First launch

What Vantage does the first time it runs - the six-step setup, the presets it offers, and the files it leaves on disk.

The first time you start Minecraft with Vantage installed, a short setup opens by itself. This page walks through it step by step, with the words you will see on screen, then explains the presets it offers and lists what the first launch writes to your computer. It is for anyone who has just installed the mod, and for anyone who skipped the setup and wants to know what they missed. Everything here describes Vantage 2.0.1.

When the setup opens

The setup opens once per install, at the first quiet moment after the game starts. Vantage waits until the title screen, or a world with no menu open, has sat still for 40 game ticks, which is two seconds. It never opens while resources are loading, never opens over another screen, and does not need the network.

Vantage records that you have seen the setup the moment it appears, not when you finish it. A crash or a closed window halfway through therefore does not trap you in a loop where every launch reopens it.

Getting around the setup

The setup is one glass window. At the top are the step's title, a line that reads "Step 1 of 6 · every step is optional", and a thin progress bar. A cross in the corner closes it; its tooltip says "Finish later (Esc): everything you picked is kept".

The bottom row holds Skip the rest on the left and Back and Next on the right. Back appears from the second step on. On the fifth step, Next is labelled Finish. The last step keeps Back but has neither Next nor Skip the rest; it has buttons of its own instead.

Every choice takes effect the moment you make it. There is no "apply" at the end, so there is nothing to lose by leaving early.

The six steps at a glance

The sections below go through each step in order.

Step 1: Welcome to Vantage

The first step introduces the mod in one sentence:

Vantage watches SkyBlock for you: timers, prices, waypoints, solvers and trackers for the places you actually play.

Under it, a quieter line says that the next five steps take about a minute, that nothing here is permanent, and that every single thing can be changed later.

Three rows follow, so you know how to get back:

If nothing is bound to the menu key, the first row says "the Vantage menu key (not bound yet)" instead of a key name. Keybinds explains how to bind it.

Step 2: What do you play?

This step lists the parts of SkyBlock you might play, each with an on/off switch and its number of features. The copy reads:

Tick where you play. Vantage switches the features it recommends for those areas back on.

Areas you leave unticked are not touched: nothing gets switched off behind your back.

An area is a gameplay category that has at least one feature in your build: Dungeons, Slayers, Combat, Mining, Farming & Garden, Fishing, Foraging, Hunting, Crimson Isle, The Rift, The End, Ravengard, Events and Vantage Vet. General, UI & Visuals, Inventory & Items, Chat and Quality of Life are not offered, because they apply to everyone whatever they play. Hovering a row shows the category's description and how many of its features Vantage recommends.

What ticking an area does

The recommended features of an area are the ones Vantage ships switched on. Ticking an area switches every one of them on. It never switches anything off.

Unticking an area puts it back exactly as it was before you ticked it, feature by feature. A line under the list keeps count, for example "2 areas picked · 5 features switched on."

The areas you tick here also decide what the Everything look shows in the next step.

Step 3: Choose a look

A look is a preset for your HUD: which displays are on, where they sit and how large they are. The step reads "How much do you want on screen? Hover to see it, click to apply it."

The looks are on the left as cards. On the right is a small preview of the screen. Hovering a card draws where that look would put each display; clicking it applies the look at once and confirms with a toast, such as "Balanced applied" and how many displays were placed.

If you ticked no areas in step 2, Everything treats every area as picked.

The step ends with a reassurance that holds for every look: "Every display can still be dragged, scaled or switched off in the HUD editor." The HUD editor page explains how.

Step 4: How loud?

This step decides how much Vantage may interrupt you. It reads "How much should Vantage interrupt you? Try each one: the Test button uses the setting you just picked."

Choosing a level sets the three switches Show toasts, Show titles and Play sounds of the Notifications feature, then fires a test so you see the result. The Test it button fires the same test again: a chat line, a toast, a title reading "Loud and clear" and a short note-block sound. Whatever the level allows is what appears.

Chat messages always come through, whatever you pick. On the title screen there is no chat to draw, so the step tells you that you will see those lines once you are in a world.

If you choose nothing here, notifications stay as they were. Every other notification setting, such as do-not-disturb and how long a toast stays, is on the Notifications page.

Step 5: Prices and data

There is nothing to set on this step, and it says so. Its three paragraphs explain where the numbers come from:

Prices need no setup: Vantage reads the Bazaar and the auction house on its own, and it keeps working offline with whatever it last saw.

The profile viewer works the same way: nothing to set up, and no Hypixel API key to paste. Vantage reads profiles through its own service, which holds one registered key.

If you have used other mods, you may be used to pasting a key here. Hypixel's developer policy asks that keys are not entered into mods, so Vantage will never ask you for one - and it deletes any you had stored from an older version.

Data and privacy says what each of those sources is and what leaves your computer. Profile viewer explains how profiles are looked up.

