Multiple individual guides concept very confusing

[kreelor]

I'm asking this in this "General Guide Discussion" because it pertains to several guides, and not just one.

I will appreciate some guidelines to follow which you have learned from your experience. I am finding the multiple guides concept very confusing and nearly unmanageable. The following issues happen between guide steps within the same day. They don't share information between each other.

• For instance, Profession/Enchanting guide may tell me that I need x-number of certain vegetables to update my Enchanting guide, so I use every plot in the garden to plant a certain type.
• Another guide, the Professions/Cooking 1-600) may ask me to plant one or more items in my garden plots, but it's already full.
• Another guide, the Dailies/Tiller may ask me to plant one or more items in my garden plots, but it's already full.
• Another guide, Dailies/Reputations may ask me to plant one or more items in my garden plots, but it's already full.

None of guides examine my char's bags (or the garden plots!) to see if I already have whatever any of them needs to complete their particular step(s). Often, I find that I have to dig up some things which I have already planted (and are growing) merely to replace the identical same things I had to dig up! Doesn't make any sense.

If one of the steps sends me to the seed vendor to buy (1) seed, the guide doesn't even know that I already have lots of those required seeds available in my char's backpack. Doesn't make any sense.

Did I start off incorrectly by choosing too many different cooking-related (there are tons of different 'ways' of cooking Mastery guides!), reputation-related, and profession-related goals, instead of mastering only 1-at-a-time? Some advice will be appreciated.

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[cabby]

We can't see what you have planted in the farm. Blizzard does not pass that information to us in the API. Since most of those quests that want you to plant something have an objective of harvesting the item simply having the item already in your bags is not good enough. You would still need to plant it and harvest it the next day before you could turn in the quest.

Now taking your picture as an example, it looks like you've got all 12 plots filled with witchberry plants. Since Blizzard doesn't tell us what you have planted all we can do is give you a step to tell you what needs to be planted. At this point you can just use some basic reasoning and as long as you have the required number already planted kip to the next step. As you can see the next step has 2 goals, to harvest 3 plants and to obtain 15 witchberries. So say you had another quest that wanted you to plant the 12 witchberries and this one that wanted you to do 3. When you harvest all 12 tomorrow that will count for both quests because the plants are not there for a specific quest and there is almost never a quest objective for getting the plants into the ground, they're almost always an objective to harvest the plants.

As for any kind of order I'd suggest doing the following.

1. Run your Tillers Daily/Rep guide (they're the same so only need to run one).
2. Do the Cooking Daily quest there at Halfhill at the same time you do the Tillers. If you show/track that quest objective you'll see that the Cooking Daily (only 1 each day) is always in the same area that you are doing the Tillers dailies. Once you do it for a few days you'll see that it's really easy to do without even having to load the Cooking Daily guide.
3. Normally by this point you only have the professions that would need you to plant something. With that in mind pick one of the professions to work on for the day. If you get lucky enough that the one you picked didn't require planting anything then feel free to run a 2nd profession guide.
4. After doing that then move to other rep/daily guides and they normally will not require planting something. If you do find a rep/daily guide that requires you to plant something make a mental note or jot something down on a scratch pad to remind you which guide it is then go work on a different rep/daily guide. Then the next day do that one rep/daily guide before doing any professions in this sequence.

I've found that reps/dailies like Golden Lotus, Klaxxi, Anglers, and Cloud Serpent are great to run with this. They're all in surrounding zones and I don't remember any of them having any planting quests. Also running all of these along with the Tillers will help to build up a nice little bit of Valor. Also don't forget that if you have the Achievements guides you'll probably want to do the Black Prince achievements (Chapter 1 - Chapter V) as that will get you a nice epic ilvl 600 cloak.

[kreelor]

Cabby, this is good information, especially since I didn't know that Zygor can't see what's in my garden. I've copied all your info into my own little txt file which I can pop-up and refer to while I'm scratching my head near the garden. heh heh. This will help me get familiar with how things work. It's far too complicated, since there are so many similar and/or related tasks to perform. Thank you!

[myrroddin]

Blizzard might not let you know what has been planted via the API, but you can find out inventory status and guess.

For example, before you plant anything, you might have 12 http://www.wowhead.com/item=89326, and after you have 6 left. Hook the events for inventory change, scan the player's inventory, and voila, you can assume 6 http://www.wowhead.com/item=74846 have been planted.

Where things go wrong is if the player sold or destroyed the seeds rather than planted them. I think there is and API to check for selling to the vendor, and certainly for auctioning, mailing, or depositing into the bank or guild bank to rule those out. That just leaves destruction. If there is an event or API that covers that, then you can learn everything you need.

All without actually knowing what is growing in the farm.

As for quest progress using seeds, I am fairly confident the quest API provides the necessary information on a step-by-step progress. So confident, I think Zygor already uses it for other quests.

It may take a lot of coding to figure all this out, but in the end, it can be accomplished.

[kreelor]

Myrroddin, from what you said, it appears that sufficient code can be used to read the garden plots, etc. However, I have no doubts whatsoever that the Zygor team will not exert that much time and energy to change the code for me (or, a relatively small number of users). In time, I'm sure I will become more knowledgeable and more familiar with the processes involved, much like all of you have done already. I'm relatively new to Pandaria and especially the gardening etc. And, it wasn't that long ago that I purchased new Zygor guides, which I'm still struggling with. They are not nearly as fluid in behavior as the primary Zygor Leveling Guide is. Zygor doesn't even recognize their own "steps" within these types of guides as "quest steps," so it's no wonder they aren't working fluidly like the Character Leveling Guide does. But, I'm getting there... just slowly! ha ha.

My main concern was not so much about the garden plots in particular (even though I used that as an example, earlier) but rather the number of separate, individual Zygor guides required to accomplish tasks (steps) all related to Cooking. For instance professions/leveling cooking, dailies reputation, dailies tiller reputation, dailies reputation for the many individual cooking vendors, and maybe more? Each of those has its own separate guide, and none of the guides communicate with the other guides, although they are each related to cooking.

Cabby, I have a question still unanswered. I hope you don't mind:

"If one of the steps sends me to the seed vendor to buy (1) seed, the guide doesn't even know that I already have lots of those required seeds available in my char's backpack."

Can't Zygor "see" and count what I have in my backpack, or in any of my char's bags?

Even this is not the end of the world for me. I can always keep buying things the guides suggest unnecessarily. But, it does seem strange to me, so I'm just wondering why it isn't a little more 'natural' in the way it works.

[cabby]

It should see what you have and not tell you to go to the vendor (mark the step complete). If it's directing you to purchase a seed that you have in your bags then there is some kind of interference causing the guide viewer to not get the information from the Blizzard API for if you have the item in your bag.

[kreelor]

Your suggestions helped

I guess your suggestions yesterday helped me. I followed them, and early this morning I got these.
Ain't too bad for an old fart. LOL. Still... I have a long ways to go!

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