Twin Essence Magic — Changelog

🌗 v5.1.0 — Rot & Ascension

The blight remembers how to spread. The bloom learns to transcend.

v5.0 made the Twin Groves native and rock-solid. v5.1 builds on that foundation: the Void gets its teeth back, a new Mythic tier crowns each path, and the whole mod opens up for server owners to tune.

🥀 The Void rots again

• Right-click a Void focus and the foe you aim at is cursed with decay — a slow plus poison-over-time — while you still surge your own speed. The attrition fantasy is back, now built entirely on the engine's native targeting (no reflection).
• Scales by tier: Creeping → Withering → Grave → Oblivion Rot (30% → 60% slow, light → heavy decay).

🌟 A fourth tier: Mythic

• A new staff crowns each line past Legendary:
  • Eternal Blossom — Petal Bolt 36, radiant World Bloom self-heal +34.
  • Oblivion Focus — Blight Bolt 42, Oblivion Surge (+65% speed) + heavy rot.
• Forged from the Legendary staff and concentrated essence at the Arcane Workbench.

📖 Tome of the Twin Essences

• A craftable in-world guidebook. Right-click to read how to forge a staff, charge a bolt, and channel each path's gift — onboarding without leaving the game.

⚙️ Server tuning — balance.json

• One editable balance.json + a bundled tool lets server owners retune every damage, heal, speed, and rot value, so the mod plays nicely beside others that change mob health. Edit, run the tool, restart — full guide in BALANCE.md.

🛠️ Polish & fixes

• Heal flash, not heal fog — the Verdant heals are instant, so their glow now blooms for a moment instead of lingering ten seconds.
• /wiki opens again — topic lookup was reading the command word itself; fixed, so /wiki void, /wiki abilities, and the rest all work.
• Leaner plugin — stripped the old reflection-casting code now that casting is fully native (12 classes → 4) and repaired the join welcome message for Hytale 0.5.3.

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⚖️ Will you give, or will you take?

Eight staffs now. Four tiers. Forge to the Mythic and decide which Grove you serve.

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🌳 v5.0.0 — The Twin Groves

Nature gives. Void takes. Now you can see where each comes from.

Twin Essence was always two magics. This update reveals where those two magics live — the Verdant line draws on the living Grove of Project Sakura, the Void line on its shadow, The Blighted Grove — and rebuilds the whole staff system on Hytale's native engine casting so it's rock-solid. One mod became the keystone of a trilogy.

🌸 The Verdant line becomes Sakura's

• Renamed and remodeled in blossom. Sprout → Sakura Sprout, Sapling → Blossom Bough, Worldtree → Heartwood Stave — each staff sculpted and painted from Sakura's own palette (pale cherry → blossom-pink → deep blossom + heartwood), with a glowing pink petal-bolt to match.
• Tiered self-heals: Hanami Blessing +10 → Blossom Ward +16 → Worldtree's Embrace +24.

🥀 The Void line becomes the Blight's

• Renamed and remodeled in rot. The three focuses are now Witherbloom, Miasma, and Grief-flame — tiered in the Grove's colors (wither-violet → blight-green → grief-flame spectral-blue), firing a toxic-green blight-bolt.
• Tiered speed surge — Blight Aura → II → III (+25% → +35% → +50%) — strike and slip away before they answer.

⚔️ Damage that climbs

• Bolts now scale with tier: Petal Bolt 12 → 18 → 26, Blight Bolt 14 → 21 → 30. A Legendary hits over twice as hard as a Basic, so the climb through the tiers is a real one.

🌳 The trilogy, made explicit

• New /wiki trilogy page; /essence is now a one-glance staff reference card. Store page cross-links both realms, and essence is the shared crafting currency (Life farmed in Sakura's spirit, Void taken from the Blighted Grove).

🛠️ Under the hood

• Native casting: rebuilt on the engine's own staff interaction chain — no reflection, no inventory polling, nothing fragile to fail. Current with Hytale's latest build.
• Six remodeled staffs (was a stick with a couple of boxes), repainted textures
  • icons, and themed bolts (matched glow, trail, and impact per realm).
• Self-contained + leaner: re-tinted vanilla particles (no dependency on the other mods); dropped unused source/stat assets; build now guards against stub, source-file, and fractional-damage leaks.

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⚖️ Will you give, or will you take?

Craft your first staff and decide which Grove you serve.

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⚔️ v4.0.0 — The Decay Update

Nature gives. Void takes.

For three versions the two essences shared the same heartbeat — fire a bolt, buff yourself, repeat. No longer. The Decay Update splits them into two true paths, and switches on a combat system that was built, shipped, and quietly left turned off.

🌗 Choose your path

	🌿 Verdant Staff (Nature)	🟣 Void Focus (Void)
Fantasy	Sustain and control	Decay and attrition
You win by	Outlasting the fight	Outlasting your enemy
Right-click	Heal yourself; root foes at mastery	Rot your foe; surge your speed

🩸 The Void learns to kill

Right-click a Void Focus and the foe in your sights begins to rot. Each tier bites deeper:

Tier	Ability	Effect on your target
Basic	Void Sap	Damage-over-time and a slow
Attuned	Entropy Field	A heavy slow that unravels them
Legendary	Null Collapse	Strong slow and heavy decay

And every Void ability now wreathes you in a real Void Aura speed surge — so even with nothing in your sights, the essence is never spent for nothing. (Until now, the Void Aura was pure decoration. It did nothing at all.)

