Despite the prevalence of projects and my inability to flesh this system out yet (and probably the necessity to completely rebuild it later on), I would like to get some kind of magic system working in this phase because it'll add to the base game and allow testing of its systems early on.
Magic Flavors (( highly disorganized post now, needs reorg))
Random aside: It might make sense to organize magic into "schools" -- then the random function picks a school first before picking a specific spell. This would balance it a bit so you're getting each school of magic equally rather than a giant collection of random nonsense. Would also make scanning functions and completion-type selfquests more viable.
Random aside: since there's a 3-way split on magic, they should each be assigned a tetrad to make them make more sense lore-wise. Thus could potentially tie into the game a bit where melange planes or elemental dungeons could boost the effect of those systems slightly. Could target tetrads or dimensional elements too, but probably too complicated.
Magic comes in several flavors:
Jewelry allows you to cast spells, which are upgradeable with Starshards. Jewelry magic costs mana.
Wands and Scrolls allow you to cast spells without mana, however they have a limited number of uses (3?). Wands have targeted effects, while Scrolls have global or environmental effects, so they don't overlap. They can be recharged with Starshards or Magical Ingredients, and this can be done anywhere, via the magic menu.
Potions are crafted from potion ingredients at an Alchemy Station. Potionmaking requires both ingredients and mana. Potions can be drank to affect you or poured on items to affect them. They can be combined together to stack the effects in a more compact format at some base fixture, which allows for automation of this process. Potion effects are always transient.
Enchantments are effects or boosts that are applied to things or yourself that are permanent. They can however be removed in various ways so aren't indestructble boosts by any means. These require an Enchanting Station to make.
There are three main fixtures associated with Magic:
Altar -- allows transmutation of different magic types into each other, upgrading of magic, and fracturing of magical items into Starshards.
Crystallizer -- allows you to create custom jewelry-based spells for whatever the dimensions currency is. Crystallizers require them to already "own" a spell, which can be added by fracturing an existing magic item with that effect there. This process is known as Rifting.
Enchanting Station -- allows you to attach permanent Enchantments to an item or yourself. This costs dimensional currency and also magical Rifting -- it's also a separate network from the Crystallizer.
There are also some natural fixtures associated with magic:
Fountain -- Allows you to turn existing potions in your inventory to the potion set in the fountain, up to some limit (3?)
Magic Fountain -- Put a potion in this and it'll turn into a regular Fountain of that type, consuming it in the process (this process is known as Anointing.)
Megalith -- allows you to use whatever spell is attached to it for free, though there are limits based on time (probably real time).
Gigalith -- You can anoint it into a megalith with one of your spells, consuming it in the process.
Sanctum/Discordant Sanctum -- same as megaliths but for Enchantments.
An item sacrificed on a Discordant Sanctum will give *all* of its Enchantments to the resultant Sanctum. Similarly a Magic Fountain will work with compound potions and a Gigalith with complex spells created at a Crystallizer.
Crystal Stuff
Caves spawn Crystals. Crystals have random names like "ruby", "topaz", etc and can be extracted with a 33% chance for a polished form which is worth money, or extracted into 3 starshards.
Altars
Altars have several functions:
Fracture -- Allows you to convert Jewelry, Crystals, Voidshards, and Magical Ingredients into Starshards. Crystals give you 3, all others give you 1. Magical ingredients are farmable and can be collected passively with enough time investment into the farming and automation systems. -- Happening early
Ascend -- Allows you to increase your mana and mana regeneration with Starshards.
Augment -- Allows you to upgrade Jewelry with Starshards.
Transmute -- Allows you to turn Jewelry into Scrolls or Wands, which requires some Starshards. You can also turn Scrolls or Wands into Jewelry, but this process requires a lot more Starshards.
Altars are found in shops (where they cost money), or in the lower levels of caves where they naturally spawn. They will sometimes spawn in dungeons as well. You can also create Altars in your base via the procgen recipe system -- however this recipe will require a lot of exploration of caves and dungeons, as well as starshards.
Crucial to a good magic system is the ability to absolutely break it with enough knowledge and experimentation. It's important that this is possible, but isn't too easy, so a couple limits will be in place:
Magic alteration is fairly split between Mana, Starshards, and dimensional Currency. So you need good stocks of all three to begin breaking the game. There are a variety of ways to make them near infinite, particularly with Automation, which probably ties in heavily to supermagic in general.
