ChromatiCraft: A comprehensive guide (WIP, for v15 and up)
This guide consists of the following sections and will require several posts:
I. Introduction
II. Basics and mechanics (almost no spoilers here)
III. Progression achievements
IV. Casting structures and Lumen networking (in progress)
V. Reference: Resources (not yet written)
VI. Reference: Constructs, tools and special abilities (not yet written)
I. Introduction
ChromatiCraft is an exploration-themed magic mod made by Reika that explores the elemental properties of the 16 colors of the world of Minecraft and provides recipes for mechanisms, structures and tools that make use of those properties. It is a beautiful and powerful mod. Along with being so incredibly useful that I find myself unwilling to play without it anymore, it also – like certain other mods I could name - has such a strong aesthetic identity that it’s a work of art in its own right. However, it is also somewhat opaque. This opacity is by design: you are expected to explore and experiment. Since people are different in what occurs to them to try out, this means that people can get stuck whenever the way forward isn’t clear. This guide intends to help you out if you get stuck.
In addition, many items and blocks you can make with ChromatiCraft have - by design - undocumented features only hinted at in the lexicon, or not mentioned at all, or aren’t very intuitive to use in the first place. Again, you are expected to experiment. I do not at all have complete knowledge of all that, but I will document what I do know about in this guide and add what I discover.
And lastly, I have read too many comments along the lines of “ChromatiCraft is useless”. It is really a shame that people get that impression, because the opposite is the case. I usually have little patience with people unwilling to RTFM, but I do want people to appreciate the power and beauty of ChromatiCraft more than I want to express my non-appreciation of an unwillingness to read. Apart from that, there is really a lot of stuff in the lexicon, and you can be excused for missing something specific even if you usually do read the manuals. Also, I am a planner myself, and always appreciate information available while I’m not playing the game. Thus, I intend to document the use of every single item ChromatiCraft provides as best as I can. This is low-priority though and may stay WIP for some time.
This document is – surprise, surprise - full of spoilers. This is a concern in a mod that’s about exploration and discovery of new things. For that reason, I have placed almost all spoilers in spoiler tags, so you can find what you need without necessarily being spoiled about other things. If you can’t resist reading them anyway, that’s your problem.
Caveat: I am, obviously, not the mod author, and none of the information in this guide is authorized by Reika. As ChromatiCraft is still undergoing development, things are liable to change. There is no guarantee that any piece of information in this guide is correct, though I will do my best to make sure that it remains current, and correct mistakes.
Other Information sources:
Reika’s website:
https://sites.google.com/site/reikasminecraft/
Reika’s mods MCF forum thread:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...ikas-mods-tech-worldgen-civilization-and-more
ChromatiCraft thread on the FTB Forum:
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/chromaticraft-questions-and-suggestions.54905/
ChromatiCrafts in modpacks
How enjoyable it is to gather resources by exploration in ChromatiCraft, depends to a very large degree on the worldgen parameters of the modpack. I’m currently playing on Reika’s development server which uses CaveControl (another one of Reika’s mods) to increase the frequency of ravines and drastically increase the frequency of dungeons. Ravines don’t only make resources visible, they also make it much easier to find cave systems without having to tunnel through kilometres of rock. In addition, it uses CondensedOres to let most resources gather in rare but rich veins, but not as rare and rich as in the default settings of Enviromine. The combined effect is that caves are easier to find *and* cave exploration is enjoyable for much longer than otherwise because you always find useful stuff in them with little need for additional digging. In addition, making ores generate in veins that are somewhat rare, but not too rare, that makes certain ChromatiCraft items which help you with finding and mining resources much more useful than in packs with a different resource distribution. And lastly, since cave exploration is actually enjoyable and rewarding, you have a very good chance for finding the rarer underground structure – we’ll get to that – before feeling that you’ll die of old age before you ever find it.
An additional consideration is biome distribution. Mods that add many biomes may make indispensable ChromatiCraft biomes, or vanilla biomes where specific ChromatiCraft resources generate, much too rare.
So, for those who put together modpacks with ChromatiCraft, I recommend also using CaveControl and Condensed Ores (I’ll try to find out some useful config settings) and making sure that relevant biomes are likely enough to generate that players have a chance of finding them before they give up in frustration. If it’s not against a modpack’s theme, I also recommend installing RotaryCraft. It will help overcome some mid-game resource shortages.
A few words about cheating
I consider cheating a perfectly valid way to do things in single player or co-op multiplayer if it doesn’t come at the expense of others’ enjoyment. After all, we play these games to enjoy ourselves, and what that means differs greatly between people. However, I advise to apply that to ChromatiCraft only with the utmost care, for the following reasons:
(1) If you have a problem and the solution appears to be “do this very tedious thing”, then it’s quite likely that ChromatiCraft itself provides a less tedious solution. So, before you cheat, look carefully through your lexicon (see below), or collect a few more fragments (see below). You may find a tool, a machine or a special ability that vaguely seems like it may be able to help you. Try it. It would be a shame if a good tool goes unused just because someone overlooked some information in the lexicon.