Step 6: You are set up

The last step opens with "That is it. Here is what changed:" and a short list built from your choices:

• the areas you ticked and how many features that switched on, or "No areas picked, so every feature kept the setting it already had."
• the look and how many displays it put on screen, or "Your displays kept the layout they already had."
• the notification level, or "Notifications left as they were."
• "Data sources need no setup, the profile viewer included."
• when a preset has been applied this session, "Changed your mind? The presets list has an Undo for this session."

Three buttons follow: Open the menu, Open the HUD editor and Done. A last line repeats the way back: press the menu key or type /vantage, and run /vantage setup to walk through it again.

Leaving early

You can leave at any step, three ways: press Escape, click the cross, or click Skip the rest. Escape and the cross close the setup; Skip the rest jumps to the summary on the last step.

None of them undoes anything. Because each choice was written the moment you made it, whatever you picked before leaving stays picked, and whatever you did not reach stays as it was.

Presets

The look in step 3 is one kind of preset. Vantage ships two kinds, and the Presets screen explains them in one sentence: "A preset is a set of settings, a HUD layout, or both. Applying one can always be undone while the game is running."

Playstyles

A playstyle switches on the features one way of playing wants. It only switches features on; it never turns one off.

Under its name, each playstyle's row in the Presets screen counts the settings it would change, and adds how many of them your version does not have, if any.

Opening the Presets screen

There are three ways in: More actions › Presets in the menu's sidebar, the Open button on the Setup & Presets feature's page, or /vantage presets in chat.

Looks come first, then playstyles. Hovering a look draws its layout in the preview under the list; hovering a playstyle says it changes settings, not where things sit. Each row has an Apply button, and Enter applies the focused row. From chat, /vantage presets apply <id> applies one by its id; /vantage presets list prints the ids.

What applying does

Applying a preset is all or nothing. Vantage copies your settings and your HUD layout first, writes the preset, and puts the copy straight back if anything goes wrong, so a preset either lands completely or not at all.

A preset may name a feature or a display your version does not have, for example one written for a newer release. That part is skipped, and the toast says how many things were left out.

Undo

Every preset you apply leaves an undo point. The Presets screen's bottom button reads "Undo 'Balanced'" (or whichever preset came last) and puts everything back the way it was before it. /vantage presets undo and the Undo button on the Setup & Presets page do the same.

Undo points stack, up to ten. They last until you close the game and are not saved to disk: restarting keeps the setup you applied and forgets the way back. Switching to another config profile clears them too, because they describe the profile you were on.

Your own setup, through the clipboard

Under "Your own settings", the Presets screen has two more buttons. Copy mine copies your active profile to the clipboard: every setting, and the HUD exactly as you arranged it. Paste applies such a string, after asking you to confirm, and can be undone like a preset.

Presets themselves are files inside the mod, under assets/vantage/presets/, and a resource pack can add one or replace one. /vantage presets reload reads them again without a restart.

What the first launch writes to disk

Everything Vantage keeps lives in one folder inside your Minecraft folder: config/vantage/. The first launch creates only a little of it.

The two files written at once look like this:

config/vantage/
  vantage.json            { "profile": "default", "configVersion": …, "modVersion": "…" }
  profiles/
    default.json          { "version": …, "values": { "<feature id>": { "<option>": value } } }

The settings file is written again whenever you change something, and the setup's "seen" flag is saved into it as the setup appears. No backup is taken on the very first launch, because there is no earlier file to copy.

What starts in the background

While you are still on the title screen, Vantage starts fetching what its features read: the NotEnoughUpdates item repository into repo/, Bazaar and auction prices, the mayor election, and its datasets into data/. These run in the background; the game does not wait for them, and features that need them start working when they arrive.

The item repository is checked for a newer version on every launch while Auto-update item repo is on, which it is by default. That option and the rest are on the API & Data Sources page. Data and privacy lists every address the mod talks to.

Vantage Stats records nothing and creates nothing on disk until you switch it on; Vantage Stats explains how.

Running the setup again

The setup never reopens by itself, but you can run it whenever you like:

• type /vantage setup (or /vt setup);
• in the menu, open More actions at the bottom of the sidebar and choose Run setup again;
• on the Setup & Presets page in General, press Run beside "Run the setup again".

Nothing is reset first, so it picks up from where you are now. An area you ticked before finds its features already on, and the summary says so.

Five things worth doing next

1. Open the menu. Press Right Shift in game, or type /vt. The menu explains the layout.
2. Arrange your HUD. Type /vt hud, or press HUD Editor in the menu's sidebar. See The HUD editor.
3. Choose the look of the interface itself. The theme, the accent and how much glass are in the Appearance feature; Appearance walks through them.
4. Search instead of browsing. In the menu, Ctrl + F searches every feature and every option: see Finding a setting.
5. Learn the commands. /vt help prints the core ones; Commands lists them all.

Related

• Install - which jar, and what it needs beside it.
• The menu - the sidebar, feature pages and every kind of control.
• Profiles - keeping more than one complete setup.
• Notifications - everything the "How loud?" step only begins.