Addon Review - Karni's Crap Filter

It's been a time since I last wrote something about an addon. After the great addon-death of 4.0, I removed all my addons completely, and revamped my entire UI. Because I am very lazy, I decided to go with a ready and set UI, rather than bust my ass off like I had done with my old one. I chose Tukui, and am mostly happy with it. Many of the addons that stopped working pre-Cata have been updated since however, and I am seriously contemplating whether I should go back to my old UI, at least to some part. But that is not what this post will be about. Instead I intend to talk about an addon that I've only recently started to use.

Although it might seem difficult to believe, I'm not an addon-hugger. Love likes to use an addon for just about anything in the game, which makes his char about as automated it can be without actually botting anything. He probably has an addon to wipe the ass of other addons. But I'm not really like that. I do think using addons is comfy, and in some cases even crucial to do a good job (like some sort of healing UI). That doesn't mean I want an addon for everything in the game. I can recall at least a dozen occasions throughout a typical year where I will go "oh, I hate it when it's like this" or "wouldn't it be awesome if there was an addon that did this?". That could be just about anything, but mostly based on what I am sick of at doing at the time. If I've been fishing a couple of hours I'm sure to be saying something like "wouldn't it be awesome if there was some way to keep track of all the fish you've caught?" or "I'd love it if there was some way to make it easier to hear the bobber sound" to which Love nearly always replies - "there is an addon that does that". Whining about something doesn't mean I want to fix it though, but guys don't get that. I want him to go "yeah, isn't that annoying!" and he want's to solve my problem and be the prince in shining armor.

I couldn't agree more!

So about a year ago, or actually probably more, I was leveling yet another alt. When doing some sort of troll area, killing trolls and looting Troll Sweat, one of the most annoying gray items in the game, I was complaining as usual - "wouldn't it be awesome if there was some way to just not loot all the crap that mobs drop?". And Love of course goes - "there is an addon that does that". Yes indeed, Karni's Crap Filter (Karni Crap for short) will make sure that you never have to loot another crap item again. It sounds simple and awesome, kind of like the addon I've got that automatically sells all grays in my bags, an addon I'd never ever play without ever again. But when I heard about Karni Crap I merely shrugged. I thought "nah, there aren't that many things I'd like to avoid to make it worth having an entire addon for it". That's what I usually think. "I don't think this is troublesome enough to actually go to a site and download the addon and set it up". So months passed and I kept on looting all those Troll Sweats and other crap items that exist around the world.

I'm usually a crap collector though. I'm always astonished at people who don't loot Bastard Sword worth 3g to vendor, and then complain about not affording that shiny purple on AH. The easiest way to earn money is without a doubt to simply loot the mobs that you kill. It's not awesomely much, which probably is the reason people avoid it in the first place, but it adds up. And why not loot it? Aint got enough bag space? I am known to constantly run around with only 1-2 free bag slots, but as long as you vendor when you repair, and don't keep your profession in your bags, running out of bag space doesn't happen often. But even if 99% of everything that drops is worth picking up, those 1% can really become a nuisance. I kept on looting those 1% and throwing them out of my bags manually (because I wouldn't save them in my bags for vendoring), until I finally snapped.

I am currently leveling yet another prot warrior (my fifth or so), and having to remove some sort of water from my bags after every instance is what finally got me to download Karni's Crap Filter. Water is just one example of many of things that aren't worth anything, and that yet drops in abundance. Another example is the already mentioned Troll Sweat, and something that drops everywhere in Cata - Shiny Fish Scales and Fish Oils. Imagine to never have to think about that crap again? you're probably thinking "hah, I don't loot that stuff often enough to care about this". I understand you, so did I for more than a year. And you may be right. Depending on how you play, you might actually rarely get into contant with crap dropping mobs. After having looted my umptififth stack of water however, I decided to give it a go. And I can say, I have no idea why I didn't try it sooner.

So what does Karni Crap do? Quite simply, you tell it what the value of the items you're looting have to be for it to loot them. Say you think you can't be bothered with anything worth less than 1g, simply tell Karni Crap so and you won't loot anything worth less. You can also decide whether you want Karni to count the value of a stack or of a single item towards this limit, so say if you have a stack limit of 1g, you'll loot items that are worth 20s as long as they stack in more than 4. Some items are worth looting regardless of their vendor value, like cloths and meats for instance. You can easily tick these items off in a little premade list to make sure Karni doesn't ignore them. If you happen to grind some certain item that falls outside of your rules and don't want to change your entire rule set for that item, you can simply write /notcrap[item] and Karni puts it on the safe-list. The opposite goes with /crap[item]. Karni comes with its own built in auto-loot, which means you have to turn the regular one off in order for Karni to work. A side effect of using Karni Crap is that looting goes a lot faster, since it won't even show the loot window if there is nothing but money. You can have it give you a message about the loot it doesn't pick up, if you want to make sure you're not missing out on something good. And it can be found right here.