User:TheSatanicSanta/Mystcraft Wiki import/Playing Mystcraft

The basic idea of Mystcraft is that you can create mystical books which let you travel to entirely new worlds, called Ages. You can explore or exploit these worlds as you choose, and while some may be much like the Overworld, others can be very different, with new resources not found in the Overworld. Creating completely random worlds is easy, but you can also learn to control the contents of your Ages by collecting the mystical symbols used to define them, and learning the grammar used to describe the new worlds.

The first catch, of course, is that these Ages offer all the usual dangers of the Minecraft world, plus a few extra. Worlds might be sunk in eternal night or perpetual storm, or be islands floating above the Void. They can also have dangerous conditions such as poisonous air, excessive gravity, or worse. A few are sufficiently unstable to decay around you while you try to explore them! Fortunately, the worst of these dangers are reserved for those who abuse the Art of designing worlds; a completely random world may be strange, but is unlikely to be unduly lethal. And then there's the second catch:  When you "link" through a book, the book stays behind. Before travelling to a new world, you'll need to prepare a way home!

In the spirit of exploration, this guide will begin by walking you through the basics of creating a (random) Age, travelling to it, and returning home. Afterwards there will be more details of what's going on, discussion of safety measures, and of the designing Ages to your own specifications.

Equipment
For this "quick peek" mission, you will need to start by building some tools: To start from scratch, you will need at least the following:
 * 3 iron ingots
 * 5 smooth stone
 * 7 wooden planks


 * 4 Ink sacs, as dropped by squid
 * 3 Glass Bottles
 * a water source block
 * 2 pieces of paper
 * 2 pieces of leather

With this you will create two of Mystcraft's three main tool blocks, the ink mixer and the book binder. (The third is the writing desk, which you don't need just yet.) The tool blocks will let you create two mystical books of different kinds:  A descriptive book which lets you create and enter a new Age, and a linking book that lets you return home. Finally, you'll go "there and back again".

1. Start with the ink mixer. The name is a little misleading; its purpose is to turn paper and ink into link panels, a key component for both kinds of books. It is so named because in advanced work, it can mix various things into the ink, to give the panels special features. Make it and place it somewhere convenient.

2. While you're at it, make your ink vials. There is an alternate recipe with an empty bottle and a bucket of water, but either way, the non-stackable ingredient makes it a bit tricky to craft large amounts of ink (Also, ink bottles only stack to 16). Both recipes are shapeless and can be done in your inventory. You'll need two vials of ink.

3. Next, make the book binder. Open its GUI and put one piece of leather into the slot provided (the other piece will be used differently). The book binder creates Descriptive Books. The large "trough" down the middle of the GUI can hold one link panel and any number of symbol pages to define the world that a book will reach. With zero symbol pages (like the book you'll be making), you get a random world.

4. Now you will make your two link panels, one for each book. Go back to the ink mixer and open its GUI. Put your paper and ink into their respective slots. Note the ink pool filling, and a link panel appearing in the output slot. Take the link panel, then take the next. Each panel costs one piece of paper and a full vial of ink.

5. Time to make your first book! Start with the linking book, your return ticket. In your inventory, craft one of the link panels together with your remaining piece of leather. You get a unlinked link book. At this point, look around, and decide just where you want to return to the Overworld. It should be a safe place indoors (not exposed to potential rain or night monsters), and not too cramped. Go there, then wield and use (right-click) the book. It will become a Linking book. Ths Linking Book will return you to this point from any other dimension, but it will not work in the Overworld.

6. And finally, the descriptive book. Go back to the book binder and open its GUI. It should already have a piece of leather, now put your other link panel in the central trough. (V11) Finally, go to the text box at the upper left, and choose a name for your new world. "First World!" will do fine. Now you can take your Descriptive Book from the output slot.

