Useful Tips for Camping Rares

I use a couple of tools in my search for rares, and I thought I would share them with you. :) I will keep this updated incase I find other useful ideas along my quest to find rare spawns.

Just a note: I have added all of the NPC IDs for the rares I post after their names in their corresponding blog posts that you would need to add in to NPCScan for the convience of all. So if you are confused as to what those weird random numbers are, that is what they are for. I have also added links to all rare spawns that I talk about on their specific blog posts. Just click their name the first time it is mentioned in the post and it will take you directly to their WoWHead page so you can learn more about them. I hope this helps everyone.

NPCScan: This add-on makes a sound and sight alert when it catches a rare in close range to you. It gives a easy click pop-up, which will auto target the npc upon click, and marks it with a green triangle. I use this add-on at all times. The only downfall I have found is that when I go afk, sometimes it finds rares already tamed, and therefore needs to be cache cleared. Doing so is simple, just log out and close the game (I recommend moving to an area where hunters won't be summoning their pets, as it can re-cache them upon login if you do), go to your World of Warcraft folder in your Program Files, go into Cache, WDB, and then enUS (enUK, whatever you may play on), and then delete the creaturecache.wdb (don't worry, this won't hurt your game). This will reset the cache, and allow the add-on to pick up NPCs again. The add-on will tell you which NPCs you have cached each time you log in, or switch to a new continent that happens to have cached NPCs, so be on the lookout for this if there is something you are looking for, as it will not go off if it is cached.
Download NPCScan here: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/npcscan.aspx


Flare: This is our hunter ability that allows us to see stealthed players or mobs. This is absolutely essential if you are looking to tame the Mist of Pandaria rare spawns. The only way to see them once you have found their tracks is to flare in the direction in which they are walking. Then you would want to instantly Hunter's Mark them so they do not disappear and require you to place another Flare.


Hunter's Mark: Hunter's Mark is a very useful tool in the taming of the new MoP rare spawns and it's built right in to being a hunter. Once you have found your beast's footprints and have flared him to expose him, make sure to use Hunter's Mark in order to keep him out of stealth to tame him. This way, you don't need to lose the tame due to flare fading. A good way to do this quickly if you freak out when you see a rare like I do is to use a hover macro that activates when you press a button as long as your cursor is hovering over the rarespawn. A hover macro for Hunter's Mark is shown below. Just copy and paste it into your macros menu and place it on your bars on a key you can hit quickly.


#showtooltip Hunter's Mark
/cast [target=mouseover,exists,harm,nodead] Hunter's Mark
/cast Hunter's Mark



WoW-Petopia: I use this site to not only have a quick link to WoWhead when needed, but to look up models easily and to see if they share models with something else. It also shows pet "class" abilities, as well as abilities specific to that species of pet. They update their information every patch, and add new rares and pets as soon as the information is released.
Link: http://wow-petopia.com/

Hunter's Track Beasts ability: This is the pretty basic one, just simply click the tracking bubble on your map (or click Track Beasts in your spellbook), and you will see all of the beasts in your area as a dot on the minimap in game. If you don't like add-ons or your computer is too slow for them, this method will likely be very helpful for you since it is already built in with your hunter.


WoWHead: I love this site because it's a database for literally anything WoW related you need to find. Simply type in the name in the search bar, and you can see all the abilities, locations, and user comments on how to tame, get to, or find the rare you are looking for with ease. It also works for things aside from rares, like raid drops, item information, quests, and so on. It's just an overall great database for WoW.
Link: http://www.wowhead.com/


Making a /Target Macro: If your computer is too old for add-ons and your web browser is too slow for searching, the easiest thing to do is make a nifty target macro. To do so, hit the Escape (Esc) button on your keyboard in game (the key should be on the top left of your keyboard),  and click [Macros] in the game menu that is brought up. This should bring up a macro menu. From there, click [New] on the bottom right of the menu, which should bring up a side panel. Name the macro there to whatever you would like, and select an icon. Doing this helps to differentiate which macro is which with ease. Then, once you are done, click [Okay]. You should see the icon in the top box of the menu. In the lower box, you can type in your macro simply by clicking the box and beginning typing. To make a target macro, simply type "/target x" where x is the name of the rare spawn you are hunting. You can add multiple rare spawns into the same macro, just hit Enter/Return and make a new "/target x" line and put in another rare spawn's name. From there, just drag it on to your bars and spam click/key smash the macro until the rare spawn you're looking for appears as your target.

Singular Macro Example:
/target Jadefang

Multiple Macro Example:
/target Sambas
/target Karoma
/target Madexx
/target Skoll