A free, open-source guide addon for World of Warcraft: Forever: step-by-step leveling routes for every race from 1 to 60, a waypoint arrow that walks real paths, and guides for class quests, professions, reputations, mounts and pets.

polestar.guide: every guide, community guides and the docs · Polestar Discord: questions, feedback and bug reports · Polestar is free; if it saves you a few hours, you can buy me a coffee.

One person at a time. Goals tick off as the game confirms them; done people fold away.	While you're here. Goals from other steps, offered when you are close to them.
New spells when you level up. What to train, what it costs, where; Upgrade updates your bars.	Every guide in one place. Leveling, class quests, professions, Lookup and Dungeons.

Quick start · What it is · A look inside · polestar.guide · Community guides · Polestar Client · Features · Help · How the routes are made · Building from source · Contributing · Data and licensing

Play Install the addon and follow the arrow.

Browse the guides Every guide, step by step, on polestar.guide.

Write guides Publish your own routes as a community guide.

Work on Polestar Fix a guide, build the addon, run the tests.

Quick start

1. Install it one of three ways:
   • The CurseForge app: search for Polestar Guides and install it, then skip to step 3.
   • The Polestar Client: a small app for Windows, macOS and Linux that finds the game, installs Polestar and keeps it up to date, community guides included. Skip to step 3.
   • By hand: download Polestar-<version>.zip from the newest release, under Assets (not "Source code").
2. Unzip it into the game's AddOns folder, so the Polestar folders (Polestar, Polestar_Guides, Polestar_Codex, Polestar_Nav and the others, with one Polestar_<language> folder per client language such as Polestar_deDE) sit directly inside it: World of Warcraft/_classic_beta_/Interface/AddOns/ on the beta client, _forever_/Interface/AddOns/ on the _forever_ client. The same zip works for both; if you have both clients installed, unzip into each one. In the game's AddOns list they all sit under one "Polestar" heading, which its arrow folds away.
3. Restart the game completely (a /reload does not load new addons) and log in. The guide window opens with a guide for your race, level and zone: follow the arrow, and the goals tick themselves off as you play.

Good to know:

• /polestar guides opens the hub: every guide, Lookup, Dungeons and Rares. /polestar options holds every setting; quest markers on the map are off until you turn them on under Map. A click on the Polestar button on the minimap's edge hides everything Polestar shows, and a second click brings it all back; right-click it for a short menu (the guide window, the arrow, whether hiding keeps the arrow), drag it to move it (Options, Map, Guide & quests, Minimap button turns it off).
• /polestar skip moves on for good; /polestar next and prev only look ahead or back.
• Updating: the CurseForge app and the Polestar Client update Polestar for you. By hand, delete the old Polestar folders, then unzip the new release the same way. Coming from 0.2.x, also delete the Polestar_Guides_deDE, Polestar_Names_deDE kind (one of each per language): Polestar_deDE and its siblings replace them, and Polestar reminds you at login while they are still there.
• "No guides installed" or "Polestar Guides is turned off": Polestar Guides is unticked in the game's AddOns list. The list shows it indented under Polestar, and ticking Polestar (after Disable All, say) does not tick it. Polestar asks once at login, and the guide window and the guide menu have a Turn on Polestar Guides and reload button that turns it and its parts back on for all your characters. By hand: tick Polestar Guides and the rows under it, or right-click Polestar in the list and pick the option that enables its whole group.
• Memory: the arrow's walking routes (Polestar_Nav) load after login, never in combat, and each continent's walking maps load when you get there. Walk real paths (Options, Arrow & routes) off never loads them.
• Optional: Polestar_Recorder (Polestar_Recorder-<version>.zip in the same release, or from the Polestar Client) records your play for the recording program that improves the routes. With the Polestar Client it records while sharing is on, which it is by default (one click in the Client stops it, and /psrec off always wins); on its own it stays off until you type /psrec on.
• Community guides are routes other players publish for Polestar, on polestar.guide: see Community guides.
• Something wrong? Click the bug in the guide window, beside Skip: say what went wrong; the report already holds the step, where you stand, your other addons and the versions. Copy report and post it in #bugs on the Polestar Discord: a bot files it for the developers and replies in your thread when it's fixed. Get the invite is there if you're not in the Discord yet. Have a GitHub account? Open on GitHub pre-fills a new issue with your report. /polestar report opens the window too, and issues are welcome as well. The release's SHA256SUMS holds the zips' checksums.

What it is

Polestar is one addon for the whole of WoW: Forever. It carries 256 guides: 61 leveling guides that take both factions from 1 to 60 from every race's starting zone (Zephras Isle for the Skyborne included), 82 class guides for every class's quest chains and class mounts, the twelve professions from 1 to 300, 27 reputations, 7 exploration guides, the Legacy challenges, 64 collectible guides (mounts and pets) and 2 miscellaneous guides. Every one of them can be read step by step on polestar.guide.

Around the guides it adds a 3D waypoint arrow that walks real paths (on Polestar's walking maps, with a router that started from Shortest Path Forever's by Cillian Berragan) and a travel planner, quest markers on the map, gear advice on tooltips, quest rewards and bags, a search for where any item, mount or pet comes from, a dungeon quest journal, rare alerts and the quality-of-life helpers a long leveling session needs. Its interface and its guides read in English, German, French, Spanish (Spain and Latin America), Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Korean and Chinese (simplified and traditional).

The leveling routes are not hand-picked. Every race plays its own starting zone (to about level 12, the Skyborne to about 15), then all the Horde races share one route from the Barrens to 60 and all the Alliance races one from Westfall. Polestar Forge builds them from the game's data and Forever's quest data, elite and group quests included, writes the guides, and plays them the way a player follows them, refusing any step that can't be done as written. Every round of routes is read step by step, and a fix from a player's report becomes a permanent record the next build keeps (How the routes are made).

Players publish their own routes for Polestar as community guides on polestar.guide, and the Polestar Client installs them and keeps them up to date (Community guides). Each new character's first login opens a short welcome: a hello and what Polestar does; on the account's first character, quest automation, the guide at login and the color scheme, then the route style (Fastest, Balanced or Roads, with a line on what each does); then the guide Polestar suggests for that character, the Discord and community guides (/polestar welcome shows it again).

Note

Beta. Every guide compiles, lints and plays to the end in a simulator for every race and class it serves, and the route checker plays every leveling guide to 60 the way a player follows it. Tell us what you find on Forever: every report becomes a fix the next build keeps. Forever's new 30-60 content (Riverglades, Shen'dralas, Mount Hyjal) is not in the routes yet: the Recorder's explorer mode maps it as players go there.

A look inside

Polestar's own windows, rendered from the addon on a game scene (game art © Blizzard Entertainment). The GIFs above show it moving; these are the rest.

Routes for every race. Each race's own start, then one route per faction to 60.	Flights, boats and your Hearthstone. Every leg timed, waits included.
Lookup. Where any item, mount, pet, recipe, quest or NPC comes from.	Dungeons. Every dungeon's quests, their chains and rewards.
Nearby services. The nearest vendor, repair, inn, flight master or trainer.	A tidy quest log. Quests the route no longer needs, in one list.

Lookup, Dungeons and Rares read the Codex, a data pack that ships in the release as Polestar_Codex (Lookup, Dungeons and Rares). Renders of every window and state, drawn without the game, are in docs/preview.

polestar.guide

polestar.guide is Polestar's website: the guides, the community guides, the Polestar Client and the docs in one place.

• The guide library. Every guide Polestar ships, step by step as the guide window shows it, searchable by zone, class, mount or reward. Pick your race for your road from 1 to 60: Alliance or Horde, zone by zone.
• Class leveling pages. Each class's races, class quests and gear advice while leveling.
• Community guides. Routes players write and publish, free to download (Community guides).
• The docs for players, guide authors and contributors, with every slash command, option and key binding, and every release's changes. AI assistants can read the site from its llms.txt.

