You need to find a mystcraft villager and trade with them or start creating blank/random ages. The ages contain the mystcraft libraries where you can find a lot of pages. You will not find pages in the overworld.
Alternatives to Mystcraft for basic mining worlds?
- Thread starter Zarkov
- Start date
-
The FTB Forum is now read-only, and is here as an archive. To participate in our community discussions, please join our Discord! https://ftb.team/discord
You need to find a mystcraft villager and trade with them or start creating blank/random ages. The ages contain the mystcraft libraries where you can find a lot of pages. You will not find pages in the overworld.
Create a random (empty) age, then look for libraries (cobble stone buildings). They contain pages. Note that on one of the sides towards the entry to the libraries, there is a hidden chest containing more pages. When you find one, there seem to be a better chance of finding another if you travel straight north or south from it.
Trying to get enough symbols from villagers alone, especially with BoP enabled (huge amount of biome symbols), requires extensive villager farming / breeding.
Using a modular power suit jet pack is probably the best when looking for libraries, since you can fly very long on one battery. Also, I usually have an ender pouch linked to a chest, to store pages in a dedicated AE setup remotely.
Unfortunately, I also seem to enjoy the mod a lot less since the recent changes. In a sense, it's the opposite of how it used to work. It used to be tough starting out with instability / bad effects due to missing symbols, but once you had some symbols you could get the ages you wanted. Now it's easy to get a stable random age to fly around in, but almost impossible to get the exact ages you want (from what I have seen so far).
According to dire's video, if you don't choose things like weather and sun and sky, the RNG will choose them. And things such as villages and ravines, if not chosen will be added as well. He specifically adds in 3 symbols from these area's in order to stop the RNG from trying to add more (Go to 11:01 in the linked video, again at 12:05 in going over sky color, again at 13:30). These are not "essential" for the world to be created, none of the symbols are that essential. They are essential to controlling the RNG. Check the video I linked, he restates it over and over and over again (almost every time he adds a symbol he says it) "the more accurately you write your book the less randomness there will be."
Start at 1:10 he specifically states, that they are required, either you put them in or the RNG does. It's apart of the grammar system. He goes on at length on this topic. These are required to control the RNG. "If you leave things out it's going to randomly add things in." "The grammar system automatically adds things in." "You might randomly get stone blocks, but you might get randomly chosen diamond ore, causing instability." "You might also get instability if you write your age incorrectly, or the grammar system adds a symbol that would add instability". An example of this, is the sun symbol. If you chose just normal sun, the grammar system might chose no or a few modifiers, the right number or not enough, this can cause instability in itself. At 10:30 he goes over this again. He chooses the sun, but not the stars or moon, so these will be randomly chosen and could cause problems. At 21:55ish he sets up a walk through of all the symbols he used in the age he writes in that video. Also things like explosions and charged won't be randomly added in. They used to be used to counter instability. If you added on it increased the stability of the world to prevent decay, but I think they may have been changed now that decay seems much less prevalent.
I think that is the case. I created 4 random ages with the new mystcraft, and from what I could tell all of them were stable, but whenever I actually write an age it has instability.
I love Direwolf's Let's Plays and the overview that he gives in his spotlights for new or updated mods. But that's all they are - overviews and introductions. He seems to create his spotlight videos after talking to the mod author, but with a fairly limited amount of hands-on experience. For the Mystcraft spotlight, I doubt that he spent hours experimenting with the grammar system.
The point is, you can't get rid of the RNG, no matter how detailed you make the description. Mystcraft 0.10.04 had problems all over the place. You could specify as many biomes as you wanted, Mr. RNG would still throw in additional ones. There was no way to specify exactly the visuals that you wanted, it would still change them significantly. Some of it got toned down/fixed in 0.10.05 (which is currently included in Unleashed).
But when it comes to features (populators and terrain modifiers), then the current version is still a bloody mess. You can specify the age as much as you want, the randomizer will still screw everything up for you. Again, try it yourself and create a world with simple solid ground, maybe you can find a combination that works.