Systems can't ramp themselves either explicitly or implicitly -- you can't use potions to give yourself the ability to use better potions, you can't ramp up jewelry abilities with jewelry, etc. You can however affect jewelry with poured potions or use jewelry spells to create better potions, or maybe it'll be an explicit 3-way method between potions influencing jewelry, jewelry affecting Enchantments and Enchantments affecting potions.
Ramping Example
So a good Ramp might look something like this:
Create a Pour potion that targets Jewelry and improves the Magnitude of its effects.
Create Jewelry that Buffs the Magnitude of an Enchantment by its Magnitude.
Create an Enchantment on yourself or armor or whatever that increases your ability to make better potions.
Then you would pour that potion on the jewelry, buffing it, and then cast it on your Enchantment, buffing it, then Enchant your ability to make better Potions so you make better Pour potions and so on.
There are a couple limits here:
Potions cost mana to create them. Since your potionmaking ability is what's going up this wouldn't really affect anything, however you still need enough mana to create the potions in the first place.
Your enchantment-buffing spell costs mana to use. In this case the amount of mana you need to cast it keeps going up because it's based on its Magnitude.
Your Enchantment is intrinsic and costs nothing so it isn't affected by the ramp. However you do need to append additional Enchantments to the entity, which costs dimensional currency. However this amount shouldn't be affected by the ramp.
The biggest issue with the ramp here is that the amount of mana needed at the jewelry step keeps going up, however it can be fixed in several ways:
Create potions to lower the mana cost of the jewelry as one of your steps.
Buff your mana with Potion or Enchantment effects as one of your steps.
Turn the jewelry into a wand and restore it every so often with starshards.
Potions always apply transient effects, with the number of ingredients added increasing their Duration and/or Magnitude (Honestly might want to rethink them a bit so the two are split more evenly somehow).
Drinker -- drinker potions are drunk to affect you in some way. They can't affect your Enchantments or any existing potion effects due to Ramping rules.
Pourer -- pourer potions are poured on items to affect them in some way. They can't affect Enchantments on items and they also can't target Potions because of Ramping rules.
All effects are transient and ideally this works in real-time.
Despite what I said earlier, Enchantments should always be permanent effects so they don't overlap with Potions too much. Both still overlap with Jewelry, which is probably acceptable given the system differences.
Enchantments come in three flavors:
Self -- Enchantments can affect you in some way. In this case you're Enchanting yourself. There might be some kind of deleterious effects if you do this too much like involuntary teleportation or increased damage or w/e but you can get around these effects somehow.
Items -- Items can be enchanted. You can Enchant Potions but not Jewelry, and you also can't affect pre-existing Enchantments directly. There are probably some additional caveats here like usage - I see the item Enchantment system being particularly useful with weapons but less so for other static items, and then idk how that overlaps with Potions.
Since you need an Enchanting Station to make Enchantments, it doesn't make sense to be able to target the environment. That system would be the exclusive domain of Jewelry, which probably makes more sense anyway.
Enchanting Limits
It might make sense to impose some limits on Enchanting (which can be fixed with some work of course):
As mentioned above, Enchanting yourself too much might make you go quantum in deleterious ways. Though things like making you swap dimensions might actually be useful. Idk how these effects work -- they're probably tied to the specific Enchantment in a handcrafted way. You could theoretically decrease your tolerance so you're using the deleterious effects to your advantage, which would be pretty cool.
Enchanting Items too much might make them go quantum as well, like they'd atomize themselves or scramble their stats or switch categories. This can again maybe be used to your advantage. Some kind of property gives them resistance to this, which can be upgraded with Potions or maybe Jewelry but never Enchanting.
Jewelry Limits
As mentioned before, Jewelry has Cost and Finick that Limits it a good bit.
Permanent Environmental effects should build up and increase the Instability of the dimension. That goes back into the Myriad mechanics so you can get around it, but it's something to watch out for.
Potion Limits
The only real limit here is that Potions require Materials which are relatively hard to source. You can't upgrade your ability to extract Potion Ingredients with Potions or Spells but you can with Enchantments. Enchanting an item so the potion ingredient chance is 100% would be interesting but waste currency at an absurd rate -- Enchanting yourself makes more sense, but is probably less potent for balance reasons.
Because of bad effects from too many Enchantments or just because you don't like a particular Enchantment, you might want to Disenchant one.
You can do this at an Enchanting Station -- it will give you back some of the currency that would've gone into the Enchantment, but not all. You can get more, up to 100% with Jewelry but never Enchantments or Potions.
