Headstart

Quality of life, levelling tools and one-click character setup for WoW: Forever, in one addon. A new character gets your action bars, macros, key bindings and interface in one click; your trainer, vendors, bank and mailbox can be handled for you by rules you set; and the screen gets the bars and notes you ask for and nothing else.

Nothing acts for you until you turn it on. Installing Headstart does not touch your action bars, macros, key bindings, Edit Mode layout, chat windows or game settings, and it buys, moves, accepts and picks nothing. Its first login shows a small card - set up this character, show me around, or later - and turns nothing on; everything that spends gold, moves items or answers for you starts off, and says what it does before you switch it on. The one thing it does unasked is skip a cinematic, which on a new character is the opening flight over its zone: it says so in chat, and Skip intro cinematic is a switch (hold Shift as you enter the world to watch).

And you can always go back. Put back everything (General page, or /headstart putback) asks first, then puts your bars, macros, key bindings, game settings, Edit Mode layout and chat windows back as they were before Headstart first changed them, and turns its quality-of-life features and Character setup off.

Headstart does not come with levelling routes: you make your own from your runs, or paste in one someone shared.

Getting started

• /headstart (or the minimap button) opens the window. It has four tabs: QoL, Interface, Routes and Character setup. /hs goes straight to the settings.
• The first login shows a small card, not the whole window: Set up this character turns Character setup on and opens it (plan this class's bars, or save a character's bars, keys and interface for the others), Show me around opens the window with a short tour - a hint at a time points at where things are: the search, All features, the Automation group (everything that spends gold, moves items or answers for you), General, the Interface tab, Character setup - and Later closes it. None of it turns anything on. The Tour button or /headstart start brings the tour back.
• The settings can be searched, and every feature is one card with its switch in its head; a feature made of several choices keeps them while it is off. On All features the groups fold away.

New characters and your interface

• Character setup. Save your bars once per class, as a profile, and put them on every new character of that class in one click - or by themselves at its first login, a little at a time so nothing stutters: class spells up to a level, racials, professions, your own macros, items. Spells you haven't learned yet get a place that fills in as you train them.
• Your interface, once for the account. Edit Mode layout, which action bars show, chat windows, game settings, camera distance, key bindings, and graphics and sound, saved from one character and applied to the next - on another install too.
• Profiles. Several bar layouts per class under names of your own (Tank, DPS), switched from the window, the minimap button, a key or /headstart profile Tank.
• A planner to lay out a whole class's bars on a level 1 character, on your real action bars, with no main to copy from.
• A macro helper that makes your class's usual macros by ticking boxes.
• A RestedXP guide from the first login. Each race starts on a guide you pick, or RestedXP's own free starter: for a character at level 5 or below, with "RestedXP guide for a new character" on.
• Safe on a character you already play. It asks first and says what would go. Your bars and macros are written down before every change: /ysetup undo steps back one change at a time, and /ysetup undo first puts the bars back as they were before Headstart touched the character. Bars only leaves your interface alone. Chat windows and the Edit Mode layout are the two things an addon cannot put back, and the dialogs say so.
• Works beside ElvUI, EllesmereUI, Bartender and Dominos: their layouts and bars are left to them.

Done for you, by your rules (all off until you turn them on)

• Class trainer. Buys your class's spells as the trainer opens: each spell Always, If I can afford it, First rank only or Never, up to a level you choose. The nice-to-have spells leave you half your money (and a sum you save, for a weapon or a mount); what they left is a Learn button under the trainer's window. It never buys weapon skills, riding or professions, and chat says what it learned and for how much.
• Quest rewards picked from a priority list per class up to a level you choose. It remembers what you picked by hand, and leaves the choice to you when a green is offered.
• Restock. Reagents, ammo and your own list bought back up to what you carry, above an amount of gold you keep.
• Bank and mail. Crafting mats and recipes you can't use yet go to the bank with a Deposit button on the bank window, or to another character with a Send button on the mail window (or as the mailbox opens, if you choose). The items Send would mail are marked in your bags. Quest items always stay.
• Trinkets. Swapped in by your own order as they come off cooldown; Carrot on a Stick while you ride, and an item of your choice while you swim.
• Group. Invites from friends and guild members accepted, a whisper of "inv" answered with an invite, quests shared and accepted.

