TO DISCOVER Items outlined in blue are already in the mod or game, but not always positioned in the same way. The items lined in red are the most tentative of the suggestions.
Beetles
Ronay Trees
Crystal
BASIC CREATIONS The Books
BREWING
Vellum
Book Bindings
Algal Solution
CRAFTING TREE
Writing Desk
Water Bottle
x9
Portal Keyhole
Crystal Engine
+Ink Sac Inkblack
Corrupt Bahro
Stone Boat
Stone Eater
+Crystal Dust Infused Darkness +Beetle Shell
x9
Starstuff
Crystal Viewer
+Diamond +Blz. Dust Fine Ink
Fire Marble
Hazard Gear
Power Marble
Crystal Etcher
Symbol Tablets
THINGS TO DISCOVER
Beetles
Ronay Trees
Corrupt Bahro
Crystal
BEETLES For ink-making, the games and books have described beetle – noted as scarab-like, and shown at least in one place as being gold-coloured (so whatever appearance is easiest to get, really, will do). Put in as an alternate source for ink, and a source for beetle shells (new item, used only in crafting). Three sizes/types: Grubs: The “baby beetle”, probably rebuilt off the silverfish model. AI like a baby chicken. Beetles: The chicken-size usual beetle. AI like a chicken, lives on sand, follows when holding crystal dust, and breeds when given same. Always drops ink; sometimes drops beetle shells. Giant Beetles: AI like a giant spider, and mostly the same model, really. Always drops shells, sometimes ink. Farming note: Beetles can be bred, but there's a small chance wheneven given crystal dust that they'll turn into giant beetles instead.
RONAY TREES For paper and binding-making, and as an alternate source for crystal dust, Ronay trees are mostly recoloured birch – blue instead of black bits, and blue leaves too (this isn't canon-based; it's to tie them to the appearance of crystal). They're made of three blocks: Leaves: Shears can clip these; three in a horizontal line in the crafting grid gives one Vellum. Logs: Broken to planks, these give birch-style planks (not magical or odd). Smelted, a Ronay Log becomes crystal dust. Root Blocks: Ronay trees don't grow saplings. Instead, they have a root block at the base from which the tree regenerates (this is to encourage going out and getting more trees, instead of just grabbing a single sapling for all your needs).
CORRUPT BAHRO The Bahro are “beast-people”, of a sort. In effect, we're talking reskinned zombie pigmen, who spawn in different places, and drop crystal dust. They could also drop hazard gear or basic tablets as rare things, which would make them really worth fighting “in quantity”. --> The “corrupt” part is just so nobody feels all evil for fighting a former slave people in their dens. Too much crystal, too many chats with Endermen, whatever the reason, these Bahro bad.
CRYSTAL (And Dust) This is the stuff we already have; the only change is for a crystal to bust into 4 dust, and restack as glowstone (so as to make recipes make way more sense).
BASIC CREATIONS
The Books
Vellum
Book Bindings
Algal Solution
THE BOOKS
A total of five kinds of basic books: Notebook, Linkbook, Shabby Agebook, True Agebook, Superior Agebook. A notebook is nine vellum in the crafting grid. A linkbook is one vellum in the grid. Agebooks mostly look like this:
To make a Shabby Agebook, replace the leather with a Book Binding, or all the paper with vellum, or the ink sac with fine ink. To make a True Agebook, replace any two. To make a Superior Agebook, replace all three.
VELLUM This is specialized paper, used in making the books (no other use). There are three ways to craft it. 1) One paper + one redstone dust = one vellum. 2) One paper + one crystal dust = one vellum. 3) Three Ronay Leaf blocks in a line = three vellum.
BOOK BINDINGS
These are specialized book spines, used in making the books (no other use). To craft them, drop a Ronay log and a piece of string in the crafting grid, and receive three bindings.
ALGAL SOLUTION
The weird orange glowing water stuff. Seeds + crystal dust + a bucket of water = a bucket of solution. Splash it out... Water that glows. How this would interact with the other water could be confusing; potentially, the stuff could even “attempt to convert” other water, and “die off”, set up in such a way that you could get self-sustaining pools of the stuff, but it'd just die out if you put it in the ocean.
BREWING & RELATED
Water Bottle
Inkblack
Infused Darkness
Stone Eater
Starstuff
Fine Ink
MAKING BETTER INK
At the brewing stand, throwing an ink sac in gives inkblack (it doesn't do anything). Brewing inkblack with crystal gives infused darkness (also does nothing). Brewing a third time with a beetle shell gives fine ink (the third book improvement). --> Mostly, these added stages are given nice names only because the way brewing works demands intermediate steps; they have to exist. But as long as they're there, they could be given other uses.
STONE EATER
Nine inkblack in the crafting grid gives one Stone Eater. This is a decay block, of the sort we already have – or possibly, a decay block that only eats down (no spreading), or similar. So-named because it's the name of a mining device in the games (and would actually work as such, if combined with stabilizing tech). --> This would almost certainly need to be disabled by default for SMP. But giving players the chance to make decay is just fun.
STARSTUFF
Nine infused darkness in the crafting grid gives one Starstuff. That is, a block of Star Fissure material, complete with the going-home effect. --> This is to provide an alternate “get home” method for the stranded that's still not super-easy but is relatively reliable, and to give people the opportunity to play with the block in survival – having a “pool” of starstuff in your vacation home would be very, very cool.
