WowVision

WowVision is a World of Warcraft addon for blind and visually impaired players. It reads the game’s windows aloud and lets you operate them with the keyboard, announces what happens around you, keeps game information ready on demand, and guides you through the world.

WowVision ist ein Addon für World of Warcraft, das blinden und sehbehinderten Menschen das Spielen ermöglicht. Es liest die Spielfenster vor und macht sie mit der Tastatur bedienbar, sagt an, was um dich herum passiert, hält Spielinformationen auf Abruf bereit und führt dich durch die Spielwelt.

Choose your language / Sprache wählen

• English: User Manual — Getting Started
• Deutsch: Benutzerhandbuch — Erste Schritte

Quick links / Schnellzugriff

Developers will find the technical documentation in the Developer Guide at the end of the book.

Getting help / Hilfe

Questions and bug reports: WowVision on GitHub or the WowVision Discord.

Fragen und Fehlermeldungen: WowVision auf GitHub oder der WowVision-Discord.

Introduction

WowVision is an addon for World of Warcraft that makes the game playable without seeing the screen. It speaks through the text to speech voices built into the game and into Windows, so you do not need a screen reader running, although you can use one alongside it.

This manual explains WowVision from the player’s point of view: what each feature does, which keys you press, what you will hear, and what you can change.

What WowVision does

It reads the game’s windows and lets you use them with the keyboard. Bags, merchants, quest givers, the talent tree, the mailbox, the auction house and many more are read like a desktop application: the arrow keys and Tab move, Enter is a left click, Backspace a right click, Space reads the tooltip. See Using the Interface and Game Windows.

It tells you what happens around you. Your new target, the zone you enter, when you start falling, run into a wall, enter combat, how many enemies are fighting you, game error messages like “Out of range”, incoming chat messages. Every one of these alerts can be spoken, played as a sound, or turned off. See Alerts.

It keeps information ready for you. Buffers are lists you can read at any time with Alt and the arrow keys: your health and mana, gold, experience, free bag slots, the buffs and debuffs on you or your target, the messages of a chat tab, and whatever else you add. See Buffers.

It watches things for you. Monitors alert you when a debuff falls off your target, a spell is ready again, or a proc happens. See Monitors.

It guides you through the world. The navigation window (F10) plans routes along a network of waypoints and leads you there with sound beacons; the scanner (F9) lists quest givers, quest objectives and other things nearby; the minimap scan finds herbs and ore. See Navigation and Routes, Scanner and Minimap.

It gives you extra controls. Soft targeting switches, five focus targets, a menu for your target, keys for loot rolls, and on Retail and WoW: Forever gamepad support. See Targeting and Controller.

Supported game versions

“Shared features only” means everything that works on all versions is there (the interface, speech, alerts, buffers, chat, navigation, targeting and many common windows), but some game windows of that version are not read yet. The details are in Features by Game Version.

WowVision is in alpha. Things change from release to release, and some windows are still missing. Your bug reports help: see Troubleshooting.

WowVision and Sku

Many blind players know Sku, the older accessibility addon. WowVision was written with Sku players in mind: many sounds and behaviours (falling tones, wall sounds, the Alt Gr distance key, focus targets) work the way Sku players expect. You can install both; WowVision then leaves a number of windows and keys to Sku. See Using WowVision together with Sku.

WowVision cannot read the login and character selection screens: the game only loads addons once a character enters the world, so no addon can. The Sku login tool can get you through them: see Logging In with the Sku Login Tool.

How this manual is organized

• Getting Started — Installation, your first login with the login tool, the Quick Start for your first minutes, managing WowVision, using it together with Sku, and Troubleshooting.
• Basics — the interface, tooltips, speech, the settings menu, alerts and keybindings. Read these first.
• Information on Demand — buffers and monitors.
• In the World — targeting, combat, movement, navigation, minimap, scanner and quests.
• Game Windows — every game window WowVision reads, one page per topic.
• Controller — playing with a gamepad on Retail and WoW: Forever.
• Reference — all keys, all commands, features per version, glossary and FAQ.

Conventions in this manual

• Keys are written in bold, with a plus sign for keys pressed together: Ctrl+Shift+F means hold Ctrl and Shift and press F.
• Names of settings, buttons and menu entries are written in bold, exactly as WowVision speaks them, for example the Invert Item Direction setting.
• Spoken examples are in quotation marks: “250 / 500 Health”.
• Features that exist only on some game versions are marked, for example (WoW: Forever only).
• Every key mentioned here is the default. You can change all of them; see Keybindings.

Getting help

Questions, ideas and bug reports go to the WowVision project on GitHub.

Installing WowVision

There are two ways to install WowVision. This page helps you choose one, and covers what comes after either: the addons WowVision works with, and switching the addon on. Then continue with Your First Login.

Two ways to install

• With the installer (recommended). The WowVision Installer is a Windows program that does everything for you: it finds your game versions, puts WowVision in the right folders, sets the game settings WowVision needs, and can install the WoW Login Tool and other useful addons along the way. Run again later, it keeps everything up to date. Every step is spoken. See Installing with the Installer.
• By hand. You download the zip and extract it into the game’s AddOns folder yourself. Use this on a Mac, where the installer does not run, or if you prefer to manage your addons yourself. See Installing by Hand.

Both give you the same WowVision. Whichever way you choose, come back to this page for switching the addon on, then go on to Your First Login.

Optional addons

WowVision works on its own. It also knows three other addons and uses them when they are installed. They are listed in WowVision’s TOC files as optional, so the game loads them first when they are enabled.

For everything about quests and Questie, including the first-start question, read Quests.

Switching the addon on

New addons are only found when the game starts, so start the game, or restart it, after installing. A /reload is not enough for a brand new addon.

The game switches on new addons by itself. After the installer, WowVision simply loads when your character enters the world, and after an installation by hand it normally does too. Check it with Shift+F1, as described under First login.

The game’s own list of addons, on the character selection screen, needs the mouse, so you do not have to use it. If WowVision does not load because addons were switched off there, for example by a sighted helper, type the game’s own command /enableaddons once your character is in the world. It switches on all your addons and reloads the interface.

“Out of date” addons

When the game gets a patch, an addon whose TOC file was made for the old patch is out of date. The login screen then shows a warning that you have out of date addons, and the game usually does not load them at all; the Load out of date AddOns check box in the game’s AddOns list no longer changes that. The fix is a WowVision whose TOC matches the patch:

• With the installer: it matches WowVision’s TOC to your game’s patch on every run. After a patch, run the WowVision Updater and choose Update now.
• By hand: download a newer WowVision from the releases page. It is normally updated soon after a patch.

The map data folder is made for The Burning Crusade and WoW: Forever only. On the other game versions the game sees it as out of date, so leave it out when you install by hand. The installer only puts it into The Burning Crusade and WoW: Forever.

If the character selection screen is a problem for you, the Sku Login Tool can drive it. See Logging In with the Sku Login Tool. If WowVision does not load, go to Troubleshooting.

Where to go next

Your First Login: getting through the login screens, and what happens when your character enters the world.

Installing with the Installer (recommended)

The WowVision Installer is a Windows program that installs WowVision for you and keeps it up to date. It is the recommended way to install WowVision:

• It finds the World of Warcraft versions on your computer by itself and puts WowVision in the right folder of each, so the folder mistakes described in Installing by Hand cannot happen.
• It matches WowVision to your game’s patch, so a game patch does not stop WowVision from loading.
• It turns off the game’s “run this script?” question, which otherwise interrupts some commands.
• It can install the WoW Login Tool, which makes the login and character screens usable, and a set of addons many players use.
• Run again later, it updates all of it.

Every page of the installer announces itself, and the progress is spoken as it installs, so it works with NVDA, JAWS or Narrator.

The installer runs on Windows only. On a Mac, see Installing by Hand.

Download and start

1. Download the installer: WowVisionInstaller.exe. This link always gives you the newest version.
2. Run the downloaded file. Windows asks whether the program may make changes to your computer; choose Yes. The installer needs this because it writes into the game’s folder.
3. Windows may also warn that it protected your PC from an unrecognized app, because the installer has no paid signature. Choose More info, then Run anyway.

The installer speaks the language of Windows (English, German or French). You can switch it on the components page, described below.

If a newer version of the installer itself exists, it first offers “Update the installer now (recommended)”. Choose it: it takes a few seconds, and the installer restarts and carries on.

The opening screen

The heading tells you where you stand: “WowVision is not installed yet”, “An update for WowVision is available”, “WowVision is installed and up to date”, or “No World of Warcraft installation found”. Below it are the buttons:

• Install now: installs WowVision into the game versions the installer found, with the recommended setup. On a first install this is all you need.
• Update now: updates WowVision where it is installed and keeps the choices you made last time.
• Install WowVision fresh, or for further game versions: the longer way, where you choose the game versions, the folders and the components yourself. See the next section.
• Browse: shown when World of Warcraft was not found. Select your World of Warcraft folder, a game version folder such as _retail_, or its Interface\AddOns folder.
• Collect all logs: writes one zip file to your Downloads folder with WowVision’s saved data, the game’s logs and the installer’s own log. Attach it to a bug report.

Choosing everything yourself

“Install WowVision fresh, or for further game versions” leads through three pages. Next moves on, Back goes back.

1. Which game versions should WowVision be installed into? Tick every version you play: WoW: Forever, The Burning Crusade anniversary, Classic Era, Mists of Pandaria Classic and Retail. All of them are done in one run.
2. Where is each version installed? The folders WowVision will be written to. If one is wrong or missing, use the Browse button next to it.
3. What should be installed? The defaults are the recommended setup; if in doubt, just continue. The page holds:
   • Language of this installer.
   • Which WowVision: Stable release (recommended) or Beta. The stable release is the last numbered version and is best for most players. The beta is rebuilt with every change, so it has the latest fixes and features and can have new bugs. Your choice is remembered for later updates.
   • Additional recommended addons: Questie, AtlasLoot Continued, Details, Pawn, Deadly Boss Mods, GTFO, and BugSack with BugGrabber. All but Pawn are ticked. Each game version gets the build made for it; an addon that does not exist for one of your game versions says so and is skipped there. See Optional addons for what WowVision does with Questie.
   • Create a desktop shortcut to the WowVision Updater (ticked): a shortcut on the desktop and in the Start menu, to update later without downloading the installer again.
   • Enable NVDA as a voice in WoW (not ticked): installs the NVDA voice bridge, so NVDA appears in the game’s voice list and WowVision can speak through it. See Speech and Sound.
   • Make all Windows voices available to WoW (not ticked): Windows keeps its newer voices in a list the game cannot see; this copies them into the game’s list, after a backup. The game’s voice numbers can shift, so check your speech voice afterward.
   • Install the WoW Login Tool (recommended, ticked): a separate program that gives the login, server and character screens an audio menu, for WoW: Forever, The Burning Crusade anniversary and Classic Era. It is the Sku Login Tool; see Logging In with the Sku Login Tool.
   • Reinstall everything (repair) (not ticked): replaces WowVision even when it is current. Use it to repair a broken install.

Then choose Install.

The two voice options change the voice list of your whole computer, which every speech program then offers. That is why they are off by default and why Update now never runs them.

While it installs

The installer announces each step, and during the download it says the progress every 10 seconds. The progress history is a list you can go through with the arrow keys. Cancel installation stops after the current step; nothing is left half written.

The game has to be closed for a first install into a game version and for the game settings. If it is running then, the installer asks you to close World of Warcraft completely and waits. An update of a WowVision that is already installed is copied even while the game runs; type /reload in the game afterward.

When it finishes

The last page says “Finished”, or “Finished with problems” with the reason for each game version. View event log lists every step of the run, line by line. Close installer ends it.

Then start World of Warcraft from Battle.net, or type /reload if the game was running. Continue with Switching the addon on and First login.

Updating later

Start the WowVision Updater from its shortcut on the desktop or in the Start menu, or run the installer you downloaded again. They are the same program: it first offers to update itself if a newer version exists, replacing its own file, then shows the opening screen. Choose Update now. It updates WowVision in every game version it installed to, follows the beta or stable choice you made, and updates the additional addons too.

To change your choices (another game version, the beta instead of the stable release, the voice options), choose “Install WowVision fresh, or for further game versions” instead.

A beta you extracted by hand, or another test build, is left as it is until you choose Reinstall everything, because the installer cannot tell how old it is. A numbered release you extracted by hand is updated normally.

What the installer leaves on your computer

The installer has no uninstaller of its own, because everything it does is files and a few settings:

• the WowVision folders in each game version’s AddOns folder, with a small file WowVisionInstall.json that records which release each folder came from;
• the two game settings: Load out of date AddOns, and no “run this script?” question;
• the updater in your local application data folder (%LOCALAPPDATA%\WowVisionUpdater) and its shortcuts;
• the additional addons you chose;
• the WoW Login Tool folder and its shortcuts, if you chose it;
• the NVDA voice bridge and the copied Windows voices, if you chose them.

To remove WowVision, follow Uninstalling.

Installing by Hand

This page installs WowVision without the installer: on a Mac, where the installer does not run, or if you prefer to manage your addons yourself. On Windows, the installer is easier and does all of this for you.

When the files are in place, continue with Switching the addon on.

Download

WowVision is published on GitHub. There are two kinds of download, and both are a single zip file.

• The latest release. The stable version. Download it from the WowVision releases page. The zip is named after the version, for example WowVision-V1.0.0.zip, and is a large download (around 100 MB).
• The beta pre-release. Between releases there is one pre-release called beta. It is rebuilt every time the developers change something, so it is for testers. It always lives at the same address: the beta pre-release page. The zip itself is always at https://github.com/wow-vision/WowVision/releases/download/beta/WowVision-beta.zip. The release notes on that page list every change since the last release.

Install both kinds the same way. If you install the beta over an older copy, it simply replaces the files.

What is in the zip

The zip holds two addon folders at its top level:

• WowVision: the addon itself. It contains everything for all game versions, including the translations and the sounds and voice recordings WowVision plays. You do not need to download translations or audio separately.
• WowVision_MapData_TBC: the map data of the classic routes, which lets navigation (the F10 window and routes) work on The Burning Crusade anniversary realms. See Navigation. WoW: Forever routes with WowNav by default, whose data is already inside the WowVision folder (see WowNav), and uses this folder only if you turn WowNav off. It is not meant for the other game versions, so you can leave it out there.

Both folders are installed by the same extraction. Other map data addons that other people publish can be installed beside them.

Where to put it

Extract the zip into the AddOns folder of the game version you play. Each game version has its own folder inside your World of Warcraft installation. The usual installation folder is C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft. On a Mac it is usually World of Warcraft in your Applications folder, with the same version folders inside.

If the Interface and AddOns folders do not exist yet, create them. If you play several versions, extract the zip once into each version’s AddOns folder.

Example: you play The Burning Crusade. Extract the zip into C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft_anniversary_\Interface\AddOns. Afterwards the folders WowVision and WowVision_MapData_TBC sit inside that AddOns folder.

The folder structure that is correct

After extraction, the AddOns folder must contain:

• WowVision
  • WowVision_Vanilla.toc
  • WowVision_TBC.toc
  • WowVision_Mists.toc
  • WowVision_Standard.toc
  • WowVision_Camelot.toc
  • the folders core, classic, retail, libs, and so on
• WowVision_MapData_TBC
  • WowVision_MapData_TBC.toc
  • and its map files

The test: the TOC files must sit directly inside the WowVision folder.

The common mistake: a nested folder

Many unzip programs offer to extract “into a new folder named after the zip”. If you accept, you can end up with a folder inside a folder, so the TOC files are at AddOns\WowVision\WowVision\WowVision_Standard.toc. The game then finds no addon at all, and WowVision silently never loads. The same happens if you extract the zip to your desktop and then copy the zip’s own folder into a folder called WowVision.

To fix it, move the inner WowVision folder up so that the TOC files are one level higher, and delete the empty outer one. Always extract directly into the AddOns folder and let the zip create the two folders itself.

The five TOC files

A TOC file is a small list that tells the game what an addon is and which files to load. WowVision ships one per game version, and the game picks the right one by itself; you never choose.

There is no setting for the version. If a feature is only on some versions, the manual says so, for example (Retail and WoW: Forever only). See Versions for the full table.

Translations and sounds

WowVision comes with text in English, German and French; the language of your game client decides which one is used, and any other client language falls back to English.

The sounds, beacon tones and recorded voices (voice packs) are inside the WowVision folder too. If you ever see a “missing sound” problem, the cause is a damaged or partial extraction: delete the folder and extract the zip again.

Updating by hand

1. Close the game completely.
2. Download the newer release or the beta zip.
3. Extract it into the same AddOns folder, as at the first install, and agree to replace files. For a clean update, delete the old WowVision and WowVision_MapData_TBC folders first, so no leftover file from an older version stays behind. Your settings are not in these folders and are not lost.
4. Start the game and log in. Type /wv version to see the new version.

Next steps

• Switching the addon on and First login.
• Troubleshooting: if WowVision does not load.

Your First Login

Getting through the login screens

WowVision starts working once your character is standing in the world. The login screen, the realm list and the character selection screen come before that, and the game only loads addons once a character enters the world, so no addon can read those screens; only the game itself could make them accessible. WoW: Forever reads its login screens aloud, but they still need the mouse.

The WoW Login Tool from the Sku project gets you through them. It is a small Windows program that runs next to the game and gives these screens a spoken menu. It supports Classic Era, The Burning Crusade anniversary and WoW: Forever; on Mists of Pandaria Classic and Retail it does not work, so ask a sighted helper there. Sign in to Battle.net through the Battle.net app, which works with a screen reader on Windows and on Mac. Tick “keep me logged in” once, so the game logs you in by itself when you start it from there.

In short:

1. Install the tool. The installer does this for you (Install the WoW Login Tool is ticked by default) and puts a WoW Login Tool shortcut on your desktop. To install it by hand, see Getting and installing it.
2. Start the tool, on WoW: Forever before the game. On the very first run it asks for your voice, language, region and game type: Right goes in, Up and Down choose, Enter confirms. You hear “Setup completed. Start the game now.”
3. Start the game. The tool says “Login mode for” with your game version, then “Main menu”.
4. On Classic Era and The Burning Crusade: go to Select character and press Right, choose your character with Up and Down and press Enter, then press Enter on Login with selected character. The tool says “Play mode”. On WoW: Forever the game speaks each item while the tool moves to it; see Using the tool on WoW: Forever.

If the tool does not switch between its menu and the game by itself, press Alt+F1. Creating a character, changing the realm, the full key list and the tool’s own troubleshooting are in Logging In with the Sku Login Tool.

In the world

Once your character is in the world, WowVision starts on its own. It has no spoken “loaded” announcement.

Check that it is running in either of these ways:

• Press Shift+F1. The WowVision menu opens and its first entry is read out. This is the quickest test.
• Type /wv in the chat box and press Enter. This also opens the menu. /wv version prints the installed version to your chat window.

Then give Quick Start a few minutes: it covers the first settings to look at, especially your speech settings.

What WowVision changes on a character’s first login

A few game settings get in the way of how WowVision works, so WowVision changes them once for every new character. It does this a single time; if you change a setting back afterward, WowVision leaves your choice alone.

Two more things follow WowVision settings rather than happen once:

• The game’s Click to Move option follows the Auto-move to Interact Target setting in WowVision’s Navigation menu (on by default), which makes interacting with a distant target walk you to it. WowVision sets the game option at each login to match that setting, so to turn it off, use the WowVision setting rather than the game’s.
• When you switch on a soft target type, WowVision sets its arc to the widest and its range to the longest. Types you leave off keep the game’s values. See Targeting.

The General buffer also gains a few new lines (free bag slots, durability, mail, hearthstone, game clock) the first time an existing character logs in after an update that adds them. See Buffers.

Recommended game settings (optional)

The UI menu has a button, Apply Recommended Game Settings. It is only a suggestion: nothing changes unless you press it, and every setting stays yours to change afterward in the game options. It sets:

• Auto loot on, and all action bars shown.
• Offscreen nameplates on: while the game shows enemy nameplates, an enemy behind you or beside you gets its nameplate at once, so the enemy count can say it right away. Enemy nameplates themselves are not switched on here; see Nameplates are required.
• Friendly NPC nameplates on, so that Turn to Target and Turn to Focus find NPCs (see Navigation).
• The game’s Audio Assist on, saying your health, your target’s health and your resource every 20 percent (the health as the number alone), and when you are targeted (without the attacker’s name). Combat start and end, target name and your debuffs are switched off.

Key bindings, camera, soft targeting and sound volumes are not touched. The button does nothing in combat. After a change the interface reloads, then WowVision says what changed and prints the same to your chat window. Resource and “targeted” are kept per specialization by the game; press the button again after switching specialization.

Where to go next

• Quick Start: the first fifteen minutes.
• Managing WowVision: where your settings are saved, and how to update and remove WowVision.
• Using WowVision together with Sku: if you also have Sku installed.
• Troubleshooting: if WowVision does not load or does not speak.
• Commands: everything you can type, including /wv speech.

Logging In with the Sku Login Tool

WowVision starts working once your character is standing in the world. The game only loads addons at that point, so no addon, WowVision included, can read the screens before it; only the game itself could make them accessible. WoW: Forever reads its login screens aloud, but they still need the mouse, so the tool helps there too. To get through the login screen, the realm list, the character screen and character creation, you can use the WoW Login Tool (version 4.x) that comes with Sku. This page explains what it is, how to get it, and how to use it, so that you can hand over to WowVision as soon as you enter the world.

What it is

The WoW Login Tool is a small Windows program that runs next to the game. It is the “start menu” tool of the Sku project. It is not an addon and it is not part of WowVision. It does not read or change the memory of the game. It only looks at the game window and presses keys and mouse clicks, the same things a sighted player does.

With it you can:

• Log in on the account screen when the game did not log you in by itself.
• Change the realm.
• Choose a character and enter the world.
• Create a character, including a name check.
• Delete a character.
• Hear the pop-up messages of the game read out loud, for example “name not available”.

This page describes WoW Login Tool version 4. The tool says its version number when it starts.

How it works depends on the game version:

• On Classic Era and The Burning Crusade (TBC) Anniversary, the tool looks at the screen with Windows text recognition (OCR) and reads it to you with its own voice. It announces real character names, levels, classes and zones, and the real realm list.
• On WoW: Forever, the game reads its own login screens aloud with its text to speech voice. The tool does not read the screen to you there. Instead it moves the mouse for you from item to item, and the game speaks each one.

Which game versions it supports

The tool detects the game version itself (see “First start”). Wrath of the Lich King clients are not supported either.

What you need

• Windows 10 or Windows 11. The tool uses functions built into Windows (window capture and text recognition), so nothing is sent over the internet.
• AutoHotkey version 2 (see “Getting and installing it”).
• The game itself, started at least once.
• For the screen reader voice option: NVDA. See “Voice and speech” below.

The Windows text recognition needs the language of your game client. The tool uses the language you choose in its setup: English, German, French, Russian or Spanish. If Windows has no text recognition for that language, the tool falls back to the languages of your Windows profile. It keeps running, but it may read names and realms badly.

A Mac version of the tool exists, but this manual does not cover it.

Getting and installing it

The easiest way is the WowVision Installer: its Install the WoW Login Tool option is ticked by default. It installs the tool for WoW: Forever, The Burning Crusade anniversary and Classic Era, brings the AutoHotkey it needs, copies the screen recognition files and the clearer font into Classic Era and The Burning Crusade, and puts a WoW Login Tool shortcut on your desktop and in the Start menu. Start the tool from that shortcut.

By hand

1. Install AutoHotkey version 2 from https://www.autohotkey.com/.
2. Download WoW-Login-Tool.zip from the WoW Login Tool version 4 download page. That release always holds the newest tool. Unzip it. The folder inside is called WoW Login Tool. Best put that folder into your World of Warcraft folder, next to the game version folders. On WoW: Forever the tool finds the game’s settings file from there, or in the default install folder.
3. Open the folder CopyTheContentOfThisFolderToInterface inside the tool folder. It holds five folders. Copy all five.
4. Open your World of Warcraft installation folder (often C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft) and then the folder of your game version:
   • anniversary for The Burning Crusade Anniversary
   • classic_era for Classic Era
5. Open its Interface folder and paste the five folders. Agree to overwrite existing files.
6. Recommended on Classic Era and TBC: run the script install_wow_fonts.ps1 from the tool’s fonts folder as administrator. It replaces the game fonts with a clearer font that the text recognition reads much better. By default it works on the TBC Anniversary folder. For Classic Era, pass the folder with the parameter -ClientDir. The parameter -Remove undoes the change. The change takes effect when the game starts the next time.
7. Start the tool by running START.ahk in the v2 folder with AutoHotkey version 2.

On WoW: Forever you do not need the five texture folders or the font.

Things to know about the install:

• The five copied folders overwrite game interface files that have the same names. If another addon changes the same files, it will be affected. If the tool says the “screen recognition textures are missing from the game folder”, copy the five texture folders again.
• After a new tool version, copy the five folders again. Old copies can stop the tool from recognising the screens.

First start

1. Start the tool. It says “Login tool version” and its number, for example 4.1. On the very first run it says “Setup mode” and asks you to set up four things with the arrow keys, in this order: voice (“Go right to select a voice”), language, region (Europe or USA) and game type. Move Right to go in, Up and Down to choose, and press Enter to confirm. Each choice is confirmed with “selected”. At the end you hear “Setup completed. Start the game now.”
2. After that the tool is in Pause mode and waits quietly.
3. Start the game. As soon as the tool sees the game window and knows the screen, it says “Login mode for” followed by your game version, region and language, for example “Login mode for Burning Crusade, Europe, English”. While it works you hear a short repeating sound. It then says “Main menu”. If the game was already running, tab back into it.

The tool works out the game version itself. When that differs from the version saved in its setup, it switches and says “game version detected” with the name. For a client it has no setup for (for example Mists of Pandaria or Wrath) you hear “This game version is not supported yet.” and the version number. If it guesses wrong, use Select game type in the menu to set it by hand. The choices are Cataclysm, Classic Era, Burning Crusade, Retail and WoW Forever. A hand-picked game type stays fixed. Detect game type automatically, an entry in the same list, switches back to automatic.

Changing the language, the region or the game type later makes the tool restart itself (“selected. Restarting script to apply. Please wait.”), so you hear the version again. Changing the voice does not.

Tips for the Forever client:

• Start the tool before you start WoW: Forever. At start-up, while the Forever game is not running, the tool turns on the game’s screen narration, switches off the first-start narrator question, and sets the narration voice and speech rate in the game’s settings. When it changes something you hear “narration settings written for Forever”. The game only reads these settings when it starts. If the game is already running, the tool leaves the settings alone and says nothing about it.
• If you hear the game’s default voice instead of yours after a first install, close the game and start the tool first, then the game.

The modes

• Setup mode: only on the very first start, while you choose voice, language, region and game type.
• Pause mode: the tool waits. It is active whenever the game window does not have the focus.
• Login mode: the spoken menu for the login, realm and character screens. It starts automatically when the tool sees one of those screens.
• Play mode: you are in the world. The tool lets all keys through to the game. WowVision (and Sku, if installed) work from here.

The tool changes mode by itself. Each time you leave the game window and come back, it starts again from the main menu. That is by design. The Alt+F1 key switches the mode by hand (see the key table).

If the tool does not switch by itself between Login mode and Play mode, press Alt+F1.

These rules keep the tool working:

• While it works and plays its waiting sound, do not press keys, click, move the mouse or switch windows.
• Keep the game window in front and visible. Do not play with it minimised.
• To stop a running action, press Alt+F1.

Using the tool on Classic Era and TBC

Log in to the account screen

If the game could not log you in by itself, it sits on the account screen. The tool then says “Not logged in. Either there is no connection to the server, or account name and password still have to be entered in the game.” Its menu then offers only things that work without a login: Account name, Password, Log in, Save account name, then voice, language, game type, region and version.

1. Move to Account name and press Enter. (Right only repeats the entry.) You hear the current content of the field (“Account name: empty” if there is none) and then “Type now. Enter ends the entry, Escape leaves it.” Type your account name and press Enter. The tool reads the account name back.
2. Move to Password and do the same. You hear “Type now. The password is never read back.” The password is never read back, and Enter ends the entry without logging in.
3. Choose Log in with Enter. You hear “Logging in. Please wait.” The tool reads out any pop-up (for example a wrong password), closes it and says “The login did not go through.” If the game is just connecting, the tool only reads the message and waits.
4. Save account name switches the game’s own “remember account name” box on or off and says “Save account name: on” or “off”.

While you type in a field, the arrow keys go to the game so you can correct typos. The tool never stores your password and has no automatic login. Closing and reopening the Battle.net app is often the faster way back. On Forever the game narrates its own login screen instead.

The main menu

The main menu has these entries, in this order:

1. Select character
2. Login with selected character
3. Create new character
4. Change server
5. Delete character
6. Select voice
7. Select language
8. Select game type
9. Select region
10. A version entry. It reads “WoW Logintool V3.0, Version: V3.0”. That is not the release number of the tool. The release number is spoken when the tool starts.

Use Up and Down to move between the entries, Right to go into an entry that has a submenu, Left to go back, and Enter to run an entry. Wording differs in other languages and can change in future versions.

Select a character and enter the world

1. Go to Select character and press Right. The tool lists your characters by real name, level, class and zone, for example “1: Anna, level 1 Priest”. If there is none, you hear “Empty. No characters on this server.”
2. Choose the character with Up and Down (Page Down and Page Up jump ten) and press Enter. The tool says the name followed by “selected” and moves on to Login with selected character.
3. Press Enter to enter the world. The tool says “Play mode”. If it does not, press Alt+F1.
4. A new character may start with an intro movie. When it ends, you stand in the world and WowVision takes over.

Counting a realm with many characters can take several seconds. The tool says “Please wait, the character list is being rebuilt.” and, on a long list, counts aloud every ten characters. A realm can hold many characters, but the game screen shows nine at a time. The tool counts all of them, so that all of them are in the list. If it could not count them, it says “The character list may be incomplete. Press Alt F1 twice to rebuild it.”

Change the realm

1. Go to Change server and press Enter. The tool opens the game’s realm list and reads the live list from the screen. That takes a few seconds, with the waiting sound. Then you are on the first realm. The entries are the realms (with their type and load), then one entry per category (the tabs of the game’s realm list, spoken “select category” and the tab name), and as the last entry Close server selection. Choosing a category reads that tab’s realms.
2. Choose a realm and press Enter. The tool says “Changing server. Please wait.” and then “Server changed” followed by the realm name.
3. The tool checks which realm the game really shows and warns you if it is a different one: “Attention. The game is on a different server” and the name. Change the server again before you play there.

Special cases:

• On a realm that has no characters of yours yet, the game goes straight to character creation. The tool says “No characters on this realm yet.”
• Some Classic Era realms show a hardcore or PvP warning. The tool reads the text and says “Press Enter to agree, or press Escape to decline.” It never answers for you.
• The tool does not handle realm queues. While the game shows a connecting message, the tool reads it and waits. After about a minute it says “The game is still connecting. Press Escape to cancel.”
• If the game itself opens the realm list, you hear “The game has opened the server selection.” and the realms appear as a menu. Close server selection is the last entry.
• While the game is connecting (login, realm change, game start), a pop-up with only one button is read but never pressed. That one button is “Cancel”, and pressing it would stop your login.

Create a character

1. Go to Create new character and press Right.
2. Choose the gender, then the race, then the class (only classes the race can play are listed), then the starting zone. Use Right to go deeper and Left to step back. Press Enter on the starting zone.
3. The tool says “Enter the name for the new character and press enter, or escape to cancel character creation.” Type the name and press Enter.
4. If the game rejects the name, it shows a pop-up. The tool reads the pop-up aloud, closes it, empties the name field and asks for the name again. Try another name.
5. After success you hear “Character created”. The list is rebuilt, and the tool returns to the main menu. The new character is not selected for you.
6. If something else goes wrong, for example the realm already holds the maximum number of characters, the game’s pop-up is read the same way. If the tool gets no answer for about 18 seconds, you hear “Something went wrong. Please restart the game and try again.”

Name rules: no spaces, the same letter not three times in a row, and the first letter is made a capital for you.

Press Escape during the name entry to cancel. The tool says “Creation is canceled. Please wait.” You cannot choose the look of the character on Classic Era and TBC. The game’s default look is used.

On a hardcore realm the game asks you to agree to the hardcore rules before the character is created. The tool reads the rules page by page and asks for Enter (agree) or Escape (decline).

On a new account the game also shows Blizzard’s social contract. The tool scrolls it to the end and accepts it for you: “Blizzard’s social contract is open. Accepting it, please wait.” Then “Social contract accepted.” If that fails, you hear that sighted help is needed once: scroll the text to the end and press accept.

Delete a character

1. Select the character you want to delete first (see “Select a character and enter the world”). The tool uses the game’s Delete button, so it deletes the character that is selected in the game right now. Right after the tool has counted the list, that is character 1.
2. Choose Delete character and press Enter. The tool reads the game’s confirmation pop-up aloud. It names the character, so check the name before you go on.
3. The tool asks you to type the word DELETE, in capital letters, and press Enter. The tool does not type the word for you. If the game does not accept it, you hear the request again. Press Escape to cancel (you hear “Deleting is canceled. Please wait”).
4. On success you hear “Character deleted” and the list is rebuilt.

The word is DELETE in English. In other tool languages it is the word of that language (LÖSCHEN, EFFACER, BORRAR, УДАЛИТЬ).

Using the tool on WoW: Forever

On Forever the tool works differently, so the keys do different things. The game reads each item aloud when the mouse rests on it. The tool moves the mouse for you.

1. When the tool recognises the game it says “Login mode for WoW Forever” with your region and language. The game narrates the first screens: the screen reader question (switched off by the tool), the login screen, the ruleset cards and the experience cards. If the tool meets a screen it cannot name, you hear “Forever mode: the game reads the screen itself. Press Control Alt F3 to save a screenshot for calibration.” That is a hint for bug reports. Keep going with the arrow keys.
2. Up and Down move to the next or previous item on the screen. The game speaks each one. At the ends of the list the cursor goes around.
3. Page Up and Page Down jump five items. They stop at the first and last item.
4. Enter clicks the item. On a text field, Enter starts typing mode. You hear “typing mode, Enter or Escape to leave”. Type, then press Enter or Escape to give the keyboard back to the tool. Escape is also passed on to the game.
5. Left and Right change the value of an appearance option. On any other item, Left reads the screen again and Right says the current item again.
6. Escape closes an open list of choices. Otherwise it goes to the game, so it backs out of a screen or opens the game menu.
7. The tool also knows the code of conduct (it scrolls to the end by itself and leaves the cursor on Accept), the character list with the delete dialog, and the game menu you get with Escape.
8. The Enter World button switches the tool to Play mode. Alt+F1 goes back to Login mode, for example to return to the character screen.

Create a character on Forever

Character creation is fully covered. The two creation pages are:

• Race and class. The races are listed per faction. Hear them with Up and Down. Both rows of classes and the body type are reachable.
• Appearance and name. The page has the full name field, a second name field if the game shows one, the name check, the dice button for a random name, and the appearance options with their current value.

On the appearance page, press Left and Right to change an option. The tool then says the new value and the number, for example “4 of 10”. For hair styles and similar choices it adds the name of the choice shortly after, once the screen shows it. Colour options have no name in the game. The tool names the colour roughly, for example “light brown”. Reddish light colours are called pink. Names can include a strength such as pale, dull, strong or bright.

Press Down on the lowest option to scroll the list further. The tool jumps to the next option. When the list ends, it goes on to Finish.

The name check shows a small icon next to the name field: a green tick (name free), a red cross (with a reason) or nothing while the game checks or the field is empty. The tool says what the icon shows: that the name is available, the reason the name was rejected, or “no result of the name check yet”. It waits up to about two and a half seconds for the result after you type.

Repeating items

The game says each text only once per run. If you hear nothing after moving to an item you already heard, the tool speaks it again for you. This is normally on when you use the screen reader bridge voice and off with a real voice. It can be changed with the setting repeatecho (see “Settings and files”).

Key reference

In Login mode and during first-time setup the tool takes these keys. In Play mode they go to the game.

The two Numpad keys are helpers for Play mode and are not needed with WowVision.

Alt+F1 does not keep the tool switched off while you stay on a login or character screen: within a second or two it sees that screen again and goes back to Login mode. To stop the tool for real, press Alt+Escape, or switch away from the game window (Alt+Tab). The tool then sits in Pause mode.

