Set up PandaQuest in three steps

Install the addon

Close World of Warcraft first – it only reads addons when it starts.

1. Ask the hub operator for the PandaQuest package (it is built with deploy/player/build-package.sh) and unzip it anywhere.
2. Move the PandaQuest folder into your WoW addons folder:
   • Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\World of Warcraft\_classic_\Interface\AddOns
   • macOS: /Applications/World of Warcraft/_classic_/Interface/AddOns
   Inside it you should see PandaQuest.toc. If you have a folder inside a folder (PandaQuest/PandaQuest/PandaQuest.toc), move the inner one up one level.
3. Start WoW, and at the character screen click AddOns and make sure PandaQuest is ticked.
4. In game, type /pq. If you get a help message, it works.

That is enough to get the arrow and the quest map pins. The rest is about sharing.

Make your account

Your account  Register with an email address and a password, or sign in.

That is all that happens here. The companion signs itself in with the same email address and password and fetches its own upload key for the computer it runs on, so there is nothing to copy out of this page and nothing to keep somewhere safe. One key per computer, listed under the name you gave that machine – which is what makes “that one is not mine” something you can see.

A key is typed by hand in exactly one place now: a config.toml you write yourself, at the bottom of step 3. The key page is where that one comes from, and it is also where you can revoke a key or sign every computer out at once.

Install the companion and sign in

The companion is a small program that watches WoW's saved file and uploads the new sessions. WoW only writes that file when you type /reload or log out, so nothing is uploaded while you are mid-quest.

Windows

1. Ask the hub operator for the Windows companion app (it is built with companion-app/build.sh) and unzip it anywhere.
2. Double-click PandaQuestCompanion.exe.

   Windows will say “Windows protected your PC” the first time, because the program is not signed with a paid code-signing certificate. Click More info → Run anyway.

3. Nothing pops up over the game. The companion is the panda icon next to the clock, in the notification area – click the ^ arrow if you do not see it. The only window it ever opens by itself is the settings window in the next step, once, on a machine that has never been configured; after that it opens a window only when you ask it to from the menu.
4. The first time only, a small settings window asks for two things: who you are – the email address and password from step 2, and a name for this computer – and your World of Warcraft folder (it usually finds the folder by itself). There is no key to paste: the companion asks the hub for one itself and keeps it. Press Save and start syncing. The window then shows what it is doing; close it whenever you like – closing it does not stop the syncing, and the menu opens it again. From then on it syncs while you play, and it starts itself when you log in to Windows.

   Right-click the icon for the rest: the status on top, then Synkronoi nyt (sync now), Avaa asetukset (this settings window again), Avaa sivusto (this site), Avaa lokit (the log folder, %APPDATA%\PandaQuest\logs – that is what to send to support), Käynnistä uudelleen (restart the sync), Poista asennus… and Lopeta (quit, until you next log in). The menu is in Finnish; the settings window is in English.

   Poista asennus… is the way back out: it stops the sync, removes the autostart entry and deletes %APPDATA%\PandaQuest, where config.toml holds this machine's upload key in plain text – then it opens your privacy page, because what was already uploaded is deleted there and nowhere else. The app's own folder is yours to delete afterwards. The key itself keeps existing on the hub until you revoke it, so if the computer is gone for good, revoke its row on the key page too.

   If you ran the companion before this app existed, it also has the sync program remove the old PandaQuest Companion scheduled task, so two autostarts do not upload everything twice – and it says so if that did not work.

macOS and Linux

1. There is no app to install and nothing to download here: use the package from step 1. In its mac-ja-linux folder, run bash run-companion.sh – it picks the right binary for your machine (Apple silicon, Intel, Linux) and removes macOS' quarantine flag.
2. It opens its own page in your browser at http://127.0.0.1:… – only on your machine, never on the network. The first time, that page asks for the game folder, the account folder, and the email address and password from step 2, which it uses to sign this machine in. Nothing is pasted.
3. Leave the terminal open while you play. Quit on the page, or Ctrl+C in the terminal, stops it cleanly; bash run-companion.sh --no-ui gives you the log in the terminal and no browser at all.

Writing the config file yourself

Nobody has to do this – the app and the browser page both write it, and both fill in api_key from the sign-in. It is here for the one case that has no window at all: a server, or a machine you set up over ssh. That is also the only place a key is still copied by hand, and the key page is where to make one. Put the file in %APPDATA%\PandaQuest\config.toml on Windows or ~/.config/pandaquest/config.toml elsewhere:

# ~/.config/pandaquest/config.toml  (Windows: %APPDATA%\PandaQuest\config.toml)
hub_url = "http://pd.zroot.it"
api_key = "pq_paste_your_key_here"
# The folder that contains Wow.exe / World of Warcraft.app:
wow_dir = "C:/Program Files (x86)/World of Warcraft"
# The WTF/Account/<NAME> folder your character logs in with:
account = "MYACCOUNT"
poll_seconds = 30

account is the folder name under WTF/Account/ – usually a number like 123456789#1. The sync program prints the ones it found: pandaquest-sync.exe detect on Windows (it is in the package from step 1, and inside the app), or bash run-companion.sh detect elsewhere.

pandaquest-sync.exe is the program that does the syncing; the tray app starts it for you and shows what it is doing. Running it by hand – on a second PC, or on a server with no tray at all – still works exactly as it did. The Python companion in platform/companion/ also still exists for servers and developers; players do not need it any more.