Into the Unknown

 * Gather your usual adventuring supplies -- armor, weapons and tools, food, etc. Go back to where you activated the Linking Book.
 * Place both the descriptive and linking books in your hot bar.
 * Wield the descriptive book, and then "use" it (right-click). You will see the GUI of the book, with a large panel to the right. Click on that panel, and... wait, you're falling through nothingness?  And your inventory is gone?  Don't panic, this is normal.  You are in transit to your new world, which is being constructed as you fall.  Eventually, you will land in a puff of smoke.  Welcome to your new world.  This is called 'linking".
 * On entry into the new world, note that your hand is now empty. Immediately switch to wielding the linking book (already in your hot bar, right?).  You will be standing on a 5x5 platform of smooth stone, which is the "spawn platform"  This is your default spawn point for the new world.  Be careful, the platform may be atop a tree or otherwise high above the ground.
 * Take a look around your world. If you are in any obvious danger, then immediately link with your linking book, just like you did with the descriptive book. Immediate danger includes but is not limited to; Stuff falling on you from above; darkness, and/or monsters approaching you; explosions, meteors, lightning, catching on fire, or otherwise taking damage.
 * If you're not in immediate danger, you can look around a bit, but don't go far or push your luck just yet. Remember that you can always come back later.  Go back to the spawn platform before you use your Linking Book to return. This will return you to where you activated that Linking Book.

Having returned to the Overworld
Note that both of the books you used are "gone" from your hotbar. Look around the ground where you are. There should be a large book lying on the ground right near you. This is the Descriptive Book that you used to travel. Note that while most items "float", and are picked up by touching, Mystcraft books rest on the ground (think "boat" or "minecart"), and trying to touch it will only push it.

To retrieve the book off the ground, interact with it (usually right-click). You will see the open book with the link panel. (If you have a current version of Mystcraft and also the LookingGlass mod, you may get a view of the Age). There will also be a single inventory slot containing a book. Pick that up (with a click), and you will see your inventory; you can place it in your inventory and it is now off the ground. You can also pick up book entities by sneak-using (default shift-right-click), if you have a free inventory slot.

Books are left in this "book entity" form whenever you use them directly from your hand, and even when they're simply dropped. Your linking book is in the same state, back on the spawn platform in your first age. (You can pick it up on your next visit.) In this form, books can take damage from the environment and eventually be destroyed. Even in a sheltered area, it will slowly take damage from exposure, but water or rain will damage it quickly, and other attacks can also harm it. As you might expect, the book is safe while its chunk is unloaded.

Your world is still there, and the only way to get there is through your book. On a future visit, you can make linking books to provide a backup entry to the world or to share it with other players, and these can go someplace more convenient than the spawn platform (say, inside a new base). (Or if you don't like the other players, they can go someplace less convenient.) Now that you have some idea what's there, you can decide if it's worth setting up such a base for mining or other purposes. Remember that as long as you can get around reasonably well, even an otherwise useless age will have libraries for you to ransack. If the age is deadly, impassable, or just really nasty, feel free to discard the book and try again.