Voice and speech

• The tool speaks through a Windows speech voice (SAPI), not through the screen reader. Choose the voice in the first-start setup or later with Select voice. A voice is tested silently first. If a voice does not work, you hear “This voice does not work, choose another one” and your old voice stays.
• If the voice list is empty, you hear “No voices found, press Enter to keep the system voice.”
• The special entry SAPI2SR is not a real voice. It is a bridge that hands the text to NVDA, so you hear it in your own screen reader voice. With that voice, arrow keys cancel NVDA’s speech. With a real voice, speech is interrupted on every move as usual.
• On Forever the narration voice is the position of your chosen voice in the Windows voice list. The speech rate is 5 by default. See “Settings and files”. If you hear the wrong voice on Forever, set voice= in forever.ini. The tool’s log lists all voices with their numbers.
• The output device can be changed with gAudioOutputMatch in the settings file. Enter a part of the device name. Empty means the system default.

Settings and files

The tool’s files are in the WoW Login Tool folder. They are small text files. Edit them with the tool closed.

What the tool writes to the game

On Forever, while the game is closed, the tool writes the narration settings into the game’s settings, so that the game speaks with your voice.

Tips

• Sign in through the Battle.net app, which works with a screen reader on Windows and on Mac, and tick “keep me logged in” once. The game then logs you in by itself, and the tool starts at the realm and character screens.
• Read these steps on a second device. Every time the game window loses the focus, the tool pauses and restarts from the main menu when you come back.
• Listen to the character list again after you create or delete a character. The list is rebuilt and the numbers can change.
• Be patient. Realm lists and character counts take seconds. The tool plays a waiting sound while it works.
• On Classic Era and TBC turn off overlays and colour changes (see Troubleshooting).
• Once you hear “Play mode” and the world has loaded, WowVision is in charge. If you hear nothing from WowVision, check Troubleshooting.

How WowVision and the login tool work together

The tool ends at the world. In Play mode it only watches the screen and offers the two Numpad camera helpers. From then on, everything is WowVision (see the Quick Start).

• The tool does not need WowVision and WowVision does not need the tool.
• You can keep the tool running in the background while you play. If you want it off, press Alt+Escape.
• When you come back to the character screen, for example after you log out, start from the beginning of this page again. On Forever press Alt+F1 to get back into Login mode.
• WowVision lists the Sku addon as an optional addon. It does not use the login tool. If the Sku addon is loaded, WowVision turns some of its keys, windows and commands off so the two do not fight over keys, for example the focus keys, soft targeting, the tooltip line keys (Shift+Up, Shift+Down, Shift+Left, Shift+Right), and windows such as gossip, trade, mail and training. The commands /pquit, /dquit and /focus1 to /focus5 are then left to Sku.
• If you want WowVision to take over completely, the command /disableaddon sku turns Sku and its audio and sound packs off and reloads the interface. /enableaddon sku turns them back on. These two commands do not exist when BlindSlash is loaded.

The full list of windows, keys and commands that WowVision leaves to Sku is in Using WowVision together with Sku.

Troubleshooting

Known limits

• The appearance options on Classic Era and TBC are not available.
• On Forever, very quick changes in a long list (for example hair styles) may briefly say the wrong value before the tool corrects itself.
• The tool needs a Windows PC. A Mac version exists but is not covered here.
• The license text before the first login still needs sighted help once. The tool handles the social contract inside the game.

Sources

• WoW Login Tool version 4 download (the “login-tool” release with WoW-Login-Tool.zip)
• Sku Discord invite, for help

See also: Installation, Quick Start and Troubleshooting.

Quick Start

Your first fifteen minutes with WowVision: check that it runs, set up your voice, and try the most important keys. Everything here is explained in more detail on the pages linked in each step.

This page assumes WowVision is installed and your character is standing in the world. If not, start with Installation.

Step 1: Check that WowVision is running

Press Shift+F1. The WowVision menu opens and WowVision reads its first entry. Press Escape to close it again.

If nothing happens, type /wv in the chat box and press Enter. If that does nothing either, WowVision is not loaded: see Troubleshooting.

Step 2: Make the voice comfortable

Most players want a faster voice than the default.

1. Press Shift+F1 to open the WowVision menu.
2. Use Down Arrow to find Speech and press Enter.
3. Move to Speech Rate and raise it a few steps (0 is normal; the game’s voices accept -10 to 10). The new rate applies to everything WowVision says from then on.
4. Change Speech Voice and Speech Volume the same way if you like.
5. Press Escape until the menu is closed.

A faster way, handy in a macro that runs at login: type /wv speech 1 8 100 for voice 1, rate 8 and volume 100. /wv speech on its own prints your current values and the list of voices with their numbers to the chat window (the first voice usually has number 0). Details in Speech and Sound.

Step 3: Learn the window keys

Open your bags with the game’s bag key (B by default). WowVision reads the bag window. Now try:

The same keys work in every game window and in WowVision’s own windows. While no window is open, these keys belong to the game again, so you can walk and fight as usual. More in Using the Interface.

Step 4: Check your status with buffers

Without opening anything, press Alt+Down a few times. WowVision reads the lines of the General buffer: your health, your mana or other power, experience, money, free bag slots, durability, mail, hearthstone, the time and your PvP status. Alt+Up goes back.

Alt+Left and Alt+Right switch to other buffers, and Alt+Ctrl+Left and Alt+Ctrl+Right to other buffer groups, once you have created some. See Buffers.

Step 5: Listen to the world

Just play for a moment and listen. Out of the box WowVision announces:

• your new target when you change targets, and its health in steps of five percent
• the compass direction when you turn
• zone and subzone changes, indoors and outdoors, swimming and flying
• rising tones when you fall, and a clunk when you walk into a wall
• “combat started”, the number of enemies fighting you, “combat ended”
• game error messages such as “Out of range”
• chat messages in the tab you are reading

Each of these is an alert you can change or turn off in the WowVision menu. See Alerts.

Step 6: Find your way

• Press F9 to open the scanner: a list of quest givers, quests and other things around you. Enter on an entry starts guiding you there.
• Press F10 to open the navigation window and pick a destination for a route (on versions with map data).
• While a route is running, press I to turn towards the current waypoint, and Alt Gr (or Ctrl+Alt) to hear the distance. Shift+F12 stops the route.

See Scanner and Navigation and Routes.

Step 7: Other keys worth knowing now

All keys are listed in the Keybinding Reference, and you can change any of them: see Keybindings.

Where to go next

• Read Using the Interface properly once; it pays off in every window.
• Look through the WowVision menu (Shift+F1) to see which modules and alerts exist.
• If something does not work, see Troubleshooting.

Managing WowVision

Where WowVision keeps your settings and how to back them up, how to update WowVision, and how to remove it.

Where your settings are saved

WowVision keeps its data in the game’s own saved variable files. The game writes them when you log out or type /reload, not while you play. If the game crashes or you close it with a task manager, changes since the last logout or reload are lost.

The files are in the game’s WTF folder, inside the version folder you installed to:

• Account-wide files: WTF\Account\<ACCOUNT NAME>\SavedVariables\ with the names WowVisionGlobalDB.lua, WowVisionDump.lua and, on TBC, WowVisionPriceDB.lua.
• Per-character files: WTF\Account\<ACCOUNT NAME>\<Realm>\<Character>\SavedVariables\WowVisionDB.lua.

By default most settings are shared by all your characters. You can make one module’s settings belong to a single character instead: in the WowVision menu, put the focus on the module, press Shift+F10 and choose Scope. The key bindings (including controller buttons) are shared the same way, and have their own Scope entry on the Bindings button. See The WowVision Menu and Settings and Keybindings.

To back up your setup, copy these files with the game closed. To reset everything, delete them with the game closed; WowVision starts with defaults on the next login. If settings keep disappearing, see settings lost.

Updating WowVision

• With the installer: start the WowVision Updater from its shortcut on the desktop or in the Start menu and choose Update now. See Updating later.
• By hand: download the new zip and replace the folders. See Updating by hand.

WowVision migrates saved settings by itself when an update needs it. Read the release notes on the releases page: they list changes since the last release and say when something resets. The beta is replaced on the same address each time, so you can update it as often as you like.

Uninstalling

1. Close the game.
2. Delete the WowVision and WowVision_MapData_TBC folders from the AddOns folder.
3. Optionally delete the WowVision saved variable files listed above to remove the stored settings.

The changes WowVision made once on first login (the action bar lock, the camera following style and the chat line sound), and Click to Move if you switched it with the WowVision setting, stay in the game after you remove the addon. Change them back in the game options if you want them as before, as described in What WowVision changes on a character’s first login.

If you installed with the installer, it may also have installed other things, such as the additional addons, the WoW Login Tool or the voice options. They are listed in What the installer leaves on your computer. Delete the folders of those you no longer want, and the WowVision Updater shortcuts.

Using WowVision together with Sku

WowVision and Sku can be installed side by side, and many players run both. They do not fight over the same windows: when Sku is loaded, WowVision deliberately steps back from the windows, keys and commands listed below and leaves them to Sku. Everything not on the list is still handled by WowVision.

How it works

When the game loads WowVision, it checks which addons are already loaded. If Sku is among them, every window, key binding and command marked as “belongs to Sku” is switched off for that session: the window simply never opens in WowVision, the key is not taken over, the command is not registered. The decision is made once at login, so enabling or disabling Sku needs a reload (/reload) or a new login to take effect. Nothing is deleted: your WowVision settings and key bindings for these features stay as they are and come back as soon as Sku is off.

If a window is not read by WowVision and you have Sku loaded, this is almost certainly why. To switch Sku off for a session, disable it in the game’s addon list, or type /disableaddon sku (it turns off Sku and its helper addons and reloads the interface; /enableaddon sku turns them back on). These two commands are themselves skipped when the BlindSlash addon is loaded.

What Sku keeps when both are loaded

Windows on every game version:

• Bags.
• Gossip and other NPC dialogs.
• Merchant.
• Mailbox.
• Popups (the game’s confirmation dialogs).
• Quest giver window (accepting and handing in quests).
• Flight master (taxi map).
• Trade window.
• Trainer.
• Ready check and the dungeon ready popup.
• Role poll (the role check popups).
• Guild invitation.

Additional windows on Classic Era, The Burning Crusade (TBC) and Mists of Pandaria (Mists):

• The Friends and Social window, with its Friends, Ignore, Who and Guild pages.
• The guild member card, guild information, guild event log and guild control windows of the classic guild window.

Additional windows on The Burning Crusade (TBC) only:

• Character pane.
• Spellbook.
• Talents.
• Trade skills and the crafting (Craft) window.
• Pet stable.
• Quest log.

Additional windows on Mists of Pandaria (Mists) only:

• Character pane.
• Talents.
• Quest log.
• Item upgrade.
• Reforging.

Additional windows on Retail and WoW: Forever:

• Guild and Communities, with its member card, text editor, event log and news filters.
• Guild control.
• The Social window with its side windows (ignore list, Battle.net broadcast, Battle.net unavailable notice, raid info, Add Friend).
• Cooldown manager window and its alert editors.
• Quest log.
• On WoW: Forever only: Character pane and the gear set popup.

Keys that Sku keeps (WowVision does not take them over while Sku is loaded):

• The tooltip line keys: Previous Tooltip Line and Next Tooltip Line (Shift+Up and Shift+Down), Read Tooltip Left and Read Tooltip Right (Shift+Left and Shift+Right).
• The soft targeting toggles Soft Target Enemy, Soft Target Friend and Soft Target Interact (Shift+I, Shift+P and Shift+O).
• Target Focus 1 to Target Focus 5.

Commands that Sku keeps: /focus1 to /focus5, /pquit (leave party) and /dquit (leave dungeon or battleground group).

What WowVision still does for you

Everything else works as usual: speech and alerts, the buffers and monitors, targeting announcements, movement and navigation, the minimap scan, the scanner, the chat window and chat announcements, the chat channels window, the action bars window, the loot window, the auction house, the collections and professions windows where Sku has no equivalent, the game menu and options, and the WowVision menu.

Troubleshooting

This page lists the problems players run into most, each with the likely cause and what to do. If nothing here helps, the last section explains how to report a bug so that it can be fixed.

Many of the checks use slash commands. You type them in the game’s chat box. Some print their answer to your chat window instead of speaking it; open the chat window with Shift+F3 to read it back. Every command is described in Commands.

Whatever the problem, first type /reload and press Enter. It reloads the interface and fixes most missing data and stuck windows.

WowVision does not load

Signs: Shift+F1 does nothing, /wv does nothing (or the game says the command does not exist), and you hear no WowVision announcements.

Go through this list in order.

1. Is the addon switched on? Type /enableaddons in the chat box and press Enter. It is the game’s own command: it switches on all your addons and reloads the interface. See Switching the addon on.
2. Is it out of date? After a game patch the login screen warns you about out of date addons, and the game usually does not load them. Run the WowVision Updater and choose Update now, or, if you installed by hand, download a newer WowVision. See “Out of date” addons.
3. Did you restart the game? A newly copied addon is only found when the game starts. /reload is not enough.
4. Is it in a nested folder? The TOC files must sit at AddOns\WowVision\WowVision_Standard.toc (and the four siblings), not at AddOns\WowVision\WowVision\WowVision_Standard.toc. Unzipping “into a new folder” causes this. See the nested folder mistake.
5. Is it in the right game version’s folder? Classic Era uses _classic_era_, the Burning Crusade anniversary _anniversary_, Mists _classic_, Retail _retail_, and WoW: Forever _forever_. An addon in another version’s folder is simply never seen by the game you started. See Where to put it.
6. Is another copy in the way? Two copies of the addon in different folders, or an old copy named WowVision-beta or similar, can confuse the game. Keep exactly one WowVision folder per game version.

To confirm WowVision runs, press Shift+F1. If the menu opens, it works.

I hear no speech at all

WowVision speaks through the text-to-speech voices that the game offers, which are the voices installed in Windows. Without speech you cannot use the WowVision menu, so these steps use only commands you type blind into the chat box.

1. Reload. Type /reload and press Enter.
2. Reset the speech settings. Type /wv speech 0 0 100 and press Enter. That chooses the first voice, the normal rate and full volume. If you hear “Speech voice …” afterwards, speech works again.
3. Try another voice. If the first voice stays silent, try the next ones: /wv speech 1, /wv speech 2 and so on. The numbers count the voices installed in Windows, starting at 0.
4. Check the Windows voices. With your screen reader, open the Windows settings, Time and language, Speech, and make sure at least one voice is installed. The game can only use those voices.
5. Did you cut it yourself? Pressing either Ctrl key stops the speech that is running. If you press Ctrl just as something is announced, you hear nothing.
6. Using a voice that hands the text to NVDA (for example SAPI2SR)? If it stays silent, switch to a plain Windows voice with /wv speech and that voice’s number, as in step 3.
7. Speech stalls or stops after a while? On Retail, TBC, Mists and WoW: Forever the Speech module has a Speech Queue setting (on by default) that makes WowVision speak one line at a time. On Classic Era the equivalent is Speech Style with the choices Direct and Buffered. If speech stalls, switch that setting.

Speech is too slow, too fast or in the wrong voice

• Rate and volume: Speech Rate goes from -10 to 10 (default 0) and Speech Volume from 0 to 100 (default 100; WowVision never sends more than 100, because a higher volume would silence the game’s speech). Change them in the Speech module of the WowVision menu, or all at once with /wv speech.
• Find your voice number: type /wv speech with nothing after it. It prints your current voice, rate and volume, and lists every voice with its number, such as “Voice 0: Microsoft David Desktop”. Your first voice is number 0.
• Set voice, rate and volume in one go: /wv speech 1 9 100 picks voice 1, rate 9, volume 100. Rate and volume may be left off to keep the current values.
• Make it automatic: make a macro containing the line /wv speech 1 9 100 and press it after login or /reload. See System windows for how to create macros.
• The voice changed after a Windows update. WowVision remembers your voice by its name, not its number, so installing or removing Windows voices does not switch you to another one. If Windows drops a voice for a while, WowVision speaks with the default voice and brings your choice back when the voice returns.
• One alert sounds different from the rest. Every spoken alert has its own Voice setting. It follows the Speech Voice until you pick another one on that alert. See Alerts.

More about voices is in Speech.

My keys do nothing

First find out which kind of key you mean. There are two.

• Window keys (arrows, Tab, Enter, Backspace, Escape, Space, Home, End and the rest of the navigation) work only while a WowVision window is open. Without a window, those keys do what the game does with them. That is on purpose, so that arrows still walk.
• Global keys (buffers, navigation, Shift+F1, F9, F10, Shift+F3 and so on) work any time.

If a key does nothing, check these causes.

1. You are in combat. Override bindings cannot change during combat, so WowVision hands all window keys back to the game when a fight starts and takes them again afterwards. Global keys keep working. See Combat.
2. No window is open. Window keys need an open window. Press the key that opens one (for example Shift+F1 for the menu) and try again.
3. A game text box has the keyboard. While you type in the chat box or another edit box, letters and arrows go to the text.
4. A key was still held when the window opened. WowVision waits to take its keys until every key it uses is released, so that the game never misses a key release. Let go of all keys, and the window will take them within a moment.
5. Another addon or a game binding has the same key. Open the WowVision menu (Shift+F1), then UI, then Bindings, and look at what the binding is set to. When you add a key that another WowVision binding already uses, you are asked “This input conflicts with … Replace?”. Keys held by other addons or by the game are not checked, so try a different key. See Keybindings.
6. Sku is loaded. WowVision leaves some keys to Sku. See below.
7. You rebound or removed the key. Some bindings need at least one key and cannot be emptied, but most can. The keybinding reference lists the defaults.
8. Letters jump instead of doing something. In the WowVision menu, in context menus and in dropdown lists, typing a letter jumps to the next entry that starts with it. This can be switched off with Letter Navigation in Menus in the UI module.

Escape and closing windows

Escape works two ways. For a window made from one of the game’s own frames (a merchant, the bags, the mailbox), Escape is left to the game and the game closes its frame; WowVision closes its window as the frame goes away. For WowVision’s own windows (the menu, navigation, the scanner, the chat window, the action bars window, and any screen opened inside another one) WowVision handles Escape itself. On a controller, B does the right one of the two. See Controller.

If a WowVision window will not go away, type /wv close. It closes every open WowVision window at once. The game’s own frames stay open.

The arrow keys do not walk any more, or my character keeps turning

An open WowVision window takes the arrow keys. Close the window (Escape, or /wv close) and the arrows walk again.

If the character turns or runs by itself, it usually means a movement key was held when a window opened and the game missed its release. Press and release the key to stop it. To help the developers find the cause, type /wv keylog to switch key logging on, play until it happens again, and send the WowVision lines from your chat log along with what you were doing. Type /wv keylog again to switch it off.

A window or key works without Sku but not with it

You have Sku loaded. When Sku is loaded, WowVision deliberately leaves a list of windows, keys and commands to Sku, so the window does not open in WowVision or the key does nothing. The full list is in Using WowVision together with Sku.

To get the WowVision version of that window or key, turn Sku off:

• Type /disableaddon sku. This turns off Sku and its audio and beacon helper addons and reloads the interface. /enableaddon sku turns them back on.
• These two commands are not available when the BlindSlash addon is loaded. In that case disable Sku in the game’s addon list instead.
• The change needs a /reload or a new login to take effect; /disableaddon reloads for you.

Your WowVision settings and key bindings for those features are not deleted while Sku runs; they come back as soon as Sku is off.

My settings are lost

Settings are saved when you log out or type /reload. A crash, or closing the game from the task manager, loses everything since the last save.

1. Reload first. If settings or other data seem to be missing, type /reload. That often brings them back.
2. They belong to another scope. By default most settings are shared by all characters (account scope). If you moved a module to a single character, its settings only show on that character. Put the focus on the module in the WowVision menu, press Shift+F10 and look at Scope. Key bindings and a few other things are always per character. See The WowVision Menu and Settings.
3. A new release reset one thing. The release notes say when an update changes a setting.

If settings still do not stay, report it (see Reporting a bug) and include the output of /wv dbcheck, which prints a short report about your saved settings to the chat window.

The game is laggy or stutters

• Close windows you are not using. WowVision rebuilds an open window every moment.
• If the stutter happens while walking outdoors, switch off Announce Tracked Dots While Walking in the Minimap Scanner module; it reads the minimap twice a second while you move. See Minimap.
• If it happens in combat or in a raid, check how many monitors you have running. See Monitors.
• Try playing with WowVision as the only addon to see whether another addon is the cause.

To report a lag problem, type /wv gperf: it measures WowVision’s per-frame work over 120 frames and reads out the shortest, average and longest times. Include that line in your report.

Game errors and the “Blocked” announcement

• You hear “Lua error: …” WowVision reads every script error aloud, but not the same one more than once every five seconds. To read the full text, type /wv errors. It speaks the most recent error and opens a window with all of them and their stack traces. The text is selected, so press Ctrl+C to copy it, and Escape to close the window. /wv errors all also shows older history when BugSack or BugGrabber is installed. /wv errors clear empties the list. WowVision keeps the last 20 errors, and they survive /reload. To stop the spoken errors, switch off Announce Errors in the Errors module. To silence only certain game messages (such as “Out of range”), use Per-Error Filter in the same module; see Combat.
• You hear “Blocked: …” followed by a name. The game refused a call that WowVision made while a protected action was in progress (a blocked macro is announced too). Blocks caused by other addons are recorded but not spoken. It is not a Lua error, but it means something did not work. Type /wv taint to list the recorded blocks with the time and what had the focus. /wv taint clear empties the list. Mention it in a bug report.
• The error list is empty but something is clearly wrong. If BugSack or BugGrabber is installed, it takes over the error handler and keeps the errors in its own list; /wv errors reads it first.

Soft targeting behaves strangely

Soft targeting changes game console variables, and some of them cannot change during combat. Type /wv soft to see the lock mode and the value of every soft targeting variable with the game’s default in brackets, and a note when a change is waiting for combat to end. For what each soft target setting does, see Targeting.

The controller does nothing

Controller support is for Retail and WoW: Forever. In the game options under Gamepad, Enable Gamepad and Enable Gamepad UI must both be on. In combat, WowVision gives the window buttons back to the game. See Controller for everything else, including how to start a fresh log with /wv padlog for a bug report.

I am stuck on a route

The beacon leads you somewhere you cannot get through, or a waypoint never counts as reached. Try these, one after the other:

• Jump forward. A small edge, a step or a root on the ground often stops you, and a jump gets you over it.
• Walk a few steps to the left or right, then turn toward the waypoint again. The direct line can run into a post, a corner or a crate.
• Skip the waypoint: Ctrl+W moves the beacon to the next waypoint.
• Go back one waypoint: Ctrl+S moves the beacon to the previous waypoint. Walk to it and try the stretch again.
• Change the arrival distance with Alt+P. A shorter distance leads you more precisely through a door or a narrow passage. A longer distance counts a waypoint as reached sooner, which helps when you cannot stand on its exact spot.
• Talk to the NPC you are looking for. Sometimes the NPC stands right in front of you, but a counter or a table is in between, as at the bank in Stormwind. You can never reach the last waypoint there. Target the NPC and press your interact key; the game walks you as close as it can and opens the window.
• On a WowNav route, press the key you bound to New WowNav Route Around a Blocked Spot. It searches a way around the spot you are stuck at. See WowNav.

You can put Next Waypoint, Previous Waypoint and Cycle Arrival Distance on other keys in the keybinding window: WowVision menu, UI, Bindings. See Navigation for the route keys.

Reporting a bug

Please report problems on GitHub: the WowVision project. Open an issue and describe:

• What you did, what you expected to hear, and what happened instead.
• Your game version (Classic Era, TBC, Mists, Retail or WoW: Forever) and your WowVision version, printed by /wv version.
• Which other addons you run, especially Sku, BlindSlash, Questie and BugSack.

Then add whatever logs fit the problem. Each of these is a window with selected text; press Ctrl+C to copy it and paste it into the issue.

Several of these logs are also saved into the WowVisionDump saved variable, which the game writes to disk when you log out or type /reload. Attach the file WowVisionDump.lua from the SavedVariables folder in your WTF directory. Its location is described in Installing WowVision. It can contain character names, so look through it before you share it.

Basics

These pages explain the parts of WowVision you use everywhere: how to move through a window and click its elements, how tooltips are read, how speech works, where the settings live, what alerts are, and how to change keys.

• Using the Interface — moving through windows, clicking, dropdowns, edit boxes, the context menu, the cursor
• Tooltips — reading tooltips as a whole or line by line
• Speech and Sound — voice, rate, volume, interrupting speech, sounds and voice packs
• The WowVision Menu and Settings — the settings menu, per-character and account settings
• Alerts — automatic announcements and how to change them
• Keybindings — the keybinding window

If you are new to WowVision, read Using the Interface first: the same keys work in every window of the game.

Using the Interface

When a game window opens, such as your bags, a merchant or the character pane, WowVision reads it and lets you move through it with the keyboard, much like a desktop application. This page explains the keys that work in every window, what you hear on each kind of control, and how menus, lists, text fields and the context menu behave.

The same navigation keys also drive WowVision’s own screens: the WowVision menu and settings, the keybinding screen, context menus and the game’s dropdown menus.

When WowVision takes your keys

WowVision only takes the navigation keys while a window is open. With no window open, the arrow keys, Tab, Enter and the rest do what the game normally does with them (walking, turning, jumping, and so on).

• Game windows are detected automatically. When one opens, WowVision stops any speech and reads where you have landed.
• When more than one window is open, Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab switch between them (see Several windows at once).
• Escape on a game window is left to the game, which closes its own windows with its own sounds. On WowVision’s own screens, Escape is WowVision’s: it goes back one level, or closes the screen when you are on the first level. These are the WowVision menu and everything inside it, context menus, game dropdown menus, and windows that exist only in WowVision, such as the chat window (Shift+F3), the navigation window (F10), the scanner (F9) and the action bars window (Shift+F4).
• /wv close force-closes every WowVision window. It is the way out if a window ever gets stuck.

If a window opens while you are holding a movement key, for example a shared quest or a ready check popping up as you run, WowVision waits until you let go of the keys it needs before it takes them. This stops your character from running or turning on its own.

The keys

All of these can be changed in the keybinding screen. Most are “vital”: they can be moved to another key, but never removed completely.

Enter and Backspace carry your modifier keys along: Shift+Enter is a shift-left-click, Ctrl+Backspace a ctrl-right-click, and so on. This matters in WoW, where modifier clicks often do something different, for example shift-clicking an item to link it in chat.

Every navigation key stops whatever is being spoken before it announces the new control, so you can arrow quickly through a list without a backlog building up.

What you hear

When you land on a control, WowVision reads it in this order: its name, what kind of control it is, its current value or state, whether it is selected or disabled, and finally its position in the list.

Windows are made of nested containers, and WowVision tells you when you enter a new one, naming it from the outside in: List for a vertical list, Bar for a single row of controls (such as a row of tabs), Panel for a section with several tab stops. When you keep moving inside the same container only the control is read. When you leave a container and enter another, the new container’s name is read first.

Examples:

• Moving into a list named Categories: “Categories, List, Combat, 1 of 3”.
• Moving down inside it: “Display, 2 of 3”.
• A setting: “Interrupt Speech on Window Close, Checkbox, Unchecked, 1 of 2”.
• A choice: “Speech Voice, Dropdown, Microsoft Zira Desktop”.
• A number: “Speech Rate, Number, 3”.
• A bar of tabs: “Tabs, Bar, General, Button, selected, 1 of 4”.

Changes are spoken while you stay put

While a control has focus, WowVision watches it. If its text, its checked state or its enabled state changes by itself, for example a Post button becoming usable once you filled in a form, or a quest text refreshing, the new value is spoken without you pressing anything.

Moving around

Arrow keys and rows

Up and Down move through the controls in the order they appear. Where controls sit side by side in a row, Left and Right move along the row. Moving up or down from a row lands on the first control of the next row, except in grids and tables that are laid out in columns, where you stay in the same column.

If you press Up on the first entry of a list or Down on the last one, you hear a short sound and the entry is read again, as in Sku. The Sound at the Start and End of Lists setting (UI menu, on by default) turns this off; the arrow key then does nothing and nothing is said. Left and Right at the edge stay silent, and so do the chat messages. Windows do not wrap around with arrow keys.

Skipping empty slots

With the Skip Empty Slots on Double Arrow setting switched on (UI menu, off by default), in your bags, the bank and the action bars you can press the same arrow key twice quickly (within a quarter of a second) to skip the empty slots: you land on the next slot that holds something. Keep tapping quickly to hop from item to item. If nothing follows in that direction, you land on the last slot, which reads “Empty”. Two different arrow keys in a row never count as a double press.

Tab stops

Large windows are divided into tab stops, usually a list, a row of buttons, a search box and so on. Tab and Shift+Tab jump between them, wrapping around from the last to the first. Each stop remembers where you were, so Tab takes you back to the entry you left, or to the selected entry when you come into a stop for the first time. A window with a single stop, such as a simple menu, ignores Tab.

Home and End

• In a group that expands and collapses, they jump to the first and last entry on the same level.
• In a row of controls (an action bar, a row of tabs), they jump to the first and last control of that row.
• Anywhere else they jump to the top or bottom of the list you are in.

Groups that open and close

Some windows show expandable groups, for example category headers. They read as “Section, Collapsed”.

• Right on a collapsed group opens it and says “Expanded”. If it turns out to have nothing in it, WowVision closes it again and reads it as it was.
• Right on an open group moves into its first entry.
• Left on an open group closes it and says “Collapsed”.
• Left on an entry inside a group moves back up to the group’s header.

Pressing and using controls

Buttons

Enter presses a button. For buttons that belong to the game, WowVision performs a real click, so everything behaves exactly as for a mouse user. Backspace performs a right click. A button that cannot be used right now says “Disabled” after its name.

On WowVision’s own screens (the menu, the keybinding screen), only Enter does anything; Backspace is not used.

Checkboxes

Enter flips the checkbox and immediately says “Checked” or “Unchecked”.

Dropdowns

There are two kinds, and they feel almost the same.

WowVision’s own choice lists (such as the Speech Voice setting). Enter opens a short list of the choices. You land on the current one, which reads, for example, “Microsoft Zira Desktop, Button, Selected”. Move with Up and Down and press Enter on a choice to pick it. WowVision returns to the setting and the new value is read. Escape closes the list without changing anything.

The game’s dropdown menus (filters, the player menu you get on a character, the gear menus in some windows). When the game opens one, WowVision shows it as a list and puts you on its first entry.

• Entries read as buttons, or, for entries that can be ticked, as checkboxes and radio buttons with “Checked” or “Unchecked”.
• The menu itself is announced as “Dropdown, List” when you enter it.
• Section titles inside a menu (a character’s name, “Interact”) are not stops. They are read once, as part of the first entry you land on in their section.
• An entry that opens a submenu reads as “Dropdown”. Enter opens it and puts you on its first entry. Escape closes the deepest submenu and returns you to the entry above; another Escape closes the whole menu.
• A menu entry with extra buttons attached (a play, edit or delete button next to an item) is a row: press Right to reach the buttons and Left to come back.
• Long menus scroll. WowVision reads every entry, also the ones out of sight, and scrolls the menu for you as you move down.
• A menu entry can hold several controls side by side, such as a minimum and a maximum box for a level range, or a checkbox and a button. Such an entry is a row: Right moves along its controls from left to right and Left moves back. Where an entry has a title, you hear the title with the first control.
• A slider in a menu gets a line of its own below its entry, read as Number. Left and Right move it by one step and Enter lets you type a value, as described under Numbers and sliders.
• In a text box inside a menu (for example the level range boxes), Enter puts the cursor in the box and, after you typed, Enter again leaves the box and takes you back to the menu entry. Escape does the same.
• The tooltip key (Space) reads the tooltip of the entry you are on, where the game gives it one. See Tooltips.
• Dropdown menus take letters too, see Letter navigation.

Example: in the auction house filter menu, Down to the Level Range row. You hear its title and the Minimum box. Press Enter and type “20”, press Enter to leave the box, then Right to move on to the Maximum box.

Example: right clicking a player portrait opens the player menu. Down to Invite, Enter. For an entry that opens a submenu, press Enter to open it, Down to the entry you want, Enter again.

Numbers and sliders

Sliders in the game options and numeric settings in WowVision read as Number.

• Left makes the value smaller and Right larger, by one step (one unit for WowVision settings, one slider step in game options). The new value is spoken after every press.
• Enter opens a small typing box to enter the value directly (see Typing text). Type the number and press Enter. A value outside the allowed range is moved to the nearest allowed value. If what you typed is not a number, nothing changes.

Example: on Speech Rate, Number, 0, press Right three times to hear “1”, “2”, “3”.

Typing text

There are two kinds of text boxes.

WowVision’s own text settings (for example a custom message for an alert). Enter opens a typing box. WowVision says the name and reads what is in it, with the text already selected, so whatever you type replaces it. Each key you type reads the text so far. Enter accepts, Escape cancels, and Tab accepts and moves on to the next control. When you arrive on such a field by Tab (not by arrow keys), or when a screen opens with the cursor on it, the typing box opens at once.

The game’s text boxes (search boxes, form fields). They read as “Edit” followed by what is in them. Enter puts the cursor in the box. When you arrive by Tab, or when a window opens with its cursor on a search box (the game options do), you can start typing immediately. Tab or Shift+Tab leaves the box and moves to the next or previous control. The box otherwise behaves exactly as in the game, including its own handling of Escape.

The search boxes of the spellbook, the talent window and the Legacy window (WoW: Forever only) offer suggestions as you type. Up and Down read the highlighted suggestion and its position, and Enter picks it, or runs your typed search if none is highlighted.

Copy boxes

A few actions hand you text to copy, for example Copy Character Name in the player menu of a chat message, or copying a chat message. WowVision says “Copy now” and puts the text, already selected, into a small edit box. Press Ctrl+C to copy it, then Escape to close the box. The text is not read out again, because you just heard it.

Long lists and scrolling

You never have to scroll yourself. When you arrow onto an entry that is off screen, the window scrolls to show it, so the game’s own tooltip and highlight work too.

Page Up and Page Down scroll a list by a full page and put you on the nearest entry that came into view. They are only needed on the long lists whose scrolling the game protects: the friends, ignore and who lists and the guild roster on Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria. On those lists Home and End do nothing, because the game does not allow a jump of that size.

Some windows show their content in pages: the spellbook, the merchant, the mailbox, books and letters, and on WoW: Forever the toy box, heirlooms and appearances. While you are on that content, Page Up and Page Down press the window’s Previous Page and Next Page buttons and put you on the first entry of the new page. On the first or last page nothing happens. In a book the new page’s text is read when it arrives. The page buttons are also reachable with Tab.

Letter navigation in menus

In lists that own the keyboard, you can press a letter to jump to the next entry whose name starts with it. This works in:

• the WowVision menu and every settings screen inside it, the key bindings included (there a letter finds an action by its name),
• context menus,
• the game’s dropdown menus.

Every other window has its own Letter Navigation switch, off by default: the navigation window in the Navigation menu, the Scanner in the Scanner menu, and each game window in its own entry of the Windows menu. Switched on, every list in that window works the same way.

How it behaves:

• Press a letter to move to the next entry starting with it. Press the same letter again to move to the one after, wrapping around at the end.
• Type two different letters quickly (within half a second) to filter the list. You land on a line that says Filter and what you typed; below it are only the entries containing those letters anywhere in their name. Every further letter narrows the list, however slowly you type it.
• While a list is filtered, Backspace or Left Arrow brings the whole list back. Enter on an entry, or going one level deeper, also ends the filter.
• Accents are ignored, so U finds “Übersicht”. Pressing an umlaut key finds only entries with that umlaut, so Ü finds “Übersicht” but not “Ultra”. Leading numbers and punctuation in a name are skipped.
• If nothing matches what you typed, you hear “No results”.
• If you press the same single letter again and the entry you are on is the only one that starts with it, that entry is read again.

While such a list is open, every letter key belongs to it: W, A, S and D do not move your character, and letter keys of the game such as B for the bags do nothing. For the menus, you can turn this off with the Letter Navigation in Menus setting (UI menu, on by default). The keys are also released whenever you enter combat or close the list.

Example: at the top of the WowVision menu, press S once to reach Scanner, S again for Speech, then T for Targeting.

The context menu

Shift+F10 opens a menu of extra actions for the control you are on. You hear “Menu” and then its entries.

• On a real game button you usually get Left Click, Right Click and Drag. Some windows add what the click does, for example “Sell, Right Click”, and window-specific actions such as linking an item in chat or inviting a player.
• On a setting in the WowVision menu you get a Scope submenu (see per-character and account-wide settings).
• On an entry in a list you build yourself in the WowVision menu (a monitor, a rule, a buffer group, a buffer) you get Copy: it adds a full copy right after the entry, named “ Copy 1” (or the next free number), and speaks that name. The copy lives where the original lives (account or character), and a copied monitor brings its rules along.
• If a control has no actions, you hear “Menu Empty”.

Inside the menu use Up and Down, Enter to run an entry (the menu closes afterwards, except for entries that act on the game directly), and Escape to close it. Submenus read as “Dropdown” and open with Enter. Entries with a Checked or Unchecked state read as radio buttons. Letters jump to entries, as described above.

