A real-time companion app for EverQuest Legends. It tails your combat log and gives you a live HUD in the browser — nothing injected, nothing touching the game process. The one thing it can write is optional: recommended spell sets into your character's saved-loadout file (with a backup), so one in-game /memspellset companion loads the whole advised bar.

In action

The HUD and the 3D Atlas — live vitals and countdown timers on the left, Najena mined from your own game files in the middle (drag to orbit; the dot is you), and the fight breakdown on the right with per-ability crits, your pet's line, and every group member's damage:

The 3D view tracks you as you move — the dot is your /loc, and the camera follows it through geometry mined from your own game files:

The Advisor — a wiki-grounded spell loadout for your exact trio and level, with one-click write-back into the game's saved spell sets, and permanent pre-buffs called out so you never waste a slot:

Where to hunt — zones ranked against the community level table, above a Gantt of the bands around you so you can see what you are about to outgrow. Then the full 24-slot gear table, with every stat scaled to your items' actual upgrade ranks:

Exaltations and farming — every stone you own: what it grants, whether it is active or dormant until a later level, and exactly which of your items it can legally socket into — then where to farm your next upgrades, and per-class notes for your trio:

The in-game overlay — a compact always-on-top meter that lives over the game: ranked damage bars, draining spell/cooldown timers, session rates, drop tracking, and loot/kill alerts with an attention banner. Click-through by default; Scroll Lock makes it interactive.

You choose what it shows. Under Settings ▸ Overlay every section switches off, and so does every field inside one — keep the kill count but drop the coin, keep cooldowns but not every buff you refreshed. Start from Combat focus (the meter and your timers) or Meter only, then adjust. Changes reach a running overlay in about half a second, so you can watch it shrink while you tune it. Anything you turn off is still in the web view, which has room for it:

What you get

• Vitals & War Ledger — live DPS, session stats, hit rate, XP, loot (with sold tags), a streaming combat feed, per-pull encounter breakdowns with group/raid DPS and a defense line (dodge/parry/block/riposte)
• Group numbers you can actually compare — everyone in the group gets a damage and DPS row, with pets on their own row rather than folded into their owner. That means if two people in the group both run this, one person's "You" matches what the other sees for them, so the figures are worth arguing over. Mob casts land in the encounter too, so you can see what is being cast at you and by whom
• Combat dashboard — hide the Atlas/Advisor panel and the encounter view spreads across the freed width; the ledger collapses to a strip; encounter text size is adjustable
• Atlas — zone charts with a live position dot, zone-to-zone routing, "true walls" mined from the game's own map geometry, and a textured 3D dollhouse view with a follow camera
• Advisor — spell loadout with pick-and-choose checkboxes, AA spending, upgrade warnings, a vendor shopping list, gear-slot recommendations, exaltation tracking (typed sockets), and where-to-hunt picks — grounded in your actual spellbook/inventory exports and the EQL wiki, with every suggestion machine-verified (owned, level-legal, not superseded, and not fighting another pick for the same buff slot — two buffs in one slot overwrite each other, so recommending both wastes a gem). One click writes the picks as in-game spell sets — a combat loadout (gems auto-ordered: DD, DoTs, AoE, heals at gem 8, utility, pets) and a pre-buff set (permanent buffs first, then longest-duration)
• Overlay — a Details-style damage meter over the game: ranked class-colored bars up to raid size, damage/DPS modes, this-fight or last-5-fights segments; closes itself when the game exits

Get it

Two ways to run it, and the .exe is the one to pick if you just want to play.

	Single .exe	Source install
You must already have	nothing	Python 3.11+ and Node 18+
Setup	download, double-click	run install_companion.bat
HUD, War Ledger, encounters, timers, alerts	yes	yes
In-game overlay	yes	yes
Atlas — charts, true walls, textured 3D	yes	yes
Advisor + gear counsel	deterministic or an LLM	same
Screen-OCR position tracking	no	yes
Download	~42 MB, one file	a repo plus its dependencies

Download WarCounsel.exe →

It needs nothing installed, finds your game through the Windows registry, and keeps its data in a data folder beside itself. First launch takes a few seconds (a one-file build unpacks itself each time); after that it is the same app as the source install.

Windows will warn you that it does not recognise the publisher — the file is unsigned. INSTALL.md shows exactly which button to press, and how to check the download yourself if you would rather not take my word for it.

Paste an API key into the gear panel if you want LLM-backed counsel; leave it empty and the built-in deterministic advisor does the job.

Everything below this point is about the source install, which you want for OCR position tracking or to hack on the code.

Requirements

(For the .exe you need none of this — just Windows and the game.)

• Windows 10/11, or macOS / Linux running the game under Wine (see Mac and Linux — the overlay and OCR are Windows-only there)
• Python 3.11+
• Node.js 18+ (serves the web UI)
• EverQuest Legends with logging enabled (type /log on in game once)

Optional — pick zero or one LLM for reasoned counsel:

Option	Needs	Notes
None (deterministic)	nothing	default-ready; mechanical but honest counsel, instant
LM Studio	a local model	free, private; ~26B MoE models work well
OpenAI	an API key	best quality; a consult is ~7k tokens
Custom endpoint	any OpenAI-compatible URL	Groq / OpenRouter / Gemini compat / LAN — free tiers work

Optional — EQL MCP server (ArtSabintsev/everquest-legends-mcp, Node 22+) for structured spell/AA data. Without it the app fetches the wiki over plain HTTP automatically — no Node beyond the UI is required.