Future Trip Tips
This was the quick-and-dirty way, for an age which was assumed reasonably safe. For future visits to new ages, it's better to make heavy use of bookstands/lecterns, and spare linking books. For best safety:
 * For each new world, you should bring 3 return linking books, two of them on your hotbar. Also on the hotbar, should be 2 lecterns or bookstands, and you should also have a chest in your inventory.
 * Put a bookstand or lectern in your base, and put the descriptive book into it. You can use it from there, and leave it safe.  The only difference between a bookstand and a lectern is height:  Bookstands mostly go on the floor, while lecterns go on a block for proper "reading level".  Both protect books from the milder abuses of the environment.
 * As soon as you enter your new age, place a bookstand or lectern down on the spawn platform, and put one of the linking books there. The second linking-book should stay in your hotbar no matter what, as an emergency escape hatch.
 * After looking around, getting oriented, and deciding not to panic-link back home, place the chest some distance from the spawn platform; far enough that, say, a charged creeper couldn't take out both your bookstand and the chest. In the chest, put the other bookstand, and the third linking book (from your main inventory).
 * And now you can go ahead exploring, building, or whatever. To go home normally, go back to your spawn platform and use the book there, or place another return book at any base you set up.
 * If you die, you will end up at the spawn platform. In most ages, you can change this as usual with a bed.  To sleep, there must be no suns above the horizon, or else it must be storming.  In any case, it's probably worth building a shelter around the platform.
 * If you do get killed, you've got your linking book back at the spawn platform, or if that gets destroyed, you have the spare in the chest. And in case things go south in a hurry, you have the book in your hotbar.
 * Note that if you do use the book from your hotbar, you're likely to lose it, but that's OK -- emergency links usually imply "burning" a link book. Sometimes you can even go back and collect it later.
 * Once you decide to keep using an age, make a link book to travel to some chosen point in the age (like your base there). Put the Descriptive Book someplace safe, and use the link book for ordinary travel.  (In future versions of the mod, books will wear out from use.)
 * There is a game "achievement" for traveling into an age without a return book. This is not necessarily a fatal mistake: You may well be able to play "slidecraft", making books in each age, to eventually reach a world with a star fissure that can return you to the Overworld.  However, this is no sure thing -- it is possible to be trapped in an age which does not have the resources to make new books..  (Lack of sugar cane is a particular hazard, but leather or ink may also be a problem.)  There is also a much safer way to gain this achievement, but figuring that out is left as a challenge for the reader.
 * Linkbooks are also handy when travelling to or from the Nether or End. (Especially since Nether and End portals will not work in an Age.)
 * Linkbooks can also be used (some would say abused) to provide convenient teleportation between distant bases: Each base gets a linkbook to a "nexus" room, which can be in an age or even a box in the Nether.  There, of course, you have placed linkbooks for all the bases.  A nexus system can easily be upgraded when you get portals.

Collecting Symbols (V10,V11.0)
The quick peek above was to a completely random world. But the true promise of Mystcraft is to create worlds of your own design! While the Minecraft engine does impose some limits, you can gain a great deal of control over the contents of your worlds, by learning how to describe your world properly in Dn'i symbols, according to their proper grammar. Also, some choices are unwise: A world selected for high ore content or another "greedy" objective, or one that is just poorly written, may be quite unpleasant, perhaps with with excessive gravity, poisonous air, deadly radiation or other hazards. These hostile conditions are represented in game by status effects within the world. In the worst cases, a world can be falling apart around you -- battered by meteors or random explosions, crumbling into the void, or with bizarre decay blocks spreadying through it.

Your first few symbols may well have come from the Overworld: The symbols spawn in the loot chests found in dungeons, abandoned mineshafts, and so on. They can appear as loose pages, or as notebooks containing more pages. Once you begin exploring ages, you will be able to get many more symbols: Every Age contains many Libraries, each containing both loose pages on lecterns, and a secret chest with more pages and notebooks. Symbols and notebooks can also be purchased as trade items, from a Archivist villager (bright purple robes, much snazzier than the priest's).

The next thing you'll want to do (if you haven't already) is craft three leather in the shape of a "V" (the bucket/bottle/bowl pattern). This will make a notebook where you can store your pages of symbols. You may want to make several in order to organize lots of symbols, but for now one will do. Now "use" the notebook and you will see a scrolling interface. Placing pages in the top slots will put them in the notebook. Notebooks have, for all purposes, infinite storage. Place your symbol pages in the upper inventory and they will be stored in the notebook. You'll want to have a notebook with you when symbol hunting (or exploring, since you may find pages in loot chests) so that the symbols you find don't take up your inventory slots as they do not stack. Notebooks are also used in the writing desk (see below), which helps organize the symbols and allows you to copy them.

Collecting Symbols (V11.1+)
The quick peek above was to a completely random world. But the true promise of Mystcraft is to create worlds of your own design! While the Minecraft engine does impose some limits, you can gain a great deal of control over the contents of your worlds, by learning how to describe your world properly in Dn'i symbols, according to their proper grammar. Also, some choices are unwise: A world selected for high ore content or another "greedy" objective, or one that is just poorly written, may be quite unpleasant, perhaps with with excessive gravity, poisonous air, deadly radiation or other hazards. These hostile conditions are represented in game by status effects within the world. In the worst cases, a world can be falling apart around you -- battered by meteors or random explosions, crumbling into the void, or with bizarre decay blocks spreadying through it.

