anvilbook 0.5.0

A local auction house and crafting ledger for WoW Forever (Classic beta).

It reads the prices that the Auctionator addon saves, keeps every scan as history, and tells you what is worth crafting with the recipes your characters actually know.

Everything runs on your own computer. Nothing is uploaded unless you turn on sharing.

What it does

• Crafts: for each recipe, the cheapest way to get every reagent (buy it, or craft it from its own reagents), the profit, and the profit for each cast. Skill-up colors come from the game.
• Plan: "I have 3g 43s, what do I buy?" It answers with a batch size, a shopping list with quantities, the crafting steps, what comes from your bags, and the leftovers.
• History: the lowest price and the listed count of any item over all your scans.
• Sell-through: what sold between 2 scans, which shows real demand.
• Disenchanting: values a crafted item by its disenchant materials as well as its sale price, and learns the real yields from the disenchants you do.
• In game: the same views in a game window, a shopping list beside the auction house, and lines on item tooltips. See In game.

Install

You need Auctionator in game. anvilbook's own addon, AnvilbookExport, ships inside the app, which installs it for you at first run.

Windows: download anvilbook.exe from the releases page and run it. Your browser opens on the app.

Anything else, with uv:

uvx anvilbook

From source:

git clone https://github.com/traagel/anvilbook
cd anvilbook
uv run anvilbook

First run

1. Point anvilbook at your game. Paste the path to Auctionator.lua, or press Look for my game folder and pick one of the results. It only searches your disk when you press that button, and it never sends anything anywhere.

   The file you want is the saved data, here:

   World of Warcraft\_classic_beta_\WTF\Account\<your id>\SavedVariables\Auctionator.lua
   

   Not the one inside Interface\AddOns\Auctionator\, which is Auctionator's own code. If the file is missing, Auctionator has not saved yet: log in, type /reload, and it appears. You can also point anvilbook at the SavedVariables folder itself.

2. Press Install addon. That copies the small AnvilbookExport addon into the game, so you do not have to download or move anything. See below if you would rather install it yourself.

3. Start WoW, or log out to the character screen if it was already running, so the game picks up the new addon. Open each profession window for a few seconds, then type /reload.

4. Scan the auction house with Auctionator, then type /reload again.

Step 3 gives anvilbook your recipes and skill levels. Step 4 gives it prices. Repeat step 4 whenever you want fresh prices; the app imports the file within 5 seconds of each /reload.

Installing the addon by hand

The Install addon button does this for you. Do it yourself only if you prefer to:

1. Download AnvilbookExport.zip from the releases page.
2. Unzip it into the game's Interface/AddOns folder, next to your other addons. You should end up with …/Interface/AddOns/AnvilbookExport/AnvilbookExport.toc.
3. Log out to the character screen, and make sure Anvilbook Export is ticked in the AddOns list.

Why /reload

WoW writes addon data to disk only when you log out, disconnect, or type /reload. No addon can write files at another time, so /reload is how the data reaches anvilbook.

In game

The AnvilbookExport addon also shows anvilbook in the game. Type /anvilbook, or click the minimap button.

• The window has the web page's tabs: Crafts, Plan, History, Sell-through, Share and Settings. Right-click a craft to plan it.
• When you open the auction house, the plan's shopping list docks beside it. A row gets a tick when you have bought it, and one button searches for the whole list in Auctionator.
• Item tooltips show the listed count, the price change since the scan before, the craft profit, and the disenchant value.
• Esc > Options > AddOns > Anvilbook turns each part on or off. /anvilbook options opens it.

The crafting math runs in the game, so a change applies at once. The prices come from the app's last scan. After you scan in the current session, Auctionator's own prices replace them.

The app writes its data to Interface/AddOns/AnvilbookExport/AnvilbookData.lua after each import, and the game reads it at the next /reload. Thus the app's numbers in the game are one /reload behind: scan, /reload (the app imports), then /reload again to see them. Settings and sharing switches that you change in game reach the app at your next /reload or logout. Sign-in and account deletion stay in the browser.

After you install or update the addon, restart the game. A /reload does not load the files that a new addon version adds.

Settings

The Settings tab holds the auction cut, the cast time, filters, the disenchant table, and the file paths. A small config file also exists for values needed before the app starts:

~/.config/anvilbook/config.toml (Windows: %APPDATA%\anvilbook\config.toml)

savedvariables_path = "/path/to/WTF/Account/12345#1/SavedVariables/Auctionator.lua"
port = 8765
open_browser = true

Data lives in ~/.local/share/anvilbook/ (Windows: %APPDATA%\anvilbook\): the price history database and a cached copy of the item database.

Sharing (optional)

Sharing is off. The app uploads nothing until you turn on a switch in the Share tab, and each switch is separate:

• Send my price scans uploads, after each import, the realm, the time of the scan, and one row per item: its id, the lowest price, and how many are listed.
• Publish what this character can craft, per character, uploads that character's name, its professions with skill levels, and the recipes it knows.

Your gold, your bags and your disenchant results are never uploaded. An account needs only a username and a password; there is no email and no password reset. "Delete my account and everything I sent" removes all of it.

Sharing goes to https://anvilbook.traagel.dev, which also shows the shared prices and crafting profits on the web. To use a different server, set Sharing server in the Settings tab. To run your own, see docs/server.md.

Known limits

• Built for WoW Forever beta, client 1.60.1, with an English client.
• Prices come from the lowest listing of each item, not the full price ladder, so a large buy costs more than the estimate.
• Disenchant yields start as estimates, and get replaced by your measured results.
• On Forever, Auctionator loses its own price database on each game load. anvilbook imports each save before that happens, which is a good reason to keep it running.

Development

uv run pytest                 # the app; the server tests skip without a database
luajit tests/addon_harness.lua src/anvilbook/addon/AnvilbookExport/AnvilbookExport.lua
luajit tests/addon_harness_modern.lua src/anvilbook/addon/AnvilbookExport/AnvilbookExport.lua

The addon harnesses stub the WoW API, so they need LuaJIT but not the game. pytest also runs LuaJIT, when it is installed: test_calc_parity.py checks that the addon's Lua calculator gives the same answers as the Python one, and test_addon_ui.py drives the in-game UI on a data file that the app wrote. The server tests need Postgres; see docs/server.md.

If the game's addon folder is a symlink to this repository, the app writes its data file into your working copy. Tell git to leave it alone:

git update-index --skip-worktree src/anvilbook/addon/AnvilbookExport/AnvilbookData.lua

Credits

• Item and recipe data: nexus-devs/wow-classic-items (MIT)
• Charts: uPlot (MIT)
• Prices: the Auctionator addon

anvilbook is not affiliated with Blizzard Entertainment.

Licence

MIT. See LICENSE.