Runic Repository reworks the enchanting table to align it with how players are already enchanting in vanilla.
What I wanted to solve
In vanilla, most players don't bother using the enchanting table. It's a waste of materials and XP precisely because of its randomness.
The more enchantments are added to the game, the worse the randomness problem gets. In modded Minecraft, it's completely unusable.
Instead, players make a villager library where they can buy enchanted books, and enchant using the anvil.
Let's take the same concept, but move it to the enchanting table
How it works
With Runic Repository, the enchanting table no longer picks enchantments randomly. Instead, it lets you pick enchantments from a library of enchantments you have discovered.
Just like the vanilla enchanting table, the runic enchanting table is surrounded by bookshelves as a source of magical power.
The difference is that these are chiseled bookshelves, filled with the enchanting books you have discovered in your travels.

The enchanting table then lets you pick exactly what you want, at a cost.

The philosophy
ok so the pitch is over this is the part where I messily dump all the actual info
I find XP & enchanting (and potions but that's for another mod) to be underbaked and kind of boring.
Books are knowledge
The philosophy of this mod is to treat enchanted books as rewards. As such, they are not consumable. Once an enchanted book has been found, it can be used forever.
In practice, that's already how it worked through villager trading. I can also point to Botania's enchanting table.
If you're designing a modpack, I'd encourage you to remove the ability to get all enchantments from villager trading. Add them to dungeons! Maybe try the villager rebalance experiment. Or don't! It's your modpack.
Building freedom
The vanilla enchanting structure is also very restrictive. It can pretty much have one and only one shape.
This mod tries to fix that by allowing chiseled bookshelves to be anywhere in a range around the enchanting table. This range can be configured.
You can build an actual fuctionning enchanting Grand Library!
It's an anvil
The new enchanting table still follows the anvil rules:
- The books in the library are virtually merged. If you have two Unbreaking I books in your bookshelves, you'll have Unbreaking II in the enchanting table.
- You can add more enchantments to an already enchanted item.
- It can't be used to remove enchantments.
It's not an anvil
It can't merge items, it can't repair, it can't rename. All of that is still in the anvil.
You can still merge two enchanted items together in the anvil as well.
XP Levels
This is disabled by default.
Next are XP levels. I hate that a level when you're at level 30 costs so much more than a level when you're at level 5. Many mods have added ways to store XP that can be abused to optimise how many XP points you're spending, but this is just not fun to me.
I've added an option to keep XP points per level flat, and one to keep XP after death.
Mod support
This mod has built-in support for Ancient Tomes from Quark.
Because my mixin is incompatible with it, I've also re-implemented Stable anvil cost in this mod. All of it is configurable and can be disabled:
- Disabling damage to the anvil when repairing or renaming
- Renaming or repairing being free
- Disabling the "prior work penalty" on anvils
- Changing the maximum cost on anvils