Interface & HUD

The screen at a glance

The interface lives around the edges of the screen and leaves the middle clear for the world. Your own frame, your action bars, and your experience bar sit along the bottom. Your target and your party sit in the top left. The minimap and the zone name sit in the top right, with your trackers running down the right side below them. The chat box sits in the bottom left corner, and a rail of small square buttons sits in the bottom right.

Everything else is a window you open and close. Most windows have a key of their own, most also have a button in that rail in the bottom right, and every one of them closes with its own key again or with Esc.

Unit frames

A unit frame is a portrait with bars beside it: a health bar always, a resource bar when the unit has one, and a name and a level chip. A damage shield paints as a lighter segment laid over the top of the health bar, so you can watch the shield spend itself before the health starts to move. It shows on your own frame, on your target, and on your party rows; the two small frames, your pet and your target's target, carry no shield overlay.

Your frame, your target frame, and your party frames can all be moved. Each carries a small move button in its corner: unlock it, drag the frame where you want it, and lock it again so a stray click cannot shift it. Edit Frames, at the top of the Frames tab in the Interface options, loosens the rest of the interface at once, those three frames with it: the action bars, the cast bar, the swing bar, the experience bar, the minimap, the button rail, the pet frame, the stance bar, the buff and debuff rows, and the Wishlist Reminder chip, each wearing a name chip while it is loose. If they end up somewhere you regret, Reset to Defaults at the foot of that same Frames tab snaps them all back to where they started.

Edit Frames also loosens the tracker stack below (your tracked quests and their objectives, your deed progress, your Reliquary pages, the delve you are in, any rift you are taking part in, and the recipe or commission you are tracking), the pet action bar beside your pet frame, the Target dots frame for your debuffs across nearby enemies, the paladin's Devotion medallion, the warlock's Affliction Bar, the spell-proc overlay, the off-hand swing timer for dual-wielders, and the tabbed damage meter window, each wearing its own name chip while it is loose.

Edit Frames also loosens the six opt-in aura tracks once you have switched them on from the Combat tab of the same Interface options: the My Buffs track, the Defensive Cooldowns track, the My Shields track, the Offensive Cooldowns track, the Movement and Stealth track, and the My Buffs on Allies track. Every track is off by default, and each wears its own name chip while it is loose.

Edit Frames also loosens the Dialogue panel, which carries an NPC's spoken line while that NPC is out of your view; it wears its name chip while it is loose.

Bars, timers, and combat text

Your cast bar appears in the middle of the screen, just above your action bars, whenever you cast or channel, and carries the spell's name and the time left. Your target gets a cast bar of its own on its frame, so you can see what is coming and answer it.

A thin swing bar sits under your cast bar and fills between your weapon swings, so a melee or ranged attacker can see when the next automatic hit lands. Fighting with a weapon in each hand adds a second bar right below it, filling on its own separate clock, so you can time your abilities between BOTH swings instead of just one.

Your experience bar runs the full width under your action bars, ticked into segments, with a lighter stretch showing the rested experience you have banked.

Swim under water and a blue breath bar appears at the top of the screen. It drains while your head is under, flashes red once it runs out and you begin to drown, and refills quickly the moment you surface. Space swims you up, and the Swim Down key, Ctrl by default, takes you deeper.

Damage and healing float up over whatever they landed on as small numbers, so you can read a fight without reading text. The Combat tab in your chat box keeps the full written record.

Buffs and debuffs

Your own buffs show as a row of small icons in the top right corner beside the minimap, each counting down the time it has left, with your debuffs in a row below them. Right-clicking one of your own buffs drops it, as long as it is one you are allowed to drop; debuffs never are, and your target's strip is read-only.

Buffs on the Player Frame, an option that is off to begin with, moves your buff row onto your own unit frame and leaves the whole corner to your debuffs. It is a desktop setting: the phone and tablet layout places your auras for you.

Your target's buffs and debuffs sit together in a strip under its frame. When you want more room for them, Shift+J opens a separate Target Buffs and Debuffs window that you can move, filter down to just buffs or just debuffs, and leave open.