Example: you are on a bag slot and want to drag its item. Press Shift+F10, Down to Drag, Enter. Or just press \ on the slot.

Several windows at once

Some actions open more than one window at the same time, for example visiting a merchant opens the merchant and your bags. Each open window keeps its own position.

• Ctrl+Tab moves to the next open window, Ctrl+Shift+Tab to the previous one. WowVision reads the whole path of the window you land on, from the window name down to the control.
• Bags that open together with another window (at a merchant, for instance) do not take focus away from the one you are using, but you can reach them with Ctrl+Tab.
• When you close a window, focus moves to another open window and its path is read.

Combat

In combat the game protects its keys, so WowVision steps aside completely. Your navigation keys go back to the game, no new announcements are made for windows, and nothing is read on your behalf. Windows that are open stay open. As soon as combat ends, WowVision takes its keys back and your windows and focus are as you left them.

Alerts and your keybound announcements (buffers, target announcements and so on) are not affected: those keep working in combat. See Combat.

Cursor and dragging

The game moves items around through the cursor. Whatever you pick up, a bag item, a spell, a macro, a mount, is attached to it, and you hear what it is.

• Enter (left click) on a bag or equipment slot picks up its item. Enter on another slot places it there, or swaps.
• Backspace (right click) usually uses the item: equips it, drinks it, opens it, depending on the item and the window.
• \ or Ctrl+D is Drag: it picks up whatever the focused slot holds, with the game’s own rules (locked bars or unlearned spells refuse, as for a mouse). Drag is also in the context menu.

On an action bar, Drag empties the slot immediately and puts its spell, item or macro on your cursor. Then you can drag another slot to put it there, or press Delete (or Alt+Ctrl+\) to throw it away.

• A spell, macro, mount or an item reference picked up from an action bar is only an assignment, so Delete just clears it, without asking.
• A real item picked up from your bags is destroyed by Delete only after the game asks you to confirm, so your inventory stays safe. Items of rare quality or better get the game’s stronger confirmation, which asks you to type “DELETE” in the game’s popup.

See Action Bars and Bags and Bank for window-specific details.

Diagnostic commands

These are mainly for bug reports. The first three speak their result and open it as a text you can copy.

The full list of commands is in the slash command reference.

See also

• Tooltips
• Keybindings
• The WowVision menu and settings
• Controller support

Reading Tooltips

Almost everything in WoW has a tooltip: item stats, spell descriptions, button explanations, option help. WowVision reads a control’s name when you land on it, and gives you the tooltip on demand, either all at once or line by line.

The keys

All seven can be changed in the keybinding screen. Press Ctrl at any time to stop the speech if a long tooltip is too much.

How reading works

Space reads every line in order, one after the other, in a single go. Blank lines add nothing to what you hear. Lines that have text on both sides (a left column and a right column) are read left first, then right: the line with “Head” on the left and “Plate” on the right is read “Head Plate”, and “Armor” with “120” is read “Armor 120”.

Shift+Down and Shift+Up walk through the tooltip one line at a time, skipping blank lines. The first Shift+Down after you land on a control reads the first line; the first Shift+Up reads the last line. When you reach the first or last line, pressing again simply reads that line again.

Shift+Left and Shift+Right are for two-column lines. After moving to a line with Shift+Up or Shift+Down you can hear just its left side or just its right side. This is handy for stat breakdowns or comparison tooltips where the numbers are on the right. If you have not moved to a line yet, they read line one.

Your position in the tooltip starts over every time you move to a different control.

The same keys work on an aura in a buffer: while you are on a buff or debuff in an aura buffer, Shift+Down and Shift+Up read its name, its description and the time left, line by line, also in combat. See Aura buffer.

Example: you are on a piece of armor in your bags.

1. Press Space and listen to the whole item, for example “Fur Boots. Binds when picked up. Feet Cloth. Common. Item Level 12. 8 Armor.” (The exact lines depend on the item.)
2. You only want the armor line again. Press Shift+Up: you hear the last line.
3. Press Shift+Up until you reach the line you want. Press Shift+Right to hear only its right column.

What gets added to item tooltips

When the tooltip belongs to an item, WowVision adds two lines the game does not always show in plain text:

• The quality name (Poor, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Artifact, Heirloom), placed directly under the item’s slot line (or under the item’s name when it has no slot line).
• The item level, directly after the quality. If the game shows its own item level line (which accounts for upgrades), that line is moved there instead of adding a second one. Only equippable items get an item level.

Money in a tooltip is read with its coins. The game shows gold, silver and copper as small coin pictures, which speech would leave out. WowVision reads the sell price and other amounts as “Sell Price: 1 Gold, 23 Silver, 45 Copper”. An item worth only a few coins reads, for example, “Sell Price: 7 Copper”.

Pawn’s upgrades

If the Pawn addon is installed and says an item is an upgrade, WowVision adds one line per Pawn scale it upgrades at the end of the tooltip: “Pawn: Hunter: Marksmanship, upgrade of 12 percent, over Rusty Helm”. “Big upgrade” replaces the percentage when Pawn gives none (an empty slot, a huge gain). Nothing is said when Pawn sees no upgrade. These lines replace the upgrade lines Pawn writes into the tooltip itself, so you do not hear each upgrade twice; Pawn’s other lines stay. Space reads them with the rest of the tooltip.

To switch them off, open the WowVision menu with Shift+F1, then UI, Tooltip, Compare, and uncheck Pawn Summary. It is on by default.

Comparing with what you wear

When the tooltip shows an item you could wear, the tooltip goes on after the item with a comparison with what you have on. The setting Compare With Equipped Item, under UI, Tooltip, Compare in the WowVision menu, picks which one: Game (the default), WowVision or None. The Enabled checkbox at the top of that screen switches the comparison and Pawn’s lines off together.

Space reads only the item itself. Press Shift+Down past the item’s last line to walk into the comparison, or Ctrl+Shift+Down to jump straight to the next block; Ctrl+Shift+Up jumps back a block, up to the item’s first line.

Game

This is the comparison a sighted player gets by holding Shift over an item (or always, with the game’s “Always compare items” option), and the game decides what it compares:

• One block for each item you wear there: two for rings, trinkets and one-handed weapons, both hands when you hold a two-handed weapon.
• Each block starts with the game’s own header (“Currently Equipped” or “Equipped”), then the lines of the item you wear.
• On WoW: Forever and Retail the first block ends with the stat changes: “If you replace this item, the following stat changes will occur:”, then one line per stat, for example “+12 Stamina”. On the classic versions you hear whatever the game puts into its comparison box.

Each item you wear starts a block, and so does the game’s heading over the stat changes.

Example: you are on a pair of boots in your bags. Space reads the boots. Shift+Down line by line goes through the boots, then “Equipped”, the boots you wear, and the stat changes.

WowVision

WowVision’s own comparison says only what differs, in one block: “Compared to equipped: Rusty Helm”, then the item level difference, then every stat that differs: armor and damage first, then the main stats, then the others by name. For example “Item level: 5 more”, “Armor: 10 more”, “Intellect: 4 less”.

• Rings and trinkets are compared with both slots (“Slot 1 of 2: …”).
• A one-hand weapon is compared with the off hand only when that holds a weapon.
• A two-hander adds “Also takes off the off hand: …”.
• An empty slot says “Nothing equipped in this slot”.
• The item you already wear is not compared with itself.

Amounts are spelled out (“5 more”, “3 less”) rather than “+5” and “-3”, which speech engines read inconsistently. The stats come from the item itself, its suffix and bonuses included, and do not count gems or enchantments.

Item quality in names

In lists and slots, item names carry the quality as the colour a sighted player sees the name in, so you hear “Fur Boots, White” or “Thunderfury, Orange”. This only affects names. The tooltip always reads the quality name (“Common”, “Legendary”) whatever you choose below.

To change them, open the WowVision menu with Shift+F1, then UI, Tooltip, Quality. Every colour is a checkbox, on by default. Turn one off to stop hearing that colour after item names. The Enabled checkbox at the top of the Quality menu switches all of them off at once.

Example: you find too many “White” and “Grey” items cluttering your bag readout. Turn off White (Common) and Grey (Poor). Names now read “Linen Cloth” for those, while “Fur Boots, Green” keeps its colour.

Prices in tooltips

On The Burning Crusade, item tooltips can carry extra price lines, read like any other line:

• Auction Price, the last price seen at the auction house, with how many days ago it was seen (left out when it was seen today),
• the Day Mean, the average over the last several days, read with its number of days (for example “7-Day Mean”),
• Vendor Sell, what a vendor pays for the item,
• Vendor Buy, what a vendor charges, once you have seen the item at a merchant.

These come from the price database WowVision builds as you use the auction house. A line only appears when WowVision has that price: an item you never saw at the auction house gets no auction lines, and one you never saw at a merchant gets no Vendor Buy line. The Tooltip Prices checkbox in the Auction Prices menu (on by default) switches the extra lines off or on. The same menu has History Days (21), Mean Days (7) and Auto Scan (off), see Auction House.

On Retail and WoW: Forever, item tooltips end with Vendor price per item, Auction minimum, Auction average, Auction maximum and Vendor Buy once you turn on Full Scan in the WowVision menu under Windows, then Auction House. See Auction House.

Controls without a tooltip

Not every control has a tooltip. Where there is none, Space is left alone for the game, which means it makes your character jump if you are not typing. The Shift+arrow keys do nothing in that case.

When you hear nothing

• An item the game has not loaded yet can have an empty tooltip at first. WowVision asks again when you press Space, by which time the information has usually arrived. Press Space once more if you heard nothing.
• The tooltip keys read what belongs to the control you have focus on. They have nothing to read when no window is open.
• If you also run the addon Sku, WowVision leaves the Shift+arrow and Ctrl+Shift+arrow tooltip keys unbound so that the two addons do not fight over them. Space still works.

Diagnostic command

If tooltips are missing or wrong in a particular window, focus the control, then type /wv gtooltip. WowVision speaks and displays what the tooltip reader knows about the control, which helps when you report a bug. See the slash command reference.

See also

• Using the interface
• Keybindings

Speech and Sound

WowVision speaks everything through the game’s built-in text to speech (TTS), using the voices installed on your computer. This page covers choosing a voice, setting speed and volume, stopping speech, the game’s own TTS sounds, the recorded voice packs, and the quick /wv speech command.

Where the settings are

Press Shift+F1 (or type /wv) to open the WowVision menu, press S until you hear Speech, and press Enter. You can also jump straight there by typing /wv gsettings speech.

The Speech module is always on; it has no Enabled checkbox.

The speech settings

Example: raise your speech rate.

1. Press Shift+F1 to open the WowVision menu.
2. Press S until you hear “Speech, Button”, then Enter.
3. Press Down to Speech Rate, Number, 0.
4. Press Right a few times. You hear each new number, and the voice speaks faster from the next line on. Or press Enter, type 5, and press Enter.

Example: change the voice.

1. In the Speech menu, move to Speech Voice and press Enter.
2. Move through the list of voices; the current one reads as “Selected”. Press Enter on the one you want.

On Classic Era, TBC and Mists, WowVision puts spaces around slashes in what it says, so “250/500” is spoken as two numbers: “250 / 500”. Retail and WoW: Forever hand the text over untouched.

Speech Voice, Speech Volume, Speech Rate and the queue or style setting are account-wide by default. You can give one character its own values with the Scope entry of the context menu (Shift+F10) on a setting, see per-character and account-wide settings. The two game sound checkboxes are the game’s own settings and have no Scope entry.

Quick setup with /wv speech

/wv speech sets the voice, rate and volume in one line. It is made for a login macro, because it takes effect at once and speaks a confirmation.

Voice numbers start at 0: your first voice is number 0. Rate is limited to -10 to 10, volume to 0 to 100, and decimals are rounded. If the voice number does not exist, or a value is not a number, WowVision prints a message in chat and changes nothing. When it works you hear, for example, “Speech voice Microsoft Zira Desktop, rate 8, volume 100”.

Stopping speech

• Press Ctrl on its own at any time to cut off the current speech. This works whether or not a window is open, and also when you use Ctrl as a modifier (Ctrl+Tab, Ctrl+D), because speech stops the moment the key goes down.
• Every navigation key (arrows, Tab, Home, End and so on) stops what is being spoken before it reads the new control, so fast arrowing never builds a backlog.
• The Interrupt Speech on Window Close setting (in the UI menu, off by default) also cuts speech when a window closes. Turn it on if the old window’s text keeps talking after you have left it.
• Alerts can interrupt too. A TTS alert with Priority Message (interrupts) switched on stops the current speech before it speaks, as the Target Change alert does. See Alerts.

Game sounds around speech

The game’s TTS plays two small sounds of its own, and WowVision gives you a checkbox for each in the Speech menu:

• Sound Between Chat Lines is a short sound the game plays between chat lines. Because it would play between all of WowVision’s announcements, WowVision turns it off for you the first time each character logs in with the addon. After that your choice stands: if you turn it on again, it stays on.
• Activity Sound When Unfocused is the game’s sound for a message spoken while the chat window is hidden.

These two checkboxes are not stored by WowVision. They are the game’s own settings, so the game’s /tts playline and /tts playactivity commands and the Speech menu always agree.

Recorded voice packs

Some alerts play recordings instead of using TTS: the compass directions (“north”, “northeast”), numbers from 1 to 100 (target health, range to the target, the enemy count), and so on. These recordings come in voice packs. Two ship with WowVision:

• Matthew
• Joanna

Each alert output of type Voice Alert has a setting that picks the pack. It is called Voice Pack and sits right below the Enabled checkbox of the output’s screen. Recordings play immediately and are not affected by the speech queue, your TTS voice or your TTS rate. See Alerts for how to choose outputs.

Voices for single alerts

Every TTS alert output has its own Voice setting. Until you choose something there, it simply follows Speech Voice, and it shows that voice as its value. Pick another voice and that alert always uses it. This lets you, for instance, hear target changes in one voice and chat in another.

The announcements made while you walk (new dots on the minimap) are spoken by the game’s voice number 0 at your Speech Rate and Speech Volume, instead of your Speech Voice, because a screen reader would cut them off at every key press. You can change that alert’s Voice setting as well. This alert has no Priority Message (interrupts) setting.

Using a screen reader voice

If your TTS voice hands the text to a screen reader, such as NVDA through the SAPI2SR voice, WowVision makes sure that repeated lines are spoken every time and that a new line cuts off the old one, just as with a normal voice.

There is nothing to switch on.

Differences between game versions

See also

• The WowVision menu and settings
• Alerts
• Troubleshooting

The WowVision Menu and Settings

The WowVision menu is where you configure the addon: speech, alerts, navigation, buffers, monitors, windows and more. It works like every other WowVision window, so everything in Using the interface applies. This page explains how the menu is laid out, how each kind of setting is edited, and how settings are stored per character or for the whole account.

Opening and closing the menu

When the menu opens, speech stops and you hear its name and the first entry, for example “WowVision, List, Buffers, Button, 1 of 13”. The exact number of entries depends on your game version.

In combat WowVision steps aside, so open the menu before a fight or after it, see Combat.

You can reach the screen of a module that has settings of its own directly with /wv gsettings followed by its short name, for example /wv gsettings speech. The names are the module names in lower case, with dots for submodules:

If the name does not match a module that has settings of its own, for example ui.tooltip or one of the game windows, WowVision prints “No settings found for” and the name in chat. The command is a shortcut meant for testers; the menu always gets you to the same screens.

How the menu is laid out

The menu is a tree. The first screen lists the modules, in alphabetical order. Pressing Enter on a module opens its screen, which in turn may list submodules. Each screen is a list; Escape goes back up.

A module’s screen holds, from top to bottom:

1. An Enabled checkbox. Every module except Speech and UI has one. Turning a module off stops its features at once, its keys, alerts and windows included, and the choice is remembered for this character.
2. Its submodules, as buttons, in alphabetical order.
3. Special entries some modules add. For example the UI module has a Bindings button, the Buffers module its list of buffer groups, and the Errors module a Per-Error Filter button.
4. The module’s own settings.
5. The module’s alerts, each as a button. See Alerts.

Example: opening Chat reads “Chat, List, Enabled, Checkbox, Checked”. Press Down to move through the chat tab alerts and its other entries.

Because it is a list that owns the keyboard, you can press letters to jump: S for Speech, T for Targeting. See Letter navigation.

What is on the first screen

Under Navigation on WoW: Forever there is also WowNav Routes, see WowNav.

The UI module

Press U in the main menu, then Enter. It contains:

The Windows module

Every game window WowVision handles has its own entry here, for example Game Menu, Merchant, Mail and Loot, each with an Enabled checkbox and sometimes settings of its own. Turning a window’s module off makes WowVision ignore that window completely, so the game window stays as the game made it. That is useful if you prefer another addon’s handling for one particular window.

How each kind of setting is edited

Picking a sound

The Sound setting of an alert’s sound output, and the Beacon Sound setting of a beacon, open a browser of audio files.

1. Press Enter on Sound. You land in a list of folders.
2. Go into Sound, then WowVision for the sounds that ship with WowVision, or LibSharedMedia for the sounds that other addons have registered. Inside WowVision the folders are alerts, errors, notes and falling.
3. Moving onto a file plays it so you can listen before you choose. Moving onto the next file stops the previous sound.
4. Press Enter on the file you want. WowVision returns to the setting and reads the new value.

Escape goes back one folder without choosing anything. The top of the browser also shows Voice and Beacon folders, which hold files for other kinds of output.

Beacon pickers work the same way, but you pick one of the beacon sounds (Notification, Probe (Deep), Probe (Mid), Steel Gong, Beacon 6), and moving onto one plays a sample beacon.

Picking a spell

Monitor rules and some other features have a Spell setting.

1. Press Enter on Spell. A screen opens with Spell Name at the top and a list below it.
2. For a spell you know the name or ID of, press Enter on Spell Name and type the name or the number. Enter accepts. If the game does not know it, you hear “Not Found” and can try again.
3. Otherwise pick from the list below, which holds the spells WowVision has seen on this character (cast by you or met as auras), sorted by name, each read as “Name (ID)”. Enter picks it.
4. Once chosen, WowVision returns to the setting and reads “Name (ID)”.

Editing a template

Buffer items use templates to decide how their text is spoken, for example “{percent}% ({current} [of] {maximum})”. The Template setting offers:

• Enter on Template opens a list of the templates that exist for that kind of object. Press Enter on one to use it. Default means the standard wording.
• Custom lets you type your own format. WowVision says Format and opens the typing box. Typing nothing and pressing Enter goes back to the default.

In your own format, write the name of a value in curly braces to insert it, for example {percent}. Square brackets insert a translated word, for example [of] (read as “of” in English). Slashes in the fixed text of a format are spoken with spaces around them. Type {{ or [[ for a literal brace or bracket. The values you can use depend on the object, and are listed with it in Buffers.

Lists of things

Buffers, buffer groups, monitors and rules are lists of things you can add and remove. A setting for such a list reads as its name and a count, “Monitors (3)”.

1. Enter opens the list. Each existing item is a button.
2. Enter on an item opens its editor: its settings, and at the bottom a Remove button that deletes it without asking.
3. Add at the end of the list opens Select Type. Pick a type and the new item is created, named “New” and the type, and its editor opens at once.
4. Shift+F10 on an item gives it a Scope entry, see below.

Some settings hold a simple list of values (for instance a list of numbers). It is read as “Name (count)”, and opens a screen with one row per value: the value’s own control, followed by a Remove button, and Add at the end.

Per-character and account-wide settings

WowVision keeps two stores of settings:

• The account store, shared by all characters on your account.
• The character store, for this character only.

Most settings start out account-wide, so the speech voice or alert sounds you set on one character apply to all of them. The first character to log in after the account store was introduced filled it from its own settings (that character keeps its copy as well); characters that log in later simply use what is there.

Which modules are enabled is always per character, whatever you choose. The Errors module’s per-error filter is the opposite: it is always shared by all characters of the account, so an error you muted on one character stays muted on all of them. The two game sound checkboxes of the Speech module are the game’s own settings and are not stored by WowVision at all.

Changing the scope

Shift+F10 on a persisted setting opens the context menu, and it contains Scope. Press Enter to open it. It offers two radio entries: Global, and your character’s name. The checked one is where this setting lives.

• Choosing Global makes the setting follow the account. It takes the account’s value. If the account has no value yet, this character’s value becomes the account’s.
• Choosing your character name gives this character its own copy, starting from the current value. You can then change it without affecting other characters.

Nothing is ever deleted when you switch, so changing your mind is safe.

The same Scope entry appears in other places:

• On a module’s button in the menu, it switches every setting and alert of that module at once. For Buffers and Monitors it also moves all their groups or monitors.
• On an alert’s button, it moves that alert with all its outputs.
• On the Bindings button in the UI menu, it moves all your key bindings at once.
• On a single item in a list of buffer groups or monitors, it moves just that item.

If a module’s settings are split between the two, neither Global nor the character name is checked.

Example: you want a faster speech rate on your alt only.

1. Shift+F1 to open the menu, S until Speech, Enter.
2. Down to Speech Rate, then Shift+F10.
3. Down to Scope, Enter, Down to your character’s name, Enter.
4. The menu closes and you are back on Speech Rate. Change the rate; your main character’s rate stays as it was.

When settings are saved

The game writes WowVision’s settings to disk when you log out, reload the interface or exit the game, not the moment you change them. If the game crashes, changes from the current session can be lost. If you are changing important settings, finish with /reload.

If your settings seem to vanish between sessions, /wv dbcheck prints how the saved settings were loaded, which is useful for a bug report. See Troubleshooting.

Resetting

There is no reset button in the menu. To put one setting back, set it to the default shown in this manual (settings are documented with their defaults). To start completely fresh, see Troubleshooting.

See also

• Using the interface
• Alerts
• Speech and sound
• Keybindings

Alerts

An alert is something WowVision tells you without being asked: you changed zone, combat started, your target changed, you walked into a wall. Every alert can speak text, play a sound, play a recorded voice, or several of these at once, and every part can be switched on, off or changed in the WowVision menu. This page explains how alerts are built, how to change them, and lists every alert by module.

Alerts and outputs

Each alert has:

• an Enabled switch that turns the whole alert on or off, and
• one or more outputs, the ways it reaches you. Each output has its own Enabled switch and its own settings.

There are four kinds of output.

An alert speaks only when the alert and the output are both enabled. Turn an alert off to silence all of it; turn one output off to keep the rest.

Example: Zone Changed Alert has a TTS Alert (on) and a Sound Alert (off). Out of the box, you hear the zone’s name. If you want a chime as well, switch on the Sound Alert. If you only want the chime, switch off the TTS Alert too.

Alert settings are account-wide, so an alert you change on one character changes on all of them. To give one character its own version of an alert, press Shift+F10 on the alert’s button and use Scope, see per-character and account-wide settings. The per-error filter of the Errors module is always shared by all your characters, and the alerts inside a monitor follow that monitor’s own scope.

Finding and changing an alert

Alerts sit at the bottom of the screen of the module they belong to, after its settings, each as a button. (The Chat module lists its tab alerts right after Enabled, and Targeting keeps the three target alerts inside Hard Target.)

1. Open the WowVision menu with Shift+F1 and go into the module, for example Navigation, then Environmental Alerts.
2. Move down to the alert, for example Zone Changed Alert, and press Enter.
3. The alert’s screen opens with an Enabled checkbox at the top, followed by one button per output. Alerts that have a setting of their own (such as Speak Messages for chat) show it here too.
4. Press Enter on an output, for example Sound Alert, to open its settings.
5. Escape goes back one level at a time.

What an output’s screen holds

Every output screen starts with Enabled. After that, depending on the kind of output:

Example: have your target’s name spoken by a different voice.

1. Shift+F1, then T for Targeting, Enter.
2. Down to Hard Target, Enter, then to Target Change, Enter.
3. Down to TTS Alert, Enter, then Down (past Priority Message (interrupts)) to Voice, Enter.
4. Pick a voice from the list with Enter.

Example: put the compass on TTS instead of recorded voice.

1. Shift+F1, N (Navigation), Enter, then E for Environmental Alerts, Enter.
2. Open Speak Compass Direction. Open Voice Alert and turn Enabled off. Go back and open TTS Alert, turn Enabled on.

The alerts, module by module

Menu paths read from the first level of the WowVision menu. The state in brackets is the default of each output. “On” means enabled. Where the default says nothing, the output is on.

UI

Navigation

Inside instances the game does not report which way you face, so Speak Compass Direction stays silent there while the other compass alerts keep working. The settings of Fall Detection (Delay (milliseconds), Ignore Jumps) are in the module’s screen, see Movement. The arrival settings of Beacon are in Navigation.

Targeting

See Targeting for the settings that go with these.

Chat

A message that reaches several tabs that speak is spoken only once. Temporary chat windows are not listed. See Chat.

Errors

The Per-Error Filter lists each message with its state read after its name: “Speech”, “Sound”, “Speech and Sound” or “Muted”. Open one to change it. The Show All Known Errors checkbox at the top lists every message the game knows, including ones you have not met yet. Repeat Delay (2 seconds, 0 to 30) stops the same error from being spoken again while you hold a key. See Combat.

Other modules

See Minimap and Quests.

Monitors

Monitors have alerts of their own, one per state of each rule. The rule types and their alerts are:

• Aura rule: Applied, Pandemic, Expiring and Missing.
• Cooldown rule: Ready, Charging and On Cooldown, plus Charge Gained and Charge Lost on Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria.
• Cooldown Manager aura rule (Retail and WoW: Forever): Applied, Pandemic (not on WoW: Forever, which has no pandemic window) and Missing.
• Spell cooldown rule (Retail and WoW: Forever): Ready, Charging and On Cooldown.
• Proc rule (Retail and WoW: Forever): Proc and Proc Ended.

Each alert has a Sound Alert and a TTS Alert, and both outputs start off, so a new monitor is silent until you switch them on. The monitors page explains how to set them up. See Monitors.

Tips

• Unsure what an alert sounds like? Open its Sound Alert output and arrow through the sounds: each one plays as you land on it.
• If you do not want to hear a certain game message, silence it with the Per-Error Filter instead of switching off Announce Errors.
• If a TTS alert is cut off too quickly by other speech, switch on Priority Message (interrupts) for it. If it keeps cutting off everything else, switch it off.

See also

• The WowVision menu and settings
• Speech and sound
• Combat

Keybindings

Every key WowVision uses can be changed. The keybinding screen lists each action, the keys it has, and lets you add keys, remove keys and move a key from one action to another. This page explains how to use it and what the messages mean. The complete list of actions and their default keys is in the keybinding reference.

Opening the keybinding screen

1. Press Shift+F1 (or type /wv) to open the WowVision menu.
2. Press U to reach UI and press Enter.
3. Press Down to Bindings and press Enter.

You land on the first binding and hear, for example, “Bindings, List, Up, Bar, Up Arrow, Button, 1 of 2”. Escape goes back to the UI menu.

Faster: type /wv bind. It opens the same screen directly as its own window; Escape then closes it.

What the screen looks like

Each action has one row. A row holds, from left to right:

• one button per key the action currently has, named after the key (“Enter”, “Up Arrow”, “Ctrl-Tab”),
• an Add button,
• with the game’s gamepad interface on, one button per controller button and an Add Controller Button button (see Controller buttons).

The row is announced by the action’s name, then “Bar”, then the button you land on, for example “Left Click, Bar, Enter, Button, 1 of 2”. An action that has no key at all (and no controller buttons showing) has only Add in its row, and is announced as “List” instead of “Bar”.

The actions are listed in the order the addon loaded them: the window navigation keys first, then the other modules. To find one, type the start of its name: S jumps to the next action starting with S, S again to the one after, and S then C quickly finds “Scanner”. You land on the action’s first key, or on Add when it has none. See Letter navigation in menus.

An action that has no key shows only Add. These are the actions that are “unbound by default”: they exist but are waiting for you to give them a key, for example Toggle All Monitors, Route to Your Target or Announce Distance.

Adding a key

1. Move to the action’s Add button and press Enter. WowVision says the action’s name and captures the keyboard. While capturing, no key reaches the game or WowVision’s own actions.
2. Press the key combination you want, for example hold Alt and press D. As you press, WowVision reads the combination, such as “ALT-D”.
3. Let go of the main key. The combination is added to the action. Modifiers are always written in the order Alt, Ctrl, Shift, so “ALT-CTRL-SHIFT-K”.

Things to know while capturing:

• Escape cancels the capture. For that reason Escape itself cannot be given to an action here.
• A modifier on its own (just Shift, just Ctrl) cannot be bound. It only counts as part of a combination with another key.
• The combination counts as the modifiers you were holding when the main key went down. It is fine to release Alt a moment before the letter.
• You hear nothing more after the key is added. Press Left from Add to hear the new key’s button.

Example: give Announce Distance the key Alt+D.

1. Open the keybinding screen as above.
2. Press Down until you hear “Announce Distance, List, Add, Button”.
3. Press Enter. You hear “Announce Distance”.
4. Hold Alt, press D, release both. You hear “ALT-D” when the key goes down.
5. Press Left to hear “Alt-D, Button”. The key is saved and active at once.

An action can have several keys. Drag, for instance, ships with \ and Ctrl+D. Add as many as you like.

Removing a key

Press Enter on a key’s button. It is removed immediately, without asking, and you hear where focus lands next. To change a key, add the new one and then remove the old one, or the other way around.

You can remove all keys from most actions; the action then simply has no key until you add one. The exceptions are the vital actions below.

Conflicts

Two actions cannot share one key. When the key you capture already belongs to another action, you hear one of these:

Example: you want Space to act as Left Click as well. Open Add on Left Click, press Space. You hear “This input conflicts with Read Tooltip. Replace?”. Press Down to Yes and Enter. Space now clicks, and Read Tooltip has lost its key; give it another one, for instance Shift+Space, if you still want it.

WowVision only checks keys against its own actions. The game’s own key bindings are not checked, and while WowVision’s key is active it takes precedence. Pick keys you do not need for something else.

Vital actions

Vital actions keep at least one key at all times, so you can never lock yourself out of the interface. Trying to remove the last key of one gives “Cannot remove; Binding must have at least one input.” You can still add another key and then remove the old one.

The other actions, such as Jump to Beginning, Jump to End, Read Tooltip, WowVision Menu and Destroy Cursor Item, may have all their keys removed. If you ever remove every key from WowVision Menu, you can still open the menu by typing /wv.

The navigation keys above are only active while a WowVision window is open. With no window open, they belong to the game as usual. Other actions, such as the buffer keys, the scanner key (F9) and the navigation window key (F10), are active all the time. See Using the interface.

Where your changes are kept

Key bindings are account-wide, so a key you change on one character changes on all of them. To give one character its own keys, go to Bindings in the UI menu, press Shift+F10, choose Scope, then your character’s name. That character gets a copy of the current keys, all of them at once; choose Global to go back to the shared keys. There is no “reset to defaults” button; to restore a default key, add it back from the keybinding reference.

Keys that stay off when Sku is loaded

If you run the addon Sku as well, WowVision does not take a few keys that Sku also uses, so the two do not fight. These are the four tooltip line keys (Shift+Up, Shift+Down, Shift+Left, Shift+Right), the soft targeting keys (Shift+I, Shift+P, Shift+O) and the five Target Focus keys. Other commands that Sku also has, such as /pquit, /dquit and /focus1 to /focus5, are likewise left to Sku. The keys still show in the keybinding screen, but they do nothing while Sku is loaded. In the same way, WowVision leaves many game windows (bags, merchant, gossip, mail, trade, quest and others) to Sku.

Controller buttons (Retail, WoW: Forever)

When the game’s gamepad options are on, each row of the keybinding screen also shows the controller buttons assigned to the action, followed by Add Controller Button. They work like keys:

• Enter on a controller button removes it.
• Enter on Add Controller Button says the action’s name followed by “Press a controller button”. Press the button you want. The shoulder buttons, the triggers and the right stick press can be held as modifiers, so “right trigger plus A” is a combination of its own. A modifier pressed and released on its own counts as the button itself.
• The same conflict messages apply. Escape on the keyboard, ten seconds with no button, or the start of combat cancels the capture with “Cancelled”. Capturing is not possible in combat: you hear “Not in combat”.

The action Close (Controller) has no keyboard key by default. It lets the controller’s close button run the game’s own Escape on windows where Escape stays with the game.

All the details are on the Controller page.

See also

• Keybinding reference
• Using the interface
• The WowVision menu and settings

Information on Demand

WowVision gives you ways to follow game information without looking at the screen:

• Buffers are lists you read whenever you want: your health, mana, gold, experience, bag space, the auras on your target, the messages of a chat tab, and much more. You step through them with Alt and the arrow keys, from anywhere in the game.
• Monitors watch something for you and tell you when it changes: a debuff falling off your target, a cooldown becoming ready, a proc. They speak or play a sound on their own.
• Group Health Monitor tells you which group members are hurt and how badly, by number and pitch (Retail and WoW: Forever).

A good rule of thumb: use a buffer for what you want to check, and a monitor for what you want to hear about.

Buffers

Buffers let you look up game information whenever you want, without waiting for an announcement. Your health, your mana, your gold, your experience, the buffs on your target and the lines of a chat tab are all kept in buffers that you walk through with a few keys. You can use the buffers that come with WowVision as they are, or build your own.

If you want WowVision to tell you automatically when something changes, for example when a debuff falls off your target, see Monitors instead. The two work well together.

How buffers are organized

Buffers have three levels:

• A group holds buffers. Think of a group as a folder or a topic, such as “General” or “Combat”.
• A buffer holds items. A buffer is the list you actually walk through.
• An item is one line of information: your health, your money, one aura.

Groups cannot contain other groups, so there is only one level of groups.

You always have one current group, one current buffer in that group, and one current item in that buffer. WowVision remembers where you were in every buffer for as long as the game session lasts, so when you come back to a buffer later it reads the item you left it on. After a reload or a new login every buffer starts again at its first item (a chat tab buffer at its newest line).

Keys

These keys work anywhere in the game. Each one interrupts whatever WowVision is saying, so you can press them quickly. You can change the keys in the keybinding window, see Keybindings.

How the keys behave

• The first time you press Alt+Down in a buffer you land on its first item. After that each press moves one item toward the end of the list. If you switch to a buffer with Alt+Left or Alt+Right first, you already hear its first item together with its name, so the next Alt+Down moves on to the second.
• Items do not wrap around. At the last item, Alt+Down just reads that item again. At the first item, Alt+Up reads it again.
• Buffers and groups do wrap around. After the last buffer of a group, Alt+Right goes back to the first one.
• When an item has changed since you last heard it (your health, say), it is read afresh each time, so you always hear the current value.
• An empty buffer (a tracked buffer with nothing in it, for example) stays silent when you press Alt+Up or Alt+Down. Switching to it with Alt+Left or Alt+Right still tells you its name.

Example: you are in the default General buffer.

1. Press Alt+Down. You hear “250 / 500 Health”.
2. Press Alt+Down again. You hear “50 / 100 MANA” (your main resource).
3. Press Alt+Up. You are back on health.

Newest item last, and Invert Item Direction

Items are listed from first to newest, with the newest item last. This matters most for buffers that grow, such as a chat tab: Alt+Down moves toward the newest line and Alt+Up toward the oldest.

Earlier versions of WowVision did it the other way round (Alt+Up moved toward the newest item). If you are used to that, turn on the Invert Item Direction setting: it swaps Alt+Up and Alt+Down for buffers. It does not change anything else. You find it in the WowVision menu under Buffers, see Settings.

Controller

With a gamepad on Retail and WoW: Forever, hold the right stick press and use the D-pad: up and down move between items, left and right between buffers. Hold the left trigger as well (the controller’s Shift) with left and right to move between groups. See Controller.

The default setup: the General group

Your account starts with one group called General. It holds one buffer, also called General, which is a static buffer with these lines in this order:

At the level cap the XP line leaves out the next level and the rested part. When you have no rested experience, the rested part is left out too.

The resource on the Power line is named the way the game names it internally, in capital letters: MANA, RAGE, ENERGY, FOCUS, RUNIC_POWER and so on. Slashes are always spoken with a space on each side (“250 / 500”), because some speech engines trip over a slash that touches the numbers.

If your character was created before the Bags, Durability, Mail, Hearthstone and Clock lines existed, WowVision adds them to your General buffer once, before the PvP line. If you remove one of them afterwards, it stays removed.

You can change or remove any of this, see Managing buffers.

Buffer types

When you add a buffer to a group you choose one of four types.

Static buffer

A static buffer holds a fixed list of items that you choose, in the order you add them. The General buffer is a static buffer. Use it for things you want to check in a fixed place: your health and mana, a cooldown, your money.

Settings of a static buffer: Enabled, Label, and Objects, the list of items (see Items).

