Factoruide v0.2.0

Personalized leveling guides for WoW Forever, Classic Era / Hardcore and TBC Anniversary.

Character power

• Fights depend on power: level plus gear and class spells.
• Each level of power makes fights 10% faster; XP still follows the level.
• The guide wears quest rewards and dungeon loot, and favours real upgrades.
• The addon picks the reward the guide planned.
• Training happens when the new spells are worth it.
• The addon buys only the spells useful for leveling.
• Each guide step shows the character's power and what its gear brings.

What the character takes on

• New progression profile: cautious (hardcore survival), normal or risky, on the main settings screen.
• Cautious never fights packs of mobs more than one level above you.
• Cautious still takes yellow quests and lone targets up to two levels above.
• Normal does yellow quests, never orange.
• Risky takes orange quests and borderline elites.
• Elite camps need one more level of power per extra elite pulled, at any level.
• Quests started by an item need the power to kill the mob dropping it (no level 24 rare at level 11).
• Exploring and escorting count as fighting; talking and delivering don't.
• Givers, turn-ins and objects in the middle of a camp wait until you can fight through it (Sven's Revenge ends among level 25-27 Defias).
• New "Crowded server (launch)" option: escorts and events wait for their turn, mobs and objects with few spawns are fought over; the guide counts the wait (in full in the starting zones, half above level 20) and avoids them when other quests pay more.

Grinding

• New "Grind on the way" option (on by default): mobs met on foot are killed on the way, as most guides ask.
• Only mobs close to your level (3 below to 1 above); the guide step says how many: "(kill ~5 mobs on the way)".
• It replaces pure grinding and never wins over a good quest: flights and walks are chosen as before.
• Grinding is limited to a share of each level, 10% by default (adjustable), mobs on the way included.
• Beyond it the guide takes quests instead, even less rewarding ones.
• New "Grinding allowed" option: without it, the guide takes more quests instead, even if longer.
• Quest objects lying among the mobs of another quest are gathered between kills, while resting.

Start from your character

• The addon keeps a profile of your character up to date (every minute and at logout; /fg profile writes it at once): level, XP, quests done and in the log, position, hearthstone, flight paths, professions, gear, spells, rested XP.
• New guide: pick one of your characters in the list (no file to move); race, class and level follow it.
• The guide goes on from where it stands: quests done are left out, those in the log are finished (objectives already done count), with its hearthstone and flight paths.
• Quests the guide does not plan still take their place in the log; follow-ups of quests done long ago are known exactly.
• Rested XP doubles kill XP until it runs out (it builds up while logged out).
• Gear worn, spells learned and profession skills set the character's power, training and profession curves.
• Flight paths are only known from a flight master's map: open one in game if the list shows none.

Professions

• Professions no longer add time or steps to the guide.
• The addon shows whether your skill is ahead or behind the curve for your level.
• The curve starts when you take the profession (level 5 by default, adjustable); taken later, it follows later.
• New curves: slow start, catching up by level 20.
• Profession quests are suggested, marked optional; the addon skips them without the skill.

Checkpoints

• Checkpoints from level 20, where many quests open: ahead of plan, a button skips to the next one.
• Skipping keeps chains going on after it, class quests, planned rewards and training.
• Behind the route, a checkpoint step has you grind before going on, so the guide stays in sync.
• Grinding happens where mobs of your level live, with an XP target: "be level 19 and 93% (19969 xp)".

Quests

• Dungeon quests are never planned without dungeons.
• Battleground quests are left out unless the new PvP option is on.
• Marks, tokens and crafted items never get a made-up mob source.
• Quests that can be picked up before the target level are kept, whatever their level.
• Quests are taken and turned in at hand, at quest hubs.
• The hearthstone is used only when it saves at least 3 minutes.
• A zone is done in one go instead of several short visits.
• Walks go around mountains and cliffs, from the game's terrain heights.
• Old chains no longer worth it are left out instead of coming back for them.
• Mobs of quests in the log are killed on the way.
• Class quests giving a pet or a form are done early: they count as power, like gear.
• Pet quests stay early even after a long optimization (up to 10 min slower).
• Objects of quests in the log are picked up on the way, like their mobs.
• Quests started by a rare drop (under 10%) are no longer planned: take them if it drops.
• Gray quests are no longer taken, unless they open a chain worth doing.
• A quest gone gray in the log is dropped instead of turned in many levels later.
• Quests taken but never turned in are left out of the guide.
• Long follow-ups (sixty cloth to gather) no longer make a chain worth starting.
• Fewer trips for one or two quests: changing zone counts 4 minutes (new advanced setting).
• Fixed: Deeprun Tram quests, Frostmane Hold.
• Fixed: the paladin's Tome of Divinity chain.

