Astral Sorcery

## **Synopsis**

Astral Sorcery is a Minecraft magic mod focused around harnessing the powers of starlight and the constellations. Explore and discover the world and the sky above you; focus starlight to your will, strengthening yourself or enhancing the world around you.

The mod itself has an ingame guide in the form of the Astral Tome, which will guide you through most of the mod if you read it carefully.

## **Getting Started**

Astral Sorcery is extremely reliant on three resources that are relatively mid-late game; marble, aquamarine, and rock crystal. Marble spawns underground in a lot of places where ores generate, including the Lost Cities dimension. Aquamarine can be found in aquamarine shale which generates in sandy areas of the Lost Cities dimension. Rock crystals can be found in rock crystal ore which spawns in the Twilight Forest dimension. You can obtain these resources with an Industrial Foregoing Laser as well. It is not recommend that you get into Astral Sorcery if you do not have a considerable supply of marble, aquamarine, and rock crystal.

Astral Sorcery has an in-game guide called an Astral Tome. You should craft this before getting into Astral Sorcery. When you right click on an Astral Tome you will see a night sky with a single galaxy in it. This galaxy will have the word "Discovery" over it. Zoom in on this galaxy by scrolling the mouse wheel or by pressing W. This will allow you to see a bunch of boxes that are connected together with lines. You can click on any of the boxes and read information about stuff you can do with the mod. If you just read these boxes and craft everything that it says you can craft, you will eventually work your way through the entire mod. If that is what you want to do, you can stop reading here. Otherwise, I will give you a streamlined version of how to progress.

In a normal crafting table craft yourself a resonating wand and a luminous crafting table (LCT). These are the key to everything you will craft in Astral Sorcery. The LCT has a bar which displays how much starlight it is currently storing. In order to store starlight, the LCT must have sky access (no blocks above it). The LCT can collect more starlight during the night time, and collects more starlight as its elevation increases, up to y level 120. Whenever you want to use the LCT to craft something, place its recipe into the LCT, exit out of the crafting GUI and right click on the LCT with your resonating wand. If you have enough starlight stored, a beam of light will shine down on the table and the crafting will succeed after a short animation.

## **Exploration**

You may have noticed that when you initially held shift over a rock crystal, it read *something seems to be here, but understanding of it is not yet revealed*. When you craft your first luminous crafting table, you will get a notification in chat, *Your vision expands*. *You learned more about ‘Exploration’*. Now when you open your Astral Tome you will be able to see a second galaxy with the word "Exploration" over it. Again, you can scroll in and read through all the boxes for information on new elements of the mod that you can use. Here’s an overview:

* **Sextant:** Right click on the main block of a multiblock structure, and a 3D hologram of the blocks you need to place will appear. Any multiblock structures can be found in the Astral Tome if the hologram is not clear enough.
* **Looking Glass:** Used to trace constellations you have discovered by looking at the night sky. Hold shift to lock the telescope so you can trace. Constellation papers are exceptionally difficult to have obtained at this point because in Sky Factory 4 they can only spawn naturally as a rare drop in chests in the Lost Cities dimension.
