Magicka is a Minecraft mod designed to make magic about the player and their knowledge, not the items they use. Too long has the Minecraft magic modding community been oversaturated with dozens of factory-made, mass-produced magic staff mods. Too long have we gone without true expressiveness and power.

It's time for a revolution.

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Keep up with development or just give me some chatter on the Discord server.

Or, you can find my other mods here:

• Backport: https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/backport
• Wrench in the Works: https://minecraft.curseforge.com/projects/wrenchitw

And just in case I forget to keep this list updated (very likely), you can find all my mods, active or otherwise, on my CurseForge profile.

If you want to support the project, please consider supporting me on Patreon as well. Every little bit of support counts!

Core Design Principles

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

~ Arthur C. Clarke

Magic /ˈmædʒ ɪk/ (n.): The science of manipulating the principles of the world through the understanding of it's building blocks to make the seemingly impossible possible.

1. Magic should not revolve around items like spellbooks, wands, or scrolls. They may serve as optional utilities, but they are not the source of magic nor the only or even necessarily the best way to use it.
2. Magic does not stem from a power source such as "mana". It is the manipulation of the principles of the world, not a power inherent to a being or object.
3. Magic is, at it's core, science. It should perform as such; following a well-defined set of rules and patterns, never breaking character.
4. Magic and alchemy are two very closely tied concepts. In fact, one could say that alchemy is magic. As such, magic also follows the principle of equivalent exchange - with every action comes an equal and opposite reaction, to put it in real-world terms.
5. Magic is powerful, but not all-powerful. Just like any other science or technology, it has limits that cannot be broken - at least, that we have not yet discovered how to break.

How?

It's still magic even if you know how it's done.

~ Terry Pratchett

In order to achieve this, Magicka will do away with the traditional, over-used systems of mana and casting items in Minecraft magic mods. At it's core, Magicka will revolve around linguistics - the study of language. Magic will be structured by way of incantations, with the grammar of the spell dictating the effects of the spell. Objects like spellbooks will be useful as memory tools or for quickly casting spells that have already been created, but they will be just that: utilities. Under no circumstances will you ever need a "casting item" to perform magic. You may need reagents for certain spells, but this is acceptable; such reagents are in order to fulfill the principle of equivalent exchange, and are not required in order to be able to use magic itself.

If executed correctly, this will result in a magic system that will be both powerful, balanced, and expressive, while requiring the wielder to think about the structure of their spell and the effects they want rather than simply spamming right-click.

Why?

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

~ W.B. Yeats

• I love magic systems, in every form imaginable. The more fleshed out and structured, the better.

• I love Minecraft. It's one of my favorite games, and by far the one I've sunk the most hundreds of hours into.

• I love combining magic and Minecraft, for obvious reasons.

What I do not love is the oversaturation of the Minecraft mod "economy", if you will, of terrible, one-off, cliché magic staff mods. Any fool with a computer can make a magic staff mod, and many of them do. But to make a truly immersive magic system that is fun, balanced, and unique is a different story entirely.

One of my first big mods was Harry Potter Wands, a mod that added in some basic wands and other Harry Potter-related items, with the ability to cast every single spell ever officially mentioned in Harry Potter history across all forms of media that I could possibly translate into Minecraft (except Expecto Patronum, because I barely managed to make a basic projectile entity, there was no way I was ready for a companion-summoning spell). HPWands was good. It was a fun mod to use and a fun mod to develop, and still gets a slow but steady stream of downloads to this day. That was back in good old 1.7, and the mod has not been updated since late 2014. But HPWands had a fundamental problem.

I had made a glorified magic staff mod.

The mod was entirely unbalanced, with the wands being quite cheap to obtain and providing no progression whatsoever as to what spells they could perform. In fact, the moment you crafted a wand, you were immediately given access to every spell in the mod . The other features, such as the invisibility cloak and Chocolate Frog cards, were interesting but on the whole entirely useless.

I am creating Magicka because I want to create a mod that does away with the traditional, oversaturated styles of magic mod revolving around a few simple spells linked to dinky little magic staffs. These mods are not necessarily bad - I just don't personally like them, nor do I think that they represent what magic in Minecraft can and should be.

How You Can Help

I think that magic, at its root, is a very abstract notion. There's no real, approved definition. And, in that sense, it's like love; you can only see magic by the effect it has on people.

