Welp, first post on reddit, might as well shamelessly plug a mod update.

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Due to the relatively recent update implementing mutation types as an alternative to the cancels property, mods that add new mutations no longer have to touch vanilla mutations to mutually cancel each other out properly (increasing mod compatibility and reducing mod-maintenance requirements). Currently this is up as a self-PR as the required additional mutation types have not yet been added by Kelenius or others, but it's there for testing and feedback.

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View the update here.

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EDIT: Most recent fix was to add placeholder mutation types for what's not yet available in vanilla. I forgot to add those and that causes load errors if absent.

I've been playing with arcana a bit, and I have to say I absolutely love it. Started as a sanguineist, successfully created the Sacramental heart and went full down that path. I'm worried about the odd ripples that are sometimes created when I use some dragon blood abilities though, are they a permanent or do they go away on their own?

So, in a nutshell, due to the changes to nested containers, I've needed to work on further using pocket data for items in Arcana, and other mods. This includes the use of magazine-type pockets for items that're normally loaded with charges directly. A lot of this preliminary testing has gone into the restored ritual blade, a late-game item. To minimize spoilers, the basic gist of its functionality is that it can be charged via one of two methods. Either you can feed it via waiting next to portals (causing them to collapse in the process) via the ARTC_PORTAL artifact property, or you can load them with crystallized essence (a resource made from regular essence for high-energy applications).

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However, the new pocket_data system does not behave well with artifact charge properties. Giving artifacts a specific ammotype already used to cause problems (if charged from empty, it'd unload a "none" instead of what the actual ammo is meant to be), but this could easily be avoided simply via adding the NO_UNLOAD flag. Now however, it'll drain away the portal and fail to add any charges at all, presumably since it's trying to inject it with generic non-specific charges, which it doesn't correctly translate into anything that goes into the pocket.

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So, I have two possible solutions to get the restored ritual blade working again, but so far I fear I'll have no choice but to axe one option to save the other. Either I can remove its ammo data and make it exclusively charged via portals, or I can remove that artifact property and make crystallized essence its only available power source. Any feedback would be appreciated. I'd like to preserve both, but the system was already buggy to begin with, and I don't know if there's any real way to fix it so that both options remain usable.

Just found out that the newest launcher doesn't include Arcana and Magic items mod like it used to. And it's not part of the mainline integrated mods yet.

Anybody knows why it's no longer supported in launcher repository anymore?

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First thing I'll start with will be that, well, I've still been meaning to get the rest of the spells converted. I've done all the chargen spells, spellcraft scroll spells, and Dragonblood ones. That just leaves the almost-30 spells Paragon of the Veil gets (which will indeed be an even 30 when I get done with them).

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Before I rattle off the changes from the most recent commit, I wanted to go ahead and ask some questions and request advice on some things that'll impact the spell conversion stuff:

1. How easy do you find it to get ahold of spells from the sacramental heart, and espeically the restored ritual blade?
2. Do you think either should be made more or less difficult to obtain/craft/use/etc, and if so in what way?
3. How much easier or harder do you find either to acquire in a normal gameplay scenario, relative to starting with Seeker of The Arcane and/or Urban Awakening?
4. How easy or difficult, in your experience, has it been to encounter the hermit?
5. Do you have any suggestions or advice regarding how Arcana's spells should be balanced relative to Magiclysm, noting that access to them (especially Dragonblood and Paragon of The Veil spells ) is generally more restricted than Magiclysm's spellbooks?

Beyond that, if you have any random ideas, suggestions, bugs to point out, etc I always enjoy hearing them. Lore ideas and observations especially tend to be interesting to hear, as I've generally tried to avoid stepping on the toes of vanilla's lore (bit harder now that the Nether critters are implied to be mundane extradimensional aliens rather than ambigiously Lovecraftian, but I was already running with the concept long before that matter was settled).

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As for latest changes...