* **Lightwell:** Place aquamarine or rock crystal into the lightwell by right clicking it. As long as the lightwell has sky access (no blocks above it), it will slowly turn its input into liquid starlight, which can be pumped out of the bottom or removed with a bucket. Standing in liquid starlight grants night vision
* **Infused Wood:** throwing wood (logs) into liquid starlight turns it into infused wood, which has a few items it can be crafted into
* **Fosic Resonator:** the strength of starlight varies from area to area in the world. While holding a fosic resonator in your hand at night you can see areas that have more starlight (and thus would be better for your LCT). Differences are pretty negligible in my experience, especially late game.
* **Spectral Relay:** a multiblock structure. When given a glass lens, can collect starlight and redirect it to LCTs that are within 14 blocks. Spectral Relays that are within 16 blocks of each other will reduce the effectiveness of each other. Look in the Astral Tome entry for an image of the structure, or use a sextant
* **Crystal Growth:** submerging rock crystals in liquid starlight will increase the crystal’s size after some time. You can see the crystals size by holding shift while hovering your mouse over the crystal. If you throw a max size crystal into liquid starlight there is a chance that the crystal splits into 2. The 2 resulting crystals will have reduced size but have a chance of having increased purity.
* **Crystal Properties:** when you mine rock crystal ore, the rock crystals that you get will have random *size*, *purity*, and *cutting.*
* **Grindstone:** you can place rock crystals in the grindstone with right click. If you right click on the grindstone again, it will grind away a little bit of the rock crystal you inserted. This will decrease its size, but increase its *cutting* each time you spin the grindstone. If you decrease the size to 0, the rock crystal will be destroyed. Shift right click the grindstone with an empty hand to pick up your rock crystal.
* **Crystal Tools:** rock crystals can be used to craft any normal minecraft tools in an LCT. The quality of the tools is dependent on the quality of the rock crystals which were used to craft them. These tools will never break, but they will wear down over time, negatively effecting the mining speed/damage. You can sharpen them up again in a grindstone, but doing so will decrease the size of the tool, just like how grinding a rock crystal works. You can also soak your tools in liquid starlight to restore their size.
* **Illumination Powder:** right click to throw a projectile that will light up the ground wherever it lands perpetually with glowing yellow orbs. To remove them you have to place a block over the lights.
* **Cave Illuminator:** a device which spawns light sources which float around, slowly moving away from the cave illuminator to find dark areas to light up. These light sources, called flares, can move through blocks, and thus can be used to light up caves passively. The cave illuminator will only work with sky access at night.
* **Nocturnal Powder:** right click to throw a projectile that will create a dark cloud wherever it lands. Inside the cloud, monsters and bats will spawn very quickly. The cloud slowly disperses after it lands.
* **Starlight Crafting Altar:** like the LCT, once you craft this block, you will increase your Astral Sorcery knowledge and enter the next phase. In order to use this new altar you will need to construct a large multiblock structure around it. This is best done using a sextant or by referring to the diagram in the Astral Tome. For reference, the multiblock structure is 9x4x9 (x, y, z)

