RareHunt: The Complete Guide
Why I built it, how the community spawn-sharing actually works under the hood, the rules quiz that gates first use, and what to do when it can't tell you anything about a rare you know is up.
I built RareHunt because I was tired of alt-tabbing to a static spreadsheet that had no idea whether a rare had died five minutes ago or five hours ago. This guide goes deeper than the addon page — if you just want the download and the pill-list of features, that's on the addons page. This is the how-it-actually-works version, plus the questions people keep asking me.
1.How the sharing actually works
There's no central server behind this. Every player running RareHunt reports sightings over a shared, hidden /RareHunt channel, and your own client builds its "next spawn" estimate from what everyone else running the addon has actually reported. That has one honest consequence: if nobody with the addon was online and watching when a rare died, there's no report to work from, and the addon will say so rather than invent a countdown. The whole system only gets better the more people are quietly running it in the background.
2.The rules quiz, and why it's stricter than it looks
The first time you open RareHunt, you get a rules screen you have to actually pass before the addon starts working, and I built it deliberately strict. The real gate isn't the Yes button — it's the No button. Clicking Yes there is treated as a wrong answer, specifically to verify you actually read the rules instead of skimming straight to the buttons. You get five total attempts to get it right, and on the fifth wrong answer the addon disables itself permanently on that character. There's no undo.
This sounds harsh for a rare tracker, but the reason is the shared channel: every person's messages go through the same pipe, so misuse from one account (typing in the channel manually, mashing Request Sync hoping it'll sync faster) risks getting the whole channel flagged, which takes everyone's tracking down at once, not just the person responsible. The rules exist to protect the shared resource, not to annoy you.
3.Commands
/rhor/rarehunt— open the tracker window/rh sync— request a sync from the channel/rh config— open settings
There's also a 3-minute cooldown built into sync requests and spacing built into broadcasts — both exist for the same reason as the rules quiz, keeping the shared channel from getting flagged for flooding.
4.Frequently asked
Why does it say there's no data for a rare I know is up right now? Nobody running RareHunt has reported it recently. The estimate is only as good as what the community has actually fed it — if you're the first person to notice it in a while, be the one to report it and the next person benefits.
Is anything about this unsafe or private? The channel only carries the addon's own automated spawn messages. You're never meant to type in it manually, and the rules quiz exists specifically to make sure people understand that before they get access.
Why does clicking Request Sync repeatedly not speed anything up? It's cooldown-gated on purpose. Mashing it does nothing except confirm you didn't read the rules screen.
What happens if the estimate turns out to be wrong? The "est. next spawn" number is exactly that, an estimate built from other players' reports, not a lookup against the server itself. If a rare actually died earlier than anyone reported, or someone forgot to report a kill, the estimate can be off. Treat it as a strong guide for where to look, not a guaranteed countdown.
Do I need to pass the rules quiz again on a new character? Yes — the quiz and the five-attempt limit are tracked per character, since each character connects to the shared channel independently.
5.Troubleshooting
If the connection pill shows disconnected, click Join Channel — it's safe to click repeatedly, it simply won't rejoin if you're already connected. If the addon seems to be behaving oddly (wrong data, unexpected spam), stop using it and report it rather than trying to fix it yourself by rejoining the channel over and over; that's exactly the kind of behavior the shared channel is sensitive to.
If you failed the rules quiz five times and the addon disabled itself, there's no in-addon undo for that — it's deliberately permanent on that character. Read carefully next time rather than clicking through, especially remembering that the "correct" first answer is No, not Yes.