In the app

• Generation: the times of the best routes are shown while they are picked, then each one's curve as it improves, in its own color; the guide kept is in bold, with why it is not always the shortest (it is scored on comfort too).
• The calculation keeps to its time: 2 minutes by default (30 s to pick the best starts, then 1 min 30 to improve them), 6 minutes for a thorough one.
• My guides: class colors, a Horde or Alliance emblem with the race, and every column sorts the list.
• The guide page shows the character the same way.
• The addon accepts only the guide's quests by default (Addon page, "Only the guide's quests"); others can still be taken by hand.

Addon look

• The addon takes the game's look by default.
• With ElvUI, EllesmereUI or SpartanUI installed, it takes their style.
• New "Look" option: automatic, game style or dark.
• Other skins can style it through FactoruideAPI.RegisterSkin.
• A big arrow points to the current step: green ahead, red behind, distance below.
• Ctrl + mouse wheel over a window, or /fg scale 1.3, changes the size of the windows in game (kept for every character; /fg scale alone goes back to the app's size).
• Single scrollbar: only the content area scrolls.

Fixes

• Quests taken or turned in on the way wait for the level their own step needs (a camp to fight through around the NPC).

• The end of the calculation no longer drops a quest turned in on the way (its XP was replaced by grinding).

• Crowded server: the wait for a contested target counts even when it is killed on the way.

• Group: the class quests required of every class in the group are required, not only the character's.

• Addon: quests marked done by hand (right click, /fg skip) and skipped steps belonged to the character: they also counted in other guides (quests never taken shown done). They now belong to their guide; a new version of a guide keeps the quests marked.

• Addon: opening the world map raised a Lua error (step pins).

• TBC: mobs of the blood elf and draenei starting zones give Azeroth XP (they counted as Outland: five times too much). Guides to 20 there are longer and take more quests.

• TBC: grinding XP follows where you are (Outland mobs from Hellfire Peninsula on, not from level 60); the Caverns of Time dungeons count as Outland.

• A quest dropped from the log no longer opens its follow-up (the guide asked for quests you could not get).

• Dungeon mobs keep their level: a dungeon run late no longer gives XP as if they had yours.

• Flight prices are those of the flight taken (the price of a cheaper, slower path was counted).

• Only flight masters are flight paths: no more "Flight path: Quest Path 11517… Shaman… A" steps (the nodes of quest flights, Eastern Plaguelands towers, the other faction's nodes).

• Forever: quests whose objectives or turn-in are unknown are left out instead of being taken for free (a Horde guide went to Menethil Harbor for an Alliance quest).

• The optimizer judged about a third of the changes it tried wrongly (quests taken at hand look ahead in the guide); it now evaluates them exactly.

• A new character's hearthstone takes it back to its starting area until bound at an inn (orcs were sent to Ratchet).

• Hearthstone steps name the town: "Hearthstone to Crossroads (The Barrens)".

• Ratchet and the Crossroads flight paths were shown in Durotar.

• Hearthstone, flight and boat steps show their own time (the whole trip was on the arrival step).

• The computing time is the whole time: the race between starts takes a share of it.

• A search could hand back an invalid route (when cutting the stops after the target level).

• Walks on two continents no longer share cached answers.

• The time shown during the calculation is the guide's play time, as in the result (it showed the optimizer's score, hours higher).

• Guides can be computed again with the default settings.

• Mobs killed on the way to an objective are no longer counted twice (time and XP).

• The guide and tracker windows always grow downwards: their buttons stay under the mouse.

• Objectives in progress stay in the guide until done, not only right after their step.

• A turn-in shows its quest's unfinished objectives first.

• Quest names are in English when no translation exists.

• Updates are checked only in published builds.