PSW Hunt for the Rares

⚠️ Important for existing users

If you are upgrading from Core v0.15.1 or earlier and the Midnight expansion disappears, right-click PSW Hunt for the Rares in the CurseForge app and select Reinstall.

This is a one-time step caused by separating Midnight from the previous Core package. Reinstalling Core will automatically restore the current Midnight expansion. Your settings and collected data will not be removed.

Why another rare addon? There are tons of them now.. What a simp..

There are already good addons for finding rares.

RareScanner, for example, is excellent at letting players know when a rare appears nearby.

PSW Hunt for the Rares was made because I wanted something a little different around the actual hunt.

I wanted one place where I could see which supported rares were available, whether they were protected, how long I had been waiting, where I had killed them before, how many times I had killed each one, and what I still had left to collect.

That gradually became HFTR.

Less waiting. Less noise.

HFTR is built around the parts of rare hunting that usually happen after you know a rare exists.

It brings supported rare status, spawn information, protected timers, kill history, navigation, collection progress, sharing and useful loot information together in one place.

The goal is not to replace every rare addon.

It is not meant to shout about everything happening around you.

And it is not meant to automate the game.

HFTR is meant to make repeated rare hunting easier to understand, easier to navigate and easier to keep track of.

Hunt Mode

For supported DAILY rare zones, HFTR includes its own Hunt Mode.

Start a Hunt and HFTR works through the remaining eligible rares in the zone, selecting the nearest available target and guiding you with its own navigation arrow.

Hunt Mode can:

• Select the nearest eligible remaining rare
• Skip rares already completed for the current daily reset
• Skip temporarily dead or unavailable targets
• Advance automatically after arrival or a qualifying kill
• Provide hints for caves, patrols, summons and other less obvious locations
• Run in a full information layout or a small Minimal mode
• Use child-map-aware navigation for rares located inside sub-zones or interiors
• Show a dedicated Hunt Complete screen when the zone has been cleared

TomTom is not required for Hunt Mode.

HFTR can still integrate with TomTom where appropriate, with Blizzard waypoint support available as well.

Smarter rare state tracking

A rare being dead is not always the same thing as you having killed it.

HFTR keeps those situations separate.

Supported DAILY rares can move through states such as:

• Attackable
• Protected / waiting
• Dead
• Not Found
• NRA — no longer reward-eligible for you until the next daily reset

If you find a supported rare already dead, HFTR can remember the corpse state without falsely recording a kill.

If you have already completed a DAILY rare, that lock can persist across reloads and relogs until Blizzard's daily reset.

HFTR uses Blizzard's reset timing rather than assuming a fixed reset hour.

Track it. Collect it. Show it off.

Rare hunting is not always just about whether the mount or toy finally drops.

HFTR keeps progression for supported rares, including:

• Character kills
• Account-wide kills
• First kill
• Most recent kill
• Kill Rank progression
• Collection progress
• Rare details and supporting information

The Rare Collection is intended to feel more like a trophy cabinet than a checklist, including 3D models where available and your own hunting history.

Sometimes the reward is the drop.

Sometimes it's being able to say:

“Yeah. I've killed that thing 347 times.”

Tracker and Rare Alert

The main tracker is designed to stay useful without taking over the screen.

HFTR includes:

• Full tracker view
• Compact Light tracker
• Supported rare status
• Protected timers
• Daily remaining-rare progress
• Hunt controls
• Automatic focus on relevant detected rares
• Rare Alert popup
• 3D model support with icon fallback
• Configurable sounds and presentation
• Optional spawn-age information when Blizzard exposes usable data

HFTR also avoids carrying outdoor rare information into unrelated dungeons, raids or scenarios.

If you enter unsupported instanced content, the tracker can simply get out of the way. You can still open HFTR and its Settings manually.

Future expansion packs can explicitly support instanced rares where appropriate.

Sharing and Sync

HFTR includes optional tools for sharing useful rare information with other players and compatible HFTR clients.

This includes:

• Manual location sharing
• Manual timer sharing
• Community rare observations
• Optional character-name sharing
• Sighting information from compatible HFTR users
• Companion-assisted community data
  
  Visit PSW HFTR Website for more info about the Companion App

Personal DAILY states such as your own NRA/reward lock are kept separate from shared rare state.

HFTR is deliberately conservative about chat output.

It should say something when it matters, not fill your chat window just because something happened nearby.

Accessibility and customization

HFTR is being built with customization in mind rather than locking everyone into one layout.

Current accessibility options include:

• Reduce flashing and rapid effects
• Reduce motion
• High contrast status colors

Important states are never communicated through color alone.

Settings are split into focused sections for things such as:

• General
• Accessibility
• Appearance
• Chat & Messages
• Expansions
• Hunt Mode
• Notifications
• Profiles
• Sharing
• Sync
• Tracker
• Waypoints
• Debugging

A first-run Setup Wizard is also included to help configure the most important parts without requiring you to understand every option immediately.

Everything can be changed later.

