Settings

The Settings window provides you with a wealth of options for customizing your Vanguard: Sage of Heroes in-game experience. These settings allow you precise control of the game's video, audio, Interface, performance values, and controls.

Video

Video Settings

Full-Screen Mode:

Enabling full-screen mode is recommended due to increased performance.

Resolution:

Determines the number of pixels drawn on the screen. Low resolutions are strongly recommended for low-end machines.

Render Quality:

Resets all settings to the defaults for the specified quality level.

Texture Quality:

Determines the quality of textures. Higher quality textures require more memory and can increase load times. Lower settings are recommended for machines with low RAM and/or Video Memory.

Anisotropy:

Anisotropy Filtering improves the quality of distant textures at the expense of GPU performance.

Environment

Atmospheric Distortion:

This setting determines the amount of atmospheric distortion (distance blur) emulated by the engine.

Far Clipping Plane (meters):

Modifies the maximum distance you can see (in meters).

Volumetric Clouds:

When enabled, high-detail clouds will be drawn. Because they have a high performance cost, this setting should be disabled on low-end computers.

Grass Density:

Determines how much grass is drawn. A grass density setting of 25% or lower is recommended for low-end machines.

Tree Detail Range:

Increases the graphical quality of distant trees.

Lighting

Bloom Effect:

When enabled, bloom lighting effects will be used.

High Dynamic Range (HDR):

HDR is a lighting method that allows for more realistic bright and dark areas. Your card must support floating-point blending for this setting to function. Newer video cards should not experience much performance loss due to HDR.

Tone Mapping:

Tone Mapping is a lighting method that averages intensities to realistically simulate the way eyes adjust to the light changes. Like HDR, this setting should have slight performance implications on newer graphics hardware.

Shadow Detail:

Shadow Level-of-Detail determines the quality of shadows.

Color Correction

Gamma:

Determines how middle-tones of color appear on the display. Only functions in full-screen mode.

Brightness:

Determines how bright the colors appear on the display. Only functions in full-screen mode.

Contrast:

Determines the contrast between light and dark colors on the display. Only functions in full-screen mode.

Audio

Setup

Enable Audio:

Turns game sound on or off.

Audio Device:

Select your preferred sound device. Changes will not take effect until you restart the game.

Volume Control

Master Volume:

Controls the overall audio volume.

Ambient Music:

Controls the volume of the ambient music.

Combat Music:

Controls the volume of combat music.

Environment:

Controls the volume of environment sound effects.

Combat:

Controls the volume of combat sound effects.

Spells:

Controls the volume of spell sound effects.

Creatures:

Controls the volume of creatures sound effects.

Footsteps:

Controls the volume of footsteps sound effects.

Speech:

Controls the volume of speech sound effects.

User Interface:

Controls the volume of user interface sound effects.

Diplomacy:

Controls the volume of diplomacy sound effects.

Distance:

Controls the distance at which sound are heard.

Interface

General

Lock Interface:

While enabled, all UI windows will be immovable.

Layout Mode:

While enabled, UI windows that are normally locked in position will become movable.

Lock Hotbars:

When enabled, the hotkeys in your hotbar will be locked and cannot be dragged off.

Filter Profanity:

When enabled, the engine will attempt to censor profane words.

PC Context Menus:

When enabled, you will get a context menu when you right click other PCs.

Auto Defensive Target Me:

When enabled, beneficial abilities will automatically be cast on yourself if you have no defensive target.

Tooltips Require Alt:

If enabled, tooltips will not be displayed unless you are holding down the Alt key.

Always Show Item Compare:

If enabled, item compare windows will always be displayed. When disabled, item compare is available by holding down the Shift key.

Tooltips Follow Mouse:

When enabled, all tooltips will appear near the mouse.

Loot Window Follows Mouse:

When enabled, the loot window will open at the mouse cursor's location.

Show Container Contents:

When enabled, container tooltips will include a list of the items contained as well as the attack size.

Window Visibility

Reactions:

When enabled, the combat reactions window will be visible.

Mini Map:

When enabled, the mini map will be visible.

Experience Bar:

When enabled, the experience bar window will be visible.

Experience Bookend:

When enabled, the experience bookends will be visible.

Experience Values:

When enabled, the numerical amounts for your experience earned within your current level will show on your experience bar.

Confirmation

No Drop:

While enabled, you are required to confirm whenever trying to loot an item that is "No Drop" or "Soulbound."

Bind on Equip:

While enabled, you are required to confirm whenever trying to equip an item that is "Bind on Equip."

Additional Hotbars

Hotbar Left:

When enabled, displays an additional hotbar. This hotbar has multiple banks, similar to the primary bar.

Hotbar Left Secondary:

When enabled, displays an additional hotbar. This hotbar maps to bank 2 of Hotbar Left.

Hotbar Right:

When enabled, displays an additional hotbar. This hotbar maps to bank 3 of Hotbar Left.