## **Attunement**

Welcome to the next phase. In your astral tome you will now be able to see a third galaxy with the word *Attunement* over it. Here’s what’s new:

* **Telescope:** a new version of the looking glass that is mounted on the ground. You can look into the telescope by right clicking on it, and you can turn the telescope by hitting the arrows on either side of the screen. Tracing constellations is the same as with the looking glass.
* **Written Expertise:** a scroll which you can right click to transfer all of your knowledge onto it. Any other player who right clicks the scroll will learn all of the information stored on it. Used for sharing knowledge of astral sorcery with other players.
* **Shooting Stars:** you will rarely see a shooting star heading towards the (minecraft) Earth. If you run to where it will land you can see it crash into the ground and recover some of the loot which was created on impact.
* **Crystal Lens**: you can craft a lens which can redirect starlight over a distance (from a source). Multiple lenses can be used in conjunction with one another, but the farther the starlight travels, the weaker it becomes. The quality of the crystals used to craft the lens will also effect how far starlight can travel. Due to the nature of the void world, you will not be able to utilize these until you can craft Collector Crystals.
* **Linking Tool:** a tool which can be used to guide the path of starlight from a source, through crystal lenses, to the destination. Right click on the source, and right click again to select the destination. You have created a single link. To continue, select a new source, and a new destination. When you want to change sources, you have to take the linking tool out of your hand. You will get a notification in chat when you do so.
* **Iron Transmutation:** focusing a beam of starlight into a block of iron ore will change it into starmetal ore. There are a bunch of other blocks which can me transmuted in a similar way. These blocks can be seen in the Astral Tome.
* **Starmetal:** you can put an iron ingot into a cauldron filled with liquid starlight to turn it into a starmetal ingot. Grinding this starmetal ingot with the grinder will yield stardust.
* **Impulsion Wand:** right click to shoot out a projectile. Wherever the projectile lands, you will be slingshotted to. The wand has a range and a recharge time.
* **Formation Wand:** shift right click to select a block you want to place. Now aim at a block somewhere in front of you. The wand will place the selected block from the block you are looking at to yourself. The blocks used will be taken from your inventory. You can select more than one block and the blocks placed will be randomized from the selected blocks. To clear your selected blocks, right click into the air with the wand.
* **Conversion Wand:** see above. Exactly the same as a formation wand except it does not place blocks, it replaces all the blocks touching the block you are looking at that are the same type with blocks you have selected from your inventory.
* **Celestial Gateway:** a multiblock structure that acts as a functional teleporter. You can teleport from any one celestial gateway to any other celestial gateway. When you enter the celestial gateway multiblock structure your surroundings will fade away and you will see nothing but a black sky filled with stars. Other celestial gateways will be represented by yellowish stars. If you crouch while looking at any of those stars and standing on the celestial gateway block, you will be transported to the celestial gateway which you were looking at. If you name the celestial gateway with an anvil, you can see which one you are looking at, making transportation much easier.
* **Domic Resonator:** an upgrade to the previous fosic resonator. Shift right click to switch between modes. Domic mode shows how natural starlight distributions are distributed by buildings or rituals that channel starlight.
* **Attunement:** the attunement altar is a multiblock structure that is 19x6x19. In order to use it, you have to have discovered at least one constellation and have found that constellation with your telescope/looking glass. On a night where that constellation is visible in the sky put your constellation paper for that constellation into your off hand. Blue glowing particles will appear at many points on the surface of the attunement altar’s multiblock structure. At each of these points place a spectral relay. Once complete, the attunement altar will activate, lighting up with blue lights. If you stand in the center of the altar you will become attuned, unlocking perks.
* **Alignment Perks:** once you attune yourself, an additional menu will appear on the right hand side of your Astral Tome (one of the red banners). It says perks. If you click on it you can see a skill tree with “powers” you can unlock with skill points you earn. Skill points are earned in different ways depending on which constellation you are attuned to.
* **Shifting Star:** right click and hold with this in your hand until you get a notification in chat. This will essentially un-attune you, taking away all your perks and your access to the perks menu.
* **Perk Sealing:** there are a few perks that might only be useful sometimes. You can turn these perks on or off using a *sealing sigil.* With a sealing sigil in your inventory, open up your perks tree. In the top left of the GUI there should be a picture of a sealing sigil if you have one. Drag and drop it onto any perks you want to temporarily disable. To reenable the perk double click on it to break the seal. You will not get the sealing sigil back.
* **Crystal Attunement:** in exactly the same way that you can attune yourself, you can attune a rock crystal by throwing it onto the attunement altar while it is active.
* **Dynamism Gems:** there are three special kinds of gems; Ilium gems, Fengarum Gems, and Ourium gems. Throw a rock crystal and a piece of glowstone into a hole on the ground that is filled with liquid starlight. After a short time all of the ingredients will be consumed to form a random type of crystal. These crystals now need to grow up, which takes a significant amount of time. When the crystal is ready to be harvested, it will sparkle. Harvest with a pickaxe. These gems can be used in gem slots in the perk tree.
* **Ritual Pedestal:** a multiblock structure which acts like a beacon. Once constructed, place an attuned crystal on the ritual pedestal by right clicking on it with a crystal. The ritual pedestal will immediately start granting an effect in an area around it. The effect depends on which constellation you used to attune the crystal. The range of the effect is determined by the quality of the crystal. The list of effects can be found in the astral tome in the constellations tab.
* **Celestial Altar:** at last we get to the next altar. Once you craft this, you will enter the next phase of Astral Sorcery knowledge. Once again, you will need to upgrade your multiblock structure in order to use the celestial altar.

## **Constellation**

In your Astral Tome you will now be able to see a fourth galaxy with the word *Constellation* inside of it. Congratulations. Scroll in and see what awaits you:

