Add-ons - a short guide

Brozarius asked for some advice on add-ons today, and gave me the idea of making a topic on this, so here I go

It would be great if everybody shared what add-ons they find usefuls and really like

0. A one very important point- what's legal.

There are tonnes of very useful, and totaly legal add-ons, but you may sometimes find something which won't be.
Legal add-ons contain mostly files with extensions such as .lua .xml .toc - those all are ok.
But beware of anything that has .exe or .com or any other executable in it! (if it's not just the installer) There's a chance it will get you banned! ''
There are some legal ones with those as well (ex. wowhead add-on has an exe file which is used to upload data to their site), but if you find any such file better triple-check with many people that it is a legal add-on.

1. First things first.

Places to get add-ons from:

For me it's mostly wow.curse.com and www.wowinterface.com there are some others but those two are usually enough for me.

How to install them:

In all cases it should be enough to unpack the contents of the archive to World of Warcraft/Interface/AddOns folder. (It may be different for Vista or Mac users, if we have any please tell us) ''

2. My favorites.

ArkInventory - surprisingly an inventory mod It let's you view you inv in one window, setup auto-sorting, view your bank and guild bank even if you're not there, show you how much of an item you have in your bank on your alts etc on mouse-over...... I can't imagine playing WoW without it.... It requires some setup, but for me it absolutely worth it.

Auctioneer - THE auction house mod. Keeps track of the prices, suggests you reasonable prices for you items, let's you auto-post auctions for the items you auction often, shows you if something is a bargain or not... An incredible, very useful mod, although it has a learning curve even steeper than the ArkInventory, but it's even more worth it.

Bejeweled - '' If you get tired of flying the same flight paths over and over again it will give you something to kill your time with... and compete with other guild members

Cartographer - contains maps of all areas and instances with marked bosses etc.. A pretty practical one. Also you can make waypoints with it and then it shows you a arrow on the screen showing where should you go.

Simplecoords - just a small frame showing your actual coordinates and also letting you enter another set to make a waypoint. Useful if you use wowhead.com or thottbot.com to check for the quest objectives which you can't find. There are also more total solutions like ex. QuestHelper, but I prefer to just check wowhead if I really can't find something in a quest... Your choice.

SpamSentry - tired of the gold selling spam? That mod is a very simple and well working solution

3. Time for you to share

And there's also many, many others... Some other very popular categories include threat-meters and damage-meters which are useful for dungeons, but I haven't used much of them so I leave it to others to say something about them and all the other mods you love The "others" mean YOU

And if you have any questions be sure to ask them, I may have forgotten something very important...''

I'd actually reccomend going to:
www.wowmatrix.com

and downloading the client there, it has a running database of legal mod's that you can install / update directly from it and is generally much safer than downloading mod's online. It's also the easiest way of finding new/interesting mods since it has a list of the current ones active in game along with short descriptions of each.


Apart from the add-ons Vesp suggested I'd also like to add Gatherer and Questhelper:

Gatherer- Marks gathering nodes on your map for ease of gathering later in the game when you can run through an area and hit all the nodes in one big circle.

Questhelper- For people who can't be arsed with the exploration of questing or just want to level that bit quicker, it calculates an optimal route for you to follow when questing in order to get quests done fast, it also has target locations for all the quests currently in WoW vanilla and TBC I'm not 100% about whether they've managed to finish it for the quests in WOTLK yet though.

Thanks! A good start

I just installed Enhanced Flight Map ... gives you an overlay on your main map and ETA
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/enhanced-flight-map/

I installed quest helper a while ago and hated it..!! It clogs up your main screen and your map. It took me an age to get used to it.. But now I think it is great. It is a useful addition to the struggling explorer.. One i have been told about is Frapps, which allows you to video your raids and actions.. Just think you could be the next Leroy jenkins! Seriously though, video guides to difficult areas may be an idea.

Nice to see so many quick replies

I've never heard of wowmatrix before, seems like a nice site, thanks

And about Questhelper... I think it all depends how much you enjoy finding things on your own etc. It may be a great help, especially if you're bored of the quests because you've done most of them before or frustrated because you can't find something. If it is your first go through leveling it may be great fun exploring on your own So, anyway, it's everybody's own decision Doesn't hurt to try it though