Hold Shift as you open a trainer, vendor, bank or mailbox to do it yourself that time.

On your screen (each one a switch)

• Combat bars. A swing timer (Blizzard's bars restyled, or Headstart's own), a range bar that says Melee range, In range, Charge range, Dead zone or Out of range and how many yards your target is away (or those yards on their own, where you like), health, power and combo point bars, and a cast bar, all in one look. Which ones show is each character's own.
• Trinket buttons with your other trinkets a click away, and keys for the game's equipment sets.
• Talent builds: for every class on Forever's own trees, a levelling build and builds for a role at 60 - tank, healer, damage - each point in order, with the trees beside it (QoL, Talents). Follow one and your talent points notice says what's next. Before level 10 your talent key opens them too.
• Quests on NPC tooltips: hover an NPC to see the quests it has for you - from your route, and from what it offered when you talked to it.
• Quest item buttons: the rewards quests gave you that you use - Really Sticky Glue, a Sprouted Frond - as buttons on screen, with their cooldowns, so they needn't go on your bars.
• Quest mob markers: a sword on the nameplates of the enemies your quests still need - to kill, or for what they drop.
• Death recap. What killed you and the hits before it.
• XP bar with rested and quest experience, XP an hour and time to level.
• Camp icon lit near a camp or while its buff runs, and a flight timer while you fly.
• Boat timer: at a dock or a zeppelin tower, when the boat gets in and leaves, and on board when it arrives. On the world map, your side's boats and zeppelins where they are now, moving along their course.
• World marker: your map pin shown in the world - a mark and how far it is, with an arrow at the screen's edge while it is behind you, within a distance you set. Put one with Ctrl+click on the world map, or /headstart way 45 62. With RestedXP it follows the guide: a pin where RestedXP's arrow points, the step you're on.
• Instance tracker. Dungeon entries this hour and today against the limits, and a log of every run.
• Loot feed and a loot log with session totals.
• Glimmer: herbs (with Herbalism), ore (with Mining), chests, quest objects and your fishing bobber light up as you walk up to them, coloured by your chance of a skill-up. Five looks and three colourings, with a preview in the settings; the game's own sparkle on lootable quest items can come back too.
• Upgrade notes. Every item's tooltip says what it would do for you, and an upgrade in your bags gets an Equip button.
• Reminders. Trainer spells waiting and what they cost, talent points to spend, low durability, stones, oils and bandages you could make.
• Your other characters' bags, bank and gold.
• Chat log to search and copy from, past sessions included, a whisper sound of your own, and fewer buttons beside chat.
• Arrange (/hs move): every bar, button and icon of Headstart's on a grid, moved by dragging, the arrow keys or typed numbers - the one place where they are placed and sized.
• Looks for the game's damage meter and for RestedXP's window; the bag bar and micro menu hidden or on mouseover; the talent window movable and see-through.
• Edit Mode outlines: in the game's Edit Mode each element is a clean dark block instead of the large blue sheet - a thin edge in Headstart's colour and its name in the middle, white under the mouse, and on the one you picked where it stands, in pixels from the middle of the screen, as you drag it - so you see what you place and what it lines up with.
• Skip intro cinematic: a new character's opening flight ended as it starts; every other cinematic plays. On unless you turn it off.

Journey

Your character's road, counted quietly as you play: how far you travelled and how, where the hours went, gold earned and spent, your best find, the zones you saw, the enemies you met most, and how long each level took. At level 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 a chapter is written and a small note offers to show it: a book in the game's own look, a page at a time, each chapter set against the one before. /hs journey.