Your first few symbols may well have come from the Overworld: The symbols spawn in the loot chests found in dungeons, abandoned mineshafts, and so on. They can appear as loose pages, or as "sealed folders". These latter are single-use items, which when used become a folder (see below) full of symbol pages. Different symbols have varying chances to appear; the system is set up similarly to a trading card game such as Magic or Pokemon, with symbols ranging from "common" to "very rare" according to category and individual value. The sealed folders correspond to booster packs, and each is guaranteed to have at least one rare or very-rare card symbol. Once you begin exploring ages, you will be able to get many more symbols: Every Age contains many Libraries, each containing both loose pages on lecterns, and a secret chest with more pages and folders. Symbols and folders can also be purchased as trade items, from a Archivist villager (bright purple robes, much snazzier than the priest's).

To organize these pages, you have two sorts of construct containers for them: Collation Folders and Symbol Portfolios. Either can hold an unlimited number of symbol pages, but they organize their contents differently: Folders store an ordered series of symbols, with no sorting or stacking. This is what you'll use to arrange pages for a Descriptive Book. Portfolios stack and sort their contents in alphabetical order. You'll generally use one or more portfolios to hold the bulk of your collection, and to display it in a writing desk (see below). You'll also want to carry a portfolio on your journeys, to hold any symbols you find (and keep them from flooding your inventory). For both containers, hovering over a symbol will show its name. Portfolios also have one additional feature: The "All" button at the top of the display will show slots for all pages available in the game, and you can still hover over the blank spaces to see their names.

Writing desk (V10, V11.0)


The third of mystcraft's major tool blocks is the writing desk. This can conveniently organize and display multiple notebooks, descriptive books, and even loose symbols. Place the writing desk down like a bed (it is 2 blocks wide). Use it (right-click by default) to open the interface. For full information, see it's page, only a summary will be given here. There are two main sections to the writing desk interface:

The left side is dedicated to displaying and organizing known symbols. The leftmost column offers 25 slots, numbered in Dn'i numerals, with scroll buttons at top and bottom. Each slot can hold a symbol page, a notebook, or a descriptive book (but not a linkbook). The dark panel displays the symbols from the selected slot. They can be dragged around with a left-click (not for a Descriptive Book), or copied to the working slot with a right-click. Note that their arrangement here does not necessarily match their page order in a notebook.

The right side is devoted to copying and sequencing pages. At the top are slots for paper and ink. Each page costs a piece of paper and a little ink (about 25 pages per vial). Below the paper slot is the "working slot", which can hold a book or symbol page. When you copy a symbol, it shows up here; if there is a notebook in the slot, it will be placed in the notebook. When something is in the working slot, a "track" will appear in the middle of this section, to show its contents. While there are no visible scroll buttons, you can still scroll along this track by clicking at the ends, and for a notebook you can also rearrange the pages. The text box here can be used to rename any book, and if used on a descriptive book, this effectively renames the age. Finally, the player inventory is visible at the bottom. Pages, books, and supplies can be moved as appropriate among your inventory, the table slots, and both page-display areas. (Note that Descriptive Book cannot have pages removed or added.) Everywhere on the desk, you can see the name of a page by hovering the cursor over it.

The most common use of the writing desk is to copy a chosen series of symbols into a notebook, which can then be taken to the book binder to create a Descriptive Book.

Writing desk (V11.1+)
The third of mystcraft's major tool blocks is the writing desk. This can conveniently organize and display multiple folders, portfolios, descriptive books, and even loose symbols. Place the writing desk down like a bed (it is 2 blocks wide). Use it (right-click by default) to open the interface. For full information, see its page, only a summary will be given here. There are two main sections to the writing desk interface:

The left side is dedicated to displaying and organizing known symbols. The leftmost column offers 25 slots, numbered in Dn'i numerals, with scroll buttons at top and bottom. Each slot can hold a symbol page, a folder or portfolio, or a descriptive book). The dark panel displays the symbols from the selected slot:  Sorted and stacked for a portfolio, in page order for a folder or descriptive book.  You can use left-click to move symbols around (not for a descriptive book), or right-click to copy them to the right side.

