Balanced Exchange Mod

This mod adds an item called the “Amulet of Transmutation”, which I’ll just refer to as ‘amulet’ from now on. For people familiar with EE2, an amulet essentially combines a Transmutation Tablet with a Mercurial Eye.

Crafting an amulet

Amulet’s are crafted with 4 iron ingots, 1 empty bucket, 1 lava bucket, 1 water bucket, 1 dirt block and 1 ender pearl.

When you ‘use’ an amulet (by right-clicking with it) it will turn the ‘target’ block (the one you’re looking at) into the ‘active’ block (the one you’ve selected in the amulet’s interface). This process is referred to as ‘transmutation’.

For a transmutation to be successful:

• The items the target block would’ve dropped when destroyed must all be ‘consumable’.
• The amulet (after consuming the target’s drops) must have enough ‘matter’ to create the active block.
• Creating the active block must not suffocate a player or mob.

If any of these conditions are not met the transmutation will fail, and no changes will be made.

The amulet’s interface can be opened by pressing the inventory key while the amulet is in your hand or by right-clicking on the amulet while another interface is open.

The interface shows you how much matter the amulet has; allows you to consume items from your inventory; lets you change its ‘upgrades’; allows you to change the ‘active’ block to something else in the list of ‘learned’ blocks; and allows you to turn stored matter into diamonds, gold ingots or iron ingots.

When you first craft an amulet (all recipes can be found in screenshots) it will only have 32 matter and will only know how to transmute blocks into dirt. The amulet will gain matter and learn to create new blocks by consuming items. It must consume 20 of a given block before it will learn to create it – but not all blocks can be learned (like hay and watermelon). Blocks that have been partially learned will appear in the list, but you won’t be able to select them.

An amulet can be used in a crafting table to transmute 8 logs to 1 iron, 8 iron to/from 1 gold, 4 gold to/from 1 diamond, 4 diamonds to/from 1 ‘Block of Stability’ and 1 iron to 10 ‘Blocks of Reactivity’.

Blocks of Stability are ingredients in the most powerful upgrades. If an amulet attempts to transmute a Block of Stability into the active block, the active block will drop as an item and the Block of Stability will not be affected. This allows them to be used as block dispensers.

Blocks of Reactivity are ingredients in most upgrades. If an amulet attempts to transmute a Block of Reactivity into itself the block will be destroyed. This allows the amulet to ‘destroy’ blocks – the first transmutation turns the target into a Block of Reactivity, the second transmutation destroys it (at no extra cost). Blocks of Reactivity will not drop any items when they are destroyed and when one Block of Reactivity is destroyed it will start a chain reaction and destroy any Blocks of Reactivity adjacent to it.

Transmutation Recipes

The following screenshots show 2 crafting tables open at once; this is one of the many things possible using BCMod interfaces. More examples of BCMod interfaces can be found on the thread for other mod – Backpacks.

Transmutation of Blocks of Stability

Transmutation of diamonds

Transmutation of gold ingots

Transmutation of iron ingots (from logs, and into blocks of reactivity)

An amulet has 3 slots for ‘upgrades’, but if any of those slots hold another amulet or a backpack, it will include any upgrades inside them.

Here are the effects of upgrades

• A Block of Stability will cause the target’s drops to drop instead of being consumed.
• Each stack of Blocks of Reactivity will increase the amulet’s recharge rate.
• A book enchanted with Silk Touch, or any tool with Silk Touch will cause the target’s drops to be modified by Silk Touch.
• Each ‘Reactivity Core’ will increase the amulet’s efficiency – decreasing the amount of matter wasted when creating blocks, they can also be right-clicked to enable ‘dual transmutation mode’.
• An ‘Amulet Precharger’ will cause amulets to transmute instantly (then recharge).
• A ‘Productivity Upgrade’ will allow you to create blocks from the amulet’s interface by shift+left-clicking (creates a stack) or shift+right-clicking on a learned block (saving you the trouble of placing, then mining the block).
• A ‘Range Upgrade’ will double the range an amulet can transmute from (8 blocks, instead of 4)
• A ‘Surveyor Upgrade’ will unlock ‘Survey mode’.
• A ‘Chain Upgrade’ will unlock ‘Chain mode’.
• An ‘Area Upgrade’ will unlock ‘Area mode’ and ‘Fill mode’.
• Having a ‘Chain Upgrade’ and an ‘Area Upgrade’ will unlock ‘Confined chain mode’ and ‘Conversion mode’.
• (Only available in creative mode) A block of Bedrock will give the amulet an instant recharge rate, and consuming a block of Bedrock within the amulet’s interface will teach it to create all learnable blocks.

Upgrade Recipes

Reactivity Core (top) and Productivity Upgrade (bottom)

Chain upgrade (top) and Surveyor Upgrade (bottom)

Area Upgrade (top) and Range Upgrade (bottom)

Transmutation chests are crafted with an amulet surrounded by wooden planks.
Amulet prechargers are crafted with (numpad notation) a transmutation chest on 5, a block of stability on 9 and hoppers on 4, 6, 1 and 2 .

You can cycle through your amulet’s unlocked modes by pressing the “Change transmutation mode” key (defaults to ‘c’).