Community guides

Guides for Polestar written by other players and published as their own addons. Install one next to Polestar and its guides show up in the guide menu under Community guides, with the arrow, the map markers and everything else Polestar does. Each is made and supported by its author.

Most are published on polestar.guide, which keeps them safe to play and fair to their authors:

• Plain text, built by Polestar. An author publishes the guide files, never code: the site builds every version with Polestar's own compiler, so no author's code runs in your game. It also checks every step against the game data and gives the author its notes; what to change is the author's call, and the notes never hold a version back.
• Scanned and reviewed. Every version is scanned on VirusTotal before it is published, and its page links the report. A moderator reviews each author's first version, and any later one that changes owner or installs different addon folders.
• Pulled when it must be. A person reviews every copyright notice; a takedown removes the guide from the site and from every player's Polestar Client. A version found to be harmful or broken can be turned off in the Client for everyone who has it, with the reason shown.

Installing a community addon

1. Find one on polestar.guide and install it with the Polestar Client, which keeps it up to date. Or download it from wherever its author publishes it and install it like any addon, next to the Polestar folders.
2. Restart the game. Its guides appear in the guide menu (/polestar guides) under Community guides.
3. Options > Community guides (/polestar packs) turns each one on or off without a reload, and picks where the guide for your level is suggested from.

A community addon never replaces Polestar's guides or another one's. Report problems in it to its author, not to Polestar, and install them only from authors you trust.

Import strings

A short guide shared as a single line of text (a quest chain, an item, a mount, an errand) can be pasted on the Import page without installing anything: /polestar import opens it, or follow the foot of the hub's left rail above Options. Polestar shows what the guide is before saving it, says why when it turns one down, offers Update for a newer version and keeps your progress, and lists your imported guides with Delete. Imported guides appear in the guide menu under Community guides > Imported, credited to their author, and are never suggested on their own.

Writing a community addon

Write leveling guides in plain text and publish them as your own addon, with the tools Polestar uses for its own: the guide format, the compiler, lint, playtest, and in the game the guide engine, the arrow and the map markers. Hand over to any of Polestar's guides with next, so your addon can cover one zone or the whole climb, under a license of your choice (Data and licensing).

git clone https://github.com/fitzforge/polestar.git
cd polestar
npm link               # puts `polestar` on your PATH
cd rust && cargo build --release -p forge && cd ..   # or a prebuilt forge from the Releases page
rust/target/release/forge data build    # the reference data every guide command reads
polestar doctor        # checks the setup and prints the fix for anything missing
cd ..                  # your pack goes beside the clone, not inside it
polestar new my-pack   # asks for the id, title, author and license
cd my-pack
polestar dev --play    # lint and build on every save, with the browser playground

To publish, sign in on polestar.guide and start a new community guide: upload the folder, or publish from GitHub Actions by pushing a tag. You send the source, never a built addon: the site builds it, shows the build report, scans it and lists it. Writing a community guide on the site walks through every step.

Start here	Then
docs/GUIDE_PACKS.md: community guides on one page, for players and authors: install, the steps from new to publishing, the checklist before you publish	docs/PACKS.md: the full handbook, with setup on each system, a first pack in 15 minutes, and every problem and its fix docs/GUIDE_CHEATSHEET.md: the guide format on one page (in full) docs/PACK_FORMAT.md: exactly what the tools write

Polestar Client

The Polestar Client is a small desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux (beta, 0.1.6). It finds WoW: Forever on your computer and:

• installs and updates Polestar's addons: Polestar, the Recorder and LibForeverData, each download checked against the checksum its GitHub release publishes. Other addons are never touched.
• installs community guides from polestar.guide and keeps them current. Updates install by themselves only if you turn that on, and then only a day after release and while the guide's publisher and folders are unchanged; a guide the site pulls is turned off or removed, with the reason shown.
• shares your play with the recording program, on by default: it sends what the Recorder records, with no character, realm or account names, and shows exactly what each upload holds. A notice says so the first time, with Stop sharing; stop, pause, or delete everything it sent, any time (docs/RECORDING.md lists every field).
• tells Polestar about new releases: after each check for updates it writes the newest Polestar release into the addon's folder, so the update card in the game knows it (docs/RECORDING.md, "Client info").

Download it from polestar.guide/client or the Client's GitHub release; its source is in apps/client.

Features

Guides and the engine

One person at a time, goals that tick themselves off, skip with undo, tabs, While you're here, group and elite quests your call, new spells at level-up, hiding Polestar in one click.

