Wisp & Willow

# Wisp & Willow 2.0.0 — Root & Branch

**Minecraft 26.2 · NeoForge 26.2.0.88** and **Minecraft 1.21.1 · NeoForge 21.1.213**

This is the biggest update I've ever made to Wisp & Willow, and it's coming out on two versions at once. On 26.2 it's the mod's first release; on 1.21.1 it's the last one.

The short version: I cut the storage network so the mod can be about magic and nothing else, rebuilt Empyrite as real 3D armour, added a cloth armour set you spin from glimmerfawn down, gave the Spirit Realm a skyline, and redrew every item and block texture by hand at vanilla resolution.

> **⚠️ I've removed the Crystalline Network. Empty yours before you update.** Controllers, cables, drives, disks, terminals, importers, exporters and storage buses are all gone (full list below). Any of them still in your world will disappear when you load it, **and so will everything stored on their disks**. Move your things into chests, or into Refined Storage or AE2, first.

> **📌 2.0.0 is the last update for Minecraft 1.21.1.** From here on I'm developing Wisp & Willow for 26.2 only. The 1.21.1 build has everything in this changelog; it just won't get anything after it.

> **Apart from that, your worlds are safe.** Every other block and item keeps its id. Empyrite, the lamp, the pool, the spitter and the cauldron keep theirs too and pick up their new looks on their own. Moving a world from 1.21.1 to 26.2? It upgrades like any other world. Back it up first, as you would for any Minecraft version jump.

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## 🌿 Magic, and Only Magic

I added the Crystalline Network back when Wisp & Willow didn't know what it wanted to be. It knows now: it's a magic mod. Refined Storage and AE2 already do storage better than I ever would, and I'd rather spend my time on rituals, Fluxia and the realm.

**Removed:**
- Amethyst Controller, Network Cable and Cable Blocker
- Amethyst Disk Drive and Amethyst Fluid Disk Drive
- Crystalline Disks (1K, 4K, 16K, 64K), Fluid Crystalline Disks (16K, 32K, 64K, 128K) and the Disk Case
- Amethyst Terminal, Crafting Terminal and Fluid Terminal
- Network Importer, Exporter and Storage Bus, and their fluid versions
- The Crystalline Network chapter of the grimoire and the terminal's client config options

**Kept on purpose:** the Chunk Loader; the cauldron's upgrade tray (Ember Plate, Miser's Lining and Deepening Sigil); and Amethyst Coal, Paper, Sugar Cane and Farmland, because they feed rituals, alchemy and Luxinia's Flower. The Alchemical Cauldron still takes hoppers and pipes from any mod. I rewrote the grimoire pages that pointed at the network (Luxinia's Flower, the Chunk Loader, Astralite).

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## 🧵 Glimmerweave

Spirit Down has always baled into wool. Now you can spin it instead, into a magical cloth set.

A full set takes 24 bolts, which is 144 down. Bring shears, and be patient with the herd.

The cloth gives you **iron's protection** (2 / 6 / 5 / 2) with no toughness and no knockback resistance. It's also the **easiest thing in the mod to enchant**: 30, where gold is 25. You mend it with a bolt of Glimmerweave on an anvil. It's a mage's set, not a soldier's.

**Set bonus** (shown on every piece's tooltip):
- **2 pieces, Downsoft:** you land like down, with no fall damage from any height.
- **4 pieces, Glimmer-sight:** you see in the dark, the way the herd does in its realm.

It counts for anything wearing it, so a zombie that picks up a hood and robe lands softly too.

When you wear it, it's fully 3D: a hood with a leaning cowl, a mantle and brooch, a sash with knotted tails, long skirt panels, bell cuffs and soft slippers. It never quite stops moving, and the glimmer stitched into the hems glows in the dark. It has its own grimoire entry under *Willow & Wilds*.

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## 🏛️ Empyrite, Remade in 3D

Empyrite armour isn't a flat recolour any more. It's a full 3D gladiator's kit:

- **Helm:** a galea with a crimson horsehair crest, a gold brow band and gem, cheek guards, a nasal bar, a flared neck guard and gold laurels at the temples.
- **Cuirass:** a muscled breastplate with a gold medallion, gold shoulder straps, a studded belt and leather strips hanging below it, plus segmented shoulder guards and a jade-and-gold sleeve down the arm.
- **Tassets:** bound thighs with a gold band and knee guards.
- **Greaves:** ridged shin guards over sandals with gilded toes.

**Dormant** plate holds still. **Awakened** plate has a look of its own: brighter gold, filigree and muscle lines that glow enchantment-gold, and a crest lit gold at the tips. It moves, too: the crest, medallion, shoulder guards and skirt breathe on a slow loop.

