Sandbox/Old Vogon

... have a nice day. Message repeats.

Welcome to the 0.11.8 Vogon Service announcement version 1.

Twilight Forest biomes are working now, no need to disable them. Note that they will generate with double the height they use in the TF dimension.

"Notebooks" have been split into "portfolios" and "folders". The portfolios are for collections; they automatically sort pages, and stack multiple copies of a single symbol. Folders are for arranging your pages while writing ages. They do not sort or stack pages, but just keep the original sequence. There are also "sealed notebooks" as treasure items. When opened, these will become a folder containing a random selection of pages, at least one of which will be uncommon or rare.

Balance and instability have been further altered. World instability can vary slightly as you explore more of the world.

Welcome to the 0.11.0 Vogon Service announcement version 1.

* It now works in 1.7.10!

Disable Twilight Forest biome symbols. \\
In the file config/mystcraft/symbols.cfg will be a list of symbols and a true/false value. Change the biomes of twilight forest to false.

To find out which biomes are twilight forest, look in config/TwilightForest.cfg

* + Avoiding being stuck in an age \*\* \\

In 1.7, witches will spawn in all biomes, just not frequently. They will toss spash potions of weakness at you. So, you can get ahold of a zombie villager, find a witch, let the witch splash you (and the zombie), and then you can cure the zombie. Do this twice, and you can build up a village in almost any age.

While this may seem crazy, a mystcraft villager will, eventually, sell you a linking panel; this reduces the requirements to get out of an age to "merely" being able to get an apple (loot chests or oak trees), wood (mineshafts, trees, some villages or other structures), iron and gold (loot chests or ground ores), and avoids the need for paper (the real killer), as well as stone in the ground, the ability to mine stone (wood pickaxe), fuel a furnace (ink mixer needs smooth stone), get ink, and make glass bottles.

Additional information will be added as more information is repeated. \\
Meanwhile, here is a repeat of the 1.6.4 announcement.

Welcome to the 0.10.10 Vogon Service Announcement version 2.

* + Yes it does work in 1.6.4. \*\* \\

0.10.8 and 0.10.9 had bugs. 0.10.8 had a significant bug, that would ruin any symbol you found while playing 0.10.8. 0.10.9 was released while in the middle of fixing weather issues, and a few minor bugs got out. 0.10.10 has all that fixed.

Biomes now actually get changed weather characteristics when the whether is different. Do not expect a desert world with eternal snow to be friendly to your hot bees. Equally, world weather will no longer override biomes for determining mob spawns, etc -- eternal rain in a mushroom biome will now be a mushroom biome, not spawn hostiles, and just be wet.

Be aware that the manner in which this is done will break compatibility with some mods. \\
Forge gets this ability inherently, and in a less damaging manner, as of forge 938, but that feature will not be used until Mystcraft 0.10.11 is released.

Now, here is the 0.10.7 Vogon Service announcement version 1.

* + Does Not Work In 1.6.4! \*\* \\

Attempting to use this mod in 1.6.4 will result in death of your game any time you get near a village!

Well, maybe not death, just a crash. And maybe not every village, just villages with a Mystcraft villager. And maybe also villages that should have contained a villager but were made before Mystcraft was installed.

But do not use this mod with 1.6.4 and expect it to work. \\
Feel free to use this with 1.6.4 if you either have no villages (live in ages) or are otherwise OK with the repeatable, dependable crashes.

* Will not work with add-ons until they update. \\

0.10.7's primary function is the first public release of a "stable" API. It is not finished, or final, but it is now workable. However, it is different than what came before. Existing add-ons will need to be updated to the API, and have a chance of continuing to work without changes in the future.

0.10.7 contains significant bugfixes and balance improvements.

It is now possible to spawn a mystcraft villager from a villager spawn egg.

"Charged" has been changed to "Lightning". This is a name change only.

Mystcraft villagers may now trade away Booster packs, instead of only singleton symbols.

Now, for the Vogon Service announcement for 0.10.6, version 8:
[size=5]Lost Descriptive Books[/size]
Lost descriptive books can be recovered with the cheat command "/myst-agebook nnn", where nnn is the dimension number. You can determine the dimension number by sticking either a D-book or an L-book into a debug block/link modifier block. You cannot craft that block. It is the only way to apply the "relative" flag, and the only current (0.10.6) way to apply "following".

[size=5]Version 0.10.6 for 1.6.2 is now out.[/size] Changes and notes:

Known issue: Either writing desks, or ink mixers, that have ink left in them when a world is saved, may throw null pointer errors on world reload. It isn't yet clear if this affects chunk saving/unloading/reloading when a world is not saved. Except to see these warnings when you leave/return to an age with these. Other than a loss of the fluid in the desks, there does not appear to be any major issue. More details as they are cleared up. 0.10.7 will have a fix for this.

First supplement: This seems to be something that affects updating from 0.10.5 to 0.10.6; ink-mixers and writing desks will have no ink/fluid in them, and writing desks may (will?) lose their notebooks. More details to come.

Both "Native Biome Controller" and "Sky Biome" are available in normal survival now. Be aware that if you write "Sky Biome" into an age, and the biome at 0,0 in that age is "sky", then you may have to fight an ender dragon that will probably tear up the landscape.

"Floating Islands" take biomes as modifiers. In particular, if you just have a string of biomes in your book, and no biome controller, then some may be used by the generated biome controller, leaving others to be used by floating islands. Note that the ground will generate according to the original biome, and it will then be changed to the biome of the floating island above it. Floating mushroom biomes do not currently generate mooshroom cows.

Twilight forest biomes are confirmed to spawn above sea-level in 0.10.6 despite generating very low in the normal twilight forest.