The right side is devoted to copying and sequencing pages. At the top are slots for paper and ink. Each page costs a piece of paper and a little ink (about 25 pages per vial). Below the paper slot is the "working slot", which can hold a book or symbol page. When you copy a symbol, it shows up here; if there is a folder in the slot, it will be placed in the folder. When something is in the working slot, a "track" will appear in the middle of this section, to show its contents. While there are no visible scroll buttons, you can still scroll along this track by clicking at the ends, and for a folder you can also rearrange the pages. The text box here can be used to rename any book, and if used on a descriptive book, this effectively renames the age. Finally, the player inventory is visible at the bottom. Pages, books, and supplies can be moved as appropriate among your inventory, the table slots, and both page-display areas. Everywhere on the desk, you can see the name of a page by hovering the cursor over it.

The most common use of the writing desk is to copy a chosen series of symbols into a folder, which can then be taken to the book binder to create a Descriptive Book.

Writing an Age (V11+?)
To control the contents of a new age, a writer needs to create a descriptive book which properly describes those contents, using symbols and the proper grammar. An age description will contain information about the contents and appearance of the age, and perhaps some special features of the dimension. Incomplete descriptions will be filled in by the game engine, with many random choices among the possibilities. More details can be found in the Writing, Grammar, and Symbols page, the following is only a bare summary.

The various features and characteristics are described by "phrases". Within each phrase, and sometimes in subphrases, there will be a primary symbol (a "noun"), preceded by modifiers ("adjectives"). Which modifiers are valid will depend on the primary symbol; for example, a Normal Sun symbol will take modifiers to determine where it "starts" in the sky, it's speed and direction of travel, etc.; Some of these modifiers have natural defaults, but you can always get a random selection instead of the defaults. Materials and biomes are represented by modifier pages.

The primary symbols fall into categories, and (except for the special effects), there generally needs to be at least one example of each category, and some can appear only once in an age. For example, there is exactly one biome controller, for a world. If a category is omitted, both the choice of primary symbol, and its modifiers, will be randomly chosen. Other categories can appear in multiple; for example there can be many sorts of structures in the age, and there can be multiple suns and/or moons. If the latter sort of category is omitted, the grammar may well provide more than one, such as multiple suns or several sorts of structures.

It is easy to write random and mostly-random ages, but if you want to specify an age completely, you need to actually specify it -- and you must have the necessary symbols to describe what you want. For example, if you want to make sure that the world's sun and daylight cycle matches the overworld, you will need several symbols: Normal Sun (visible and sheds light), Rising phase (dawn at time 0), East Direction (where it rises), Normal Length (of the day). (Specifying the sunset color can require even more symbols, including color symbols). Similarly, if you want to be sure of jungles in the age, you will need a symbol for one of the Jungle biomes. Again, any aspect of the world which you do not supply will be supplied for you, and will likely be a mix of sensible defaults and random strangeness. Note in particular that if the terrain material is not "stone", most of the biome-specific decoration, (dirt and sand, vegetation, some other surface details), simply won't happen (likewise for ore placement).

There are a few conditions that make an age unstable and therefore dangerous, with results ranging from afflictions to the player (or buffs for monsters), through hazards such as lightning or meteors, up to the world destroying itself around (and beneath) the player. These fall into two categories:
 * Outright errors in page grammar, self-contradictions, or incorrectly used symbols, will produce instability to no benefit. However, the range of "punishable" errors has been shrinking over recent versions of the mod.  As of version 0.11.0, omissions in general (and many other errors) will be silently fixed by the game adding symbols to the book, which may have strange results but mostly won't cause instability.  However, there are still unfixable errors that will make the world unstable.
 * Aside from errors, greed is the primary hazard. In particular, ages with easy-to-reach ore will almost always be unstable.  Ages with piles of gold and diamonds on the surface will be disastrously unstable.  Most blocks (especially liquids) provided by other mods will also be presumed valuable unless the mod itself specifies otherwise.  Asking for certain special features in the world can also cause instability.