War Within
The new releaswe has the Khaz Algar portals. It will automatically add the portals if you complete the correct quests. One portal in Azj-Kahet becomes available during normal campaign quests with the "What We Still Have" quest. Another portal only opens if you go to The Ringing Deeps and complete the normal level quest "Rust and Redemption" at /way 53.3 44.6.
Quick Instructions:
This addon tells you which portals to use to get you where you want to go using the fastest route. It includes mage portals, druid portals, and hearthstones as well. The default options were chosen to include the portals that most max level mains have available to them. If you’re told to use a portal that you haven’t yet unlocked, simply open the options, uncheck that portal, and then hit the “Start Over” button in the Portal Helper path button. To use your normal hearthstone, you must first register its location in the Hearthstones section of the options.
To get portalling directions, left click the Portal Helper minimap button. This will bring up the Portal Helper Select Destination dialog box. Then simply add a waypoint, either with Alt Left click on a zone map or by entering /way #<zone number> <x> <y> in the chat box. You will then see portalling directions to your destination. If you have default TomTom options, you will see waypoint arrows guiding you to your next portal. Make sure your TomTom options are set to allow waypoint arrows to guide you. TomTomOptions>WaypointArrow>EnableFloatingWaypointArrow and AutomaticallySetWaypointArrow should both be checked.
Detailed Instructions:
There is a massive set of portals all connected together that can get you quickly to most areas you might want. I call that the main portal network. Once you get to any of these portals, you can quickly get to any other portal location in the main portal network since they are all connected with a short travel. For example, if you’re at your Draenor Horde garrison, you can take the garrison portal to Warspear which then has a portal to Orgrimmar which is the center of the main portal network for the Horde. Generally, using the main portal network is the fastest way to get somewhere far away, but not always. There are other portals not connected to the main portal network that might be more advantageous to use. For example, if you’re in Un’Goro Crater and you want to get to Northrend, using the portal from Un’Goro Crater to Sholazar Basin (if you’ve unlocked that portal) might be your fastest route. This program will automatically take these isolated portals into account and check to see if using any of them is the fastest way to go.
Without a mage, if you’re not near a portal it is usually fastest to use a hearthstone portal into the main portal network and then travel from there. You should have multiple independent “hearthstones” to the main portal network. These include your main hearthstone which should be set to an inn near a main portal network portal, the Dalaran hearthstone, the Draenor garrison hearthstone, the three Orgrimmar or Stormwind cloaks, the Draenor shipyard hearthstone, and a Kirin Tor ring. But for those of you who haven’t obtained most of these “hearthstones” and are doing a lot of traveling, you might want to click the option to not use a hearthstone so you don’t use up a hearthstone cooldown. Of course, if you have a mage with you, you won’t have this problem because they can portal you into multiple locations in the main portal network.
Since the three cloaks to Orgrimmar and Stormwind are so important to fast portalling, I was thinking about adding support to automatically equip, use, and unequip them, but then I saw there already is an addon that will do that for you. The addon Tome of Teleportation does all this and more than what I was thinking of supporting so I highly recommend you use that addon to simplify your portalling. (I’ve got my hands full supporting Portal Helper as it is so I’m unlikely to support Tome of Teleportation-like functionality in Portal Helper.) Manually equipping, using, and unequipping works fine as well if you prefer, as long as you don’t forget to unequip the cloak and then vendor your main cloak.
You’ll notice in the options, the portals have a 1 or 2 behind the checkbox name. That indicates the portal is one way or works in both directions. Sometimes I have to split a two way portal into two one way portals. That is usually because the permissions to use that portal differ depending on the direction you want to go or one of the portal exits is not near the entrance on that side. For example, the Orgrimmar-Jade Forrest portal needs to be unlocked to get to Jade Forrest, but does not need to be unlocked to go from Jade Forrest to Orgrimmar. So you will see Orgrimmar-Jade Forrest 1 as a checkbox. You won’t see Jade Forrest-Orgrimmar 1 as a checkbox because it needs no unlocking so is automatically included in the path searches. The Val'sharah-Bel'ameth portal works for my level 70 horde character but not the Bel'ameth-Val'sharah portal. My level 70 night elf can access both directions. Consequently, you will see both Val'sharah-Bel'ameth 1 and Bel'ameth-Val'sharah 1 in the list of checkboxes. There is an intimidating list of checkboxes. I hope I’ve minimized this pain by defaulting to available most of the portals that most level 70 main characters would have available to them, but there’s really no easy way for me to automatically determine if an unlockable portal is available to your character.
