Immersive Spell Crafting Minecraft Mod

Nostrum Magica is a Minecraft mod that adds magic to Minecraft. Players find dungeons in the overworld, explore them by solving puzzles and fighting monsters, and travel to a new Sorcery dimension. Through this dimension, they unlock magic and begin their journey to unlock new tools, make more and more advanced spells, and face new challenges.

Nostrum Magica was inspired by the Ars Magica II Minecraft mod that ended up being abandoned before it was finished. Like Ars Magica II, Nostrum lets the player create the spells they want to make by presenting spell components and letting players pick and choose and sequence the components to make a spell that does something unique.

Spells are made from spell triggers and spell effects. Each effect is described by one spell shape (the 'who'), an element, and an optional 'alteration.' By default, spell effects made of an element and no alteration do damage in that element's type. Alterations change the effect to a unique effect depending on the element and alteration combo. In total, there are 16 different spell triggers, 4 different shapes, 7 elements, and 8 alterations. That means there are 52 different effects a single spell effect could have. Because spells can have up to 16 different components, there are more than 2.5 x 10^36 spells.

In addition to complex spell crafting, Nostrum adds new player characteristics like mana, mana regen rate, spell cost mitigation, reagent cost mitigation, resistance to magic and different magical elements, and more. Players pick how they want their character to progress and what attributes they want to prioritize based on how they want to play. As they play, they gain more mana to cast more powerful spells.

A big focus of Nostrum Magica is progression. The first way players experience meaningful progression in Nostrum Magica is by leveling themselves up. Casting spells awards xp which builds towards advancing the player's magical level. Leveling awards skill points that the player can choose how to allocate between three major attributes -- Control, Finesse, and Technique. These attributes govern what types of spells players can cast. As they allocate these points, they also progress along a large attribute glyph, where nodes require certain attributes and levels before being attained. On this same glyph, players unlock alterations which allows them to add new spell effects to their spells.

While casting spells and leveling up themselves, players make many trips into the Sorcery dimension to progress in a hand-crafted and instanced (each player has their own) dungeon to unlock more and more magical spell components. As they make their way further and further into the dungeon, they fight foes and are challenged with puzzles that increase in difficulty. Many of the puzzles require careful observation and traversal, while others demand clever use of different spell components.

The third primary progression tracks in Nostrum Magica is the research tree. As players interact with the world, they are awarded lore points that let them unlock new nodes in the research tree. Nodes become visible when players reach adjacent nodes or satisfy any criteria for the node to be purchased -- like experiencing teleportation for the first time to unlock a research item about mark and recall. The research tree pairs with the advanced crafting system Nostrum Magica adds (called Rituals in game) to challenge the players to gather materials and craft powerful weapons and tools.

Nostrum Magica has integrations with several other popular Minecraft mods including JEI, EnderIO, Baubles, and Botania. Additionally, it exposes several APIs itself so that other mods (included dedicated Nostrum Magica add-on mods) can add their own custom content.

NostrumMagica is currently in version 1.8.0 and works with Minecraft 1.12.2. It currently has two optional add-ons: Nostrum Aetheria which adds an energy mechanic called Aether, and Quest Maker which adds mysterious fey that provide automation to friendly mages!