Ars Affinity in FTB StoneBlock 4

Ars Affinity is included in this pack at version 1.1.1, built for Minecraft 1.21.1 (the file is ars_affinity-1.21.1-1.1.1.jar). It was already present in the first release of the pack's 1.21.0 line or earlier.^[1]

Unverified The sources I have don't describe what Ars Affinity does, who it is aimed at, or any of its recipes, configs or mechanics, so I'm not going to guess. There is also no in-jar guidebook to draw on. I couldn't confirm any place for it in the pack's progression. It does not appear to be on the ATM Star path, and no quests in this pack involve it.

Ars Affinity builds on Ars Nouveau spellcasting by tracking your progress in each magic school. The sources I have for this pack don't include any crafting recipes or quests for the mod, so there's no set order of items to craft first. What I can confirm is how the progression works and which items manage it.^[2]

Your first goal: earn an affinity point

The first milestone is the Initiate advancement, which asks you to earn your first affinity point in any school. After that, each school has its own mastery advancement for earning every affinity point available in it.^[2]

• The schools with mastery advancements are Abjuration, Air, Conjuration, Earth, Fire, Manipulation, Necromancy and Water.^[2]
• Some items may show a "Prerequisites not met" tooltip, so expect some things to stay locked until you meet their requirements.^[2]

Items worth knowing about early

The Affinity Anchor Charm prevents affinity changes while you wear it. Its tooltip also says it costs one charge per spell cast, so keep an eye on its charges.^[2]

The Tablet of Amnesia resets your affinity progress for one specific school. It requires an essence to decide which school gets reset, so don't use it casually.^[2]

Effects you may run into

The mod adds several effects. Silenced stops casters from firing Ars Nouveau spells until it ends. Sanctuary fully negates incoming damage, and Hydrated restores hunger when you're wet. There are also cooldown effects for abilities such as Air Dash, Fire Dash, Ghost Step, Ground Slam, Ice Blast, Deflection, Curse Field, Swap and Sanctuary. While one is active, that ability is temporarily unavailable.^[2]

Unverified How affinity points are earned, how to craft the Affinity Anchor Charm or the Tablet of Amnesia, and whether this pack changes any of the mod's values are not confirmed by the sources available for this section.

Ars Affinity is a progression system on top of Ars Nouveau spellcasting, so there are no machines, multiblocks or power, fluid and item handling to automate here. The more mana you spend casting a school's spells, the more affinity you earn in that school, and affinity unlocks perks. This section covers how that works in the pack.^[2][3]

How you earn affinity

Affinity comes from mana you spend casting. affinity.affinityGainMultiplier sets the gain per mana spent, and the pack uses 0.001, the same as the mod default. Raising it speeds up progression and lowering it slows it down.^[3]

Gains slow down as you advance, and the first slowdown is per school. affinity.affinityScalingDecayStrength is 1.7 and controls how quickly gain falls as that school's affinity rises. affinity.affinityScalingMinimumFactor is 0.1, the minimum percentage of the original gain that can be applied (10%).^[3]

The other slowdown is global, based on your total points across all schools. affinity.globalScalingDecayStrength is 1.3 and affinity.globalScalingMinimumFactor is 0.2, which is the minimum share of the original gain once you have many total points. Spreading across many schools therefore also slows you down. The pack leaves all of these at the mod defaults.^[3]

Opposing schools work against each other. affinity.opposingSchoolPenaltyPercentage is 0.66, meaning opposing schools lose that share of the affinity gain.^[3]

Not every glyph counts. glyph_blacklist.blacklistedGlyphs lists glyphs ignored for affinity tracking, and in the pack that's ars_nouveau:glyph_break and ars_nouveau:glyph_craft.^[3]

Tiers

Perks are gated by tiers, which depend on your affinity percentage in a school. The pack's thresholds are 25 for Tier 1 (affinity.tier1ThresholdPercentage), 50 for Tier 2 (affinity.tier2ThresholdPercentage) and 75 for Tier 3 (affinity.tier3ThresholdPercentage). These match the mod defaults.^[3]

Advancements track your progress. One is for earning your first affinity point in any school. The others are mastery advancements for earning every available point in a single school: Abjuration, Air, Conjuration, Earth, Fire, Manipulation, Necromancy or Water.^[2]

Perk trees

Each school has a perk tree, and the pack ships them as config. Abjuration is the one we can look at here, in perks. Every perk there costs 1 point and most have prerequisites, so you unlock them in a chain rather than picking freely.^[4]