• One person at a time. In a quest hub the window shows only who to talk to now and their quests, then "Then: next person" and "Person 2 of 8"; the arrow points at that person. Counters sit right after each goal ("Kill Zhevra Chargers 3/8") and a bar at the foot shows how far into the guide you are.
• Goals check themselves off as you play: accepted and turned-in quests, kills, loot, places reached, trainers visited, skills and reputation. Your place in a guide is recomputed from your quest log, so it survives lost saved variables.
• Skip a quest. Right-click a quest's line, Skip this quest: the guide drops it and the quests that follow from it, in every guide, and the banner's Undo brings them back. Skip, at the top, passes the whole step.
• Abandoned a quest by mistake? The guide stays on its step, greys out that quest's goals and points the arrow back at its giver, and asks: go back for it, or skip it and what follows. "When you abandon a guide quest" (Options, Guide, Automation) can always do one or the other.
• Failed quests say so. A failed escort or timed quest greys its goals with "failed: abandon it and take it again", and the arrow leads to its giver.
• Timed quests count down. Their goals and the arrow show the time left ("M:SS left"); a chat line and a sound come at 5 minutes, at 1 minute and if the quest fails (Options, Questing, Quests, "Timed quest alerts"), and the step says when the way to the hand-in takes longer than the time you have left.
• It catches up. With "Skip grey quests" on, a guide you open on a character who already did part of the route goes over what is done to where you are: gray quests are left out, and so are green ones behind your progress, unless a later quest needs them. A guide you are past, given to you when no guide is open or by Start guide, hands over to the next. Item, mount, reputation, profession and class guides do every step.
• A guide for where you are. The window opens with a guide suggested for your race, class, level and location, and each guide hands over to the next one in its chain when you finish it.
• Tabs. Up to six guides open at once (a leveling route and a profession, say); quests are auto-accepted for all of them.
• Class quests come to you. When one of your class's quest guides opens (you reach its level, or its first quest becomes available), the guide window offers it in a tab next to your leveling guide (Options, Guide, Automation, "Offer class quests").
• Pin a quest along the way. Right-click any quest in the quest log, or use the guide window's menu, and its open objectives join the Along the way list beside whatever step you are on, with their map marks, the target button and the arrow, until they are done or you unpin it.
• Dynamic Questing. When you pass through the area of a later step's objective whose quest is already in your log (12 vermin as much as one chest), a "While you're here" panel under the step lists it, up to three at once; done now, that step is done or shorter when you get there. Click one for the arrow, right-click it to leave it around there (twice: for the rest of the zone). A quest ready to hand in shows the same way when its NPC is in the town you're in or a few seconds out of your way (20 by default; Options, Guide, Window, Dynamic Questing, "Hand-ins: how far out of your way"), and at that NPC it also takes the quests the next steps need ("Hand in … then take …: saves a trip back"). Pick-ups count too: walk near someone who gives a quest your guide takes later, anywhere in the guide you have loaded, and a row says "Take “” from : saves a trip back"; talking to an NPC whose quest comes in the next few steps takes it without moving the guide.
• Group quests are your call. At a quest a guide marks as a group quest, the guide window asks: Skip it keeps to the solo route, Do it with a group takes it on. "Group quests" (Options, Guide, Automation) can answer them all at once, so the route never stops to ask.
• Talent plans are paused for now: the hub's Talents section says "Coming soon".
• Reputation guides say, for each standing band, what every turn-in, kill or run pays, how many you need to the next standing, where the items come from, when kills stop counting and what the quartermaster sells.
• Professions send you to the nearest trainer, vendor or inn of your own faction from where you stand, never into a city of the other faction; a goal's cycle button picks another. In the starting zones, a character who already has a profession gets its Camping 101 quest at the campfire too, handed in at the trainer on the way.
• Class training reminder every two levels (configurable): when your guide trains you within a few steps it says so, else it names the class trainer that fits your route. At levels 40 and 60 a riding reminder shows the cost of riding and your balance, and points the arrow at your riding trainer once you can afford it.
• New spells at level-up. When you ding, a quiet card on the guide window shows the class spells you can now train (the game's own tooltip on each icon), what they cost together and whether you can pay it, and where to train: your guide's own training stop when it is a few steps away, else the class trainer that fits your route, with a button for the arrow. It goes by itself, stays away in combat and dungeons, and says nothing on levels with nothing new.
• Old ranks on your bars. Action bars keep the exact rank you put on them, so after training (and at login) a card lists the spells on your bars that are a lower rank than your spellbook's ("Renew: rank 2 to 3"), and Upgrade puts the highest rank in those same buttons, out of combat. Macros and items are never touched; right-click a spell on the card to keep it at its rank, and a lower rank you put on a bar yourself is kept too. Both under Options > Quality of Life > Vendors > Trainers.
• Elite quests with a solo way past. The leveling routes take elite and group quests where they pay, sized from the game's creature data, with the group each one wants; skip one and the guide has you grind to the route's level there instead, so you are never stranded. Quests that start from a rare drop are optional extras.
• Escort notes. On an escort quest the guide window says so under the quest's accept and under the goal to complete it: "Escort: if the NPC is not there, wait for it to respawn", so an empty spot means someone else is on the escort, not a wrong place.
• Bar at the bottom (Options, Guide, Window): puts the tabs and the step bar at the bottom edge when the window grows upward, so they stay in one place as steps get longer. Off by default.
• Hidden in dungeons and battlegrounds (Options, Guide, Window, In dungeons and battlegrounds; on by default): the guide window, its action buttons and alerts stay out of the way inside dungeons, raids, battlegrounds and arenas and come back when you leave. /polestar, the key binding or Guide window in the minimap button's menu still opens it while you are inside. The first time it hides, a note at the top of the screen says how to bring it back.
• Floating button (Options, Guide, Window, Show and hide; off by default): a small Polestar button you put anywhere on the screen. It works as the minimap button does: click it to hide or show Polestar, right-click it for the same menu, drag it to move it. It hides with the window in combat and in dungeons when those are set to hide.
• Minimap button, on for everyone: click it to hide or show everything Polestar shows, right-click it for a menu (the guide window, the arrow, whether hiding keeps the arrow), drag it to move it (Options, Guide, Window, Show and hide turns it off).
• Esc menu button: a Polestar button in the game menu opens the guide menu (Options, Appearance, Windows, Menus, "Button in the game menu").
• Hiding Polestar (a click on the minimap or floating button, Polestar in the addon list on the minimap, the Hide/show Polestar key binding or /polestar hide): everything Polestar shows goes at once, the guide window, the arrow, the buttons, alerts and toasts, the lines and pins on the map and minimap, the marks on your bags, quest windows, nameplates and tooltips, and its sounds. Your guide keeps up with what you do meanwhile, and the next click brings it all back as it was, also after a /reload. The minimap button stays, dimmed. Keep the arrow when hidden (in the minimap button's menu and under Show and hide; this character only) leaves the arrow, its travel button and its arrival sound. Opening a Polestar window (the guides, the options, their key bindings) brings Polestar back. In a fight the action buttons go or come back when it ends.

Navigation

The 3D arrow with distance and time, the travel planner, route lines, zone crossings, Go anywhere, Nearby services, other addons' waypoints.

• A 3D waypoint arrow points at the current goal, shifting from the accent to jade as you arrive, with distance and ETA. Distances read in yards, the game's unit, or in meters (Options, Arrow & routes).
• The travel planner uses known flight paths, boats, zeppelins and your Hearthstone when they are faster. Each leg has its own caption on the arrow ("Fly to Crossroads", "Take the boat to Menethil Harbor", "Hearth to Razor Hill").
• Route lines on the world map and the minimap show the way to the goal as a line, dots or sparkles, with their own colour, opacity and size; flights show dashed (Options, Guide, Arrow & routes, Line style; a switch takes them off the minimap).
• Zone crossings. Walks between zones go through the real tunnels, passes, bridges and gates (Carbonite's zone connections), one waypoint at a time ("Go to Ashenvale"): from Sun Rock Retreat to Astranaar through the Talondeep Path, not over the ridge.
• /polestar way <x> <y> [label] points the arrow anywhere on the current map.
• Go anywhere. Shift-click the world map or the minimap and the arrow takes you there, routed like any goal; Alt-click works over map icons. Click the spot again to let it go.
• Nearby services. /polestar near repair (trainer, a profession, class, weapon, reagents, vendor, food, general, arrows, bullets, ranged, innkeeper, bank, mailbox, auction, flight, stable) points the arrow at the quickest one to reach, naming a vendor's trade; the map's tracking menu and the guide window's Nearby services button list them, the button with a page of vendors (food and drink, general goods, and the ammunition and bows or guns your class can use) and one of the weapons a weapon master can teach you. Once you get there, the arrow is back on the guide.
• OpenMap. On OpenMap's seamless world map the trail dots carry on across zone borders and show on the whole-world view too. OpenMap's menu has a "Polestar trail dots" switch.
• Other addons' waypoints (Options, Integrations, TomTom). Without TomTom, "Let other addons set waypoints" (off by default) lets addons that set TomTom waypoints point Polestar's arrow and makes /way work; addons that expect TomTom's own settings may not work with it on. With TomTom, the arrow can follow TomTom's. Addon authors: Polestar.Nav.API (docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, "Nav API").
• Flight map destination. On the flight map, the destination the guide flies you to is marked with a bobbing arrow and its name above it, and a slow ripple on the node itself. With Reduce motion on, the mark stands still. With Take the marked flight on (Quality of Life, Travel; off by default), the map flies you there as soon as it opens; hold Shift at the flight master to choose yourself.
• Lock arrow and buttons (Options, Guide, Window; off by default): a stray drag no longer moves the arrow, the quest item, target and Hearthstone buttons or the flight and instance timers. Shift-drag still moves them.

Pathing by Shortest Path Forever

Real walking paths, route styles, and handing guiding to Shortest Path Forever if you prefer it.

The arrow walks real paths: round cliffs, water and walls, through the town gate and down into the mine, not over the edge. That is the work of Shortest Path Forever by Cillian Berragan (cillian.dev), who baked walking maps of the continents from the game client and wrote a router that finds a route over them a couple of milliseconds at a time, so the game never stutters. It is beautiful work, and he generously said yes when we asked to use it. Polestar's travel planner still picks the flights, boats and Hearthstone; the router that started from his walks every leg between them. It keeps to roads where they are not much longer, round steep slopes, and out of the other faction's towns; when a walk must enter one (a quest inside Southshore for a Horde character), the arrow says "Hostile town: Southshore" once as the walk starts, and the walk's journey step reads the same when the route has more steps. Route style (Options, Guide, Arrow & routes) picks how it walks: Fastest takes the shortest way over hills and across fields, Balanced (the default) keeps to roads that aren't much longer and goes round hills, and Roads stays on roads even when they're longer. Every style keeps out of the other faction's towns.

