How to add Vendor Waypoints

[hendricius]

This guide makes the assumption that the user is at least familiar with how to set up a simple, basic profile before using Vendor Waypoints. If you are a brand new user, I encourage you to first make sure you can successfully create and run a simple profile (for this see the main Glider help file) before expanding to Vendor Waypoints. Vendoring is listed in the help guide as Advanced for a reason. You need to understand gliding basics first. You will also need a valid copy of http://www.d3scene.com/forum/wow-bots/12071-glider.html.


This guide does not reference the Profile Wizard. Quite simply I have never used it, and I believe you will get better results on your profiles if you directly understand how every step you take affects the profile you create. The wizard also requires more rigidity in where your profile starts and stops, and the order in which you put the pieces together. Using this guide, you can add Vendor Waypoints to any profile at any time.
Hopefully, new users will also learn a little about how to edit your profiles so you don’t have to start from scratch!

Throughout this guide you will see pictures of profiles. The pictures were produced with EditPatrol. EditPatrol is by no means required to use Vendor Waypoints, but I find it in general a useful tool for viewing a profile and minor adjustments.
Link: Glider Forums

How Waypoints Work
If you are familiar with Ghost Waypoints, then you are already familiar with the fact that Glider has different kinds of waypoints. Glider does different things depending on which type of waypoint it is running, and only switches to those waypoints on certain conditions. The picture below shows a profile with three kinds of waypoints:



Green: Regular Waypoints
Red: Ghost Waypoints
Blue: Vendor Waypoints

This profile is provided as an attachment at the end of this tutorial, so that you can run it and see Vendoring in action. (How long you want to keep running the ever-popular yeti profile is up to you.)

This profile will grind in the normal waypoint circle, hearth back to Everlook when you’re low on durability/ammo/food/water, and then run back to the grinding circle to start grinding again.

When Glider is running vendor waypoints, it will stop whenever it sees any of the named characters for Food/Water, Ammo/Repair, and Alternate Repair. Per the Glider help file, it takes the following actions when it sees them:

Food/water vendor: Glider will talk to this vendor to restock food/drink when necessary. It will attempt to buy the Food item sitting in your button that is mapped to Common.Eat on your keys.xml (Default Bar 6, Key 1), until it buys enough that you have the number entered in your Limits tab as the Food Amount. It will attempt to buy the Drink item sitting in your button that is mapped to Common.Drink on your keys.xml (Default Bar 6, Key 2), until it buys enough that you have the number entered in your Limits tab as the Drink Amount. For mages, this vendor will be skipped.

Ammo/repair vendor: Glider will talk to this vendor to repair, sell poor-quality (gray) items if this is enabled (see further down), and, for hunters, reload on ammunition. If you need to buy ammo from one vendor and repair at another, this should be your Ammo vendor, not the repair vendor.

Alternate repair vendor: Glider will use this vendor if it cannot repair at either of the first two. If you don’t buy ammo, just use the slot above for the repair vendor, and ignore this option.

The place to enter these names is located on your Glider window on the Profiles tab. (We’ll cover this in more detail in the next section.) Glider will run along your waypoints looking for the people whose names are in these slots, taking the associated actions, until it reaches the end of your vendor waypoints. At that time it expects to find some Normal waypoints, and will switch to normal gliding mode when it does. Also, Glider will not attack anything while on Vendor Waypoints, and will ignore any attackers. We’ll get to why that is important later.

Creating Vendor Waypoints
So now that you hopefully understand what Glider does with your Vendor Waypoints, let’s talk about how to build them. You can build Vendor Waypoints as the first part of a profile (much like the Wizard would walk you through it), or add them later to an existing profile, going through the same steps.

Step 1: Load or create a New Profile that the Vendor Waypoints will go on.
This is self explanatory. Remember this method assumes you click ‘Do not use wizard’

Step 2: Locate the hearth location.
It is imperative that your Vendor Waypoints start at the town’s hearth location (meaning the place you arrive when you activate your hearthstone while set to that town). If the location does not have an Innkeeper, you cannot set up Vendor Waypoints there. The easiest way to locate your hearth location is just to set your hearth to the town, and then activate it. However you can also go to the Innkeeper and watch for people arriving via hearth, and then go stand where they arrived.

Step 3: Start building the Waypoints
Go to your Profile tab and be sure Waypoint Type ‘Vendor’ is selected.



Create your first waypoint standing in the hearth location. You can do this either by hitting the Add Waypoint button, or by hitting Ctrl + Ctrl + W. Have your sound on so you can hear Glider beep that it has added the waypoint. Then walk/run around the town, going to the location of each of the two or three characters whose names you will enter in the Food/Water, Ammo/Repair, and Alternate Repair blanks on your Profile tab. I find it easiest to just have Auto-Add Waypoints on the Profile tab checked, but more advanced users may wish to manually add each waypoint. Either way, you will probably need to manually add one or two waypoints (with Add Waypoint or Ctrl + Ctrl +W) to clear doors and tight corners in the tight confines of a city. Remember, Glider works by moving from one waypoint to the next (each time you hear a beep) in a straight line between the two waypoints. Take the example below:

______1________2________3__________4____


In picture 1, Glider did not add a waypoint while you were moving near the door. As a result, when the profile runs, you will try to run through the wall. This will both stop Glider, and make you look like a bot in a crowded city environment.

In picture 2, You added waypoints near the door, but did not take a lot of care in your path. Glider has some slack in hitting waypoints. (That is, it does not necessarily walk directly over the waypoint.) You may walk through the door fine. But if you’re even a little to the right, you get stuck again.

Pictures 3 and 4 are both valid ways of building a path through a door. Picture 3 adds a waypoint directly in the middle of the door, to make sure you pass cleanly through. Picture 4 does not manually add a waypoint in the middle of the auto-added waypoints, but takes care in aiming through the door, by keeping the waypoints before and after the door in a straight line. You can see now why it is so important to have your sound on and know where your waypoints are being added. Building paths with a character who has a small body (such as a gnome or undead) rather than a large character like a Tauren will help make sure your waypoints are where you think they are.

This same logic should be applied to any tight quarters or obstacles in your path while building the Vendor Waypoints.

Visit each of the two or three characters you’re going to use for the different vendor slots described above. You can either enter their names in the Profile tab when you visit them as you build the profile, or write their names down and enter them in Step 4.

Get as close as possible to each of the vendor characters while building the path. Again, this is because Glider has slack in hitting waypoints. You don’t want to be too far away for Glider to click on the vendor when it actually runs the profile. Once again, I recommend building with a ‘toon with a small body so you can see exactly where they are. (You can run the profile with any toon, this is just for creating it.)

If there is a dedicated food seller (such as a butcher) as opposed to the Innkeeper, I prefer to use the dedicated seller for two reasons:

1)Less chance of odd Innkeeper text (‘What can I do at an Inn?’) confusing Glider
2)Less chance that if lag causes Glider to start running the profile before Vendor logic has caught up, you’ll skip getting food because you’re already passed them. (Since the Innkeeper is always at the hearth location.)

Step 4 (or part of 3): Add the character names to your Profile
If you did not do this as part of step 3, fill in the character names. If the name has spaces or apostrophes, enter those just as they appear into the appropriate blank of the Edit Profile screen. You can reach this screen from the Profile tab.



Tip: You can check that your spellings are correct by entering them as search terms at thottbot.com or wow.allakhazam.com.

This guide has been written by Rabiddog. All credits go to him.