Addon Spotlight: Feed-O-Matic
I wasn't going to write about this "so soon" after discussing Trackmenu, but after The Blog King presented appetizer and entree courses on hunter management, I thought this add-on would make the perfect dessert helping. The cheesecake, if you will. (Cherry cheesecake, of course.)Our friend Gazmik Fizzwidget is a goblin of many talents, and unlike most goblins, his inventions do not tend to blow up. As I said, I spoke about Trackmenu not too long ago, but he has also created an excellent add-on to aid in the sometimes arduous task of keeping your pet fed. Keeping your pet fed is important because, after all, if it's happiness drops too low for an extended period of time, the pet will desert you. Hunters who have invested an extended amount of time and money into their pets will tell you that losing your pet is a bad thing. Re-training from scratch is not a pleasant experience, especially if you acquired a rare pet at a low level that you're particularly fond of.
So what exactly are you to do to keep your pet happy? With the default user interface, you are forced to continually monitor that tiny little tri-colour box beside your pet's unit frame (that I swear looks like a coffee cup) and click the feed icon, and then click the food. It's time consuming, repetitive, and tedious.
Our friend Gazmik has written another gem called Feed-O-Matic that makes feeding your pet so gleefully simple it's the next best thing to total automation! Installation is simple and typical of most add-ons. Probably the most difficult thing is choosing a key to bind to the pet feeding process in the Feed-O-Matic configuration window. Once you have defined your key, Feed-O-Matic will intelligently monitor the contents of your inventory and only feed your pet the food that your pet likes, each time you press the feeding key. It will choose foods in the order of your pet's preference. So if one food will give a higher happiness yield, it will use that up first before moving to the next type. It will also optionally ignore food items that are cooking or quest items. It can also be set to consume "shorter" stacks first to maximize your bag space, although this is less of an issue since the recent changes to the stacking mechanism. Lastly, (and this is perhaps my favourite feature) it can even be set to make your pet growl audibly when it's hungry so you don't have to watch the happiness monitor at all!
I don't know Gazmik personally, and I wouldn't normally review two add-ons from the same person in such rapid succession, but it just seemed like a perfect topical flow today. Remember: He's got what you need!
Filed under: Hunter, Add-Ons, AddOn Spotlight






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
qwerty321 Aug 28th 2007 4:18PM
Been using feed-o-matic for a long time now and it is one of the best things that happened to my hunter. Plain and simple - good choice to review.
Ahoni Aug 28th 2007 4:14PM
Great idea, if a little late for me.
Using Pitbull, the entire health bar of the pet reflects his happiness. Green for happy, yellow, red etc. Use a pet feed macro bound to and mend pet bound to . Occasionally have to update the macro if I change food or change to a pet that uses diff food, but that takes 20 sec, tops.
Cody Aug 28th 2007 4:27PM
I use Pitbull, too, and don't like the way it's setup because I'm colorblind. It's hard for me to tell when my pet is hungry. I think I'll like the audible growl.
agentaero Aug 28th 2007 5:41PM
I picked up zHunterMod, and I really like it, as to all this pet feeding easiness.... I never found it to be a problem monitoring my pets happiness and keeping him well fed, but to each his own. Zhuntermod really whips my hunter skills into orginized shape, freeing up room on my action bars, it has other uses but those were my favorite, that and Zanti-daze, which automatically turns off aspect of the pack and cheatah when I or a party member gets dazed, excellent when im dumb in a group and forget I turned it on...
Treston Aug 28th 2007 5:44PM
I love all of the Fizzwidget gadgets. They've all made a huge difference in my gameplay. Feed-o-matic and Track Menu are two of my must have addons now.
Matthew Aug 28th 2007 5:52PM
I hate to be snarky, but I had no clue feeding the pet was such a big deal. Open bags, click on feed pet icon, find food, click on it, stay out of combat for 15 seconds or so. It sounds like the addon simplifies it, but still, it's not exactly a challenging endeavour.
lucifer.cross Aug 28th 2007 11:08PM
I can't stand the "pet equivalent" alerts. They always startle the shit out of me, because they're so loud compared to everything else. LOL.
Prauche Aug 29th 2007 9:09AM
The only problem I have had is with my boar, Baconbits, who will eat anything; if I have any Dragonbreath Chili, it automatically chooses it for Baconbits. Um, no. So, I have to be careful in that situation.
ThorinII Aug 29th 2007 9:20AM
Been using this since about lvl 10 (maybe 15). It was real nice when it auto-magically fed your pet for you. That is before the dreaded Blizz nerfed all our addons. Now I have it bound to my Delete key and whenever my BFF gets a little hungry FOM tells me and Guano gets a heaping helping of whatever I have in my bag.
Ryan Aug 29th 2007 1:51PM
@6. For Real. Or if you're lazy like me, put buttons for both on your toolbar right next to one another..