Magic

Magic in Fear Nightfall is spread across three systems: the spellcasting overhaul from Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks, the witchcraft and alchemy content from Hexerei, and a set of enchanting and anvil changes made by Easy Magic and Easy Anvils. The first two add their own items, mobs and structures, and the third changes how existing enchanting and anvil blocks behave. Magic is the pack's main source of ranged and area attacks, and most of its casters, bosses and ruins sit in the horror set that the pack spawns more densely.

Iron's Spells supplies the pack's hostile spellcasters and its magic gear. Hexerei supplies the witch huts, covens and herb-based brewing. Players who want to use magic will usually need both: Iron's for combat and spells, and Hexerei for the witch-themed items and locations that the pack's swamps and forests are full of.

Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks

Iron's Spells 'n Spellbooks is the largest magic system in the pack. It adds a mana resource, nine spell schools, spellbooks, scrolls, casting implements, magic armor and Curios jewelry. Spells are learned from Spell Books and Scrolls, and cast with mana. The main rules of casting, including mana regeneration, cast interruption and cooldowns, are described on Spellcasting.

Spell schools

Every spell belongs to one school. Each school has its own spell power and magic resistance attributes, and most schools have a focus item or a set of gear that raises them.

Gear and progression

Casting implements are the Staffs and the swords and wands that the mod tags as magic focuses. A staff is a usable weapon as well as a focus, and it starts the selected spell on right-click. The Arcane Anvil is the mod's upgrade station: it merges ink into scrolls to raise their level and rarity, and it applies rune and spell-slot upgrades. It is not the same block as the anvil that Easy Anvils replaces. Ink and scroll crafting are handled at the Scroll Forge and Inks, and the upgrade items are described on Upgrade Orbs and Runes.

Magical jewelry is worn in Curios slots and is covered on Rings, Amulets and Charms. Armor sets are covered on Mage Armor and School Armor Sets, and the mod's weapons and materials are on Iron's Spellbooks Weapons and Iron's Spellbooks Materials. Potions and elixirs are made in the Alchemist Cauldron and Elixirs and their status effects are on Iron's Spellbooks Effects.

Hostile casters and bosses

The mod's hostile mobs cast spells and are the pack's main magic opponents. The most important are the Necromancer and the Cultist, which appear in the mod's undead and cult structures; the Pyromancer and Cryomancer, which guard the fire and ice towers; the Priest and Apothecarist; and the Archevoker and Magehunter Vindicator from the evocation set. The full list of summoned creatures is on Summoned Creatures.

The Dead King is the mod's boss. It has 500 health, fights mainly with spells, and switches to a flying second phase at half health. It never generates in a biome. It is found through the dormant Dead King Corpse in the Catacombs, and a player who carries a Dead King Phylactery can bring it back after it dies. Its drop, the Necronomicon, is covered on Spell Books.

Structures

Several overworld structures are built around the mod's magic. The Catacombs are buried undead networks with a throne room and a Necromancer. The Citadel is a Nether fortress with a library and a locked vault. The Pyromancer Tower is a fire-school stronghold with a buried cellar. Other locations include the Ice Spider Den, the Impaled Icebreaker, the Evoker Fort, the Mountain Tower, the Mangrove Hut and the Cursed Armor Stand sites. The mod also adds a Pocket Dimension mechanic that the eldritch school uses.

Hexerei witchcraft

Hexerei adds a witch-themed alchemy chain, two tameable companion mobs, flying brooms, a courier network and a set of generated witch structures. It is covered in detail on Hexerei Witchcraft. The chain starts with herbs. The five herbs are Sage, Mandrake, Belladonna, Mugwort and Yellow Dock, and Sage Seeds also drop from grass. Herbs are dried on a Herb Drying Rack, ground in a pestle and mortar, and combined with fluids in the Mixing Cauldron. Candles, covered on Candles and Candle Dipper, apply potion effects to nearby living entities.

The mod's guidebook is the Book of Shadows, which is crafted and reads as the mod's reference book. Flying is provided by Brooms, and the companion mobs are the Crow and the Owl. Witch gear is the Witch Armor set, made from Infused Fabric. The Crystal Ball and Dowsing Rod are utility items: the Crystal Ball reports day, night and the moon phase, and the Dowsing Rod points toward the nearest swamp or jungle biome.

Hexerei's structures are the Covens (the Dark Coven in swamps and marshes and the Nature Coven in forests), the Hexerei Witch Hut, and the Owl Post Office. The witch huts are covered on Witch Huts, Witch Circle and Witch Villa and Mangrove Witch Hut, and the Baba Yaga's Hut is a separate structure. The mod's swamp biome is the Willow Swamp.

Enchanting and anvils

Enchanting follows vanilla rules with a few changes. The Enchantments page covers the enchantments that the pack uses. Enchantment Descriptions is a client-side tooltip mod that adds a line explaining each enchantment when a player hovers over an enchanted item or book. Easy Magic changes the vanilla enchanting table so that it keeps its items after the menu is closed, can reroll its offers, and counts chiseled bookshelves toward enchanting power. Easy Anvils replaces the vanilla anvil with a version that has two input slots, free renaming by default and a lower break chance.

Some mods add enchantments of their own to the pack. The Butchery Enchantments, Butcher and Hunter, apply to weapons and bows, the Dungeons and Taverns Enchantments come from the D&T set, and the Nether Expansion Effects and Enchantments come from the Nether mod. The Stasis enchantment comes from Supplementaries.

Horror context

Most of the pack's magic is tied to its horror content. The mod structures that matter most are the Catacombs, the Citadel, the Pyromancer Tower and the witch structures in the swamps and forests. The pack places horror structures about 30% closer together than the base mods do, and where they share a structure set with other structures they receive 6 times the weight. Several biomes, including the Dark Forest, Ominous Woods, Spider Nest, Blackwood Taiga, Ashen Woodland and Sleepy Hollows, are weighted 6 times, and horror biomes cover roughly 12% of land, up from about 4.5% without the pack's changes. The witch-themed structures are more common in the swamps and forests that the pack's horror biomes favour, so a player will meet Hexerei and YUNG's witch sites more often than the vanilla swamp huts they replace.

The Catacombs and the Dead King are the most likely places to meet a boss in this pack, because the pack places Catacombs closer together than the base mod does. Magic loot is added to many of the pack's mapped structure chests, so Scrolls, Spell Books and elixirs appear in the End and Nether structures as well as in the overworld.

Tips

• Keep an eye on mana. Each cast spends mana and starts a cooldown, so a spell-heavy fight can leave you with nothing to cast at the wrong moment. The base maximum is 100 mana.
• Scrolls can be merged with ink on the Arcane Anvil to raise their level and rarity, which improves a spell you already have without finding a new one.
• Staffs are both weapons and casting focuses, so one item covers melee and spellcasting.
• Herbs for Hexerei are most common in swamps, where the Willow Swamp biome generates mud patches.
• Witch huts are swamp structures that often hold a witch and a cat, so approach them with care at night.