* **Celestial Crystals:** throw a rock crystal and a piece of stardust into a hole that is filled with liquid starlight. After some time,  you will get a crystal cluster which will eventually grow up into a Celestial Crystal. You can harvest these with a pickaxe. Celestial crystals can be used in place of normal rock crystals. They are better in every way.
* **Resplendent Prism:** a bauble that can be worn in the Amulet slot. It randomly adds enchantment levels to existing enchantments. You can reroll which enchantments it increases with the Celestial Altar.
* **Ritual Anchor:** craft two anchors. Place one anchor five blocks above a pedestal. Place the second anchor wherever you desire. Link the two anchors with a linking tool. The effect of the ritual pedestal will be moved to be centered at the location of the second anchor.
* **Colored Lenses:** you can craft colored lenses which you can place into existing Lenses by right clicking them. There are several colored lenses that all have different functions:
	+ orange: cooks items and burns living entities
	+ yellow: destroys blocks
	+ red: damages mobs, but not the player
	+ green: speeds up crop growth nearby
	+ pink: heals mobs and players
	+ light blue: pushes living entities
* **Spectral Lens:** a lens which can be inserted into existing Lenses by right clicking them. Allows starlight to pass through blocks after passing through this lens.
* **Stellar Refraction Table:** a slightly complicated version of an enchantment table. Get yourself a bunch of parchment and some infused glass. In order to use this table you are going to need to have found a decent number of constellations in your telescope. During the night time, with sky access, enter the table by right clicking it. On the outer edges of the table you will see constellations which you have found. Drag 3 constellations onto the parchment. There is a chance that the process fails and the parchments is destroyed. If this happens, just try again with different constellation combinations. The combinations which will work depend on the constellations in the sky and the time of night. Once you have found a combination of constellations which does not destroy the parchment your infused glass will become engraved glass. When this happens, leave the table and shift right click it to remove the parchment (if there is any left in the table). Now you can right click on the table with water bottles, books, armor, and tools to insert them into the table to be enchanted or turned into a potion. Once the process has completed you can shift right click the table to remove them. The engraved glass you are using has a durability and will eventually break, so you will have to create another piece. The enchantments/potion effects that you can get depend on the constellations which you used to create your engraved glass.
* **Tree Beacon:** place this block down and plant a sapling nearby. When this sapling grows it will become a sort of ghost tree. Over time the tree will slowly decay, dropping logs and saplings. The single tree will drop way more logs and saplings than an ordinary sapling would.
* **Crystal Prism:** you can now craft a block called a prism lens which can split a beam of starlight equally into more than one direction. Can also be used with colored lenses.
* **Illumination Wand:** right clicking on a block with the wand will create a light source like the one that was created by throwing illumination powder onto the ground. Right clicking a block that already has a light source on it will remove that light source.
* **Advanced Sextant:** allows you to track vanilla minecraft structures like desert temples and ocean monuments...
* **Starlight Infuser:** a multiblock structure that can be used to infuse aquamarine and tools with liquid starlight. Once the structure is complete, right click on the starlight infuser to place a tool or piece of aquamarine into the structure. Then right click on the starlight infuser with your resonating wand. An animation will play, transforming your item into an infused tool or a resonating gem. Infusing an aquamarine has a chance of consuming one pool of liquid starlight. Infusing a weapon or tool will consume all 12 pools of liquid starlight. In order to use your altar again, you must make sure that all 12 pools are filled at the start of the ritual.
* **Infused Crystal Tools:** infusing your tools grants them special effects. These effects have a short cool down before being able to be used again.
	+ axe: breaking any part of a tree will destroy the entire tree and put its drops into your inventory
	+ sword: hitting something with your sword will send out a shockwave that deals damage in all directions
	+ pickaxe: right clicking gives you a visual indicator leading you to any nearby ores
	+ shovel: breaking a block breaks a 10x10 area around that block
* **Collector Crystal:** a source of starlight that is even more powerful than relays. Link these crystals to your altars to supply them more starlight. Starlight is increased at night naturally. The better the stats of the crystal you used to craft the collector crystal, the more starlight will be provided by the collector crystal. Additionally, the crystal will be more powerful on nights when the constellation that it was attuned to is visible.
* **Enhanced Collector Crystal:** a multiblock structure which you can use to empower a collector crystal so that it can produce peak starlight at all times, including during the day and at low altitudes. Putting these structures too close together does cause losses however.
* **Iridescent Altar:** The final altar. You will need to add some blocks to the multiblock structure and put the ingredients for the Iridescent altar into your celestial altar. Right click on your celestial altar and let the magic happen. When the process is complete, a blue crystal will appear above your altar. Welcome to the next phase.

## **Radiance**

Scroll to your brand new galaxy in your astral tome, this time with the word Radiance over it. This is the last step before mastering Astral Sorcery.