(2) ChromatiCraft is intended to motivate you to experiment. There is such a thing as the satisfaction of finding things out on your own, and getting a facility to work you designed with no help from outside sources. Keep in mind that if you cheat, you may be depriving yourself of that satisfaction.
(3) ChromatiCraft tracks your progression. If you cheat resources in you shouldn’t have at this point, it’s likely they won’t function, often because you lack the infrastructure to use them. and it’s almost certain that recipes that use them won’t work. So if you cheat in crafted resources, make sure that you’ve crafted them at least once in the intended way, and if you cheat in mined resources, make sure that you can see their sources in the world (I’ll get to that).
(4) There are ways to cheat with progression. However, doing that without a good understanding of how the internal mechanics work is extremely likely to land you in very deep trouble. In the worst case, you’ll lose all progression when you load your world the next time, or you won’t be able to progress any further without additional cheats. So really, be careful.
I said I consider cheating as a valid way to do things in single-player. I am offering these warnings because there is a reason for them, not because I’m an anti-cheating fundamentalist.
II. Basics and mechanics
II.1 Using the Chromic Lexicon
You start with the Chromic Lexicon. This is your guide to all aspects of the mod. Most modpacks I know give it to you when you spawn in a new world, but you can also craft it. Right-clicking will open it. It has two main pages accessible by the tabs at the top right corner of the window, a “notes” page where you can write your own notes, and a recovery page that becomes accessible through a fourth tab after you lost lexicon content, for instance by death with inventory loss while carrying the lexicon. Each tab will show you one giant page of “stuff”. You navigate the page by scrolling (use the WASD keys).
Shift-rightclicking on the lexicon will open the fragment interface. Here, you can add research fragments (see below) to the lexicon. The information contained in the fragment will then appear on the research page.
If you open the lexicon (normally), you will see the research page. It is almost empty at the start. It will track your knowledge and your casting recipes. Knowledge and recipes fall under different categories and levels. Categories, like “tools”, “constructs”, “structures” etc. will be arranged like rows on a table, one under the other. Levels within a category, like “basic crafting”, “runecrafting”, “multi-block-casting” will be arranged from left to right, so the highest-tier information is on the right and the lowest-tier information on the left.
Clicking on an element on the research page will give you a description of an item or a piece of information about ChromatiCraft lore. Once you added casting recipes, holding shift will show you a crafting grid for all research page entries that represent things you can craft. Clicking on the grid will show you the casting recipe. Research page entries may have many casting recipes in them, particularly for items that come in 16-color variants. Every casting recipe may have multiple pages, depending on how many extra components this items need beyond raw materials in the casting table. Extra components can be raw materials on the extended crafting grid (see the casting temple structure entry in the lexicon once you have it), runes in the casting structure (see the entry about runecrafting once you have it), lumens (pylon energy – see various lexicon entries or consult the “lumen networking” section of this guide) or any combination thereof.
Clicking on the topmost tab at the top right corner of the window will bring you to the progression page. The progression page tracks your ChromatiCraft progression achievements. You start with a long row of images. Clicking on them will give you some hint what this tab is all about, and a line of cryptic symbols that indicates that you don’t know yet what this is about. The lines between progression achievements indicate direct dependencies. That does NOT mean that once you’ve completed a progression achievement, you can immediately proceed to doing the next one. See the “mechanics “ section below for more about that.
If you die and lose your lexicon, you will not need to re-collect all your research fragments, but you can re-create your knowledge on the recovery page of a newly-crafting Chromic Lexicon. All you need is paper and ink sacs (confirmation pending. I never had to do this). This also applies if you forgot your lexicon somewhere, or if you just want to make a copy..
II.2 Unlocking resources.
ChromatiCraft uses many different special resources, some of them mined, some of them harvested from plants. If you look at a block that looks like stone and a grey box with cryptic symbols appears, then it’s actually not stone, but a block that provides one of those resources. Since you don’t know how to detect that resource at the start, you will not see that this block is special. The same applies to some plants. At the start most of the plants will be invisible to you and you only know that something is there because a block outline appears if you point your tool at it. These resources will become available and visible as you progress. Occasionally, you will get a message with the subtitle “more of the world becomes visible to you”. You won’t need to do anything special to unlock them, it’s a part of regular progression using the mechanics I’ll describe below. There are some biome-dependent plants. These are visible right from the start.