If you're Horde, you can ignore the Alliance portals. Whether they're checked or not they won't affect you. If as a Horde player you can use an Alliance portal even though it might put you in danger, then it will be in the Horde section if you need to enable it. Likewise, if you're Alliance, you can ignore the Horde portals.
When you left click the Portal Helper minimap button, a dialog box will come up with multiple options.
Use hearthstones: If you're right next to one of the main portal network portals, you might want to uncheck this box so you don’t use up a precious hearthstone portal cooldown. If you uncheck this option often even when the main portal network is far away, you might want to spend the time to get some more hearthstones. For example, the three Orgrimmar or Stormwind cloaks can easily be bought if your guild has completed the right achievements. The Draenor garrison hearthstone can be obtained after a short Draenor questline. The Draenor shipyard hearthstone can be obtained when you’ve done enough Draenor shipyard missions. The Dalaran hearthstone can be obtained after a short Legion questline. A Kirin Tor ring can be bought in Dalaran Northrend.
Use mage portals: If you are a mage or you have a mage with you, check this box so Portal Helper can try to use mage portals to get you somewhere fast.
Choose Start: Normally, Portal Helper assumes your starting point is your current position. If this button is clicked, your first map waypoint entered will be your starting location and your second waypoint entered will be your destination. You might want to use this if one member of your party isn’t with you and you want to help them by telling them which portals to use.
Other Information:
Traveling Speed: This dropdown selects your speed all the way from level 5 walking speed at 100% to fast dragon flying speed. This is used to convert portal time such as zeppelin flying and wait times to the distance you could have traveled if you were flying or walking instead. For example, if you’re on the Orgrimmar zeppelin station to Thunder Bluff and you want to go to Thunder Bluff and you’re level 5 so your max speed is only 100%, then Portal Helper will tell you to take the zeppelin to Thunder Bluff. But if you check dragon flying speed, then it would instead tell you to fly to Thunder Bluff since your flying time would be much less than the zeppelin time. If you’re very slow but expect to use flight paths to go most of the distance, you might want to select master flying.
When using TomTom to select your destination with Alt Right Click, you need to put your destination waypoint on the lowest level map you can. Early on, I tried to support placing waypoints on the Eastern Kingdoms map and discovered many errors resulting from that. For example, I’d place a waypoint on Tol Barad on the Eastern Kingdoms map and Portal Helper would tell me to take the Orgrimmar-Vashj’ir portal instead of the Orgrimmar-Tol Barad portal. On the Eastern Kingdoms map it looked like I had a good waypoint on Tol Barad, but the actual coordinates I got from Here Be Dragons was a point much closer to Vashj’ir. I don’t think this was a Here Be Dragons fault. I think the Blizzard function C_Map.GetWorldPosFromMapPos often gives bad coordinates. A similar situation exists in Pandaria. The Isle of Thunder can only be reached by portal but Portal Helper wasn’t using the portals and instead told me to fly directly there because my Isle of Thunder waypoint was telling me it was in Kun-Lai Summit. To avoid these errors and prevent myself from being inundated with complaints about bad portalling decisions, I’ve blocked using high level maps to set destination waypoints.
Zidormi time is a problem for Portal Helper, especially for the Tirisfall Glades portals which are fairly useful. I have no way to see if you are in Tirisfall Glades old Zidormi time or new Zidormi time while you’re in Grom’gul trying to find the best portal path. In addition, there are two different versions of new Zidormi time, one without any portals before completing the Return to Lordaeron story quest, and one with multiple portals in an Under City courtyard after completing the Return to Lordaeron story quest. You can see if you’ve completed this questline by seeing if you have the title Of Lordaeron or not. The same sort of situation exists with Blasted Lands old and new Zidormi time. If Blasted Lands is in new Zidormi time, then the Orgrimmar Thrallmar Mage and Stormwind Honor Hold Mage will portal you to the Blasted Lands and the Dark Portal will take you to Draenor. If not, then all 3 portals will go to Hellfire Peninsula instead. As a result, I have checkboxes in the general options to tell me which Zidormi time you are in. I can programmatically tell if you have the title “Of Lordaeron” so I can choose portals based on that after you check Tirisfall Glades is in new Zidormi time. If you are in new Zidormi time and haven’t completed the Return to Lordaeron story quest, then Portal Helper will still use Tirisfall Glades portals. It will just tell you to change to old Zidormi time when you portal in to Tirisfall Glades and materialize near Zidormi.
