Orbis Medeis has four main gameplay elements: Study, Spellcrafting, Spellcasting, and Practice.
Each element can be played up to three ways, and as per most things, a naturally adept player will have more luck than others.
In order for a player to be able to craft spells, they need sufficient knowledge in doing what they want to do.
Ergo, if the user wants to make a spell that can mine blocks, they need to mine a LOT of blocks.
If they want to make a spell that can harm entities, they need to harm a LOT of entities.
Likewise for moving, swimming, absorbing (bucketing) water, shooting arrows, alighting things on fire, lighting up blocks with torches/glowstone...
All of these activities counts towards the player's Study, and once they've made a Breakthrough in their area they can put some time towards thinking about that field of study, eventually leading to a Realisation.
Spellcrafting is done with a journal that the player can carry around with them, or leave in a bookshelf.
The Journal contains a square drawing area, and a box underneath containing glyph hints, as well as dedicated pages for the Study and the player's thoughts on the world.
Every Realisation lets the player have a cue for a certain glyph in the journal. The glyph's purpose will be revealed, and it will be overlaid on the drawing square as a visual aid for drawing said glyph.
However, the glyph does not need to be Realised in order to be drawn. If a player remembers a spell from their last gameplay, they will be able to draw the spell as soon as they get the Journal.
It will be full of unknowns and the Journal will mention that the player does not know what compelled him to draw the glyphs, but the spell will work.
This also means that trial-and-error is a viable way to learn glyphs, as it would be in a realistic world.
The glyphs themselves are geometric shapes, all based on geometry of a circle.
Some are categorized by being chords, some may be linked by arcs inside the "base" circle, etc.
The closer the drawn glyph to geometric perfection, the stronger the effect of the spell will be.
Drawing in the journal is freehand, meaning that unless the user has a trackball or a graphics tablet, this will usually be hard.
Crafting spells in the journal is done by hand.
To increase precision, the Spellcrafting Table provides tools such as:
- Resizeable 360° protractor for drawing circles and arcs
- Set square for drawing 90° angles
- Rotateable and resizeable straight-edge for drawing straight lines.
These tools are purely what they say. They do not automatically work on a grid, they do not automatically link the ends of lines together.
They are only as useful as the player makes them.
The Spellcrafting table may also be upgraded to provide a bigger drawing area, which will allow the user to craft Spell Scrolls, which when casted provide a much larger (x) for the spell that is cast.
ie. an area-of-effect fire spell would have wider effect and stronger flames in a Spell Scroll compared to the Journal.
Fully drawing the circle will complete and cast the spell in-place.
This may be a viable weapon for ie. a ranged attack drawn in panic.
However, a mining spell drawn this way on the Spellcrafting Table will dissolve the table that the Journal sits on.
Once the spell is readied in the journal, or a Spell Scroll, it can be cast by completing the circle.
This may be done with a Quill in the Journal, once the spell page is readied. Simply by tapping the quill to the paper, the circle is complete and the magic is released.
This allows for a quick, on-demand cast of prepared spells.
However, this means that spells are one-use only.
To make up for this, you may place a used spell page underneath a blank one to use as a guide to redraw it.
Cast spells in the world look like purple projectiles with surrounding graphics that mimic the effect that the spell will have on impact.
A Fire spell will have red graphics, a poisoning spell will have dark red graphics, a slowing spell will have light blue graphics, a pushing spell will have white graphics, etc.
Note that every spell will be seen as a projectile for at least a moment, even if it is an AoE spell (as it will go towards the ground), a touch spell (as it will simply go from the Journal/Scroll to the block/entity) etc...
The more potent (or in most cases, geometrically perfect) the spell is, the thicker the projectile and the more lavish the effects will be.
This serves as a visual indicator that a powerful spell is coming.
Naturally, casting a spell unfamiliar to the player will result in sloppy magic the first few attempts (unless the player used a substantial amount of glyphs they didn't know, implying natural talent). Therefore, casting the same spell a few times over and over to build an amount of "muscle memory" is a requirement for consistent, potent casts.
Without this, the player will not be used to the sudden draw of "mana", and result in a small amount of clumsiness, which will make them trip over (take damage from) blocks that stick out of the ground, destroy materials in ores (dropping only cobble stone) and other debuffs. Notably, all shield damage reduction is negated by Clumsiness, meaning that using new spells in combat is a very bad idea.
If the player has sufficient practice with a spell, it will be casted flawlessly.
There are no further buffs for practicing with a spell, as strength is dictated by the glyphs themselves.