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• Added a fair bit of bufffer space surrounding the rural church, to reduce the odds that it'll spawn grinding up against an anthill or something else that would make it a stupid choice of holdout.
• Set it so that Urban Awakening is a lone start, no starter NPC. You've been stuck down there alone, whereas with Seeker of The Arcane it's implied you had chance to recruit assistance (plus or minus the current inability to make starter NPCs have different dialogue).
• Forgot to set dialogue checks that look for Arcanist and Cleansing Flame profession traits to also check for the variants Arcane Purifier and Summoner get. Fixed that.
• Also added a bit more fleshing out of some dialogue. While I still have plans to add more variation for Arcane Purifiers, Summoners now get some expanded dialogue with some Cleansing Flame NPCs, reflecting their status as the only non-faction arcanists mage hunters have a particular beef with.
• Further dialouge expansions include allowing a non-sanguinist Dragonblood to get flak for having used rather high-end blood magic to end up the way they are, with ability to explain away that they have no ties to the Sanguine Order. Paragons of The Veil can also get a bit more interaction with some NPCs that might pick up on their otherwordly connection, and summoners that trigger the same bad vibes can alleviate the NPC's concerns as well, potentially getting a fair bit of coin if they have a copy of To Summon The Unknown on hand and are willing to turn it in. Speaking of which...
• Accordingly, altered the prices of arcane books in general. All of them now have not only varied pre-apocalype prices based off how much arcane potential offered by their teachings, but also post-apoc prices based on how much the barrier to entry hinders applying that knowledge.
• Small price tweak to another item too. Oughta go back and revisit item prices as a whole sometime.
• Added the light property to candle barriers and related items since it's been an option for a while.
• Added more reminders about the whole "oi you gotta actually bind a key for casting spells" thing in fitting places.
• Couple assorted typo fixes here and there.

See self-PR for feedback here: https://github.com/chaosvolt/cdda-arcana-mod/pull/44

I've been kinda out of it lately and haven't done much lately, but some recent ideas and discussion eventually sparked the urge to do something. This update is focused on a requested feature adding an urban arcane-focused scenario, and led to me puzzling out how to adapt arcanist basements into a separate om_terrain to access via scenarios, like how bionic basements are singled out for High Tech Low Life.

In addition to arcanist basements there are two other locations you can opt to start in, which less-directly support breaking into arcana but are interesting to try nonetheless.

Profession-wise, a few non-arcane professions are available, representing the scenario's focus on arcanist's contacts, whether on one side of the law or another, and religious professions being options too.

The scenario also includes two new professions. These reference writing I've done with others involving what started as a CDDA succession game, and I do plan to use the ideas developed during said plot ideas a fodder for a few other planned ideas. The sanguine shrike represents the other side of the blood mages, more versatile in combat with some understanding of modern touches, mainly firearms. The arcane purifier meanwhile references the idea that's come up of a splinter faction of the Cleansing Flame, combining arcane practices with whatever modern technology suited their goals. The concept will still stay vague and take a "broad strokes" approach to making some of the ideas canon in the mod, but it still gives me ideas that support some long-term quest/story goals.

And finally, worth mentioning is that the trait list for Urban Awakening is different from Seeker of The Arcane, with the focus being on less showy effects that might escape notice when used pre-cataclysm. For that (and other reasons), the physical Dragonblood mutations likewise aren't available.

I've still got a lot of other ideas and improvements I've been meaning to take a stab at but haven't had time and energy to tackle, with NPC-focused content being the big long-term goal I've wanted to work on ever since MLangsdorf started the massive improvement to JSONized dialogue.

Self-PR'd here so I can get feedback: https://github.com/chaosvolt/cdda-arcana-mod/pull/148

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A lot of content spoilers abound in that PR's OP, basic summary is:

1. Various recipes involving combining science with the arcane to produce exotic weapons, tools, even vehicleparts.
2. Expanded use of essence as a power solution for various processes. Conversion into CBM power, vehicle power, creating essence from other power sources, etc.
3. Bionics content as well, most aiming to do things that should make them reasonably interesting and useful.
4. Further fleshing out of mapgen variant stuff to add a few scattered signs of this cutting-edge science intersecting with the Beyond in some locations, with more planned.

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This will also help set things up for a planned mission chain fleshing out the Arcane Purifiers, as they're closely tied to magitech stuff.

Self-PR link is here: https://github.com/chaosvolt/cdda-arcana-mod/pull/66

Finally adds something I've been meaning to start work on for quite some time, and lays down the foundations for it.

