Mystcraft 0.10.4 - How to get rid of randomness?

[Zarkov]

I have been playing the 1.5.2 FTB beta now for a while with the new Mystcraft 0.10.4, and so far haven't been able to get predictable results in creating ages.

From my admittedly limited testing, the new changes almost seem to produce the inverse of the behavior seen in previous versions. Not adding any symbols at all gives you a good chance of a stable world, while adding symbols that used to result in a stable age may give you horrible instability effects such as nausea and decay.

I'm really hoping I'm missing some key principles with age writing in the new version, because right now it's far less enjoyable to me than the previous versions.

The feeling of not having any real control over the ages I write is a real turnoff for me, and the primary reason why my testing so far has been fairly limited. Once I managed to get a stable mining age (which became a nausea + mining fatigue + decay-nightmare for another player using the exact same symbols in the same order), I didn't quite have the energy to try anything else (e.g. ages for specific resources, eternal day world for main base etc.)

Any tips greatly appreciated!

 

[gattsuru]

You should be able to make controlled stable Ages, with three limitations.

Some Symbols will cause instability, or cause instability-like effects in exchange for negating other instability. Dense Ores will cause instability, almost always severe instability. Accelerated will cause instability, to a degree that can only barely be controlled. Charged, Meteors, Explosions, and Scorched will directly cause instability effects, but in return reduce other instability, if any would have otherwise occurred.

Some materials will cause instability depending on how common the material is, not just because of the symbol's use. Diamond, Coal, Iron, Mystcraft Crystal, Glowstone, and Forge Liquid Dictionary Oil can cause instability if they occur in significant amounts -- or can add to other causes of instability. When people point out the danger of Diamond Tendrils or Oil Seas, this is why.

Finally, using too many or not enough Symbols when writing your world can cause instability, as can writing them out of order. "Blank" Ages default to stable in 0.10.4 unless the random generator selects an unstable feature, unlike in previous versions where blank Ages were always unstable. Once you use any Symbol, however, you must correctly describe the basics of the world within the grammar rules. These rules are very strict, and have only become more so over time.

In 10.4, a written age must contain :
- One and only one Weather attribute
- One and only one Terrain Generator
- The correct number of Biomes descriptors, followed by one and only one Biome Controller, (the order requirement is new to 10.4 : you used to be able to put them in any order. You no longer need Clear Modifiers directly after this, although early versions did require that.)

In previous versions, you also had to include
- One and only one Lighting
- At least one Sun
- At least one Moon
- One and only one Stars.

You must also avoid
- Dangling modifiers. Modifier symbols can only affect very specific things, and must come before that thing. The order does matter.
- Extra nouns. Using more than one Biome Controller, or more biomes than your Biome Controller can handle, will always cause significant instability.

 

[thestarlion]

I've been going by that way of writing ages, but with 0.10.4 it doesn't make a difference. I posted in another Mystcraft thread the symbol set I use to get a stable single-biome void age that always worked for me. Under this version however, I've had all manner of unwanted effects - tendrils, incorrect terrain generation, wrong or more biomes than specified, and more.
And all from the exact same set of symbols in the exact same order.
Given that the ability to pick what was wanted in an Age was one of the big pluses to Mystcraft, I can't see this randomness keeping many. I've already ditched it in favour of other dimension adding mods. It's not perfect of course, but it's better than this.

 

[Methusalem]

I had similar issues in 10.4, when trying to create a mining age. The requirements are really simple: Extreme Hills, Dense Ores, solid ground (no caves, water, lava etc.), no meteors, no decay. Surface effects like Hunger or Weakness don't matter, since I always dig down and set up the quarries at y55.
But no matter what, in 10.4 I always got caves, underground lakes, sometimes not even the correct biome.

Turned out, I made two mistakes:

1. I've used "No seas" as feature. This is in fact now a terrain modifier, so the correct usage would be something like "Stone Blocks, No seas, Flat" ... or don't use it at all. If used as a feature at the end, then it will ignore your original biome description.

2. The features are really goofy now. They fall into three categories: "Caved" ("Unknown" in the wiki, includes Caves, Ravines, Tendrils etc), "Nature" (Crystals, Trees, Lakes, Star Fissure) and "Civilization" (Dungeons, Mines, Obelisks, Villages). Seems, if you don't pick three each, then Mystcraft will add random features to it and cause instabilities.