• Block mode – This is the default mode, the target block is transmuted to the active block.
• Air mode – This is activated while sneaking in most other modes. The active block is created beside the target block, as if you had ‘placed’ the active block.
• Chain mode – The target block and any connected blocks of the same type are transmuted. This mode costs extra matter for each additional block, and chains are limited to 27 blocks.
• Area mode – The target block and all existing blocks within the area are transmuted. This costs extra matter based on how far away transmuted blocks were from the target.
• Fill mode – Same as area mode, but includes air blocks.
• Confined chain mode – Like chain mode, but confined to blocks within the area. This is cheaper than chain mode and is not limited to 27 blocks per chain.
• Conversion mode – The target block and all blocks of the same type within the area are transmuted. This is cheaper than area mode.
• Survey mode – No blocks are transmuted, instead you get a report of the average and best MPB (matter per block) for the area. This costs matter based on the survey area used. You can change the size of the survey area by sneak+scrolling or pressing the ‘Select next/previous favourite block’ keys.
• Dual transmutation mode – Allows your left and right mouse buttons to trigger different transmutations, so left click could transmute a 3x3x3 area to glass while right click could transmute a chain into blocks of reactivity.

To change the transmutation mode for the left mouse button hold down the ‘Change transmutation mode’ key and click with the left mouse button. Same goes for the other keys.

The area of an area upgrade can be configured by right-clicking the upgrade within the amulet’s interface.
Right-clicking on a chain upgrade will toggle it between Strict and Wildcard modes. Strict mode will chain to any block with the same id and metadata as the target block, and Wildcard mode will chain to any block with the same id, irregardless of its metadata.
Right-clicking on a productivity upgrade will toggle between Transmute and Build modes. Transmute mode is the default behaviour and build mode inverts the effect of sneaking while in Block mode, so you don’t have to sneak to place blocks, but you will have to sneak to transmute blocks.

Examples of the effects of each transmutation mode

These screenshots demonstrate the effects of each transmutation mode. The example area was reset between each transmutation and the amulet was at 100% efficiency (no matter wastage).

Example area, before any transmutations

Block mode – didn’t cost any extra matter

Chain mode – cost 49 extra matter to transmute 15 blocks.

Confined chain mode – Only cost 18 extra matter to transmute 13 blocks.

Conversion mode – cost 33 extra matter to transmute 18 blocks.

Survey mode – cost 1 matter to survey a 1x1x8 area. Maximum survey area (3x3x32) costs 51 matter per survey.

Area mode – cost 104 extra matter to transmute 28 blocks, and another 92 matter to turn 4 torches (9 MPB) into stained clay (32 MPB).

Fill mode – cost 450 extra matter to transmute 125 blocks, another 92 matter for torches and another 3104 matter to create 97 stained clay blocks at 32 MPB.

Air mode – cost 32 matter to create a single stained clay block.

Divining rod – Give an amulet a surveyor upgrade and put it in “Survey mode”.
Destruction catalyst – Give an amulet an area upgrade and a block of stability (as an upgrade), set the active block to Block of Reactivity and put it in “Area mode”.
Dark matter pickaxe (area effect) – Same as destruction catalyst, just set the area upgrade to a smaller area.
Dark matter pickaxe (mining ore chains) – Give an amulet a chain upgrade and a block of stability (as an upgrade), set the active block to Block of Reactivity and put it in “Chain mode”.
Energy Condenser – Craft a transmutation chest (an amulet surrounded by wooden planks) and put the amulet in the top left slot, put what you want to create into the bottom left slot and what you want to consume into the chest area. If the target item is creatable you can take the created items out of the bottom right slot, or pipe them out of the bottom of the chest (you can pipe items into the chest from the left or right sides).

As of Balanced Exchange 2.0.0 you can now restore lost/destroyed amulets by crafting an ‘Amulet Restorer’ using 4 gold ingots (corners), 1 eye of ender (middle), 1 lava bucket (left), 1 empty bucket (top), 1 water bucket (right) and a block of dirt (bottom).

Balanced Exchange has been designed to be customizable and extensible. As such you can change the MPB values of all items and blocks, and add or remove any crafting recipe.
Note: if you are playing on a server Balanced Exchange will use the MPB values and recipe definitions stored on the server.
Other settings can be found in “minecraft/config/BalancedExchange.cfg”, including options to make Blocks of Reactivity climbable like ladders and/or transparent (looks nicer, but may increase lag); you can also change the ‘power’ of some upgrades and can disable others.

The easiest way to change MPB values and recipes is to use the ingame editors.
Open an amulet interface and press CTRL+E to edit MPB values or press CTRL+R to edit recipes. You must be opped to do this.
To make a block untransmutable you can either make the items it drops inconsumable or set its ‘MBP created’ to -123.

How to manually change MPB values and/or transmutation recipes

After running Balanced Exchange for the first time you will find a folder in minecraft/config called MPB_values. This folder will have 2 files in it – default (version).mpb and default (version).drd. When Balanced Exchange starts it will scan this folder and read MPB values from any ‘.mpb’ file in the folder (except ‘Unassigned.mpb’, ‘Assigned.mpb’ or any default file from another version) and it will read transmutation recipes from any ‘.drd’ (dynamic recipe definition) file (except any default file from another version) – this allows you to put all the mpb values and recipes for a mod into its own separate files, or allows mod makers to provide their own.

Information about the ‘.mpb’ and ‘.drd’ file formats can be found inside the files, which can be edited using any text editor.

Pressing the ‘home’ key while an amulet’s interface is open will generate 2 example mpb files. One file – ‘Assigned.mpb’, will contain the mpb definitions of all items with mpb values, the other file – ‘Unassigned.mpb’, will only contain items that don’t have mpb values yet. Unassigned.mpb can be helpful when defining mpb values for a mod, as the names of the items are shown before their ids, so you don’t have to look up the id of each item.