The router ships with Polestar as the Polestar_Nav folder. Polestar's walking router started from Shortest Path Forever v1.16.0 by Cillian Berragan, with thanks; Polestar maintains it since 2026-10-16. It runs on Polestar's own walking maps of Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor and Zephras Isle, made from the game's geometry in a format grown from his by a port of his map baker (GPL-3.0-or-later; what came from where is in addon/Polestar_Nav/CREDITS.md). Walk real paths (Options, Arrow & routes) turns it off. If you like it, try his addon: Shortest Path Forever on CurseForge plans whole journeys with flights, boats, zeppelins, portals and live departure times.

Shortest Path Forever: an option. With it installed, Polestar still guides by default. Hand guiding to Shortest Path Forever (Options, Integrations) hands it the route instead: each goal goes to Shortest Path Forever, whose arrow, route and journey take you there, and Polestar's own arrow, route lines, journey steps, travel button, transport alerts, map clicks and /way step aside, so the two never guide at once (Polestar's walking maps are not even loaded). The guide window and the map pins stay. A kill or collect area is handed over as an area, so it holds you there until the goal is done; if you clear or replace the journey, Polestar leaves it be until the guide moves on. With the option off, a journey you start in Shortest Path Forever itself still wins: Polestar steps aside the same way while it runs, and guides again when it ends. If Shortest Path Forever finds no way to a goal, or turns its journeys off, Polestar's own arrow guides you there instead.

Quests and the map

Quest markers and nameplate counts, services and rares on the map, the Target button, Quick Keybind Mode and key bindings.

• Quest markers: givers, objectives and turn-ins on the world map and the minimap, with tooltip lines on the mobs and items a quest needs and quest levels in the log. Nameplate icons mark the mobs you still need, with a live kill or loot count beside the quest icon ("3/10", "3/10 · 1/8" for two quests), beside the health bar of EllesmereUI and other replacement nameplates too: left or right of the bar, or above the name, as you choose.
• Rare and treasure spawns, dungeon entrances, flight masters, docks and inns can mark the map too. Every map icon is off by default and turns on under Map in the options; the arrow's target, its route and the regions the guide step's mobs and objects spawn in (shaded on the world map and the minimap) always show.
• NPC services and mailboxes on zone and city maps (Map, Rares & travel, NPC services; off by default): class trainers and mailboxes, with repair, vendors, bankers, profession trainers, weapon masters and the rest one click away. A click sets the arrow there.
• A world map without fog of war, with coordinates and zone level ranges.
• The step's item glows in your bags (and in Baganator): the carcass, the seeds or the horn the step uses or has you collect.
• Hide the game's quest tracker (Options, Questing; off by default).
• The Target button (Options, Questing, Buttons; bindable): targets the step's mobs by name, or the NPCs it sends you to when it has no mob, the arrow's goal first and the next name on each click. Its icon shows what you do with the one it targets next (a speech bubble, ! or ? for an NPC, a sword or a bag for a mob, a skull for an elite, rare or boss, or their face once you have seen them), with the name beside it in green, red or gold and small icons for the names after it.
• Mark what they target (Options, Questing, Buttons; off by default): the target button and the step key put a raid icon on the mob or NPC they target — a skull and a star by default, configurable — and pressing again never takes an icon off. Either can be set to "A new one each press", so the last few targets keep theirs. Your party sees the icons. In a party you don't lead, only a mob or NPC with no icon yet gets one, so a mark someone else placed stays; in a raid it marks only when you lead or assist.
• New in Forever. Quests Forever added carry a small ∞ mark on their step, in While you're here, in the Codex and in quest tooltips (Options, Guide, Window, "Mark quests new in Forever").
• Bind the buttons from Quick Keybind Mode (Options > Keybindings > Quick Keybind Mode, or an action bar addon's /kb): hover the Target, quest item, Hearthstone, rare, bag or travel button and press a key (with Shift, Ctrl or Alt if you like), a mouse button or the wheel; Escape unbinds. While the window is open, the buttons the guide doesn't need right now show dimmed in their places, named, so you can bind them too, and go again when it closes. The window's Okay keeps the keys (for this character only if you tick its box), Cancel drops them. Nothing changes in a fight.
• Key bindings (Options > Keybindings): all of Polestar's, the Recorder's included, have a Polestar section of their own, and searching "polestar" there finds them.

Playing in a party

Party sync, waiting for the group, sharing a missing quest, the party panel, Sync to my guide.

Group play works only with party members who also run Polestar. On joining a party Polestar sends one small hidden hello; a member who answers is synced, and everything below but the chat line is about them. With friends who don't run Polestar nothing shows and nothing more is sent, apart from that line. Turn each part off under Options > Questing > Quests > Group; nothing of it runs solo or in a raid.

• Party sync: each member's count shows under the quest goals you share ("Ana 5/8", "Ben done"), and on a quest you took, which of them lacks it. It is on by default; the first time a party member's progress shows, Polestar says so once in chat. What goes out: quest IDs and counts, level, XP %, class and race, your step, your guide (and pack), your Polestar version, and which quests of the steps around yours you've handed in, as hidden addon messages to your party, never to chat. Up to v0.3.2 it was off by default and that choice wasn't stored, so if you had it off, 0.3.3 turned it on once (with a chat notice); turned off since then, it stays off.
• Another Polestar version: a party member on another Polestar version gets one line in chat per session ("Ana is on Polestar 0.3.6: your guides can differ."), since the steps and quests of a guide can change between versions. Two players on the same version still see different steps when their class or race differs: each sees only the steps for their own.
• Wait for the group: when you finish an objective a party member on the same quest still needs ("Waiting on Ana: 3/8 Boar Ribs"), the step and its turn-in wait for them (nothing is handed in automatically meanwhile), and the arrow leads to the nearest place they still need. "Everyone's ready" shows once they are done. A member in another zone, or offline for more than 2 minutes, doesn't hold you, and the guide window's party line offers "Go on without them".
• Share a missing quest: a Share button on the goal of a quest you have that a member lacks, using the game's own sharing. When Polestar knows why they can't take it, it says so ("Ben (level 8, needs 10)", "already done": the game said so, or they handed it in near their step). A member whose class or race can't take the quest isn't named at all: their guide never has it.
• Party panel: a small movable panel that opens by itself the first time another Polestar member in the party is heard, with each one's level and XP, the step they are on, what they still need of yours, and whether they are dead, far away or offline. Click a name to point the arrow at them where the game gives their place on the map. Close it and it stays closed; a click on the guide window's party line or /polestar party brings it back (and says why when nothing can show yet). Without a Polestar member in the party it stays hidden.
• Sync to my guide: the party panel's "Sync to my guide" (or /polestar party sync) asks your party to move to your step. Each member who runs Polestar gets a prompt, never an automatic move, that names the quests the move passes they haven't done and the ones they did already. Accepting opens your guide (in a new tab when needed) and moves them to your step by the step itself, not its number; their ticks and skips stay, and Undo takes it back. Declining changes nothing. Once every 30 seconds.
• Loot a friend needs: "Ana still needs 2 Scalding Mornbrew" under a collect goal, and on a loot window or roll with a quest item a member still needs and you don't, "For Ana: she still needs 2". Nothing is passed, rolled or said for you.
• Tell my party (on by default): the one part everyone in the party sees, Polestar or not. Party chat lines that start with the Star raid icon and the quest's link: "Polestar: [Plagued Lands] Plagued Hide 5/5, Rabid Wolves 8/8" for objectives you finish (those within a few seconds in one line), "Polestar: [Plagued Lands] is ready to turn in", and, when you loot an item that starts a quest, "Polestar: looted [Mysterious Letter], which starts [The Dark Iron War]". Nothing for what was already done when you log in, reload or join, and never the same line twice. During a boss fight, while the game holds chat back, a line waits up to two minutes. The first line says once where to change it. Party members with Polestar see Polestar's star on these lines; your own stay out of your chat unless you turn "Show my own lines in my chat too" on. Also under Options > Questing > Quests > Group: the loot line, hiding other players' Polestar lines, and "Only when someone in the party doesn't have Polestar".