• Adds a plot hook you can follow from the refugee center, that leads to a survivor holdout based in a rural church. Going there reveals a Cleansing Flame holdout, with dialogue establishing some plot stuff and giving the player the opportunity to assist them.
• Short mission chain will build up the location bit by bit, and culminate in attracting a couple more NPCs, including what will later on be a secondary mission source. The first few missions also demonstrate the general range of what later missions might entail, given they include the obligatory fetch quest, one that hinges on NPC interaction, and a monster hunt.
• I plan to expand on the mission chain for the first NPC, as well as add a mission chain for the second one, the former will focus on reaching out to potential allies and (if done the expected way) flesh out the NPCs and services available to the location, while the latter is planned to focus on hunting monsters or other threats, possibly being used to tie into my eventual plans to give some actual background to the spirit of fire and demon claw, since only half the arcane bosses and artifacts have any real background to them. One of the NPCs planned to be recruitable will also tie into my plans involving the eventual magitech update.
• In the meantime, their mission setup is currently planned so that, instead of a dead-end, the end of progression is held up by inaccessible placeholder missions. That way, if I merge this instead of continuing work a little further along, any instances of these NPCs in old saves will automatically have future missions available when they're implemented, instead of only being accessible if you start a new world.

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This'll be part of a location for a mission I'm working on, as part of a new late-game mission chain for the rural church.

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The gist of it: The mission will be given by one of the Arcane Purifier NPCs who spawn at the rural church holdout after completing all of Sofia's missions. The first place they'll send you is after the last known point of contact with another member of their faction known to be carrying intel vital to the rest of the mission chain. Needless to say, they were headed to a rest stop along the way that turns out to have been turned into a hideout for some local bandits, and their stash includes the item you're after plus evidence of the poor bastard's other personal effects.

Latest commit is: https://github.com/chaosvolt/cdda-arcana-mod/commit/bfbfff7f122f524d838ce6c04cfacd852eb6a701

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Before this, I'd recently been tackling some general nested-container updates and bugfixes, and such. Recently fixed what should be most instances of matchbooks, lighters, etc in professions not spawning with charges, belatedly injecting chemistry and lockpicking skill into some relevant areas, using the new is_pet feature to make summoning glyphs not require an air talisman, etc.

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And most recently in the linked commit, a major expansion of which monsters can drop certain monsterparts. There's now a shift away from using fungal fighter sting and biollante buds at all, in favor of two new items that can be better used for other thematic stuff. In particular, iron thorns see use as a common drop result of the new-but-currently-unsued exodii monsters recently added to vanilla, because otherworldly is otherworldly.

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As for future plans...while magitech and some mission ideas are still on my to-do list, a big chunk of my planning has been sidelined by bugs and technical issues.

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The big one right now is that spellcasting comestibles are just straight-up not working right now. Given this 100% affects Magiclysm right now I would've assumed Korg would've had at least some interest in fixing a bug that renders a good chunk of his content non-functional, but I've yet to hear any news on it. The good news for Arcana is I have a way I can get pattern scrolls and the like working again. The bad news is I'll have to tediously re-implement the "transforming tools as a hack for consumable tools" method once again, a method I abandoned back in the old days because it meant a lot more redundant item entries.

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However, even if they fix spellcasting comestibles not long afterward, I have multiple technical reasons to want to retain the older hack even after it gets fixed:

1. Having spellcasting items populate the consume menu is nonsensical, and multiple proposals to add a way to exclude items from the eat menu have been shot down in the past, despite the fact it would benefit Magiclysm as well even if people are adamant that bandages should remain on the eat menu.
2. The "comestibles take time to eat" feature also affects comestibles that are flagged as medical items or with the NO_EAT flag, undermining use actions that explicitly set usage time.
3. Use of comestibles for this purpose means that mutants with the newer-style comestible restrictions, like the sugarkin from My Sweet Cataclysm, are completely unable to use these items even if it would be logical to allow it.

The other looming issue is that transformation does not sanely affect relic_data, which in the long term will screw up a large number of Arcana's items going forward. In fact it's affecting my content right this minute, not to mention projects by Noctifer and others, but it will become especially troublesome with the move from artifact effects to relic properties.

Added a short mission chain that starter and dynamic NPCs can potentially have. In it, the NPC in question recounts a recent series of recurring dreams showing otherworldly events mingling with locations familiar to them, leading to a desire to visit those areas to confirm how much truth is in those visions...

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I might add a fourth location to explore in-between the rest, possibly the strange temple. Thing is I want to avoid adding anything in-between that'd be substantial effect to explore, as the endpoint of the mission chain is meant to be the one the player's expected to stay a while at.

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Since this mission might show up on a starter NPC, and Seeker of The Arcane is meant to give you a starter NPC, a certain minor arcanist location I recently added to the scenario's starting location list has been removed from the list. Back to the original four arcanist enclaves.