He probably didn't spend hours but he's obviously spent quite a bit of time with it. On his SMP series he's pretty much been the mystcraft guy for the last couple of seasons (at least 3 I think). The video I linked was a specific walk through for creating stable ages, not really a spotlight.
You are correct in that you can't get completely rid of the RNG in the current version (from the forums it appears as though 10.6 he has MUCH improved this but that's not out yet). I think the biggest problem people are having is looking for a world that has no caves/ravines/villages/etc in it for maximum mining potential (no holes or anything taking away from the ore count). According to the forums the only things that can really get messed up are the colors and length/angle/time type modifiers. I would love to try it, but alas my machine has been kaput since like mid may so I'm a bit out of date, and surviving on lets plays and forums. My best advise to you would be to try and copy the book dire writes in the video i linked, only try to be even more specific that he was. Try to take as much away from the RNG as possible.
When I'm looking for pages, I'll generally create a completely random Mystcraft age, gather all my best quick-travel gear, and go through (making sure to plonk down a book stand and a linking book when I do). There'll usually be a library structure of some sort in the new age--I generally find 2 or 3 within a fair distance of the age's spawn. Those structures will contain a TON of pages--there's the 3 or 4 you'll find on shelves out in the open, and then there's a hidden chest in one of the corners with 3-6 more.
I must say, I don't really enjoy the mystcraft age-creation process either. I've watched the spotlights, I've read the wiki, but every time I start to create one, I'm running down the checklist, checking the order, arranging the modifiers, and then... I get bored/fed up and I chuck it all in. 
I usually just go for random ages and fly around (MPS jetpack makes life much easier) and zoom around to libraries, grab more pages (which I'll never use) and plunder chests from barrows and those obsidian... thingies full of loot. Fun stuff anyway.
Oh, and I've noticed something... in recent versions (ie: what I'm playing now) randomly created worlds seem to have *much* less instability. Like... almost none. Out of the 20 or so ages I've created randomly, I think *two* of them had some mining slowness and fatigue. Nothing else.
Mr. RNG at work or has the difficulty/instability been lowered?
Either way... I can't be bothered to hand craft the ages. Someone be nice and give me a complete (no variables! spoon feed me!) list of pages to throw in and try one? Thanks. I'll lend you my bicycle in return.
I usually just go for random ages and fly around (MPS jetpack makes life much easier) and zoom around to libraries, grab more pages (which I'll never use) and plunder chests from barrows and those obsidian... thingies full of loot. Fun stuff anyway.
Oh, and I've noticed something... in recent versions (ie: what I'm playing now) randomly created worlds seem to have *much* less instability. Like... almost none. Out of the 20 or so ages I've created randomly, I think *two* of them had some mining slowness and fatigue. Nothing else.
Mr. RNG at work or has the difficulty/instability been lowered?
Either way... I can't be bothered to hand craft the ages. Someone be nice and give me a complete (no variables! spoon feed me!) list of pages to throw in and try one? Thanks. I'll lend you my bicycle in return.
As mentioned earlier in the thread, when you leave out required symbols, the RNG would just pick symbols for you. In earlier versions, each randomly-picked symbol would cause instability even if it's normally harmless. So, the only way to create a completely stable age was by writing a 100% accurate age. In newer versions, randomly-picked symbols do NOT cause instability unless they're symbols that normally would, like if you ended up with Diamond Ore Tendrils. So, it's a lot easier to create stable ages when you don't have the skill or symbols to completely write an age.
Right, that's true. But in this new system, lots of stuff gets added in that you didn't write. I've ended up with glass and netherrack tendrils when I didn't write any tendrils at all, and the same order of pages that would in older versions create totally stable ages will often result in slightly unstable ages because of random junk being added. Symbols like caves, ravines, lakes, villages, etc. get put in there whether you write them in or not. In the older versions, you could leave stuff out that you didn't want, but in the newer versions stuff gets added in whether or not you wrote it in. Nothing ticks me off more than taking 10 minutes to write an age, check it, double check it, then create it and realize it's unstable because something random was added in.
There needs to be a "no" symbol, as in "no tendrils" or "no caves" or "no villages", etc.