Expansion support

HFTR is not limited to the current expansion.

The addon is built around a modular content system so players can install the eras they actually want to hunt without loading the entire history of World of Warcraft into one giant content package.

Current supported Retail content includes:

• Classic content — original pre-expansion World of Warcraft rares
• The Burning Crusade
• Wrath of the Lich King
• Cataclysm
• Mists of Pandaria
• Warlords of Draenor
• Legion
• Battle for Azeroth
• Shadowlands
• Dragonflight
• The War Within
• Midnight

Legacy expansion modules can be installed individually.

Each expansion pack owns its own rare data, locations, mechanics and expansion-specific behavior, while HFTR Core provides the shared hunting systems, tracking, UI, navigation, collection and supporting logic.

That separation also means expansion content can be corrected and improved independently without requiring every other era to be rebuilt at the same time.

Current expansion — Midnight

Midnight is the current expansion supported by HFTR.

Current coverage includes:

Eversong Woods

DAILY rare tracking and Hunt Mode.

Zul'Aman

15 DAILY rares with Hunt Mode and targeted location/mechanic guidance.

Harandar

15 DAILY rares with Hunt Mode, patrol guidance and support for less obvious locations.

Voidstorm

14 DAILY rares from The Ultimate Predator, plus a separate group of 5 Stormarion EVENT rares.

Stormarion rares do not inflate the DAILY Hunt total and do not use DAILY NRA rules.

The Coiled Isle

12 DAILY rares from Coiled to Strike, plus a separate group of 5 Cursed Surge EVENT bosses.

The Coiled Isle also makes use of child-map navigation for rares located inside areas such as The Underbelly and Tomb of the Lost Priest.

Val

EVENT-style rare tracking.

Naigtal

EVENT-style rare tracking.

DAILY and EVENT content use different lifecycle rules so one system does not contaminate the other.

A note about Voidstorm and The Coiled Isle

Voidstorm and The Coiled Isle were implemented from current live game data, achievements, databases, guides and community observations, but I have not yet been able to personally live-test those two zones in-game.

The underlying rare lists and structure have been researched carefully, but coordinates, Hunt routing, event-state behavior or special encounter mechanics may still need adjustments once I can test them directly.

If something behaves strangely, please report the rare, zone and what happened.

That kind of feedback is genuinely useful.

Legacy content and ongoing improvements

Legacy World of Warcraft content can be complicated.

Rares can move, phase, patrol, use old quest-state logic or behave differently from how historical sources described them years ago.

HFTR's legacy expansion modules are built from the best verified data available, but they are also designed to improve over time.

Community observations and future research systems can help identify:

• Missing or alternate spawn locations
• Patrol routes
• Phasing differences
• Alternate NPC variants
• Outdated legacy coordinates
• Changes Blizzard makes to older content

Community evidence is used as research input rather than automatically rewriting live addon data.

The goal is to keep improving legacy accuracy without pretending that twenty years of World of Warcraft can be perfectly verified in advance.

Optional Companion

PSW Hunt for the Rares also has an optional Windows Companion.

The addon itself does not require it.

The Companion can help with things such as:

• Installing and updating HFTR
• Installing, updating and managing optional expansion modules
• Community synchronization
• Diagnostics and debug report handling
• Checking official addon releases
• Verifying installed addon files against official release hashes
• Detecting modified, missing or extra files
• Repairing an installation from the verified official release package

The goal is to make maintaining HFTR easier without turning the addon itself into a giant external dependency.

PSW HFTR Website

Normal rare hunting remains available without Companion.

Built to grow

HFTR Core is the engine.

Expansion packs provide the content.

HFTR now supports rare hunting content spanning the original World of Warcraft through the current expansion while keeping those eras separated into manageable content modules.

That architecture is intentional.

It means HFTR does not need to dump decades of rare data into one giant addon, and individual expansions can be researched, corrected and updated independently.

It also gives HFTR room to support future expansions, additional World of Warcraft game versions and new hunting systems without turning the Core into an unmaintainable collection of expansion-specific code.

The goal is simple:

One organized hunting platform. Install the content you actually want.

Built as an addon first

HFTR is designed so the World of Warcraft addon remains useful on its own.

Community services, Companion integration, research systems and web features can add more capability around it, but they are not intended to become requirements for basic rare hunting.

That separation matters for both players and long-term development.

HFTR should remain understandable, maintainable and usable even if optional external services are unavailable.

Still evolving

HFTR began because I wanted a better way to keep track of my own rare hunting.

It has grown considerably since then, but that original idea is still the point.

Know what is left.

Know where you're going.

Know what you've already done.

And spend a little less time wondering whether you are waiting for the right thing.

There will always be edge cases, old content that behaves strangely and things that need another pass.

That is part of maintaining an addon across this much World of Warcraft history.

The goal is not to pretend HFTR will never have a bug.

The goal is to keep building it carefully, keep improving the data and make the hunting experience better over time.

Hunt smarter. Share less noise.

Created by PandaSaidWhat
EU · Grim Batol · Horde