Since the release of version 1.0-beta of the script, the availability of new cards in the database depended on my daily manual updates. As I begun to have less and less time to dedicate to the script and was away many weekends in a row, these updates became quite rare.
You will be happy to hear that from now on the updates to the script are strictly linked to the updates of the Python script runs every hour on my server (in the first minute of each hour) and looks for information on new cards and collections.
Isaac and Pedro also developed scripts (in Perl and /bin/sh & co. respectively) to fetch informations from the wiki and transform them into the cards database format. I would like to thank them both for their dedication to this script (and the tips I found in their scripts :-)).
So if you need to add a card to the database, add it to the Wiki and wait until the next update. If a new card is introduced with a spelling error in the card image’s name, the script will still have problems. Report the misspelled cards (those found in Tools > GreaseMonkey > Commands > Show unknown cards e.g.) on my blog as usual.
Since Facebook decided to totally replace the old layout with the new one, all my scripts need some small changes. You can find the updated versions below:
Download PackRat Helper: version 1.1.1
Download MobWars Helper: version 1.0
[This version of the script is OBSOLETE. For more informations and new releases check the Mob Wars Helper category.]
Also available at UserScripts.org, where you find a short manual.
For more informations about the installation process please check the FAQ.
[This version of the script is OBSOLETE. For more informations and newer versions check the PackRat Helper category.]
As I mentioned in my previous post the PackRat servers are undergoing a great strain due to the number of people playing the game and (which most concerns me) the number of people that use this script 24 hours a day. The developers of the game has gently asked to make some modifications to the script to limit the abuses. Since their proposal was reasonable enough, I have decided to adopt it (with some changes).
Changelog:
- Stalking works again.
- You can automatically buy only one card of each kind from the new collections every 24 hours (currently “Green Scene”, “High Seas Century” and “Trick or Treat). For the rest of them you’ll get a confirmation pop-up).
- After collecting 2000 credits or discovering 10 pop-ups since your last visit to Your Pack, the script will pause.
- After 2 hours since your last visit to Your Pack, the script will browse the pages at a much slower pace.
- The minimum delay for browsing is 3 seconds, while for market stalking it is 30 seconds.
Download PackRat Helper: version 1.1
Also available at UserScripts.org, where you find a short manual.
For more informations about the installation process please check the FAQ.
The script has reached 700 daily users, which compared with the total number of PackRat players is far from negligible. It’s no surprise that we attracted the attention of the Dev’s, who contacted me in the hope to make the game a better place (for the script users, the others and the servers).
Some of the features of the script (if misused) place a great strain to the game servers and cause a denial of service for everyone. On the other side despite my best intentions there are other features that hurt the non-script users of the game: stalking for newly released cards e.g. makes impossible for a normal user to buy these items.
Thus I am discussing with the Dev’s the limits to put on the script to make it more fair for everyone. As far I am thinking about:
- Putting a limit on how long the script can run unattended (e.g. 2 hours). Afterwards it will just stop and ask for human input.
- The credit module will become inert after a certain amount of money. E.g. if you have more than 20k credits, you surely don’t need more.
- The script will stalk normally for old cards, but when you are looking for newly released items you will have to manually confirm your intention of buying that item (and give a chance to others to buy the card).
I gave the link to this post to PackRat’s Dev’s so that we can discuss the problems together.
[This version of the script is OBSOLETE. For more informations and newer versions check the PackRat Helper category.]
At a popular demand and since it doesn’t seem to provide any valuable data, I removed the pop-up that relayed the error messages when the menu is not available.
Changelog:
- Removed the pop-up with errors.
- Update version 1.0.2: a last bugfix for the market stalking fix.
Download PackRat Helper: version 1.0.1, version 1.0.2
Also available at UserScripts.org, where you find a short manual.
For more informations about the installation process please check the FAQ.
[This version of the script is OBSOLETE. For more informations and newer versions check the PackRat Helper category.]
Since the release of the 1.0-beta version of the script a month ago, the script has improved greatly on the stability and features level. That’s why we are now proud to present the first stable 1.0 release.
The stalking module that was broken a couple of days ago by an update in the PackRat application is working again and some minor features you requested were added.
I’d like to thank Donna for her donation to this project.
Changelog:
- The script takes into account the new changes to buying introduced by the PackRat developers. Market stalking will work again.
- There is an option to browse only through Rats in the Browse section.
- An option to stalk every market (instead of only those were there are known cards from the shopping list) has been added. Use it if you are looking for cards that are not already in the database.
- A fourth shopping list was added: “Empty”. It can be useful if you are looking only for cards that are not in the database.
- There is an option to steal locks even if they are not in the shopping list. It can be useful to free some space in the pack, while not buying any lock from the markets while market stalking.
- A couple of new script commands were introduced: “Show pop-up statistics” and “Show unknown cards”. The second one can be useful to correct some misspelling done by the PackRat Devs. E.g. if the image file for “Any Card” has a name that is different from “any-card” (e.g. “Any%20Card” or ‘any-cadr”, etc.) I must take this into account in the database to correctly detect it.
Download PackRat Helper: version 1.0
Also available at UserScripts.org, where you find a short manual.
For more informations about the installation process please check the FAQ.
[This version of the script is OBSOLETE. For more informations and newer versions check the PackRat Helper category.]
Since I will be away for most of the next weekends, thus being unable to update the database of known cards, I offer you the possibility to pick-up/steal/buy cards from unknown collections or unknown cards from selected collections.
I would like to thank Texy for her donation to this project.
In other news this script has reached 500 daily users from around the globe (based on the daily database downloads).