Portal Helper tries to use the fastest way to get you somewhere. You might wonder why Portal Helper doesn’t use the Grom’gul-Orgrimmar zeppelin when you’re standing right next to the zeppelin in Grom’gul and your destination is Orgrimmar. That’s because it’s always faster to portal to Tirisfall Glades and then portal to Orgrimmar. As a result, probably the only time Portal Helper will suggest using the Grom’gul zeppelin is if you’re an Alliance character who can’t see the Grom’gul-Tirisfall portal and you’re willing to be put into pvp mode in Orgrimmar.
You might be wondering why the Stormwind-Waking Shores ship is listed in the Horde section but not the Alliance section since it’s an Alliance ship. That ship can be taken by Horde but it will force them into pvp mode so they need to actually check it to include it. Since a level 10 Alliance player can take the ship, it isn’t listed for Alliance but instead is automatically included in their path searches.
If you Shift Right Click the minimap button, you will get a list of all the portals currently enabled by default and by options chosen by you. Please don’t tell me I’m missing a portal before checking this list. Many portals are added by default and so will not appear anywhere in the options. Some portals that are not in the options will be added to the list if you enable “Willing to face danger.” Some portals in the list may be unlikely to be used even though they are on the list. For example, the Orgrimmar-Grom’gul zeppelin might never be suggested to you to use because going through Undercity is almost always faster.
Some portalling directions may seem odd but are given for good reason. For example, if you are in Tol Barad with Use hearthstones off and you want to get to Valdrakken and your traveling speed is set to slow, Portal Helper will tell you:
Take the Tol Barad portal to Orgrimmar
Take the Orgrimmar portal to Hyjal
Take the Hyjal portal to Orgrimmar
Take the Orgrimmar portal to Valdrakken
You might ask, why is it going to Hyjal? Why not just go directly to the Valdrakken portal? It’s because the Tol Barad portal is one of the few portals that port you to the upper plateau right next to the portal to Hyjal and not to the Orgrimmar portal room. By portalling to Hyjal and back you get to the Orgrimmar portal room without the lengthy travel time to get from the upper plateau to the portal room.
This addon relies on the addons TomTom by jnwhiteh and Ludovicus_Major and Here Be Dragons by Nevcairiel which is included in TomTom. TomTom gives me the waypoints to set destinations and the waypoint arrows to guide you to the next portal. Here Be Dragons calculates distances for me and gives me world coordinates in yards. I also use the Ace3 library as well. Thanks to wyrcurse for providing the Manapoof coordinates.
Known Conflicts with other Addons
This program relies on you adding a TomTom waypoint on the map. Currently, if you have the addon HandyNotes installed, it will cause your Alt Right Click on the map to no longer add a TomTom waypoint. Functionality in HandyNotes to set a note in HandyNotes will block you from adding a waypoint. You have 2 options to fix this. 1) You could uninstall HandyNotes. 2) You can change the keybind in TomTom to be something other than Alt Right Click in the Options > AddOns Tab > TomTom > Quest Objectives > Set Waypoint Modifier dropdown. You could set it to Alt Control Right Click for example. (Control Right Click is used by Blizzard to set a Blizzard waypoint.) I’m hoping HandyNotes will change their seldom used Alt Right Click to Alt Control Right Click in the future or at least have an option to change it.
Rare Alert often creates a waypoint when it detects a rare and if you have the Portal Helper Select Destination dialog box open because you’re about to tell Portal Helper where you want to go, then Portal Helper might tell you portalling directions to Rare Alert’s rare. I'm not very fond of this because flying to a TomTom waypoint only to have Rare Alert change my TomTom arrow mid-flight was beyond tolerable for me. Yes, I know about the lock icon that will stop waypoint arrows from changing, but it also stops Portal Helper from changing the waypoint arrow. There is no option like other rare detecting addons have to disable the automatic waypoint creation without disabling the addon completely. So when you are portalling, uncheck RareAlertOptions>GeneralOptions>EnableRareAlertAddon to disable this addon completely or be prepared to have Rare Alert unexpectedly create a waypoint that closes the Portal Helper Select Destination dialog and open the Portal Helper Path dialog that tells directions to a rare you don’t want to go to. Portal Helper can also give TomTom waypoints to the portals you’re using. If Rare Alert is on, it is likely to mess up your traveling directions. I would far prefer Rare Alert to only add a waypoint if I click on a Rare and maybe have an option to automatically set waypoints that other people might use but I would never enable.
Silver Dragon will also by default automatically set waypoints, but in this case, it's easy to stop this without totally disabling Silver Dragon. Simply uncheck SilverDragonOptions>Waypoints>Automatically. You can turn it back on after you're done portalling or stay in the mode where you have to click a rare notice to get a waypoint.