First Launch

Get your character on screen from a command line — through Lich, or straight to play.net — and know what you’re looking at when the room description lands.

What it’s for

You already know how you connect: Lich on a port, or account-and-password to the game. This page is the command-line route for both, so you can put VellumFE behind a Lich launcher entry, a shell alias, or a shortcut and stop thinking about it. The last section is a tour of the screen you land on — which window is which, where you type, how you scroll back to the thing that killed you.

If you’d rather click a saved connection than type flags, use the Launcher; it covers the same ground with stored passwords. Running vellum-fe with no arguments at all opens it.

⚠️ The same character, started two ways, lands in two different interfaces. A hand-typed command line defaults to the terminal UI; a saved Launcher connection defaults to the GUI. Pass --frontend gui (or -f gui) to make the command line match.

Set it up

Common setups

Recipe 1 — Make Lich launch VellumFE for you

In Lich’s launcher, add VellumFE as a custom frontend and set the command to:

path\to\vellum-fe.exe --frontend gui --port %port% --key %key%

Lich substitutes %port% with the port it opened and %key% with the login key it received from the game; --key hands that key straight to the game server, so you are never asked for credentials. Drop --frontend gui from the line if you want the terminal UI.

Outcome: picking your character in Lich opens VellumFE already in the room you logged out in — no password prompt, no port to copy.

Recipe 2 — One set of settings, several characters

--character is your login name. --profile is your config name, and it picks which folder under ~/.vellum-fe/profiles/ holds your layout, highlights, keybinds, and hotbars. When you leave --profile off, it silently copies --character — which is why every new character starts with a blank-slate layout.

Point three characters at one shared config folder:

vellum-fe --port 8000 --character Rysk    --profile hunting
vellum-fe --port 8000 --character Nisugi  --profile hunting
vellum-fe --port 8000 --character Vellum  --profile hunting

Outcome: all three log in under their own names, and all three read and write ~/.vellum-fe/profiles/hunting/ — so a layout you save on one is there when you log in as the next.

Tips & gotchas

⚠️ In the terminal UI, Ctrl+C copies your selection — it does not quit. In the GUI, Ctrl+C quits. To leave either one, type .quit. Note that .quit disconnects but keeps the window open — run it again, or use .exit, to close the client outright.

⚠️ --profile is not --character. Omitting --profile makes your config folder follow your character name. If you rename the flag you pass, you land in a different folder and your layout looks lost. It is not lost — it is under the old profile name in ~/.vellum-fe/profiles/.

⚠️ The DragonRealms world names are spelled differently in two places. On the command line they are hyphenated: dr, dr-platinum, dr-fallen, dr-test. In config.toml and in saved Launcher connections they are not: dr, drplatinum, drfallen, drtest. A misspelled value in config.toml does not error — it falls back to GemStone IV Prime, and you find out at the character list.

The tour — what you’re looking at once you’re in. The default layout places six windows:

Everything else — vitals bars, a compass, an injury doll, hotbars — is a window you add yourself. In the GUI that’s the Windows button in the top toolbar, which opens a stay-open catalog with a checkbox per window. In the terminal, type .addwindow with no arguments to get a picker. See Widgets.

Where things are. Your command line is the bottom row of the screen; press Enter to send, Up and Down to walk back through history, and Ctrl+R to repeat your last command. Scrolling back is PageUp / PageDown a page at a time and Alt+PageUp / Alt+PageDown a line at a time in the terminal, or the mouse wheel and scrollbar in the GUI. Tab moves focus between windows in the terminal; in the GUI you click the window you want.

Getting help. Anything you type starting with a dot is a client command, not game input. Three worth knowing on day one:

• .help — the full dot-command list, grouped by section
• .menu — the main menu tree (the GUI also has toolbar hubs)
• .settings — the in-app settings editor

Copying text. In the terminal, drag-select and the text is on your clipboard the moment you release. In the GUI, drag-select (double-click for a word, triple for a line) and press Ctrl+C. Copy is plain text in both, deliberately.

Direct mode and TLS. Direct connections use your operating system’s own TLS stack, so Windows and macOS need nothing extra. On Linux, see Installation.

See also

• Installation — getting the binary, and Linux TLS notes
• The Launcher — saved connections, stored passwords, per-connection frontend
• Command Reference — every dot-command
• keybinds.toml — rebinding anything in the tour above
• Widgets — the windows you add to the default six