QuestHelper is definitely one mod you must not be without if you are leveling your character. Best of all, not only does it work in Vanila WoW, and the Burning Crusade, it works for Wrath of the Lich King too! Since I haven’t had any alts (until the refer-a-friend promo) and leveled a character in awhile, I don’t know of any other alternative mods to this, but this mod is amazing. It seriously makes questing 20 times easier. No more need to alt-tab in and out to look at WoWHead or Thottbot. Everything is there for you in-game. You can download this nifty little mod here at Curse Gaming.

Simply download, unzip, and throw the folder into your addons folder. Enable the mod on your character screen, and voila, instant help with all your quests. First thing you want to look at is your map (M).

You will notice your map will start looking like an air traffic control screen with dotted lines and icons all over the place. The dotted lines or way points, are recommended paths to take to get from one quest objective to another. The mod actually looks all every quest you have in your log, and calculates the best path to take to finish all the quests.

If you keep your quest log clean, then this will save you a ton of time. But if you are and quest hog like me, and still have the “Opening the Gates of AQ” quest still saved up to be solo’d later, then your map can get pretty messy. Good thing the mod gives you the option to prioritize all your quests. Just simply put all the quest you don’t want listed as “low priority”, and your map will look a bit cleaner.

What does the Icons mean?

There is pretty much only four icons which you should worry about. They are the Blue Question Mark, the Gray Question Mark, the Box, and the Monster Face.

Blue Question Mark:

This is the Icon with the Question Mark with a Blue background, not actually a Blue Question Mark.

This will show up on the map when you have a completed quest, and will mark on the map where you go to turn in the quest. It will also show up on your mini-map.

Gray Question Mark:

This is the icon with the Question Mark with a Grey background, not actually a Gray colored Question Mark.

This will also show where you would go on the map to turn in a quest. The only difference is that you have not completed this quest yet. It will also show up on your mini-map.

When you mouse over the icons, it will give you more detail on what quest it is referring to, as well as your progress (if it can be tracked), as well as the estimated time it would take to reach that point on the map.

The Box:

This is the box or cube looking icon on the map.

This icon will show the area on the map of where you want to go to complete your objective. This is for quests which requires you to collect items.

When you scroll over the icon, again it will give you the description of the quest it pertains to, as well as the current progress of the quest.

The Monster Face:

This icon looks like a jack-o-lantern face, or a pumpkin face on the map.

It will show you where you need to go on the map to find the mobs you need to kill are located. This is for quests which require you to kill an X amount of mobs or a single target.

Scrolling over the icon on the map will also give you the description of the quest it is pertaining to, as well as the current progress of the given quest.

How do you know what target to kill?

Another great function this mob has, is when you target the correct mob after going to the location specified on the map, it will tell you on the tooltip if it is the correct mob. If it is a gathering or kill X amount quest, it will also track the current progress for that mob for the quest it pertains to.

What about the party members?

I don’t have a screenshot of it currently (will add in later today maybe), but it will actually track the progress of all the party members currently on the same quests as you. For players running the same mod, it will actually show what other quests they have, and the progress they have on those quests as well! No more, “How many more tusks do you need left?”

How much memory will it use?

This is actually the only negative thing about the mod. It uses quite a bit of memory to run as expected. This doesn’t concern me much cause there won’t be much going on while questing (Not nearly as much going on like during raids), so it won’t bog down your computer much. You might want to restart your WoW client every hour or two of straight questing. It does build up pretty quickly.

What are the commands?

/qh – Displays a list of command options.
/qh ants – Toggles the dotted lines.
/qh hide – Toggles the minimap arrow and addon icons and paths on the world map.

Again, this is a great addon, and I highly recommend it to all of you out there leveling in Northrend right now. It will save you a ton of time. It did for me, hope you find this mod useful too.

Any questions, comments, or addition information to add, let me know!

On the surface, Quartz is just a customizable castbar to replace the dull default Blizz castbar with something bigger and more colorful. Not only can you change the size and color of your bar, you can add the spell’s icon, name, rank, or cast time to the bar itself. It even changes your cast time according to your spell haste. And that is just the basics.

Latency

If you explore the mod deeper, you can add latency to your castbar. The mod will adjust your castbar depending on your current latency by adding a red “buffer” zone of how long it takes the spell to cast so you can start the next spell cast. This part of the mod is kind of difficult to explain. Let’s see…

Have you ever start mounting up on your horse, but then move before it finished “casting” and still end up mounted? Or cast a spell and right before the castbar finishes you get interrupted, but the spell still managed to get through? Sometimes you cast a spell and you don’t see the castbar right away. That’s is all because of the game latency.

2 Second Frostbolts? Niiiiiiice!

Latency is the time delay between the moment something is initiated, and the moment one of its effects begins. So when you press your Frostbolt key, the user’s game sends the command to the main server, the server receives the command and initiates it, sends information back to the game, which you see in the form of a castbar. All this can be affected by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) or anything that may slow down your internet (downloading pr0n).

Quartz estimates according to your current latency, and adds the “buffer” zone so you know how long until the spell is done casting so you can cast again, or start moving. I normally “aim” for the middle of the “buffer” zone to start my next cast. It is very useful in raids where you are just chain casting on a boss, or in a situation where you have to move soon and need to know if you can get the cast off in time or not.

The castbar also adjusts to spell knockback due to taking damage so you know how long until the spell is done casting. This can be useful in various PvP and PvE situations.

Global Cooldown 

See that small line below the castbar with a white glowing dot? That is the Global cooldown timer, which goes from left to right, everytime you cast a spell. It is a very useful tool for when you cast an instantcast spell and want to see when you can cast again.

Global Cooldown bar going across the bottom.

Debuffs

It also comes with a very good debuff timer. It will keep track of how long until your sheep breaks, how long the chill effects are on your Frostbolts and Cone of Cold, how long until Winter’s Chill expires, and even how many stacks of the debuff is on the target. This is probably the main reason why I use this mod.

No more looking through the target’s debuff list to find my debuffs to see how many stacks of Winter’s Chill I have up, Quartz tracks it for me, and only the debuff that matters to me. If your are Fire spec, it keeps track of Improve Scorch, if your a Shadow Priest it keeps track of your debuffs and dots. An extremely useful part of the mod to use in PvE or PvP.

You can also have it set to show your buffs and your target’s buffs too if you want.

Focused sheep target at the top with sheep debuff timer.

Other Castbars

You can have a castbar to show your target’s casting. Good for PvPing when you need to know what the boss is casting, or in PvP so you can time your Counterspell to interrupt an enemy’s heal or spell. You can also have a castbar for your target’s target, and even your focus target.

This can be used to just see how much longer until your sheep target breaks.

There is also a bar for air when you are swimming underwater, bar for when the arena match is about to begin, and bar for how long til the challenge or party invite will last until it is auto-declined. All these miscellaneous bars are categorized under “mirrors”.

The smaller castbar above my own castbar is my target’s castbar.

Usage

The command to open up the Quartz menu is: /quartz

The menu that is brought up is broken down nicely to make it easy for you to customize every bar to the way you want them to be. You can change the size and color of every bar, enable or disable any options that you want or don’t want.

You can download this mod at: Curse.com

If you have any questions or would like to add something, just let me know.