Polestar 0.2.5

Polestar 0.2.5 brings skins, a new walking router you can tune, the whole addon and every guide in nine languages, full gamepad support, and fixes for nearly every route report since 0.2.4. Thank you to everyone who reported a wrong step, sent a /polestar report or opened a pull request: much of this release came from you.

Still a beta: every guide plays to the end in our simulator for every race and class, and your reports keep the routes honest. Delete your old Polestar folders before unzipping, then restart the game fully.

Skins

New looks under Options › Appearance › Windows › Skin. Polestar's own look stays the default.

• Halo: no frame, a dark veil with soft edges under the text, the game's gold, Fira Sans.
• Hearth: Polestar in warm game colours, with the game's red buttons, check boxes and font.
• WoW Forever, Blizzard and Classic: Polestar drawn in the game's own art: Forever's bronze frames, header rods and plates; retail's metal window frame and minimal controls; Classic's original dialog box, tooltip borders, panel buttons and tabs.

Every window takes the skin, and so does the arrow ("The skin's arrow": a dart that turns green within 40 m, then a ring and a check on arrival; the 3D and flat arrows can still be picked). The font follows the skin unless you pick one.

A new walking router, with a route style

• Walks keep to roads where they aren't much longer, go round steep slopes instead of over them, and stay out of the other faction's towns. When a walk must enter one, the arrow says "Hostile town: Southshore" once.
• Walks keep out of zones far above your level, unless your walk starts or ends there or there's no other way.
• The walk starts from the ground you're standing on, not a roof, rock top or upper floor above you.
• Route style (Options › Guide › Arrow & routes, or the new page in the welcome): Fastest takes the shortest walk over hills and across fields; Balanced (the default) keeps to roads that aren't much longer; Roads stays on roads even when longer.
• The arrow's walk to a trainer, vendor or innkeeper ends on that NPC's floor (the warrior trainer inside Northshire Abbey, not outside it), and boats lead onto the pier beside the ship instead of into the water.
• On a long zone crossing (the Gold Road from the Barrens into Ashenvale), the arrow no longer turns you back once you've walked past the near end.
• Where two zone maps overlap, the arrow leads to people on the map of the zone they really stand in: Kadrak at Mor'shan, Tirion Fordring's hut, the Syndicate camps in Alterac, Tal and Cairne in Thunder Bluff, and more.

Nine languages

• Every guide's titles, tips and notes now read in your game's language on German, Spanish (Spain and Latin America), French, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Chinese (simplified and traditional) clients, with every NPC, place, item and quest named exactly as your client names them.
• Every interface text shows in your language on all nine clients. French by Yendi, German reviewed by thecodingcortex, Spanish (Spain) by julen92 and Forever Hispano, Spanish (Latin America) by CDVolvik; Options › About says so where a translation was made with AI.
• Forever's own quests, NPCs, objects and items, instances, bosses, factions and flight points use the game's names. Reputation standings, item qualities, gear slots and race names read exactly as the game writes them.
• Setting your home, discovering a flight path, hearthing and flying now complete their steps on non-English clients, and names no longer stay in English when the names pack loads late.
• Settings help lines wrap instead of being cut, and labels make room for longer languages.

Gamepad

• Polestar's windows work with a gamepad, with a new Gamepad page: button names (Xbox letters or PlayStation shapes) and bindings for any Polestar action to a key, a button or a chord. "Browse the guide with the gamepad" lets the D-pad pick a goal. Ported from Ding! by Yendi.
• With Forever's Gamepad UI on, Polestar keeps to its own windows, so the "Polestar was blocked from an action" warning no longer appears on the world map, quest rewards or talents. The map's gamepad cursor works on Polestar's pins.
• With keyboard and mouse, no gamepad hints or outlines show, even with a pad plugged in.
• The bug report (/polestar report) now lists actions the game blocked, which pins down gamepad problems.
• The bug report also says how the arrow routes ("Routes: balanced", plus any routing setting you turned off), so a pathing report shows which style planned the walk.

