Arcana

From Gardens wiki

Fungi first: grow strange mushrooms in the dark, and learn what they, and everything else, are made of.

Opens: ☿ Metallurgy researched and 90 𓏛 knowledge and 1 ⍝ ghost fungus.

Fungi: where magic starts

The find. ⸭ A pale glow: once ☿ Metallurgy researched and an ore vein is dug, "Something glows in the ore vein after dark: a pale fungus on the wet rock, and a dust of spores around it. You take it home." It gives 1 ⍝ ghost fungus, 5 ⁝ spores, once a garden. With 90 knowledge on hand, that ghost fungus opens this tab.

Strains grow in the Dark room, one bed at a time; pick the bed in its recipe row. The bed changes what you get.

Aspects and analysis

Everything is made of hidden aspects. Six are base aspects; four are made of two others. Analyse a thing in this tab (once ⌕ Observation researched): it takes 1 of it. The first time shows what it holds; every time adds those numbers to your aspect knowledge. Aspect knowledge is never spent and is not 𓏛 knowledge: some Arcana research waits until you have enough of an aspect. What you have analysed, and your aspect knowledge, are kept when you start a new garden or Reset; essence, mana, and Arcana's buildings, machines and research start again with the garden.

Research that waits on aspect knowledge (Arcana and Synthesis): ⫯ Mycology (🜞 Life 5), ⍫ Essence theory (🜗 Void 5), ᚹ Runecraft (🜕 Order 20), ⌿ Arcane conductors (🜡 Energy 20), ⎃ Resonance engineering (🜛 Tide 20).

Essence

An Arcane extractor breaks an analysed thing down into essence: each batch gives the aspects its inputs hold (the table above) × 1. It waits until every input has been analysed. Essence is magical material, not knowledge: it is kept per aspect in this tab (not in the resource list), up to 100 each, more with an Arcane accumulator. A batch whose essence would not fit waits, whole, until there is room.

Mana

Mana is magical energy with a store. Mycelial networks make it from prepared substrate (no substrate, no mana; with the store full they take none), and a Ghost fungus batch gives off a little while it grows. Mycelial networks and Arcane accumulators hold it. The Arcane extractor draws it while it works. While some is stored, users work in full; with none stored, at the share of what is made; with none made either, they stop ("no mana", and the red bar). No production bonus (seasons, happiness, legacy seeds, chronoboost, the Altar) reaches mana, and mana and power never turn into each other. It all goes on while you are away.

Alchemy and runes

The Alchemy bench works ordinary goods, fungi and essence together; the Rune table cuts runes into a plate or a rod with rune ink and essence. Runes are components that later recipes take (infusion, the Ward stone), not spells. Both machines draw mana while a run is under way. A batch takes its goods, its mana and its essence when it starts; if you pick another recipe, the run is called off and all of it comes back. With too little essence the machine waits and says "no essence".

Infusion and stability

The Infusion chamber presses a base item, its components, essence and mana together for a time. Every infusion has a risk, worked out in full before it starts (in the Infusion section of this tab, the chamber's row and the recipe's tooltip) and fixed when it starts:

risk = base instability − stability + modifiers, between 0% and 90%. Stability is what your ᛉ Ward stone (+2) and ⏥ Mycelial lattice (+3) add, each one switched on. The one modifier now: +2 for each base or component you have not analysed yet.

When its work is done, the garden's own dice decide (the same numbers whether you watch, are away, or reload: never a new throw). At or over the risk it holds and the item lands. Under it, the run is unstable and costs one of these, and the log says which: more time (it needs longer), more mana, some of its essence again, or (for the Arcane capacitor) the run itself, losing one coil. The base item always comes back. It is plain mechanics: nothing else in the garden reads it.

Each further copy costs 15% more than the last. Selling a building gives back half of what the last one cost.