Using CASC Extract and DBC Extract

Overview

SimC has a couple of useful command line tools for downloading and extracting data from WoW client data. This page covers some basic usage that may be useful if you want to use game client data for your own projects.

casc_extract/casc_extract.py can extract binary DBC files or images/icons.

dbc_extract/dbc_extract.py can extract data from DBCs into more "friendly" formats like JSON or CSV

(These notes were written for 8.x / bfa-dev versions)

casc_extract.py Examples

Download game data from CDN:

./casc_extract.py --cdn -m batch -o [OUTPUT_DIR]

--ptr or --beta can be added.

--locale [LOCALE] will grab data for other locales (en_US is default when not specified)

casc_extract.py will create a directory inside of OUTPUT_DIR using the current WoW version from that environment so you'll end up with something like OUTPUT_DIR/8.0.1.26715

dbc_extract.py Examples

Extract Game Data

Extract JSON files from DBC:

./dbc_extract.py -b [WOW_BUILD] -t json -p [PATH_TO_DBCS] [DBC]

WOW_BUILD is the full WoW version (e.g. 8.0.1.26715)

PATH_TO_DBCS will likely be based on the OUTPUT_DIR you used with casc_extract.py and will usually need to point to the [WOW_VERSION]/DBFilesClient/ subdirectory

--hotfix [PATH_TO_DBCACHEBIN] is used to include hotfix data from a local game installation.

Download images/icons from CDN

You can use casc_extract.py to extract assets from the game data (such as icons). You need a file with the names of assets you want to extract.

You can generate a list of icon paths by looking at the ManifestInterfaceData DBC.

./casc_extract.py --cdn -m batch -o [OUTPUT_DIR] -b files.txt

files.txt is a new-line delimited file of the paths used in the DBC. Partial example:

Interface\ICONS\Ability_Ambush.blp
Interface\ICONS\Ability_BackStab.blp
Interface\ICONS\Ability_BullRush.blp
Interface\ICONS\Ability_CheapShot.blp
...

Full Example

Full example to convert ItemSparse DBC into a JSON file

./casc_extract.py --cdn -m batch -o /tmp/casc-data

# This would create /tmp/casc-data/8.0.1.26715

./dbc_extract.py -b 8.0.1.26715 -t json -p /tmp/casc-data/8.0.1.26715/DBFilesClient ItemSparse > /tmp/ItemSparse.json

To include hotfix data, use the --hotfix flag pointed at your WoW install:

./dbc_extract.py -b 8.0.1.26715 -t csv -p /tmp/casc-data/8.0.1.26715/DBFilesClient --hotfix /path/to/wow/Cache/ADB/enUS/DBCache.bin ItemSparse > /tmp/ItemSparse.csv