AddOn Spotlight: QuestRouterLite
QuestRouterLite (3.3)
With QuestHelper and TourGuide both suffering their own demises recently, QuestHelper slowing development and TourGuide going pay-for-use (ugh); interactive leveling addons seemed pretty much dead. Yes, there’s Carbonite, but it modifies the default UI more than I care for. What do we do? I feel cold, hold me. The latest white horse of the addon world is QuestRouterLite (QRL), by Lyncks.
Patch 3.3 brought about a vast number of questing changes and APIs. QRL takes advantage of these in an extremely non-intrusive manner. Since all of the new points of interest are provided by Blizzard, there is no additional calculation required. This keeps memory low (really low) and CPU cycles to a minimum. Speaking of CPU cycles, this was one of my beefs about QuestHelper. When I had that installed, I lost 3-5+ fps with the standard route calculation settings. Sure, it’s probably less with newer systems, but it’s quite a performance hit. This is because of the complicated real-time quest pathing that QuestHelper uses (and did very well).
Technically, LightHeaded can be discarded also. It has certainly become less relevant throughout patch 3.3.x, but I still find it very useful. Having wowhead comments provided in-game along with QRL is a great combo.
If you are looking for a quest routing addon that can simply move you from quest to quest based on optimal proximity, this is your answer. Just because this doesn’t include real-time pathing, it doesn’t mean there’s no intelligence built in. It will watch for completed items/quests, provides optional timed updates, and can be told to only route for in-zone quests.
Required addons for usage: TomTom