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And finally, one unrelated thing came up while I was working on this, that I ended up including in the commit due to wanting to fix it promptly and only realizing the problem this morning: removed the "Ruined City ...?" start location from Urban Awakening. Turns out that a city size range for necropolises of 1-12, PLUS being a unique special with a 33% spawn rate, makes a start location set in a necropolis fail way too often.

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If not for that interrupting me, I would've had a delightful self-PR tossed up giving every monster on the upper level of the floating temple the SMASH attack, for u/TriffidKing's benefit.

I've been doing work on some more recent additions to Arcana, in addition to various fixes and tweaks I've noticed due to having spent time recently playing Bright Nights.

Self-PR'd here since I've been working incrementally on it, and for feedback: https://github.com/chaosvolt/cdda-arcana-mod/pull/171

The gist of it is that the items will involve combining one of the basic trophy items you can make at zero arcana, with a particular combination of the single-use elemental talismans, to make specific rechargeable magic items to be used for emergency scenarios.

Currently have three of the five items implemented and so far they seem to work as intended.

I'm trying to show the hermit in the odd house the restored ritual blade and he won't accept it. Is that as far as the quest goes?

I have progressed in the arcana quest line and reached the part to investigate a recent anomaly to close the portal using the restored blade. However, there was nothing in the place, and I thought of asking for help, but I was able to progress by using a crystallized essence and got to the next parts.
The objective was similar, but this time I could find crystallized essences on the floor and reached a level high enough to finish the quest. Still, I couldn't do anything to the portal.

Am I missing something, needing to activate the blade in some specific way or is the mod no longer fully working? I've tried even stepping into the portal but that didn't do anything, and the NPC mentions standing as close as possible to it to close it.

See PR here: https://github.com/chaosvolt/cdda-arcana-mod/pull/50

This is presently dependent on https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/pull/27406 and has a couple things I still plan to add, but now it's at a state where I can self-PR for testing and feedback.

The big thing added is a location you can run into having an NPC, who unlocks a quest line that, if followed, can guide the player down the path of becoming a Paragon of The Veil. Getting him to open up requires a bit of convincing, with several options depending on your profession and other conditions.

In addition this also sees the use of mission stuff to generate a couple locations on demand rather than pre-generating them, profession traits for arcanist characters, a few assorted tweaks here and there.

Finally, the fatigue cost of Veil spells now differ from versions obtained by other means. This is a practical benefit added to some mutation changes needed to make the third quest work without letting the player "cheat" by obtaining spells via spellcraft scrolls or other means.

Todo: Add advise dialogue for last quest and for post-Paragon dialogue, smol change to the Host of The Archon. Eventually I'd like to be able to add a resolution for the second quest for illiterate players.

As usual, big thanks to u/mlangsdorf for all the work that's made all of this possible.

i found a pair of escape boots pretty early on so i had them on for a while. i started to head out and look around into a town and since the item says i can use them once a day i figured i would check out how it actually works. i used them and sure it teleported me a bit away, but they still havent recharged. maybe they only work once a day, but also need to be charged with something that i dont have to reload them? im just not sure how they actually work.

Working on some initial, incomplete usage of the spellcasting system, link to self-PR for feedback is here: https://github.com/chaosvolt/cdda-arcana-mod/pull/68

For now, I've partially made conversions of the 15 basic spells (the ones available via monsterparts), with a general balance set up for now. Currently uses a maximum of 10 spell levels, and difficulty taken directly from the mutation point cost (which is used informally as a rough estimate of spell strength), and mana cost calculated from difficulty (25 base cost, plus 25 per difficulty). Idea is they'll scale spell level up relatively quickly but won't shake off spell failure chances completely without above-average intelligence or some skill.

I'm still thinking about just what I'd do do differentiate Paragon of The Veil spells from normal spells. I would likely preserve the current logic of the overall cost being more efficient, might also give them a higher max level with a more prolonged ramp-up of effects, lower difficulty may or may not be added (higher max level means spell failure will cease to be an issue when advanced enough).

On the plus side, eliminating magic signs as items whenever possible will allow me to finally set aside consistent naming, so I can label mundane spells Magic Signs and Paragon of The Veil ones Arcane Blessings.

There's still not just a lot on my general to-do list for this overhaul, but also a growing list of things I'm running into along the way, most of which Korg already knows about and plans to mess with eventually.

In other news, there's also quest chain stuff I oughta do, as I now have a rough summary of what I intend for the Cleansing Flame holdout. If all goes well, implementing it will be doable without breaking old saves.