Essence RPG

*Here is the official guide for Essence RPG. Note: Some features from this document may be missing from the pack, so it may be best to use the wiki a reference instead.*

## Quick Guide

### Gameplay

* Just play the game like it’s vanilla, and you will gradually learn about different sources of your world’s new most valuable resource: Essence Points.
* Essence Points can be spent in your Imbuer and Empowerer books that you should have loaded in with. If for some reason they are missing, perform the command “/trigger levelup” then click the chat buttons.
* The Imbuer can:
	+ Level up passive skills, and tell you about their effects
	+ Change your personal difficulty
	+ Browse personal options
	+ Respecialize your character
* The Empowerer can:
	+ Buy, toggle, and view your active abilities.
	+ Find powerful Relic items via rare drops.
	+ Use the sneak key to use your purchased Empowerments
* Use a Stonecutter, Blast Furnace, or a Smoker to augment your gear. Each table and individual item produces different results. (Bows and crossbows not yet supported)
* Hunt down an Evoker or an Ender Dragon to obtain the Unformed Essence. Toss it onto an enchantment table with a diamond to craft the Essence Channeler of your choice.
* Avoid the Affliction, or embrace it…

## Major Features

### Essence Points

* **Fighter** - Primarily obtained from combat. Can also be found from specific ores and chests. Used to upgrade aspects of yourself related to direct damage or cooldown timers.
* **Protector** - Primarily obtained from village-related activities and combat with tougher enemy types. Can also be found from specific ores and chests. Used to upgrade defensive aspects of yourself, such as health and regeneration.
* **Scavenger** - Primarily obtained from the world around you, except from combat. Used to upgrade utility aspects of yourself, such as traversal and hunger prevention.
* Spend enough in one area to earn Mastery bonuses! (Detailed in their respective subsection.)
	+ This may not be in the 1.15 version of the datapack that is used

### Imbuements

Imbuements are passive abilities that are useful to the player without them having to think about using their benefits. Each of them are upgradeable from the Essence Imbuer book, usually for 100 EP per investment. However, each investment does not provide benefits! Check the requirements to see when you’ll start benefiting from these. By default, you can invest up to 5,000 EP into imbuements before you reach the level cap, referred to as your “Potential”.

* Fighter:
	+ Strength: Increases attack strength. Six tiers. Each tier provides one more stack of the Strength status effect.
		- Upgrades: 1, 5, 10, 20, 35, 50
	+ Focus: Reduces all cooldowns. Be it an essence channeler or an empowerment, it’s going to be available more often! Three tiers.
		- Upgrades: 1, 5, 10
	+ Truth: Increases arrow speed, therefore also the arrow’s damage and accuracy. Six tiers. Also works on crossbows!
		- Upgrades: 1, 5, 10, 20, 35, 50
* Protector:
	+ Resistance: Provides extra max health. Five tiers. Each tier provides one more stack of the Health Boost status effect.
		- Upgrades: 1, 5, 10, 20, 35
	+ Regeneration: Provides extra health regeneration. Three tiers. Each tier provides more of the Regeneration status effect, but in varying strengths and situations. Tier one only applies when the player is at low health.
		- Upgrades: 1, 5, 10
	+ Resilience: Provides a regenerating absorption health shield. Four tiers. Each tier provides a stronger version of the Absorption status effect, and even faster shield recharge rates.
		- Upgrades: 1, 5, 15, 30
* Scavenger:
	+ Speed: Increases movement speed. Three tiers. Each tier provides another stack of the Speed status effect.
		- Upgrades: 1, 5, 10
	+ Haste: Increases block breaking speed. Two tiers. Each tier provides another stack of the Haste status effect.
		- Upgrades: 1, 5
	+ Saturation: Staves off starvation. Costs 500 EP per upgrade instead of 100. Two tiers. Tier 1 only provides the saturation to prevent sprint loss, whereas tier 2 provides enough to grant minor natural health regeneration.
		- Upgrades: 1, 2

### Empowerments

Empowerments are active abilities that are all activated by pressing the sneak key. All of them cost 1,000 EP. If you have more than one Empowerment active, you will use all of them that are not on a cooldown period at the same time. Some Empowerments, however, are not active abilities, and instead use up one active ability slot in order to increase your maximum Potential limit by 1,000 each.

* Fighter:
	+ Vengeful Expansion: Increases your Potential limit by 1000.
	+ Cripple: Ensnares targets in a circle around you, applying slowness to almost everything, and a damage over time effect (Wither) to hostiles.
	+ Erupt: Hold sneak to charge up a blast of rage around you. There are three possible tiers of attack. The longer you hold, the stronger the attack’s tier becomes! The attack (and its cooldown) becomes stronger at charge level 30 and 60. Holding for too long, however (Charge level 100), causes you to lose your charge and Erupt will be put on a cooldown.
* Protector:
	+ Benevolent Expansion: Increases your Potential limit by 1000.
	+ Brace: Hold to block (most of) the next incoming attack. It provides you Resistance IV until you receive damage, so long as you are sneaking. It is not put on cooldown until it is actually used to block damage.
	+ Collude: Summons a smoke bomb, causes nearby entities to glow, and gives you some regeneration. You are granted a brief period of invisibility as you drop the smoke bomb.
* Scavenger:
	+ Bountiful Expansion: Increases your Potential limit by 1000.
	+ Rejuvenate: Provides energy to all nearby players. In particular, it provides some minor food, jump boost enough to vault two blocks, some water breathing, and speed status faster than what is attainable via imbuements.
	+ Upwind: Use a violent gale for area traversal or a combat advantage. Allows the player to float upwards and be set down gently, while also tossing mobs upwards and slamming them down to take fall damage

### Augmentations

Boost the power of almost all vanilla gear by taking them to an augment table! The stonecutter, blast furnace, and smoker all provide different benefits and accept different EP forms as crafting material. Each tool/armor (except for bows and crossbows) have nine possible results, one being common, the second being uncommon, and the last being rare. Each augment attempt will repair the item, but remove any prior stats (including enchantments) it had.