This currency feature is interesting because it allows you to make money just by disenchanting looted items. Similarly the currency aspect of Enchantment should tie into an item's value when sold (though with markup and dimensional Currency value procgen).
You should be able to Disenchant with Jewelry as well, though potions and Enchantments will never affect any abilities around Disenchanting.
Disenchanting is probably also a deleterious effect from jewelry costs or enemy attacks. To get around this, Enchantments don't ever actually disappear- they just get stored in something similar to the atomized dimension. You can bring them back at an Ghost Station or Jewelry, and can also permanently delete gone ones to clear out clutter.
In this post I've made a bunch of changes to the magic system to balance it better and prevent overlap, so it makes sense to try to aggregate some of these changes for a future cleanup of this post.
With Ramping, the direction is Potions --> Jewelry --> Enchantments --> Potions.
Scope
Potions are transient, and affect either you or items.
Jewelry affects the environment or Enchantments. It can do unique things with items like clone them but doesn't alter their properties. Jewelry can be either transient or permanent.
Enchantments affect either you or items and are permanent.
Ramping
Potions can affect Jewelry, items that compose them or your ability to use or make them.
Jewelry can affect Enchantments or your ability to make or use them.
Enchantments can affect Potions, materials that can be extracted from them, or your ability to make Potions.
Creation
Potions are created at an Alchemy Station and cost the ingredient items and mana.
Jewelry is crafted with items or created at a Crystallizer for dimensional currency.
Enchantments are created at an Enchanting Station for dimensional currency
Limits
The only real limit with Potions are that items are used to create them and they cost some amount of mana for basic upkeep.
Jewelry has deleterious costs on use or is finicky. They also cost mana, with progressively more as the Jewelry gets better. Wands and Scrolls don't cost Mana but creating them costs Starshards and they have limited uses which are also recharged with Starshards. Environmental Jewelry makes the dimension more Unstable.
Enchanting yourself too much makes you go quantum, and Enchanting items too much makes *them* go quantum.
Limit Breaking
Potion Ingredients can be easier to extract with item or self enchantments. Potions can cost less mana to make with self Enchantments.
Jewelry can have less cost/finick, instability causing or mana with the use of either Jewelry-targeting Potions or self Potions. They can also be upgraded at an Altar with Starshards.
Enchant stability on items or yourself can be improved with Jewelry spells.
Creation Ramping
Potion Ingredients can be easier to extract with item or self enchantments. Potions can cost less mana to make with self Enchantments. Already covered but worth mentioning again.
Crystallizer costs can go down with the use of self Potions.
Enchantment costs can go down with the use of Jewelry.
Fountains can disenchant items or yourself and refresh themselves that way. You don't get currency this way, the energy goes back into the fountain.
Megaliths can have their times upgraded by feeding them jewelry with a time-upgrading potion poured on them or via self potions that globally alter them.
Sanctums can have their times upgraded via Jewelry targeted environmental effects. Targeting Enchantments themselves with Jewelry is probably too abstract and complicated.
Fixture upgrading
Fountains, Megaliths and Sanctums can be removed to give you a Hexcore.
Hexcores can be fed to tier-1 fixtures to upgrade them (like give a fountain more uses) or to turn tier-1 into tier-2 types (like megaliths unto gigaliths).
Hexcores can be used to let you use a megalith remotely -- idk how that works though without it overlapping with other magic systems. I also like the idea of using Fountains and Sanctums remotely. All the usual limits apply -- you just don't have to be near it to interact with it. Maybe network them all together and then when you interact with one you can interact with any other.
To cut down on overlap, any particular field of magic should be split between the three modes.
So for example, with the lockpicking system:
Potions improve your ability to lockpick.
Jewelry affects a particular lock.
Enchanted Lockpicks work better.
Where possible, Enchantments should affect items and potions should affect you unless I want to skew the balance some other way.
It honestly makes sense to make Potions exclusively target you and Enchantments to exclusively target items, however I like the pouring system and self-quantumization so I'm kinda torn.
Jewelry should definitely exclusively target the environment -- other than Enchantments too which is necessary for balance reasons. It might make sense to allow Jewelry to target Enchantment stations instead though - that would clean it up a bit. IDK, something to think about.
Potions can be combined together at a Mixing Station to stack and condense them.
Jewelry can be upgraded at an Altar. Jewelry can only have one effect so combining them doesn't make sense, however I have notes somewhere for "macros" that cast multiple spells at once or in sequence.
Enchantments just automatically stack when you re-enchant.
