HelloHardcore

A lean, opinionated survival HUD for WoW Classic Era. It keeps your emergency items together, tells you whether you are prepared before a pull, and takes over with escalating visual and heartbeat warnings when observable danger becomes serious — without ever acting for you.

HelloHardcore works on every Classic Era realm, but is designed around the consequences of Hardcore: surface the one thing that matters, make real danger impossible to miss, and stay quiet the rest of the time.

Heads up — this is a personal work in progress. I build and evolve it as I play using it, so features land when I need them, design choices reflect my play style, and things may change between releases. Feel free to give it a whirl and leave me some feedback, but don't expect changes that fit your play style if it doesn't fit mine.

What it does

• One status that matters. Outside combat, the compact strip shows READY or the single most important preparation problem. In combat, urgent danger takes priority so the display never turns into a scrolling checklist.
• Escalating danger alarms. Low health, rapidly falling health, new adds, multiple recent attackers, elite or skull attackers, low breath or fatigue, and a newly enabled PvP flag can all raise the alert level. Combat by itself does not make noise.
• Screen-edge warning. Warning and critical danger produce a slow pulsing red bleed around all four edges of the screen. When danger clears, it settles through orange and green before fading away instead of disappearing abruptly.
• Heartbeat audio. Critical danger uses a loud, fast two-beat heartbeat; warning danger uses a slower single beat. The heartbeat repeats while danger remains, quietens during orange recovery, and stops at green.
• Pull readiness. Tracks healing potions, bandages, Hearthstone cooldown, equipped durability, free general-purpose bag slots, and ammunition when a bow, gun, or crossbow is equipped. Readiness reminders can change the center strip, but never trigger the heartbeat or full-screen flash.
• Emergency items. Four secure buttons choose your best carried healing potion, Healthstone, bandage, and target dummy. Missing items collapse out of the row; the rest show their current keybind, count, cooldown, usability, and normal item tooltip.
• Attention-first layout. The compact Hello-style HUD starts at the upper center of the screen, above zone-name announcements and away from the character. Unlock it if you prefer another location.
• One complete test. The settings panel's Test alert button runs a roughly 14-second preview of the critical, warning, orange, green, and fade phases while updating the center indicator and playing the matching sounds.

What counts as danger

HelloHardcore only starts an alarm for danger it can actually observe:

• Critical: health at 20% or below; at least 15% health lost over one or more seconds with an estimated five seconds or less to live; breath or fatigue at 20% or below; or a recently observed skull/world-boss attacker.
• Warning: health at 35% or below; a recently observed elite attacker; a second hostile NPC joining the fight; at least two hostile NPCs that damaged you in the last eight seconds; or a PvP flag that has just switched on.

Preparation reminders such as missing consumables, low durability, ammunition, or bag space can color the center strip, but never trigger the heartbeat or screen vignette. Death itself displays DEAD without playing an alarm.

Usage

• /hhc — list commands; /hhc config opens the settings panel.
• /hhc show|hide — show or hide the survival HUD.
• /hhc lock|unlock — lock the HUD or unlock it for dragging.
• /hhc resetpos — restore the upper-center default position.
• /hhc sound on|off — enable or disable heartbeat audio.
• /hhc test — preview the complete alert sequence.
• /hhc reset — reset all settings after confirmation.

Bind the emergency buttons under Esc > Options > Keybindings > HelloHardcore. The defaults are Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V for potion, Healthstone, bandage, and target dummy. Ctrl+V intentionally replaces Classic Era's Show All Nameplates binding.

Caveats

• Classic Era 1.15.9 only. Retail, progression Classic, and other game versions are unsupported.
• No automatic item use. The emergency actions are ordinary secure buttons; HelloHardcore chooses what belongs on them, but you still press the key or click the button.
• Item assignments update out of combat and freeze safely during combat, as required by WoW's secure-action rules.
• "Recent attackers" means distinct hostile NPCs that damaged you during the previous eight seconds. The Classic API does not reveal every nearby or engaged enemy.
• Elite and skull warnings require the attacker to be resolvable as a target, mouseover, focus, boss, or nameplate unit. The combat log alone does not include classification.
• Time-to-death is a short rolling estimate, not a prediction. It deliberately requires meaningful sustained health loss before warning.
• No death feed, Hardcore verification, route guidance, or mob database. This is a compact survival instrument panel, not a replacement for the Hardcore or Deathlog addons.
• Opinionated defaults. The settings stay deliberately small rather than growing into a profile editor for every color, threshold, and sound.

Heartbeat audio

The bundled heartbeat is deliberately loud and plays through WoW's Master channel. Critical danger uses a dedicated two-beat recording; warning and recovery use the single-beat recording at progressively slower, quieter cadences.

Heartbeat recordings by bart, with the single heartbeat modified by Jieiku, sourced from OpenGameArt under CC0 1.0.

Released under the MIT License.