Tracked buffer

A tracked buffer fills and empties itself. You describe what to watch (a type of information and, for unit information, which unit), and the buffer adds an item whenever a matching thing appears and removes it when it goes away. You do not manage the items yourself.

Typical uses: every aura on your target, or every spell of yours that is currently on cooldown.

Tracked buffers are not offered on Retail and WoW: Forever, because the game hides nearly everything they could track from addons there. Use an aura buffer for auras, the Spell Cooldowns monitor for cooldowns (see Monitors) and a static buffer for everything else. A tracked buffer you made earlier stays in your list.

Settings of a tracked buffer: Enabled, Label, and Source. The source has a Type (what to track) and, for most types, Parameters such as the unit. A newly added tracked buffer has no type yet (“None”) and stays empty until you choose one.

Notes:

• Tracked buffers read each item with the type’s standard wording. You cannot give their items a custom format.
• For auras, the dedicated aura buffer (below) is the better choice: it also works on Retail in combat and in instances.

Aura buffer

An aura buffer lists the buffs and debuffs on one or more units, every one the game knows about, not just the ones drawn on screen. The auras follow one another in a single list with no headings in the way.

Settings:

Each filter is a choice with up to three values. Any ignores the filter. Only keeps just the auras it describes. Not leaves those auras out. For example, Cast by Me set to Only lists only auras that you cast, and Crowd Control set to Not hides stuns, fears and the like. You can combine several filters; an aura must pass all of them. The filters also work on Retail in combat and in instances.

• Cast by Me: auras that you cast.
• Castable or Dispellable by Me: auras that you could cast or dispel.
• Cancelable: buffs that you can cancel.
• Crowd Control: stuns, fears, polymorphs and the like.
• Dispellable by My Group: auras that someone in your group can dispel.
• Dispellable: auras that can be dispelled.
• External Defensive: defensive effects that others put on you.
• Big Defensive: major defensive effects.
• Shown on Raid Frames in Combat: auras the game shows on raid frames in combat.
• Important: auras the game marks as important.

On Retail and WoW: Forever every filter offers Any, Only and Not. On Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria only Cancelable offers Not; the others offer Any and Only. A game version only offers the filters it knows, so on some versions the list is shorter. The old setting Only My Auras is now Cast by Me; a buffer that had Only My Auras on keeps listing only your own auras until you set Cast by Me.

The available sources are Player Debuffs, Player Buffs, Target Debuffs, Target Buffs, Focus Debuffs, Focus Buffs, Pet Debuffs and Pet Buffs. You can mix them freely, and the order of the Sources list is the order you hear them in.

What you hear for one aura: its name; its stack count when it has stacks; the time remaining when it has a duration; for debuffs, its dispel type (Magic, Curse, Poison, Disease); and last its description, what the aura does. For example: “Moonfire, 12 seconds remaining, Magic, Burns the enemy for 4 Arcane damage every 3 seconds”, or with stacks “Rejuvenation, 2 stacks, 9 seconds remaining, Heals 50 damage over 15 seconds”. The description comes last, so you can stop the speech with Ctrl once you have heard enough. Speak Time Remaining and Speak Description leave those parts out. The tooltip keys still read them.

When a source has nothing to list, the buffer says so instead of staying silent: “Target Debuffs, none”, “Target Debuffs, no target”, “Focus Buffs, no focus”, “Pet Buffs, no pet”, or “unavailable” when the game will not tell. An aura that vanishes while you are on it reads “Gone”.

While you are on an aura, the tooltip keys read it line by line: Shift+Down and Shift+Up move through its name, its description and the time left, and Shift+Left and Shift+Right read the left or right part of the current line. This also works in combat, and the time left is current each time you press a key. See Reading Tooltips.

The list updates by itself when auras come and go or when the unit changes (you target something else), and it keeps your position.

On Retail, in combat and in instances, the game closes its aura list to addons. The aura buffer then reads each aura from the game’s own tooltip: you still hear the name, for debuffs the dispel type, and then the rest of the tooltip in the game’s order: the description, then the time remaining. The two can’t be told apart there, so with Speak Description off you hear the tooltip’s last line while Speak Time Remaining is on, and with Speak Description on you can still hear the time remaining. The stack count is only read for your own auras, in a buffer with no filters set, and only for auras the game shows on its own buff and debuff bars.

Chat tab buffer

A chat tab buffer holds the lines of one of your chat tabs, the same lines the chat window shows, so you can read them with the buffer keys without opening anything. See Chat for the chat features themselves.

Settings: Enabled, Label, and Chat Tab, a choice among the chat tabs that are open right now (by their names, as set in the game) plus Whisper Tabs, which gathers the lines of all your whisper tabs together. A new chat tab buffer starts on your first chat tab. Which messages a tab receives is decided by the game’s own chat settings for that tab.

Each line is read as the message followed by its date and time. The buffer keeps up to 5000 lines. It opens on the newest line and follows new lines as they arrive, like a chat log. Once you move back into older lines with Alt+Up (or Alt+Down with Invert Item Direction on) it stays where you are until you return to the newest line.

If you clear the Label, the buffer is named after its tab.

Items and the things they can show

An item in a static buffer shows one “thing”, which WowVision calls an object type. When you add an item you pick the type from a list. Some types need a little more information, called parameters.

The list you pick from shows these names. Types without parameters never ask for anything more. The names of the type, the unit and so on also form the item’s name in the item list, for example “Power (player, mana)”.

The wording of an aura item is fixed: its name, the word “stacks” and the stack count (0 for an aura that does not stack), then the time left when it has one.

Parameters

• Unit: any unit the game knows by name, typed as text. The common ones are player, target, focus, pet, mouseover, targettarget, party1 to party4 and raid1 and up.
• Power Type: which resource to read, for example mana, rage, energy, focus, runic power, combo points, soul shards, holy power, chi, insanity, maelstrom, fury, pain, essence, runes. The list holds every power type your game version knows, starting with mana, so choose one that your class actually uses. When you change the Type of an item or a tracked buffer to Power, Power Type starts on mana; open Parameters if you want another one. A tracked Power buffer lists every resource the unit has, and picks up a resource that appears later, such as combo points once you start building them.
• Spell ID (Cooldown): the spell to watch. You can type its name or its number, or pick it from the list of spells this character has cast (or met as auras). See Picking a spell on the Monitors page.
• On Cooldown (Cooldown): a yes/no filter used by tracked buffers. On means “only spells that are currently on cooldown”. Off, once you have switched it on and back off, means “only spells that are ready”. Left untouched there is no filter.

Things to know about each type

• Aura items are meant for tracked buffers. A static buffer needs an item that points at exactly one thing, and an aura is only identified by an internal number that changes each time it is applied, so the menu will not let you save an Aura parameter set in a static buffer. Use a tracked buffer or an aura buffer.
• Power in a static buffer needs a Power Type; without one the menu refuses to save it (“Parameters must identify a single object”). The Power line in the default General buffer is the exception: it has no power type and simply reads your main resource, whatever it is.
• Cooldown needs a Spell ID in a static buffer. In a tracked buffer, you can leave the spell out and set only On Cooldown: the buffer then collects the spells you cast that have a real cooldown (the global cooldown never counts) and shows only those on cooldown. Spells appear after you have cast them once in this session. A tracked Cooldown buffer needs at least a Spell ID or On Cooldown to be saved, otherwise you hear “Invalid parameters”.
• Cooldown items work through the game’s normal cooldown functions. On Retail the game hides cooldown numbers from addons in combat and in instances, so use the Spell Cooldowns monitor and its Speak Tracked Cooldowns key there, see Monitors.
• Health and Power of other units can be unreadable on Retail in combat; WowVision speaks what the game allows.
• Hearthstone shares one cooldown for all hearthstones, so it reports the right time whichever hearthstone you carry. When the game hides the cooldown, you only hear the bind location.
• With no target, a Health item for target has nothing real to read. Where you have tracked buffers, one is the cleaner choice for the target, since it is simply empty when you have no target.

Custom formats

Every item in a static buffer has a Template setting that controls the wording. By default it reads Default, which is the type’s standard wording (the examples above).

For types that have a registered wording (Health, Power, PVP, Clock, Bags, Cooldown) the list offers Default and Custom. For the others (XP, Money, Durability, Mail, Hearthstone) only Custom is offered. Choosing Custom opens a text field named Format. Type your own wording and press Enter. Leaving it empty and confirming puts the item back to its standard wording.

One difference: for a Cooldown item, the standard wording (when the Template has never been set) reads “Barkskin: Ready” or “Barkskin: 12.3s”, while picking Default in the list gives “Barkskin: 12 seconds” (and “Barkskin: 0 seconds” when ready).

A format is plain text with two kinds of placeholders:

• {name} is replaced by a value. For example {current} is the current health.
• [word] is replaced by that word in your language, for words WowVision knows, such as [Health], [of], [ready]. If WowVision does not know the word, the text in brackets is spoken as typed.
• To write a literal brace or bracket, double it: {{, }}, [[, ]].
• A slash in your own text is spoken with a space on each side, as in the standard wordings.

Example: for a Health item, the format {current} of {maximum} reads “250 of 500”. Another: [Health] {current} reads “Health 250”.

Use only text and number values in a format. Yes/no values (such as ready or unread) cannot be put into a format; they are left out of the list below, and using one would make that line fail with an error instead of speaking.

The values you can use, by type:

A value that has nothing to say, such as rested when you have no rested experience, simply adds nothing. Time values are spoken in words (“1 minute 5 seconds”).

Example: to make the Money line say “I have 5 Gold 23 Silver 45 Copper”, set its template to Custom with the format I have {formatted}.

Managing buffers in the menu

All buffer setup happens in the WowVision menu. The menu is the same keyboard-driven list used everywhere else in WowVision, see The WowVision menu and settings and Using WowVision windows.

Opening the buffer settings

1. Press Shift+F1 (or type /wv) to open the WowVision menu.
2. Move to Buffers and press Enter. The screen shows an Enabled toggle, a button named Buffers followed by the number of groups, for example “Buffers (1)”, and the Invert Item Direction setting, in that order.
3. Press Enter on Buffers (1). You see your groups, one button each, followed by an Add button.

Pressing Escape goes back one screen.

The levels of the menu

• On the groups list, Enter on a group opens that group. It has Enabled, Label, a Buffers button with the number of buffers in the group, and Remove.
• Enter on the Buffers button shows the group’s buffers and an Add button. Enter on a buffer opens it. A buffer has Enabled, Label, its type-specific settings, and Remove.
• For a static buffer the type-specific setting is the Objects button (with the item count), which lists the items and an Add button. Enter on an item opens it: Object, Template, and Remove.

Add a group

1. In the groups list, go to Add and press Enter.
2. The Select Type screen has one entry, Buffer Group. Press Enter.
3. The new group opens, named “New Buffer Group”. Change Label to a name you like (press Enter on it, type, Enter again).

Add a buffer to a group

1. Open the group, press Enter on Buffers, then on Add.
2. Choose the type: Static Buffer, Tracked Buffer (not on Retail and WoW: Forever), Aura Buffer or Chat Tab Buffer.
3. The new buffer opens, named “New Static Buffer” (and so on). Set Label to a name that tells you what it is. This is the name you hear when you switch to it.
4. Fill in the type-specific settings (the Objects list, the Source, the Sources, or the Chat Tab).

Add an item to a static buffer

1. Open the buffer, go to Objects, and press Enter.
2. Press Enter on Add. The Select Type list shows the object types (Aura, Health, Power, PVP, XP, Money, Bags, Durability, Mail, Hearthstone, Clock, Cooldown).
3. Pick one. The new item opens.
4. If the type has parameters, press Enter on Object. The screen has a Type choice (you can still change the type here) and, for types with parameters, a Parameters button. Press Enter on Parameters, fill in Unit, Power Type or Spell ID, then go to Save and press Enter. WowVision checks the parameters and tells you “Invalid parameters” or “Parameters must identify a single object” if something is missing.

Always set the unit explicitly for Health, Power and PVP items, even when you want player: an item you have just added has no unit yet. The Unit box shows “player”, but Save only knows what you typed into it, so saving with the box untouched says “Invalid parameters”. (Changing the Type of an item or of a tracked buffer to a unit type does fill in player for you.)

Items are added at the end of the list.

Change or rename something

Open the group, buffer or item and change its settings. Changes apply immediately; there is no Save button except in the parameters screen. To rename a group or buffer, change its Label. Items have no label of their own; their name comes from their type and parameters.

Remove something

Open the group, buffer or item and press Enter on Remove. There is no confirmation and no undo. Removing a group removes all its buffers; removing a buffer removes all its items. If you remove the default General group by mistake, you have to build it again by hand.

Put things in a different order

The menu has no move up or move down. Groups, buffers and items appear in the order they were added. To change the order, remove the things after the one you want to move and add them again in the order you like.

Turn something off for a while

Groups and buffers have an Enabled toggle. A group or buffer that is switched off keeps its settings, but Alt+Left, Alt+Right, Alt+Ctrl+Left and Alt+Ctrl+Right skip over it. Switch it on again and it is back in its place. If every other buffer in a group is off, Alt+Left and Alt+Right stay where you are. The Enabled toggle on the Buffers screen itself does switch the whole buffer feature off.

Account-wide or per character

WowVision stores settings in two places: once for your whole account (“Global”) and once for each character.

• Groups are stored account-wide by default, so every character sees them and a change on one character is there on all of them. That includes the default General group.
• When a character first logs in after buffers became account-wide, its groups join the account’s. A group joins the account’s group of the same name, which takes only the buffers it does not have yet, so a changed buffer sits beside the account’s. Any other group moves as it is.
• To change where a group lives, go to the groups list, move to the group, and press Shift+F10 (the context menu). Choose Scope, then Global (all characters) or your character’s name (this character only). The buffers and items inside a group travel with it and have no scope choice of their own.
• To change everything at once, open the WowVision menu, move to Buffers, press Shift+F10, choose Scope, and pick Global or your character.
• The Invert Item Direction setting can also be given a scope with Shift+F10 on it. It is account-wide by default.

Nothing is deleted when you switch a scope: choosing your character copies the current setup to this character, and choosing Global adopts the account version.

Examples

Hear your target’s health

The simplest way is a tracked buffer, because it is empty when you have no target and refills on every new target. On Retail and WoW: Forever, use the static buffer at the end of this example.

1. Open the WowVision menu with Shift+F1 and go to Buffers, then Buffers (1), then General, then Buffers.
2. Press Add, choose Tracked Buffer.
3. Set Label to “Target Health”.
4. Press Enter on Source. Set Type to Health.
5. Press Enter on Parameters. Set Unit to target, then Save.
6. Close the menu. Target something, then press Alt+Right until you hear “Target Health”, followed by the health of your target, for example “Target Health 8200 / 12000 Health”. Press Alt+Down to read it again.

If you prefer a static buffer: add a Static Buffer, open Objects, Add, Health, then set the item’s Parameters with Unit target. With no target it has nothing to read, see above.

Hear the debuffs on your target

1. In the group’s Buffers list press Add and choose Aura Buffer.
2. Set Label to “Target Debuffs”.
3. Press Enter on Sources (2). You see two rows, “Player Debuffs” and “Player Buffs”, each with a choice and a Remove button, and an Add button at the end. Change the first row to Target Debuffs and press Remove on the second row, so that only one source is left. (Add appends a new row that starts as “Player Debuffs”; change it to any source you like.)
4. Set Cast by Me to Only if you only care about your own debuffs.
5. In the game, target an enemy and press Alt+Right until you hear “Target Debuffs”. Then press Alt+Down to walk through the debuffs: “Moonfire, 12 seconds remaining, Magic, Burns the enemy for 4 Arcane damage every 3 seconds”.

Watch a power other than your main one

1. Add a Static Buffer named “Resources”.
2. Objects, Add, Power.
3. Open the item, Object, Parameters. Set Unit to player and Power Type to the one you want, for example combo points. Save.
4. In the game, Alt+Right to “Resources”, then Alt+Down: “3 / 5 combo points”.

See every spell currently on cooldown

On Retail and WoW: Forever, use the Spell Cooldowns monitor and its Speak Tracked Cooldowns key instead, see Monitors.

1. Add a Tracked Buffer named “Cooldowns”.
2. Open Source, set Type to Cooldown, open Parameters, switch On Cooldown on, and Save.
3. Cast some spells. Whenever one is on cooldown it shows up in the buffer. Walk through them with Alt+Down: “Barkskin: 12.3s”.

Read chat without opening it

1. Add a Chat Tab Buffer. Set Label to “Whispers”.
2. Set Chat Tab to Whisper Tabs.
3. Press Alt+Right to switch to it: you hear the name and the newest whisper. Alt+Up moves back into older lines.

Settings

The Buffers screen of the WowVision menu has:

Settings of the things you add (group, buffer, item) are described in the sections above. There are no alerts for buffers; nothing is spoken until you press a key.

Availability

See Versions for the full feature matrix.

Tips

• Keep the General buffer short and put your own things in buffers of their own. Switching buffers with Alt+Left and Alt+Right is quicker than walking a long list.
• Name buffers by what you will say to yourself: “Target Debuffs”, “Cooldowns”, “Whispers”. The name is the first thing you hear.
• Use an aura buffer for buffs and debuffs, a static buffer for fixed facts, and, where you have one, a tracked buffer for “whatever matches right now”.
• If Alt+Up and Alt+Down feel backwards, you are probably used to the older behaviour: turn on Invert Item Direction.
• Buffers show information on demand. To be told when something happens, set up a monitor.
• If the keys do nothing, see Troubleshooting.

Monitors

Monitors watch the game for you and speak or play a sound when something changes: a debuff you applied is about to run out, a cooldown is ready again, a proc lights up. While Buffers answer the question when you ask it, monitors tell you without being asked.

Which monitors you have depends on your game version. Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria have an Aura monitor and a Cooldown monitor. Retail and WoW: Forever have Cooldown Manager Auras and Spell Cooldowns, because the game hides aura and cooldown numbers from addons there during combat. Cooldown Manager Auras reads Blizzard’s cooldown manager. Spell Cooldowns uses the few facts the game still gives out, and only borrows the cooldown manager for its list of spells to pick from.

How monitors work

A monitor has one or more rules. A rule watches one thing, usually one spell, and moves through states such as Applied, Pandemic, Expiring and Missing. Every state has its own alert, and every alert has two outputs: a sound and a spoken message. You decide which states should make noise and how.

In short:

• The monitor says what kind of thing to watch and on which unit (for example auras on your target).
• Each rule inside it names a spell.
• Each state of a rule has an alert with a Sound Alert and a TTS Alert output.

Nothing is spoken until you turn an output on. All outputs are off when you create a rule.

What triggers an alert

A rule speaks when its state changes, not continuously. The first state a rule sees after it starts is established silently, so logging in while Moonfire is already running does not produce an announcement. After that, each change to another state fires the outputs of the new state.

What happens when you change the setup differs by monitor type:

• Aura and Cooldown monitors (Classic Era, TBC, Mists) start over whenever you change what they track: a rule’s Spell (or Applied by Player), the monitor’s Unit, or when you add or remove a rule. Starting over resets every rule of that monitor, and each rule then announces the state it finds once, if the output for that state is on. For example, after you add a second rule, the first rule can announce “Moonfire Applied” or “Moonfire Missing” again.
• Spell Cooldowns (Retail, WoW: Forever) starts over silently: after a change, every rule just takes in the current state without speaking.
• Cooldown Manager Auras (Retail, WoW: Forever) does not start over. A rule you change speaks only if the state it now finds differs from the state it had before.

Turning an output on while its rule is already in that state also makes it speak (or play) at once, as soon as the rule next checks. Don’t be surprised when you switch on the Applied sound while Moonfire is up and hear it straight away.

Fallback between states

Some states are “worse versions” of another one. For auras, Pandemic falls back to Applied, and Expiring falls back to Pandemic. The rule is: if a state has no output of its own turned on, the output of the state it falls back to is used instead, and an output that does not change from one state to the next is not repeated.

Practical consequences:

• If you only turn on a sound for Applied, you hear it once when the aura appears. You do not hear it again when the aura enters its pandemic window or starts expiring.
• If you turn on a different sound for Expiring, you hear Applied’s sound when the aura goes on and Expiring’s sound when it is about to fall off.
• Missing has no fallback: it only fires when its own output is on.

Cooldown states (Ready, Charging, On Cooldown) have no fallbacks; each plays only its own outputs.

Setting up a monitor

1. Press Shift+F1 (or type /wv) to open the WowVision menu, move to Monitors and press Enter.
2. The screen shows Enabled, and a button named Monitors with the number of monitors, for example “Monitors (0)”. Press Enter on it.
3. Press Enter on Add. The Select Type screen lists the monitor types for your game version. Choose one.
4. The new monitor opens, named “New” plus its type, for example “New Aura” (or “New Spell Cooldowns”). Set Label to something meaningful like “Target DoTs”.
5. Set the monitor’s own settings (the unit, and so on). They come after the Rules button in the monitor’s screen.
6. Press Enter on the Rules button (“Rules (0)”), then Add, and choose the rule type.
7. The new rule opens. Set the Spell, then the thresholds if the rule has any.
8. Open the state you care about (Applied, Missing, Ready, and so on), then open Sound Alert or TTS Alert and turn it on. See Alerts below.

Escape goes back one screen. To remove a monitor or a rule, open it and press Enter on Remove at the bottom. There is no confirmation.

The menu is described in The WowVision menu and settings. The general idea of alerts is in Alerts.

Account-wide or per character

Monitors you add are stored account-wide by default, so all your characters share them. That is not always what you want: a Druid’s Moonfire monitor means nothing on a Warrior.

• To keep a monitor on one character, go to the monitors list, move to the monitor, press Shift+F10 (the context menu), choose Scope, and then your character’s name. Choose Global to share it again.
• To switch every monitor at once, open the WowVision menu, move to Monitors, press Shift+F10, choose Scope, and pick Global or your character’s name.

Nothing is deleted when you change scope.

Copying a monitor or a rule

To build a second monitor like one you already have, move to it in the monitors list, press Shift+F10 and choose Copy. You hear the new name, for example “Moonfire Copy 1”; the copy sits right after the original, with the same settings, alerts and rules, in the same scope. Rename it and change what differs. Copy works the same on a rule inside a monitor.

Settings that every monitor and rule has

State alerts and their outputs

Each state of a rule appears in the rule’s screen as a button named after the state, for example Applied. Pressing Enter on it opens the alert of that state. It contains:

Turn on the output you want, and leave the state’s own Enabled on. At the moment that switch does nothing for the states of any rule: only the Enabled switch of the Sound Alert or TTS Alert inside decides whether something plays. The only alerts that obey the state’s own Enabled are Charge Gained and Charge Lost of the Cooldown rule.

The Sound Alert screen has:

The TTS Alert screen has:

The standard message is the spell’s name and the state, on every monitor: “Moonfire Applied”, “Moonfire Expiring”, “Rebirth On Cooldown”, “Rebirth Charge Gained”, “Barkskin Ready”, “Starsurge Proc”. A rule without a spell uses its Label instead. Type your own Message, such as “Moonfire down”, to replace that whole sentence.

Aura monitor

(Classic Era, The Burning Crusade, Mists of Pandaria)

Watches buffs and debuffs on one unit.

Rule type: Aura State Rule. It follows one spell through its life on the unit.

States and when they fire:

Details worth knowing:

• Expiring needs both conditions: inside the pandemic window and under the expiry threshold. For a short aura (say 6 seconds) the pandemic window is so small that the aura goes straight from Applied to Expiring.
• Auras with no duration stay at Applied.
• If more than one matching aura is present (when Applied by Player is off and several people applied it), the rule reports the healthiest one.
• Missing is spoken when an aura that was being tracked disappears. When the monitor starts (at login, say) and the aura was never there, Missing is not spoken. Set Announce on Target Change to Always if you want to hear “Moonfire Missing” or “Moonfire Applied” every time you target something new.
• With Announce on Target Change at Only Changes (the default), changing target still speaks when the new target’s state differs from what the rule had (for example from Applied to Missing). Set it to Never to hear nothing at a target change, only the changes that follow on the new target.
• Applied by Player must be turned off for effects with no caster, such as many trinket procs.
• A rule matches the aura by its own spell number. When the spell you cast and the aura it puts on the target have different numbers (on the classic versions this can depend on the spell rank), choose the aura from the quick picks instead of typing the name. The aura appears there once your monitor has seen it on the unit.

Cooldown monitor

(Classic Era, The Burning Crusade, Mists of Pandaria)

Watches the cooldowns of your own spells. It has no settings beyond the common ones; the spells are named in its rules.

Rule type: Cooldown State Rule.

States:

Two more alerts fire independently of the state, for spells with charges:

The global cooldown never counts as a cooldown. The first state a rule sees (at login, say) is silent.

Cooldown Manager Auras

(Retail and WoW: Forever)

On Retail the game hides aura information from addons in combat and in instances, so the ordinary aura functions cannot see your debuffs there. Blizzard’s own cooldown manager can, and this monitor reads what it shows. It tells you, for each aura in the cooldown manager’s Tracked Buffs and Tracked Bars, whether the aura is up on the unit and whether it is in its pandemic window.

Before you can use it, the aura must be one of the cooldown manager’s tracked buffs or bars:

• Only auras in the Tracked Buffs and Tracked Bars categories can be watched. The Essential and Utility categories hold spells, not auras.
• Only two units can be watched: Target and Player, the two the cooldown manager follows. While you target yourself, a Target monitor hears the auras on you. In instances the game may hide whether you are your own target; WowVision then goes by the last answer it could read since your target changed, so your aura is not reported Missing while you still target yourself.
• The cooldown manager must be showing the aura. A cooldown manager row that you have hidden, or set to appear only in combat, reads as empty while it is hidden, and your rule will report Missing. If an alert plays at the wrong time, check that the rows are shown.

You arrange the cooldown manager in its settings window, which WowVision makes accessible. Open it with /cdm. The window has the Spells, Auras and Group Buffs tabs, a Search box, a Settings menu, each category with its items, the Layout dropdown and a Revert Changes button. Press Enter on an item to pick it up and Enter on another item, or on the empty slot of a category, to drop it there. Press Backspace on an item for its menu (alerts, move to another category). Changes made with the keyboard take effect after the interface reloads, because the game rebuilds its on-screen cooldown data from them. The window tells you so the first time and offers a Reload Interface button at its end (or type /reload); when you close the window after such changes it reminds you again. Make these changes with no buffs on you, at least none that the cooldown manager tracks. If such a buff is active while you move an item or pick something in its menu, the game shows a Lua error. The error does not stop you: the change is still saved and works after the reload. It comes from the game’s own code, which refuses to rebuild the on-screen buffs for a change that did not come from a real mouse click. Reload before you go into combat: until the reload, the on-screen buffs still carry the keyboard change, and the next buff in combat brings the same Lua error, whether or not a buff was on you while you made the change. The items are read with their name, “Unlearned” for spells you have not learned, and the number of alerts they have (for example “1 alert”). Categories can be collapsed and expanded with Enter on their heading. On the Group Buffs tab the buffs sit in a Shown and a Hidden section: Enter picks a buff up, and Enter on a buff in the other section moves it there. Choosing an alert in the item’s menu (Add New Alert, or editing an existing one) opens the game’s alert editor as a window of its own, called Alert Editor: the spell, one dropdown for each choice, and the button that adds or saves the alert, then Close.

You rarely need the game’s alerts, though: WowVision’s monitors do everything they do, and do it better. Each state of a rule has its own sound and its own spoken message, in your own speech settings, and you can change both at any time. Spell Cooldowns also works for any spell, not only those in the cooldown manager. The game’s alert editor is there if you want it, but start with a monitor.

Monitor settings

Rule type: Cooldown Manager Aura Rule

The Spell picker lists the auras that are in your Tracked Buffs and Tracked Bars (or says “No tracked buffs or bars”). You can still type any spell name or number, but only auras that are in those two categories will ever be seen. The rule matches by the spell’s name, so a cast spell like Moonfire matches its debuff.

States:

On WoW: Forever there is no pandemic window, so the Pandemic state does not exist there and does not show in the menu.

When a tracked aura runs out while inside its pandemic window, the rule goes straight from Pandemic to Missing, with no spurious Applied between them.

After you change target, the rule waits a moment (a couple of ticks) for the game to refresh its icons before reading them, so a target change does not sound like the aura dropped and came back.

Speak Tracked Auras

The Speak Tracked Auras key reads every tracked aura of every enabled Cooldown Manager Auras monitor, as the game shows it: the aura’s name, the time left, the stacks, and “Pandemic” when it applies, or “Missing”. Example: “Moonfire, 8.7, 3 stacks, Pandemic. Rake, Missing”. When nothing is tracked you hear “No tracked auras”.

The key is unbound by default. You find it under Monitors in the keybinding window, see Keybindings.

Diagnostic command: /wv cdmlog

If an alert fires at the wrong moment, /wv cdmlog shows a log of what each rule saw on the cooldown manager frames around every change, newest last, in a window you can copy from, and speaks the newest line. Include it when you report a bug.

• /wv cdmlog clear empties the log.
• /wv cdmlog spells lists every entry in Tracked Buffs and Tracked Bars with its spell ids.
• /wv cdmlog cooldowns lists the Essential and Utility entries.

Spell Cooldowns

(Retail and WoW: Forever)

Cooldown information is secret in combat and in instances on Retail, but the game leaves a few plain facts: whether a cooldown is running, whether it is only the global cooldown, and whether a charge is recharging. This monitor builds its states from those facts alone, so it works anywhere and for any spell. The cooldown manager is needed only to offer you a list of spells to pick from; you can type any spell instead. The time left comes from the game’s own formatting, in plain words, and can be spoken even in combat.

It has no settings of its own beyond the common ones. It has two rule types.

Rule type: Spell Cooldown Rule

The Spell picker offers the spells of your cooldown manager’s Essential and Utility categories that the game says have a cooldown to alert on (an instant like Sunfire, which has none, is not offered; or it says “No spells with cooldowns”). An entry that stands for several spells, like Eclipse for Lunar and Solar, is offered as each of those spells. You can still type any spell name or number.

States:

The global cooldown never counts. While the spell is on cooldown or charging, the rule checks it about ten times a second, because the game sends no event when a cooldown ends.

Rule type: Spell Proc Rule

A proc rule follows the glow the game draws around a spell when it procs.

The picker lists the same cooldown manager spells without filtering, since a proc can be on any spell (or says “No essential or utility spells”). States, each with its own alert:

Speak Tracked Cooldowns

The Speak Tracked Cooldowns key reads the state of every rule of every enabled Spell Cooldowns monitor. Example: “Barkskin, On Cooldown, 49 seconds. Fire Blast, Charging, 1 charges, 8 seconds. Starsurge, Proc. Wild Growth, Ready”. A proc rule reads “No proc” when the glow is off. When no rules exist you hear “No tracked cooldowns”.

The key is unbound by default. You find it under Monitors in the keybinding window.

Availability

See Versions for the full feature matrix.

Keys

Bind them in the keybinding window, see Keybindings. Toggle All Monitors works as a mute: press it once to silence all monitors and again to turn them all back on. Monitors you had switched off one by one are turned on as well.

Picking a spell

Every rule has a Spell setting. Press Enter on it to open a small screen:

• Spell Name opens a text field. Type the spell’s name or its number and press Enter. If WowVision cannot find the spell you hear “Not Found”. On the classic versions the name usually has to be a spell you know; for anything else, use the spell’s number.
• Below it is a list of quick picks, each read as “Spell name (number)”. Choose one with Enter. For the Aura, Cooldown and Spell Cooldowns rules the list is the spells you have cast, or met as auras, on this character. The Cooldown Manager Auras and Spell Cooldowns rules offer the cooldown manager’s own entries instead, as described above.

When a spell is set, the Spell setting reads like “Moonfire (8921)”.

Examples

Moonfire on your target (Classic Era, TBC, Mists)

You want to hear when your Moonfire is about to fall off the target, and when it is gone.

1. Open the WowVision menu (Shift+F1), then Monitors, then Monitors (0), then Add, and choose Aura.
2. Set Label to “Moonfire”. Leave Unit at target.
3. Open Rules, press Add and choose Aura State Rule.
4. Set Spell: press Enter, choose Spell Name, type Moonfire, Enter. You hear the spell with its number.
5. Leave Applied by Player on.
6. Open Expiring, then TTS Alert. Turn Enabled on. Set Message to “Moonfire expiring”.
7. Go back and open Missing, then TTS Alert. Turn Enabled on. Set Message to “Moonfire gone”.
8. Optionally open Applied, then Sound Alert, turn it on and choose a short sound with Sound, for a click each time you apply it.

Now apply Moonfire to a target. Applied plays your click. The Pandemic state stays quiet: it has no output of its own, so it falls back to Applied and nothing new plays. When the aura is about to expire you hear “Moonfire expiring”, and when it falls off you hear “Moonfire gone”. If you then switch to a target that has no Moonfire, you also hear “Moonfire gone”, because the rule changed from Applied to Missing.

A cooldown ready alert (Classic Era, TBC, Mists)

1. Monitors, Monitors (0), Add, Cooldown. Label it “Cooldowns”.
2. Rules, Add, Cooldown State Rule. Set Spell to Starfire (or any spell with a cooldown).
3. Open Ready, then TTS Alert, turn it on and set Message to “Starfire ready”.

Cast the spell. When the cooldown ends you hear “Starfire ready”. Nothing is said at login, when the spell is simply ready.

A cooldown ready alert (Retail and WoW: Forever)

1. Monitors, Monitors (0), Add, Spell Cooldowns.
2. Rules, Add, Spell Cooldown Rule. Open Spell: the quick picks list the Essential and Utility spells of your cooldown manager that have a cooldown. Choose Barkskin.
3. Open Ready, TTS Alert, turn on Enabled.

When Barkskin comes back you hear “Barkskin Ready”, also in combat. Add the On Cooldown TTS alert if you also want “Barkskin On Cooldown” when you use it. Bind Speak Tracked Cooldowns to hear the state and the time left on demand.

A debuff in combat on Retail

1. In the cooldown manager settings (/cdm), make sure the aura you want is in Tracked Buffs or Tracked Bars.
2. Monitors, Add, Cooldown Manager Auras. Keep Unit at Target.
3. Rules, Add, Cooldown Manager Aura Rule. Open Spell: the quick picks list your tracked auras. Choose the debuff.
4. Turn on the TTS Alert of Missing and Pandemic.

You hear “Moonfire Pandemic” when the cooldown manager marks the debuff as ready to refresh and “Moonfire Missing” when it falls off.

Tips

• Start with one monitor and one rule and make sure it works before adding more.
• Turn on only the alerts you will need. A sound on Applied and a spoken message on Missing is a good start.
• Use Applied by Player for auras in group play so that other players’ copies do not count. Turn it off for effects that have no caster, such as many trinket procs.
• Give monitors and rules clear labels; the lists show nothing else.
• Monitors and buffers complement each other: let a monitor tell you when Moonfire falls off, and read your other timers on demand with a buffer or the Speak keys.
• If an alert never fires, check in this order: the monitor is Enabled; the rule is Enabled; the Spell is set; the state’s Sound Alert or TTS Alert is Enabled (they are off by default); and for the sound, a Sound has been chosen.
• If an alert fires at an odd moment on Retail, use /wv cdmlog, see Reporting problems.

Group Health Monitor

Available on Retail and WoW: Forever.

The Group Health Monitor tells you which of your group members are hurt, and how badly, without reading out percentages. A hurt member is spoken as their number. The pitch tells you how hurt they are: the lower their health, the higher the pitch. Members who are healthy stay silent.

The idea and the numbering come from Sku’s health monitor. The monitor is off until you turn it on.

Turning it on

1. Press Shift+F1 (or type /wv) to open the WowVision menu.
2. Go to Group Health Monitor. It sits in the main list, between Errors and Minimap Scanner, so pressing G gets you there quickly.
3. Press Enter on Enabled to turn it on.

All settings of the monitor are on the same screen, see Settings below. Switching Enabled off again silences the monitor completely, and its key does nothing then.

The numbers

• You are 1.
• Your party members are 2 to 5, in party order.
• In a raid of up to 10 members, the members are numbered 1 to 10 in group order, whatever groups they are in.
• In a raid of 11 or more, a member’s number is their group number times five, minus five, plus their place in the group. Group 1 is 1 to 5, group 2 is 6 to 10, and so on up to 40.

These are the same numbers Sku uses for the same members.

In a raid the numbers are only renewed out of combat, so a number never changes in the middle of a fight.

You need a real Windows voice

The monitor speaks with a voice of its own, which you choose in its settings (Voice). The pitch only works with a real Windows voice. A screen reader bridge voice, such as the NVDA SAPI bridge, speaks the numbers but ignores the pitch. When the bridge is the monitor’s voice, the monitor says so once. The monitor does not need a screen reader at all.

