Getting Started (Mystcraft)/Archive/Pre 0.10

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Mystcraft for Newbies
(A reference guide for the rest of us)

So, first off, what does this mod do?

It permits you to travel to different Ages, and even create your own custom ages

Why might you want to use this mod?

You want to be able to set up a 'nexus' transportation system to get from one base to another rapidly You want to be able to get to your nether/end base with a single click from your overland base You want to be able to generate 'mining ages' so you don't have to destroy your own landscape to fuel your industry. You want a wide number of drastically different worlds to explore, with widely different terrain generation, and even different colored skies.

What mods does this mod work well with?

All of them. No, really, this mod works as terrain generation that every other mod can benefit from. Need a biome-specific resource? Make a mono-biome age. Railcraft feed stations can be used to mass produce leather which is needed for the books

To begin with this mod, you will need the following already established:

A source of leather and paper. That's it. It will be particularly effective once you get to the Nether, Twilight Forest, or even the End, but it can be useful even before then

The Basics: Linking Books

Mystcraft is one of those mods that anyone freshly new to mods can start playing around with and incorporate it into their mostly vanilla worlds, but provides nearly infinite depth for the advanced user.

The first thing in Mystcraft you should make, before even thinking about doing ANYTHING else, is going to be a Linking Book. Don't worry, this is really easy, just put a regular book in your crafting square. Done. Word of warning: don't try to automate the creation, it doesn't work out so well.

A Linking Book is your ticket home. If you are in another age, and you use it, then it will send you back to the exact location and age you were in when you made it. So if you make your linking book in your Overworld base, then that's where you will end up when you use it.

The book won't follow you (at least not until you use some end-game toys to alter them), and you can't use it from within the same age (again, there's an end-game toy to alter this as well), but it sends you back home. There's also a bookstand you can make, and then place a linking book in it, and use it to get back home without having the book drop to the ground and possibly de-spawning.

WARNING: DO NOT travel to foreign ages without a linking book in your inventory. You will be unable to get back home until you find a very specific descriptive book property (star fissure) which is hard to find.

But wait, there's more! The Nether and the End and the Twilight Forest are all considered to be different ages. What does this mean for you? It means that once you have established an outpost in these lands, you can make linking books to transport yourself back and forth effortlessly. This means, among other things, that you can disable that noisy Nether Portal which has a tendency to let rude neighbors into your base. You can also control precisely where you land by where you create the linking books.

Oh, and it doesn't stop there either. You can set up a nexus in one of these other dimensions. So if you had to travel a significant distance in the overworld and set up an installation for some reason, you can effortlessly link them together. Just make a linking book to your nether base, and a linking book to your secondary base from there. You can set up an entire network once you get access to alternate dimensions, if you so choose.

If this was this mod's only function, it would still be worth exploring and using. But it doesn't stop there. In fact, we've only touched the tip of the iceberg here.

What comes next

I won't spoiler everything, however I will give you a very brief overview of what to expect when you start delving into the more advanced parts of this mod.

Descriptive Books are a book and a feather in your crafting square. They will send you to a new age to explore! Again, DO NOT forget a Linking Book to get yourself back home.

You might experience worlds with some really bad effects. Negative effects may include but are not limited to: detrimental potion effects constantly on, cometary collisions, block decay where blocks literally are sucked out of reality, and more. If it's really bad, use your linking book and... well... book it home.

Now, we look at the writing desk and the notebook, which is where the real magic happens.

Make a writing desk. Recipe in NEI. Make a Notebook, likewise recipe in NEI. Put the notebook in the corner slot in your writing desk. Now throw in your descriptive book you just made and visited. You'll see new symbols. These describe the age you just went to. There's TONS of different symbols, some more useful than others. Some symbols can guarantee that there will be some kind of instability. However, there are some tricks to minimizing instability:

Write out a complete age without conflicting symbols. For example, the symbol for checkerboard layout of biomes demands precisely two biomes. If you put more or less biome symbols in it, then there may be instability Fill up the age with symbols. If you don't define an aspect of the age, then it will be randomly generated, which can also add in instability. So make sure to define the time cycle, the sky and sunset colors, the biome placement, the biomes themselves... everything. Don't use Dense Ores. Don't use Cave Worlds in conjunction with Redpower 2. The marble generation function from RP2 has been known to crash you out.

Now that you have the basics, go 'age surfing' until you find some interesting symbols to play with. You might find Crystals, which are useful in making Myst Portals. You might find glowstone spires, eternal day, or wooden tendrils. You might also find the coveted, but dangerous, Dense Ores symbol. Who knows? Go exploring and find out for yourself.