II.3 Collecting research fragments
While exploring the world, you will find various structures related to ChromatiCraft lore. All of those structures have loot chests which will have a high probability of containing one or more research fragments. In the chest, they appear to be blank, but if you have the knowledge to read them, once you take them into your inventory they will immediately turn into fragments describing specific aspects of the world, or casting recipes. If you do not have the knowledge, they will remain blank. Nonetheless, keep them all. You will eventually acquire the knowledge to read them. You will need a total of about 200-220, depending on other mods you may have installed that have interaction with ChromatiCraft. The exact number of fragments available in your game will be visible in the lexicon’s fragment interface (shift-rightclick on the lexicon to open that, see above)
II.4 Using the casting table and the elemental manipulator
The casting table and the elemental manipulator are the first items you can make, and the most indispensable ones. Casting itself is pretty straightforward: put the raw material into the casting table and give it a whack with the elemental manipulator. However, there is much more to say about them:
The casting table stores your casting history, which means that every progression feature that requires you to have cast something specific will look here. Do NOT lose or destroy it especially late in the game. This should not be hard since there is no reason to move it once you have built a casting room. I recommend that when you start out, put it two blocks up from the surface (one block between the surface and the casting table) in the centre of a 19x19 area where do you not intend to build anything else. With such a location you can upgrade your casting structure on site and you’ll never need to move the casting table.
Casting takes time. Early items are usually cast almost instantly, but late items can take a while. If your server suffers from tick lag, casting times will increase accordingly.
The casting table enables multiple castings. For any recipe that doesn’t require pylon energy, just put up to a stack of each raw material into the slots of the casting table, and you will make the corresponding number of items with one casting. Because of the pylon energy requirement, this is not always possible with pylon-casting recipes. Instead, for some items which are often needed in greater numbers, chain-casting is enabled. This reduces the casting time for each additional item after the first, with exponential progression. Again, you can put up to a stack into each raw material slot, or you can use the casting delegate to chain-cast even greater numbers (see the constructs reference for details).
If you put a container next to the casting table, any item you cast will automatically land in that container if there is space for it. This is very useful for multiple castings, but will become a problem once you're using a lumen network, since it will always block at least one of the beams. You can place the container under the casting table instead, but then getting at the container fast is not possible without temporarily damaging your casting structure , so this is best used to route any cast items into a storage network or at least a more conveniently placed container.
Bug warning: if one set of raw materials creates more than one item, it is possible to cast more than a stack of items with one casting. If you did NOT put a container under the table and attempt a casting that creates more than a stack of an item, the output box may appear empty, but it is usually possible to get your crafted items out with multiple clicks. Nonetheless, I recommend never to put more raw materials into the casting table than required for casting a stack of items, unless you use the container method. For instance, when I cast crystalline stone, I will put full stacks of stone into the table but never more than 8 of the central crystal shard.
The casting table gui and the elemental manipulator also provide a lot of useful information about your attempted casting.
II.4.1 Casting recipe information
If you put the raw materials into the casting table, one of three things can appear in the output box in the top right corner of the gui:
1. Nothing. In that case, a component of the recipe is missing. Note that for runecrafting recipes (see below), the runes are considered part of the recipe, even though they’re part of the casting structure and won’t be consumed in the casting.
2. The international “not allowed” sign (red circle crossed by a red line): you have the recipe, but you’re lacking other knowledge required to make this item. Progress further before you attempt it again.
3. A ghost representation of the item. Everything is in order. You can proceed with the casting.
II.4.2 Casting level information
In the top left corner of the casting table’s gui, you will see one to four yellow dots, with possibly one of them covered by a “not allowed”sign. These dots, if not covered by the “not allowed”, indicate that your casting structure for the corresponding casting level is complete and constructed correctly. If the dot is missing, you don’t have the progression to build it. If the dot is covered by the “not allowed” sign, the structure is damaged or otherwise incorrect. Casting levels are “basic crafting” (using only the casting table), “runecrafting” (using the casting room or above), multi-block crafting” (using the casting temple and above) and “pylon-crafting” (using the casting complex and the lumen network)
Bug warning: after upgrading your casting structure, sometimes that change is not reflected correctly in the casting table gui unless you leave and re-start your world (in SSP) or disconnect and re-connect to the server (in SMP).
III.4.3 Lumen requirement information
When your casting table becomes part of a casting complex, 16 bars will appear on the right side of its gui. If you attempt a recipe that requires pylon energy, these bars will show which elements (colours) are required. If you have a lumen network that connects your casting complex with at least one pylon of each of the required colours, your casting complex will attempt to draw the required power from the network after you start the casting.As power goes into the table, the bars will slowly fill and change from a shadowed colour to a bright colour (this is not always easy to see, especially with the dark colours). A full and bright bar indicates that the table has drawn all of the required power of this colour. Lumens stay in the table until they’re used. If you interrupt your casting before they have been used, they will not be gone.