Every voice sounds a little different, so the pitch steps are tuned per voice. Microsoft Hedda, Zira and Katja are tuned. Any other voice uses Hedda’s steps and may sound less even.

What you hear

Three things speak.

The repeat

Every member below their role’s Repeat Below value is spoken again at the interval of Repeat Every. The members take turns, one number at a time, and a turn only starts while WowVision has nothing else to say, so the monitor never holds back your other speech.

A member above the threshold takes a silent turn. A silent turn is short, about a quarter of a second, so a round through a healthy party of five takes about a second and a half.

Every role has its own values: tanks, healers, damage dealers and members without a role. The defaults are:

Setting Repeat Every to 0 turns the repeat off for that role.

Deaths

When a member dies, you hear their number and “dead”, once. Someone who is already dead when you join the group is not announced.

The snapshot key

Speak Group Health (default Alt+H, on a controller the right trigger together with the right stick press) says everyone once, in number order, at their current pitch. A member at full health is said as their number and “full”, if Announce Full Health is on. Dead members are said as their number and “dead”. After the snapshot, the repeat starts afresh.

If there is nobody to watch, you hear “Nobody to watch”.

To change the key, open the WowVision menu, go to UI, then Bindings, or type /wv bind. See Keybindings.

Settings

All of these are on the screen of the Group Health Monitor in the WowVision menu. The names are as WowVision speaks them.

Repeat Only After a Change

With this setting off, every member takes a turn at the role’s interval, and silence means the member is healthy.

With it on, a member only takes a turn when their health changed since their last turn. A member who was hit once is said once and then stays quiet, so the monitor is much quieter. Heals and damage count as changes, but the interval still allows at most one turn per member per interval.

Mind what silence means with this setting on: it means nothing changed, not that everyone is healthy. A member who stays at low health is not said again. Use the snapshot key to check.

Limits

• The monitor does not follow health changes as they happen and cannot say a percentage or count incoming heals. The repeat and the snapshot are its only voice.
• Every member costs a turn, heard or not, so a large raid takes a while to go round. Watch only the raid groups you heal, or set Repeat Every to 0 for the roles you do not need.
• In battlegrounds and arenas the game does not let addons see your group members. The monitor then says once that it is unavailable (“Group health monitor unavailable here”).

Example

You play a healer in a party of five and want to know who needs you. You turn the monitor on and choose Microsoft Hedda as its voice. In a fight you hear “3” in a high pitch: member 3 is badly hurt. A moment later you hear “2” in a lower pitch: member 2 is only slightly hurt. The tank, number 4, is silent, so that member is above 80 percent. After the fight you press Alt+H and hear all five numbers one after the other, each at its pitch, and “1 full” for yourself.

See also Monitors for the monitors that watch your own spells and auras, and Alerts for the general idea of alerts.

In the World

These pages cover everything WowVision does while you play in the world, outside of game windows.

• Targeting — target announcements, soft targeting, focus targets, the target menu
• Combat — how WowVision behaves in combat, the enemy count, game error messages
• Movement and Orientation — compass, following, falling, walls, corpse, camera and pitch lock
• Navigation and Routes — the navigation window, routes, waypoints and beacons
• WowNav (WoW: Forever) — the route planner of WoW: Forever
• Minimap — scanning the minimap for herbs, ore and other tracked things
• Scanner — a categorized list of what is around you: quest givers, quests, your corpse and more
• Quests — the quest log, quest dialogs and Questie

Targeting

WowVision tells you what you target, lets you keep up to five “virtual focus” targets on keys, can switch the game’s soft targeting on and off, can take your target’s target with a key you assign, and opens the target’s menu with a single key. This page covers all of it: the announcements, the keys, and the settings.

All targeting settings live in the WowVision menu (type /wv) under Targeting. Targeting works the same on every supported game version, apart from the notes marked for Retail and WoW: Forever. Soft targeting needs support from the game itself; if your version lacks one of its settings, /wv soft lists it as “not available”.

Targeting keys at a glance

You can change or add keys in the keybinding window (WowVision menu, UI, Bindings); see Keybindings. The complete list of all keys is in the keybinding reference.

If the addon Sku is loaded at the same time, WowVision leaves the soft targeting keys, the Target Focus keys and the /focus1 to /focus5 commands to Sku and does not register them. Target of Target and Alt+T are not affected.

Hearing your target (hard target)

A “hard target” is the target you get the normal way: clicking, pressing Tab, a macro, or /target. Whenever your hard target changes to a new unit, WowVision reads it out.

What you hear depends on what kind of unit it is and whether you are in combat. Out of combat a mob sounds like “Gnoll Brute, Level 12, Humanoid, Hostile”, in combat just “Gnoll Brute, Level 12”. You choose these facts yourself for players, NPCs, mobs, pets and totems, separately for in combat and out of combat; see What the announcement says: Names. If the unit wears a raid marker, the marker name comes first, so you hear for example “Skull Gnoll Brute, Level 12”. The markers are Star, Circle, Diamond, Triangle, Moon, Square, X and Skull.

Some details:

• Clearing your target is silent. Only a new target is announced.
• The announcement interrupts whatever is being spoken, so quick target switching is never a backlog of old names.
• If the unit you target is already in combat with you, a short sound plays as well. WowVision decides this from the threat lists of you, your party or raid members and their pets, so it also works when only a party member or a pet is fighting it.
• (Retail and WoW: Forever only) The game hides which raid marker a unit has from addons. WowVision still tells you that there is one, but speaks its number instead of its name: 1 is Star, 2 Circle, 3 Diamond, 4 Triangle, 5 Moon, 6 Square, 7 X and 8 Skull. In some situations the game also hides a unit’s identity from addons; the announcement keeps working, and only facts the game hides in that moment, such as whether a player is away, are left out.

What the announcement says: Names

Open Targeting, then Names. Here you decide which facts the target announcement speaks. The soft target announcements use the same choices.

Which of the two applies is decided the moment you take the target: in combat, In Combat; otherwise Out of Combat. Both open the same five kinds of unit, each with one checkbox per fact, and end with Reset to Defaults, which puts that combat state’s checkboxes back to the defaults and says “Defaults restored”. A change counts from the next target on.

The five kinds of unit:

• Players: other players’ characters, and yourself.
• NPCs: units you cannot attack, such as vendors, quest givers and the guards of your faction.
• Mobs: units you can attack, neutral ones and enemy guards included.
• Pets: units a player controls, such as hunter pets, warlock demons and summoned minions.
• Totems: shaman totems.

Things that are not units, such as a mailbox or a herb under soft interact, always speak their full tooltip text.

The facts are spoken in the order of the list, separated by commas. Level and Rare, Elite or Boss come together (“Level 11 Elite”), and so do Race and Class (“Human Warrior”). A fact the unit does not have is left out, so Realm says nothing for a player from your own realm. A fact two checkboxes would both say is said once: with Classification and Elite both on, you hear “Elite” once. If a checkbox is missing from a list, your game version does not offer that fact.

Players:

NPCs:

Mobs have the same facts as NPCs, plus two:

The defaults for mobs differ from NPCs: in combat Name, Level, Rare, Elite, Boss and Dead are on; out of combat also Title, Creature Type, Reaction, Quest Boss, Quest Target, Quest Progress and Tapped by Others.

Pets:

Totems have Name and Owner (both on) and Reaction (off).

Example: in combat you want to hear only the names of mobs.

1. Press Shift+F1 (or type /wv) and go to Targeting, then Names, then In Combat, then Mobs.
2. Turn off Level, Rare, Elite, Boss and Dead.
3. Close the menu with Escape. The next mob you target in combat says only its name.

To hear and read what each fact says for your current target, type /wv targetinfo; see Commands.

Settings for hard target announcements

Open Targeting, then Hard Target. There are three alerts, each with the usual alert controls (see Alerts).

Target Change is the announcement above.

(Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria) Health Monitor reads your target’s health aloud as it drops (or rises) in steps of five percent.

The health is rounded up to the next multiple of five, so you hear “95%” as soon as the target is at or below 95 percent, then “90%”, “85%” and so on. Nothing is said at full health or at zero. When you change targets, you hear the new target’s health right after its name, unless it is at full health.

(Retail and WoW: Forever) There is no Health Monitor here, because the game hides a target’s health from addons in combat, just when you need it. Use the game’s own Combat Audio Alerts instead, in its Accessibility options: they can say your target’s health, in combat too.

Example: you want a quieter fight, so you turn off health readouts.

1. Press Shift+F1 (or type /wv) to open the menu and go to Targeting, then Hard Target.
2. Choose Health Monitor.
3. Turn Enabled off.

Target Crowd Control tells you when your target is crowd controlled, by anyone: stunned, feared, polymorphed and the like. It works in combat too.

Switching from one free target to another is silent; you only hear the Free Sound when the target before was crowd controlled. Both sounds have a Sound setting where you can pick a different one.

This alert is available on Retail, WoW: Forever and Mists of Pandaria. On The Burning Crusade Anniversary the game gives no crowd control information, so the alert does not appear there.

Soft targeting

Soft targeting is a game feature that picks a unit for you without a real target: the enemy in front of you, a friendly player, or something you can interact with (an NPC, a mailbox, a corpse to loot). The game’s interact key acts on the soft interact target. WowVision lets you switch the three kinds on and off with a key, announces the unit when it changes, and exposes the game’s hidden soft targeting options.

There are three kinds:

• Soft Target Enemy (Shift+I): the enemy the game would pick in front of you.
• Soft Target Friend (Shift+P): the friendly unit in front of you.
• Soft Target Interact (Shift+O): the nearest thing you can interact with.

All three are off by default.

Switching them on and off

Press the key. WowVision toggles the setting and says, for example, “Soft Target Enemy Enabled” or “Soft Target Enemy Disabled”. The key behaves exactly like the Enabled switch of the matching alert in the menu. Both turn the game’s own soft targeting on (for keyboard and gamepad) or off.

The game does not allow these switches to change during combat. If you press the key in a fight, WowVision says for example “Soft Target Enemy Enabled, after combat”, and the change is applied the moment combat ends.

If you have turned the interact key on in the game’s own options, WowVision does not turn it off again when you log in; it only switches on the ones you have enabled in WowVision.

What you hear

While a soft target type is on, WowVision announces each new soft target of that type with the facts you picked under Names (see What the announcement says: Names), plus a short sound that is different for enemy, friend and interact. Things that are not units, such as a mailbox, speak their tooltip text, or at least their name. When the soft target disappears nothing is said.

Each type is an alert in the Targeting menu named Soft Target Enemy, Soft Target Friend and Soft Target Interact. The alert is off by default; its Enabled setting is what the key flips. Under it you find TTS Alert (spoken, interrupting by default) and Sound Alert, both on by default once the alert is on. You can pick a different sound with the Sound setting of the sound output.

Arc and range

Every soft target type has two more settings, inside its alert in the Targeting menu: open Soft Target Enemy, Soft Target Friend or Soft Target Interact to find them. They default to the widest arc and the longest range, because the game’s own values are made for players who can see what is in front of them. WowVision only writes them for a soft target type you have switched on, so the game’s values stay in place for any type you do not use. Game Default, or a range of 0, puts the game’s own value back.

Soft targeting with a hard target

The game has an extra rule for what soft targeting does while you already have a real target. WowVision exposes it as one choice, Soft Targeting With a Hard Target (default Game Default):

The mode follows every target change and also your target’s death, and it works in combat too. A target the game sets by itself from your soft target (Make Soft Target the Hard Target, on for enemies by default) is not a real target here, also while you fight it: soft targeting keeps working with it. Only a target you choose yourself, with Tab or a click, counts. So with the game’s default the two Only Without modes step aside only for enemies you target yourself.

Make Soft Target the Hard Target (default Game Default) lets the game turn your real target into the soft one. Choices: Game Default, Off, Enemies, Friends. Like the on/off switches, this one is held until combat ends if you change it during a fight.

Example: loot corpses and still interact with what is next to your target

1. Press Shift+O to switch soft interact on. You hear “Soft Target Interact Enabled”.
2. In the Targeting menu set Soft Targeting With a Hard Target to Only Without an Attackable Hard Target.
3. Kill a monster and walk up to its corpse. WowVision says what the soft interact target is as it changes.
4. Press the game’s interact key. While the dead monster is your target, soft targeting stays active, so the key loots the corpse. Had you targeted a living enemy next to the corpse yourself (Tab or a click) instead, soft targeting would step aside and the interact key would act on that enemy.

Checking the values: /wv soft

/wv soft reads out and prints to chat the current lock mode and every soft targeting game setting with its value and the game’s default, for example “SoftTargetEnemy 3 (default 0)”. Settings that are waiting for combat to end are marked “after combat” with the value they will get. A setting your game version does not have is listed as “not available”. This is useful for bug reports.

Virtual focus: five stored targets

The virtual focus works like the Sku feature of the same name. You store up to five targets by name and bring each back with its own key. It is independent of the game’s own focus target.

The module is called Virtual Focus and sits under Targeting in the menu. It has no settings of its own.

Storing a focus

Type /focus1 to /focus5 in chat.

• /focus1 with nothing after it stores the name of your current target in slot 1. Without a target, slot 1 keeps its old name and WowVision prints “No target. Use /focus1 <name> or target a unit.”
• /focus2 Some Name stores that name in slot 2, whether or not you target anything.

WowVision answers in chat, for example “Focus 1 set to Hogger.”. Storing is not possible during combat; WowVision then prints “Cannot set virtual focus while in combat.” Do it before the pull.

Using a focus

Bind a key to Target Focus 1 to Target Focus 5 (they are unbound by default; see Keybindings). Pressing it targets the stored name, exactly like typing /target with that name. Pressing the key also works in combat.

Because the focus is a name, the game targets the nearest unit with that name. Two monsters with the same name cannot be told apart. Virtual focus slots are not saved: after /reload or a new login the slots are empty and must be set again.

Example: three bosses in a raid

1. Target the first boss and type /focus1.
2. Target the second boss and type /focus2, then the third and /focus3.
3. In the keybinding window assign Alt+1, Alt+2 and Alt+3 to Target Focus 1, 2 and 3.
4. In the fight, Alt+1 targets the first boss and WowVision reads it as it would any target change.

Your target’s target

Target of Target has no key by default, so give it one in the keybinding window. Press it to target whatever your target is targeting: the enemy a group member is fighting, or the group member an enemy is attacking. WowVision reads the new target as it reads any target change. If the enemy is attacking you, you target yourself. It works in combat too, and it does not start an attack.

If you have no target, you hear “No target”. If your target has no target, you hear “Your target has no target”, and your target stays as it was.

The target’s menu: Alt+T

Press Alt+T to open the same menu that a right click on your target’s portrait opens: Copy Character Name, Whisper, Invite and the rest, depending on what you target. Target yourself and you get entries such as Reset All Instances and the loot and dungeon difficulty choices.

Move through the menu with the arrow keys and press Enter on an entry; see Using the interface. Without a target nothing opens.

Range to your target

While you have a target, the Range Changed alert, under Hard Target in the Targeting menu, plays your target’s distance in yards from a voice pack whenever the distance changes. It is described in The range readout.

Related pages

• Combat for the combat alerts and enemy count.
• Alerts for how alert outputs work.
• Navigation for routing to your target.

Combat

This page explains what WowVision does when a fight starts and ends, how the combat alerts and the enemy count work, and how the Errors module reads the game’s red and yellow messages aloud (“Out of range”, “Ability is not ready yet” and so on).

The combat settings are in the WowVision menu (type /wv) under UI, then Combat. The error settings are under Errors.

What happens when combat starts

WoW does not let addons change key bindings or use many of its functions during combat. WowVision therefore steps aside the moment a fight begins:

• The keys WowVision takes over to navigate its windows (the arrow keys, Tab and Ctrl+Tab, Home and End, the context menu key, letter navigation in menus, and the keys of the element you were on) are handed back to the game. Your movement keys and action bar keys behave exactly as the game intends.
• WowVision stops reading and updating its windows. No new windows are detected and no announcements about windows are made until combat is over.
• Keys that are not about windows, such as the soft targeting switches and the Target Focus keys, stay as they are. Some of them cannot do everything in combat; see below.
• With a gamepad on Retail and WoW: Forever, only the keys needed for the world, such as the right stick press, stay with WowVision. See Controller.

When combat ends, WowVision takes its keys back as soon as none of the keys it needs is held down, and picks up where you were. Windows that were open stay open, and you are on the same element as before.

If you ever find a WowVision window stuck after a fight, type /wv close. It closes every WowVision window.

Things that wait for combat to end

• Switching soft targeting on or off, and the Make Soft Target the Hard Target setting: WowVision says “after combat” and applies the change when the fight ends. See Targeting.
• Storing a virtual focus with /focus1 to /focus5: refused with the message “Cannot set virtual focus while in combat.”
• Capturing a new key in the keybinding window: WowVision says “Not in combat”.
• The minimap scan and similar actions: they also say “Not in combat”. See Minimap.

Retail and WoW: Forever: values hidden in combat

(Retail and WoW: Forever only) Blizzard hides a number of game values from addons, especially in combat and in instances. These are the ones that you notice in WowVision:

• Your target’s health cannot be read, so there is no target health monitor. Use the game’s own Combat Audio Alerts instead, in its Accessibility options: they can say your target’s health, in combat too. See Targeting.
• Your movement speed is hidden in combat, so wall detection can only notice that you are standing still, not that you are slowed (Movement).
• Raid markers are spoken as numbers.
• Buffs and debuffs are read from their tooltips in combat (Buffers).

Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria do not have these limits.

Your own health and resources

WowVision does not announce your own health or mana by itself. You read them whenever you want from the General buffer:

1. Press Alt+Down (with no window open). The first two lines of the General buffer are your health, for example “250 / 500 Health”, and your main resource, for example “50 / 100 MANA”.
2. Press Alt+Up to go back to the first line.

The lines are always current, also in combat. A second resource, such as combo points, holy power or soul shards, can be added as a line of its own; see Watch a power other than your main one. The whole General buffer is described in The default setup: the General group.

On Retail and WoW: Forever the Group Health Monitor can include you: with Include Yourself on, you are number 1 and are announced when you are hurt.

Combat alerts

Two alerts tell you when a fight begins and ends. They sit in UI, Combat:

Each has a TTS Alert output with the usual settings (see Alerts): you can turn the whole alert off with Enabled, turn off the spoken output, or choose a different voice for it. Only the spoken output exists for these two alerts.

Enemy count

In a fight WowVision says how many enemies are in it, every time that number changes: “1”, “3”, “2”, and “0” when the last one is gone. It is a quick way to know whether the pull went wrong, without reading any list.

Settings

All in UI, Combat.

Nameplates are required

The count comes from enemy nameplates, the health bars a sighted player sees above enemies. Without nameplates there is nothing to count. Turn on enemy nameplates in the game’s options (the Enemy Units option in the Nameplates section; in some game versions they are off by default). If you enter combat with the alert on and the enemy nameplates off, WowVision says once: “Turn on enemy nameplates to count enemies”. It does not repeat this until you reload the interface or log in again.

Some more things to know:

• An enemy counts only while its nameplate exists, which means within the game’s nameplate range (about 45 yards on WoW: Forever).
• Turning on the Minor and Minions nameplate options in the game also counts small trash monsters and enemy pets.
• Only enemies that are hostile to you, alive and in combat count. Neutral monsters count once they are fighting.
• Enemy players count too. In a group, while you, your pet or a group member is in combat, every enemy player in combat near you counts, also one who is fighting someone outside your group: the game never marks a player as tapped. In PvP this gives you the wider picture, all enemy players fighting around you, as the nameplates show it to a sighted player.
• A number that other speech threw away before it was spoken (an interrupting alert such as a target change empties the speech queue) is said again once, when no newer number came within 5 seconds and the count did not change in the meantime. Only the spoken number is repeated: a voice pack number plays at once and is never thrown away. A number that was cut off while it was already being spoken is not repeated. Not on Vanilla.
• A new number is announced only after it has held for 0.3 seconds, so an enemy that flickers out of range and back is not spoken twice. The wait starts again at every change, so a pack that comes in one after another is said as one number, 0.3 seconds after the last enemy. The count is also re-checked every second during a fight, which catches monsters that die or give up quietly.

Announce Crowd Control

This choice is experimental and off by default. With it on, a sheeped, stunned or feared enemy leaves the number, and you hear what happens to it in as few words as possible:

• A crowd control lands: its name alone, in your client’s language. For monsters this is the spell, as the crowd control icon on their nameplate shows it (“Polymorph”, “Frost Nova”); for enemy players the game’s own word (“Stunned”). The number is one lower now; it is not said again.
• A crowd control ends while the enemy is still in the fight: a short sound, then the new number.
• Only controlled enemies are left: “0” and their names, for example “0, Polymorph”, so it is not taken for the end of the fight.
• A controlled enemy dies: nothing by itself; the number or the end of combat says the rest.
• A kill in the same moment as a crowd control says both: “1, Frost Nova”.

A typical pull: “3”, “Polymorph” (one sheeped), “1”, “0, Polymorph” (the others are dead), the sound and “1” (the sheep broke), then “0”.

What counts as crowd control is what the game puts in the Crowd Control list on an enemy’s nameplate: stuns, fears, polymorphs, roots and the like, not slows. On WoW: Forever, in combat, that list is hidden from addons; WowVision then follows the game’s crowd control filter, which may count a slow too. On Retail, in combat and in instances, the auras of enemies are hidden from addons and every enemy counts as free.

One or two crowd controls landing together are named one after the other (“Polymorph, Frost Nova”). Three or more at once, usually one area spell, become a count: “3 Frost Nova” when every name is the same, else “3 controlled”. On WoW: Forever the names are hidden from addons in combat: WowVision can speak them but not compare them, so three or more there always say “controlled”. The same goes for “0” with three or more controlled enemies left: “0, 3 controlled”. Where no name can be read, WowVision says “controlled”.

Without Names skips the names, which can be long (“Hammer of Justice”): one control says “controlled”, two or more at once “2 controlled”. The sound for a control that ends works the same in both. The voice pack output plays only the numbers.

Example

You pull three monsters in a dungeon. You hear “combat started”, then “3”. You kill one: “2”. Your tank grabs the other two, you switch Count Enemies to Attacking You, and the number now falls to “0” while they are still alive, because none of them is attacking you any more. Switch it back to Attacking You or Your Group to follow the whole fight. When the last enemy dies you hear “0” and “combat ended”.

Errors and info messages

When the game shows you a red message at the top of the screen (“Out of range.”, “Ability is not ready yet.”, “You are too far away.”) or a yellow information message, the Errors module speaks it. It also works on Retail, where the game normally hides some of these (out of range, out of rage, energy or focus, and spell and ability cooldown messages) from the screen: WowVision hears the message itself and says them anyway. It keeps working even when another addon hides the game’s error display.

Every message goes through a filter in which you decide, message by message, whether it is spoken, played as a sound, or muted.

Settings

Open Errors in the WowVision menu.

Holding a key down still repeats the message, once every Repeat Delay seconds. The delay counts from the last time the message was actually spoken.

The per-error filter

Choose Per-Error Filter to see a list of every error and info message you have met so far. Each one is a button. Its name is the message text, with names and numbers replaced by “…” so that all variations of a message share one entry. For example every “… has died.” message is one entry whatever the name is. After the name, WowVision tells you what the entry does: Speech, Speech and Sound, Sound or Muted.

Press Enter on an entry to open its settings:

The first item of the filter screen is Show All Known Errors (off by default). Normally an entry appears only after the message has happened to you once. Turn this on and the list also holds every message the game knows, so you can mute one in advance. The list is sorted alphabetically; in menus you can type the first letters of an entry to jump to it.

The filter is shared by all your characters: a message muted on one character stays muted on all of them.

Example: mute “Ability is not ready yet” but keep “Out of range”.

1. Open the menu with /wv, go to Errors, then Per-Error Filter.
2. Find Ability is not ready yet. (if it is not in the list, turn on Show All Known Errors first) and press Enter.
3. Turn Enabled off and leave the screen with Escape. The entry now reads “Muted”.
4. Leave Out of range. alone. It is still spoken.

Always spoken, not filterable

• Messages that the game hands over in a form that cannot be inspected (a Retail restriction) are spoken as they are through the Announce Errors alert, because the filter cannot identify them.
• Lua errors, below.

Lua errors

WoW’s own Lua error window cannot be used with a screen reader. With Announce Errors on, WowVision speaks “Lua error:” followed by the message when an addon error happens. The same error is not spoken again for five seconds, so an error that repeats every frame does not flood speech. The errors are collected, up to the last 20, and are kept over /reload and logout.

Diagnostic commands

When you report a bug, /wv errors is the first thing to try.

Related pages

• Targeting for target announcements and focus keys.
• Movement for falling, walls and similar alerts, which also work in combat.
• Alerts for configuring any alert.

Movement and Surroundings

This page covers the parts of WowVision that help you move through the world without seeing it: the compass and facing announcements, zone names, indoors and outdoors, swimming and flying alerts, fall detection, wall detection, follow sounds, the corpse run, the camera settings WowVision manages, and the pitch lock.

Everything here is in the WowVision menu (type /wv) under Navigation. The route and waypoint features of the navigation window (F10) have their own page: Navigation. These features have no keys of their own, and they work on every game version unless a note says otherwise.

Each of these sub-menus has an Enabled switch at the top, so any feature can be turned off completely.

Environmental alerts

The Environmental Alerts module watches your character and speaks when something about your surroundings changes. Each of its entries is an alert (see Alerts): it has an Enabled switch and one or more outputs, usually TTS Alert (speech) and Sound Alert.

Compass direction

The compass says “north”, “northwest”, “west”, “southwest”, “south”, “southeast”, “east” or “northeast” whenever the direction your character faces moves from one of these eight sectors into another. Each sector is 45 degrees wide and centered on its direction, so “north” covers 22.5 degrees to either side of exactly north.

By default the direction is played from a recorded voice pack (the Voice Alert output) rather than spoken by text to speech. If you prefer text to speech, turn TTS Alert on and Voice Alert off. In the Voice Alert settings you can also choose a different voice pack. See Speech.

Inside some instances the game does not tell addons which way you face; the compass is then silent there, but all the other alerts in the table keep working.

Zone and subzone

“Zone Changed Alert” speaks the zone name when you cross into a new zone, for example “Elwynn Forest”. “Subzone Changed Alert” speaks the area name, for example “Goldshire”. Nothing is said when the area has no name.

Indoors, outdoors, flying, swimming, diving

You hear “outdoors” or “indoors” when the game decides that you changed from one to the other, “flying” when you take off on a flying mount, “flying ended” when you land, “swimming” when you enter water, and “diving” when you go under the surface. Walking back out of water does not say anything.

Breath and fatigue

Under water the game shows a breath bar that runs down while you hold your breath. Swim too far out into deep water and a fatigue bar appears. Hunters see a bar while they feign death. Breath Alert speaks the bar’s name and how full it is, one line per step down: “Breath 90”, “Breath 80”, and so on to “Breath 0”, when you start to drown. Nothing is said while the bar fills up again after you surface; dive again and the steps count down from wherever the bar is.

The steps are 10 percent by default. Change them with Breath Step (5, 10, 20 or 25 percent) on the Environmental Alerts screen. The game shows only the bar, not the seconds left, so WowVision says the percent too. Breath Alert speaks with a game voice, so movement keys do not cut it off.

Changing these

Every alert in the table except Speak Compass Direction has a Sound Alert, and it is off by default. To get a sound instead of or in addition to speech, open the alert, turn Sound Alert on and pick a sound with its Sound setting.

Example: you want a sound when you step indoors and no speech.

1. Press Shift+F1 (or type /wv), go to Navigation, then Environmental Alerts, then Indoors Alert.
2. Turn TTS Alert off.
3. Turn Sound Alert on and choose a sound with Sound.

Fall detection

When you fall, WowVision plays a rising series of tones that tells you how long you have been falling: the longer the fall, the further the sequence has climbed. It also says “Falling” once when the tones start. The tones are the same as the ones in Sku. After about five seconds the sequence reaches its end.

Settings in Navigation, Fall Detection:

Water is not a fall: a fall that starts while you are swimming, or within a moment of leaving the water (for example jumping out of it), stays silent until you land.

Example: you walk off a ledge. After a fifth of a second you hear “Falling” and the first tone. The tones climb while you drop. When you land they stop.

Wall detection

Wall detection tells you that you are pushing against something. While you are moving but your position hardly changes, WowVision plays a short clunk. The more you are held back, the more it sounds like a hard stop. This is the same system as Sku’s, with the same sounds.

How it works: every fraction of a second WowVision compares how far you actually moved with how far your speed says you should have moved, and grades the shortfall in five steps:

A sound plays only once three checks in a row are impeded (roughly every half second), so continuous pushing gives a steady rhythm of clunks, not a buzz. As soon as you move freely, the rhythm resets.

Things it takes care of:

• It follows your movement commands, no matter which keys you have bound for moving. Autorun counts as movement too.
• It also covers walks that the game makes for you: when you press the interact key and the game walks you to an NPC, or you use click to move. If such a walk ends before it reaches its goal (you got stuck on something), the Blocked sound plays once.
• Being stunned, rooted, feared or otherwise out of control is never reported as a wall, and nothing is graded while you are on a flight path.
• When you attack with the interact key, your character follows the enemy for the whole fight. Once you are in combat, wall detection stays quiet while your auto-attack is on and you press no movement key. On the way to the enemy, before the fight begins, it warns about an obstacle as usual, and so it does when you press a movement key.
• While swimming, your swimming speed is used for comparison.
• (Retail and WoW: Forever only) In combat the game hides your movement speed, so only a complete standstill can be noticed: you hear the Blocked sound but none of the slower grades.

Settings: open Navigation, Wall Detection, then Wall Detection (the alert).

Follow

When you follow another player (the game’s follow function), WowVision plays a short sound as following starts and another as it ends. Following also ends by itself when the other player gets out of range, and you hear the stop sound then. As in the game, moving by hand ends following too.

Interacting: Auto-move to Interact Target

In the Navigation menu itself:

WowVision switches this on by default because new players otherwise find it hard to reach NPCs. WowVision sets the game’s option to match at each login, so change it here rather than in the game’s options.

Corpse run

When you die and release your spirit, WowVision can start walking you to your corpse. This also happens when you log in or reload as a ghost.

Here is what happens: you release your spirit; WowVision looks up where your corpse is, first on your current map and then on the larger maps around it (this finds a corpse that lies in the next zone from the graveyard you woke up in), and says “Corpse”. It then starts a route to it, just as if you had chosen the corpse in the navigation window. Where WowNav route data is available (WoW: Forever), a corpse that lies over several floors is routed to the lowest floor that can be reached. If no route can be found, a beacon points straight at the corpse instead. The route is followed like any other; see Navigation for how routes and the beacon sounds work.

Details:

• Right after a loading screen the game may not know where the corpse is, so WowVision asks again for a few seconds (up to eight times, once a second) before giving up. If it gives up, you can still find the corpse with the scanner: press F9, and choose the corpse entry under Player. See Scanner.
• The corpse is only routed to when it lies on the continent you are on. A corpse inside an instance is not walked to from outside.
• Turning the setting off does not stop the scanner entry; it only stops the automatic route.

Camera

Turning to a waypoint, and the pitch lock below, steer your character by moving the game camera. For that to work reliably WowVision sets two game camera options once for each character, the first time you log in with the addon:

• The camera following style becomes “Always adjust camera”, which means the camera always follows behind your character.
• Switching between saved camera views becomes instant.

When it changes one of these options, WowVision prints this message in chat: “WowVision set the camera to always follow behind your character, which turning to waypoints needs. You can change the camera following style in the game options under Controls.” If you change the following style back afterwards, WowVision does not change it again for that character.

WowVision also uses camera view slot 5, one of the five views the game lets you save. It resets and snaps to that slot to put the camera straight behind your character and nearly level. If you use Save View 5 yourself, WowVision will overwrite it; use another slot for your own views.

With a gamepad on Retail and WoW: Forever, WowVision briefly turns the gamepad’s free look off during a turn to a waypoint, then back on. See Controller.

Pitch lock

When you swim or fly, every turn to a waypoint used to tip your character’s nose slightly downwards, until you were slowly diving and no key could correct it. The pitch lock prevents that by keeping your character level while you are in the water or in the air. It is on by default.

• It engages by itself as you start swimming (or flying) and lets go as soon as you are on land or on a flight path. You hear nothing.
• Space (swim up, ascend) and X (swim down, descend) keep working; you lose no vertical movement.
• If you are already tilted, the following all bring you back to level: pressing Space or X, the window of an NPC opening after the game walked you to it through water (gossip, quest or merchant window), and the key that turns you to the waypoint (I by default) when you are already facing it. These all rely on camera view slot 5.
• It works in combat.
• Flying: on Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria the lock also holds while you fly. (Retail and WoW: Forever) the lock is only held while swimming, because skyriding steers by pitch.
• To dive and climb by pitch, turn the pitch lock off: open Navigation, Pitch Lock and switch Enabled off. The lock lets go at once.

The game does not let addons read the pitch limit back, so WowVision sets it to the game’s normal value whenever you enter the world without the lock being held.

Diagnostic commands

None of these features has a command, but if a movement key seems stuck after a window opened or combat ended, /wv keylog logs when WowVision takes and releases its keys. See Combat. Turn-to-waypoint problems use /wv turnlog, described on the Navigation page.

Related pages

• Navigation: routes, waypoints, the beacon and turning to waypoints.
• Combat: what happens to WowVision’s keys in a fight.
• Alerts: outputs, sounds and voices.

Navigation: Maps, Routes and Beacons

WowVision can guide you to a place on foot. You pick where you start and where you want to go in the navigation window (F10), WowVision works out a route along known paths, and then an audio beacon leads you from waypoint to waypoint until you arrive. This page covers the navigation window, the beacon and all the keys you use while walking a route.

How it works in short

1. Press F10 to open the navigation window.
2. Choose your entry point: the place on the known path network where your route starts. The nearest one is already selected for you.
3. Search for a destination and press Enter on it.
4. WowVision says how many waypoints the route has and how long it is, and a beacon starts to ping.
5. Turn towards the beacon, walk, and listen. Each waypoint you reach plays a short sound and the beacon moves on to the next one. At the end you hear “Arrived” and the name of the place.

You can also set a straight-line beacon with no route at all, from the Direct checkbox in the window, from the scanner, or with the /beacon command.

Which routes you have

Routes need map data: a network of waypoints that are linked to each other, plus the names of the places you can go to. WowVision has two route systems, each with its own data. Which one you have depends on your game version:

Both systems use the same window, the same keys and the same beacon, so this page applies to both, and says so where they differ. What is special about each one is in Classic routes further down and on the WowNav page.

The examples on this page use the plain place names of WowNav. Classic routes read names in a longer form; see Place names.

The navigation window (F10)

Press F10 to open the navigation window. Press Escape to close it. On a controller, hold both shoulder buttons and press D-pad up (see Controller). If the game cannot tell WowVision where you are (for example inside an instance on Retail), the window stays empty.

Pressing F10 while you are in the quest log opens the window aimed at that quest’s next target, the same place the Scanner’s Enter on the quest leads to: the nearest target of its first unfinished objective, or its turn-in once it is complete. That target heads the destination list and is selected, so Enter starts the route. The quest is the one your cursor is on in the log, or else the one whose details are open. A quest with nowhere to go, or a place without route data, opens the window as usual.

The window has four stops. Move between them with Tab and Shift+Tab, and move inside a list with Up and Down. See Interface for the general keys.

When the window opens, you land on the entry point that is already selected, so you can often skip straight to the search.

Entry points

The entry point is where your route joins the network. WoW is fully three-dimensional, so the closest waypoint is sometimes the road under a bridge or the floor below you. That is why WowVision lists the closest ones and lets you choose.

Each entry reads its name, its distance and the direction relative to where you are facing, for example “Innkeeper Allison (Innkeeper), 4 yards, ahead left”. The directions are ahead, ahead right, right, behind right, behind, behind left, left and ahead left. The entry that is chosen is announced with selected.

• The closest entry point is selected when the window opens.
• Press Enter on another entry to select that one instead. You hear selected at once, and again whenever you move back onto it. Only one entry is selected at a time.
• While you swim or dive, the nearest entry that lies in water is preselected instead, if the data knows about water points. With WowNav, if there is no water point nearby, you hear “No water point nearby”. The classic data has no water points, so there the nearest entry stays selected.

The route you get includes the walk from where you stand to the entry point. So choose an entry that you can really walk to.

Direct

Tick Direct (press Enter on the checkbox) if you do not want a route. The entry points disappear, and Enter on a destination sets a straight beacon to exactly that point. You hear, for example, “Direct: Innkeeper Allison (Innkeeper), 120 yards”, and on arrival “Arrived” followed by the name. Use this when you are already close, when you are inside a building the network does not know, or when you want to go somewhere in a straight line.