Gear advice

Upgrade arrows on tooltips, quest rewards and bags, with your own stat weights.

• Upgrade indicator on item tooltips: by how much an item is an upgrade for your spec at your level, from stat weights per spec (detected from your talent points) and level band.
• On the game's reward panel every choice that is an upgrade gets a green arrow, the one to take is framed, and a coin marks the one that sells for most. Turn-in goals name the best reward, and a quest you are about to accept shows its reward when it is an upgrade.
• In your bags every item that is an upgrade gets the same green arrow, in the game's bags, in Baganator and in EllesmereUI Bags. With Pawn installed, "Leave bag arrows to Pawn" hides Polestar's.
• Your own stat weights: paste a Pawn scale string (Options, Questing, Rewards & gear, or /polestar gear import) and choose it under Stat weights as "Custom: ". It replaces the built-in weights at every level. One window lists your scales for every class: use, rename, export or delete them, change their weights, and start one from a built-in spec.

Lookup, Dungeons and Rares

Where anything comes from, every dungeon's quests, rare alerts, and the Characters page.

• Lookup searches guides, items, mounts, pets, NPCs, quests, zones, dungeons and rares, and answers "how do I get that?" with the sources ranked for your character. "Guide me" opens the curated guide or builds one on the spot. Target or mouse over a player to see their mount and how to get it; Alt-click an item link for a guide.
• Dungeons: a journal page per dungeon with every quest (where it starts and ends, its objective, chain and rewards), the bosses and the entrance. Each dungeon shows its level range and the level it's best at ("35–47 · best at 43"); For your level puts the ones that suit you first and marks the rest "Tough at your level", and the hub says what fits your level and when the rest unlock ("N now · M at level X"), with a chat line and a map pin when you reach one. Hovering a dungeon's level chip shows the XP its quests give and the levels they span. "Pick up the quests" builds a guide that collects every quest of the dungeon you can take, earlier quests first, on the shortest path from where you stand to the entrance; after the run, "Hand in the quests" guides you to where they are turned in and takes the follow-ups there.
• Rares: rares and treasures by zone with their spawns and signature drop, and an alert when one shows up on your minimap, nameplates or target. A Rare button appears under the Target button when Polestar spots a rare nearby and targets it by name (Options, Questing, Buttons, Rare button).
• Characters (/polestar alts): every character on the account with its level, zone, guide, gold and an estimate of its rested XP.

Lookup, Dungeons and Rares read the Codex, a data pack that ships in the release as Polestar_Codex. Without it Lookup still searches the guides, and each section says what is missing.

Appearance and UI suites

Colour schemes, window styles, fonts and EllesmereUI.

• Color schemes: Dusk (the default), Night and Graphite, and EllesmereUI's own panel color and accent while it is installed. On top of any scheme: your own accent or your class color, background color, opacity and brightness. Text stays legible whatever you pick: a ground too light for its text is darkened until it reads.
• Windows: the border, its color and thickness, the starlit header band and the shadow, each on or off; the guide window's style (standard, compact or transparent), scale, width and opacity; the menu scale; the arrow's style, scale, opacity and colors; reduced motion. Everything applies live, without a reload; right-click any setting to reset it.
• Fonts: the game's own by default, or Inter, or EllesmereUI's.
• EllesmereUI (Options, Integrations): Polestar follows its accent and font by default through its public skinning API, and where its Quality of Life or Friends module does the same job as a Polestar toggle, the toggle starts off.

Quality of life

Quest item, target and Hearthstone buttons, XP per hour, selling greys and repairing, training, the best quest reward, instant quest text, answers to summons and invitations; Shift skips any of them once.

Quest item, target and Hearthstone buttons; an item you loot that starts a quest you can take shows on the quest item button, glowing, until you read it (the step's own item comes first); inside a dungeon or raid the quest tracker shows only that instance's quests and gives you your list back when you leave; a hearth step while your Hearthstone is on cooldown says how long until it is ready and points the arrow at the inn; XP per hour and time to level; how long the campfire's Boosted Rest lasts and the Cozy Sleeping Bag's cooldown, and your party's Boosted Rest in the party panel; the level the guide wants you to reach, marked on the game's XP bar; selling grays and repairing (optionally from the guild bank first); buying what a step of Polestar's own guides asks you to buy (a community guide's step names what to buy and leaves it to you); learning new spells at class trainers; taking the best quest reward and wearing rewards that are upgrades; instant quest text, single-option gossip and faster auto-loot; hiding combat error spam; flight map and death helpers, and releasing at once in battlegrounds; setting your home at the inn the guide names when you talk to its innkeeper (off by default). Requests from other players: accept summons, resurrections and friends' or guildmates' party invitations; decline other party invitations, guild invitations and duels (friends and guild excepted). Hold Shift to skip auto-accept, auto-turn-in, auto-sell, training, binding or the flight helper once, or to answer a request yourself.

Updates

A card at login when a newer Polestar is out, and where Polestar learns of one.

Many problems players report are already fixed in a newer Polestar, so Polestar says when one is out. At every login, ten seconds in, a card on the guide window says "Polestar 0.3.7 is out", which version you're on and how to update: with Polestar Client installed, that it can do it for you; else the CurseForge app, Polestar Client or the zip. What's new gives you the release notes' link to copy; Got it keeps the card away for a day. A line in the guide window ("Polestar 0.3.7 is out: you're on 0.3.6.") stays until you update; its Update brings the card back. Two or more updates behind, both say so, the line can't be closed, and the card still shows once a day with its option off. The card never shows in combat, in dungeons or in the first two minutes of a fresh install. Turn it off under Options > Guide > Window (Tell me when a newer Polestar is out).

Where Polestar learns of a newer release: Polestar Client, after each of its checks for updates; party members running Polestar (the version party sync already sends); guild members running Polestar; and other players of your faction you meet. For the guild, Polestar sends one hidden hello with only its version number when you log in (at most every half hour), and a guild member on a newer release answers with theirs. For players you target or mouse over (not in your group or guild), Polestar sends one hidden addon whisper with its version number: at most once a week per player, once every 30 seconds and 10 times a session, never in combat, dungeons, cities or inns, and none once it has heard of a newer release. Their Polestar answers once with its own (at most 20 answers a session). A newer version heard only this way counts once two different players have answered with it. Nothing goes to chat. Turning party sync's sharing off stops all of these; Ask other players' Polestar which version it is (under it, on by default) stops the whispers alone. With no source at all, a Polestar first run three weeks ago or more says, in the guide window only, that updates come often.

With a gamepad

Every Polestar action on a gamepad, with its own options and bindings.

Polestar plays with a gamepad on Forever (ported from Ding! by Yendi, @moust4ki). Open its options from the minimap button (or /polestar gamepad without the game's gamepad interface): their Gamepad page names the buttons (Xbox letters or PlayStation shapes, read off the gamepad by default), and its Key bindings tab binds every Polestar action: next and previous step, browse the guide, show or hide the guide window, hide or show all of Polestar, the guide menu, the options, report a problem, and the quest item, target and Hearthstone buttons. Nothing is bound until you bind it. Press A on a row, then a button, or hold one button and press another for a combination: Polestar watches its combinations itself, keeps the second button from the game only while you hold the first, and never acts on one in a fight. With the game's gamepad interface on, LB and RB are its targeting buttons and every combination with them is the game's own: the row says so before it binds one. Tap B to cancel, hold B to bind B itself; Y unbinds. The rows take keys of the keyboard too.