II.4.4 Elemental manipulator casting information
If you point the elemental manipulator at the casting table, one of four things will appear:
(1) A circle with a red cross. This means the casting table is not ready. The reason may be that the raw materials and/or runes for the recipe are incorrect or that the output box is full.
(2) A circle with a yellow dot. This means that the raw materials for a casting are complete, but pylon energy is required in order to make the item, but is not in the casting table yet. If you have a lumen network (see below) you can proceed with the casting. If you don’t, making this item is not possible at the moment.
(3) A circle with a green dot. Everything is in order. Proceed with the casting.
(4) If a casting that requires pylon energy is ongoing, a circle with sections for every required element for this casting, which will fill up from the center, changing pale colour to bright colour, as power is drawn from the network. Once all the power has been drawn, the actual casting will commence.
II.4.5 Stored energy
The elemental manipulator can be used to store pylon energy in you, i.e. in your game avatar. How much energy of each colour is stored is shown in the circle in (usually) the top left corner of the game window. The cap of stored energy rises with the energy already stored, as long as a minimum colour balance is kept, up to a certain point. This cap will upgrade itself later. This energy is used to power some of the tools and any special abilities you may activate (see below). Since this energy is stored in you, it is lost when you die.
II.4.6 Activating special abilities
Once you have the knowledge to give yourself special abilities with the ritual altar, you activate those abilities by clicking the mouse wheel while holding the elemental manipulator. Select the ability by scrolling, then select the power level, if applicable, with the mouse wheel while holding the shift key on the power selector bar above the ability symbol. After that, left-click the power selection bar. Deactivate a special ability by going here again and just left-clicking the ability symbol.
II.5 Progression mechanics: research levels and progression achievements
If you are stuck and don’t want to be spoiled, this section explains the mechanics without spoiling anything specific. ChromatiCraft uses a two-track progression system: progression achievements and research levels run in parallel to create the progression mechanics. Progression achievements are tracked on the progression page of the lexicon and consist of doing specific things to expand your knowledge of the elemental powers and your ability to use them. Research levels track your acquisition of knowledge in form of research fragments and your casting experience. Research levels are difficult to track as you play, but if you get a grey box with a message that you’ve learned something, and it’s not a casting recipe, a feature description that appears in the lexicon or a progression achievement, then it’s a research level. The casting levels that appear on the research page of the lexicon – basic crafting, runecrafting, multiblock casting, pylon casting etc.. – are also research levels, but they don’t correspond 1:1.
In its most simplified form, ChromatiCraft progression works like this: progression achievements unlock research fragments. Collecting research fragments and casting items from the mod completes research levels and unlocks new research levels. New research levels unlock more fragments, and those fragments, in turn, give you the means to complete the next set of progression achievements.
This means that in order to progress, you must do three things:
(1) Complete progression achievements
(2) Collect research fragments
(3) Craft ChromatiCraft items
Regarding the crafting requirement, how much you craft is irrelevant. One item per research level is enough, but it must be the right kind of item. How the coded crafting condition expresses itself in gameplay is something I do not understand completely, but the following rule has worked well for me:
By all means, do experiment to find out more.
II.6 Powering devices
Early ChromatiCraft devices and tools usually do not need to be powered. For the more powerful devices and tools, ChromatiCraft uses the magical power of the 16 colours, also called elements. It is measured in lumens. Lumens become available for powering devices once you've completed "Broadcasting" and have acquired the ability to build a stable lumen network (see section IV for more about this).
There are four ways to supply lumens to devices. If you hold the shift key while in your inventory, ChromatiCraft devices that need to be powered will show an extra symbol:
(1) A pillar with a beam: the device draws directly from the lumen network (see section IV below). It must be placed within 32 blocks of a suitable crystal repeater or multi-aura repeater, using the normal connection rules.
(2) A storage crystal symbol: the device is powered by a storage crystal you put in. Storage crystals are charged in the storage crystal charger and draw their power from the lumen network if the charger is placed where it can connect to the network. A good place to charge all elements is on a casting complex's casting table. Beware: this will empty all connected pylons fast. I do not recommend it unless you have upgraded your pylons. It is possible to charge crystal chargers from pylons that are not part of your network by placing them nearby (this may not work anymore in v15).
(3) Concentric circles: the device is powered by the ambient lumen distributor ("wireless lumen distributor" up to v15, see section IV below for details), which draws its power from the lumen network if placed where it can connect to it.
(4) A relay symbol: the device is powered through lumen relays (see section IV below).