Direct is the first stop. To reach it, press Shift+Tab from the entry points.

You do not need the checkbox for a single straight beacon: Backspace on a destination sets one at once, while Enter still routes. The checkbox is still useful with WowNav, because only with Direct on does the list also show places no route leads to.

Searching for a destination

Press Tab from the entry points to reach Search. The edit box takes your typing immediately, and what you have typed is read as you type. Type a fragment of a name, for example “auctioneer”, and press Enter to apply it. WowVision reads back what you typed. The list below is filtered at once. Tab applies the text as well and moves on to the next stop; Escape closes the edit box without changing the search.

• The search is not case sensitive and matches any part of a place’s text. It is one text fragment, not several words: “auctioneer stormwind” finds nothing, but “auctioneer” or “stormwind” each work.
• With WowNav that text is the name in English and German, the categories of the place and its zone. With classic routes it is the whole long name, including the role, the zone and the numbers.
• Leave the box empty to list everything on your continent, up to the nearest 1000 places with WowNav.
• The search covers all of the map data on the continent you are on, so routes can leave the zone you are in.

Destinations

Press Tab again to reach Destinations. It is one long list, sorted by distance from where you opened the window, the nearest first. It can be very long (up to 1000 entries with WowNav, tens of thousands with classic routes), so it works like a single control rather than a real list of items:

Each destination reads its name and its distance, then its position in the list. With WowNav, what the place is and where it is come after the distance, for example “Innkeeper Allison (Innkeeper), 85 yards, quest giver, vendor, innkeeper, Stormwind City, 1 / 342”. A destination you reached in the last few minutes is announced with Visited first; see Visited places. An empty list reads “Empty”.

When you press Enter, you hear the route summary, for example “12 waypoints, 340 yards”. The yards include the walk to your entry point. The summary can say more about how the route ends: see The last stretch for classic routes and WowNav. If something is wrong you hear No route found, sometimes followed by a short reason such as “unreachable” (no path leads there from your entry point) or “no entry”.

From the scanner

In the scanner (Scanner), Enter on a quest, an NPC or any other placed entry opens the navigation window already aimed at it. The closest entry point and the scanner’s entry as destination are both selected, and the focus lands on the destination. Press Enter to route there; if you want a different entry point, press Shift+Tab twice first. Without map data for the continent the scanner sets a straight beacon directly and does not open the window.

Following a route

What you hear

When the route starts, WowVision speaks the summary and the beacon begins to ping. Waypoints are not read out one by one. Instead you hear them:

• The beacon pings towards the current waypoint. The ping changes with the direction and the distance to the waypoint. It pings faster the more directly you face the waypoint, about every 0.7 seconds when off course and about every 0.3 seconds when you are aimed at it. Distance is heard in steps of about 6 yards and works out to roughly 180 yards.
• Aligned (a clack) plays when you turn to within 10 degrees of the waypoint. Off course (a click) plays when you turn away again. These only play when you cross that line by turning.
• Waypoint reached (a success sound) plays every time you get close enough to a waypoint, including the last one.
• Right after the sound, WowVision says how many waypoints are left, for example “3 remaining”. The waypoint the beacon now leads to counts too. At the last waypoint you hear Arrived instead, and at a portal, the tram or an elevator on a WowNav route you hear WowNav’s own guidance. This works on classic routes and WowNav routes alike. The setting Announce Remaining Waypoints in the Navigation module (on by default) turns it off.
• Arrived is spoken at the end of a route, followed by the name of the destination.
• Beacon stopped is spoken when you cancel.

A waypoint counts as reached when you are within the arrival distance of it (see Arrival distance). With WowNav, a waypoint can also have a larger distance of its own.

Beacon sounds

All beacon sounds are one alert called Beacon in the Beacon and Routes module (WowVision menu, Navigation, Beacon and Routes, Beacon). The alert and each of its four sounds has its own Enabled switch and its own sound, so each cue can be turned off or changed on its own. See Alerts for how alerts work.

For Beacon Sound you choose one of the beacon sets: Notification, Probe (Deep), Probe (Mid), Steel Gong and Beacon 6 (Sku’s beacon 6). Moving onto an entry in the picker plays a sample. For the other three you pick any sound from the sound list.

Keys while you walk

All of these can be changed in the keybinding window (WowVision menu, UI, Bindings); see Keybindings. The full list is in the binding reference.

Turn to waypoint (I)

Addons cannot turn your character directly, so WowVision turns the camera and hands the new direction to your character. Press I while you follow a route and your character turns to face the current waypoint. The turn takes a few frames and works standing still or while walking; when you are moving, it aims at where the waypoint will be when the turn ends, so you do not circle a waypoint you are about to reach.

Nothing is spoken when it works. A few things you should know:

• If you already face the waypoint (within about 3 degrees), the press turns nothing. While you swim or fly with the pitch lock on, it levels your character instead; see Movement.
• A press while a turn is still running is ignored. Pressing a turn key yourself stops the turn where it is.
• Without a route you hear No active waypoint. (The exception is WowNav at a dock or tram station; see WowNav.)
• Where the game hides your position and facing from addons (instances on Retail) you hear Turning is not available here.
• On a controller, press the right stick instead of I.

Turning needs two camera settings: the camera following style Always (the game option “Always adjust camera”) and instant switching between saved camera views. WowVision sets both once on each character, at the first login where one of them had to be changed, and tells you in the chat: “WowVision set the camera to always follow behind your character, which turning to waypoints needs. You can change the camera following style in the game options under Controls.” If you change the following style back later, turns will land in the wrong places. WowVision does not set it again. WowVision also uses saved camera view 5 for turning, so anything you saved there is overwritten. During a turn it briefly changes the game’s mouse look speed and puts your own value back afterwards. With a gamepad, free look is switched off for the length of the turn.

Turn to target and focus (Ctrl+I, Ctrl+U)

Ctrl+I turns your character to face your target, Ctrl+U to face your focus. It is meant for units you cannot click or follow, such as an escort NPC: put it on your focus (/focus) and keep your target free for the fight.

The game tells addons nothing about where an NPC stands, but it does say whether a unit’s nameplate is in front of the camera or behind it. So a press switches the camera to first person, turns it around you until the nameplate changes sides, works out the direction from that, and turns you with the same turn as Turn to Waypoint. A press takes about half a second. The camera moves first; your character turns once, at the end. You hear a click when you face the unit. When the unit stands close, or is off screen while offscreen nameplates are off, the press measures with the camera close behind you instead, which takes about a second longer. A unit within about 2 yards cannot be measured that way; you are standing at it then. Walking while you press works, but the result is most exact when you stand still.

• The unit needs a nameplate. For NPCs, friendly NPC nameplates must be on: the game option, or Apply Recommended Game Settings (see First login).
• If you already face the unit (within about 3 degrees), nothing turns; you only hear the click.
• Without a target or focus you hear No target or No focus; without a nameplate, No nameplate.
• In dungeons and other instances the game hides friendly nameplates from addons, so you hear Friendly nameplates are hidden here. Enemies still work.
• If your target or focus changes during the press, you hear Lost the nameplate.
• If the game refuses the camera changes the press needs, you hear Turning is not available here; if the nameplate gave no answer, Could not turn to it or Nameplate position is hidden here. Your character does not turn then.
• Pressing a turn key yourself stops it. A press while Turn to Waypoint is still turning is ignored.
• The press uses first person (camera view 1, which cannot be saved over) and puts the camera back behind you afterwards, as Turn to Waypoint does with view 5.

Arrival distance

The arrival distance is how close, in yards, you must get to a waypoint for it to count as reached. A small distance makes you walk precisely onto each point; a large one forgives wandering. WowVision has three values and one of them is active at a time. It counts for the classic routes and for WowNav. With WowNav, a waypoint that has a larger distance of its own in the data uses that one; see WowNav.

Press Alt+P while following a route to cycle short, medium, long and back to short. WowVision speaks the name and the distance, for example “Long Range, 3 yards”. Use the short range in tight places such as a doorway and the long range in open country. The settings are under Settings. There, Left and Right change each distance by 0.1 yards, and Enter lets you type one, such as 0.5.

Announce distance

Alt Gr speaks the distance in yards to the waypoint you are walking to, for example “120 yards”, just like Sku. Windows reports Alt Gr as Ctrl and Alt pressed together, so Ctrl+Alt does the same thing. If you hold the keys, the distance is repeated every second while you walk. Only the speech carries it; nothing is written to the chat.

• Without a route you hear No active waypoint; if the game cannot give your position you hear Position unavailable.
• It stays silent while you type in an edit box, so typing characters with Alt Gr (such as @, { or [) does not talk. It is also silent while Shift is held.
• Any other shortcut that uses Ctrl+Alt will also trigger the announcement. If that bothers you, turn off the Announce Distance with Alt Gr setting and bind the Announce Distance binding to a key you do not use otherwise.

Next and previous waypoint

When you have wandered off, or want to skip a waypoint you cannot reach, press Ctrl+W to move the beacon to the next waypoint or Ctrl+S to go back one. The step plays the waypoint-reached sound and speaks how many waypoints remain, current one included, for example “4 remaining”. At the ends you hear End of route or Start of route; only walking to the last waypoint finishes the route. Without a route you hear No active waypoint.

Restart the route

If you have strayed far from the route, press Ctrl+Shift+N. WowVision plans the last destination you chose again, starting from where you stand now. It works for destinations from the window, from the scanner, from the route to your target, and for the corpse run. With classic routes the router picks whichever of the five nearest waypoints gives the best route. With WowNav the route starts where you stand, if WowNav knows which floor you are on. You hear the route summary again, or No route to start again if you have not chosen a destination yet.

Reverse the route

Halfway along a route you may remember that you have to go back. Press Ctrl+Shift+R. The route turns around: the new route begins at the destination of the previous one, and its destination is where the previous route started, the entry point you chose in the navigation window. The waypoint the beacon was leading to stays active, so you walk back from where you are and do not go to the old destination first. You hear “Route reversed, back to” and the name of that place, then the summary of the new route with the waypoints and yards still ahead of you. For example, on the way from Priestess Anetta to Marshal Dughan you press Ctrl+Shift+R and hear “Route reversed, back to Priestess Anetta”. If the start has no name, you hear “back to the start of the previous route”.

This works on classic routes and WowNav routes alike. Afterwards, Ctrl+Shift+N goes to that start again. Without a running route you hear “No route to reverse”.

Cancel navigation

Shift+F12 stops the route or straight beacon: you hear Beacon stopped and the pings end. If nothing is running you hear No active waypoint. /beacon stop does the same.

Route to your target

The Route to Your Target binding takes the creature or group member you are targeting as the destination. It is unbound by default; bind it in the keybinding window. See also Targeting.

What happens depends on who you target:

• A party or raid member. WowVision uses that player’s current position.
• An NPC or creature. With classic routes, WowVision looks for the closest waypoint with exactly the same name within 120 yards. With WowNav, it uses the creature’s position in the WowNav catalogue. Another spawn of the same kind further away than 120 yards does not count.
• Anything else. You hear Your target’s position is not known.

Other things you may hear: You have no target, You are targeting yourself, Position unavailable, No route to your target (no map data here, or WowNav cannot start). With classic routes a route that the router cannot find is reported as No route found with its reason. If it works, you hear the target’s name (with classic routes the name of the matching waypoint, in its long form) and then the route summary, and the route starts at once from your position (WowNav) or the nearest entry point (classic routes).

With WowNav, if it cannot tell which floor you are on, you hear “Your floor is not clear here. Choose your start.” and the navigation window opens with the target already selected, so you choose the start yourself.

Visited places

When you walk to the same kind of thing again and again (herbs, ore veins, the spawns of a creature), you do not want to be sent back to a place you just checked. The visited places feature remembers it for you.

• A destination you picked and reached counts as visited for a number of minutes (15 by default, a kind of respawn timer). Only the destination counts, not the waypoints on the way. This works for destinations from the window, the scanner, the route to your target and the corpse run.
• In the destination list, a visited destination is announced with Visited first.
• The memory is kept per character, uses real time, and survives logging out and reloading.
• Forget Visited Waypoints (in the WowVision menu under Navigation, Visited Waypoints) wipes it. You hear “Visited waypoints forgotten”.
• The Enabled switch of the Visited Waypoints module turns the whole feature off.

Two bindings, both unbound by default, lead you to the nearest unvisited destination with the same name as the last one you picked:

“Same name” means the whole name with WowNav and the name before the first semicolon with classic routes (“Peacebloom”), ignoring capital letters. The spot you are already at, and the ones marked visited, are skipped. So are the spots the keys already led you to, even when you left one before reaching it, until you pick a destination another way. Chain the key and you walk through every spawn of that object, one after the other.

While auto mode runs (below), either key steps the chain on to its next spawn, the same as Ctrl+W past the end of a leg.

Without a destination picked earlier you hear Choose a destination in the navigation window first. If every spawn is visited you hear “No unvisited” and the name, for example “No unvisited Peacebloom found”.

Auto mode

Auto mode does that chaining for you. In the navigation window, press Shift+F10 on a destination or an entry point and choose one of two entries:

• Auto Direct: a straight beacon to the destination. Each time you arrive, the next straight beacon goes to the nearest unvisited destination with the same name.
• Auto Route: a route to the destination. Each time you arrive, the next route goes to the unvisited destination of that name that is the shortest walk away. WowVision checks the nearest 8 by straight line and picks the one with the shortest walk, so a herb across a river does not win over one a little further away on your side. With WowNav this is planned in the background, and you may hear Calculating route first.

You hear “Auto Direct” or “Auto Route” when it starts, then the usual words of each beacon or route. The first leg starts at the entry point you selected in the window, as Enter does. The chain ends when every spawn is visited (you hear “No unvisited” and the name), when any other guidance starts (another destination, a beacon, /beacon, Ctrl+Shift+R), or when you stop the guidance with Shift+F12. Ctrl+Shift+N starts the current leg again and keeps the chain.

Ctrl+W and Ctrl+S step through the chain the way they step through a route. Past the end of the current leg, Ctrl+W goes to the next spawn: with Auto Direct at once, since a straight beacon has only one point, with Auto Route after the route’s last waypoint. It skips a spawn you cannot reach or that is empty, and the chain does not offer it again. When a leg finds no route, Ctrl+W moves on the same way. Ctrl+S before the start of a leg goes back to the spawn before. After stepping back, the chain goes on through the spawns it already led to, then to new ones. Before the first one you hear Start of route.

Auto mode needs visited places switched on, because they are what it skips. With the Visited Waypoints module off, both entries only say “Auto mode needs Visited Waypoints switched on”.

Straight beacons and the /beacon command

You can set a beacon without the window. Type these commands in the chat box:

With /beacon to, an unknown name gives “No route found” and the name. A beacon from /beacon with coordinates ends with “Arrived” when you get close enough, like any route.

Classic routes

Classic routes are the route system of The Burning Crusade and Classic Era, and of WoW: Forever when you turn WowNav off. Everything on this page applies to them. This section adds what is only true for them.

Map data

The map data comes in its own addon folder named WowVision_MapData_TBC. It is inside the WowVision download zip next to the WowVision folder, so one extraction installs both (see Installation). It is switched on automatically as long as the addon is enabled in the game’s addon list. Its TOC file is made for The Burning Crusade and WoW: Forever, so on Classic Era the game sees it as out of date and may not load it. WowNav does not use this folder: its data is inside the WowVision folder. Other map data addons for WowVision keep working beside the bundled one.

The bundled data is derived from the survey data of the addon Sku: its waypoints, the links between them and the names of NPCs, creatures and objects. It covers Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, the Deeprun Tram, Outland and Northrend. The Northrend and Death Knight starting area files are included but are never extended beyond what the survey held, so expect more gaps there than in the old world. On a German or French game client the place names are shown in your language.

Place names

Names in this data are stored in a fixed form: the name, then its role if it has one, then the zone, a spawn number and the map coordinates, all separated by semicolons. For example: “Shailiea;Stormwind City;1;30.38;53.33” or “Eldraeith;Herbalism Supplies;Stormwind City;1;46.66;78.65”. WowVision reads the name exactly like that. Your screen reader may pause at the semicolons or read them aloud. The role words are useful when you search: “Questgiver”, “Trainer”, “Banker”, “Auctioneer”, “Repair”, “Stable Master” and many more are part of the name.

The last stretch

When a destination is not on the link network (most creatures and objects are not), the route goes through the network to the closest linked waypoint and then ends with a straight leg to the destination. WowVision tells you how long that straight leg is, for example “last 40 yards direct”.

Settings

Open the WowVision menu (/wv), then Navigation, then Beacon and Routes. Settings are shared by all your characters unless you change that in the module’s context menu; see Menu and settings.

The Visited Waypoints module (under Navigation) has one setting:

Close All Windows When a Route Starts (Navigation module, on by default) closes every open window as soon as you start a route or a beacon, so your keys are free for walking; the legs an Auto chain starts by itself leave your windows alone.

Three settings of the Navigation module are related: Announce Remaining Waypoints (on by default) says how many waypoints are left after each one you reach, Automatically Navigate to Corpse (on by default) starts a route to your body as soon as you are a ghost, and Auto-move to Interact Target is explained with the movement features. See Movement for those, for the compass and for following a player.

Diagnostic commands

Examples

Walk from the bank to the auction house (Stormwind)

1. Stand outside the bank and press F10. You land on the closest entry point, announced with selected. That is fine, so leave it alone.
2. Press Tab. You are in Search and can type straight away. Type “auctioneer” and press Enter. WowVision repeats your text.
3. Press Tab to reach Destinations. You hear the nearest auctioneer with its distance and its position in the list. Press Down to hear the next one.
4. Press Enter. The window closes and you hear a summary such as “9 waypoints, 410 yards”.
5. Press I to turn to the first waypoint, and walk. When you hear the beacon ping faster, you are facing the right way. Press Alt Gr at any time to hear how far the current waypoint is.
6. If you get lost, press Ctrl+Shift+N to plan the route again from where you stand.
7. At the end you hear “Arrived” and the name of the place.

Follow a route to a quest NPC

1. Press F9 to open the scanner and find the quest, then its NPC (see Scanner).
2. Press Enter on the NPC. The navigation window opens with the closest entry point and the NPC both selected, focus on the destination.
3. Press Enter. If you want a different starting point first, press Shift+Tab twice to reach the entry points, pick one with Enter, then return with Tab twice.
4. Walk the route as above. If the NPC is not on the path network, the final stretch is not a known path, so use the beacon and Alt Gr. With classic routes the summary says so (“last 25 yards direct”), and WowNav tells you at the end of the network how far the NPC still is.

Find the next herb

1. Search for “Peacebloom” in the window and walk to the nearest one. When you arrive it counts as visited.
2. Bind Route to the Nearest Unvisited of the Same Name to a key.
3. Press that key. You are routed to the nearest Peacebloom you have not visited. Keep pressing it after each arrival.

Related pages

• WowNav: the route system of WoW: Forever.
• Movement: compass, facing, following, falling, walls and the corpse run.
• Scanner: lists of things around you, with Enter handing over to the navigation window.
• Targeting: selecting the target for the route to your target.
• Alerts: how to change the beacon sounds.

WowNav (WoW: Forever)

WowNav is the route system of WoW: Forever. It was made by Broesel33 for blind players, from a survey of the real walkable ground of the game world, and WowVision includes it with his permission. It knows where you can really walk, including stairs, bridges and the floors of buildings, and it can take you to portals, elevators, boats, zeppelins and the Deeprun Tram. This page explains what it does, how it differs from the classic routes and how to use it.

You use WowNav through the same navigation window and the same keys as the classic routes. Read Navigation first; this page only describes what changes.

(WoW: Forever only. The other game versions use the classic routes.)

Turning WowNav off

WowNav is on by default. Every route request goes to it: the navigation window (F10), the scanner’s Enter, /beacon to, the route to your target, the corpse run and the visited-places keys. The classic routes are not used while it is on.

To use the classic routes instead:

1. Open the WowVision menu (/wv), then Navigation, then WowNav Routes.
2. Turn off Routes from WowNav.

There is also an Enabled switch for the WowNav Routes module itself, which must stay on for WowNav to work.

What it covers

The data comes with WowVision (in the release and beta downloads) and needs nothing else installed. It covers 51 zones on four maps:

• Eastern Kingdoms (26 zones, including the capitals Stormwind, Ironforge and Undercity, and Riverglades)
• Kalimdor (23 zones, including Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff and Darnassus, Mount Hyjal and Shendralas)
• The Deeprun Tram
• Zephras Isle

About 111,000 places (NPCs, creatures, objects), 242 places to get somewhere else (dungeon entrances, portals, elevators, docks, tram stops, crossings between zones) and 788 fishing spots at the waters of 45 zones can be chosen as destinations.

Things WowNav does not do:

• No instances. Dungeon and raid interiors do not exist in the data. Dungeon entrances do, and you can walk to them. Entrances of some of the dungeons that are new in WoW Forever are missing.
• No vehicles in a route. Routes are always on foot. A boat, a zeppelin or the tram is not part of a route: WowNav guides you to its dock and you board it yourself.
• No flight paths.
• No danger warnings about enemies or creature levels. The only exception is the enemy outpost warning described below.
• Diving is yours. Water is flat in the data. The only dive route is the Ruins of Blackfathom in Darkshore.

On a map the data does not know, F10 lists nothing and /beacon to answers “No route found”. The scanner’s Enter then sets a straight beacon, as it does without map data. Where WowNav has data, the scanner’s Enter on an NPC or object that WowNav’s place list knows near that spot routes to WowNav’s own entry of it, with its height; see Scanner. If the place list of a map cannot be read at all, you hear “WowNav catalogue not usable” followed by a reason; include it in a bug report.

How it differs from the classic routes

The navigation window with WowNav

F10 works as described in Navigation: Direct, Entry Points, Search and Destinations. What is different:

Entry points

The entry points are the 50 nearest entries: the places that sit on the network (the flight master in front of you, a door, a portal) and the network’s own waypoints right beside you. You choose where your route starts, as with the classic routes. WowNav never works out your start by itself, except for Ctrl+Shift+N and the route to your target, which start where you stand if that is clear. When you choose a place as your start, your route begins at that place itself.

• The network’s own waypoints within 10 yards of you are always in the list, so you can start right where you stand even when the nearest place is far away. With Show Automatic Waypoints on, the waypoints farther away join the list as well. A waypoint is read as “Auto, height 54”: only its height in yards is said.
• While you swim or dive, the nearest water point within 100 yards is always in the list and preselected. If there is none you hear “No water point nearby”.
• If there is nothing of the network near enough, the list says Empty, and a route request answers “No WowNav network here”.

Destinations

Each destination reads its name, its distance, what it is and where it is, for example “Innkeeper Allison (Innkeeper), 85 yards, quest giver, vendor, innkeeper, Stormwind City”. The extra words come from the categories of the place. They are: quest giver, trainer, vendor, flight master, innkeeper, banker, stable master, auctioneer, spirit healer, spirit guide, NPC or mob, herb or ore, object, quest item, interaction object, mailbox, anvil, forge, door, book, chair, sign, fishing spot, switch, trap, spell focus, capture point, destructible building, guild bank, trapdoor, waypoint, orientation point, transport, live target, zone transition, transit, ship, tram, dungeon, portal, zeppelin, elevator and dive. You can search for any of these words, for the name or for a zone name: “banker”, “mailbox”, “Ironforge”.

• The list shows at most the nearest 1000 matches. When it was cut, the first entry you hear starts with “The nearest 1000 of 4821 results”.
• A destination with no network point near it (see Target Radius Around the Network (Yards)) is left out. A place whose zone has not been prepared yet is offered unchecked, and checked when you choose it.
• Extra information may come first, before the categories: “inexact +3.2 yards” (the place is not exactly on the network), “choose the floor” (the place is over several floors), “floor unknown”, “no network point within the radius” or “water surface, diving depth 12 yards”.
• Places to get somewhere else have descriptive names: “Dungeon entrance: The Deadmines”, “Portal to Orgrimmar”, “Ship dock to Auberdine”, “Zeppelin dock to Grom’gol”, “Tram dock toward Ironforge”, “Deeprun Tram entrance”, “Elevator: Thunder Bluff”, “Crossing to Westfall”, “Dive here” and “Surface here”. Where two places of a zone would sound the same, they get “(lower)”, “(upper)”, a height or a number added. The place words in these names come from the game client. On a German client the names are German.
• Creatures and objects (NPCs, mobs, herbs, ores, mailboxes) are named in your game language when Questie knows them. The navigation data itself only has English and German names, so on any other client the name comes from Questie’s database by the ID of the creature or object; where Questie does not know it, the English name stays. Titles written in parentheses, such as “(Innkeeper)”, are translated too, so you can search for “aubergiste” or “cuisinier”. Questie’s own language has to be Auto, or the game’s. English and German clients are not affected. The Names in Your Language setting turns this off.
• Fishing spots are named after the water they cast into: “Fishing spot on the shore: Crystal Lake” or “Fishing spot on pier or quay: The Temple Gardens”, with a number when several spots of a zone have the same name. Search for “fishing” or “fishing spot”. See Fishing spots.
• A dungeon with several entrances names the wing: “Dungeon entrance: Scarlet Monastery, Graveyard”.
• The boarding points of docks are listed too: “On the ship”, “On the zeppelin” and “At the vehicle”, with the name of the dock as the extra words.
• With Direct on, no destination is dropped as unreachable, because a straight beacon needs no route.

If you choose a place a step further than the network reaches, WowNav ends the route at the network and says so; see What you hear at the end.

Asking for the floor

When your destination lies over several floors (a tower, a multi-storey building) and nothing says which one you want, a small window opens: Choose the target’s floor. It has one button per floor, lowest first, for example:

• “Floor 1 of 3, lowest, height 40”
• “Floor 2 of 3, height 52”
• “Floor 3 of 3, highest, height 64, no path from here”

no path from here means that floor cannot be reached from your starting point. Move with Up and Down and press Enter on the floor you want; the route is then planned. Your own floor is never asked, because you chose your start in F10. A corpse run takes the lowest reachable floor without asking.

Starting and following a route

When you choose a destination, WowNav searches for the route in small steps so the game does not stutter. If the search takes more than a second, you hear “Calculating route”. Then you hear the summary, for example “14 waypoints, 520 yards”.

The summary may continue:

• “approximate, 4 yards” (the place is not exactly on the network; “height unknown” may be added) or “water surface, diving depth 12 yards”.
• “then the portal” (or “the tram”, “the elevator”, “a dive”, “surfacing”): the route ends at a transit that is described below.
• “Approximate target position.” when the data’s position of the place is itself an estimate.
• “Warning: there is no way around the enemy outpost, the route leads through it.” or “Warning: the target lies in an enemy outpost.”, only with Avoid Enemy Outposts on.

The beacon, its sounds, Ctrl+W, Ctrl+S, Shift+F12, Alt Gr and I all work as in Navigation. The differences:

• A waypoint counts as reached within the Alt+P arrival distance, or within its own distance from the data when that is larger. The areas of portals, the tram and elevators widen with Alt+P too.
• Ctrl+W and Ctrl+S step along the route’s own waypoints.
• Ctrl+Shift+N plans the last destination again from where you stand, but only if WowNav knows which floor you are on. If you stand beside the network, the route starts at its nearest point within 30 yards. Otherwise you hear “Your floor is not clear here”, or “No WowNav network here” when nothing of the network is within 30 yards.
• Shift+F12 ends everything WowNav does: the search, the route, a transit that waits for its far end, the dock guidance and the beacon at a fishing spot.
• /beacon to name takes the nearest place with that name, from WowNav’s list, with the entry point F10 would preselect.

While you walk

WowNav watches your progress and speaks only when it matters:

If you get stuck, WowNav tries to re-enter the route and step back at gates, but it never plans a new route on its own. That is your decision: press the key below. If you die, the route stops without a word.

What you hear at the end

• On the network, or within 1.5 yards of its end: “Arrived” and the name of the place.
• Close to the network but farther from its end: “The network ends 4.2 yards from the target; search the surroundings yourself. The last stretch is unchecked.” If the data does not know the height, “horizontally” is added.
• A water target: “The network ends 6.1 yards from the water surface position; diving depth 12.0 yards. The rest of the way and the diving are yours, the last stretch is unchecked.”
• When the target lies clearly above or below the end of the route, you also hear “Target is above, about 12 yards.” or “Target is below, about 12 yards.” That is said when the route starts and with the arrival.

Route status and new route

Two bindings are unbound by default; bind them in the keybinding window (WowVision menu, UI, Bindings), see Keybindings:

Transit: docks, boats, zeppelins, trams, portals and elevators

Docks

A dock is a waiting place for a ship, zeppelin or tram stop. Choosing one in F10 routes you to its waiting point on foot. When you arrive, you hear what to wait for, for example: “Dock Ship dock to Auberdine reached. Wait here for the ship. Board when you hear it arrive. The beacon shows the boarding direction; I turns you toward it.” The beacon then leads to a boarding point a few yards ahead and ends there: “Boarding point Ship dock to Auberdine reached”. WowNav cannot tell when the vehicle is there; you board by ear.

If you stand at a dock and choose the other end of the same line, nothing is walked. WowNav notes it and says where the ride goes and with what, for example “Ride to Ironforge with the Deeprun Tram: wait here, board by ear and get off at the last stop. Near it, I turns you toward the dock.” When you come near that dock later, you hear its name followed by “is near; I turns you toward it”, and I now faces that dock. Choose the dock again to walk the rest of the way. This only works for a line whose docks are on the same map, such as the Deeprun Tram: the list only holds places of the map you are on, so the dock at the far end of a sea crossing to another continent cannot be chosen from here.

Being in a station (within about 100 yards of a dock) counts as having reached it, so you can choose the far dock without walking to the near one first. Choosing a dock of your own station, such as the other dock in Menethil Harbor, walks to it as usual.

Some docks, so far the one in Stormwind’s harbour, work without a waiting circle. Choosing one walks you to it like to any place. When you arrive you hear “Dock … reached. Wait here for the ship. Board when you hear it arrive. Next point: On the ship to Auberdine.” The route to that point on board then starts by itself, and when you reach it the dock counts as reached again, so you can choose the far dock of the line to note it. There is no boarding beacon at these docks.

Portals, the tram entrance and walk-in places

Portals and the tram entrance work by walking into them. A route ends at the portal, and WowNav says so before you reach it, because a portal teleports at once: “Ahead: walk into the portal; the route goes on after it”. Walk into it. When you come out at the far end, you hear “The route goes on”, and WowNav searches the rest of the way from there. If nothing happens within about 90 seconds (longer for rides, which wait three full cycles of the vehicle) you hear “The transit took too long; route ended”. The Wind Bridge of Zephras Isle has no such limit: it comes at its own time.

If you choose the portal or the tram entrance itself as your destination, you are guided to a point just before it and told: “Prepoint reached. Walk straight ahead through the entrance or portal; the beacon stays on until the activation area.” Then: “In the activation area. Keep walking straight ahead; only a map change confirms the transition. The route stays on until then.” After the map change you hear “Map change after the activation area; route ended. The destination is not confirmed.”

Elevators and dives

An elevator is a place to wait: “Use the elevator; the route goes on after it. Board only when the vehicle is safely there.” A dive is “Dive here; the route goes on after it”, and the way back up is “Surface here; the route goes on after it”. The route goes on after you are at the other end.

The turn key without a route

The I key normally needs a route. At a dock it also works without one: at a reached dock it turns you to the boarding point, and near a noted dock it turns you to that dock. At a fishing spot you reached, it turns you to the water.

Zephras Isle

The portals and the Wind Bridge of Zephras Isle are included. Their positions are estimates, so WowNav adds “The position is approximate.” to what it says there. The portals are not walked into: you target the portal and interact with it. A route through one ends there with “Target the portal with soft targeting and interact with it; the route goes on after it”. The Wind Bridge comes at its own time: “Wait here until you hear the Wind Bridge, then step into the wind current; the route goes on after it”. There is no time limit for it. Once you have arrived at the far end, the route goes on.

The portal to Valanaar takes the Horde and the Alliance to different places. A route only uses the way that belongs to your faction.

If you choose one of these portals or the waiting point of the Wind Bridge itself as your destination, you hear at the prepoint “Prepoint reached. Walk on to the portal; the beacon stays on until you are there.” (for the bridge “Prepoint reached. Walk on to the waiting point of the Wind Bridge; the beacon stays on until then.”). At the portal you hear “At the portal. Target it with soft targeting and interact with it; the route stays on until the transition is confirmed.”, at the bridge “At the waiting point of the Wind Bridge. Wait until you hear the bridge, then step into the wind current.”

Fishing spots

WowNav knows 788 places to stand and fish, at the waters of 45 zones. A fishing spot stands on solid ground on the shore, or on a pier, a jetty, a quay or a bridge. You may wade in shallow water there, but you never have to swim. From the spot, the water lies 10 to 20 yards ahead in one direction, the range of your cast.

1. Press F10, search “fishing” and choose a spot in Destinations, for example “Fishing spot on the shore: Crystal Lake (3), 120 yards, fishing spot, Elwynn Forest”.
2. Follow the route. When you arrive, you hear where the water lies, seen from the way you face: “Fishing spot on the shore: Crystal Lake (3) reached. The water is ahead to the left. Cast range about 10 to 20 yards. Press I to turn to the water.” The directions are straight ahead, ahead to the left, to the left, behind to the left, behind you, behind to the right, to the right and ahead to the right.
3. A beacon now sounds from the water, 15 yards out, in the middle of your cast range. Press I to face the water, then cast.
4. The beacon stops when you walk away from the spot (more than 20 yards), when you press Shift+F12 or when you start a new route.

The water point is only there to face. WowNav never routes you into the water. If the network ends farther from the spot than your cast range, you hear the usual “The network ends … from the target” instead, and no beacon starts.

Settings

Open the WowVision menu (/wv), then Navigation, then WowNav Routes.

Examples

Walk to a trainer in a city

1. Press F10. The entry points are the network’s waypoints right beside you and the nearest places on the network, for example a flight master. The closest is already selected.
2. Press Tab and type “trainer”, then Enter.
3. Press Tab to reach Destinations. You hear, for example, “Einris Brightspear (Hunter Trainer), 140 yards, quest giver, trainer, Stormwind City”. Down reads the next one.
4. Press Enter. You hear the summary, such as “12 waypoints, 330 yards”. Press I to turn and follow the beacon. At the end: “Arrived Einris Brightspear (Hunter Trainer)”.

Take the boat from Menethil Harbor to Auberdine

1. In Menethil Harbor, press F10, search “Auberdine” and choose “Ship dock to Auberdine” in Destinations.
2. Follow the route to the dock. You hear “Dock Ship dock to Auberdine reached. Wait here for the ship. Board when you hear it arrive.”
3. Press I to face the boarding direction and board the ship when it arrives.
4. Ride to Auberdine. Once you have landed on Kalimdor, press F10 there and choose your next destination as usual.

Use a portal

1. Press F10, search “portal” and choose “Portal to Orgrimmar” (or any portal you need).
2. Walk the route. Before the portal you hear “Ahead: walk into the portal; the route goes on after it”.
3. Walk into the portal. On the other side you hear “The route goes on”, then the new summary.

A blocked spot

1. You follow a route and walk into a fence the data does not know about. WowNav tries to find its way back by itself.
2. If you are still stuck, press the key you bound to New WowNav Route Around a Blocked Spot. You hear “Searching a new route”.
3. Follow the new beacon. The blocked link is avoided for the rest of this route.

Related pages

• Navigation: the navigation window, beacons, arrival distance and all route keys.
• Scanner: its Enter opens the navigation window with WowNav as well.
• Movement: the compass, following, falling and the corpse run.
• Interface: general keys in WowVision windows.

Minimap Scanner

A sighted player sees quest givers, vendors, herbs and ore as dots on the minimap. WowVision cannot look at the minimap picture, but it can ask the game what every dot is called. The Minimap Scanner does exactly that: it finds the named dots around you, sorts them by kind, works out roughly where each one is, and lists them in the Scanner so you can walk to them. It can also announce new dots as you walk past them.

Currently unavailable: a change by Blizzard broke the minimap reads the scanner depends on, so it is switched off for now. The scan key and /wv mscan answer “Due to Blizzard restrictions the minimap scanner is unavailable.”, and the walking announcements do not run. The rest of this page describes the scanner as it works when the game allows it.

(Retail and WoW: Forever.) The scanner needs minimap functions that only the newer game clients offer. The Classic clients do not have them: on Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria the scan key answers “Minimap scanner not available on this client”, and the walking announcements never start.

What it finds

The minimap only shows what your character can currently see on it. The scanner reads exactly that, so what it finds depends on your tracking.