The guide window never takes a button away from the game. To browse it with the gamepad, bind Browse the guide with the gamepad: the D-pad picks a line (up from the goals: Skip, the bug, the menu and the tabs), A points the arrow there or uses the quest item on its line (not with the game's gamepad interface, whose own buttons Polestar leaves alone), X shows the line's details, LB / RB look at the previous and next step, Y minimizes the window, and B gives the gamepad back to the game.

Every Polestar window you open (the guide menu with Lookup and Dungeons, the options, the welcome, the route choice, the report and copy windows, the drop-down menus) answers the gamepad while it is open: the D-pad moves the focus (an accent ring), A selects, B closes or goes back, LB / RB change tabs or pages, left / right adjust a slider or a drop-down, Y puts a setting back to its default. A window that opens by itself (the welcome on a new character, the choice of where to level next) takes no button until you press the Browse the guide button, which its bar shows. A bar under the window lists the buttons no button on screen shows; B sits on the window's close button. The gamepad goes back to the game when the window closes or a fight starts, and returns after it. Turn the bar off, or the windows' navigation altogether, on the Gamepad page. Without a gamepad plugged in, none of it shows: everything works with the mouse and keyboard as before.

Recorder

The optional recording program: what it records, and how to turn it off.

Polestar_Recorder is an optional companion addon that records your play for the recording program, to improve the routes. It records while sharing is on in the Polestar Client (on by default there, unless you stop it or type /psrec off); without the Client it is off until you turn it on (/psrec on, or Options > Recorder), and it writes nothing while off. It writes compact chunks with no character, realm or account names, and records what the guides need most: kill pace and kill XP, drops counted against what your quests still needed, which quests each NPC offered you, trainer and vendor lists, flight times, item uses and gossip choices (docs/RECORDING.md, field by field). In Forever's new zones and dungeons its explorer mode maps more on its own (creature spawns, the quest log's map points, dungeon floors, boss pulls, objects opened), nothing more about you; /psrec explore off turns it off, and Polestar Client 0.1.6 or later sends it. Recordings replace estimates with Forever facts, feed the Codex what only play shows, and record report turns them into per-step timings: passes, median and p75 time, XP per hour, time in combat, deaths and travel, then the slowest steps and detours, the steps to fix first.

Slash commands

/polestar (or /pole) shows or hides the guide window; settings live in /polestar options, grouped by what you came to do: Guide, Appearance, Map, Questing, Discovery, Quality of Life, Integrations (settings for other addons Polestar works with, such as Questie, shown while they are installed), Guide packs, Gamepad, Recorder and About, with a search that finds any setting.

With the game's gamepad interface on (Options, Gamepad, Enable Gamepad UI) there are no slash commands: the game blocks gamepad actions after any addon command typed in chat, until the game freezes. Polestar's minimap button (on by default) and its key bindings open the guide and the settings instead, and Polestar keeps out of the game's own windows.

Every slash command

Command	What it does
help	List every command
show	Show the guide window, and Polestar with it when it is hidden. /polestar alone shows or hides the window, with the action buttons and the rare and transport alerts; the arrow too only with Hide the arrow with the guide (Options, Guide, Arrow & routes), and never the arrow back to your corpse or a Spirit Healer
hide	Hide everything Polestar shows, or bring it back, as a click on the minimap button does; hide arrow turns Keep the arrow when hidden on or off
guides	Open the hub on Guides
options [page]	Open the settings, optionally on a page
next, prev	Look at the next or previous step (nothing is skipped)
skip	Skip the step shown, for good (the window offers Undo)
status	Current guide and step
guide <id>	Switch to a guide by id
tabs, tab <n>, close	List, switch and close guide tabs
path	Choose where to level next, where a guide offers a choice of route
route	Show the travel route to the current target
skipleg	Skip the travel route's current leg (a Hearthstone, flight or portal: plan the rest without it; a walk or lift: mark it done)
near <service>	Point the arrow at the nearest trainer, class trainer, repair, reagents, vendor, innkeeper, bank, mailbox, auction house, flight or stable master
way <x> <y> [label]	Point the arrow at x y on your current map (no argument clears it)
arrow show|hide|reset	The waypoint arrow (drag it to move it); while the guide hides it (Hide the arrow with the guide) or Polestar is hidden, these commands, way and near say so
reset	Clear ticks and skips for the current guide
xp	XP per hour, time to level and level splits
party [debug]	Show or hide the party panel: each party member who also runs Polestar (level, step, what they still need); debug prints what party sync sends and hears, for a report
gear [item link]	Gear advice: the weights in use, or compare an item
gear import [string]	Import a Pawn scale: opens the paste box, or imports the string given
gear scales	Open the window that manages your custom stat-weight scales
instances [clear]	Instance limits, runs and lockouts
dungeons [name]	Open Dungeons, or a dungeon's page
lookup [search]	Open Lookup, optionally searching
mount	Look up the mount of your target (or mouseover) and how to get it
rares [test]	Open Rares, or show a sample rare alert
talents	Open the Talents section (talent plans: coming soon)
questdb	Quest database status
packs	Open Options > Community guides
import	Open the Import page: paste a shared guide string to save it without installing an addon; import clear or import delete to remove it
gamepad	Open Options > Gamepad: button names and key bindings
welcome	Show the welcome again
where	Print your map and position as guide lines (zone map <id>, goto x,y live), in a box to copy
report	Report a problem with the step on screen (the guide window's bug button)
update	Show the update card when a newer Polestar is out (else whether this one is the newest, when Polestar Client says so)
discord	The invite to the Polestar Discord, to copy
debug	Toggle debug output

The Recorder has its own: /psrec on | off | ui | mark <text> | trail on [label] | trail off | clear and a few more listed by /psrec. /psrec trail on Brill records a dense position trail (a point every yard, height included) until /psrec trail off or 30 minutes; record trail <session> writes it out. /psrec ui (or Options > Recorder > Recorder window) opens a small window with the same controls, a key binding for the trail, and a checklist of the spots we need walked.

Every command with its help line, every option and every key binding are on polestar.guide's reference.

Help and feedback

• The docs answer most questions: installing, the guide window and the arrow, community guides, the FAQ, and every slash command and option.
• A wrong step? Click the bug in the guide window (or /polestar report) and post the report in #bugs on the Polestar Discord, or open it on GitHub from the same window. What makes a good report is in CONTRIBUTING.md.
• Questions, ideas and feedback are welcome on the Discord; a feature request goes in an issue.
• A security problem goes in a private report, never an issue: SECURITY.md.

How the routes are made

flowchart LR
  game["The game's data<br/>+ corrections"] --> data["Reference<br/>data"]
  data --> world["World model<br/>solo, elite and group quests"]
  world --> walks["Walks<br/>priced on the maps"]
  walks --> routes["Route search<br/>one route per faction"]
  fixes["Player reports<br/>kept as fix records"] --> routes
  routes --> guides["Guides<br/>written from the route"]
  guides --> check["Route check<br/>played like a player"]
  check --> legs["Walking legs<br/>for the arrow"]
  legs --> addon["Polestar_Guides"]

Loading

The routes are made by Polestar Forge, one program (forge build) that runs every step from the installed game to checked guides (docs/FORGE.md). Each race has its own starting zone (levels 1 to about 12, the Skyborne to about 15); from there one Horde route runs from the Barrens and one Alliance route from Westfall to 60, written once per faction and played by every race of it.