This guide consists of the following sections and will require several posts:
I. Introduction
II. Basics and mechanics (almost no spoilers here)
III. Progression achievements
IV. Casting structures and Lumen networking (in progress)
V. Reference: Resources (not yet written)
VI. Reference: Constructs, tools and special abilities (not yet written)
I. Introduction
ChromatiCraft is an exploration-themed magic mod made by Reika that explores the elemental properties of the 16 colors of the world of Minecraft and provides recipes for mechanisms, structures and tools that make use of those properties. It is a beautiful and powerful mod. Along with being so incredibly useful that I find myself unwilling to play without it anymore, it also – like certain other mods I could name - has such a strong aesthetic identity that it’s a work of art in its own right. However, it is also somewhat opaque. This opacity is by design: you are expected to explore and experiment. Since people are different in what occurs to them to try out, this means that people can get stuck whenever the way forward isn’t clear. This guide intends to help you out if you get stuck.
In addition, many items and blocks you can make with ChromatiCraft have - by design - undocumented features only hinted at in the lexicon, or not mentioned at all, or aren’t very intuitive to use in the first place. Again, you are expected to experiment. I do not at all have complete knowledge of all that, but I will document what I do know about in this guide and add what I discover.
And lastly, I have read too many comments along the lines of “ChromatiCraft is useless”. It is really a shame that people get that impression, because the opposite is the case. I usually have little patience with people unwilling to RTFM, but I do want people to appreciate the power and beauty of ChromatiCraft more than I want to express my non-appreciation of an unwillingness to read. Apart from that, there is really a lot of stuff in the lexicon, and you can be excused for missing something specific even if you usually do read the manuals. Also, I am a planner myself, and always appreciate information available while I’m not playing the game. Thus, I intend to document the use of every single item ChromatiCraft provides as best as I can. This is low-priority though and may stay WIP for some time.
This document is – surprise, surprise - full of spoilers. This is a concern in a mod that’s about exploration and discovery of new things. For that reason, I have placed almost all spoilers in spoiler tags, so you can find what you need without necessarily being spoiled about other things. If you can’t resist reading them anyway, that’s your problem.
Caveat: I am, obviously, not the mod author, and none of the information in this guide is authorized by Reika. As ChromatiCraft is still undergoing development, things are liable to change. There is no guarantee that any piece of information in this guide is correct, though I will do my best to make sure that it remains current, and correct mistakes.
Other Information sources:
Reika’s website:
https://sites.google.com/site/reikasminecraft/
Reika’s mods MCF forum thread:
http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum...ikas-mods-tech-worldgen-civilization-and-more
ChromatiCraft thread on the FTB Forum:
http://forum.feed-the-beast.com/threads/chromaticraft-questions-and-suggestions.54905/
ChromatiCrafts in modpacks
How enjoyable it is to gather resources by exploration in ChromatiCraft, depends to a very large degree on the worldgen parameters of the modpack. I’m currently playing on Reika’s development server which uses CaveControl (another one of Reika’s mods) to increase the frequency of ravines and drastically increase the frequency of dungeons. Ravines don’t only make resources visible, they also make it much easier to find cave systems without having to tunnel through kilometres of rock. In addition, it uses CondensedOres to let most resources gather in rare but rich veins, but not as rare and rich as in the default settings of Enviromine. The combined effect is that caves are easier to find *and* cave exploration is enjoyable for much longer than otherwise because you always find useful stuff in them with little need for additional digging. In addition, making ores generate in veins that are somewhat rare, but not too rare, that makes certain ChromatiCraft items which help you with finding and mining resources much more useful than in packs with a different resource distribution. And lastly, since cave exploration is actually enjoyable and rewarding, you have a very good chance for finding the rarer underground structure – we’ll get to that – before feeling that you’ll die of old age before you ever find it.
An additional consideration is biome distribution. Mods that add many biomes may make indispensable ChromatiCraft biomes, or vanilla biomes where specific ChromatiCraft resources generate, much too rare.
So, for those who put together modpacks with ChromatiCraft, I recommend also using CaveControl and Condensed Ores (I’ll try to find out some useful config settings) and making sure that relevant biomes are likely enough to generate that players have a chance of finding them before they give up in frustration. If it’s not against a modpack’s theme, I also recommend installing RotaryCraft. It will help overcome some mid-game resource shortages.
A few words about cheating
I consider cheating a perfectly valid way to do things in single player or co-op multiplayer if it doesn’t come at the expense of others’ enjoyment. After all, we play these games to enjoy ourselves, and what that means differs greatly between people. However, I advise to apply that to ChromatiCraft only with the utmost care, for the following reasons:
(1) If you have a problem and the solution appears to be “do this very tedious thing”, then it’s quite likely that ChromatiCraft itself provides a less tedious solution. So, before you cheat, look carefully through your lexicon (see below), or collect a few more fragments (see below). You may find a tool, a machine or a special ability that vaguely seems like it may be able to help you. Try it. It would be a shame if a good tool goes unused just because someone overlooked some information in the lexicon.