Levelling (the Routes tab; with RestedXP Guides)

• Run log. Position, quests, kills, deaths, vendors and money of each run, in order on This run: to see where the time went, or to hand to someone (or an AI) to look over afterwards.
• Level splits. Time per level and in total against your best run, XP an hour and time to level.
• Level pace. A small box under the RestedXP guide: time to level at your pace, what grinding here pays, and one line when a step costs more than grinding would (it never skips anything for you).
• Skip quest. Right-click a step in RestedXP's guide: every step of that quest skipped at once (off until you turn it on).
• Release at death skips. On a guide step that says to die and come back at the Spirit Healer, your spirit is released at once and the resurrection accepted (off until you turn it on).
• Keep what the route needs. Items a route quest still needs say so on their tooltip, and selling one warns you.

Taking your settings to another install

The game keeps an addon's settings separately for every installed client: the beta's are not the live game's, and nothing carries them over. Two ways to bring yours along. Either one brings your settings, trainer choices, reward lists, your own routes and Character setup's profiles and interface. What belongs to one character (its journey, its logs, its undo copies) stays with that character.

1. Copy one file, before you log in there. With the game closed, copy

WTF\Account\<your account>\SavedVariables\Headstart.lua

from the old client's folder to the same place in the new one. The account folder appears in the new client the first time you log in there, and its name may differ between clients (on a test client it can be a number where the live game uses your account name). This is the account's file: the files further down, under a realm and a character's name, belong to those characters and are not needed. The next time you enter the world everything is there.

2. As a text, in the game. In the old install: /headstart transfer, Export, and save the text in a text file. In the new one, once you are in the world: /headstart transfer, paste, Read, Import. If the old install can no longer be opened, paste the whole of its Headstart.lua file instead: it is read the same way. Nothing in the text is ever run, and what an import replaced can be put back with Undo last import. A text from someone else is safe to import: what acts for you (mail, restock, the trainer, invites) stays as you have it and macros that run code are left out; All of it is for a text you exported yourself.

Then, on a new character, Headstart's window comes up two seconds after its first login: Apply both puts your bars, macros, key bindings and interface on.

In a beta client the top of All features says this too, with a button to the window above, until you hide it for a week.

Commands

Command	What it does
/headstart	The window
/hs	The settings
/headstart start	The tour
/headstart putback	Put back everything Headstart changed (asks first)
/headstart way 45 62	A map pin there in your zone (/headstart way alone takes it away)
/hs move	Arrange what is on your screen
/hs journey	Your journey
/headstart transfer	Your settings as a text, to take to another install
/ysetup undo, /ysetup undo first	Character setup: the last change undone; the bars as they were before Headstart

Other addons

RestedXP Guides is needed for the routes and their tools; everything else works without it. Where EllesmereUI, Leatrix Plus, Naowh Forever, NovaInstanceTracker or Baganator already does what one of Headstart's features does, that feature of Headstart's starts off and the settings say which addon has it.

Credits and licence

Headstart's route tools work on RestedXP guide text, and RestedXP Guides plays the routes. Thank you, RestedXP. Routes built on RestedXP's guides are under their Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 licence; Headstart ships none.

Headstart as a whole is shared under the same licence: see LICENSE.

Development

• python tools/smoke.py, python tools/smoke_setup.py and python tools/smoke_planner.py run the tests (they need lupa). smoke.py's route tests need a routes addon in ../Headstart_Routes and skip without it; python tools/smoke_noroutes.py tests Headstart as published, with none. python tools/smoke_idle.py counts what a login costs with everything off and as a new install comes.
• python tools/render.py <page> draws a settings page to tools/render/<page>.html without the game.
• python tools/settings_text.py [saved file] makes the Move settings text from a saved file without the game; python tools/live_move.py keeps a copy of a client's WTF folder and puts the saved files into another client's.
• python tools/package.py builds dist/Headstart-<version>.zip.