One of the most beloved Minecraft mods I ever played was Astral Sorcery. Drawing massive constellations from the night sky onto your Attunement Altar to bind yourself to the stars... it was a powerful blend of mechanical progression and pure fantasy flavor. Even though it gave way to a traditional talent tree, the fantasy was just spectacular.
MoteMancer is definitely inspired by a variety of those beloved mods, and tries to build something new and interesting on those foundations, which leads us to Runeshroom Rituals.
Grounding the System
MoteMancer’s design has a few guiding pillars, and one of the big ones is this:
Every space should have an opportunity cost.
That means the idea of placing a constellation on the ground where the 'stars' take up precious building space is a perfect fit. You build a ritual by laying out caps (like Flamecap, Shadecap, or Cloudcap) in a specific runic shape. That shape then generates an area effect. And because caps take up space, the structures you want to benefit from the ritual have to work around them. It follows the DNA of MoteMancer - always granting you a benefit through a spatial puzzle.
Influence and Function
Rituals in MoteMancer are like beacons from previous games, buffing affected structures or even just the area itself within. Rituals cannot overlap each other, but a single structure can sit at the intersection of three separate rituals. If any part of a structure is inside a ritual's area, it gains the benefit. This encourages clever layout strategies and leads to satisfying, emergent solutions.
Shadow structures in particular are designed with this in mind. Their long, winding shapes can thread between mushroom caps in ways others can't. It fits perfectly with Shadow’s theme of subtlety and slipping between the seen and unseen. Also since Blazecaps and Cloudcaps have dual element associations, they follow the same Planar exclusivity that other combo buildings do, so your strategy will shift as it always has depending on the Elemental Plane you find yourself in.
Current Rituals
Here are the rituals planned so far:
Echocatcher – 10% chance to duplicate a Structure’s output.
Shadeveil – Prevents Entropy from spreading into the area.
Darkreach – Removes all Reach restrictions within the Ritual.
Windshear – Amplifies open-air tiles inside the ritual.
Tailwind – Boosts crafting speed of all Structures inside.
Emberheart – Reduces Mana cost of nearby Structures.
Amplify – Each Lava tile inside increases Lava Generator Heat.
Open Design Space
There is still (at least) one open ritual slot for Fire and Air - so if you have cool ideas, I’d love to hear them! There are a lot of opportunities to use Runeshroom Rituals for Tower benefits, or maybe even some sort of Chasm gameplay. The original two I had planned are not cool enough, we can do better :)
The best part of Rituals is they don’t eat into a Production Structure's recipe limit, so they don’t compete for their slot the way brand new Structures do. There's even a possibility for other elemental combinations later if there's a cool enough thing to chase.
It started with a love of constellations.
It ended in a field of mushrooms.
And I couldn’t be happier.
Blazecap and Cloudcap will be in Thursday's build! I can't wait to see what grows :)
~CyanAvatar