(2) ChromatiCraft is intended to motivate you to experiment. There is such a thing as the satisfaction of finding things out on your own, and getting a facility to work you designed with no help from outside sources. Keep in mind that if you cheat, you may be depriving yourself of that satisfaction.
(3) ChromatiCraft tracks your progression. If you cheat resources in you shouldn’t have at this point, it’s likely they won’t function, often because you lack the infrastructure to use them. and it’s almost certain that recipes that use them won’t work. So if you cheat in crafted resources, make sure that you’ve crafted them at least once in the intended way, and if you cheat in mined resources, make sure that you can see their sources in the world (I’ll get to that).
(4) There are ways to cheat with progression. However, doing that without a good understanding of how the internal mechanics work is extremely likely to land you in very deep trouble. In the worst case, you’ll lose all progression when you load your world the next time, or you won’t be able to progress any further without additional cheats. So really, be careful.
I said I consider cheating as a valid way to do things in single-player. I am offering these warnings because there is a reason for them, not because I’m an anti-cheating fundamentalist.
II. Basics and mechanics
II.1 Using the Chromic Lexicon
You start with the Chromic Lexicon. This is your guide to all aspects of the mod. Most modpacks I know give it to you when you spawn in a new world, but you can also craft it. Right-clicking will open it. It has two main pages accessible by the tabs at the top right corner of the window, a “notes” page where you can write your own notes, and a recovery page that becomes accessible through a fourth tab after you lost lexicon content, for instance by death with inventory loss while carrying the lexicon. Each tab will show you one giant page of “stuff”. You navigate the page by scrolling (use the WASD keys).
Shift-rightclicking on the lexicon will open the fragment interface. Here, you can add research fragments (see below) to the lexicon. The information contained in the fragment will then appear on the research page.
If you open the lexicon (normally), you will see the research page. It is almost empty at the start. It will track your knowledge and your casting recipes. Knowledge and recipes fall under different categories and levels. Categories, like “tools”, “constructs”, “structures” etc. will be arranged like rows on a table, one under the other. Levels within a category, like “basic crafting”, “runecrafting”, “multi-block-casting” will be arranged from left to right, so the highest-tier information is on the right and the lowest-tier information on the left.
Clicking on an element on the research page will give you a description of an item or a piece of information about ChromatiCraft lore. Once you added casting recipes, holding shift will show you a crafting grid for all research page entries that represent things you can craft. Clicking on the grid will show you the casting recipe. Research page entries may have many casting recipes in them, particularly for items that come in 16-color variants. Every casting recipe may have multiple pages, depending on how many extra components this items need beyond raw materials in the casting table. Extra components can be raw materials on the extended crafting grid (see the casting temple structure entry in the lexicon once you have it), runes in the casting structure (see the entry about runecrafting once you have it), lumens (pylon energy – see various lexicon entries or consult the “lumen networking” section of this guide) or any combination thereof.
Clicking on the topmost tab at the top right corner of the window will bring you to the progression page. The progression page tracks your ChromatiCraft progression achievements. You start with a long row of images. Clicking on them will give you some hint what this tab is all about, and a line of cryptic symbols that indicates that you don’t know yet what this is about. The lines between progression achievements indicate direct dependencies. That does NOT mean that once you’ve completed a progression achievement, you can immediately proceed to doing the next one. See the “mechanics “ section below for more about that.
If you die and lose your lexicon, you will not need to re-collect all your research fragments, but you can re-create your knowledge on the recovery page of a newly-crafting Chromic Lexicon. All you need is paper and ink sacs (confirmation pending. I never had to do this). This also applies if you forgot your lexicon somewhere, or if you just want to make a copy..
II.2 Unlocking resources.
ChromatiCraft uses many different special resources, some of them mined, some of them harvested from plants. If you look at a block that looks like stone and a grey box with cryptic symbols appears, then it’s actually not stone, but a block that provides one of those resources. Since you don’t know how to detect that resource at the start, you will not see that this block is special. The same applies to some plants. At the start most of the plants will be invisible to you and you only know that something is there because a block outline appears if you point your tool at it. These resources will become available and visible as you progress. Occasionally, you will get a message with the subtitle “more of the world becomes visible to you”. You won’t need to do anything special to unlock them, it’s a part of regular progression using the mechanics I’ll describe below. There are some biome-dependent plants. These are visible right from the start.