~ Drummond Money-Coutts

If there's one thing Magicka is, it's ambitious. I'm 17 years old, going into my senior year of high school - I don't have the luxury of working exclusively on a Minecraft mod. I work an internship at a software development company for no pay, I go to church and youth group, and when fall comes around I'll be going back to school, which will mean even less time to work on this mod.

The biggest way you can help is by contributing. As I develop this mod, there will be problems that I can't solve on my own - contributing code or even just helping talk through a tough bug is more help than you can possible imagine. There will likely be opportunities to contribute textures, localization, and so on in the future as well - I'm only so skilled as a texture artist, and I only speak English and Japanese (and the latter far from fluently). Any help you can give is appreciated more than you can imagine.

Some other ways you can help:

• Support my other mods - it helps immensely with motivation and morale on my part.
• Spread the word! The more the merrier, and the more help I can get the better.
• Bug testing - I can only find and squash so many bugs alone. Once test versions of the mod are ready, any people I can get to test it and report issues back to me are immensely helpful.
• Support me on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/tripl3dogdare
• Keep an eye on this list of ways you can help for new ways to lend a hand.

Honorable Mentions and Inspirations: Those Who Have Kept the Faith and Shunned the Staff

We don't consider the Wizard of Oz or Father Christmas to be too old. They're still magical characters, and the fact they've been around the block only adds to their magic.

~ Peter Capaldi

With all this said, there are a few mods that have come before me that hit close to the mark of what Magicka is designed to be. It wouldn't do to bash on the Minecraft magic modding community this hard without mentioning those who've gotten it right and created mods that go beyond the traditional magic staff.

Perhaps the best-known mod that follows this concept well is Ars Magica 2 by Mithion. However, Ars Magica at it's core revolves around items; it's system of spell scrolls and spell pieces allows for some very interesting spell combinations to be created, but it imposes limits on how much you can place in one spell, as well as using a conjoined mana/burnout system. It also provides a heavy focus on progression - to reach stronger spells, you must grind for hours to gain the materials and experience needed. It is up to date as far as MC 1.10.

Psi, by well-known supermodder Vazkii, is another mod that allows for extreme customization and flexibility in it's spells. Based on the anime Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei (one of my personal favorites, as well as Vazkii's, it would appear), it presents magic as little different to programming, with it's spells revolving around vector math providing an interesting way to both bar players from becoming too powerful too quickly and to educate them on some of the finer points of math. However, much like Ars Magica, while it drops some of the grindy sense of progression, it still relies on a master casting item and a mana system. It is currently up to date with the most recent version of Minecraft (1.12).

A quick glance through the first 20 pages of CurseForge's Magic category revealed little else of promise, though I will give an honorable mention to Mundus Magicus by CAS_ual_TY; the mod looks to still be in heavy development (and only for 1.7.10, no less), but follows a similar principle of creating spells beyond just predefined actions by combining pieces in a structural-based system. It does not appear to feature a mana system of any kind, though who knows what may happen in it's future; it does, however, rely entirely on items.

This does, of course, focus only on the sub-genre of magic mods that fit with Magicka's design; those mods revolving primarily around spellcasting, that is. There are plenty of amazing magic mods out there that fill a different niche, and I certainly don't want to show disrespect by not acknowledging that not all magic mods are designed to fill the same role. So, to that end, here's a list of a few of my favorites:

• Thaumcraft (1.8) by azanor; focuses around thaumaturgy, or the ability to work miracles, by way of reshaping and combining the base elements of the world into various different forms. A heavy focus on research and progression, with countless addons to expand the experience.
• Witchery (1.7) by Emoniph; focuses around witchcraft, from brewing to herbology to voodoo and beyond. An expansive mod that could take even experienced players months to explore every nook and cranny.
• Botania (1.11) by Vazkii; a natural-magic based tech mod revolving around mana as an impersonal energy source. Flowers, trees, and plants of all kinds play a massive role in the mod.
• Blood Magic (1.11) by WayofTime; a mod that takes on the darker side of magic, delving into the realms of blood sacrifices and using life force as power.
• ProjectE (1.11) by sinkillerj; an updated version of x3n0ph0b3's Equivalent Exchange 2 for newer versions. Focuses around alchemy and the titular equivalent exchange, allowing you to swap materials for others through the power of alchemy.