🌿 Nature learns to hold the line

• World Root's Embrace (Legendary) now binds the enemy you aim at — sprint and jump sealed — while it heals you.
• Healing finally scales with mastery: Nature's Blessing +10 → Grove Ward +16 → World Root's Embrace +24. Every tier used to heal exactly the same.

⚡ Essence now sharpens your bolts

One more system switched on: the essence amplifier is real. Every stack you still hold after a cast adds true damage to that bolt — +15% per stack, up to +75% at five. Hoard for one devastating opening salvo, or spend freely to keep the pressure on. Watch your live bonus in /essence.

🛠️ Built to last

• Fixed the /essence crash. Hytale's Update 5 changed how commands find your character; the old code assumed the previous form and crashed. /essence now resolves you reliably on every build.
• Reloading the mod no longer leaves ghost handlers behind or leaks memory.
• A startup self-check warns loudly in the log if a future Hytale update moves something the staffs depend on — no more silent "nothing happens."
• Housekeeping: the changelog no longer stows away inside the mod jar, and every in-game tooltip and /wiki page now matches how the staffs actually behave.

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⚖️ Will you give, or will you take?

Craft your first staff and decide.

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v3.1.0 — Latest Game Version Compatibility

Breaking Fix

• Fixed /wiki command crash: replaced non-existent CommandContext.getArgs() with getInputString() parsing. The old method was removed from the Hytale API, causing NoSuchMethodError at runtime.

Stub Updates

• Updated CommandContext stub to match current Hytale API (removed phantom getArgs()/getRawArgs(), added getInputString(), senderAs(), getCalledCommand()).

Version

• Bumped to 3.1.0 across manifest, build.gradle, welcome message, and wiki.

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v3.0.1 — Bug Fixes & Cleanup

Recipe Fixes

• Fixed invalid recipe ingredient IDs that prevented crafting:
  • Ingredient_Wood_Azure → Wood_Azure_Trunk (Verdant Staff Attuned)
  • Ingredient_Wood_Ash → Wood_Ash_Trunk (Verdant Staff Legendary, Void Focus Legendary)
  • Ingredient_Basalt → Rock_Basalt (Void Focus Basic)

Staff Model Fixes

• Fixed staff orientation from horizontal to vertical (Y-axis).
• Replaced Portal_Purple particle on Void staff with Smoke_Black trail and VoidImpact death effect.

Cleanup

• Removed 31 unused non-staff item assets (models, textures, icons) — mod is now staff-only.
• JAR size reduced from ~400KB to ~129KB.
• Removed legacy _extracted/ data pack folder.
• Consolidated 7 Python build scripts into tools/ directory.

Wiki & Localization

• Expanded /wiki to 7 articles: home, verdant, void, essence, abilities, amplifier, commands.
• Added fuzzy search to /wiki (e.g., /wiki ver matches verdant).
• Updated items.lang with accurate v3.0 staff descriptions and stats.
• Removed descriptions for non-staff items that are no longer in the mod.

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v3.0.0 — Staff Weapons with Projectiles & Custom 3D Models

Custom 3D Staff Models

• 6 custom .blockymodel staff models with unique fantasy designs per tier.
• Verdant Staff line: Sprout (Basic) → Sapling (Attuned) → Worldtree (Legendary).
• Void Focus line: Crack (Basic) → Fracture (Attuned) → Rift Gate (Legendary).
• Each staff has a hand-painted 64x64 palette texture.
• Y-vertical orientation with proper bone hierarchies.

Projectile System

• Vine Bolt — Green nature bolt. 12 damage, speed 55. Green particle impact.
• Rift Pulse — Dark void orb. 14 damage, speed 40. Smoky trail, purple impact.
• Custom Void Orb ModelAsset with model, texture, hitbox, and purple glow.

Staff Abilities (Right-Click)

• Nature: Nature's Blessing → Grove Ward → World Root's Embrace.
• Void: Void Sap → Entropy Field → Null Collapse.
• Applied via Hytale's ApplyEffectInteraction with circuit-breaker fallback.
• Active buffs tracked and displayed via /essence.

Essence Amplifier

• Remaining essence stacks boost damage: +15% per stack, up to +75% at 5+.

Plugin

• Java server plugin with interaction codecs, cooldowns, buff tracking, and inventory-based essence.
• /wiki [topic] — In-game guide with fuzzy search (7 articles).
• /essence — Shows essence count, amplifier, and active buffs.
• Welcome message on player join.

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v2.0.0 — Initial Hytale Data Pack

Architecture

• Complete rewrite from non-functional JavaScript to Hytale JSON data assets.
• 6 staff item definitions with crafting recipes at the Arcane Workbench.

Staffs

• Verdant Staff (Basic, Attuned, Legendary) — Nature-attuned.
• Void Focus (Basic, Attuned, Legendary) — Void-attuned.
• Custom Creative Library category: Twin Essences (Nature, Void).

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v1.0.0 — Initial Release

• Original concept. Non-functional (Hytale does not support JavaScript scripting).