Help Getting Started w/ MystCraft?

[Eunomiac]

MystCraft is one of my favorite mods, but ever since the upgrade to the new writing system I'm really struggling with getting started. I have two competing problems:

One one hand, trying to create an Age with incomplete symbols (e.g. "Plains + Desert + Extreme Hills + Huge Biomes") has never resulted in an even remotely useable Age: I'm either beseiged with all manner of Instability effects, or I get an outright Void Age. (Just to clarify, I've watched spotlights and studied the rules for writing Ages, so I'm reasonably sure I'm doing it correctly.)

On the other hand, trying to gather enough symbols to create even one "complete" Age is a daunting task (and I'm pretty far along, infrastructure-wise). I've found four MystCraft Villages, but trading for the Emeralds to buy my third copy of "Huge Biomes" just to see the next offering is becoming tedious (and I don't want to burn through my barrel of UU-Matter unless I have to, which is what I'm here to find out).

So how has everyone else been tackling MystCraft? How many symbols would you consider enough to start trying for a useful, stable Age? Has UU-Matter been your answer to Emeralds, or have you been diligently trading for them? Is my problem not exploring enough, to find more MystCraft-Villagers?

 

[whizzball1]

What I always do is cheat in the Mystcraft stuff. I don't bother with all that nonsense.

 

[Eunomiac]

What I always do is cheat in the Mystcraft stuff. I don't bother with all that nonsense.

That's kinda of what I meant with "use my barrel of UU-Matter"

Anyone else play MystCraft without cheating? Was it as gruelling and tedious as Wither Skull-grinding before Soul Shards?

 

[Evil Hamster]

What I did-

Once I got enough symbols to make a decent stable age, I made a plains, flat age. Start from your spawn and pick a direction and just go straight. Using rei's minimap on max magnification, it's easy tp see the libraries (small grey squares), barrows (green mounds) and villages collect all the loot and move on. I use an ender-pouch to transfer back to my main base sorting system, most of it ends up in the 3 diamond chest overflow (I just replaced that system with AE and haven't tried this since). When you're done, delete the age book, age from your save and the agedata dat file from the data folder to keep your save from getting insanely huge. You'll find tons of pages that way.

Another option I only recently figured out, you can carry an empty notebook to drop pages in from your inventory.

 

[ex13]

I found the fastest method is to look for libraries in newly created ages. Just create a random age (in the beginning, later you can try to create stable ones) and visit it. If the instability is not to bad (just potion effects, monster regen, maybe even nausea if you can deal with it), start looking around your spawn. There is garanteed to be a library nearby (a nice looking cobblestone house), usually just outside the render distance. Find it, take all pages, cut down the bookshelves to find the hidden chest and get even more pages. Repeat until you have all the pages you want. Should be a lot faster then trading with villages, or even looting villages/mounds.

 

[Ako_the_Builder]

I found the fastest method is to look for libraries in newly created ages. Just create a random age (in the beginning, later you can try to create stable ones) and visit it. If the instability is not to bad (just potion effects, monster regen, maybe even nausea if you can deal with it), start looking around your spawn. There is garanteed to be a library nearby (a nice looking cobblestone house), usually just outside the render distance. Find it, take all pages, cut down the bookshelves to find the hidden chest and get even more pages. Repeat until you have all the pages you want. Should be a lot faster then trading with villages, or even looting villages/mounds.

I use this method too, works well imo.