SilverDragon - Rare Scanner
SilverDragon
SilverDragon tracks rares in World of Warcraft. It will try everything possible to notice them and tell you about them.
How does it search?
Vignettes
Those little skull icons you see on the minimap. If one of them is a rare SilverDragon knows about, it'll yell at you.
Targets
If you mouse over or target a rare mob, SilverDragon will notice it.
Nameplates
If you have enemy nameplates turned on, SilverDragon will keep an eye on them to look for the names of known rares.
Macro
SilverDragon can also create a macro to target any rares that are known in the current zone. You can stick this on your actionbars as a button to spam while chasing after a rare, or bind it to a key. This is sort of a last resort.
Chat
Some rares yell in zone chat. If SilverDragon notices those yells, it'll alert you.
Dark Magic
This abuses detection of when Blizzard blocks attempts to call a protected function (TargetUnit
) to work out when you're in targetting range of a unit with a given name
This inherently causes in-game errors, so it is disabled by default. Enable in the addon config under Scanning / Dark Magic
.
By default it's less-aggressive, scanning through rares in the zone without known vignettes at a rate of 1/second. However, you can turn that rate way up if you'd like. You can also turn on an option to automatically hide the error messages it causes, but beware that this will potentially cause taint issues that'll leave you needing to /reload
eventually.
How will I know when a rare is seen?
Frame
When a rare appears, SilverDragon will pop up a frame that you can click on to target it.
Warning: If you're in combat, secure action restrictions mean that it won't show up until combat finishes.
Sounds
You can choose from assorted sounds to play when a rare is seen. The sound can loop for a while, to make sure you don't miss it.
There's special settings for rares that drop mounts and world boss rares which you might want to call up a group for. If you're sitting mostly-AFK on a Time-Lost Proto Drake spawn, you probably want the sound that plays to be utterly ridiculous and go on for a good long while, to make sure you don't miss that sucker.
Messages
A notice can be sent to a number of places:
- your scrolling combat text
- your chat frame
- a channel in your chat frame (announcing it to your party, for instance)
- a popup window
- etc
History
A log of seen rares will be shown in a window, so you can easily glance over spawn times.
Other useful things?
Custom mobs
In SilverDragon's options you'll find a "Mobs" section. In the "Always" section, you can add any mob you want to be scanned for. All you need to know is the mob id.
So, let's say you wanted to keep an eye out for Lil Timmy in Stormwind, to buy the kitten he sells. You would...
- Go to his wowhead page.
- Grab his id from the URL. It's
8666
. - Enter
8666
into the "add" field, and click "okay". - Play with your new kitten.
Yes, this example dates me.
Ignoring mobs
If there's some mob you don't want to hear about for whatever reason, just go to the "Ignore" section of the options. Again, enter the mob's id into the "add" box, then click okay. Bam! You will never again be told that Vern is up.
(Actually, Vern is ignored by default. But you get the idea.)
Alternately, right-click the close button for the popup and that'll ignore it as well.
Syncs
SilverDragon will talk to itself. It can communicate with other copies of itself run by people in your party / guild, and tell you when they see a rare mob. (If there's a group of you camping all the Time-Lost Proto Drake spawns, say...)
You can turn this off completely, if you want to be private about it.
Tooltips
Some rares are part of an achievement. When you mouse over a rare mob, SilverDragon will add to the tooltip whether you've already killed it, so you know whether you need to rush for it.
Broker
SilverDragon includes a Broker plugin. It'll attach itself to the addon compartment and also your minimap, or a Broker container you have installed, and show you a list of the mobs it knows about in the current zone.
Other addons you may find useful
- AppearanceTooltip: integrates with the SilverDragon loot popups and shows transmog-known status.
- ServerRestartSound: plays a sound when the server's about to restart. If you're AFK-camping for a rare spawn, you probably want to know about this.
- ObjectScanner: A few rares are hidden away behind interacting with world-objects like the Edge of Reality. These have to be localized individually, so you need to work out what they're called in your language and set up a watch for tooltips mentioning them. This addon does that bit.
- ButtonBin: a broker display. SilverDragon's minimap icon will show up on it (or any other addon like it) instead of cluttering up your minimap, if you have it installed.
No triggering when you fly past it, I'm afraid. Minimap icons for pets are much more of a pain to scan than the rare-vignette icons.
Maybe I'm just missing the obvious but is there a way to change the size of the pop up frame? I often like to keep the frame up as a reminder while I continue doing other things but I wish I could make it smaller.
So I ended up writing lists of the rares per zone (/tar <rare name here>) I'm in in macros, and using that to guide SilverDragon to rare spawns. The macro scrolls down the list, and if one of the rares is nearby, targets it - which trips the SilverDragon popup and alert.
Works well enough for what I want it for now, since using the SilverDragon macro without importing the rare list doesn't work for me. Not sure if this is a bug, or a conflict with another add-on.
Something I have noticed though, sometimes the icons that pop-up on the map do so in the wrong place, or underneath something else (gathermate nodes, wholly quest marks), making them hard to spot. Could you make the icons drag-able please? Thanks in advance^^
Everytime I mouse over Haakun the All-Consuming in Shattrath - Draenor, my game crashes. If I turn of silverdragon, game doesnt crash.
Same thing happened to me. Never had wow crash form an addon before. Haakun the All-Consuming in Shattrath crashes the game.
Looks like this was reported back in May so it seems to be an ongoing issue. Back to npcscan :(
Unfortunately, looks like people are complaining about it on NPCscan, too. ;-)
That said, I fixed it in the just-released version.
Is there a way to retarget a rare if you closed the target window early? I see a rare, the target window shows up, if I close the target window early and the rare is still there, how can I retarget the mob?
