changing the text file to

      @echo off
      del "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Cache\WDB\enUS\creaturecache.wdb"
      start "C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\launcher.exe" | exit

      will close the command screen as soon as the cache is deleted. which can be a little more convenient for some.

      Delete
  9. here's a question: i am simultaneously running 2 wow accounts on the same computer, camping 2 areas. If I am not tabbed out on ONE of the accounts (but obviously tabbed out for the other one), will NPCscan give the audio alert for EITHER / BOTH accounts or just the one I'm tabbed into?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If NPCScan goes off on the second account (the one you are tabbed out of in the background), you will need to be in windowed mode to be able to hear it. Just mute the sound in the second account and make sure that you check off "unmute for alert sound" in the NPCScan alert options so that you can hear it when/if it goes off. Hope that answers your question.

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  10. Got NPCScan from curse and I have a problem. I dont find the Search tab on addons. I changed that .toc file from 50001 to 50200 and still dont works ...

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  11. your right it sounds annoying to have to log out of the game to delete the CACHE, after finding each rare.. more trouble then it is worth......thanks for the info but I won't be useing NPCScan or Silverdragon... I'll just hunt them with out it.

    ReplyDelete
  12. can't download the addons :\

    ReplyDelete