AddOn Spotlight: Advanced Trade Skill Window

AddOn Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your AddOns folder, we'll cover it here.
For anyone that has tried leveling up a profession, you know that it can be a bit of a grind. This can be especially true with things like engineering or jewelcrafting that have little parts that you have to make in order to make the actual items. Even leatherworking has the ability to upgrade leather from one grade to a better grade and still make something out of it. All of this can be confusing, especially with the categories that Blizzard has setup in the normal trade window. Advanced Trade Skill Window can help out with that problem.
This addon comes from Slartibartfast (nice HHGG reference, by the way). If you're just a skinner/herbalist who doesn't cook, then you'll find no use for this addon. Sorry, that's just the way things go.
What does it do right?
There are two major reasons I love this addon. a) the ability to queue complex items in engineering so that it will process its way through creating all of the little pieces so that I can create the item and b) the ability to do custom categories for things like inscription so you can separate things the way you want them. Those two things alone make this addon worth while.
Let's talk about the queue it has. When working with the addon, you can either decide to just create something or add it to the queue of things you want to make. If you're someone who has a certain list of things you keep stocked on the auction house, you can just queue up each one right after the other and then check what materials you're missing before creating the whole batch. Another part of this feature is if, for example, you're an engineer and you've finally acquired the schematic for Jeeves, you're going to need to create a whole laundry list of things in order to build him. Instead of going through and writing down on a piece of paper everything you need, just click on Jeeves and hit 'Queue' and suddenly everything needed for him is popped into the interface from the fused wiring to the cobalt bolts. After that, you can decide if you want to farm or buy your mats. For things like leatherworking or tailoring it will list something as being creatable even if you only haven't made your borean leather into heavy borean or your frostweave into bolts.
The other nice thing is that any base parts from things in your queue will show in a little box under the auction house. There is also a buy reagents button at the top of vendors so that if you need a stack of vials for all of the potions you're making, you just walk over to the vendor, hit the button, and it will buy however many you need. These settings for materials needed is shared across characters, so if you have a designated auction house or bank character you'll be able to hop over to it and still see the items you need.
Where does it need work?
One major complaint is that various tradeskills on your characters are unable to interact. If you need two titanium bars more for blacksmithing and you've got four titanium ore in your bags that you could smelt, it doesn't understand that it could convert them for blacksmithing. Part of this is probably drawbacks within the way Blizzard handles skills in that you must have the skill window up in order to create something. Also, if you accidentally queue things in the wrong order, you must delete everything out to change items at the beginning.
Overall, it's a very good addon, especially for anyone who does a lot of crafting. I've got a lot of screenshots in the gallery and more explanation of the features so go and take a look.
Where can I get it?
Available from: [Curse] [WoWInterface]
Filed under: Mining, AddOn Spotlight, Jewelcrafting, Add-Ons, First Aid, Enchanting, Tailoring, Leatherworking, Engineering, Cooking, Blacksmithing, Alchemy, Inscription






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sicadastra Oct 25th 2009 2:06PM
One of my favorites. My only complaint is that it doesn't play nice with some other tradeskill addons, most notably Lil Sparkys Workshop. Ackis Recipie List is another prof must-have which does work great.
Justo Oct 25th 2009 2:14PM
the only drawback is that it is a memory hog
Eudeyrn Oct 25th 2009 2:22PM
ATSW can be a memory hog, but in the days of 4 GB RAM, this starts to be irrelevant on all but the lowest-end of systems. There was a similar addon, Skilletm which had most of the features of ASTW in a much smaller footprint. Unfortunately, the original author abandoned it, and it has a long way to go before the new maintainer will have it ready again. By the way, the new maintainer is the Li'l Sparky referenced above.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/skillet.aspx
rulez Oct 25th 2009 7:35PM
Your PC can have 12GB RAM but it does not matter for WoW. As long the Devs keep slacking and don't create a 64bit executable, the game gives you a nice crash back to the desktop when it tries to allocate more then 2GB.
PeeWee Oct 25th 2009 7:43PM
I use Skillet today, with no problems at all. WHy fix it if it aint broken?
Riiya Oct 25th 2009 2:08PM
I was always thinking this kind of addon would be so useful!
Other people must've been thinking the same too.
Thank you for showing us that such addon exists!
Riiya Oct 25th 2009 2:09PM
What do the other two addons do? :O
Cynic Oct 25th 2009 2:21PM
Used this for a while, but even on a new computer the memory issues were too annoying to keep using it.
Pity, since I really liked this addon
Moved on to skillet, which does basically the same, but doesnt lag your game
Eudeyrn Oct 25th 2009 2:24PM
See my note above - Skillet is currently in the process of transitioning to a new author, and doesn't work very well at the moment. The last update Li'l Sparky did was in August, and several new bugs have cropped up. I always preferred Skillet, so I hope it gets resurrected soon.
http://www.wowace.com/addons/skillet/repositories/lilsparkys-clone/files/
KBear Oct 25th 2009 3:04PM
Same issue here- I only turn it on when leveling, it makes WoW freeze occasionally and lag a lot, even on a decent-to-good computer.
Urza Oct 25th 2009 2:35PM
I love this addon. :)
alpha5099 Oct 25th 2009 2:56PM
I'm definitely getting this. My main crafting is just bags, but it gets real repetitive taking Frostweave and turning it into Bolts of Frostweave, and turning those into Imbued Frostweave, and turn those into Frostweave Bags. Even worse on Netherweave Bags: less steps, but the crafting takes forever.
Delmonico Oct 25th 2009 4:21PM
I have been wondering.... is there an Addon that functions as an Achievement Checker? I know we can compare Achievements by right clicking on a character's portrait, but is there an Addon that would let you check to see if a party member has any achievements related to the instance you are in?
I have never kicked someone for not having an achievement, but would like to know as the Tank, because if they have not done the instance then I will take time to explain things more than "Healer has mana, follow the skull, pulling".
Del
RogueJedi86 Oct 25th 2009 5:36PM
Right-click their portrait, hit Compare Achievements, then go down to the Dungeons & Raids section and look for the achievement. Takes 5 seconds. Also, I don't know of any addons that do specifically what you ask for.
Delmonico Oct 25th 2009 11:05PM
I gotta say, I really appreciate the reply.... you know, summing up what I wrote. /golfclap
Squishy Oct 26th 2009 9:08AM
I gotta say, I really appreciate the thread hijack... you know, posting an idiotic comment about some new subject that has nothing at all to do with the original topic.
/golfclap
Tim Oct 26th 2009 12:42PM
@Squishy
If you think about it, it is off topic because this is a feature about add-ons. The specific post is about one add-on. I ask questions based on the feature with the assumption that those reading the post will be interested in the subject, in this case add-ons.
Care and feeding of warriors often times has warriors commenting on a post with another warrior related topic because they think the community will help because warriors most likely make up the majority of the readers.
Delmonico Oct 26th 2009 6:11PM
The /golfclap was taking it too far on my part. But the discussion of an addon, in a forum about addons seemed quite on topic.
danawhitaker Oct 25th 2009 5:28PM
The thing that I love about this addon, which I've been using for a few months, is the ability to sort recipes by their difficulty. Much less sorting through when you've gathered mats while questing in an area and are ready to level your profession.
I personally haven't noticed any ram issues, but I have 4gb of memory and am using a system that's about 1.5 years old.
perrins Oct 25th 2009 6:01PM
ATSW was ok in the old days, but now i use Skillet. WAY better and smoother than ATSW