Routes and guides

• Quests in the order Forever offers them. Forever added and moved quests inside many chains, and the guides no longer ask for a follow-up before the quest that opens it: Baine's chain and Thunderhorn's Report in Mulgore, Bandarion Keep in Tirisfal, Alther's Mill in Redridge, The State of the Mines in Westfall, Scout Support in Hillsbrad, Quinn's potions and Ivar the Foul in Silverpine, Holy Diver in Darkshore, From the Ashes in the Wetlands, Blood in the Streets in Dalaran, and more. A quest whose earlier part you haven't done reads "Requires first" right away.
• Quests not offered to you are left out: Alba Fairmoon's chain in Westfall is for Dwarves, Gnomes, Night Elves and Skyborne; Stop the Spread in Silverpine and Stopping the Cycle in the Wetlands are no longer asked for.
• Fewer walks back. Quests whose giver the route already passes are taken on the way (Zenn's Bidding, the Beached Sea Creature, Fields of Grief, Caliph Scorpidsting's bounty, Panther Mastery, Book of the Ancients), the giver beside you comes first, and Durotar's Burning Blade Coven is one trip.
• The arrow always has somewhere to point: every objective step that had no place now leads somewhere (the Grizzled Den, Rumbleshot's Ammo, The Red Crystal, Investigate the Camp and dozens more), to the objective itself rather than its turn-in, to the camp that holds the step's mobs rather than a stray one far away, and to normal mobs rather than an elite camp when both drop the item.
• Caves and docks: a "Go to" at a cave or mine mouth ticks off once you walk inside, or once the work after it is done.
• Hearths: every guide that hearths you back binds you there first, and "set your home" points the arrow at your faction's innkeeper.
• A giver who didn't offer a quest no longer pulls you back after a level-up, turn-in or relog; the guide takes you back only when they offer it.
• Optional quests you never took no longer hold the guide or show their turn-in.
• Professions: the crafting guides follow Forever's own recipes, skill colours, reagents and names.
• Zone fixes: Alliance Priests' Cenarion Aid chain on the route; Teldrassil's Ilthalaine first, the Gnarlpine Totems with the step's kills, class sigils handed in when you train, Shanda up the ramp and Amara's patrol; Zephras Isle's Skysight, Read Ley Line, The Great Outdoors and the Scrawny Ursera; Dun Morogh's Distracting Jarven; Thousand Needles' Bronze Tube; Elwynn's optional Croaky's Head; Darkshore's Grizzled Scalps at the Grove; the cloth donations at the Auction House; Call of Fire and Legging It counting the right objectives; Legacy Challenges' Return to Bodley.

More

• Shortest Path Forever: Polestar's own arrow now guides by default; "Hand guiding to Shortest Path Forever" hands it over, and if it finds no way to a goal, Polestar's arrow steps back in.
• Options › Integrations holds every setting that depends on another addon: Shortest Path Forever, TomTom and EllesmereUI. Questie's tracker can show where Polestar plans to hand in each completed quest.
• Community guides: what used to be "guide packs" are now Community guides, each a community addon you install like any other.
• Skip grey quests says which later quest a kept grey quest opens.
• A minimap button (off by default), and gear advice no longer marks a weapon you haven't trained as an upgrade.
• Registering the guides at login makes about 3 MiB less garbage.

Thanks

Reports and fixes from Hulari, Phear, Wyatt R, stroexd, Gruko, XooVe, Syfin, sesgoe, Lou-Saydus, Rupert, Arachnit, Twerkjob, Lofka, fur, Fleanuts, Taako, whiteswag, rikette, Conjure, Pynte, Sato, Smuve, Tedddogg, Tate Mastin, halexh and many more on Discord. Pull requests from CDVolvik, markgould, stroexd, thmastin, XrayAlpha and jnickles85-bit. Translations by Yendi, thecodingcortex, julen92, CDVolvik and Forever Hispano; the gamepad port from Ding! by Yendi; and the walking router, which started from Shortest Path Forever by Cillian Berragan.

The full list of changes, including those for guide authors and contributors, is in CHANGELOG.md.