Arcane LibraryWhat is Arcane Library?
A knowledge-based enchanting system and an endless library dimension, for Minecraft 26.3 on NeoForge.
Vanilla enchanting is a slot machine. In Arcane Library, knowledge picks the enchantment, a roll picks its power, and effort improves the roll. You learn enchantments from tomes found in the Arcane Library, an endless dimension of streets, stacks and vaults kept by things that don't want you there. Then, at the Arcane Lectern, you choose what to inscribe and spend Lumen Dust to roll for its level.
Requirements
- Minecraft 26.3
- NeoForge 26.3.0.89 or newer
- No other mods. Arcane Library has no dependencies.
- Install it on the client, and on the server too when you play on one.
Arcane Library is developed with the help of AI.
Modpack makers: use the CurseForge download, not the GitHub one. CurseForge is the official distribution for modpacks; GitHub Releases is for manual installs and testing.
How it plays
- Find a Ruined Librarian Tower in the Overworld (plains, forests, taiga, snowy plains, savanna, desert, swamps, meadows and cherry groves). Its top-floor chest holds a Book of Portals, Lumen Dust, Inscribed Bricks, Ink Vials, a Codex and your first tome. A broken portal frame stands beside it as a hint.
- Build a portal frame of Inscribed Bricks, upright like a Nether portal, from 2 × 3 up to 21 × 21 inside (corners optional), and use the Book of Portals on it.
- Explore the Library. Loot tomes from its chests and brush them out of suspicious bookshelves, and survive its keepers.
- Study a tome (hold use) to learn its enchantment as Glimpsed, Studied or Mastered.
- Inscribe it at the Arcane Lectern: pick what you know, roll its power, refine the roll, accept it.
- Take spare enchanted gear apart at the Deconstruction Table: learn what it carried and get Lumen Dust back.
- Go deeper. Past the fourth ring of the Library lies the Restricted Section, its richest vaults and the Archivist.
Knowledge: tomes and mastery
Every tome teaches one enchantment, vanilla or modded, at one of three tiers. Hold use for 2.5 seconds to study it. Mastery only ever rises, and a tome that would teach you nothing new is not used up.
| Mastery | Refinements per inscription | Roll bonus |
|---|---|---|
| Glimpsed | 1 | +0 |
| Studied | 2 | +8 |
| Mastered | 3 | +16 |
What you know is yours: knowledge is per player and kept through death. The Codex of the Learned lists all of it, with search, a filter by tier, which mod each enchantment comes from, and your odds of rolling it at full power.
The Arcane Lectern
Put in a weapon, tool, armour piece or book, plus Lumen Dust. The lectern lists every enchantment you know that the item can take, including higher levels of ones it already has.
- Inscribe rolls a power level:
score = d100 + your mastery bonus, and the level is that share of the enchantment's maximum. Sharpness at 70 rolls Sharpness IV. It costs2 + max level / 2dust, 2 more for rare enchantments. - Refine rerolls and keeps the better result, as many times as your mastery allows. Each refine costs one dust more than the last.
- Accept binds the result to the item. A plain book becomes an enchanted book.
- A Quill of Insight in the third slot adds +6 to every roll and one more refinement. It wears out after 48 rolls.
The vanilla enchanting table is turned off by default (it can be turned back on in the config). Anvils, grindstones, enchanted books and villager trades are untouched.
Want the numbers? Try the roll calculator.
The Deconstruction Table
Spare enchanted gear has a use. The Deconstruction Table destroys an enchanted item or book and teaches you everything on it: unknown enchantments become Glimpsed, and Glimpsed ones become Studied if the item carried them at level III or higher (or at their maximum). It returns 3 Lumen Dust per enchantment level, 3 to 36. Mastery comes only from Mastered tomes.
The Arcane Library
An endless dimension under a bedrock roof, built street by street as you explore: corridors of shelves 14 blocks high, lantern-lit plazas, and behind every wall a room.
- Gate halls hold a lit return portal and a Deconstruction Table. Every Library portal takes you back to the portal you came in by, rebuilt if it is gone, even underground or in the Nether. With none on record, it takes you to your respawn point, else world spawn.
- Suspicious bookshelves, a dusty shelf with one book out of place, give up a hidden tome, dust or book to a vanilla brush.
- Monsters spawn at any light level, beds don't work, and the clock never moves.
Where you enter matters: you arrive at the gate hall nearest your portal's position. A portal within about 96 blocks of the Overworld's centre opens into the heart of the Library; one built farther out opens straight into the Restricted Section.
The Restricted Section
From the fourth ring of rooms outwards the Library turns darker: fewer lanterns, cobwebs and cracked floors, many more vaults with Mastered tomes, diamonds and ancient debris, sealed archives of chained books, harder variants of every keeper, and the arenas of the Archivist.
Six new enchantments
Found only in the Library's vaults and from the Archivist.
| Enchantment | Levels | On | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lumen Step | I-III | boots | +7 / 14 / 21% speed and a higher step |
| Page Turn | I-III | melee weapons | +8 / 16 / 24% attack speed |
| Knowledge Leech | I-II | melee weapons | ×1.5 / ×2 experience from kills |
| Ink Bound | I-II | anything with durability | slowly repairs itself anywhere in your inventory |
| Arcane Ward | I-III | armour | protection against projectiles, magic and wither |
| Lumen Edge | I-II | melee weapons | makes what you hit glow |
Creatures and the boss
Ten creatures, each with its own model and three or four variants that fight differently, and The Archivist, a three-phase boss. See the Bestiary for all of them.
Other mods' enchantments
Everything reads the enchantment registry, so enchantments from other mods can be learned, inscribed, deconstructed and browsed in the Codex,
and tomes for them drop from Library loot automatically. An enchantment in #minecraft:treasure goes to the rare pool, one with weight 5 or more to the common pool,
the rest to the uncommon pool. Curses never drop. Modpacks can place enchantments explicitly; see the modpack notes.
Configuration and commands
config/arcane-synced.toml: turn the vanilla enchanting table back on (disableVanillaEnchantingTable), how often Ink Bound repairs (inkBoundIntervalTicks),
and how long you stand in a portal (portalDelayTicks).
Operators can manage knowledge with /arcane knowledge learn | forget | learnall | reset | list.
More
- Source, issues and releases: GitHub.
- Questions, ideas and finds: Discussions.
- Design notes: docs/DESIGN.md and docs/DECISIONS.md.