Cartographer – The Ultimate Questing Addon
If you are sick and tired of trying to keep track of all the thousands of quests you need to run to reach level 70, then I have an awesome bit of information for you: you can use the WoW addon Cartographer to increase your leveling speed by a huge factor! This has to be one of the best kept “open” secrets in all of World of Warcraft.
Cartographer is a tool that allows you to display information about WoW directly to your in-game map and minimap. Addons like this are famously used to track profession nodes such as ore veins or herb nodes. Cartographer allows addon developers to create plugins to feed it whatever information they please to your in-game map, and because of this two projects were born that we are now interested in: Cartographer Quests and Cartographer QuestObjectives.
Both Quests and QuestObjectives record the locations of quest givers and the locations quests are completed in a database (lua) file on your computer. They then display this information on your map in-game, so you can see how having this information right in front of you will speed up your questing (and hence your leveling) QUICK. And the best thing? They are both 100% legal – you will not get in trouble with the GMs for using these.
You can download the newest versions of all three files (Cartographer, Cartographer Quests and Cartographer QuestObjectives) at the official WowAce site. You will need all three of these files!
After you have downloaded them, unzip the contents of these files to your …\World of Warcraft\Interface\Addons\ folder. The “…” represents the directory World of Warcraft is installed in. For most Windows users this will be C:\Program Files\.
After unzipping these files your World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns folder should have these folders in it:
- \Cartographer
- \Cartographer_QuestObjectives
- \Cartographer_Quests
This is aside from any other addons you have installed or the default addons such as \Blizzard_AuctionUI.
Of course, starting from scratch with these addons won’t really speed up your leveling right away. You’ll only have a blank slate. This is why I’m offering both of my personal database files below.
These have almost all the quests for both Alliance and Horde, from the starting areas all the way to the Outlands. To install these files simply unzip the contents of these two files into the following directory, overwriting the default (empty) files which are created the first time you log into WoW with Cartographer installed:
- …\World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT-NAME\SavedVariables
Note that ACCOUNT-NAME is the name of your account. Now when you log in, you should see icons for all the quest-givers and the locations of where to complete your current quests already on your map and minimap!
Of course, knowing where to get quests and then where to complete them is really only half the battle. To really level fast, you have to know which order to complete the quests in to minimize your travel-time in the game. That’s why I find guides like the Elite WoW 1-70 Guide invaluable. Aside from giving many pointers about how to more effectively level, they also tell you which order to do the quests in.
UPDATE: In response to some of the comments below from players who are having difficulty making this addon work, I recommend going to the Cartographer forum on the Ace2 website:
http://www.wowace.com/forums/index.php?board=54.0
A couple other things to try:
- Make sure Addons in general and all the Cartographer addons are enabled. You can do this from the Addon button in the bottom left of your character selection screen. Remember that these settings are specific to each server, so you will have to change them for each server you play on.
- You can access your cartographer settings in-game from the mini-map icon (screw icon labeled “Addon Preferences”) or by typing /cartographer in your chat panel.
- If you were previously using a different Map utility like MetaMap make sure its files are either completely deleted or completely turned off from the Addons button on the character selection screen. These might cause Cartographer to not work.
Updated: 4/25/2008
Cartographer_Herbalism
Cartographer_Mining
Cartographer_Treasure
are more handy addons that are great with Cartographer
heres a zip with data for all 5 of them
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=BGLRWKRD
To install these files simply unzip the contents into the following directory, overwriting the default (empty) files:
* World of Warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT-NAME\SavedVariables
Note that ACCOUNT-NAME is the name of your account.
Enjoy!
well, for geting the files installed, you need to install the addon files to world of warcraft/interface/addons…. then unzip the files and put them in there along with the rest of the files (make sure it is the whole folder from the zip for each)
this is legal? can i be ban if i use it on the game??
Hi, just popping in to make sure Fortier and everyone else knows that this is 100% legal.
It doesn’t actually do any of the work for you (which would be against the TOS), it just collects and displays information about quests on your map making it easier for you to complete them.
If you are interested in Cartographer I would also download their herbalism, mining and treasure addons that display the node spawn points on your map. There is also a fishing addon, but the last time I tried it it didn’t work (it’s probably updated by now though).
I think you should be carefull,seems to me the place to install this so called addon a bit suspicious,I don`t encourage anyone to act like me,but if I were making a spyware hack that can send data about your account this would be the perfect cover.Be carefull.
Once in game how do actually turn on or use Cartographer? I installed the files into the correct directory and nothing is different and I can’t find anything on how to actually use it.
Firstly you unzip the files.
Then you take the singularly named extracted folders (eg: Cartographer NOT Cartographer r61316.2 etc) and put them into the World Of Warcraft \ Interface \ AddOns folder.
Here is an example of how it should look:
[IMG]http://i25.tinypic.com/6z1sgx.jpg[/IMG]
*If the picture doesn’t show, remove the [IMG] tags and use the rest as a URL*
When you run WoW, make sure the addon is enabled via the Addons button on your character selection screen.
Then in-game, the easiest thing to do is press M to bring up the map, and hey presto you should have Cartographer and all its options loaded and available to play with.
Hope this helps
You don’t put it in Warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT-NAME\SavedVariables
You put the file in
C:\Program files\world of warcraft\interface\Addons
no you make sure catrographer is in C:\Program files\world of warcraft\interface\Addons
and the files you get off this guy go in Warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT-NAME\SavedVariables
just open the Downloaded files with win zip then drag them into Warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT-NAME\SavedVariables
ok so i clicked on the link to download cartographer-quest and cartographer quest helper, then i clicked save (for both of them) then i extracted the files (using WinRAR) into warcraft\WTF\Account\ACCOUNT-NAME\SavedVariables (i switched ACCOUNT-NAME to my account name)but when i run the game it isnt there! plz help me
EDIT by Fortuente: You need to turn on your addons from the addon button in the lower left corner of the character selection screen. The character selection screen is what you see after you enter your account id and password.
lol may i just say you guys are dumb and cant read a thing -.-’
ok these three files go here >>>>> C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Interface\AddOns
1. Cartographer_QuestObjectives
2. Cartographer_Quests
3. Cartographer
not the wtf folder you nubs!
and make shure the addon is enabled LIKE THAY SAID AND IT SHOULD WORK LOL
Guys why not just use WoWmatrix? it should automatically download it for you AND make it work. Unless this is fake…or it’s got a faulty download…or it isn’t on WoWmatrix…
WoWmatrix installed Questhelper and Auctioneer o my WoW game so It should work! Hope it helps people having problems.
P.S. I don’t know if this is gonna help me or not…please tell me if I have something similar already, the ones i told u r the ones i have
Hi there i haven’t downloaded any of it yet but when i do i will kick major BUTTTTT!
Ps:i already have 1 lvl 70 and a bunch of 60′s so this wont help that much for me but it will for NOOOBIES!!!!!!!!!
It amuses me no end the amount of retards who didn’t pick up that you should replace “ACCOUNT-NAME” in the instructions with the name of your account, as that’s the name of the folder that will be in your “Account” folder.
How you all remember to breathe in and out is beyond me.