Your action bars

Three rows of eleven ability slots sit above your experience bar, with a dedicated attack button at the head of the first row. Only the first row is there to begin with: the second and third are switched on in the options when you want the room, and the third needs the second. The number row across the top of your keyboard fires the first bar, and the extra bars default to the numpad.

Abilities come from your spellbook (P): drag one out of the book onto a slot, or use the toggle on its row to put it on the first free one. Items work the same way, so a stack of potions or a bandage can live on a slot and be used with a key.

Once a bar is arranged the way you like it, you can lock it. Locking refuses drags, drops, and clears while leaving the abilities themselves as usable as ever, so a fumbled click in a fight cannot rearrange your buttons.

Two smaller bars join the row when they apply: the pet bar, with Attack, Stop, Taunt, Defensive, and Aggressive on Ctrl plus 1 through 5, and a stance bar for the classes that change stance or form.

The minimap

Top right: a round minimap with the zone name above it and your coordinates below, ringed by a dial that paints the time of day.

The disc carries more than terrain. Your own arrow sits at the center, pointing the way you face, with your party around you as class-colored dots and an edge arrow for anyone who has wandered off it. Quest givers wear the same marks there as they do in the world, and you will also pick out gathering nodes and crafting stations, travel portals, lootable bodies and containers, any hostile that has taken an interest in you, friends and guildmates who are nearby, and your own body while you are running back as a ghost.

Small indicators appear on it when they have something to say: an envelope while unread letters are waiting for you, a coin while sale proceeds or returned goods are waiting at the Merchant, and a button listing your raid lockouts.

The button rail

Down in the bottom right corner of the screen, a long way from the minimap, sits a rail of small square buttons, one per window, arranged in two short columns side by side. Most of them are printed with their default key.

The first column covers your character, spellbook, talents, quest log, Book of Deeds, professions, world map, bags, and crafting. The second opens with the Vorgrym Store and runs on through PvP, the Dungeon Finder, the Vale Cup, Card Duel, the leaderboard, emotes, music, friends and guild, this wiki, and the game menu. A few more join them only when they apply.

The world map and your trackers

M opens the world map on the zone you are standing in, with your own arrow on it, the points of interest around you, the quest givers with their marks and the areas your objectives sit in, the crafting stations, mailboxes, noticeboards and garden beds, the dungeon entrances, and every gathering node in the zone, grayed out while it regrows and marked when your tools are not up to it. Your party shows on it too. Right-click the map, or press its World map button, and it pulls back to the continent, every zone drawn with its name, where a click on a zone opens that zone's map. Step into a delve, a dungeon, a rift or a castle keep and the map switches to a floor plan of where you stand; the Thornhollow Fields battleground gets a field map of its own.

Down the right side, under the minimap, a stack of trackers keeps your current business in view without opening anything: your tracked quests and their objectives, your deed progress, your Reliquary pages, the delve you are in, and any rift you are taking part in. The quest tracker collapses when you want the screen back.

A gathering goal tracker joins the stack once you Track a recipe in the crafting window or a commission on the board: it names the recipe or commission you are tracking, how many you are collecting for, and how far your held and stored materials get you there. Track replaces your current goal, and Clear drops it explicitly; neither one ever changes your harvest preference.

Near the Eastbrook hub, a practice tracker joins the stack once you take the guided practice lessons there: it keeps your best runs against the practice dummies in view. While a lesson is active, a coaching strip beside it walks you through the current step of the lesson, from opening the Damage Meters to comparing a second run.

The chat box

Bottom left. Press Enter to start typing and Enter again to send.

Two tabs are always there: Chat, the combined log of everything said around you, and Combat, the written record of your fight. The plus button adds more, one per channel: Say, Yell, Party, General, World, LFG, Guild, and Officer, plus a Whisper tab that gathers every whisper you send and receive in one place. Typing in a channel tab sends to that channel without you retyping the command.

The whole box can be dragged to another spot and resized, and it remembers where you left it.