II.3 Collecting research fragments
While exploring the world, you will find various structures related to ChromatiCraft lore. All of those structures have loot chests which will have a high probability of containing one or more research fragments. In the chest, they appear to be blank, but if you have the knowledge to read them, once you take them into your inventory they will immediately turn into fragments describing specific aspects of the world, or casting recipes. If you do not have the knowledge, they will remain blank. Nonetheless, keep them all. You will eventually acquire the knowledge to read them. You will need a total of about 200-220, depending on other mods you may have installed that have interaction with ChromatiCraft. The exact number of fragments available in your game will be visible in the lexicon’s fragment interface (shift-rightclick on the lexicon to open that, see above)
II.4 Using the casting table and the elemental manipulator
The casting table and the elemental manipulator are the first items you can make, and the most indispensable ones. Casting itself is pretty straightforward: put the raw material into the casting table and give it a whack with the elemental manipulator. However, there is much more to say about them:
The casting table stores your casting history, which means that every progression feature that requires you to have cast something specific will look here. Do NOT lose or destroy it especially late in the game. This should not be hard since there is no reason to move it once you have built a casting room. I recommend that when you start out, put it two blocks up from the surface (one block between the surface and the casting table) in the centre of a 19x19 area where do you not intend to build anything else. With such a location you can upgrade your casting structure on site and you’ll never need to move the casting table.
Casting takes time. Early items are usually cast almost instantly, but late items can take a while. If your server suffers from tick lag, casting times will increase accordingly.
The casting table enables multiple castings. For any recipe that doesn’t require pylon energy, just put up to a stack of each raw material into the slots of the casting table, and you will make the corresponding number of items with one casting. Because of the pylon energy requirement, this is not always possible with pylon-casting recipes. Instead, for some items which are often needed in greater numbers, chain-casting is enabled. This reduces the casting time for each additional item after the first, with exponential progression. Again, you can put up to a stack into each raw material slot, or you can use the casting delegate to chain-cast even greater numbers (see the constructs reference for details).
If you put a container next to the casting table, any item you cast will automatically land in that container if there is space for it. This is very useful for multiple castings, but will become a problem once you're using a lumen network, since it will always block at least one of the beams. You can place the container under the casting table instead, but then getting at the container fast is not possible without temporarily damaging your casting structure , so this is best used to route any cast items into a storage network or at least a more conveniently placed container.
Bug warning: if one set of raw materials creates more than one item, it is possible to cast more than a stack of items with one casting. If you did NOT put a container under the table and attempt a casting that creates more than a stack of an item, the output box may appear empty, but it is usually possible to get your crafted items out with multiple clicks. Nonetheless, I recommend never to put more raw materials into the casting table than required for casting a stack of items, unless you use the container method. For instance, when I cast crystalline stone, I will put full stacks of stone into the table but never more than 8 of the central crystal shard.
The casting table gui and the elemental manipulator also provide a lot of useful information about your attempted casting.
II.4.1 Casting recipe information
If you put the raw materials into the casting table, one of three things can appear in the output box in the top right corner of the gui:
1. Nothing. In that case, a component of the recipe is missing. Note that for runecrafting recipes (see below), the runes are considered part of the recipe, even though they’re part of the casting structure and won’t be consumed in the casting.
2. The international “not allowed” sign (red circle crossed by a red line): you have the recipe, but you’re lacking other knowledge required to make this item. Progress further before you attempt it again.
3. A ghost representation of the item. Everything is in order. You can proceed with the casting.
II.4.2 Casting level information
In the top left corner of the casting table’s gui, you will see one to four yellow dots, with possibly one of them covered by a “not allowed”sign. These dots, if not covered by the “not allowed”, indicate that your casting structure for the corresponding casting level is complete and constructed correctly. If the dot is missing, you don’t have the progression to build it. If the dot is covered by the “not allowed” sign, the structure is damaged or otherwise incorrect. Casting levels are “basic crafting” (using only the casting table), “runecrafting” (using the casting room or above), multi-block crafting” (using the casting temple and above) and “pylon-crafting” (using the casting complex and the lumen network)
Bug warning: after upgrading your casting structure, sometimes that change is not reflected correctly in the casting table gui unless you leave and re-start your world (in SSP) or disconnect and re-connect to the server (in SMP).
III.4.3 Lumen requirement information
When your casting table becomes part of a casting complex, 16 bars will appear on the right side of its gui. If you attempt a recipe that requires pylon energy, these bars will show which elements (colours) are required. If you have a lumen network that connects your casting complex with at least one pylon of each of the required colours, your casting complex will attempt to draw the required power from the network after you start the casting.As power goes into the table, the bars will slowly fill and change from a shadowed colour to a bright colour (this is not always easy to see, especially with the dark colours). A full and bright bar indicates that the table has drawn all of the required power of this colour. Lumens stay in the table until they’re used. If you interrupt your casting before they have been used, they will not be gone.