1. Reference data. Forge reads the game's own tables from the installed client, Forever's quest data and our corrections into the facts every tool uses: quests, givers and enders, objectives, spawns, items, travel (data).
2. World model. Every quest the faction can take, with its level, prerequisites and the work its objectives take: kills at the mob's camps, item drops at their rates, objects, escorts. Elite and group quests are in, sized from the game's creature data, each with a solo way past: a player who skips one grinds to the route's level there instead, and the guide gives grouping tips. Quests that start from a rare drop are optional extras the route does not count on. Dungeon, raid and PvP quests are left out.
3. Walks. Every walk a route may take is priced on the terrain, with Leffe's navigation maps where they cover it and Polestar's own walking grid elsewhere (nav).
4. Route search. Starting from the order players knew, the search reorders, adds and drops quests, from moving one stop to rebuilding a whole stretch, and keeps a change only when every step stays possible: the quest is available, the flight path is learnt, the hearthstone is ready, the quest log has room, and every fix from a player's report holds. On a shared route a change is kept only when no race gets slower (routes, model).
5. Guides. The writer turns the route into the guides: one shared route per faction, each town done in one sweep through its quest givers, class training and weapon masters on the way, hearths an hour apart and a travel line for every flight, boat and portal (writer).
6. Route check. The written guides are played the way a player follows them, for every race and class, and a step that can't be done as written is refused: a quest taken before it is available, a flight to a flight path not learnt, an item used before its quest, a hearth on cooldown, a trip made twice, a town left with work ready there (judge).
7. Walking legs. The walk into every step is worked out once and shipped with the guides, so the arrow follows it at once.

Each round of routes is then read step by step. What a reader or a player finds becomes a permanent fix record (data/route-fixes.json, data/guide-fixes.json and our corrections), never a hand edit of a guide, so the next build keeps it; the leveling guides themselves are generated (guides/GENERATED.json lists them). Every quest a route leaves out is listed with the reason, so a missing quest is a question with an answer.

Every leveling guide is checked the way a player follows it before it ships, for every race and class, and each round of routes is read step by step. Polestar is not a speed-leveling guide: the aim is a route that makes sense to play, with nothing pointless in it.

Forge's model is in docs/forge/model.md and the route check in docs/forge/judge.md. The routes of releases up to 0.2.x came from an earlier JavaScript simulator, described in docs/legacy/SIMULATION-js.md.

A guide, from source to game

Guides are plain text, compiled to Lua. The compiler fills in names, titles and coordinates from the reference data, so a line can be as short as accept 788. From the Orc starting guide (written by Forge, like every leveling guide), guides/forever/horde/orc/01-durotar.guide:

guide forever/horde/orc/01-durotar
title Durotar
faction Horde
race Orc
levels 1-12
zone Durotar
next forever/horde/02-the-barrens

step Kaltunk
  accept 4641                         -- Kaltunk, where you start
  tip Gornek waits inside the Den, the building just west of Kaltunk.
  turnin 4641                         -- Inside
  accept 788
  accept 97279
  accept 1485 only Warlock            -- Ruzan

step Training weapons and boars
  tip The weapons lie around the Den and the training grounds; the Mottled Boars roam the whole valley floor.
  kill 3098 quest 788.1
  collect 277653 quest 97279.1
  goto 42.4,68.6 "The Den"

The second step compiles to (goals wrapped and spawn lists cut short here; the compiler writes each goal on one line):

{
  title = "Training weapons and boars",
  note = "The weapons lie around the Den and the training grounds; the Mottled Boars roam the whole valley floor.",
  goals = {
    { t = "kill", quest = 788, title = "Cutting Teeth",
      target = "Mottled Boar", npc = 3098, count = 10, oi = 1,
      map = 1411, x = 42.72, y = 71.58, z = 40.3, f = "e",
      spotsPacked = "42.4,72.1,,56,6;44.3,71.2,,54,6;..." },
    { t = "collect", quest = 97279, title = "Wayward Weapons",
      item = 277653, itemName = "Abandoned Training Weapon", count = 6, oi = 1,
      map = 1411, x = 43.2, y = 71.7, f = "e",
      spotsPacked = "43.6,72.4,,54,4;44.3,70.8,,21,2;...",
      from = "Abandoned Training Weapon", fromKind = "object", fromId = 673476 },
    { t = "goto", text = "{object:3227}", map = 1411, x = 42.4, y = 68.6, f = "e" },
  },
},

Every verb, modifier and condition is in docs/GUIDE_FORMAT.md; guides of your own ship as a community addon.

Building from source

This part is for working on Polestar itself: players need only the Quick start, guide authors the Community guides section. docs/README.md maps every document, and CHANGELOG.md lists what changed in each release.

Polestar has two command lines. forge (Rust, in rust/; build it with cargo build --release -p forge there, or take a prebuilt one from the Releases page) builds the data, the guides, the walking maps and the releases: forge guide compile|lint|check, forge data ..., forge nav pack|check, forge release ... and forge changelog. The old node tools/polestar.js compile, lint, data, release and their neighbors only print the forge command now. node tools/polestar.js keeps the contributor tools that have not moved yet: playtest, find, record, new, dev, install, play, preview and the planner.

Node 24 or later (no npm dependencies) and Lua 5.1 (lua5.1, luac5.1) for the tests. Building the data needs a local Forever client: it reads the client's tables and installed addons.

forge data build --kb                     # reference data into data/forever/ (local)
forge data questdb                        # the Polestar_QuestDB pack
forge guide lint                          # check every guide
forge guide compile                       # build addon/Polestar_Guides
node --test "tests/**/*.test.js"          # the test suite
node tools/polestar.js preview            # render the UI to docs/preview/*.svg
node tools/polestar.js install --recorder # into a detected Forever or beta client
forge release version                     # the release version in package.json, guides/pack.json and every addon TOC
forge release pack                        # release zips and SHA256SUMS into dist/

npm test runs the suite. CI runs it on every push to main and every pull request, where the tests that need the locally built data skip with a reason, and fails when the committed textures or UI renders differ from a fresh media or preview build; with the data built, all pass locally. install finds the client under Wine, Proton and similar prefixes in your home folder, or takes $WOW_FOREVER_ADDONS or --dest <Interface/AddOns>; --link symlinks the folders instead, so an edit needs only a /reload.

Releases are built on a maintainer's machine, because the data addons come from the game client's tables: docs/RELEASING.md has the steps and what each zip carries.

forge --help and forge <command> --help list Forge's commands and options; node tools/polestar.js help lists the Node ones and help <command> their options; tools/README.md groups them, lists the generated files and gives the rebuild order after a data change.

Polestar Forge: making the routes

cd rust && cargo build --release -p forge && cd ..   # or a prebuilt forge from the Releases page
rust/target/release/forge doctor                     # what it finds: the game, the data, the maps
rust/target/release/forge build --guides guides --out forge-out

Forge reads the installed game, builds the data and the walks, searches every start's route, writes the leveling guides (one shared route per faction) and plays them through the route check: forge-out/report.md and check.md say what changed and what a player would trip on. Without a maintainer's data/sources, forge data fetch downloads the public data pack first. docs/FORGE.md is the guide.

The playground: the real addon in a browser

node tools/polestar.js play              # prints http://127.0.0.1:8077/
node tools/polestar.js play --fresh      # a new level 1 character, default settings

One long-lived Lua 5.1 process runs Polestar, its guides and the built data packs against the simulated world of the tests. The page shows a 1920x1080 game screen with the hub and the guide window; click, hover, scroll, drag, type into search boxes and run slash commands from the chat line. A side panel sets the look, jumps through a guide, opens any window and changes the character, position and time. Zone paintings come only from a local folder of your own client's art (--art); without it the world is dark.

