Sandbox/Old Warnings-Entrapment

Entrapment
Always bring a linking book. In fact, bring multiple.

** If you do not bring a linking book, you cannot return. The risk of getting stuck is a core aspect of Mystcraft.**

From any age, including the Overworld, you can craft books that let you visit new ages (descriptive books), or that will bring you back to where you are now (linking books). Nothing legit will let you craft a book that will return you to where you were. Loss of linking books will strand you, until you find a ages:linking which will return you to the Overworld.

Always Bring a Linking Book
As a moderate safety level, bring three books ( one **Two!** in your hotbar), two linking stands, and a chest with you when you enter a new age. Place one stand, and one book (this has to be in your hotbar) near the spot you arrive at. Place the chest, second stand, and book close to, but not too near, your arrival spot (ideally it should be far enough away that if a charged creeper explodes on you, the chest will still be intact.)

** Keep the third book in your hotbar at all times.**

In older versions, black decay was the only form of instability, and it could open a hole to the void on you with minimal notice (a 1-in-128 chance of no notice at all, and at any time a small sinkhole could collapse into the void). Having a linking book in your hotbar gives you a chance to leave an age before falling to your death in the void.

In current versions, black decay is rare (and may be disabled in your config). There are many other issues to worry about. Rare is anything that will cause you to fall to your death. Except things like skylands, or other terrain/landscapes that will generate sand or gravel with nothing under them. Remember, do not dig straight down. Use care when digging into sand or gravel when standing on that sand or gravel patch. The "404: Solid ground not found" challenge can be very, very real in a Mystcraft age.

Backup Plans
For maximum safety, place the following into an Ender chest before arriving, place one Ender chest on the ground near your arrival spot, and carry a second chest with you (listed in order of urgency)

* At least one return linking book (to return home)

* At least one writing desk * At least one book binder * At least one blank book (so you are not stuck if you want to travel)

To create a travel kit from scratch, for "recent" (0.10.5 and later): * Leather (not all ages can generate cows) * Paper (an age might have no water to grow sugar cane) * Wood logs (to make book binders and ink mixers) * Multiple ink vials, or ink sacks and water buckets * Smooth stone (to make an ink mixer) * Glass vials (ink mixer, writing desk, ink vials) * Optional: Feathers (writing desk)

For real scratch, you need: * Reeds (for new paper) * Two water buckets (for new ink, growing reeds, etc.) * At least one stack of chicken eggs (for new feathers and food) * Saplings (for new wood) * Dirt (to grow the wood) * Spare blocks for safe building (voids, etc) * Leather (not all ages can generate cows) * Sand (to make glass vials)

In the worst "normal" case, you might not be able to harvest any of the ground, nor access any libraries (end stone, lava, island world); this set of material will let you grow trees, and "branch" out to find a library. The library will give you stone tools and a furnace, the wood will give you furnace fuel, and the ink/squid can be obtained by using the stone pick on your starting island egg to make a depression for your water.

For a wipe in Magic Farm, where you cannot make stone tools, or even a wood pick to make a furnace out of the material in the Libraries, if you cannot find the gravel to make a flint pick, feel free to cheat (see below)

Fences/gates, grass/mycelium blocks, silk touch tools, mushrooms, etc, are all optional.

* Important: From a complete wipe, you will need an eye of ender to make a replacement ender chest to recover your stuff. This requires blaze powder, which normally requires access to the nether. You cannot go to the nether from an age. (A few ages may have Nether Fortresses with Blaze spawners.) This means that complete wipes and loss of ender chests are almost certainly a long and tedious **entertaining** search for a natural star fissure. See gameplay:slidecraft. The only known vanilla source of eyes of ender from inside an age, with no access to the overworld, is a village. As there is no known way to heal zombie villagers from a vanilla age, this means you have to find a village (already uncommon), and then find a villager who is able to trade you an eye (also uncommon), and then pay for it.

