Sortilege

Minecraft Magic System Update

Minecraft already has magical elements: enchanting, brewing, and experience. However, these three components don't work well together and often feel incomplete.

Sortilege unites these systems into a single harmonious magical mechanic. The mod offers numerous useful improvements and additional features that are fully customizable to your preferences.

Unlike most magic mods that create completely new systems, Sortilege develops the existing elements in vanilla game, turning them into a full-fledged magical system.

Magic Staves

Sortilege adds magic staves to the game - perfect weapons for spell enthusiasts. They're available in all six standard materials: wood, stone, iron, gold, diamond, and netherite.

Staves occupy an intermediate position between melee (swords) and ranged combat (bows). They instantly fire a particle beam that ignores gravity and damages everything in its path, stopping when hitting a block or after reaching the maximum number of pierced targets.

Different staff tiers affect range, damage, and maximum target count. After use, the staff goes on cooldown - you don't need to charge it beforehand (unless configured otherwise), but you can't spam spells either.

The special feature of staves is they deal magic damage, giving new life to an almost unused game mechanic.

Staff Enchantments

Staves have their own enchantment system:

Enhancing Enchantments:

• Unbreaking - standard enchantment
• Potency - increases damage (levels 1-5)
• Stability - increases beam range (levels 1-5)
• Chaining - increases target piercing (levels 1-3)
• Wisdom - reduces experience cost (levels 1-3)

Effect Enchantments:

• Bonk - allows using staff as melee weapon
• Push - pushes enemies away (levels 1-2)
• Pull - pulls enemies toward you (levels 1-2)
• Blizzard - freezes enemies, blue particles (levels 1-2, incompatible with Brazier, Blast and Blitz)
• Brazier - burns enemies, orange particles (levels 1-2, incompatible with Blizzard, Blast and Blitz)
• Blast - creates small explosion at beam stop point, at max level explodes every hit target, dark red particles (levels 1-2, incompatible with Blizzard, Brazier and Blitz)
• Blitz - slows and weakens enemies, yellow particles (levels 1-2, incompatible with Blizzard, Brazier and Blast)

Curses:

• Curse of Ignorance - using staff requires experience or increases existing cost

Staff particle color depends on staff type and applied enchantments. You can also dye it on a crafting table to any desired color.

Staff Overcharging

Click on staff with Lapis Lazuli in inventory to overcharge it. This displays as a second durability bar and allows using staff without experience cost while active.

All staff parameters are fully configurable: from changing characteristics to adding custom types or disabling default ones.

Antidotes

Besides standard potions, Sortilege adds a new type - antidotes.

Brew glow ink with any non-instant potion to get the corresponding antidote (works with modded effects too). Drink the antidote while under the effect to instantly remove it - like a precise milk bucket. You'll also gain immunity to that effect for the next 5 minutes.

Antidotes stack up to 16 per slot and drink significantly faster than regular potions.

Want your regular potion back? Just brew your spare antidotes with normal ink - the transformation will reverse.

Improved Potion System

Sortilege completely overhauls the potion system and makes it available for datapacks.

Potions now stack to 8, drink faster (1 second instead of 1.6), last longer, but go on a 10-second cooldown after use. This makes them more useful in regular gameplay.

Cauldrons placed over a lit campfire can be used for brewing potions - just throw ingredients inside. Cauldrons over soul campfires even refill over time!

Better Enchanting

Sortilege also improves the enchanting system. New enchantments have been added for working with magic damage:

• Arcane - applies to melee weapons, converts all damage to magical (single level, incompatible with Fire Aspect)
• Magic Protection - protects from magical damage sources (levels I-IV, incompatible with other protection enchantments)
• Soulbound - items with this enchantment don't drop on death (single level)

Some forgotten vanilla enchantments have received additional effects at max level.

Enchantment Limiter

For balance, you can enable the limiter module in settings, which limits the number of enchantments per item (default 3). Set to 0 to disable enchanting or -1 to disable the module.

Curses add an enchantment slot instead of using an existing one - will you take the risk?

From version 1.1, you can set limits for individual items. From version 1.3, you can find limitite gems in rare structure chests - combine them with an item on a smithing table to increase its enchant limit!

Enchanting Catalysts

From version 1.6, a new mechanic has been added: enchanting catalysts.

Certain items (defined via datapacks) can be placed on the book in enchanting tables. They significantly increase the chances of certain enchantments appearing - availability in the pool is indicated by an amethyst outline!

An enchanted book placed on the table increases chances for all its enchantments (the book isn't consumed). You can completely disable the standard enchanting system and use only catalysts.

Experience System Overhaul

From version 1.3, Sortilege offers improvements for the infamous experience system. All values can be changed or disabled in settings.

Linear Level Progression

Vanilla punishes players for high levels - now the system is fairer.

Experience Level Cap

Experience accumulates faster, but you need to use it or it will be lost - dynamism in everything!

Witch Hat

Hunt witches to get their hat! It increases all experience gains.

More Expensive Enchanting

There's a catch: you get more experience, but you spend more too. Enchanting tables now require 1 level for tier 1 enchantment, 3 for tier 2, and 7 for tier 3. Combined with the enchantment limiter, this creates a balanced system.

This also makes staves more viable: instead of hoarding experience, you can use it to deal more damage!

Experience Keeping on Death

Now you can keep more than 7 levels on death! Settings offer three values:

• Part of experience is kept - you won't start from scratch
• Part drops on the ground - you can return for your treasure
• Part goes to the killer - encourages PvP

When dying to a monster, it becomes a "living piggy bank" and glows from accumulated experience.

Experience Piñatas

Monsters have a chance to burst into experience on death - combat is now the main way to gather experience.

Death Position Tracking

Death coordinates now appear on the death screen and in chat - no more need to use F3!

Balanced keepInventory

From version 1.5, you can configure keeping equipped items (hotbar, armor, accessories, and offhand), as well as items with Soulbound!

Experience-less Anvils

Anvils no longer require experience - fully utilize your enchanted books and staves.

Recipe Locks

You can lock certain recipes behind experience level or advancement requirements.

Lapis Shield

By surrounding a shield with lapis lazuli on a crafting table, you can create a lapis shield.

These shields are specialized for working with staves - they automatically block front attacks every few seconds without needing to hold any button.

Be careful: they have less durability than regular shields and block attacks in a narrower cone.