Hello, and welcome to the addons beginner’s guide from learn2playwow.com. This guide is intended for players who are relatively new to addons. With so many addons around, finding the right ones, the addons that actually help you and improve your gaming experience may prove a bit difficult. This guide will show how to install and addon, and will present the most useful addons for a beginner: QuestHelper and Cartographer.
There are many sites such as curse.com, wowinterface.com or wowace.com from where you can choose to download addons.
I recommend using the curse client because it makes downloading and updating addons easier and faster. To update an addon all you have to do is simply select the addon , and then click update. To download a new addon, you need to go to curse.com, then click install via curse client.
Let’s assume you would want to download QuestHelper. QuestHelper tells you where you need to go and what you need to do for every quest that you take. Go to curse.com and type in Questhelper. You can now download it or install it via the curse client. I recommend using the curse client as it makes updating and managing your addons a lot easier. If you don’t want to bother with the curse client you can manually download and install QuestHelper.
Save it anywhere on your computer.
Go to that folder and unrar it.
If you copy the entire unrar-ed version is not going work. What you want to copy is the folder that is inside the unrar-ed version. Copy that and than navigate to your wow folder\Interface\AddOns and paste it there.
Login, select addons, check the addon that you wish to use. A good practice when getting a new addon, especially if that addon is class related, is to 1st disable it for all your chars, and then to enable it just for required chars.
Then, inside the game, different addons have different ways of getting configured, most of them can be configured from interface-> addons. Those that you can’t find there will usually have some sort of “slash” command to bring up the configuring interface. To find out the command you need to check the addon readme or the addon description on the website from where you downloaded it.
Addons are useful as they can improve your gaming experience and performance quite a bit. But some, on the other hand, simply duplicate what blizz is already providing you with.
Try to find addons that actually help you, that provide visual or audio aids to what you need but try to avoid getting too many addons clogging up your screen. Try to avoid a sensory overload due to addons, keep only what you need from them configure them so as to eliminate what you don’t want or what they are duplicating.
Let’s take a closer look at QuestHelper. QuestHelper is priceless when it comes to leveling a char and every new player should have this addon.
When you take a quest, QuestHelper will show on your map and on your minimap where you need to go to kill mobs. Once there you will also see on your tooltip when selecting mob how many items you still need to get. Upon returning the quest, you will see the location of the required npc. QuestHelper dramatically increases your leveling speed and it basically does what paid leveling software does, but for free.
Questhelper is easy to use and doesn’t really need any additional configuring. At lvl 80 QuestHelper can still be useful when doing dailies.
Another addon useful for leveling is Cartographer. Cartographer reveals all the unexplored areas of the map. Also, when hovering over a zone, it will show the level range of that zone and the instances present there. This feature is very useful for when leveling you should do quests in the same level range as you. You can use Cartographer to check which areas have the level ranges that are best suited for you.
Cartographer also enables you to see your character’s coordinates as well as the coordinates of the area you mouse over. This is useful for when searching for a certain npc that Questhelper can’t find. You search the npc on Google, find his cords, and then you go to those coords ingame.
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