• Quest givers. Every dot of an NPC who offers or takes in a quest. The scanner also tells you whether the giver offers a new quest or takes one in (see “Quest givers” below).
• Townsfolk, by tracking type. The scanner switches each of your minimap tracking types on for a moment and notes which new names appear. That sorts the names into these kinds: Auctioneers, Bankers, Battlemasters, Flight Masters, Vendors (food, ammunition, reagent and poison vendors), Innkeepers, Mailboxes, Class Trainers, Trainers (profession trainers), Repair, Stable Masters, and Other NPCs (barbers, transmogrifiers, item upgrade NPCs). You only get a kind if your character has that tracking type. Most of them every character has.
• Gathering nodes. Herbs, ore veins and treasure chests, but only while the matching tracking ability is switched on: Find Herbs, Find Minerals or Find Treasure. See “Gathering nodes” below.
• Points of interest. The towns and landmarks the minimap draws as arrows, such as Goldshire or Stormwind. These are only names with no position, because the game draws those arrows at a fixed distance in the direction of the place.
• Other tracking. If you have a different tracking ability on, for example Track Beasts or Track Humanoids, its dots cannot be sorted by name. They are listed as Unsorted, in the Gathering category of the Scanner. While such a tracking ability is on, the scanner also cannot tell those dots from quest givers, so quest givers without a special tracking type land in Unsorted too.

The scanner sees dots out to the minimap’s range: about 233 yards outdoors and 150 yards indoors. Indoors the minimap shows only the building you are in, so an indoor scan only knows that building. The game switches the minimap to its indoor view not only in houses but also in some covered streets, for example parts of Stormwind; WowVision notices that and treats it as indoors.

Names that are titles of quests in your quest log are left out. The minimap draws them as the quest’s area or as an arrow at its edge pointing towards it; WowVision already has those quests with their real places under Quests, In Progress in the Scanner.

Scanning: Ctrl+Shift+F

Press Ctrl+Shift+F (Scan Minimap) to scan once. The binding can be changed in the keybinding window; see Keybindings. You can also type /wv mscan.

You will hear “Scanning minimap” and the result, after a second or two when nothing is new, and up to about six seconds when there is a lot new to place. For example:

• “Scan done, 4 new: 1 Points of Interest, 1 Innkeepers, 2 Quest Givers”
• “Nothing new nearby”

The result counts only entries that are new since the last scan. If entries that were on your list have vanished (a herb you picked, a quest you took), the result adds how many are gone, for example “Scan done, 1 new: 1 Find Herbs, 2 gone”. If you scanned indoors it ends with “indoors, this building only”.

Before you scan

A scan temporarily takes over the minimap and the mouse cursor, so a few things must be true. Otherwise the scan refuses or stops:

• Stand still. “Stand still to scan” if you are moving.
• Not in combat. “Not in combat”.
• No mouselook. “Stop mouselook to scan” if you are steering with the mouse.
• Close every window. The mouse cursor must rest over the game world, not over a window. By default the scan moves the cursor to the middle of the screen itself (see Centre Mouse Cursor Before Scanning), so any window open at the screen centre blocks it. The message names the window in the way: “Scan canceled, window: “ followed by the window’s name. Close the window with Escape and scan again.
• Be somewhere with a position. “No position here” appears in places the game cannot locate you, for example some instances.
• Nothing on the cursor. While a spell waits to be placed on the ground, something is held on the cursor or a mouse button is down, the scan does not start: “Scan canceled, targeting” or “Scan canceled, mouse”.

Once a scan runs, do not move, turn, use the mouse or enter combat until it ends. Any of these stops it with “Scan canceled, moved”, “Scan canceled, turned”, “Scan canceled, mouse”, “Scan canceled, mouselook” or “Scan canceled, combat”. (“Turned” can only happen if the game’s Rotate Minimap option is on.) Nothing half-measured is kept, so just scan again. If you press the key during a running scan you hear “Scan already running”.

While it runs, the scan briefly switches your tracking types on and off and moves and shrinks the minimap, then puts everything back. Meanwhile the minimap takes no clicks (a click would ping the spot for your group) and its tooltip stays hidden. Quest-area announcements are silenced until it is done. If a tracking type did not come back, WowVision tells you: “Tracking not restored” followed by its name. Switch it on again in the Scanner under Tracking.

If something goes wrong inside the scan, you hear “Minimap scan failed”.

Where the results go

Scan results are not spoken one by one. They go into the Scanner (F9) and stay there until you log out or /reload. The scan gives each entry a position to within a few yards. Which category an entry lands in:

Every entry found this way is marked seen in the list, and indoors if it is inside a building. If your quest database already knows an NPC of the same name (see Quests), the database entry is shown and the seen one is left out.

Quest givers

A quest giver found by the scan reads as “seen” with one of two states:

• quest available: the NPC offers a quest.
• turn in: you have a finished quest and this NPC is where it is handed in. WowVision recognises this because the game moves a finished quest’s map marker onto its turn-in NPC.

If the quest giver is only shown because of the “low level quests” tracking option, it is also marked low level. The game draws the same dot for a quest that is still a level or two out of reach, so “quest available” is a good hint, not a promise.

Real names on arrival

On the newer clients some NPCs show their title as the minimap name, for example “Skinning Trainer” instead of the person’s name. When you arrive at a seen NPC by following a beacon from the Scanner, WowVision looks at the NPCs around you and, if one carries that title, says its real name followed by the name the minimap showed, for example “Olivia Burnside, Skinning Trainer”. The real name is remembered for the session, and Enter on the same entry later speaks it again on arrival.

This only works for NPCs the game lets WowVision read, which are your target, your soft target and NPCs with a nameplate. The game hides friendly NPC nameplates by default. If the scanner needs them it tells you once: “Turn on friendly NPC nameplates to learn NPC names”. Switch on the game’s friendly NPC nameplate option if you want real names.

Gathering nodes

Herbs, ore and treasure are recognised by name, because the minimap draws all of them as plain dots. The scanner has name lists for the nodes from Classic Era up to Wrath of the Lich King, in English, German and French. A name only has to contain a listed name, so variants like a withered version of a herb still count. Clients in other languages use the English names.

• Find Herbs lists herbs such as Peacebloom, Silverleaf and Kingsblood.
• Find Minerals lists veins and deposits such as Copper Vein and Mithril Deposit.
• Find Treasure lists chests such as Solid Chest.

You must switch the tracking ability on yourself, either from the game’s minimap tracking button or in the Scanner under Tracking, Minimap Tracking. The scan never switches these abilities for you, because switching them casts a spell. In the Scanner the nodes appear in a Gathering category with one group per ability, named after it (for example “Find Herbs”).

Nodes added in later expansions are not in the lists, so the scanner does not recognise them as gathering nodes. It then treats such a node like a quest giver and lists it among the quest givers (or under Unsorted, if another tracking ability such as Track Beasts is on).

Walking announcements

While you walk, run or fly, WowVision looks at the minimap twice a second and announces names that come into range. This is how you hear a herb, a mailbox or a quest giver appear while you travel. It is switched on by default.

Each announcement is the name, then extras when they apply:

• above or below: the dot is on a different height than you, for example a herb on a cliff above or a node under water.
• indoors: the dot is inside a building or underground.
• the kind: either “quest giver” or the name of the tracking type that shows it, for example “Find Herbs” or “Banker”. The kind is only added after a scan has sorted that name. Until then you hear just the name.

Examples:

• “Peacebloom” (no scan yet)
• “Peacebloom, Find Herbs” (after a scan sorted it)
• “Copper Vein, below”
• “Olivia Burnside, Banker”
• “Marshal McBride, quest giver”
• “Innkeeper Farley, indoors, Innkeeper”

Each name is spoken once. It is spoken again only after you have walked far enough away that the dot was out of range, so a flicker at the edge of the minimap never repeats it. If WowVision could not place a dot, for example because it is a town arrow, it falls back to this rule: after 30 seconds of walking outdoors without that name in view it counts as gone.

The announcements use the tracking types you have switched on yourself. They never change your tracking. They are skipped while you stand still, are in combat, are steering with the mouse, a scan is running, or a window sits under the mouse cursor. The first time it runs in a session, the mouse cursor is moved to the screen centre as well (see Centre Mouse Cursor Before Scanning).

Announcements use a game voice of their own, voice 0 unless you pick another, and not your screen reader’s voice. Screen readers cut their own speech off at every key press, which would clip announcements while you walk. Change the voice in the alert settings below.

Settings

Open the WowVision menu, then Minimap Scanner. See Menu and Settings for how settings work.

New Minimap Dot Alert

This is a standard WowVision alert; see Alerts for how alert settings work. Open it from the Minimap Scanner settings.

The same text is spoken either way. The scan result messages (“Scan done …”) are not part of this alert. They are spoken like any other WowVision message, with your normal speech voice.

Example: find the herbs around you

1. Open the Scanner with F9, move to the Tracking category, open Minimap Tracking and switch on Find Herbs with Enter. Close the Scanner with Escape. (A herbalist can also use the game’s tracking button.)
2. Stand still and press Ctrl+Shift+F. You hear “Scanning minimap”, then for example “Scan done, 3 new: 3 Find Herbs”.
3. Press F9 and open the Gathering category, then Find Herbs. Each herb is listed with its distance and direction, for example “Peacebloom, seen, 85 yards, ahead left”.
4. Press Enter on one. The navigation window opens, aimed at the herb.
5. Walk. While you walk, any further herb coming into range is announced: “Silverleaf, Find Herbs”.
6. After you pick the herb, scan again. The result says “Nothing new nearby, 1 gone” or similar, and the herb disappears from the list.

Example: a quest hub in a new area

1. Arrive at a town and stand still. Press Ctrl+Shift+F.
2. You hear something like “Scan done, 9 new: 1 Points of Interest, 1 Innkeepers, 1 Flight Masters, 1 Mailboxes, 5 Quest Givers”.
3. Press F9, open Quests, then Nearby. The seen quest givers are listed nearest first, each marked “seen, quest available” or “seen, turn in”. Press Enter on one to go there.

Diagnostic commands

You only need these for bug reports.

Related pages

• Scanner, where the results are listed.
• Navigation, for walking to an entry.
• Quests, for how seen quest givers join the quest lists.
• Alerts and Speech, for voices.

Scanner

The Scanner is a list of things around you and where they are: quests, quest givers, NPCs, your corpse, party members, gathering nodes and more. It plays the part of the “what is near me” list that players know from other accessibility addons. You look through it with the arrow keys, hear how far away each entry is and in which direction, and press Enter to be guided there.

Press F9 to open the Scanner. Press Escape to close it. The key is called Scanner in the keybinding window and can be changed there; see Keybindings. The Scanner works on every game version, but what it can list depends on the version and on the data available. See “Version notes” at the end.

The Scanner is a tree by default. If you would rather go through it like the WowVision menu, one level at a time with Enter and back with Escape, switch off Scanner as Tree in the Scanner settings; see The Scanner as a menu.

Pressing F9 while you are in the quest log opens the Scanner right on that quest, under Quests, In Progress and the quest’s zone: the quest your cursor is on in the log, or else the quest whose details are open. Press Right to hear its objectives, or Enter to be guided to its next target.

How it is laid out

By default the Scanner is one tree. The top level holds categories, categories hold entries, and many entries hold more entries below them. Entries that hold more are groups. You hear “collapsed” or “expanded” after a group’s name.

Everything else works as in any WowVision window; see Using the interface for Home, End and type-ahead.

The Scanner as a menu

If you prefer moving through the Scanner like the WowVision menu, one level at a time, switch off Scanner as Tree in the Scanner settings (see Settings). The Scanner then opens on the list of categories, and each list you open replaces the one before:

So the menu reaches every level the tree does: Quests, In Progress, the zone, the quest, its objective, the creature, its spawn. In the tree, Enter on a quest or an objective guides you to the nearest place right away; in the menu you go down to the place you want first.

Refresh works on every level and keeps you on the level you are on. Pressing F9 in the quest log opens the levels Quests, In Progress and the quest’s zone for you and puts you on the quest; Escape takes you back through them.

For each entry with a position you hear its name, an extra note when it has one, the distance and direction from where you stand now, and its place in the list. For example: “Marshal McBride, seen, quest available, 85 yards, ahead left, 3 of 12”. The distance and direction are worked out when you land on the entry, so they follow you as you walk. The directions are relative to the way you face: ahead, ahead left, left, behind left, behind, behind right, right, ahead right.

A snapshot, not a live list

The Scanner builds its lists once, when you open it. It does not change while it is open, so it never slows the game down in the middle of a fight or a flight. Only distance and direction update. To bring the lists up to date without closing the window, press Tab to the Refresh button and press Enter. You hear “Refreshed”. Opening the Scanner again also builds fresh lists.

Which groups you have opened is remembered between openings until you log out. On your first opening of a session every category is open except Tracking.

If a category has an error while it is being built, you hear a line starting with “Error” in its place and the rest of the Scanner still works. A category or group with nothing in it says “Empty” after its name and does not open.

The categories

The categories are always there, in this order, even when one has nothing to list. So every category keeps its place: Group always comes right after Player, also when you are not in a group. An empty category says “Empty” and does not open.

Player

• You: your character’s name first, then the zone you are in, then level, race, class and guild, for example “Anna, Elwynn Forest, Level 12, Human, Warrior, Guild: Order of Light”. Press Enter to target yourself.
• Corpse: while you are dead or a ghost, the place where your body lies, if the game reports it on the current map. Press Enter to be guided to it, the usual way to find it on a corpse run.
• Graveyards: the graveyards of the map you are on, each with its distance. Open the group to see them.

Group

Your party or raid members. Each is listed by name, then the zone the member is in, then level, race, class and guild. The game only gives a position for group members who are on your map; for them you also hear distance and direction. Press Enter on such a member to be guided there: the navigation window aims at the member’s position at that moment. On a member without a position, Enter says “Position unavailable”. With WowNav on WoW: Forever, WowNav is told which member you chose, so a new route or Ctrl+Shift+N reads the member’s position again instead of using the old one; see WowNav. If the member is no longer on your map you hear “No position of the group member available”. While you are not in a group, Group says “Empty”.

Quests

Two sub-groups: Nearby and In Progress. These are filled from the quest data your game version offers: see Quests.

Nearby lists quests you could pick up around you, nearest giver first. Each entry shows the quest name, then “Level” and the quest level, whether it is Daily or Repeatable, and the name of the giver. Where a giver is only a seen quest giver (found by the Minimap Scanner) the entry shows the giver’s name instead, marked seen, quest available or turn in, low level when applicable, and indoors. Press Backspace on a quest to read its objective text, or Shift+Down and Shift+Up to read its tooltip line by line: the title, the level with the quest colour (Grey, Green, Yellow, Orange or Red, as the game colours it for your level), the required level, what kind of quest it is (such as Elite, Dungeon, Daily, or how many players it is meant for), the quest giver with its place, and the quest text. Which quests are listed depends on the Nearby Level Range and Include Repeatable Quests settings; see Quests.

If the data source is still starting, you hear “Loading”. Without any data source at all the whole Quests category holds the single line “No quest data source”.

In Progress lists your quest log, sorted by zone like the quest log: first the zones (such as Elwynn Forest or Westfall, or a class or profession) with the number of quests in each, and under each zone its quests, the nearest first. Nearest means the place the quest guides you to, so the quest you can work on with the shortest walk comes first. Quests without a place follow. The Sort Quests by Proximity setting turns this off to keep the order of the log inside each zone; see Quests. Each quest shows the quest title with its level (“A Threat Within, Level 5”; the level is the log’s, so it can differ a little from the level of a scaled quest) and its state: “Complete”, “Failed”, or “2 of 3” for how many objectives are done. Press Backspace to read its objective text, or Shift+Down and Shift+Up to read its tooltip line by line: the title, the level with the quest colour, what kind of quest it is, how many objectives are done, each objective with its progress, for a complete quest where to turn it in, and the quest text. The progress is read fresh each time. Open a quest to see its objectives:

1. A quest in progress expands to its objectives (only when the data source knows the quest; a quest it does not know shows just its state), for example “Kobold Vermin slain: 3/10”. A finished objective is marked “Complete”.
2. An objective expands to what it is about: the creatures, objects or item sources that count towards it. An item source is named like “Linen Cloth from Defias Thug”. Each of these shows a note: its title, “seen” if the Minimap Scanner found it, “indoors”, the number of spawns and, when there is only one spawn, where it is.
3. Something with several spawns expands again to each spawn, named by its place, for example “Valley of the Four Winds, Halfhill Market, 80 yards”. A spawn marked phased out is one that probably does not exist for your character right now, but it is kept in case the guess was wrong.
4. A quest that is complete expands straight to the turn-in NPC or object instead, marked “turn in”.

So you hear what to look for before you hear where. Example: you have the quest “Wolves Across the Border” in Elwynn Forest with the objective “Prowler slain: 3/10”. Open In Progress, then Elwynn Forest, and land on the quest and you hear its name and “0 of 1” (no objective finished yet). Press Right: the first entry is the objective, “Prowler slain: 3/10”. Press Right again: “Prowler, 12 spawns”. Press Right once more and you walk through the spawns, nearest first, each with its place name and distance. Press Enter on the one you want.

The quest line and the objective each also carry a position of their own, the first unfinished target, so Enter on the quest itself guides you to the nearest place where you can make progress. A complete quest guides you to its turn-in.

Some objectives name nothing to walk to: an area to explore, a creature the quest data has no spawns for, or a place on another continent. Then WowVision falls back on the game’s own quest marker, the area the game shows on your map for the quest’s current step, and the entry says “game quest marker”. If the game marks nothing, WowVision takes Questie’s own map marker for the next open objective, the point Questie shows on your map, and the entry says “Questie marker”. If an objective has several Questie markers, it expands to them, nearest first. The game’s marker also guides you to the turn-in of a complete quest whose turn-in is not known, and to a quest that Questie does not know. Enter guides you to any of these like to any other place. Only when neither the game nor Questie marks anything does the entry have no place.

NPCs

• Quest Givers: the NPCs who offer the quests listed under Nearby, each with the number of quests beneath it (“3 quests”). Open one to see its quests. A giver found only by the minimap scan is a single entry marked “seen”.
• Role groups: Vendors, Repair, Trainers, Flight Masters, Innkeepers, Bankers, Auctioneers, Stable Masters, Battlemasters, Spirit Healers, Class Trainers, Mailboxes, Other NPCs, Rares. Each lists the NPCs of that kind in your current zone and within the Scan Radius, nearest first.

How many show depends on the data. With a quest database (Questie, see Quests) all of them can show. Without one, a role group only appears once the Minimap Scanner has seen an NPC of that kind, and the groups for Spirit Healers and Rares never appear. Entries the minimap scan found are marked “seen”. An NPC the database already lists is not repeated as seen.

Points of Interest

The towns and landmarks the last minimap scan saw on the minimap. These are names only, without a position, so Enter does nothing on them. Empty until a scan found some. See Minimap Scanner.

Gathering

Herb, ore and treasure nodes found by the minimap scan, with one group for each tracking ability, named after it, such as “Find Herbs” or “Find Minerals”. A group “Unsorted” holds dots from other tracking abilities that could not be sorted. Empty until a scan found some. Each node is marked “seen” and “indoors” where it applies. See Minimap Scanner.

Tracking

This category starts closed. It holds the tracking and map filter choices that a sighted player toggles from the minimap and the world map menus. They are checkboxes: Enter switches the one you are on, and you hear its new state.

• Minimap Tracking: every tracking type of your character, such as Find Herbs, Find Minerals, Auctioneer, Banker, Flight Master, Innkeeper, Mailbox, Repair and Vendors. What you switch on here is what the minimap, and therefore the Minimap Scanner and its walking announcements, can show.
• Map Filter: the world map’s filter options: quest objectives on the map, quest levels, quest difficulty colors, dungeon entrances, low level quests and tracked items. The names come from the game. Press Backspace on one to read the game’s description of it. A filter that your game version does not have is not listed.

What Enter does

Enter on an entry that has a position closes the Scanner and starts guiding you. What happens next is the navigation window:

• If there is route data for the continent you are on, the navigation window opens with the nearest entry point to the route network and your chosen entry already selected as the destination. Press Enter there to start walking the route. It follows the waypoint network and finishes with a straight last leg to the entry.
• If there is no route data, you hear “Beacon set” followed by the distance in yards, for example “Beacon set 40 yards”, and a sound beacon guides you in a straight line. When you arrive you hear “Arrived”.

With WowNav on (WoW: Forever), an NPC or object that WowNav’s own place list knows near that spot is taken from that list: the same creature, or else a place with the same name. The route then knows the target’s height and floor, so it leads onto the right floor and ends without the warning that the last stretch is unchecked. A target WowNav does not know is routed to as before.

For a seen NPC found by the minimap scan, arriving also triggers the real-name lookup described in Minimap Scanner.

Settings

Open the WowVision menu, then Scanner. See Menu and Settings.

The related quest settings live in the Quests module: see Quests.

Example: find a quest giver and go to him

1. Press F9. You hear “Scanner” and the first category.
2. Move to Quests with Down, press Right to open it, then open Nearby.
3. The first entry is the closest quest, for example “A Threat Within, Level 1, Marshal McBride, 40 yards, ahead, 1 of 4”.
4. Press Backspace to read what the quest asks of you, then Escape to come back.
5. Press Enter. The Scanner closes and the navigation window opens, or you hear “Beacon set 40 yards” if there is no route data.
6. Walk to the giver. You hear “Arrived”.

Example: corpse run

1. Release your spirit.
2. Press F9 and open the Player category. After your own name comes “Corpse” with distance and direction.
3. Press Enter on it to be guided. Follow the beacon or the route.

Version notes

• Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria: the quest groups and NPC role groups use the Questie addon when it is loaded. Without Questie, WowVision falls back to the game’s own quest map data where the client has it, as Retail does; where it does not, you hear “No quest data source”.
• Retail: the quest lists come from the game’s own quest map data. There are no spawn tables, so each quest entry has a single position, and the NPC groups only list quest givers, who appear as “Quest Giver” at a place rather than by name. There are no role groups.
• WoW: Forever: uses Questie when it is loaded, otherwise the game’s own quest data. The game’s own quest data is often incomplete there, so the Minimap Scanner fills in quest givers, NPC kinds, gathering nodes and points of interest. See Minimap Scanner.
• Tracking is empty where the game provides no minimap tracking types.
• Graveyards appear when the game can list them for the map.
• Group member positions can only be read where the game exposes them.
• Enter opens the navigation window where map data exists for the continent, and falls back to a straight beacon elsewhere.
• The Scanner is also on the controller shortcut layer; see Controller.

Related pages

• Minimap Scanner, which fills Gathering, Points of Interest and the “seen” entries.
• Quests, for quest data and Questie.
• Navigation, where Enter takes you.

Quests

This page covers everything about quests that WowVision does for you: reading the quest log, reading and answering a quest giver’s window, hearing when you enter the area of a quest objective, and finding quest givers and objectives with the Scanner. It also explains the Questie addon, which supplies most of the quest data on the classic game versions.

Where quest data comes from

WowVision needs to know where quests start and where their objectives are. It gets that from up to three sources, and uses whichever your game version offers:

WowVision uses Questie whenever it is loaded and the game’s own data otherwise. Where neither exists, the Scanner’s Quests and NPCs categories hold the single line “No quest data source”. With Questie it always works. Your quest log windows and quest giver windows work without any of these sources. Only finding places needs them.

Questie: what you need to do

1. Install the Questie addon for your game version and keep it enabled. See Installation.
2. Log in. Questie builds its quest database at login. Until it is ready, quest lists in the Scanner say “Loading” and /wv quests says “Questie is still loading”. It usually takes a few seconds.
3. Open the Scanner with F9 and look at Quests and NPCs.

What Questie adds that the game’s own data lacks:

• Quest names, levels and giver names in the Nearby list.
• For quests in progress, the creatures, objects and item sources behind each objective, with every spawn point.
• NPC role groups in the Scanner’s NPCs category: Vendors, Repair, Trainers, Flight Masters, Innkeepers, Bankers, Auctioneers, Stable Masters, Battlemasters, Spirit Healers, Class Trainers, Mailboxes and Rares. Questie’s NPC list is indexed in the background after login, so these groups may say “Loading” for a short time.
• Place names for spawns, such as “Elwynn Forest, Goldshire” or “Valley of the Four Winds, near Halfhill, 40 yards”.

Questie only includes quests and spawns that exist for your character. Spawns hidden because of the story phase your character is in are listed as phased out; they are kept at the end of the list in case the guess is wrong.

On WoW: Forever, Questie ships a version built on Classic Era data. WowVision prefers it over the game’s own quest data, because the game’s own quest data is often empty there.

The quest log window

Open the quest log with the game’s own key (L by default). WowVision reads the window that opens on your version. The list and the details are separate tab stops, so press Tab to move between them and the buttons.

In the quest list, Up and Down move between headers and quests. Press Enter on a quest to select it, which fills the details. Press Enter on a header to collapse or expand it. Press the tooltip key to hear the quest’s tooltip; see Tooltips.

Normally the focus starts on the selected quest. Turn on Always Start at Top in the WowVision menu under Windows, Quest Log, and it starts on the top entry of the list instead. It is off by default. If the quest log opens on a quest’s details, you stay there.

The Burning Crusade

(The Burning Crusade only.)

• Quests are read as “[Complete] [Daily] Quest Title”. The tags Complete, Failed, Daily and Weekly appear when they apply. The selected quest says “selected”. Zone headers say “Collapsed” or “Expanded”.
• The details are one group called Details: the quest title, its description, the objectives text and each objective, such as “Kobold Vermin slain: 3/10”.
• Buttons follow as their own stops: collapse all, abandon and share, with the game’s own captions.
• The game shows only six quests at a time. WowVision scrolls the list for you as you move.

Mists of Pandaria

(Mists of Pandaria only.)

• The same reading as The Burning Crusade for quests and headers.
• Objective lines follow your progress while the log is open.
• Buttons: abandon, share and track, with the game’s own captions.

Retail and WoW: Forever

(Retail and WoW: Forever.) On these versions the quest log is part of the world map. The key opens a panel beside the map, and WowVision reads that panel.

The panel shows one of two views, as it does on screen: the list, or the details of one quest. The details replace the list.

The list view opens first. Press Tab to move from the quest list to the search box, then the settings, and back to the list.

• The list shows zone headers and quests, under a name that gives your quest count. Press Enter on a header to collapse or expand it. Backspace on a header opens the game’s menu with Track All and Untrack All.
• A quest reads like “[12] Wolves Across the Border, Green, selected, tracked”. The color word (Grey, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red) is the game’s difficulty color for your level, as a sighted player sees it. “selected” and “tracked” are added when they apply, and a tag such as Elite or Dungeon follows the title. A finished quest adds “Complete” after its title, a failed one “Failed”, where the game shows its check mark or its red Failed icon.
• Press Enter on a quest to open its details. Backspace opens the game’s menu for that quest, with Track, Focus, Share and Abandon.
• Press Right on a quest to reach its Track Quest checkbox. Enter checks or unchecks it. If the game’s Show Objectives setting is on, the quest’s objectives follow to the right of the checkbox.
• The search box filters the list as you type. Tab into it to start typing.
• Settings opens the game’s menu, which holds the Show Objectives setting.

The details view opens on the quest’s title. Press Tab to move from the text to the rewards, then to the buttons.

• The Details group reads in the game’s order: the title, the objectives text, any timer, each live objective, any required money, the group size, and the description.
• The Rewards group lists everything the quest gives, including items, money and experience. Press Space on an item to read its tooltip. Choosing a reward does not happen here. That happens when you turn the quest in.
• The buttons are one row, so move along it with Left and Right: Back, abandon, track (it reads Untrack when the quest is tracked), share, and the map button when the quest has one. Their captions are the game’s own, and the caption is spoken again after you press the button.
• Press Enter on Back to return to the list, on the quest you opened. Shift+Tab from the text reaches Back straight away.

Classic Era

WowVision has no quest log window for Classic Era, so the game’s own quest log is not read there. With Questie installed you can still read your quests through the Scanner, under Quests, In Progress.

The quest log windows above are left to Sku when the Sku addon is loaded alongside WowVision.

Quest giver windows

When you talk to an NPC who has quests, the game opens a quest window. WowVision reads whichever page of it is showing. The window’s title is the NPC’s name. On the details, progress and reward pages the text is one list in one tab stop, followed by its buttons as separate stops, so one Tab takes you from the text to the buttons. On the greeting page the greeting text is one stop and each quest is a stop of its own.

The buttons are the game’s own, with the game’s captions, which may differ slightly from the ones above.

Rewards are read in groups:

• A list of choices, introduced by the game’s own sentence (“You will be able to choose one of these rewards”). Each choice reads as the item name, with “ x 5“ after it when you get several.
• A list of items you receive.
• Money and experience, as plain lines.

To pick a reward, press Enter on the item you want. That is a real click, so the item becomes selected. Then Tab to Complete Quest and press Enter. Item tooltips work with the tooltip key.

A quest giver may offer quests through the gossip window first; those entries are read as “Available Quest: Title” and “Accepted Quest: Title” as well. See NPC windows.

If Sku is loaded, WowVision leaves this window to Sku.

Quest choice dialog

(Mists of Pandaria only.) Some quests that offer a choice between several options show a Quest Choice window instead. It reads the question, then each option as its own tab stop: the option text, the reputation, item and currency rewards it gives, and its choose button. A final Close button leaves the window without choosing.

Quest area alert

When you walk into or out of the shaded area where a tracked quest’s objectives are, WowVision tells you:

• “Entering area: Wolves Across the Border”
• “Leaving area: Wolves Across the Border”

This works for quests you are tracking, and also in combat. A quest announces each state only once, so you do not hear a repeat.

During a minimap scan the area alert is silenced for a moment. The scan switches tracking on and off, which the game would otherwise report as leaving and entering every area.

The alert is the Quest Area Alert in the Quests module. See Alerts for how alerts work.

Quest progress alerts

The game shows quest progress as a message in the middle of the screen. WowVision speaks those messages as the game words them, and plays a sound for what happened, with three alerts of their own:

• Quest Progress Alert: a count moves, for example “Kobold Vermin slain: 3/8” or “Linen Cloth: 2/6”. Its sound is success1, the one Sku plays.
• Objective Complete Alert: an objective is done, for example “Explore the Mine (Complete)”, or the game’s “Objective Complete.” message, which names no objective. Its sound is objective_complete.
• Quest Complete Alert: every objective of a quest is done, so it is ready to hand in. Its sound is success2, the one Sku plays, and it plays in place of the objective’s sound. The game sends no message for this, so WowVision reads it from your quest log. Its speech, the quest’s title and “Complete”, starts switched off, because you already hear the game’s line for the last objective.

The game’s line is spoken at once. When an objective is done, its sound waits a moment, less than half a second, to learn whether that finished the quest. Each alert has TTS and Sound and can be switched off on its own. They work whatever the Errors module does, also with it switched off, and these messages do not appear in its Per-Error Filter. If you had muted one of these messages there, or switched Announce Errors off, its alert starts switched off. See Alerts.

Nearby quest sounds

While you walk around, you hear the quests near you. Each quest sound is a short ping that comes from the direction of the place, like the Beacon. It is quieter the farther away the place is, and you only hear it when the place is in front of you. Turn toward a ping you have missed and you hear it again. The sounds need Questie, so they are for Classic Era, The Burning Crusade, Mists of Pandaria and WoW: Forever with Questie loaded. Without Questie they stay silent.

There are three sounds:

• Available Quest Sound: a quest you can accept has its giver near you. It is the soft notification sound, the one Sku plays.
• Turn-In Quest Sound: a quest in your log is complete and the person to hand it in to is near you. It is the steel gong, the one Sku plays.
• Quest Objective Sound: a quest in your log has an open objective near you, such as creatures to kill or an item to find. It is a deep probe sound. Sku has no sound for this.

A place pings for the first time a moment after you come into its range, sooner when it is close and later when it is far. Several quests at the same giver give one ping. After the ping the place stays quiet until you enter another zone. If the giver gets a new quest to offer, you hear it again. With the Play Once setting off, the place pings again and again for as long as you stay in range. Objectives are quiet again after you have walked well away from them, and ping again when you come back. Standing close to a place, nearer than the Silence Distance, makes it quiet. You hear nothing while you ride a flight path, are dead, or are fighting, and the pings come again after the fight.

Quests of a holiday only count while the holiday is on. The Nearby Level Range and Include Repeatable Quests settings, below, apply to the quests you can accept. Switch the whole feature off with Enabled in the Nearby menu.

Open the WowVision menu, then Quests, then Nearby.

Finding quests and objectives

The Scanner turns quest data into places you can walk to. It is the main way to find quests with WowVision.

• Quests, Nearby: quests you can accept around you, nearest giver first.
• Quests, In Progress: your log, grouped by zone like the quest log, the nearest quest first in each zone. Each quest the data source knows opens to its objectives, each objective to the creatures, objects and item sources it is about, and each of those to its spawns.
• NPCs, Quest Givers: the same givers, grouped by NPC.

Enter on a quest, an objective, a target or a spawn guides you to its place. See Navigation.

How places are described in the lists: a spawn reads with its zone, then the best hint WowVision has for the place inside the zone. If a landmark on the map, such as a town or camp, is within about 600 yards, the spawn reads “near Halfhill, 40 yards”, or just “Halfhill, 40 yards” when the explored map also names the spot Halfhill. If the quest data names the subzone, it is named first. If no landmark is close, the area name of the explored map is used. This is a description to help you picture the place, not an exact address.

Settings

Open the WowVision menu, then Quests. See Menu and Settings.

The Nearby list also leaves out quests you cannot take yet, because of your level or a missing prerequisite.

Example: work through a quest

1. Walk to a quest giver. The game opens the quest window. You hear the NPC’s name, then “Quests” with “Available Quest: A Threat Within” or the details of the single quest.
2. Press Down to read the description and objectives. Press Tab, then Enter on Accept.
3. Press F9, open Quests, then In Progress, then Elwynn Forest. The quest is listed, “A Threat Within, 0 of 1”. Press Right to open the objective and Right again to see what to kill, then press Enter on a spawn to be guided there.
4. In the field, you hear “Entering area: A Threat Within” when you reach the objective area.
5. When the objective is done, the quest reads “Complete”. Press F9, open it, and press Enter on the turn-in. Talk to the NPC, press Tab to Complete Quest, choose a reward if there is a choice, then Enter.

Diagnostic commands

Useful for bug reports. Output goes to the chat window.

Messages you might hear: “No quest data source”, “Questie is still loading”, “No nearby quests”, “No quests in progress”, “No targets”.

Related pages

• Scanner and Minimap Scanner.
• Navigation for what happens after Enter.
• NPC windows for gossip, merchants and trainers.
• Alerts.

Game Windows

Most of World of Warcraft happens in windows: your bags, a merchant, the quest log, the talent tree, the mailbox. A sighted player clicks around in them with the mouse. WowVision reads these windows to you and lets you work them with the keyboard, like a desktop application with a screen reader.

This page explains how that works in general. The pages in this section then go through the windows one by one.

How it works

You open a game window the usual way: with the game’s own key (B for bags, C for the character pane, L for the quest log and so on), by talking to an NPC, or by clicking something. WowVision notices that the window is open and turns it into a WowVision window:

• It says the window’s name and the element you are on, for example “Merchant” and then “Linen Cloth, 1 silver, Button”.
• The window keys now work: the arrow keys, Tab and Shift+Tab move between elements, Enter is a left click, Backspace a right click, Space reads the tooltip, Shift+F10 opens the context menu. All of this is explained in Using the Interface.
• Escape closes the window, the same as closing it in the game.

As soon as the game window closes, the WowVision window closes too, and your keys go back to the game. While no WowVision window is open, the arrow keys, Tab, Enter and the other window keys do whatever you bound them to in the game, so they never get in the way of playing.

WowVision does not replace the game’s windows; it reads the real ones. Anything you do (buying, equipping, learning a talent) is a real click in the game’s window.

Several windows at once

You can have more than one window open, for example a merchant and your bags. Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab switch between them. Each window remembers the element you were on.

A typical case is selling: talk to a merchant, open your bags, find the item and right click it with Backspace to sell it.

Windows of WowVision itself

Some windows belong to WowVision and have no counterpart in the game:

They work with the same keys as the game windows.

In combat

The game does not let addons take over keys during a fight. When combat starts, WowVision hands its window keys back to the game and stops reading windows; when combat ends, it takes them back and you are where you left off. See Combat.

Turning a window off

Every supported window is a module under Windows in the WowVision menu. If you prefer to handle a window without WowVision, or another addon reads it for you, switch that module off there. See The WowVision Menu and Settings.

When Sku is loaded

If you run Sku, the older accessibility addon, at the same time, WowVision leaves many windows to Sku and does not read them itself. Which ones is listed in Using WowVision together with Sku.

Windows that are not read yet

Not every game window is supported on every version. If a window opens and WowVision says nothing, it is probably one of these. Features by Game Version has the full table; the pages below mention what is missing in each window.

