amg i neds teh saronitez

So. You probably typed "saronite farming" into Google. Then you saw "Stabilized Effort Scope". For whatever reason, you clicked it, and got a bunch of Hunter crap. You probably rolled your eyes, hit back, and went to another page.

This blog post's for you, Mister Saronite Farmer Guy.

Now, as a Hunter, I need a boatload of Saronite and Cobalt for my ammo. You know how I do it? I use a combination of mods to rake it in by the bucketload.

Cartographer, GatherMate, GatherMate_Data, and Routes. Get them, install them, then come back to this post.

*sips on some Honeymint Tea*

Back? You restarted WoW, right? Let's get to work.

First things first - you need to pull the WoWhead database into your GatherMate database. Type /gathermate to bring up the config UI for GatherMate (herein called GM). Click on the plus symbol next to Import Data, then click GatherMateData. You'll get a list of things you want to pull the data for - mine nodes, herb nodes, fish nodes, gas clouds, and treasure chests. Select what you want, then click the Import GatherMateData button. Give it a second or two, and bam. You have a fat, ready-to-rock database of node locations.

Now we get to the meat of my trickery - Routes. Type /routes to pull up a config UI. Set up the options in the Options menu it already has open, and then we'll start by setting up a route.

Click where it says Add on the left side. This brings up the Add Route dialog. First thing first - let's pick a zone. I'm fond of farming in Icecrown, so select Icecrown from the dropdown. Make sure that Cartographer and GatherMate are selected in "Select sources of data". Now, give your route a name in the name box, such as "AMG TEH TITANIUMZ". Scroll all the way down to where it lists the GatherMate data points to use, and choose "Titanium Node", then hit Create Route.

Now, if you look at your map for Icecrown, you probably see a clustered mess of crappy lines. Like... this?


You're not gonna mine SHIT with that route. It's too chaotic and hard to follow! We're gonna clean that crap up.

Go back into the /routes menu. Click the plus sign near Routes, then click the plus sign near Icecrown, then click your new AMG TEH TITANIUMZ route. You see five tabs in the right screen - the one you want is "Optimize Route".

The first thing you wanna do is hit the Cluster button - it makes all data points within 60 map clicks of each other (pretty small radius) one data point. That limits the number of data points the route calculates. Then, once that's done, check the box that says Extra Optimization (to get the best route you can) and then click the Background button to optimize your Titanium route in the background so it doesn't freeze up WoW while it processes.

This will likely take 2-3 minutes, so go do something else. AFK, pwn noobs in a battleground, whatever.

Now that your route is done optimizing and stuff, go back to the map and look at Icecrown again. You probably have something much more manageable, that looks sorta like this:


Now that's a hell of a lot more concise, ain't it! Get on your dragon/gryphon/balding chicken/wyvern/shapeshifted form, get to Icecrown, and follow that line to SHINIES!

Any questions? Please comment, IM me on AIM, or tweet!