That's where the macro comes in handy. Either make a macro that says "/click SilverDragonMacroButton" or go into the settings and press the button in "scanning > macro" that'll do it for you. Then use that macro, and it'll try to target rares that were nearby.
Depends on how you found it. If you imported the list, and the macro is working, then yes this will happen. If you chose not to import the list, and found the rare yourself (via mouseover or during flight for example) then no, this won't work as the macro is import list dependent as I stated before
Macro doesn't rely on the import. It does, however, only rebuild itself when you change zones, which explains why it doesn't immediately work to target a rare you just saw. (I should fix that.)
Ah cool. In that case I should be able to use the macro without needing the list import. That's good then, coz the list suffers from some strange errors. Nearby zones overlapping I can understand (such as with Durator and Nrth Barrens) as it is concievably possible to pick up on rares near the edges of adjacent zones.
But Darkmoon Rabbit is listed as inside Orgrimmar, along with a couple others that just don't make sense. There's also something called a Shar of Anger (?) which is listed as just outside the gates?
EDIT: Nope. Without the list imported, the macro is still refusing to find rares - even if I leave the zone, and return. Tested this out at Mulgore/Thunderbluff.
First I confirmed the presence of the rare (Doomsayer Wiserunner), then headed to TB to rebuild with the zone change - returning to the rare's hideaway, the macro still didn't pick up on anything - right up until I was practically on top of it.
Mouseover works fine, but de-selecting the rare and hitting macro still doesn't find anything. This does work when the list is imported - even if the rare is dead. Any idea what's going wrong?
For now I've just made a cheap macro listing the rares in the zone I am in, and click that. Works the same :P
So, I just wondered what's up with the latest version of SilverDragon. I'm currently in the Nth Barrens, and the list of rares for the area includes Cptn Flat-tusk - which is a Durator rare. I've noticed a few other handynotes sighting which too far out of place before, but this is the first I've seen that's in the wrong zone.
What I really don't understand is, the previous version had him listed in Durator. Is there a way to fix these issues, or do I need to wait for the next version? Also, can I manually trim sightings? Some of the current ones are wildly inaccurate, as I said.
Ideally, I'd like to be able to keep ones which I can confirm are correct, and trim those which either are just plain wrong (as per Sis Rathalon at Crossroads), or have a lower spawn frequency.
I know I can do this for each icon on the map, but I want to know if I click "delete entire mob" will it remove it just from that zone (as per our good Cptn) or will it also effect the Durator location?
EDIT: So I figured it out. For the most part, I can just manually prune each rare after confirming one location. Once I have one set, I'm happy. For the other, I had to remove the entire mob, which wiped both zones. I can just find him though, since I know where he spawns
My new question then, is will you be adding an "export mobs" function? I'd like to be able to save my personal list of located rares somewhere in case I need to reinstall the game at some point again (like I had to for WoD ==) I'd like to be able to have this as an optional location for "import rares" should this be implemented
Also, I can't seen to add my own handynote icons? When I see a rare, it don't drop a sighting like it does if you don't import. Did something get disabled I need to reset? A way to manually add would be nice too, since cave mobs don't appear in their corresponding map
SECOND EDIT: Okay, this is weird. The Darkmoon Rabit is located in Orgrimmar? oO Something is screwy with SilverDragon's rare import list. The Sha of Anger and Tak the Leaper are reported to be in Durator too :/
I deleted the import list and installed npcscan's overlay, as it seemed the berst solution to the problem. Feels wierd doing it this way though, so I wondered if SilverDragon will get an overlay at some point?
THIRD EDIT: Had to abandon this idea, as the npcscan overlay interferes with the macro scan :/
So I thoght, but I was wrong. It's just the macro doesn't work unless you load the mob list. But since the mob list is a scewed up >>
That said:
"I, as its author, have precisely one quirk: I like a minimal starting experience. That means that by defaultSilverDragon doesn't know about any rare mobs, and will just learn about them when you encounter new ones." - quote Keymayo (author)
I like minimal starting experience too, but SilverDragon no longer works like this. If you do not load the rare mob list, you can sit down next to a rare, and nothing will happen. Even the macro fails to see anything.
The macro only works if the list has been added. I've tried adding rares with mouseover first, but the macro just doesn't see anything without the imported mob list to reference.
Since in WoD you only get the loot from the rare the 1st time. Is there anyway to easly clear a rare name/icon from one characters list without it effecting other characters? I have tons of alts. >; >
Could you explain what you mean by this? Are these Draenor specific rares? Coz the old content rares don't have this behaviour.
With regards to your question, however - you can set a profile for each character which should give you what you need here. The default view is shared, but you can go into Interface/Addons./Silverdragon ,and set the profile option there
I have a question why are none of the 7 rares that drop mounts listed in your addon?
Because my addon knows about things which are on wowhead / wowdb, and flagged as rare. I can force other stuff in, but it's not automatic.
Have to correct myself only 5 of the 7 rares that drop mounts are missing:
Nakk the Thunderer
Silthide
Poundfist
Gorok
Nok-Karosh
I looked into it a little more. The missing ones are missing because their locations aren't known, or in Nok-Karosh's case because it's apparently not actually tagged as a rare.
There's an alpha build up now which includes them all.
No German Mobnames anymore? All Mobnames are in english now, it makes a diffrence for an example fulgorge is normaly gierschlund in german what happend? and does it still work for german users?
Hey im not sure if i should bug this here or at TomTom, since TomTom was updated last day, and i press the Red markers from SilverDragon of the rares.
Its not all waypoints that is correct, atleast when i press the red square it some times go to a whole other zone then the one i was marking.
So reason i also post it here, is im not sure if its the database for the waypoint that need correction after the prepatch, or if its just a problem with TomTom.