Hextale

Added

• The Void is a place now. A breach held by six anchors no longer throws a researcher back: walk into it and it pulls you through, down its throat, to the other side. Its ground is a field of huge curved plates of shell lying in terraces over a bottomless magenta glow - soil and flesh on top, glowing seams beneath, lips curled at the edges, the abyss open in the gaps between them. Colossal chitin ribs arch out of knots of flesh and from plate to plate, skin is stretched between them, hollow husks lie sunk into the plates and digested masses hang in the gaps. Nothing of our world is in it. Everything curls toward the vortices at its heart.

• The way out is always open: the breach stands on the other side as a gate, warm with our daylight, on a ledge of chitin. It cannot be closed or broken; it follows its breach when a Breach Heart carries it elsewhere and still leads to where it stood if it is gone. One step in the Void is eight in our world, so held breaches are joined by a short road through it. A Recall Charm used in the Void pulls its bearer out to our world.

• The Void is dangerous and does not warn twice: the abyss below kills, and worn patches of skin - a shade paler, the veins nearly gone - hold a moment under your weight and then tear.

• Its zones: the Threshold, the Ribcage Reach, the Swallowed Shoals, the Husk Drift and the Vortex.

• Its plates are alive with detail: veins of light running across them like rivers, thickets of thin curved spines, bladders of skin with crystals in their bottoms, pores through to the abyss ringed with light, outcrops of Void crystal, banded edges of chitin and flesh, tendrils hanging from their undersides with glowing tips, bladders drifting in the gaps. The great ribs glow at their joints. Voidlings and Void Mites come out of its dark.

• New blocks: Husk Chitin and its lit ridge, Void Membrane (plain, veined, worn), Gnawed Stone, Riftmetal Ore and Hollow Crystal clusters.

• Raw Riftmetal, broken out of veins in the Void's chitin (it wants a radiant pickaxe), and Hollow Crystals - hextech the Void drank empty.

• Each zone has something of its own to find: membrane lakes sagging between rims of chitin in the Ribcage Reach, their veins running to a crystal knot; islands of swallowed stone at the level one walks on in the Shoals; husks thirty blocks long in the Husk Drift, lit from inside; and over the Vortex its sealed heart, a bud of chitin petals with light in its seams.

• The Void's own sky: a funnel of veined membrane turning slowly overhead, its veils spiralling in toward a beating violet eye; far ribs, curled horns and crystal-tipped spires stand in drifting mist at the horizon; below, the abyss glows round its own slower funnel, and motes of its air rise slowly from the dark, lilac or amber by the zone.

• Every gate in the Void stands under a column of warm light, seen from far off: the way home.

• The Void's flora: cilia carpets and tall cilia, hanging tendrils (one can climb them), spore puffs (brush one for slow falling, crush a picked one for longer), sinew curtains stretched across narrow gaps (they hold you back, then snap), spring blisters that throw you high. Pools of Void Ichor glow in the plates' hollows: thick, slow, one wades out of it.

• Everything found in the Void has a use: chitin and gnawed stone building sets (stairs, slabs, walls), dyes from cilia, string from sinews, craftable spring blisters and lit ridges, a bucket of ichor burns as long as lava, Hollow Crystals hold four times as long in anchors and purifiers, worn skin can be taken with Silk Touch for traps. The Void's matter carries its own essences (rift first of all).

• Sinew Willows grow on the Void's plates: trunks braided of two or three sinews, roots gripping the plate, boughs that arch out and droop, lilac fronds with glowing buds and long curtains of fronds hanging from them. Groves stand at the Threshold, fewer and younger trees deeper in, none round the vortex. Their wood is a full set (logs, stripped, planks, stairs, slab, fence, gate, door, trapdoor, button, pressure plate) that never burns and works wherever wood does - a crafting table and tools can be made in the Void at last. Fronds drop sprouts that grow on the Void's soil.

• Ichor Pods hang under the willows' fronds and glow brighter as they ripen. Pick a ripe one by hand; eaten, it lets you see in the dark - and a few blocks into ichor. Pods and tendrils light a Husk Chitin ridge as glowstone does, and a pod gives magenta dye.

• Gnawed Iron Ore and Gnawed Gold Ore: the metal our world lost to the Void, in clots through the gnawed stone of the Shoals.