Windows you open with a key

Each of these has a default key and a button in the rail in the bottom right corner. Press the key again, or Esc, to close it.

Windows the world opens for you

Some windows you never press a key for: they open when you talk to the right person or click the right thing.

A merchant opens the vendor window, with their stock to buy from and a buyback list at the foot of the same panel holding what you last sold, in case you sold it by mistake. A row of quantity buttons sits with the stock, so a stack of reagents is one press at five or ten at a time rather than ten presses, and a custom amount is there when neither suits. Your class abilities need no trainer, they come with your levels; the trainers here are the resident masters of the crafting stations, and Training on one of them opens the recipes they can teach you now, the ones you already know, and the ones still locked behind more skill.

A banker opens your bank, with a Personal tab for the strongbox of extra slots you can buy more of and a Vault tab that stores your crafting materials by kind. If your guild has opened a bank, a Guild tab there shows it: every member can look inside even without permission to take anything out, so nobody has to ask what the guild is holding, ranks decide who may deposit, withdraw, and move the guild's coin, and a log records every movement.

A Ravenpost mailbox opens your letters, with what has arrived on one tab and a form for sending on another, attachments and all. The World Market, at the Merchant in Eastbrook or Auctioneer Voss up in Highwatch, has its own window: browse and buy on one tab, list your own goods on another, and collect what has sold on a third. Trading face to face with another player opens a trade window with a side each.

Loot and rolls

The interact key collects ordinary loot from a body you have earned. You can also open the corpse loot window and choose Take Loot. These actions follow the normal loot rules and never harvest materials.

In a group, a good drop under the group's loot rules puts a roll prompt on your screen instead: Need if you want it for yourself, Greed if you would take it to sell, or Pass to leave it to someone else. A small panel then shows who has rolled and what they chose while the timer runs down.

The loot rules themselves live in a small window of their own. The group leader can change them there, and everyone else sees the same window read-only, so the rules are never a secret.

Some bodies can also be harvested for their parts, and that is a separate action from looting: it needs a Field Kit in your bags, carried rather than spent, and its own Harvest command, a short cast rather than an instant grab. The kit's harvest preference, the same picker the Professions window and a corpse's own Change option open, defaults to taking everything a body offers; naming one material and pressing Apply saves a choice to concentrate on it instead, which can earn a finer grade when doing so leaves the body's other workable materials ungathered. If the body does not carry your chosen material, harvesting it refuses rather than falling back to the rest, until you change your preference.

Your player card

A button on your character sheet composes a player card: a picture with a close-up of your character, the gear you are wearing, and your stats, ready to save or share. It is a snapshot for showing off a new set, and it changes nothing in the game.

The Wiki button

This wiki is one click away in game. A button for it sits with the others in the rail in the bottom right corner, there is a row for it in the Esc game menu, and on a phone it lives in the More tray. Because opening it hands you over to your browser, the button always asks you to confirm first, so an accidental tap in a fight can never pull you out of one. The game keeps running behind it.

On a phone or a tablet

Touch controls appear on their own, and the layout sizes itself to your screen: a compact arrangement on a small phone, a standard one on a larger phone, and a roomier one on a tablet.

Your abilities sit in a ring rather than a number row: the attack button with four action buttons beside it, and a page toggle that swaps the ring between its 2 pages, which together reach all 33 of your ability slots whether or not the extra desktop bars are switched on. The fifth arc position of that ring is your consumables seat: tap it to use what is seated there, or hold it, or swipe it inward, to open a row that fills itself from what you are carrying. Around the ring sit the buttons a touch player reaches for most, swapping target, using what is in front of you, and jumping.

One Quick Actions control sits at the bottom edge in place of a row of buttons. It opens onto everything else: mount, chat, map, bags, social, quests, character, spellbook, game menu, and a More entry holding the rest of your windows, the Dungeon Finder, PvP, emotes and the wiki among them. Windows fill the screen here rather than floating over it.

Moving your unit frames is a desktop thing: on touch the layout places them for you.