If you want to import saved-games as mystcraft ages, be aware: Since caves, ravines, villages, etc., can be listed multiple times, each one will generate a set of these. This means that each of these will use it's own concept of "seed" for generation. This dates all the way to 0.10.0! Since each instance of these symbols will use their own idea for the world's seed, they will not generate exactly the same as the overworld. This means that Mystcraft cannot be used to import other worlds/saved games as an age without some alteration along newly generated chunks.

[size=5]Alerts for 0.10.5 on 1.5.2:[/size]
For those of you still using 0.10.5 and 1.5.2 because of older mods that won't update yet, be aware of the following (version 4 for 0.10.5)

* An issue was found in "Open to LAN" mode -- once one player disconnect, linking/descriptive books will fail to work. \* A hotfix for this is available -- see http://binarymage.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9222#p9222 for an updated class file to place inside the Mystcraft jar/zip.

[size=5]Alerts for 0.10.4:[/size]
If you are using 0.10.4, you are [b]strongly urged to upgrade[/b]. There are no significant losses or issues with upgrading. You may see some chunk boundary issues, especially with tendrils, on new chunks.

[size=5]Help, I cannot craft books![/size]
Some of you are having issues with the newest version of Mystcraft. Please remember that all books, linking and descriptive, now require link panels. Vanilla books are no longer used for any purpose in making mystcraft books.

Please refer to the http://binarymage.com/wiki/doku.php?id=items:crafting crafting wiki page. Note that 0.10.4 and later change some recipes.

You will need to make ink vial to accomplish anything. The two ways to do this currently are with black dye, water buckets, and glass vials; or with black due and water bottles. Note that neither recipe currently can produce large quantities at once.

An ink mixer is needed to make link panels. It consumes one full ink vial per page. Most of the special abilities from the old link modifier can be obtained here. See the wiki for crafting.

All properties of the link panels -- intra-linking (same dimension), disarm, generate platform, and maintain momentum -- can be crafted in vanilla minecraft/mystcraft. No third-party mods are needed.

"Following", on linking books, is a property of the book, not of the link panel. As such, it cannot be crafted in survival at the current time.

"Relative" is creative-mode only. It is abusable on servers (example: getting past guard walls into private zones). It can be obtained from the debug block or from creative mode inventory.

A book binder is needed to make descriptive books. You place a link panel at the front of the book, and use one leather per book. See the wiki for crafting.

Linking books are now created from a leather and a link panel, as an unshaped recipe. Like maps, they are created as inactive books, and are activated where you want them.

[size=5]Changes to the writing system:[/size]
Random worlds no longer have inherent or large instability. However, under-specified worlds will likely have random elements, that may include instability. The most common cause are tendrils with ores. It is possible to get "too many" of caves, ravines, villages, mineshafts, or dungeons. As of 0.10.5, all of these will be less frequently added; you are still advised to write no more than two of each unless you wish to experiment. In each case, "three" is confirmed safe. Some are confirmed to permit more.

Biomes now are listed in front of the biome controller. You may get one random biome added (much less likely in 0.10.5; you may want to write each biome multiple times to reduce the effect of the added one.) Native biome controller is broken in 0.10.4 and fixed in 0.10.5. It can be obtained in survival in 0.10.6.

Next, if you want something colored (other than grass/water/foliage) a single color, be aware that the best way to achieve this is as two or more gradients with the same color listed three times. There is no good way to specify "native minecraft colors", nor to duplicate the natural per-biome variations of the overworld at this time. This is available in 0.10.6/1.6.2.

An example to clarify: "red red red gradient red red red gradient" is the best way to specify "red" right now for anything that can take a gradient (celestial objects, for example). For grass, or foliage, that only takes a color and not a gradient, you would say "green green green grass color". This is fixed in 0.10.6, which will not alter your specified colors/lengths/angles/phases.

In general, any color should be specified with three symbols, even if repeated. The difference between two input symbols and the output, versus three input symbols and the output is significant. Two symbols will be close (example: "green blue"), but three will be closer. Again, this is no longer needed in 0.10.6

It is possible to create a world in the 0.10.3 version for 1.5.1, visit it, and then be certain that the world will be "as expected". In particular, 0.10.3 will not add any random features, so what you write will be what you get. However, it may generate instability as 0.10.3 still had some "required" items -- terrain controller, biomes and biome controller, and weather. After you visit the age, you can copy the agedata file (found in save-dir/data) for that age to a 1.5.2 / 0.10.4 server -- stop the server first -- and then the age will work in the new 0.10.5. The same trick can be used with either 0.9.5 or 0.10.1 for Minecraft 1.4.7, if you have a worldgen mod that is stuck on 1.4.7 and "fly around" or otherwise generate chunks. In that case, copy the DIM\_MYST folder (found in save-dir) as well as the agedata.dat file (found in save-dir/data). Note the primary differences between those two: 0.9.5 will add random features, 0.10.1 will not.

0.10.5 has changed "end world" to "island world". This is a name change, and does not change the default of "no seas".

0.10.5 has changed the "phase" symbols for "noon" and "end" to "zenith" and "nadir". These affect the starting position in the sky of celestial objects

If you are looking for an unforgiving challenge, try: lava, dirt, island world, hell biome, extreme hills biome, river biome, tiny biomes, zero length, nadir, normal sun, bright lighting. Vision will not be a problem, and you can use torches to "win" -- but you can't tell the dark areas by looking. Do remember to keep a linking book on your "hot" bar. Beware creepers and other explosions.

Finally, be advised that due to the repetition and time consuming nature of answering these questions all the time, all shore leave ... (message fades into the distance.)