**Tiers Explanation:**

* Wood/Leather - 10 EP - Weakest tier, but still useful for beginners.
* Stone - 20 EP - A little stronger. Useful for early/midgame.
* Chainmail - 20 EP - Has some odd effects, can be a worthy sidegrade high tier equipment!
* Iron - 25 EP - Great for midgame. Cheap enough to make lots of, but not strong enough for the highest difficulties.
* Turtle - 50 EP - Gimmick helmet that slows the player down, but provides bonuses much greater than iron can.
* Gold - 35 EP - Oddball tier, is either a complete joke or a situational powerhouse, better than diamond/netherite.
* Diamond - 100 EP - High tier, is simply great at anything you augment it for. Expensive, but worth it!

**Tools Explanation:**

All tools are now viable combat items if they are augmented.

* Sword - Exactly as it used to be.
* Shovel - Becomes a spade, striking faster than a sword, but weaker.
* Axe - Tweaked from vanilla, now are slightly faster and slightly more damaging.
* Pickaxe - Becomes a warpick, which strikes slowly, but with extreme power.
* Hoe - Becomes a scythe, which acts as an offhand charm.
* Shield - Still a shield, and gains extra benefits. Can even be used as a direct weapon!
* Trident - Still a trident, and gains extra benefits. Can even be used as an offhand charm!

**Augment Tables Explanation**

* Stonecutter (Fighter) - Improves direct damage dealt or sometimes speed.
* Blast furnace (Protector) - Improves defense ratings. On Chainmail, improves maximum HP.
* Smoker (Scavenger) - Improves speed and/or utility of an item.

### Mastery Bonuses

Mastery bonuses can be acquired for each discipline (fighter, protector, and scavenger) by spending 1300/2500 EP in their respective imbuements/empowerments. Currently, the only acknowledgement of these in-game are the particle effects a player can earn for achieving them at 2500 EP. If you have achieved a mastery bonus, use the Imbuer and select the setting “Toggle Particles” in order to activate/deactivate them.

* Fighter: Attacking enemies builds rage, which manifests as a speed bonus and strong (40%) damage resistance buff during combat. A weak variant is earned at 1300 EP.

* Protector: Passively grants a weak (20%) damage resistance buff.

* Scavenger: Passively grants luck. Luck can be used to attain some sources of EP faster, and improves the drop rates of certain relic items. A weak variant is earned at 1300 EP.

### Personal Difficulty/Cross-Player Scaling

Every player on a multiplayer server can select how difficult they want their game to be! While players cannot choose to edit the game’s base difficulty (Peaceful/Easy/Normal/Hard), they can choose between seven difficulties that alter the strength of entities around them. Higher difficulties provide more EP! The player on the highest difficulty within 50 blocks of a mob will set that mob’s difficulty. However, players on lower difficulties are compensated with damage reduction. If a player on a lower difficulty is provided some shared EP from a nearby high-difficulty player, they will only be given as much EP as their difficulty dictates. The descriptions for most difficulties are references to Halo’s difficulty select screen.

* Vanilla: No changes to the server’s base difficulty.
* Spicy: Enemies are a little tougher. While no extra EP is provided, hostiles do begin to use custom abilities, for those who want to see them.
* Hot: Provides 2x EP per drop. Challenging, but never unmanageable.
* Burning: Provides 2x EP per drop. Survival is not guaranteed.
* Tortuous: Provides 3x EP per drop. Your opponents laugh at most attempts to kill them.
* Hellfire: Provides 4x EP per drop. Cower as you are overrun by seemingly invincible foes.
* Molten: Provides 5x EP per drop. The battle is hopeless.

### Essence Channelers

* Rage: Rack up damage to build a hidden Rage meter, then right-click with this channeler in hand to unleash a volley of damaging jaws from the earth. If the player has enough Rage, they are also given four absorption hearts to protect them from their own attack, assuming they don’t already have them. No cooldown.

* Protection: Right click to summon a pool of powerful regeneration! Lasts longer as it heals more targets. Long cooldown.
* Adrenaline: Right click to conjure a powerful explosion behind you, which allows you to reach new heights and evade enemies! Decent cooldown.
* Wisdom: Right click to create a slowly descending fireball in front of you. This can be hit towards any direction you wish, or left in place as a trap! Short cooldown.
* Resilience: Call to the essence to aid your dire need! Can soothe burns, heal you out of critical condition, provide food if you starve, or all three at once! Very long cooldown.
* Perception: Reveal all living beings. Your gaze will pierce most foes, pacifying them for a short time. Medium cooldown.
* Power: Grant yourself intoxicating strength. Medium cooldown.

### Relic

Relic items are rare drops or chest loot with special effects! This guide will be updated as more relics are found and asked about in the Discord.

* Discovered relics:
	+ [None so far. Be the first!]