TECH TREE (TIER ONE)
Writing Desk
Portal Keyhole
Crystal Engine
Stone Boat
DESKS & KEYHOLES
These are already in; the only changes here would be to the desk – symbols don't display from Agebooks, and can't be learned from such books. Instead, they're learned by dropping tablets into the book slot (which could convert that tablet to crystal dust, or not, as desired).
CRYSTAL ENGINE
This spot in the crafting tree is basically being marked out for a “catch-all” utilities block, to enable a lot of the odd tech in the games while still looking like part of the mod. Catch-all effects could be all, some, or most of: 1) Produces strong light, as glowstone. 2) Generates redstone current in adjacent blocks (or similar); switches off with a lever directly attached if that's easy. Or some other “oh, man, that's handy” function snaked from a power mod. The point being to make it possible to make a few myst-machine constructs easier. 3) Can be opened GUI-style to feed it fuel and have it kill nearby decay and similar “transmutation” instabilities while burning. Made with crystal, glowstone, redstone, possibly a furnace.
STONEBOAT
Four crystal and a crystal engine makes a stoneboat! It's a boat, except it moves at “walking on soul sand” speed, can only climb while in motion (and slowly), and (if it's easy to code in) descends when you leave it alone.
Writing Desk
TECH TREE (TIER TWO) Starstuff
Crystal Engine
Crystal Viewer
Fire Marble
Power Marble
Crystal Etcher
CRYSTAL VIEWER
The station for looking at and analyzing other Ages. Again, this is a placeholder and “catch all” for “the interface for in-game age-manipulation utilities goes here”. The most commonly-suggested such utilities are recovering books to Ages where the books are lost, or deletion of Ages that aren't useful anymore. To keep the cost of this high enough that it feels advanced, and doesn't get made before basic items, it's made by putting a starstuff on top of a desk, an block of glass on top of that, and then filling in the sides of of the crafting grid with crystal. IF one of the “utilities” given for crystal engines is considered worth putting in and that block is made, a couple of those should go in the recipe too.
CRYSTAL ETCHER (Or Crystal Scribe)
The tablet-making “ivory tower” option goes here, built with a Viewer and some truly expensive stuff (lots of diamonds, maybe), or built using the same stuff that's listed for a viewer, plus a few diamonds (if a viewer-utility is not added in). This would be a GUI block; feed it piles of crystal dust as fuel, to “smelt” a crystal into a random tablet. Potentially with a target slot to “duplicate” tablets as desired. --> More temperamental: If it's amusing to force the lab rats to actually build a whole complex, have it eat one fuel while taking a redstone current, processing fuel power it into progress (the way a furnace 'fire' does). But then it stops, until the current goes off and comes back on – and killing the current too fast wastes progress. For extremely temperamental, killing the power and then reinstating it before the flames die out makes the block explode. --> Alternate: For a bit more “writing” flavour, convert tablets to symbol notes, and the etcher into a scribe – and automatic desk that creates those notes. In this case, a special crystal pen would suit as a part to install, which could break down for “more temperamental”.
MARBLES
Fire marbles are a light source in the canon – so, take a diamond, some starstuff, and a pinch of blaze dust, and get a whole pile of fire marbles. Then, with the thrown-to-entity trick, you have lights you can fling into position. Which would be pretty wild. --> Power marbles are noted here as a possible “alternate” to the crystal engine as an instability-stopper (a polace for a one-shot instability killer); they're canon methods for killing instability flat, but should require the very top of the tree – drop a fire marble into the etcher and burn loads, for example.
TECH TREE (TIER THREE)
Fire Marble
Crystal Etcher
Hazard Gear
Symbol Tablets
SYMBOL TABLETS
Besides being found in the various dungeons on the Ages, these can be built in the Etcher (or, if notes, scribed in the auto-table, etc). Each tablet “teaches” one symbol, when put in the desk (teaches it to a notebook, that is).
HAZARD GEAR
The ever-popular “Oh, shiny new stuff” segment of crafting comes late in the tree (though adventurertypes who are skipping a chunk of the tree and just going out and getting tablets will get to it way faster). Each piece here is a recipe that goes [Fire Marble + Normal Item + Tablet = Hazard Item]. The fire marble is thrown in as a cost increase for adventurers and as a 'power source', both, but could be cut without much of an effect. Some possible items, just to spew ideas: HAZARD ITEMS
Kinds of Tablets Used
Items Used
Maintainer's Suit
Hazardous Features
Diamond Armour
Indestructible armour that cuts damage to about 1/3 when all is worn; gives light fire resist (legs), the anti-drowning bit (head), blast resist (body), feather fall (legs). Also slows movement to soulsand speeds, all the time, if any of it is worn – a maintainers suit is a slow construct-device you occupy as much as it is a suit. Guilder's Garb
Special Features
Leather Armour
Gives the enchantment benefits of a Maintainer's suit, amped up to maximum settings. But it's basically nice clothes with cool effects; it protects like leather, and degrades like it, too. Still handy, though. Heek
Something Sky-Ish
Three sugar cane.
A Heek is a rifle. An arrow-less bow would do fine as an effect for this, really. KI
Any Biome
Compass
Gives you a blue compass. However, you can target a block, and hold right-click to draw it back like a bow... Release, and that point is “north” to the KI compass. Teledahn Mining Gun
Dense Ores
3 Obsidian, Diamond Block
The universally beloved insane multi-tool, because why not? Looks like an ugly gun (and 'kicks' rapidly through the drawback animation rather than being swung when used), digs like a diamond pick, hold and draw back to shoot an 'explosive particle' (eats some crystal dust each time).