If you play with the slim (Alex) arms, the sleeves are narrowed to fit instead of hanging off you.

> **Renamed to match:** the leggings are now **Empyrite Tassets** and the boots are **Empyrite Greaves** (they used to be Greaves and Sabatons). Only the names changed, so the gear you already have is untouched. The imbuing pages now say *Stride on tassets* and *Skystep on greaves*.

I redrew the item icons to match, and the sword is a short Greek xiphos now.

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## 🌌 The Spirit Realm Gets a Skyline

The islands were flat-topped and low, so there was nothing tall to steer by. Now there is.

- **Spirit Spires:** tapering spiritstone pillars with a band of old brickwork near the base, moss at the foot and something glowing on the tip. They're thickest in the Hollow Barrens, with a few across the Spirit Meadow and the Mistfall Shallows.
- **Ancient Soulwood:** huge trees with a 2×2 trunk, usually forked into several crowns, with willow vines trailing off them. Look in the Spirit Meadow and the Soulwood Grove.
- **Soulwood, regrown:** every soulwood now has a full trunk with buttress roots, and grows one of three ways: straight with a side branch, forked into two or three crowns, or bent by a wind that never stops. The old broken trunk with a crown floating above it looked like a bug, so it's gone.
- **Wispcap glades:** tight clusters of the glowing mushroom, the realm's night-lights.
- **Spirit veils:** fields of glimmerbloom, moonlily, fern and duskbloom, thick enough to read as a meadow from above.
- **Atmosphere:** the fog and sky lean violet now, more motes drift through the Spirit Meadow and the Soulwood Grove, and ash drifts over the Barrens.

> New features only grow in chunks that haven't been generated yet. If you've already explored part of the realm, head somewhere new to find them.

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## 🎨 Every Item and Block Texture, Redrawn

I redrew every item sprite and block texture by hand at **vanilla resolution (16×)**, in the spirit of Botania, Thaumcraft and Blood Magic. That includes the Empyrite, Glimmerweave and Arcane Goggles icons. The natural blocks start from real vanilla sprites recoloured into the mod's palette, so they sit comfortably next to vanilla: willow bark, soulwood with glowing cyan veins, willow and soulwood leaves, fenstone, peat, spiritstone, astralite and willow amber.

- **Spawn eggs:** each one is a little drawing of its creature now, instead of a two-colour egg.
- I redrew the **portal** surfaces and the cauldron's rune ring to match.
- I repainted the Alchemical Cauldron's window, the Fluxia bar, the mod's buttons, the advancement background, the Fluxia beam, the portal sparkles, the awakened glint, and the Arcane Goggles as worn.

Mobs, the 3D armour, the Thornrose Staff and the effects stay high-resolution on purpose.

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## ⚙️ The Machines, Remodelled

- **Fluxia Lamp:** a proper lamp block now, shaped like a redstone lamp but glowing Fluxia cyan. Full brightness (15, up from 10), a full-block hitbox, and it breaks quickly and sounds like glass.
- **Willow Fluxia Pool:** a low basin with gold-capped corner posts, with the Fluxia sitting inside it.
- **Fluxia Spitter:** an open cage of pillars with a gold canopy and a lens, so you can see the orb inside.
- **Alchemical Cauldron:** cauldron-shaped, in the mod's own dark iron. Complete the ring and it gains gold bands and glowing runes.

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## 🐾 Creatures

Every creature got a shading pass: darker edges and soft light from above, so heads, legs and bodies read as separate shapes instead of flat slabs. The glimmerfawn's coat is proper fleece now, I tidied up the wisp familiar's head, and the frog familiar hops instead of trotting.

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## 🧩 Version Notes

\*Patchouli doesn't have a 26.2 build yet, so on 26.2 it's optional. Everything else works without it, the book's data still ships, and the grimoire comes back as soon as Patchouli does. Until then the root advancement uses the Omni Chalk as its icon. Ponder doesn't have a 26.2 build either; I'll bring its scenes back when it does.

**Recipe pages are JEI on both versions now.** On 1.21.1 I've switched the mod's recipe pages from EMI to JEI, so both versions share the same ones: every ritual circle drawn to scale with its glyphs, reagents and Fluxia cost, plus Fluxia Infusion and the cauldron's brews. Hover a glyph to see its shape and colour. EMI doesn't get pages of its own from Wisp & Willow any more.

Also on 26.2: the fen's liquids have movement of their own. Bog water is a little thicker than water, and willow sap is slow going, but you can always wade or climb out of it.

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## 🔧 Smaller Things

- Botany Pots recipes only load now when Botany Pots is installed, so a pack without it no longer logs recipe errors at startup.

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*Thanks for playing, and thank you to everyone who stuck with the mod on 1.21.1. See you on 26.2!* 💜