Changelog:
- You can select “Add unknown collections to current shopping list” in the preferences panel to collect cards from collections that are not already in the database.
- The “Add unknown cards from selected collections to current shopping list” allows you to hunt for newly released cards from your working collections without having to wait for the database update.
Download PackRat Helper: version 1.0-rc2
Also available at UserScripts.org, where you find a short manual.
For more informations about the installation process please check the FAQ.
[This version of the script is OBSOLETE. For more informations and newer versions check the PackRat Helper category.]
After several months since the first 0.1 release we are proud to present you the first release candidate for version 1.0. The major improvement from the last beta release is the new stealing module that allows you to steal valuable cards from rats and upgrade the cards you need so that whenever you need to steal something important you’ll have a 7000 points card in your pack.
Another improvement is the way the script decides which cards to steal/buy/pick-up as pop-ups: you’ll have three choices, all cards from selected collections, an automatically generated list of missing cards or a fully personalized list.
Changelog:
- New stealing module to steal important cards from Rats only and upgrade your droppable cards.
- You can select which cards you don’t need under the collection preferences.
- Shopping lists: fully personalized choice of the shopping list for the steal, stalk and pop-up module.
- A configurable delay for the stalking module and the amount of free space to leave in the pack.
- A Pause/Resume button for Brian, in additional to the traditional PAUSE shortcut.
- Many small changes and bug fixes.
Download PackRat Helper: version 1.0-rc1.3
ATTENTION: for those who are upgrading, please flush the scripts preferences (with Tools > GreaseMonkey > Script Commands > Reset PackRat preferences) before reporting errors.
Also available at UserScripts.org, where you find a short manual.
For more informations about the installation process please check the FAQ.
[Update: Version 1.0-rc1.1 corrects the glitch reported in comment #3,
Version 1.0-rc1.2 does not update the pack if the steal failed,
Version 1.0-rc1.3 counter-acts the changes in the stealing procedure done by the Pack Rat developers.]
[This version of the script is OBSOLETE. For more informations and newer versions check the PackRat Helper category.]
A couple of days ago I started working on the ‘Market stalking’ feature. For this purpose I had to parse the information contained in the excellent PackRat Wiki and transform it into a format usable by the script.
We are now proud to present version 1.0-beta of the script.
Changelog:
- The highlighting module can now highlight either all the cards from selected collections or just the missing cards and the ingredients for missing cards from your Vault and Pack. In the previous versions only missing cards from your Vault where highlighted. So (unless there are errors in the card database) only the cards you really need are highlighted.
- There is a database of known cards, recipes and markets where you can purchase them. The database is downloaded daily, but if you want to force an update go to Tools > GreaseMonkey > Script Commands “Update collections database”
- A market stalking module was added. This means that the script can buy all the cards that you need in order to complete the collection automatically.
- Some pop-up recognition problems where solved.
- The grinding feature was improved.
- The script updates your pack’s content on many pages (Make, Steal, Your Pack and Purchase). Before it only did it on the ‘Your Pack’ page. Note that when you purchase a card you must still go to Your Pack in order to make it available for grinding: the ID number of the card you bought don’t appear on the Purchase page.
- There were some changes to stealing made by the PackRat developers. The script takes them into account (meaning that grinding will work again).
The script takes the names of the cards from the name of the image files (they are the only ones available on every page). The PackRat developers added some misspellings to the names of the images (either on purpose or probably by mistake), so some informations in the database may be wrong.
We need your help: to identify the misspelled cards in the database, please go to about:config and look for the key ‘packrat*missing’. It contains the names of the cards that are not in the database. Please go to your vault and then report the entries from the collections you have completed as comments (and check the other comments too in order not to duplicate the information).
If you appreciate this release and were hesitating about making a donation, don’t hesitate any more 
. The database will need a daily update from now on, with the new collections coming and other corrections.
Download PackRat Helper: version 1.0-beta2
ATTENTION: for those who are upgrading you may consider forcing the update of the collections database (which was previously scheduled every week) with Tools > GreaseMonkey > Script Commands > Update collections database.
Also available at UserScripts.org, where you find a short manual.
For more informations about the installation process please check the FAQ.
[Update: Version 1.0-beta2 solves the problem with selecting multiple collections]
[This version of the script is obsolete. For more informations check the PackRat Helper category.]
After some changes in the Facebook application the ‘popup’ module of this script stopped working properly. This new version corrects this bug and adds two new modules: ‘highlight’ and ‘grinding’.
Changelog
- Corrected the malfunction in the ‘popup’ module.
- Added a way to specify the standard delay for actions (in the preferences).
- Added a menu command (accessible via Tools > GreaseMonkey > Script Commands) that resets the database and is totally equivalent to reinstalling the script.
- Added a ‘highlight’ module like in the 0.4 series: missing cards from selected collections are highlighted and moved in front of the pack.
- Added a ‘Delete cards from completed collections’, that cleans the markets and friend packs from collection that we already finished.
- Added a ‘grinding’ module. When active it will automatically steal cards from friends packs and drop the same card instead. It can be useful for low level characters to level up.
- (Version 0.10.3) From this version you have to go to Your Friends page at least once to give the script the chance the read the list of your friends.
PackRat Helper: version 0.10.5
Also available at UserScripts.org, where you find a short manual.
For more informations about the installation process please check the FAQ.
[Update: in version 0.10 the 'highlight' module updated the 'credit' preferences...
Version 0.10.2 corrects other minor bugs,
Version 0.10.3 corrects not recognized cards (like 'roulette=wheel')
Version 0.10.4 corrects grinding of mismatched cards.
Version 0.10.5 corrects another "In the Oven" problem.]