II.4.4 Elemental manipulator casting information
If you point the elemental manipulator at the casting table, one of four things will appear:
(1) A circle with a red cross. This means the casting table is not ready. The reason may be that the raw materials and/or runes for the recipe are incorrect or that the output box is full.
(2) A circle with a yellow dot. This means that the raw materials for a casting are complete, but pylon energy is required in order to make the item, but is not in the casting table yet. If you have a lumen network (see below) you can proceed with the casting. If you don’t, making this item is not possible at the moment.
(3) A circle with a green dot. Everything is in order. Proceed with the casting.
(4) If a casting that requires pylon energy is ongoing, a circle with sections for every required element for this casting, which will fill up from the center, changing pale colour to bright colour, as power is drawn from the network. Once all the power has been drawn, the actual casting will commence.
II.4.5 Stored energy
The elemental manipulator can be used to store pylon energy in you, i.e. in your game avatar. How much energy of each colour is stored is shown in the circle in (usually) the top left corner of the game window. The cap of stored energy rises with the energy already stored, as long as a minimum colour balance is kept, up to a certain point. This cap will upgrade itself later. This energy is used to power some of the tools and any special abilities you may activate (see below). Since this energy is stored in you, it is lost when you die.
II.4.6 Activating special abilities
Once you have the knowledge to give yourself special abilities with the ritual altar, you activate those abilities by clicking the mouse wheel while holding the elemental manipulator. Select the ability by scrolling, then select the power level, if applicable, with the mouse wheel while holding the shift key on the power selector bar above the ability symbol. After that, left-click the power selection bar. Deactivate a special ability by going here again and just left-clicking the ability symbol.
II.5 Progression mechanics: research levels and progression achievements
If you are stuck and don’t want to be spoiled, this section explains the mechanics without spoiling anything specific. ChromatiCraft uses a two-track progression system: progression achievements and research levels run in parallel to create the progression mechanics. Progression achievements are tracked on the progression page of the lexicon and consist of doing specific things to expand your knowledge of the elemental powers and your ability to use them. Research levels track your acquisition of knowledge in form of research fragments and your casting experience. Research levels are difficult to track as you play, but if you get a grey box with a message that you’ve learned something, and it’s not a casting recipe, a feature description that appears in the lexicon or a progression achievement, then it’s a research level. The casting levels that appear on the research page of the lexicon – basic crafting, runecrafting, multiblock casting, pylon casting etc.. – are also research levels, but they don’t correspond 1:1.
In its most simplified form, ChromatiCraft progression works like this: progression achievements unlock research fragments. Collecting research fragments and casting items from the mod completes research levels and unlocks new research levels. New research levels unlock more fragments, and those fragments, in turn, give you the means to complete the next set of progression achievements.
This means that in order to progress, you must do three things:
(1) Complete progression achievements
(2) Collect research fragments
(3) Craft ChromatiCraft items
Regarding the crafting requirement, how much you craft is irrelevant. One item per research level is enough, but it must be the right kind of item. How the coded crafting condition expresses itself in gameplay is something I do not understand completely, but the following rule has worked well for me:
If you’re reasonably sure that you have completed all relevant progression achievements you can at the moment, and all new research fragments come up blank, then craft one item from the constructs row of the research page of the lexicon at the highest casting level you have achieved, and if that doesn’t work, one of the second-highest casting level.
By all means, do experiment to find out more.
II.6 Powering devices
Early ChromatiCraft devices and tools usually do not need to be powered. For the more powerful devices and tools, ChromatiCraft uses the magical power of the 16 colours, also called elements. It is measured in lumens. Lumens become available for powering devices once you've completed "Broadcasting" and have acquired the ability to build a stable lumen network (see section IV for more about this).
There are four ways to supply lumens to devices. If you hold the shift key while in your inventory, ChromatiCraft devices that need to be powered will show an extra symbol:
(1) A pillar with a beam: the device draws directly from the lumen network (see section IV below). It must be placed within 32 blocks of a suitable crystal repeater or multi-aura repeater, using the normal connection rules.
(2) A storage crystal symbol: the device is powered by a storage crystal you put in. Storage crystals are charged in the storage crystal charger and draw their power from the lumen network if the charger is placed where it can connect to the network. A good place to charge all elements is on a casting complex's casting table. Beware: this will empty all connected pylons fast. I do not recommend it unless you have upgraded your pylons. It is possible to charge crystal chargers from pylons that are not part of your network by placing them nearby (this may not work anymore in v15).
(3) Concentric circles: the device is powered by the ambient lumen distributor ("wireless lumen distributor" up to v15, see section IV below for details), which draws its power from the lumen network if placed where it can connect to it.
(4) A relay symbol: the device is powered through lumen relays (see section IV below).
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