Windows that every version reads: bags and bank, merchants, NPC dialogs, the quest giver window, flight masters, trainers, trade, the mailbox inbox, books and letters, the game’s confirmation popups, ready check and role check, guild invitations, the game menu and options, macros and the color picker. Beyond that, each version has its own set:

The pages in this section

• Action Bars — the action bars window, dragging spells and items, gamepad bars
• Bags and Bank — bags, bank, using and moving items, destroying items
• Talking to NPCs — dialogs, merchants, trainers, flight masters, books and letters, pet stable
• Loot, Trade and Mail — loot rolls, trading with players, the mailbox
• Character — equipment, stats, reputation, skills, PvP, equipment sets
• Spells and Talents — spellbook, talents, glyphs, spell search
• Professions — trade skills, crafting, socketing, reforging, item upgrade
• Collections — mounts, pets, toys, heirlooms, appearances, Legacy
• Group Finder — group finder, ready check, role check
• Auction House — buying, selling, price scans
• Chat — chat announcements, the chat window, clicking links
• Social — friends, guild, communities, channels
• Menus, Options and Dialogs — game menu, game options, popups, macros and more

Action Bars

The Action Bars window shows every action bar the game currently displays, one bar after the other, so you can hear what is on each slot, use a slot, and rearrange your spells, items and macros. Press Shift+F4 to open it.

Opening the window

With the gamepad interface on (Retail and WoW: Forever), the same window can also be opened from the controller’s shortcut layer: hold both shoulder buttons and press the left stick. See Controller.

You cannot navigate the window while you are in combat. WowVision gives its keys back to the game during combat so that your own key bindings keep working, and takes them again when combat ends. Use your normal bindings for abilities in a fight.

How the window is laid out

The whole window is one tab stop. Each bar is a labeled row inside it:

• Left and Right walk along the slots of the current bar.
• Up and Down switch to the previous or next bar. You land on the first slot of that bar.
• Home and End jump to the first or last slot of the bar you are on.

Tab does nothing here, because the whole window is a single stop.

When you move to a different bar, WowVision says the bar’s name first, then the slot. Each slot ends with its position in the bar, for example “3 of 12”.

Only bars that exist right now are listed. The window reads them in this order:

The four extra bars are off by default in the game. Turn them on in the game options under Action Bars (see System windows for the options window). A bar you switch off disappears from the window.

On WoW: Forever, when the gamepad interface is on, four more bars are added. See Gamepad action bars.

Not read: the bars that Retail added beyond the four above (Action Bars 5, 6 and 7), the extra action button, the zone ability button, and the vehicle or possess bars. Use your normal game key bindings for those.

What a slot says

Main bar and extra bars

A slot reads the name of what is on it, followed by the key the game shows on that button in brackets:

• “Fireball (1)”
• “Healing Potion (s-2)”
• “Empty”

The key text is exactly what the game draws on the button, so Shift, Ctrl and Alt appear in the game’s short form such as s-, c- and a-. An empty slot only says “Empty”.

The label updates while you are standing on it. If you pick a spell up from a slot, it immediately reads “Empty”. Spells, items, macros, mounts, battle pets, equipment sets and flyouts are all read by name. Rarely a slot reads “Unknown”, followed by technical details such as an id and a type; that is something the addon cannot name yet. A slot whose button the game has switched off says “Disabled” after its name.

Pet Bar

Each slot reads the command or ability name. If the ability can be cast automatically, it also says Auto Casting or Not Auto Casting:

• “Attack”
• “Growl Auto Casting”
• “Empty”

Stance Bar

Each slot reads the stance, form or aura name, for example “Defensive Stance”. There is no key text on these slots. Only the stances you have learned are listed.

Tooltips

Press Space on any slot to read its tooltip, which is the spell or item tooltip the game would show under the mouse. See Tooltips.

Using a slot

Using abilities is faster with your normal game key bindings. The window is for checking and rearranging your bars.

Moving and removing things

WoW uses a cursor: you pick something up, and then you put it down somewhere. WowVision does the same with keys.

Example: move Fireball from the first slot of the main bar to the fifth.

1. Press Shift+F4.
2. Walk to the first slot with Left and Right. It says “Fireball (1)”.
3. Press \ (or Ctrl+D). Fireball is now on your cursor, and the slot reads “Empty”.
4. Walk to the fifth slot.
5. Press \ again. Fireball goes into the fifth slot. If there was something in that slot, it swaps onto your cursor, and you can place it somewhere else the same way.

Example: take a spell off your bar for good.

1. Focus the slot and press \. The spell is on your cursor.
2. Press Delete. The cursor is cleared and the spell is gone from the bar. There is no confirmation, because a spell on an action bar is only a shortcut and nothing is lost. You can always drag it from the spellbook again.

The same works for macros, mounts and equipment sets. An item on an action bar is also only a shortcut: Delete just clears it, and the item stays in your bags.

Use the Drag key (\ or Ctrl+D) when you pick something up from an action bar, rather than the Drag entry in the slot’s context menu. The key tells WowVision that the thing on your cursor is only a bar shortcut, so Delete will never offer to destroy the real item. If you pick up an item shortcut through the context menu instead, WowVision treats it as a real bag item, and Delete then opens the destroy confirmation for that item. This matters only for items on a bar. Spells, macros and the like are only ever cleared.

Delete does nothing when your cursor is empty. This is deliberate: you cannot destroy something by merely focusing it. The Delete key works wherever you are in the game, not only inside this window, as long as something is on your cursor.

For items taken from your bags see Bags and bank, which also explains how to destroy a real item.

To place a spell on a bar from the spellbook, pick it up in the spellbook (see Spells and talents), then open this window with Shift+F4 and drop it on a slot. The cursor stays with you between windows. To place a macro, see System windows.

Lock Action Bars is turned off for you

The game has a setting called Lock Action Bars. When it is on, dragging an action off a bar does nothing unless you also hold the game’s pick-up key, and nothing tells you why. That makes dragging look broken.

The first time each character logs in with WowVision, the setting is turned off, and WowVision prints this message in the chat:

“WowVision unlocked your action bars so that dragging works. You can lock them again in the game options under Action Bars.”

This happens once per character. If you lock the bars again in the game options, they stay locked, and WowVision will not change them again. If the game refuses the change (for example during combat), WowVision tries again at the next login. If you hear nothing at login, either the bars were already unlocked, or this character was handled before.

Gamepad action bars (WoW: Forever)

(WoW: Forever only.)

When the game’s gamepad interface is on, your spells sit on the gamepad action bars rather than on the keyboard ones. These bars have eight slots each. The window lists four extra bars, in this order:

The bar’s name is followed by the page the game is on, for example “Gamepad Bar, Page 1”. The pages are turned with the D-pad left and right in the controller’s shortcut layer (both shoulder buttons held), as for a sighted player.

Each slot reads like a normal slot, followed by the controller button that triggers it:

• “Frostbolt, A”
• “Empty, X”

The eight slots are, in order: D-pad left, D-pad up, D-pad right, D-pad down, and then the four face buttons (the left, top, right and bottom ones). The button names follow your controller’s own naming. These slots have no key text. These bars only appear while the game’s Enable Gamepad UI option is on. See Controller for the controller keys of WowVision itself.

Settings and alerts

The Action Bars window has no settings you can change and no alerts. The only stored value is a hidden note that this character’s bars were already unlocked. Like every window, it has an Enabled switch in the WowVision menu, under Windows, then Bars. See Menu and settings.

Troubleshooting

• A bar is missing. The game does not show it. Switch it on in the game options under Action Bars.
• Drag does nothing. The bars are locked, probably because you locked them yourself after the first login. Unlock them in the game options under Action Bars.
• The window does nothing in a fight. WowVision gives its keys back to the game in combat. Leave combat first.
• Enter casts the spell instead of picking it up. That is correct. Enter is a click. Use \ or Ctrl+D to pick up.

Bags and Bank

WowVision reads your bags and your bank as lists of slots that you can walk through, pick up from, use, sell and rearrange with the keyboard. This page explains how the bags window is laid out on each game version, what a slot says, and how to move, use and destroy items with the cursor.

Opening your bags

Open your bags with the game’s own keys, exactly as a sighted player does (B for all bags, or the backpack key). When any bag is open, the bags window appears in WowVision.

The bags window is a background window. It also opens by itself next to a merchant, the mailbox, the bank or a trade, because the game opens your bags there. The merchant, mailbox or bank keeps the focus. Press Ctrl+Tab to switch to the bags and Ctrl+Tab again to come back. See Navigating windows.

Close the bags the way the game does, by pressing the bag key again.

If the addon Sku is loaded, WowVision leaves the bags to Sku and does not read them.

Bag shape: grid or list

The Bag Shape setting (Windows, then Containers) decides how the slots of one bag are read.

In the grid shape, Up and Down follow the position in the row, not the screen column. On some bags a short row sits at the top, pushed to the right. From the first cell of that short row, Down lands on the first cell of the row below, so you never skip anything when you read from the top left downward.

Home and End jump to the first or last slot (in a grid, of the current row). Change the setting in the WowVision menu. See Menu and settings.

What a slot says

An empty slot says “Empty”. A slot with an item says the item’s name followed by its quality colour as a word, and the stack count.

• Classic Era, TBC and Mists: “Linen Cloth, White 12”, “Heavy Leather Ball, White”.
• Retail and WoW: Forever: “Linen Cloth, White, 12”. After the count the slot may add Quest Item, New, Locked (the item is in use, for example on the cursor) and Filtered (the slot does not match the bag search). While the game has not yet sent an item’s name, the slot says Loading.

The colour word follows the game’s quality colours: Grey (poor), White (common), Green (uncommon), Blue (rare), Purple (epic), Orange (legendary), Light Gold (artifact), Light Blue (heirloom). You can switch individual colours off in the Tooltip settings under Quality. See Tooltips.

The slot label is live. If you pick up an item, the slot you are standing on says “Empty” at once. If you drop one in, it says the new item.

Press Space for the full tooltip of the item.

What you can do with a slot

The context menu is the quickest way to find out what Backspace will do. Each click entry is named for its effect, for example “Sell, Right Click” or “Equip, Right Click”.

What a right click does

The game decides this by which windows are open. In the order WowVision checks:

The left click entry says Pick Up, or Place Item while you hold something.

Splitting a stack

To split a stack, press Shift+Enter on the slot. The game opens a small box that asks how many items to take; WowVision does not read it. Type the amount, press Enter, and put the new stack down with Enter on an empty slot.

The cursor

WoW moves things with a cursor. You pick something up and the game holds it on the cursor until you put it down. WowVision does not speak a separate message when something lands on the cursor. Instead, check the slot you took it from: it now says “Empty”.

• To move an item, pick it up (Enter or \), walk to another slot and press Enter on it.
• To put an item into a bag, pick it up, then use Enter on the bag slot entry (see “Bag slots” below) or on a free slot of that bag.
• Items on the cursor are also used with other windows. You can put one on a trade slot, on a mail attachment or on a merchant to sell it. See Loot, trade and mail and NPCs.
• An item taken from a bag, a trade slot or a merchant is a real item. A spell, macro or other shortcut taken from an action bar is only a reference.

Destroying an item

You have to pick the item up first. This is on purpose, and it matches the game, where you drag an item away to destroy it. It also protects you from deleting the wrong thing.

Example: destroy a Broken Sword.

1. Walk to its slot in your bags.
2. Press Enter (or \) to pick it up.
3. Press Delete.
4. The game’s confirmation popup opens and WowVision reads it. See System windows. For common items the popup has a text and two buttons: read the text, Tab to the button that confirms and press Enter. Items of rare quality or better (heirlooms excepted) may also ask you to type the word DELETE into a text box before the confirm button works.
5. Pressing Escape or the cancel button leaves the item on your cursor. Put it back in a slot with Enter.

If you press Delete while nothing is on your cursor, nothing happens.

Classic Era, TBC and Mists bags

Each open bag is its own tab stop, in this order: backpack, then bags 1 to 4. Press Tab and Shift+Tab to move between bags, and the arrow keys to move inside one.

• The bag is announced by its name, for example “Backpack” or “Journeyman’s Backpack”. Bank bags are announced as “Bank: “ and their name.
• The first entry of a bag is its bag slot: “Bag Slot Backpack”. This is the button you put a new bag on, and you can pick up the bag from here. After it come the item slots.
• The bag slot buttons live inside each bag’s own stop, so you can only reach them while that bag is open.

The keyring (Classic Era and The Burning Crusade) is not read.

WowVision reads no sort button on these versions, even where the game draws one. Arrange items by hand or use the sorting your game version offers.

The bank on Classic Era, TBC and Mists

Walk up to a banker and open the bank. The bank window reads:

1. A stop named Bank with the bank’s own item slots.
2. A stop named Bank Bag Slots with the bank bag slots you own, each reading the bag’s name or “Empty” followed by the game’s own description of the slot. Put a bag in a slot with Enter, as with your own bag slots. Below the owned slots, when you can buy another one, WowVision reads the purchase text, “Costs” and the price, and a purchase button. Press Enter on the button to buy.
3. Each open bank bag appears as its own stop, named “Bank: “ and the bag name.

To move items between your bags and the bank, open both, pick an item up and press Enter on a free slot of the other. Or use Backspace on the item. With the bank open, a right click on a bag item moves it to the bank and a right click on a bank item moves it to your bags.

Retail and WoW: Forever bags

(Retail and WoW: Forever only.)

These versions have two bag views, which you pick in the game’s bag menu. WowVision follows what the game shows.

Combined bags

All your bags are drawn as one big grid, and WowVision reads it the same way: the backpack first, then the other bags, no bag boundaries. The window opens on the Bags stop. The stops are:

1. Bag Controls: Bag Menu, a dropdown with one submenu per bag (filters, clean up, switch bag view); Sort Bags; Money, which reads your gold, for example “Money, 12 Gold 5 Silver”; and Add Slots when the game offers it.
2. Search: a text box. Tab into it and type, and slots that do not match read Filtered. Tab out to leave it.
3. Bags: the slots, in the shape you chose (a grid is ten slots wide, with the first row possibly shorter). In the list shape the slots are in slot order, backpack first.
4. Bag Slots: a row with the bag slot buttons of the backpack and your four bags. Each reads “Bag Slot” and the bag’s name. The reagent bag and, on WoW: Forever, the keyring are drawn by the game as their own frames even in combined view. They are not in this row. Each gets a stop of its own, with its bag slot first, as in the individual view below.

A backpack of an account without an authenticator shows four extra slots that cannot hold anything. WowVision does not read these as slots. The Add Slots button is still in Bag Controls.

Example: find your Hearthstone with the search.

1. Open the bags with B. Press Ctrl+Tab if you are inside another window.
2. The window opens on Bags. Press Shift+Tab once to reach “Search”.
3. Type hearth. The slots that do not match now read Filtered.
4. Press Tab to the Bags stop and read slots with Down.

Individual bags

Each bag is its own window, as on Classic. Each open bag is a stop, announced by the bag’s name. The backpack key alone opens just the backpack. The game’s Open All Bags key (by default Shift together with the backpack key) opens everything.

• The first entry is the bag slot: “Bag Slot” and the bag name. Both clicks on it say Close Bag, or Place Item while you hold a bag. The bag’s own menu (filters, clean up, switch bag view) is in the slot’s context menu, as Bag Menu.
• Sort Bags, Money and Add Slots belong to the backpack. They appear in a stop called Bag Controls before the bags, followed by the Search stop. The window opens on the first bag.

Retail and WoW: Forever bank

(Retail and WoW: Forever only.)

The modern bank is one window that shows the character bank, and the Warband (account) bank. A banker opens it. The stops are:

1. Bank Tabs: a row with the tabs. These are the bank type tabs (character and Warband bank, named by the game), the page tabs on WoW: Forever, the side tabs for each bank tab on Retail (Enter selects, Backspace opens its settings on Retail), and the purchase tab. The current one says “selected”.
2. One stop per bank tab: its slots, named by the tab’s name. On WoW: Forever all purchased tabs of the current bank type are shown at once, on pages.
3. Bank Bag Slots (WoW: Forever): a row with the bank bag slot buttons, which can be picked up with the Drag key. A slot you have not bought reads Purchasable Bag Slot and the price. Press Enter on it to buy, and the game asks you to confirm. The game sells the next slot in line, whichever unbought slot you press Enter on.
4. Search: a text box.
5. Bank Controls: Sort Bank, Money (in the Warband bank this is the deposited gold, with the game’s deposit and withdraw buttons), and the price and purchase button for the next tab or bag.

A locked or not yet bought bank shows the game’s explanation instead of slots. It is read as a text under the name “Bank”.

Slots read like bag slots. Right click moves an item between bags and bank as on Classic: Move to Bank and Move to Bags.

Example: put an item in your Warband bank on Retail.

1. Open the bank. Press Tab until the tab row, and press Right until the Warband bank tab. Press Enter.
2. Press Ctrl+Tab to your bags, find the item, and press Enter to pick it up.
3. Ctrl+Tab back, walk to a free slot in the Warband bank, and press Enter to drop the item there.

Settings

The bags and the bank have one setting, Bag Shape, described above. Like every window, the bags have an Enabled switch in the WowVision menu, under Windows, then Containers. They have no alerts and no key bindings of their own. The keys on this page are the shared window keys, which can be changed in the keybinding window. See Keybindings.

Troubleshooting

• Nothing happens when I press Delete. Delete destroys only what is on the cursor. Pick the item up first.
• I cannot find the bags. They are a background window. Press Ctrl+Tab to cycle windows.
• Slot order seems backwards. Make sure Bag Shape is set to List for slot order. In Grid, rows follow the screen.

NPCs: Gossip, Vendors, Trainers, Flight Masters and Books

This page covers the windows you meet when you talk to a character in the world: the conversation window (gossip), merchants, trainers, flight masters, books and letters, and the hunter’s pet stable. All of them open when the game opens them. Walk up to the NPC and interact as usual, for example with the interact key. WowVision then reads the window and lets you move through it.

In all these windows Tab and Shift+Tab move between the parts of the window (each part is a “stop”), the arrow keys move inside a part, Enter clicks, Space reads the tooltip where there is one, and Escape closes the window. Backspace right clicks, which matters only where a right click does something, such as on a merchant’s goods. Shift+F10 opens the context menu of the focused entry. See Navigating windows.

If the addon Sku is loaded, WowVision leaves the gossip, merchant, trainer, flight master and pet stable windows to Sku.

Gossip

The gossip window is the conversation you get when you talk to most NPCs. It lists what the NPC says and what you can choose.

The window reads, from the top. Every entry is a stop of its own, so use Tab and Shift+Tab to move from one to the next:

1. The greeting, the NPC’s current text. The name of the NPC is announced as the window’s title.
2. Options, one entry for each thing the NPC offers, for example “Train me”, “Make this inn your home” or “I want to browse your goods”. Press Enter to pick one.
3. Available Quest: … entries, quests you can accept from this NPC, followed by the quest title.
4. Accepted Quest: … entries, quests you have already taken that involve this NPC, for example to turn them in.
5. Goodbye, which ends the conversation.

When you pick an option, the NPC answers and the window refreshes. The new text is read to you automatically from the top, and focus returns to the greeting. While the game is still working on your choice, WowVision keeps showing the old page rather than a half-updated one, and then jumps to the new page when it is ready.

Picking a quest entry opens the quest window. See Quests. Choosing an option that opens a trainer, merchant or flight master closes the conversation and opens that window.

Example: set your hearthstone at an innkeeper.

1. Interact with the innkeeper. You hear the name of the NPC and the greeting.
2. Press Tab to move through the options until you hear “Make this inn your home”.
3. Press Enter. The NPC answers, probably with a confirmation popup. See System windows.

Not read: some friendship and special reputation displays that the modern game shows in gossip.

Merchants

The merchant window is where you buy, sell and repair.

The stops, in order:

1. Tabs: a row with two tabs, the merchant’s goods and Buyback. The one you are on says “selected”. Use Left and Right, and Enter to switch.
2. Items: the goods for sale on this page, or the items you sold, on the Buyback tab. Ten goods per page; the buyback list has up to twelve. An empty page says “Empty”.
3. Previous Page and Next Page: one stop each, only when the merchant has more than one page.
4. Repair (only at merchants who repair): Repair All, Repair Item and, where available, Guild Bank Repair. These are on the Merchant tab only.

What an item says

Each item reads its name and quality colour, how many you get in a stack, the price, how many are left, and any other costs:

• “Linen Bandage, White, 1 Silver 5 Copper”
• “Rough Arrow, White x 200, 3 Silver, 2 in stock”
• “Insignia of Conquest, Purple, Honor Points 1200”

The price is shown in gold, silver and copper. A stack like “x 200” shows only when the merchant sells more than one at a time. Items that cost extra currencies or items add them at the end, for example “Marks of Honor 20” or the name of the required item. Limited items add “N in stock”. These labels are live. Page flips rewrite the same slots while you stay on them.

Press Space for the item tooltip.

Buying

• Backspace (right click) on an item buys it. A stack item buys the whole stack the merchant offers, as in the game.
• Enter (left click) picks the item up onto your cursor. You can then put it into a bag slot to buy it there.
• To buy a chosen amount of a stack item, press Shift+Enter on it. The game opens a small box that asks how many you want: type the amount and press Enter. WowVision does not read that box.

Selling

• Open your bags (see Bags and bank), and press Backspace on an item. With a merchant open this sells it. The context menu of the slot says “Sell, Right Click” so you can check before you press.
• Or pick the item up with Enter and put it down in the merchant’s items.
• Items you sold by mistake can be bought back on the Buyback tab, for the price you got.

Repairing

On the Repair stop press Enter on Repair All to repair everything you have equipped for the price shown by the game (the cost is in the button’s tooltip, read with Space). Repair Item puts the game’s repair tool on your cursor, and then you click the item to repair. Guild Bank Repair repairs with the guild’s money where you may.

Merchant settings

Open the WowVision menu and go to Windows, then Merchant.

Both are meant for the common run: arrive at a vendor, hear what you sold and repaired, and move on. Locked items are not sold. The automatic sale looks at the backpack and your four bags.

Like every window, the merchant has an Enabled switch on the same menu page.

Trainers

The trainer window teaches you spells, skills and professions.

The stops, in order:

1. Next rank (WoW: Forever only): WoW: Forever lifts the next rank of a profession you have not learned yet out of the list into its own button above the list.
2. Filter: a dropdown with Available, Unavailable and Already Known. On WoW: Forever the game hides unavailable skills by default, so a new character hears only one entry and nothing of what comes later. Open the filter and tick Unavailable to see everything.
3. Training: the list of services, a spell or skill per entry. Enter selects one.
4. Details: the selected service’s name (Space reads its tooltip), a second skill line when there is one, what it requires, and the cost.
5. The Train button. Press Enter to learn the selected service.

What a service says

A service reads its name and rank, then Known or Unavailable where that applies, the price, and its requirements:

• “Fireball Rank 2, 20 Silver, Requires: Level 6”
• “Apprentice Cooking, Known”
• “Heroic Strike Rank 3, Unavailable, 1 Gold, Requires: Level 16”

The word “selected” follows the one you have selected. The requirements are shown whether or not you already meet them, and the line is built from the game’s own wording, so it may differ slightly from the examples. Headers in the list (the groups the game uses, such as Available) say Expanded or Collapsed, and Enter folds or unfolds them.

Example: learn a new spell.

1. Interact with your class trainer.
2. Press Tab until you hear “Training”, then walk with Down through the list.
3. Stop on a service you can afford and press Enter. It says “selected”.
4. Press Tab until “Details” and read the cost. Then press Tab to Train.
5. Press Enter. The game teaches you the spell, and your money goes down.

Your pet’s Beast Training

On WoW: Forever the hunter’s Beast Training ability opens your pet’s skills in the same trainer window, without a trainer to talk to. WowVision reads it like the class trainer. The window is named after your pet, and the stops are the same: Filter, Training and the Train button. One stop is new, at the top: Training Points, which reads how many points your pet has left, for example “Training Points: 19”.

A skill costs training points, not money, and says so: “Natural Armor Rank 1, Training point cost: 1, Requires: Level 8”. Press Enter on a skill to select it, then Tab to Train and Enter to teach it. The points go down, and you hear the new total.

Flight masters

A flight master window lists where you can fly. It has one stop, named with the title of the map (usually the flight master’s location or the continent), and one entry per destination.

Each entry reads the name of the place and the cost:

• “Ironforge, Dun Morogh, 2 Silver”
• “Menethil Harbor, Wetlands, 1 Silver 40 Copper”

Walk with Up and Down, and press Enter on a destination to take the flight. Only the destinations the game draws on its map are listed, and the place you stand at may be among them.

Books, letters and plaques

When you read an item or object that has text, such as a book, a letter or a plaque, the item text window opens. It reads:

1. The text stop: the item’s name, “From” and the author (only if there is one), and then the body of the text. A page of text is read as one piece.
2. Previous Page and Next Page, only for texts that have more than one page. Press Enter to turn the page. The new page is read when it arrives.
3. A Close button. Escape also closes it.

The text can take a moment to come from the server. WowVision stays quiet until it arrives and then reads it.

Pet stable

(The Burning Crusade only.)

Hunters use the pet stable on The Burning Crusade to keep extra pets. Talk to a stable master and choose to open the stable. The window reads:

1. Selected Pet: the pet’s level, its loyalty or happiness text where the game shows one, and what it eats.
2. Slots: the current pet, then Stable slot 1 and Stable slot 2. Each reads its heading, the pet’s name and “Level N Family”, or “Empty Stable Slot”. The slot you have selected says “selected”.
3. Purchase: the button to buy the next slot, with its price.
4. Money: your money.
5. Close.

Stabling and taking a pet out work with the cursor, like items:

• To stable your current pet: press Shift+F10 on the current pet slot, choose Drag, then press Enter on a free stable slot.
• To bring a stabled pet out: press Shift+F10 on the stabled pet, choose Drag, then press Enter on the current pet slot. The two pets swap if you already have one.
• Enter on a slot with nothing on your cursor selects it, and the window shows that pet’s details.

The Drag keys (\ and Ctrl+D) do nothing on stable slots, so use the Drag entry of the context menu.

Classic Era, Mists of Pandaria, Retail and WoW: Forever have no stable reader.

Loot, Trade and Mail

This page covers three ways of moving items and gold between you and other characters: rolling for group loot, trading with another player, and the mailbox. It also tells you what is not read yet.

Loot

The loot window

WowVision does not read the loot window that lists the items on a corpse or in a chest. There is no window for it, and no key or menu that lists the loot. The easiest way to collect loot is the game’s own Auto Loot option. Turn it on in the game options (see System windows) and everything is picked up as soon as you loot.

What you picked up is announced through the loot messages the game writes in your chat, which WowVision speaks like any other chat message when a chat tab that shows them is set to speak. See Chat.

Your own target menu holds the loot settings. Target yourself and press Alt+T: the menu that opens has the game’s loot and dungeon difficulty entries, among other things, as a right click on your own portrait would. See Targeting.

Group loot rolls: need, greed, pass

When you are in a group and an item drops that the group rolls on, the game opens a roll window for each item. WowVision gives you keys to answer it without the mouse. They work wherever you are in the game and need no window to be focused.

All of these can be changed in the keybinding window. See Keybindings.

If more than one roll window is open, the keys act on the first one that is visible, one item at a time. After you answer it, the next press goes to the next item. If there is no roll window open, WowVision says “No loot.”

Example: a group rolls for a blue sword.

1. A roll window opens. You hear nothing from it by itself, so press Alt+Ctrl+Y to hear the item name.
2. Decide. Press Alt+Ctrl+U for Need, Alt+Ctrl+I for Greed, or Alt+Ctrl+O to pass.
3. For some items the game asks you to confirm, for example “This item will bind to you”. That is a popup. Read it, Tab to the confirm button and press Enter. See System windows.

The Roll Bonus key exists only on game versions where the bonus roll window exists, which is Retail and WoW: Forever, and possibly Mists of Pandaria.

Disenchant rolls are not offered with these keys.

Trade

When another player trades with you, the trade window opens and WowVision reads it. Start a trade the way the game does. With the player targeted, open the target menu with Alt+T, see Targeting, or use the game’s own trade key or command.

The stops, in order:

1. Your offer: your name, then your six trade slots.
2. Money (yours): the gold you offer, or “Empty”.
3. The other player’s offer: their name, then their six slots.
4. Their Money: for example “Money 5 Gold”, or “Money Empty”.
5. The Trade button.
6. The Cancel button.

Each slot reads the item, its quality colour as a word and the number of items if the stack is more than one: “Linen Cloth, White x20”, or “Empty”. Slots read their current content every time you move onto them. The other player’s slots change while they decide, so step onto a slot again to hear what is in it now.

Putting an item into the trade

• Open your bags and press Backspace on the item. With the trade open it says “Add to Trade” in the context menu and moves the item into the first free slot.
• Or pick the item up with Enter or \, move to one of your trade slots and press Enter. See Bags and bank.
• To take an item back out, press \ (Drag) on your trade slot, then put it into a bag with Enter on a free slot.

Offering gold

You cannot type your gold into the trade window with WowVision. The game seals the money box from addons to protect players from scams. You can hear the amount that is already offered, but entering it is only possible with the mouse. If you need to pay someone gold, send it by mail instead (see below).

Finishing

Press Enter on the Trade button to accept, or Enter on Cancel to call the trade off. Escape also cancels it. The trade goes through when both sides have accepted. WowVision does not read the other player’s accept mark, so listen to the game’s chat messages.

The mailbox

Walk up to a mailbox and interact with it. The mail window opens, and your bags open next to it. (Press Ctrl+Tab to switch between them.)

The stops, in order:

1. Tabs: Inbox and Send Mail. The one you are on says “selected”. Left and Right move between them, and Enter switches.
2. Open All: a button that takes everything from your inbox, when the game shows it.
3. Inbox: your letters on this page.
4. Previous Page and Next Page: only when there are more letters than fit.
5. When a letter is open: the letter and its buttons (see below).
6. On the Send Mail tab: the send form (see below).

The inbox

Each letter reads who it is from and the subject:

• “From: Auction House, Subject: Auction successful: Linen Cloth”
• “From: Thrall, Subject: Hello”

The inbox does not say whether a letter has gold or items. You find that out when you open it. An empty inbox says “Empty”.

Reading a letter and taking what is in it

Press Enter on a letter to open it. Then press Tab until you reach the opened letter (the page buttons, if any, come first). Its stop reads:

1. The sender.
2. The subject.
3. The body text. This is only present when the letter has text.
4. For an auction house sale or purchase, the invoice: the item, the buyer or seller, the sale price, the deposit, the auction house’s cut and the total you received.
5. The attachments: Letter for the letter itself, the gold when it holds money (for example “5 Gold 20 Silver”), and each item with its name, colour and count: “Linen Cloth, White x 20”. Money that is already taken reads “Empty”.

Press Enter on an attachment to take it into your bags or purse. The attachment list shrinks as you take things.

After the letter, each of the buttons the game shows has its own stop: Reply, Delete, Close and Report Spam. Press Enter to use one. Delete removes the letter. Take the attachments first: the game may ask you to confirm deleting a letter that still has something in it.

A cash on delivery (COD) letter asks you to pay when you take the item. The game shows a popup. See System windows.

Example: collect an auction sale.

1. Open the mailbox and press Enter on “From: Auction House, Subject: Auction successful”.
2. Tab to the letter. Listen to the invoice.
3. Down to the money attachment and press Enter. The gold is in your purse.
4. Tab to Delete (or Close) and press Enter.

Or press Enter on Open All to take everything at once.

Sending mail

(Classic Era, The Burning Crusade and Mists of Pandaria. The Send Mail tab is not read on Retail or WoW: Forever yet.)

Select the Send Mail tab. The stops are:

1. Send To: an edit box for the player’s name. Tabbing in starts typing.
2. Subject: an edit box.
3. Body: an edit box for the letter text.
4. Attachments: the items attached so far, followed by Drop Item, an empty slot where you can place an item from your cursor.
5. Send Money: a checkbox.
6. COD: a checkbox. It is greyed out until you attach an item. Send Money and COD are a pair: turning one on turns the other off.
7. A money group named Amount to Send or COD Amount, which follows the choice above, with three edit boxes: Gold, Silver and Copper. Each box is a stop of its own, so Tab moves from one to the next.
8. Postage: what sending will cost.
9. The Send button and the Cancel button.

Typing: Tab into an edit box and type. Tab leaves the box and moves on to the next stop, Shift+Tab goes back. The game’s own Tab chain between mail fields is turned off.

Example: send 10 Linen Cloth and 5 silver to a friend.

1. Open the Send Mail tab.
2. In Send To type “Anna”. Press Tab.
3. In Subject type “Cloth”. Press Tab.
4. In Body type a note and press Tab.
5. In your bags, press Backspace on the Linen Cloth (the context menu says “Attach to Mail”). Return with Ctrl+Tab. The Attachments stop now reads “Linen Cloth, White x 10”.
6. Tab to Send Money; it is the game’s default and should be selected, so you hear that it is checked. In Silver type 5.
7. Tab to Send and press Enter.

Settings and alerts

None of these windows has settings or alerts of its own. The roll keys can be rebound in the keybinding window. See Keybindings. In the WowVision menu, under Windows, the Loot, Trade and Mail entries each have just an Enabled switch. Switching Loot off turns the roll keys off.

If the addon Sku is loaded, WowVision leaves the trade window and the mailbox to Sku. The roll keys stay active.

Troubleshooting

• The roll keys say “No loot.” No roll window is open. The roll may be over, or the game is not showing it.
• I cannot enter gold into a trade. This cannot be done with WowVision. Use mail.
• The Send Mail tab is empty. On Retail and WoW: Forever it is not read yet.

Character

The character pane is where you see what you wear, your stats, your reputations, your skills, your PvP standing and your currencies. WowVision reads it as a set of stops you move through with Tab, with the contents of each tab laid out as lists you walk with the arrow keys.

Where it is available

Opening and closing

Open the pane with the game’s own character key (C unless you changed it). The game’s keys for single tabs, such as the reputation key, open the same pane on that tab, and WowVision reads whichever tab the game shows.

Press Escape to close it. WowVision closes the game’s own panel for you.

If the Sku addon is loaded too, WowVision does not read this window, to avoid two addons fighting over the same keys. Switch Sku off if you want WowVision to read the pane.

You can switch WowVision’s reading of this window off and on with the Enabled toggle: open the WowVision menu with Shift+F1, go to Windows, then Character. See The WowVision menu.

How the pane is laid out

Each tab is a handful of stops. Tab and Shift+Tab move between stops, the arrow keys move inside one. The body of the active tab comes first and the row of tabs is always the last stop. That means:

• When the pane opens you land on the first stop of the current tab, normally the equipment list.
• Shift+Tab from the first stop jumps straight to the tabs, because the stops wrap around.
• To switch tabs, go to the Tabs stop, use Left and Right to pick a tab and press Enter. The tab you are on reads as “selected”. The body below it is rebuilt and Tab takes you into it.

The keys that work on most elements here:

More on these in Using the interface and Reading tooltips.

Equipment

The first stop of the character tab is the Equipment list, one entry per slot, in the order the game draws them: head, neck, shoulders, back, chest, shirt, tabard, wrist, hands, waist, legs, feet, the two finger slots, the two trinket slots, main hand, off hand, ranged and, where the game has one, ammo.

• A filled slot reads the item name followed by its quality as a colour word: “Stormforged Helm, Blue”.
• An empty slot reads the name of the slot: “Head”, “Finger”, “Main Hand”.
• On the ammo slot the item reads even when the game gives no link for it.
• A slot the game hides is skipped: on WoW: Forever the ammo slot only shows while you wear a ranged weapon, and Mists has no ammo slot.
• On WoW: Forever the list ends with a line for your level (“Level 60 Human Paladin”) and, for a hunter with a pet, the pet’s loyalty.

Press Space on a slot to read the full item tooltip with its stats. Press Enter to pick the item up onto your cursor, or to drop the item that is on your cursor into the slot. How the cursor works, and how to equip something from your bags with Backspace, is explained in Bags and bank. \ or Ctrl+D picks the item up too, exactly as dragging it with the mouse would.

Stats

The stats are read-only lines such as “Strength 142” or “Armor 1500”. Press Space to read what a stat means.

The Burning Crusade

Two stops, both named Stats: a left column and a right column. Each starts with a dropdown that chooses the category the column shows (for example base stats, melee, ranged, spell or defense). Press Enter on the dropdown to open the game’s menu, pick a category and the lines below change. After the dropdown come up to six stat lines.

A third stop, Resistances, reads the five resistances (fire, frost, nature, shadow, arcane) the way the game’s own tooltip words them.

Mists of Pandaria

One stop called Stats. Every stat category the game shows is a row; Up and Down switch category (you hear the category name) and Left and Right walk the stats inside the category.

WoW: Forever