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Author Topic: [47.05] Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress  (Read 167857 times)

Eric Blank

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[47.05] Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« on: March 16, 2015, 11:26:09 pm »

This is the next iteration of the release of "Spellcrafts," a mod I've been working on for a few years now.

This time there are more ways to learn spells, and at the moment no way to know any magic innately (creating an adventurer who already knows magics, I mean.) except to start as a wizard (creature).
You can;
Learn spells from secrets stored in towers of great sorcerers - slabs might also be stored elsewhere, as not all secrets allow building towers.
Learn from the lectures of wizards, or murder them and drink their blood.
And study on your own. This will take time, perseverance, an inscribed slate, and lots of junk to grind into aether salts for the reaction. You can also use aether salts to conjure basic items like food or drink in adventure mode, although the utility of this is negligible.

The magics you can learn are further described in the following post

The mod can be downloaded from here:
Main Mod Download


But additional steps must be taken during installation for now:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


A legacy version for DF version 44.12 is available here
http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=15030

A copy of the current readme file can be found here:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The readme file has a little more information regarding these things, so check it out if you need help, or ask in this thread/PM me.

If there's anything else that needs to be said or done with the readme file, let me know.
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 08:00:54 pm by Eric Blank »
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Eric Blank

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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #1 on: March 16, 2015, 11:26:25 pm »

What you need to learn magic;

Fort mode:
You can teach your dwarves magic in the magician's studio by providing them with an inscribed slate, made of any valid building material, and aether salts, produced from various sources. inscribed slates can be purchased from your caravan, as they are tools, or made on-site at craftsdwarves workshops or forges.
Dwarves can also learn magic from wizard creatures, which might show up as visitors, or being "blessed" by the gods if they desecrate a temple, making them a wizard. (but they could turn into a pig or werebeast or vampire instead...). Secrets can also be written down in books and slabs, and an adventurer could collect these and bring them to the fortress.

Adventure mode:
As an adventurer you have access to all the same avenues of learning as in fort mode. There are reactions available to learn magic and produce aether salts (from all the same sources as in fort mode). Inscribed slates can be made from wood or stone. Towers can hold slabs and books, but to build the tower the mages need a zombie workforce, and not all secrets include interactions to raise the dead. The slabs other mages learn from can be found in sites listed in legends mode, but it's still very difficult to actually locate these. Good places to look include mead halls and artifact halls in dwarven fortresses
You can also find wizards or people "blessed" as wizards for desecrating a temple. Stand around them and they will cast spells that create clouds of vapor, which if your character breathes them in will give you access to spells. This could take a while, however. You could also attack the wizard and drink their blood, making you a wizard and allowing you to teach yourself these spells, but starting a fight and benefitting from it of course implies not losing the fight.

Magic Schools ("mundane" mortal magic):

(currently implemented)
Generic: A collection of simplified spells that would fit into one of the other schools
Aetherial: Mysteries of magic itself, warping the very fabric of reality and summoning beings of pure magic
Hyazith: the mastery of fire and ice
Polybestia: the power to shapeshift into various creatures, and to transform your enemies to disrupt them
Medisephos: Holy magic of healing and protection.
Dementia: evil magic, including spells to paralyze and torture enemies with intense pain. Can also raise the dead and become werebeasts.

(planned)
Storms and Earth elements: lightning, wind, stone and stuff
Shamanism: ancient powers to bless or harm others
Dwarves: mastery of the underground and aspects of dwarven life
Elves: devotion to and reliance on nature and one's bodily needs
Illusion: Affecting the senses of others and planting ideas in their heads.
???

Summoning and worship:
Can sacrifice, gift or trade with the gods or otherworldly beings to summon useful items or magic powers
Or die horribly, it depends...

Secrets: various gods may gift mortals with immense powers, detailed on legendary slabs and passed down through teaching and literature.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2020, 06:25:17 pm by Eric Blank »
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Eric Blank

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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #2 on: March 16, 2015, 11:27:12 pm »

Bestiary and Feature Summary
This post contain some small summaries on important features.

A Bestiary can be found here:
Bestiary
And also contained in the "Vanilla entities and extra info" folder

Plants:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Tools
Needed for the various reactions in the mod. Most can be made at forges or craftsman's workshops, or magicians studios. Can also be traded for, may be made by adventurers or found on people in adventure mode. Some however cannot be gained by normal means
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Materials
Some of the things produced by or found in he world.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: November 09, 2020, 07:49:55 pm by Eric Blank »
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GM-X

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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #3 on: March 18, 2015, 03:02:34 am »

Your fortress magic system idea is fantastic. If you have no objections, I would like to add your buildings into Dark Ages. I've been tinkering around with various arcane buildings, but yours are basically ideal.
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Eric Blank

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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #4 on: March 18, 2015, 05:48:59 pm »

I suppose that's cool, yeah.
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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #5 on: March 18, 2015, 06:06:55 pm »

One idea I had in trying to make a magic mod is creating and shooting solid items. In the end, I learned breath attacks that use solid items just cause them to fall to the ground. Though, you could use this for making items like ice swords and stuff, for fighting.
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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #6 on: March 18, 2015, 07:56:36 pm »

So, I got myself a Dorf to learn magic, and he did it. This is in Fortress Mode

How do I USE his magic now?
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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #7 on: March 19, 2015, 01:48:13 am »

I suppose that's cool, yeah.

Thank you. I haven't looked at your raws yet. Generally, I elaborate and collate portions of other mods that fit a horror fantasy theme.

Your name will get added to the lore page, once released.

So, I got myself a Dorf to learn magic, and he did it. This is in Fortress Mode

How do I USE his magic now?