In Mystcraft 0.11, you're working with Minecraft 1.7.10, where, witches will occasionally spawn in (almost) all biomes, so it is possible to combine them with zombie villagers (and some gold) to build up a village from scratch: *   Capture a zombie villager, then find a witch and lead them to the scene. Let the witch splash you //and// the zombie with a potion of weakness, then cure the zombie. Do this twice, and you can build up a village in almost any age. *   Build the village up far enough, and you can get a Mystcraft Archivist among the villagers, who can sell you a linking panel. (Note that a priest might also sell you an Eye of Ender to replace your Ender Chest, but you'll need to manage obsidian yourself) * This reduces the requirements to get out of an age to “merely” being able to get wood (mineshafts, trees, some villages or other structures), iron and gold (loot chests or ground ores), and a couple of apples or golden apples (oak trees, loot chests). * It specifically avoids several other needs that may be showstoppers:  Paper (a common problem), stone/mining, fuel to make smooth stone (for the ink mixer), ink (water, squid), and sand to make glass bottles.

Historical notes
** In 0.10.0-3, random ages will __never__ have villages, dungeons, strongholds, or any source of loot chests. A complete wipe will require raiding libraries to recover. Equally, there will never be a random star fissure (but the symbol itself is fairly common).** 0.10.4 adds random features -- including star fissures, villages, strongholds, and dungeons -- back.

From a complete wipe, with no ender chest of supplies, in 0.10.4, you will need a book binder (wood, iron), an ink mixer (wood, glass bottles (sand, furnace)), leather, paper (for the link panel), ink (for the link panel), water (bucket or glass bottle). Writing desk is not a requirement (leather plus link panel in a book binder is sufficient).

Wood, stone in the ground, iron ore in the ground, water, sand next to the water, reeds next to the water, cows (either kind) on the ground, squids (either in natural water, or else two water source blocks plus buckets used to make a pool for them to spawn in.)

Almost all ages have naturally occurring stone. Most have naturally occurring dirt (for growing trees) and iron. Many have naturally occurring water for squids. A good number have naturally occurring reeds. A good number have naturally occurring cows. Sand isn't that rare, but it can be hard to find in some ages.

Having all of these, in one age, is a different story; a complete wipe in a flat, single biome age will often end your trip.

Cheating
If you get stuck and wish to escape via cheats, you have a few options, listed in order of desirability:

* Enabling cheats: * To enable commands in a single player game that has them disabled, open to LAN or use NBTExplorer to change "allowCommands" to 1. * In multiplayer, you can add your username to the "ops.txt" file, or from the console type "op playername"

* /give -- give yourself a blank descriptive book. * A blank descriptive book will, when used, generate a random age. This will require playing gameplay:slidecraft. * /give 8956 is the default (8700 + 256). If your config is different, the number will be different. * NEI, TMI, or vanilla creative mode may be used to make this easier.

* /tpx 0 * This command will return you to the spawn point of the overworld. Or any other dimension, by passing the dimension number after /tpx

* Spawning a notebook * By spawning a notebook in creative mode, you can immediately generate a world with star fissures, which will return you to the overworld * If you have access to creative mode (e.g. cheats) just use /tpx above! * The complete steps: * 0.9: Creative mode (not just /give), create and pick up notebook, make a blank descriptive book, make a writing desk, put both in writing desk, create an age with single biome, mushroom island, flat, eternal day, (those 4 make it easy to find your way around) star fissure (so you can get home), and optionally normal sky, normal fog, red sunset, white clouds, standard lighting. Create bookstand or lectern. Place book in holder. Use book. Look around for star fissure. Enter. * 0.10: Creative mode, "creative spawned notebook", book binder, leather, place the following symbols into the binder: flat, mushroom island, single biome, bright lighting, star fissure, [optional: noon, zero length, normal sun, normal stars, dark moon, white, cloud color, blue, sky color, clear modifiers]. Remove completed descriptive book. [Optional: Place book in bookstand or lectern.] Use book. Look around for star fissure. Enter. * **Caution!** Star fissures can have water and lava in them if the fissure intersects a natural pool. While unlikely, this could stop your fall. Solution: Creative mode flight on the way down.

* Editing your save file directly * By changing your player data to say that you're currently in dimension 0, you will be placed back in the overworld. Best practice would be to also change your position values (spawnX, spawnY, and spawnZ are known safe!) as to not kill yourself by accident.