Try out the following, this gave me the mining age I was looking for:

Flat, Extreme Hills, Single Biome, Bright, Eternal Rain
Zero Length, Noon, Normal Sun, Normal Moon, Normal Stars (or skip the celestials all together)
Stone Blocks, Tendrils, Stone Blocks, Tendrils, Stone Blocks, Tendrils (Normal World Gen still seems to work on stone blocks. If I skipped the material, then it always created wood tendrils under ground.)
Huge Trees, Huge Trees, Huge Trees (Crystals would be another choice, but it might add instability)
Villages, Villages, Obelisks (or any other surface structure, I was looking for the "cheapest" with the lowest chance of instabilities)
Dense Ore, Charged x 3, Scorched Surface x 3
Clear Modifiers

 

[Zarkov]

Thanks for the answers! It seems that what I'm looking for is basically "anti-symbols", such as "no landscape features" or "no more suns" (which of course don't exist). I guess adding a truckload of symbols will eventually remove most of the randomness. It's just a bit unfortunate if that forces you to end up with an age different from what you actually want (not talking about "dense ores without instability" or anything like that).

Anyway, I'll do a bit more testing. Thanks again.

 

[spardha]

Am I right in thinking there are 2 ways to get pages?

Trade with villager, & creating ages then exploring them for temples with pages in? The reason I ask is I'm new to mystcraft and would like to create a mining age to, I've created 3 ages and its taken a long time to search these worlds for pages which to be honest so far have been pretty bad.

Thanks

 

[Pokefenn]

Am I right in thinking there are 2 ways to get pages?

Trade with villager, & creating ages then exploring them for temples with pages in? The reason I ask is I'm new to mystcraft and would like to create a mining age to, I've created 3 ages and its taken a long time to search these worlds for pages which to be honest so far have been pretty bad.

Thanks

Villagers and mystcraft are the only ways to get pages.

 

[draeath]

Ah, so the temples are no longer out in the overworld? I had wondered why those disappeared...

 

[PhilHibbs]

Ah, so the temples are no longer out in the overworld? I had wondered why those disappeared...

What temples?

 

[Drawde]

What temples?

I think draeath meant the libraries that appear in Mythcraft worlds.

 

[spardha]

I thought I'd made a good basic mining age, but have found every block is dirt ?!?!?

I used, in this order to: Normal Sun > Normal Moon > Normal Lighting > Plains Biome > Single Biome > Villiages > End

I give up I've created 10 worlds and only 1 was stable.

 

[draeath]

I think draeath meant the libraries that appear in Mythcraft worlds.

Well, those sure are tiny libraries

But yes. The stone structures with books, pages etc in them.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Ah, so the temples are no longer out in the overworld? I had wondered why those disappeared...

...

The stone structures with books, pages etc in them.

They never were in the overworld.

I thought I'd made a good basic mining age, but have found every block is dirt ?!?!?
I used, in this order to: Normal Sun > Normal Moon > Normal Lighting > Plains Biome > Single Biome > Villiages > End
I give up I've created 10 worlds and only 1 was stable.

Specify colours as well, and lengths, and add some features like dungeons and mineshafts, which you can have multiples of. All the things that you specify will reduce the random stuff that Mystcraft adds when they are missed out.

 

[draeath]

Then was my old FTB Ultimate overworld actually a mystcraft age? I could swear I saw several of them.

More likely I'm just getting old.

 

[Seraph089]

Then was my old FTB Ultimate overworld actually a mystcraft age? I could swear I saw several of them.

More likely I'm just getting old.

It could be you're thinking of the TC barrow hills, I've found Mystcraft pages in the chests in those.

 

[draeath]

There was no TC in Ultimate. Looked up a screenshot and what I'm thinking of is definitely a mystcraft library.

 

[Seraph089]

There was no TC in Ultimate. Looked up a screenshot and what I'm thinking of is definitely a mystcraft library.

Thaumcraft was certainly in Ultimate. But if it was a library, it was either a strange bug or you were living in an age that looked like the overworld

 

[draeath]

TC is Tinker's Construct isn't it? Thaumcraft is one word.

Anyway I think it's more likely I'm remembering falsely rather than a bug.

 

[PhilHibbs]

Thaumcraft has always been called TC as far as I remember (what would you call it, "T"?), Tinker's Construct is usually abbreviated to TiCo.

 

[draeath]

If it's a single word I wouldn't abbreviate it at all.

But thank you for that clarification.