That
is the tricky part in Fortress mode.  ???
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Eric Blank

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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #8 on: March 19, 2015, 02:11:19 pm »

It depends on what spells he learned, and it is technically possible that he didn't actually pick up any spell from the vapors, although unlikely.

If it was an offensive spell, he will cast it on enemies, if it's a spell that is activated upon fleeing, like animal transformations, he won't use it until he's running away from a combat situation. If it was a passive healing/buff spell, he'll probably cast it whenever there's another dorf in range. Basically, it depends on the [CDI:USAGE_HINT:x] token, which makes it a matter of putting your dorf in the proper situation to use that spell. If you train up some battlemages and put them in a crossbow squad, that'd be an effective use in fort mode. No way to tell them what to study yet, though.

The reformation spells in particular can be a pain in the ass at times; dwarves that know them will go around turning all their fellow fort members into cocoon-creatures. If a dorf learns those spells, I'd suggest making them a doctor and confining them to the hospital via a burrow, where they will regularly check up on patients and transform them, which results in instant recovery once transformed back.

One idea I had in trying to make a magic mod is creating and shooting solid items. In the end, I learned breath attacks that use solid items just cause them to fall to the ground. Though, you could use this for making items like ice swords and stuff, for fighting.
I actually experimented with that. End result is that item clouds will precipitate great lakes of items on the ground as a big colorful mess. In adventure mode, the adventurer can grab as many thousands of duplicates of that item as they want, but in either mode NPCs will ignore them, except, potentially, to clean up the puddles of swords in fort mode. I'm really hoping Toady does something with that effect such as causing it to actually launch the physical items violently.

I ended up going with the food/drink/materials conjuring you can access now in adventure mode, and I planned to allow that from the magic buildings in fort mode.


Quick question in that regard; how do you guys feel about a possibility of failure on conjuring attempts in either mode?
« Last Edit: March 19, 2015, 02:17:11 pm by Eric Blank »
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Ianflow

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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #9 on: August 24, 2015, 07:59:20 am »

I know I am necro-ing, but honestly this is a nice mod. I am all for there being conjuration failures, but I want to ask if the alchemy skill has been incorporated in some part to this mod, and if there are plans for a workshop that allows the choice of research?
The concept could happily work in line with the next version : D
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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #10 on: July 29, 2016, 02:11:32 pm »

Mod has been updated to 43.05. Lots of changes, too.

To answer your questions Ianflow, I've been thinking about including alchemy for a long time and never actually done anything with it. The workshops will permit choice of research in the future or a general option, too. I'm just lazy and haven't gotten that far yet. :P
I've also been wanting to move away from using the inorganic syndromes and to actual secrets and knowledge that can be written down and learned in a library. I haven't succeeded in tricking the game into doing that. People don't seem to write down secrets except if they have a necromancer tower, which never leave the tower unless an adventurer gets ahold of them and always implies the secret requiring the ability to raise the dead, among other problems. That might turn out to be a pipe dream, but a lot of secrets have been moved over to the no-zombies model already. I've found one slab stored in a dwarven library, once. And plenty of folks who have learned their secrets from a slab, but the slab was stored in a hamlet or something and I've never been able to find those ones. Not in houses, the mead halls, etc. I've occasionally found books lying on the ground out in the middle of the fields, so I figure that's what's happening to books and slabs stored in hamlets or hillocks.
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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #11 on: July 30, 2016, 01:18:50 pm »

so are you going to add toppling a statue to get attention of a god and having to roll the wheel on what syndrome class the god going to gift you with? maybe have this stack repeatedly for hilarious results and call them god perks.
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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #12 on: July 30, 2016, 03:46:02 pm »

Awesome looking mod, surprised the thread isn't bigger.
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Eric Blank

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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #13 on: July 31, 2016, 12:34:42 am »

Yeah, the thread is kinda sparse. I literally didn't update for like a year.

so are you going to add toppling a statue to get attention of a god and having to roll the wheel on what syndrome class the god going to gift you with? maybe have this stack repeatedly for hilarious results and call them god perks.

You know, it is tempting to just let you get cursed with all the deity curses, but werecurses at the very least end up being mutually exclusive simply because you can't transform into multiple things at the same time, and the faun (mythological goat-person) and pig curses have you transforming into, well, a faun or a pig. Permanently. Being a pig would kinda put a damper on what you can do. Like opening doors, or talking. I'm not sure how the vampire curses would interact either.

I did want to add a few more curses, but I haven't come up with many. If anyone has suggestions I'd be happy to hear them.

Already lined up for next update: Wereserpents, a food-sphere secret that turns you into a dumb animal that falls apart at the seams (without being fatal, mind) and be butchered and eaten (as well as adding NO_EAT somewhere in there), more to do with "blessed" wizards that can "teach" you the syndrome-based spells, and a fort mode magic study update.


______________
4.01 Update released. Caught a bug with wizards teaching spells, and added evil sorcerers (who won't teach spells). Food interaction/critter and wereserpent included. Magic studying in both fort and adventure mode updated. There's also the testing reaction you can do in adventure mode to make you a real wizard, real fast, just to play with things without having to obtain a spellbook and aether salts.
« Last Edit: August 02, 2016, 04:14:16 pm by Eric Blank »
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I make Spellcrafts!
I have no idea where anything is. I have no idea what anything does. This is not merely a madhouse designed by a madman, but a madhouse designed by many madmen, each with an intense hatred for the previous madman's unique flavour of madness.

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Re: Spellcrafts Mod - Basic Magic in Dwarf Fortress
« Reply #14 on: August 03, 2016, 10:21:39 am »

PTW
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