Setup — the easy way

Never installed anything like this before? INSTALL.md walks through every click — no git or command line knowledge needed (download the ZIP, extract, run install_companion.bat).

git clone https://github.com/EKirschmann/WarCounsel
cd WarCounsel
install_companion.bat

No git? Download the newest Source code (zip) from the releases page, extract, run install_companion.bat.

The installer pulls dependencies, then a short wizard finds your EverQuest Legends install (scans all drives; or paste the path), offers to download the Brewall map pack for the 2D Atlas charts (the 3D view mines the game's own files — nothing to download), and asks which counsel model to use — including none. Every answer just fills in .env; change any of it later by editing that file, or re-run python setup_wizard.py.

Setup — by hand

pip install -r requirements.txt
cd frontend && npm install && cd ..
copy .env.example .env

You usually do NOT need to set EQL_GAME_DIR: the backend tries the launcher's standard path and then the game's own registry entry, so even custom installs are found automatically (logs and maps derive from it). Set it in .env only when detection fails. Optional 2D dungeon charts: extract the Brewall pack from https://www.eqmaps.info/eq-map-files/ into <game dir>\maps\Dark Brewall.

Run

start_companion.bat — or two terminals:

uvicorn backend.main:app --reload     # backend on :8000
cd frontend && npm run dev            # UI on :3000

Open http://localhost:3000, then in game type:

Command	Why
/log on	start writing the combat log (once per character)
/who	teaches the app your level + class trio
/outputfile spellbook · inventory · missingspells	grounds the Advisor in what you own
/alternateadv list	syncs your AA ranks
/loc	drops a position fix on the Atlas (or enable OCR tracking)

Then press check exports and Consult in the Advisor tab.

Mac and Linux

There is no native EQL client for either, so people play under Wine — and that turns out to suit this app well. From the host side a Wine bottle is an ordinary folder, so the combat log is a normal file: WarCounsel reads it directly, without going through Wine at all.

First get the game running, using whichever the community recommends:

macOS	Linux
osxEQL — free, open-source Wine + Metal	Lutris
CrossOver — paid, commercially supported Wine	Bottles
Whisky	plain wine in ~/.wine

Then run WarCounsel from source:

git clone https://github.com/EKirschmann/WarCounsel.git
cd WarCounsel
./start_companion.sh          # add "dev" for hot reload

You need Python 3.11+ and Node 20+ (brew install python node, or your distro's packages). Everything else is handled on first run.

The game folder is found automatically in the usual bottle locations — osxEQL's prefix and prefix-cx, CrossOver and Whisky bottles, Lutris under ~/Games, Bottles, and plain ~/.wine. If yours lives somewhere else, point at it and skip the guessing:

EQL_GAME_DIR="$WINEPREFIX/drive_c/users/Public/Daybreak Game Company/Installed Games/EverQuest Legends"   ./start_companion.sh

Then /log on in game, exactly as on Windows.

What you do not get

• No in-game overlay. It relies on Win32 click-through windows, global hotkeys and a tray icon; macOS has no Scroll Lock key and will not reliably draw over a fullscreen Wine game anyway. Run the game windowed and keep the browser beside it — that is the intended shape here.
• No screen-OCR position feed. Typing /loc still plots you on the Atlas; only the automatic tracking is missing.
• No packaged download. Run from source. An unsigned Mac app would need xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine before it would open, which is a worse first run than git clone.

Everything else is the same build: HUD, War Ledger, encounters, Atlas 2D and 3D, the Advisor, sessions and settings.

Tested by construction against every bottle layout above, but not yet on real hardware — if the game folder is not found on yours, please open an issue with the path and it will be a one-line fix.

Updating

Using the .exe? Download the new one and replace the old file. Your data folder beside it is untouched, so sessions, settings, and mined geometry all survive. The in-app version badge tells you when a newer release exists.

Source install: click the version badge in the app header to check for a newer release. To update: close the companion, run update_companion.bat, start it again — works for both git clones (pull) and ZIP installs (a built-in downloader; git is never required). What changed is in CHANGELOG.md.

Overlay shortcuts

Global, so they work while the game has focus:

Keys	Does
Ctrl+Alt+O	show / hide
Ctrl+Alt+C	compact mode
Ctrl+Alt+↑ / ↓	opacity
Ctrl+Alt+X	force interactive (no Scroll Lock needed)

A tray icon near the clock offers the same, plus Reset position for an overlay dragged off-screen. Windows 11 tucks new tray icons into the ^ overflow until you drag one out.

License

MIT — see LICENSE. Credits for the community projects whose data and techniques are vendored here are in NOTICE.md.

Notes

• Sessions survive backend restarts (state snapshots to data/)
• One active character at a time; the header dropdown switches between every eqlog_*.txt in the folder
• Everything stays local: logs, exports, and counsel never leave your machine unless you point the LLM at a hosted API
• Full architecture and extension docs: CLAUDE.md