Addon Spotlight: TradeSkillMaster tips and tricks
This, readers, is the final installment of our TradeSkillMaster (TSM) series. We've previously looked at TradeSkillMaster Crafting and TradeSkillMaster Auctioning, and today we're going to be having a little look at some of the brilliant additional functionality of this fantastic addon.
I really want to encourage reader feedback here. I'm certain don't have the space to write about all the awesome little things you can do with TSM to make your gold making life easier, and I'm even more certain that I don't know them all. So please, do share your clever TSM tricks and any tips you think might be useful to other readers. Then we can all learn something.
Download TradeSkillMaster: TradeSkillMaster.com, Curse
TSM Destroying
Firstly, I'm going to talk about a feature that I use a lot and have recommended to guildmates on several occasions. What does it do? Well, with a little setup and the click of a button, it can disenchant all the greens in your bag. OK, so you actually need to click the button once for every green, but quite frankly, that's a vast improvement on the other options for disenchanting.
TSM Destroying also works for prospecting and milling, but let's have a quick look at setting it up for enchanting.
First, click the boot on the bottom of the TSM main window, opened by typing /tsm into chat. It'll bring up this screen.
Note here that there are two lists on the left side. The top list is of items the Destroyer will disenchant, while the bottom list is of things that are safe from the Destroyer's clutches. This is particularly important with disenchanting; as I'm sure you can imagine, Blizzard's support team has limited patience for "Oh, I clicked the wrong button in my addon." So have a look at those lists, and right-click items that are in the top section of the list to move them to the bottom section, where they're safe. Prospecting and milling have no such setup, as it's nigh impossible to accidentally turn your raiding epics into Carnelian.
Once you're happy, click Display the Destroyer, and this little window will appear. You may need to hunt around for it; its default spawn point is right in the center of your screen -- yes, underneath the main window.
Once it's appeared, you need to set your destruction method of choice in the top drop-down menu. Only professions your character already has will be available for selection.
The lower window sets the speed, and I'm going to let Sapu (lead TSM developer) explain that:
Normal and Fast take advantage of the fact that you can cast the next mill/prospect/disenchant while the loot window is still open for the previous one if you time it correctly. At the very least, normal and fast will start the next spell cast immediately when you're done looting (even though you initiate the cast earlier), but there is a small window in which it'll actually start casting as the loot window is still open. Normal tries to guess when this window is, while fast leaves it up to the user to figure it out.
Slow is the typical '/cast Milling; /use ' macro and doesn't start the next cast until you hit the button again once the loot window is closed.
Once you've chosen your speed, push the button. Make sure you've got auto-looting turned on, and the first couple of times you use it for disenchanting, I'd strongly recommend placing anything in your bags that you particularly love into the bank. It's easy to miss an item the first time you run through the lists!
Shopping and dealfinding lists
Shopping and dealfinding is another truly awesome feature of TSM, one that's shared by other addons such as Auctioneer and Auctionator. You can, of course, create your own shopping lists, but first we're going to look at the easy way: importing them.
What's the difference between a shopping list and a dealfinding list? Well, a shopping list simply searches for items. A dealfinding list allows you to set pricing threshholds for each item and see the costs displayed as a percentage of your threshhold. TSM does allow you to ignore items above the dealfinding price in your shopping list, though.
Importing dealfinding and shopping lists So, you want to get into that transmog market? Well, all you need is TSM Shopping and Faid's lists of transmog gear. Copy all the weird code from Faid, hit the Shopping Options button in TSM's main window (it's the third one down on the right) and click the yellow Shopping Lists on the left. Hit the big button labelled Import Shopping List, and you'll get this window.
Give the list a name, and check or uncheck the Ignore Existing Items box depending on whether you want items already in lists to be dragged into this one too. Copy the weird code into the List Data window, then click the Accept button below. Check your chat pane -- you may notice that I accidentally tried to import a shopping list as a dealfinding list. It told me in my chat pane. Once it's accepted, click Import List, and Bob's your uncle, as we say this side of the Atlantic.
There are also dealfinding lists for most major materials and other searches.
Creating your own dealfinding and shopping lists This is a more labor-intensive process, hence why I led with the importing method. Fortunately, it's very simple to do; it just takes a while. Head to the shopping options, click on either type of list, give your list a name, and start adding. You can add in many ways: by typing the item's name, by shift-clicking items in your bag or in chat or anywhere else, or by importing via item IDs from Wowhead.
For the latter, I highly recommend this website that converts wowhead links to TSM lists!
For every added item in a dealfinding list, you need to set a price that's some manner of limit around which TSM can work. Say, for example, you won't buy your jewelcrafting ores for more than 2g per item. Set all the ores at 2g. If there are auctions below 2g, TSM will show you their price as a percentage of 2g, so if there's an auction for ore at 1g, it'll show 50%. If the auctions start at 4g, it'll still show them but at 200%.
You can see the results here.
Using your shopping and dealfinding lists Head over to the auctioneer and interact with him. Click Search, as highlighted in the above screenshot on the left. Click either on the single list you want to search, or hit the "scan all Dealfinding lists" button to do just that. Click "Show Saved Searches" at the top to return to your list of searches.
TSM Mailing
This is yet another feature of TSM that actually made me exclaim "Oh, my God!" at my screen when it did its thing. Grab the module, then click on the button (bottom right of the main TSM screen). First thing to do is add a mail target, so choose the character you want to send groups of stuff to.
Then click that character's name to the left, and you'll see a screen where you can set items to send them -- the output of groups or individual items. I have a jewelcrafter and enchanter, so I created an auction group from my jewelcrafting crafts and checked the box to ignore it for posting. These things are to be disnechanted only.
Go back to Mailing, add that group to your mail target's list, head to the mailbox, and click TradeSkillMaster_Automailing at the top of your mail screen. Gasp with amazement as TSM does it all for you. Again.
Getting auction data without scanning
In the previous columns, I've harped on about the importance of regular scans to get your data. TSM can't do magic. It isn't capable of speculation; it does cold, hard math based on the data you supply to it. If you give it bad data, it'll give you bad results. If you give it good data, it'll sometimes still give you bad results, so do use your brain!
But there are several other options for getting your data apart from scanning all the time. For all these sites, you're basically accessing an online API of auctions via different channels.
WoWuction.com has designed a TSM module in conjunction with Sapu. To get it working, you need to first download the TradeSkillMaster_wowuction module and install it, then head over to wowuction's data export page and log in if necessary. Enter your realm, then refer to the lower box to download the data, then copy the resultant file into your TradeSkillMaster_wowuction folder. Every time you reload your UI (type /rl or /reload) in game, the data is refreshed.
The Undermine Journal also has an addon available from their site that provides data to TSM. Head to the Undermine Journal Addon page to get started; yet again you'll need to log in, select your realm and download an addon. Install as usual. It's not as easy as the above, but it works just as well. It does seem that you have to re-download the addon every time you want new data, but I'm not 100% sure about this.
AuctionDB Sapu posted instructions over a year ago on how to set up automatic updating based on AuctionDB. You'll need to visit his post to obtain the automatic updating addon, and I strongly suggest following Sapu's instructions. I'm not even going to rewrite them here; suffice it to say that you need to download a program and that it all still works!
Addons are what we do on Addon Spotlight. If you're new to mods, Addons 101 will walk you through the basics; see what other players are doing at Reader UI of the Week. If there's a mod you think Addon Spotlight should take a look at, email mat@wowinsider.com.
