How to play

Getting started

1. Find a Ruined Librarian Tower. It generates in the Overworld in plains, forests, taiga, snowy plains, savanna, desert, swamps, meadows and cherry groves. A broken portal frame stands beside it.
2. Open the top-floor chest. It holds a Book of Portals, Lumen Dust, Inscribed Bricks, Ink Vials, a Codex and your first tome. Brush the dusty bookshelves in the tower too.
3. Build the frame. Inscribed Bricks, upright like a Nether portal, from 2 × 3 up to 21 × 21 inside (corners optional). Craft more bricks from stone bricks and Lumen Dust.
4. Use the Book of Portals on the frame and step in. Standing in the portal takes a moment (portalDelayTicks in the config).
5. Study your first tome (hold use for 2.5 seconds), then craft an Arcane Lectern or find one in a Library reading room.

Learning enchantments

Loot tomes from Library chests, vaults and suspicious bookshelves. Hold use to study one. The tier is the mastery it grants: Glimpsed (1 refinement, +0), Studied (2, +8), Mastered (3, +16). A tome that teaches nothing new isn't consumed, so it's safe to keep spare ones for trading or giving away.

Open the Codex of the Learned to see everything you know. It can search, filter by tier, show which mod an enchantment comes from, and show your odds of full power.

Knowledge is per player and stays after death. Mastered tomes are the rare prize of vaults in the Restricted Section and the Archivist.

Roll calculator

At the Lectern the roll is score = clamp(d100 + bonus, 1, 100), then power = ceil(score × max level / 100). Each refinement rolls again and keeps the higher result. This calculator uses the same maths as the mod.

Two tips: the roll only decides power, and there is no failure that wastes the item or the tome. A Quill of Insight is worth carrying to every serious inscription.

Deconstructing gear

Put an enchanted item or book in the Deconstruction Table. It is destroyed, and you learn what it carried: unknown enchantments become Glimpsed; Glimpsed ones become Studied if the item had them at level III or higher (or at their maximum). You get 3 dust per enchantment level back (3 to 36). Mastery only comes from Mastered tomes, so deconstruction is the fast way to learn something, not to master it.

Gate halls in the Library have a Deconstruction Table, so you can salvage loot without leaving.

Navigating the Library

• Gate halls sit on a fixed grid every 8 cells plus about one in 20 other cells. Each has a lit return portal.
• Every Library portal returns you to the portal you entered by, rebuilt in place if it's gone. With none on record, you return to your respawn point, else world spawn.
• Reading rooms have a free Arcane Lectern: carry gear and dust and inscribe on the spot.
• Vaults have no door. Look for the hidden gap in the wall.
• The Archivist's Bookmark marks a spot and recalls you to it (same dimension, 60-second cooldown).
• Monsters spawn at any light level, beds don't work, and the clock never moves. Bring food and a way back.
• Past the fourth ring of rooms you're in the Restricted Section: darker, richer vaults, harder keepers.

Surviving the keepers

• Silent Librarians are neutral until you take a tome from a chest or shelf nearby. Know which variant you're facing before you take one.
• Gargoyles: a Granite one only moves when unwatched. Marble pounces (it tells first). Obsidian deflects arrows, so use melee.
• Bookwyrms rattle before they burst out of a shelf. A Glossy one shrugs off hits from the front.
• Inklings: back away from a swelling Red one. Black ones split, so keep moving.
• Vault Wards are stationary. A Warden of Keys seals a vault's chests until it falls.
• Tome Mimics sleep as a book. A Ledger swallows your items, so don't wake one with a full inventory you care about.

The full list is in the Bestiary.

Beating the Archivist

The Archivist has 360 health and three phases. Every attack is telegraphed.

1. Page Storm. Aim lines appear and lock before the volley. Sidestep the locked lines.
2. Erasure. Marked floor bands are wiped by a wave that deletes placed blocks and your longest-lasting buff. Step off the marked bands.
3. Recall and Page Slam. A tether pulls you to the dais. Break line of sight behind a pillar to snap it and stagger the boss, or run out of the flame ring.
4. The Index. Summoned Vault Wards shield the Archivist until they're destroyed. Kill the wards first.

It drops Mastered tomes, exclusive tomes, a pile of Lumen Dust, the Archivist's Seal and the Archivist's Bookmark.

Modpacks and servers

Everything reads the enchantment registry, so enchantments from other mods can be learned, inscribed, deconstructed and browsed in the Codex. Tomes for them drop automatically: #minecraft:treasure goes to the rare pool, weight 5 or more to the common pool, the rest to the uncommon pool. Curses never drop. Codex descriptions use the enchantment.<mod>.<name>.desc key many mods already ship.

Enchantment tag	Effect
arcane:tome_pool/common	put in the common tome pool
arcane:tome_pool/uncommon	put in the uncommon pool
arcane:tome_pool/rare	put in the rare pool
arcane:tome_pool/exclusive	exclusive pool
arcane:tome_pool/excluded	never drops as a tome

Config (config/arcane-synced.toml): disableVanillaEnchantingTable, inkBoundIntervalTicks, portalDelayTicks.
Commands (operators): /arcane knowledge learn | forget | learnall | reset | list.
Servers: install the mod on the server and on every client.

FAQ

Does it need other mods?

No. Arcane Library has no dependencies besides NeoForge.

The enchanting table doesn't work!

The vanilla enchanting table is disabled by default. Set disableVanillaEnchantingTable to false in config/arcane-synced.toml to bring it back. Anvils, grindstones, enchanted books and villager trades are untouched.

I can't find a Ruined Librarian Tower.

It generates in plains, forests, taiga, snowy plains, savanna, desert, swamps, meadows and cherry groves. Explore those biomes in the Overworld. A tower includes a broken portal frame beside it.

My portal opened somewhere scary.

A portal farther than about 96 blocks from the Overworld's centre opens straight into the Restricted Section. Build closer to the centre for the heart of the Library.

Can I lose my knowledge?

Not by dying: it's per player and kept on death. Operators can change it with /arcane knowledge.

Does a tome that teaches nothing get used up?

No. Mastery only rises, and a tome that would teach you nothing new is not used.

Where do I report bugs or ask questions?

Bugs, crashes, mod conflicts and performance problems go to the issue forms. Questions, ideas and finds go to Discussions.