• Abjuration power is the root of the tree. Level 1 has no prerequisite and level 2 requires level 1.^[4]
• Healing amplification has three levels across Tiers 1 to 3, each requiring the previous one. Level 1 requires abjuration power 1.^[4]
• Abjuration resistance has two levels. Level 1 requires abjuration power 1 and level 2 requires resistance 1.^[4]
• Ghost Step is a Tier 2 passive that requires abjuration resistance 1 and the invisibility glyph from Ars Nouveau. The file gives it a cooldown of 6,000.^[4]
• Sanctuary is the active perk. It requires abjuration power 2 and abjuration resistance 2, and the file sets its cooldown to 200 and its mana cost to 0.2. While it's active, incoming damage is fully negated, and afterwards a cooldown effect marks it as unavailable.^[2][4]

The mod also has a button in the spell book GUI, controlled by ui.enableSpellBookButton, which the pack leaves enabled.^[3]

Active abilities and cooldowns

Several abilities show a cooldown effect while they recharge: Air Dash, Curse Field, Deflection, Fire Dash, Ghost Step, Ground Slam, Ice Blast, Sanctuary, Stone Skin and Swap. A related effect, Silenced, stops casters from firing Ars Nouveau spells until it ends.^[2]

Ice Blast and Ground Slam have server config values. Ice Blast uses a cooldown of 200 ticks, damage of 8, a freeze time of 100 ticks, a mana cost of 0.3 and a radius of 6. See ice_blast.defaultCooldown, ice_blast.defaultDamage, ice_blast.defaultFreezeTime, ice_blast.defaultManaCost and ice_blast.defaultRadius. Ground Slam has a max drop distance of 10 blocks for its scaling (ground_slam.maxDropDistance) and a max radius of 5 blocks (ground_slam.maxRadius). All of these are the mod defaults.^[3]

When the summoning power passive is active, summons follow you based on distance settings. They start following at 50 blocks (summon_distance_override.minDistance) and stop following at 75 blocks (summon_distance_override.maxDistance). They teleport back to you at 100 blocks (summon_distance_override.teleportDistance).^[3]

Managing your affinity

Some utility items let you control affinity. A charm prevents affinity changes while worn, and it costs one charge per spell cast. The tablet of amnesia resets affinity progress for a specific school and needs an essence to decide which school.^[2]

Good news first: in this pack the Ars Affinity server config matches the mod's stock setup for every option that reports a mod default. Nothing about affinity progression has been changed from those defaults. All of it lives in config/ars_affinity-server.toml.^[3]

How fast affinity grows

• affinity.affinityGainMultiplier is 0.001, the same as the mod default. It is the multiplier for affinity gain per mana spent. Higher values mean faster progression, and the allowed range is 0.0001 to 0.1.^[3]
• affinity.affinityScalingDecayStrength is 1.7 (the default) and controls how quickly gain drops as a school's affinity rises. affinity.affinityScalingMinimumFactor is 0.1, the minimum share of the original gain that can still be applied (10%).^[3]
• affinity.globalScalingDecayStrength is 1.3 and affinity.globalScalingMinimumFactor is 0.2. These slow your gain as your total points across all schools grow, and both are the mod defaults.^[3]
• affinity.opposingSchoolPenaltyPercentage is 0.66 (the default). It is the share of your affinity gain that opposing schools lose.^[3]

Tier thresholds

Tiers unlock at 25, 50 and 75 percent affinity, set by affinity.tier1ThresholdPercentage, affinity.tier2ThresholdPercentage and affinity.tier3ThresholdPercentage. All three match the mod defaults.^[3]

Glyph blacklist

glyph_blacklist.blacklistedGlyphs lists glyphs that are ignored for affinity progress tracking. This pack sets it to ars_nouveau:glyph_break and ars_nouveau:glyph_craft, so casting Break or Craft will not earn you affinity.^[3]

Ability and summon settings

• Deep underground detection: affinity.deepUndergroundYThreshold is 20, so you count as deep underground below Y 20. That is the mod default.^[3]
• Ground Slam: ground_slam.maxRadius is 5 blocks and ground_slam.maxDropDistance is 10 blocks. Both are defaults.^[3]
• Ice Blast: ice_blast.defaultDamage is 8, ice_blast.defaultRadius is 6, ice_blast.defaultCooldown is 200 ticks, ice_blast.defaultFreezeTime is 100 ticks and ice_blast.defaultManaCost is 0.3. All of these are mod defaults.^[3]
• Summon following: with the passive summoning power active, summons start following you at summon_distance_override.minDistance (50 blocks), stop following at summon_distance_override.maxDistance (75 blocks) and teleport back to you at summon_distance_override.teleportDistance (100 blocks). Again, these are defaults.^[3]
• ui.enableSpellBookButton is true, so the Ars Affinity button shows up in the spell book screen.^[3]

Perk trees

Each school has its own perk tree file in config/ars_affinity/perk_trees: abjuration, air, conjuration, earth, fire, manipulation, necromancy and water. For example, perks defines the Ice Blast perk with damage 8, radius 6, cooldown 200, freeze time 100 and a mana cost of 0.2. The server config's default mana cost for Ice Blast is 0.3, so the two files list different mana figures.^[3][5]