* **Constellations:** you can now craft constellation paper in the Iridescent Altar. This is the main way you are going to discover constellations in Sky Factory 4 due to the rarity of finding constellation paper in loot chests. Once you have some constellations, use the looking glass/telescope/observatory to find and trace as many constellations as you can. Store your constellation paper in your astral tome by shift right clicking the astral tome.
* **Focused Crafting:** you can now “focus” crafts to constellations by placing a crystal which was attuned to a specific constellation in the top left box in the Iridescent Altar. In addition, some recipes require items to be added to the altar outside of the crating GUI. This requires the use of spectral relays. In the astral tome, the items which a recipe calls for outside of the crafting grid can be seen floating around the outside of the image. Before you attempt to craft the recipe you should put down the same number of relays as the number of items outside of the crafting grid, somewhere on the sooty marble. When you right click on the altar with your wand, an item will appear over each of your spectral relays. Right click on the spectral relay with the item that is hovering over it. Once you place all the items, a short animation will play, and the craft will complete.
* **Wand Attunement:**
	+ **Armara:** while holding right click with the wand all damage that you take will be reduced significantly
	+ **Discidia:** as you hit an enemy, each consecutive hit does more damage than the previous hit (capped at 2x damage)
	+ **Evorsio:** while holding the wand in your hand or off hand, breaking a block will cause all blocks of the same type in a 5x5x5 to break around that block
	+ **Aevitas:** while in your hand or offhand you are able to walk on air. Jumping will increase your y level. In order to descend you have to move the wand out of your hand or offhand.
	+ **Vicio:** holding right click with the wand in your hand or offhand will cause the wand to draw back like you are drawing a bow. When you release you will be shot in the direction you are facing. The longer you draw back, the further you will travel.
* **Mantle of Stars:** a fancy looking chest plate. Can be attuned in the Iridescent Altar. Make sure that you insert a celestial attuned crystal into the box in the upper left corner of the altar. You can find a list of the Constellations that you can attune your mantle to in the Constellations tab of your Astral Tome. Mantles can be enchanted and enchantments on them are very powerful.
* **Observatory:** works just like the looking glass and the telescope except it is more powerful. Allows you to see a new type of constellation called a feint constellation. Hold shift to draw and discover constellations. Hit shift to get out of the seat after exiting the looking glass.
* **Enhanced Crystal Attunement:** you cannot align yourself or your mantle with faint constellations. You can however attune crystals that you have already attuned to other constellations to faint constellations to alter their effects
	+ Gelu: increases range of ritual but lowers the strength
	+ Ulteria: increases the strength of the effect but decreases the range
	+ Vorux: increases fracture rate, doubles the range, doubles the efficacy
	+ Alcara: increases fracture rate, doubles the range, doubles the strength of the effect, corrupts the ritual (reverses the effects)
* **Fracturing:** crystals can fracture if they are in a ritual altar that is empowered with too much starlight. Crystals will be destroyed if they fracture too much. Fractures can be repaired in liquid starlight.
* **Irradiant Star:** allows you to reallocate your perk points and change your root. All of your points will be refunded and your root will be set to whatever constellation you attune your star to. Hold right click for a really long time with the star in your hand to activate. The star will be consumed and you will get a notification in chat.
* **Containment Chalice:** a golden chalice which holds up to 24 buckets of any liquid. Liquid can be pumped in and out of the bottom of the chalice by various methods. The chalice will effect areas around it with whatever it is containing - for example a chalice with water next to a chalice with lava will occasionally touch in the air and drop cobble stone. Starlight next to water will drop ice. Placing lava, water, and liquid starlight next to each other spawns sand, ores, rock crystals, and aquamarine. Putting a chalice next to a lightwell will automatically drain the lightwell into the chalice. Putting a chalice inside the infuser structure will allow the structure to use the chalice instead of draining from the 12 pools of liquid starlight.
* **Ichosic Resonator:** another upgrade to your fosic resonator that can be crafted in the Iridescent Altar. When you have this in your hand, visual indicators will pop up along the ground telling you where underground lava or water deposits are.
* **Necromantic Prime:** a block required for the Evershifting Fountain ritual
* **Evershifting Fountain:** use the ichosic resonator to find a water or lava deposit. Build the Evershifting Fountain multiblock over this deposit. Next, put a containment chalice on top of the fountain and a necromantic prime underneath. When you add liquid starlight to the chalice, the process will start. It will dig below it to bedrock, breaking blocks that it finds along the way. Any chalices you have nearby will fill with liquid. The fountain will stop when it either runs out of liquid starlight or the deposit is depleted. During the ritual, do not place any blocks inside the area of the multiblock or it will stop working.
* **Fysallidic Prime:** a block that can be put in place of the necromantic prime in the Evershifting fountain ritual. If done so, while active all nearby mobs will be sucked up towards the structure and held in place.

## **Other Information and Tips**

**Obtaining Perfect Crystals:** perfect celestial crystals have 900/100/100 stats. Grow clusters of celestial crystals. Get the highest purity crystal you can find and throw it in some liquid starlight. After a short while the crystal will grow in size and consume the liquid starlight. Repeat this until the crystal’s size is 900 (max). Placing this crystal in liquid starlight again will have a chance to split into 2 crystals (with extensive testing, I believe it happens about 25% of the time). The two new crystals will have at minimum the same purity as the original crystal, but there is a chance that the purity increases. With enough repetitions, you can get a crystal to 100% purity. Once you have 100% purity crystals, cut them until their cutting is 100. Then increase their size back to 900. This is tedious, but will definitely be extremely powerful in the long run.