Hotbar Right Secondary:

When enabled, displays an additional hotbar. This hotbar maps to bank 4 of Hotbar Left.

Hotbar Right Side:

When enabled, displays an additional hotbar. This hotbar maps to bank 5 of Hotbar Left.

Offensive Target Windows:

Selecting the following options determines whether or not the windows are displayed and determines their location.

Debuffs Vertical

Debuffs Horizontal

Debuffs (Cast by me)

Buffs Vertical

Buffs Horizontal

Weaknesses

Short Duration Buffs Time:

This adjusts the maximum duration of a buff to display in the Short Duration Buffs window. (Minutes)

Mine:

When enabled, 3D Text will appear over the heads of enemies you damage.

Verbose:

When enabled, 3D Text will appear over the heads of enemies when you perform non-damage abilities. (i.e. stun, snare, root)

Pet:

When enabled, 3D Text will appear over the heads of your pet's enemies.

Beneficial:

When enabled, 3D Text will appear over the heads of you and your allies when you perform beneficial abilities.

Incoming:

When enabled, 3D Text will appear over your head when you are harmed by enemies.

Others:

When enabled, 3D Text will appear over the heads of others when they take or receive damage.

Use Scrolling Combat Text:

When enabled, combat text will slide straight up over the targets head.

Scrolling Multiple Layers:

When enabled, text will use two layers. The less important combat text will be slightly transparent and slide upwards in its own column over the more important opaque text.

Scrolling Combat Text Scale:

This will change the size of scrolling combat text.

Scrolling Combat Text Alpha:

Lowering this will make the combat text more transparent.

Other

Show Chat Bubbles:

When enabled, text from nearby players will display in chat bubbles above their heads.

Off Target Targets:

When enabled, all enemies in the encounter display will show their target if you succeed the Perception check.

Controls

General

Look-Speed Multiplier:

This adjusts the speed of looking up and down with the mouse and keyboard.

Turn-Speed Multiplier:

This adjusts the speed of turning left and right with the mouse and keyboard.

Invert Mouse:

When enabled, inverts the movement of the mouse while mousing-looking.

Cam Snap-Behind:

When enabled, the camera will snap home when not mouse-looking.

Right-Click Cam Snap:

When enabled, right-clicking will reset the camera behind your shoulders, rather than turning the character the direction the camera is looking.

Model Chat:

When enabled, you must press Enter or click the chat window to begin chatting. While disabled, pressing any lettter will begin chatting. Disabling model chat may require keybind changes for optimal playability.

Enter Auto-Run:

When enabled, your character will begin auto-running if moving foward while Enter is pressed to begin chatting.

Arrows Scroll Chat:

When enabled, your arrow keys will move the chat cursor and scroll through chat history. If disabled, you must hold the Alt key to move your cursor and scroll through history, allowing use of the arrow keys for actions such as character movement.

NumPad State:

Detemrines the functionality of the NumPad at the gameplay level. If "Functions Only" is selected, the NumPad keys will have constant funcationality regardless of teh NumLock button state.

Key Bindings

Allows binding abilities to specific primary and secondary keyboard keys.

Performance

Rendering

Hardware Occlusion Query

When enabled, hardware occlusion queries will be used to determine the visibility of objects. Enabling HOQ is recommended but it should be disabled if it causes graphical anomalies.

Vertical Sync

When this is enabled, the image will wait for your monitor's refresh rate to display. This will reduce artifacting and 'tearing' that occurs when a scene is presented out of sync. Enabling this can limit your framerate to your refresh rate. However, the fps you notice won't change since updating the image when the monitor isn't ready won't update the image anyway.

Triple Buffering

This will use an additional backbuffer for your graphics cord. It will use slightly more graphics memory for the benefit of allowing your graphics cord to render up to 2 frames in advance rather than the standard 1 frame.

Characters

Character Occlusion

When enabled, this prevents "any" graphical character processing on characters that don't have any renderable pixels. Enabling Character Occlusion is recommended but it should be disabled if it causes graphical anomolies. This option isn't supported under high / highest performance, with bloom enabled.

Use Provided Shaders

When enabled, Vanguard will use precompiled shaders. This should reduce hitchig but it may ause performance issues. Enabling Provided Shadersis recommended but it should be disabled if you are experiencing additional crashes or running out of memory.

Animation LOD

As this setting is increased, animations being drawn in the distance will be of higher quality at the expense of performance.

Particles

Environment Particle Density

This setting controls the density of environment particle effects.

Player Spell Particle Density

This setting controls the density of spell particles drawn on your character.

Target Spell Particle Density

This setting controls the density of spell particles drawn on your target.

PC Spell Particle Density

This setting controls the density of spell particles drawn on other PCs.

NPC Spell Particle Density

This setting controls the density of spell particles drawn on NPCs.

Character

Coming soon!

User Interface Customization

• User Interface Customization