• Void Glass and its pane: a Hollow Crystal and membrane fused into glass, lilac with the skin's net in it.

• The Void Lens, a spyglass with a Hollow Crystal for its lens: looking through it, the haze draws back, and riftmetal ore, hollow crystals and worn skin glint far off.

• /hextale void enter and /hextale void exit [player] for operators.

• A breach opened with a Void Shard is held by a ring of anchors and lets a player through like any other (it still does not feed on the land or send voidlings out).

• Holding a Void Anchor or a crystal near a breach shows where its ring goes: six marks on the ground round it, a missing side pulsing magenta with sparks rising, a held side glowing cold. Placing anchors tells you how many of the six sides the ring holds.

• The Void has its own creatures now. Rib Crawlers hang upside down under ribs and plates; a dry clicking overhead is all the warning before one drops, lands coiled and runs at you, climbing walls. Pit Maws lie flush in the ground - a low bulge with a ring of short spines - and tear open into a funnel when you step on them, pulling you toward their throat; run, or hurt one enough, and it lets go. Seers drift over the plates, eyes in cages of petals: one that stares at you long enough marks you with a thin violet line, and every voidling, mite and crawler around comes for you for half a minute. Seers never fight themselves.

• Husk crust grows thin over hollows in the plates, paler than the shell round it. It ticks under your feet; stand still on it and it cracks and falls in, with the patch round it.

• Currents run through the Void in long arcs from plate to plate over the gaps, pale streaks showing their way. Step in and one carries you across (sneak to let go). Some of them fade every now and then and drop whoever rides them - their streaks thin and their whoosh sinks first.

• Fog banks roll over the Void every few minutes, closing the view to a few blocks for half a minute. The fog takes the abyss's magenta glow when you look down.

• Nurseries: husks the size of a hall in the Husk Drift, closed but for one mouth, their walls hung with sacs that hatch voidlings and mites when someone comes near. On a mound in the middle the pearl sacs hold Void Pearls - but some of them are mimics that twitch when you come close and burst into mites when touched.

• Void Pearls, the heart of the riftforged chestplate (in place of crying obsidian). Pit Maws carry one now and then.

• Swallowed ruins on the crowns of the Shoals: corners of our houses and halls, gnawed through, a chest still standing in them.

• Building blocks of the Void: Polished Husk Chitin, Husk Chitin Tiles (both with stairs and slabs) and Husk Chitin Pillars; and the gnawed blocks of the ruins (cobblestone, planks, stone bricks, bricks).

• Passing through a breach or a gate is felt now: it draws you in along a tightening spiral, the view narrows and twists and the breach's throat closes round you; the fall down the throat lasts a moment however fast the other side is ready, and the other side spits you out.

• Own sounds for the Void's new creatures, its traps, currents, fog banks and the passage; worn skin has its own stretch and tear.

• Diary pages for the Undertow, thin floors, the new creatures, the Nursery, Void Pearls and the swallowed ruins.

Changed

• Rift Ore is called Riftmetal Ore and looks like it: dark shards of the metal grown into the chitin, sparks of violet light running through them. It grows in veins on the open flanks of ribs, husks and plates: a few in the Ribcage Reach and the Shoals, many in the Husk Drift and round the vortex, none at the Threshold. Veins glow faintly and throw violet sparks, so they show from across a gap.
• Void Chitin comes only from the Void's creatures; Husk Chitin no longer breaks off any.
• Void Ichor looks like a glowing magenta lava, and with your head in it you see as little as in lava.
• The Void Chitin item has its earlier, darker look back.
• A closed ring of anchors no longer wears its crystals just by holding: they cloud only while the ring is still open, with what the breach eats and with every passage through it. A breach once held stays held.
• A breach on clean land no longer starves away while a ring of anchors is being built round it: one tied anchor is enough to keep it.
• A breach opened with a Void Shard counts as a breach for the land around it: sick land near it no longer tears open a second one. Breaches already open side by side stay open and work as before.
• The Sealed Void Crystal is sealed with Void Membrane instead of honeycomb.
• Riftmetal is no longer forged by throwing Radiant Alloy into a held breach: Raw Riftmetal from the Void is alloyed with Radiant Alloy in the furnace. Void Crystals no longer grow round a held breach; they grow on the geodes where the Void's skin sags lowest.

Fixed

• With a shader pack on, the Void shows its own sky instead of an overworld sky.