The route planner: guides played on the real map

node tools/polestar.js planner art       # once: the map art (~330 MB downloaded, ~250 MB built; local only)
node tools/polestar.js nav build         # once: the navigation grid for terrain-aware walks (~750 MB, ~15-25 min; local only)
node tools/polestar.js planner           # prints http://127.0.0.1:8078/
node tools/polestar.js planner mcp       # the same commands for an AI agent (MCP over stdio)

The planner is Nivek_Gaming's idea (@Nivek_Gaming on X): his route planning inspired this tool and the navigation grid behind it. Thank you, Nivek.

Pick a guide and a character and the route plays on the game's own minimap terrain, zone by zone or as the whole 1-60 route across the continents: each step's start time and duration split into travel, combat, talking and waiting, the level and XP, the quest log and items, the spawn areas and the path. The clock is the simulator's model (docs/legacy/SIMULATION-js.md), so treat absolute hours as estimates and compare steps against each other. With the navigation grid built (node tools/polestar.js nav build, local only) every walk follows the terrain, the walks between mobs in a kill area too: around mountains, into caves and buildings, swimming, dropping off ledges, mounted from level 40, at the speed of the character's class (Ghost Wolf, Travel Form...). Flights follow the flight master's real path. The first playback of a route shows straight lines while its walks are routed in the background ("Routing…" in the footer), then "Routed N of M legs" (and the hops between spawns); routes are cached under data/local/nav, so the next start is immediate. A walk the grid cannot route stays a straight line, marked ≈ in the steps list. Layers adds Walkable (what the grid can walk: blocked, steep, climb, water, indoors, zoomed in) and Arrow aids (the crossings and approach chains of nav aids). In Edit mode, drag a waypoint, add one with a click, bend a travel line into a new labelled waypoint ("Cross the bridge"), or change any goal or step in its form: every edit is written into the .guide file at once (undo with Ctrl+Z; Changes lists and reverts them; Compile builds the addon folder), so dev picks it up too. Given a pack folder it edits that pack; planner mcp lets an assistant read routes, edit them and drive the open page while you watch (claude mcp add polestar-planner -- node tools/polestar.js planner mcp). The map art is the Forever client's own, fetched from wago.tools and never committed or shipped.

Measuring routes with recordings

forge record import                     # the Recorder's chunks -> data/recordings (forge record pull: the server's)
forge data build --kb                   # fold recordings into the reference data
node tools/polestar.js record report    # how long each guide step really took

record report [--guide <text>] [--json] lists, per step, passes, median and p75 time, XP per hour, time in combat, deaths, turn-ins and travel, then the slowest steps, steps far over the guide's median and detours. Reloads, AFK breaks (idle time counts at most 5 minutes), going back a step and other tabs are accounted for.

At Forever's launch, the data is rebuilt and Forge builds the routes again to take in the new zones (docs/FORGE.md).

Project layout

Path	What lives there
addon/Polestar	The addon: engine, navigation, UI, modules, textures drawn in code (addon/README.md; every addon: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, "Overview")
addon/Polestar_Guides	The compiled guides (generated by compile)
addon/Polestar_ItemDB	Item stats for gear advice: Items.lua from forge data itemdb, Forever.lua from forge data gear
addon/Polestar_Nav	The arrow's walking routes: Polestar's walking router, started from Shortest Path Forever's by Cillian Berragan (GPL-3.0-or-later), on Polestar's walking maps of Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor and Zephras Isle, grown from his format (nav pack; CREDITS.md)
addon/Polestar_Recorder	The optional session recorder
guides/forever	The guide sources: leveling, professions, reputation, exploration, Legacy, collectibles
tools	The command line (polestar.js), the guide compiler, the simulator, data importers, texture and preview renderers, the playground (tools/README.md)
rust	Polestar Forge, the Rust pipeline that makes the routes and writes them into the guides: one forge program (docs/FORGE.md)
apps/client	The Polestar Client, the desktop app that installs and updates the addons and community guides and sends recordings (apps/client/README.md)
services/ingest	The recording program's server: it checks and stores the chunks the Polestar Client sends (services/ingest/README.md)
tests	node --test suites; tests/lua is the simulated game client they run the addon in (tests/README.md)
docs	Architecture, guide format, Forge, the suite's scope, UI renders (docs/README.md)
data/	Local build products and recordings, gitignored

docs/ARCHITECTURE.md describes the modules and their contracts, docs/SUITE.md the suite and what is out of scope (best-in-slot lists, loot browsing, talent builds), and docs/DESIGN.md the visual system.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome, guide fixes most of all: a step in the wrong order, a quest that is not where the guide says, a tip that would have saved you a minute. Questions and ideas are welcome on the Polestar Discord.

• Found a wrong step? A guide's title names its file under guides/forever/; fix the step, run forge guide lint and playtest --filter <name>, and open a pull request. Without the reference data (built from a local client today), send the fix or an issue anyway: CONTRIBUTING.md has the full walkthrough.
• Code follows the existing modules; read docs/ARCHITECTURE.md first and keep node --test "tests/**/*.test.js" green.
• UI changes stay in the visual system of docs/DESIGN.md; node tools/polestar.js preview renders them for review.
• Recordings are the most useful contribution of all: install the Polestar Client (it shares by default) and play, or attach record report for the steps that felt slow.
• With an AI agent? It reads AGENTS.md in a clone. To have Polestar's skills everywhere, install them: npx skills add fitzforge/polestar -g, or the Claude Code and Codex plugins in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Contributions are accepted under the GPL-3.0, the project's license.

Data and licensing

Polestar is free and open source under the GNU General Public License, version 3.

Its data comes from public sources, the game client's own tables and recordings; THIRD_PARTY.md lists every input, its license and what a release holds from it. The guides and the quest markers carry facts (titles, givers, positions, levels) from QuestieDB's Forever store, credited there. Inputs whose terms do not allow redistribution are read from your installed copies at build time and their outputs stay local: a Codex built with those extras (--local-extras) and the zone crossings pack are never packaged; the Codex that ships is built from release-safe inputs only. No game art ships with Polestar: zone paintings are read from the player's own client, and every texture is drawn in code. The screenshots in this README show the game (© Blizzard Entertainment) and are not part of the release.

The Inter typeface (SIL Open Font License 1.1) ships with the addon; the POLESTAR wordmark is cut from Cinzel (SIL Open Font License 1.1) and ships only as images. The README's banner, buttons, logo, charts and the CurseForge avatar are drawn by tools/readme from the same sources, with Marcellus (SIL Open Font License 1.1) for the banner's lines; the CurseForge button's anvil is the CurseForge mark from simple-icons (CC0 1.0).

The walking router in Polestar_Nav started from Shortest Path Forever's, by Cillian Berragan, and keeps his copyright in the files that began as his; its maps of Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor and Zephras Isle are Polestar's, written in a format grown from his by a port of his baker; all of it is under the GPL version 3 or later, used with his permission (see Pathing by Shortest Path Forever); the guide-pack permission below does not cover them.

The walks baked into the guides are drawn on Leffe's navigation maps (and on Polestar's own maps where his have no way), used with Leffe's full permission; his map files are not part of the addon.

LICENSE-EXCEPTION.md adds a permission under section 7: guide packs produced by Polestar's compiler and import strings produced by its tools, including the reference data they place in them, may be distributed under terms of the author's choice (not guide text copied from Polestar's own guides, nor Polestar's code).

_{World of Warcraft is a trademark of Blizzard Entertainment. Polestar is a community project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Blizzard.}