A tradesman without tools would be challenged to create any final product. WoW isn't much different. If you're looking to master multiple professions across multiple toons, and make the most of your crafting time, you may eventually consider picking up a mod or two to help you.

I was recently introduced to Advanced Trade Skill Window by a guild mate who, like myself, has multiple characters with many, many professions. The idea in my alt farm is that I'm trying to produce myself any final product I might need. This includes enchants, reagents, and even the transmutes required to produce gems. As we were chatting about this kind of set up, she immediately filled me in on the basics of ATSW. Gregg first looked at ATSW for AddOn Spotlight back in October. But considering how helpful it is to profession-hounds, I wanted to spend a little more time with it now.

Advanced Trade Skill Window replaces your standard in-game trade skill windows. Whenever you hit the action button for your profession, Advanced Trade Skill Window will automatically open. Right off the bat, you'll get one of my favorite benefits of the mod. The screen is much, much bigger than the native interface, which gives you a lot more room to scroll through your recipes. But, obviously, there's a lot more to the tool.
Basic Setup

The basic setup of the mod is stupid easy. You download the mod (I got mine from Curse), power up WoW, and log into your character. You might want to make sure it's enabled, if you're using some other system to control your mods.

As soon as you log in and open your trade skill for the first time, the mod will scan your available recipes to store in its local cache. I'm not much of a tech guy, but there's different options the mod uses across characters. It makes sense that it would have to store that information to your hard drive for when your character's window isn't available.

The scan's fairly quick. My home computer is pretty robust, but I loaded my trade skills while hanging out in Dalaran -- not exactly a lag-free place to hang out. It only took a few seconds to load about three hundred recipes. It's pretty quick about its business.

Recipe Organization

Maybe it's just me, but I've always felt a little limited by the in game interface. Sometimes I want to be able to browse my recipes by name, by category, or by whatever other method I think of. Most importantly, when levelling up a new craft, I want to be able to put my entire inventory of recipes in order of level.

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