Ding! Leveling Guide

Yendi's Ding! leveling guides for Polestar, the leveling guide addon for World of Warcraft: Forever. It is a guide pack: a separate addon, made and supported by Yendi, not by Polestar.

It holds the 86 leveling guides of the Ding! addon, from level 1 to 60:

• Alliance: Human, Dwarf and Gnome, and Night Elf starts (1-13), then 40 zone guides from Westfall (13) to Silithus (60);
• Horde: Undead, Tauren, and Orc and Troll starts (1-13), then 38 zone guides from Silverpine Forest (13) to Silithus (60);
• Skyborne: a start on each side (1-13), joining the Alliance guides in Westfall or the Horde guides in Silverpine Forest.

For players

1. Install Polestar first: this pack does nothing without it.
2. Download PolestarPack_DingLevelingGuide-<version>.zip and unzip it into the game's Interface/AddOns/ folder, next to the Polestar folders.
3. Restart the game. The guides appear in Polestar's guide menu (/polestar guides) under Guide packs, as "Ding! Leveling Guide". Options > Guide packs (/polestar packs) turns the pack on or off, and Suggest guides from lets Polestar suggest these guides to your characters.

What the guides leave out, as Ding! does by default:

• elite quests and dungeon quests;
• death skips (dying on purpose to travel faster).

Report wrong steps and other problems to Yendi, on this pack's page, not to Polestar. Options > Guide packs > Copy report gives you the details to send.

Credits: Yendi. Licence: GPL-3.0-only (see LICENSE), like Ding!. The pack carries reference data from Polestar's compiler, whose sources are listed in LICENSE-DATA.txt inside the addon.

For authors

The .guide files in guides/ are written by tools/convert.js from the Ding! addon's leveling guides: do not edit them by hand, change the Ding! route and convert again. You need Node 24 or newer, Lua 5.1, a Polestar clone with its reference data built (polestar doctor checks it all) and a checkout of Ding!:

# from this folder; LUA names your Lua 5.1 when it is not `lua`
node tools/convert.js --ding ../DingGuideWoWForever --polestar ../polestar
polestar lint
polestar playtest
polestar install      # into the game's AddOns folder (--dest <folder> to pick it)
polestar pack         # the release zip, in dist/

tools/dump_ding.lua reads Ding!'s guides (and, from its database, where the NPCs found only inside an instance are entered); tools/convert.js maps every Ding! step to the guide format and writes tools/report.txt: the steps left out and the ones to look at.

How Ding!'s steps become Polestar's:

Ding!	Polestar
accept, turnin	accept, turnin (object when a quest starts or ends at one)
complete	the quest's objectives: kill npc xN quest Q.O, collect item xN quest Q.O, interact object quest Q.O, and a goto then complete for a place to reach
go with its text, radius	goto x,y "text" map M, r
collect, buy, spots	collect item xN, buy item xN npc V (or nearest), the first spot as @x,y
talk with train, vendor, sethearth, fly	train npc, vendor npc, sethome "Inn" npc, getfp or fly
train, vendor, repair without an NPC	train class, vendor nearest
hearth	hearth to the last inn the route binds at
level (with xp, patrol)	level N, the XP left as a note, the first patrol point as an optional goto
useitem, object	the objectives of the quest the item serves, with "Use " as their note (else use item), interact object
equip, destroy, bank, unbank, abandon, keep	notes (and a talk to the banker)
note, why	the step's tip
classes, races, faction	only
when, optional	optional goals
dungeon, elite, deathskip	left out

Where Polestar's data has no place for a target, the guide takes Ding!'s own spots for the step, else DingDB's spawns, drops and quest areas, else the entrance of the instance the target is in, so that the arrow has somewhere to lead. A quest whose prerequisite the route does not do for sure is optional, with its objectives and turn-in. node tools/unplaced.lua dist/<folder>/Guides.lua counts the goals and steps left without a place after a build.

A step left with only optional goals or notes, a hearth or a flight joins the step after it, so that Polestar shows it while the player works on that step.