Confluence

The Crucible dissolves things, the Workbench puts them together, and Confluence pours currents into the thing itself. It gives what neither the Crucible nor a workbench can: weavings in tools and armor, exact enchantments, the power of trinkets and the strongest things of fluxion. The Codex chapter is Confluence, its first entry Confluence (after the Conduit and Distillate).

The altarCopy Anchor Link

• The Confluence Heart hangs two blocks above the central Plinth. The thing on the central plinth is the one that changes.
• Side plinths — up to sixteen, within eight blocks: one thing on each, to flow into the central one. Set them in an even ring — two rings of eight, near and far: streams heaped on one side churn, and so do streams that cross from above.
• Four Confluence Column stand two blocks from the central plinth on each side: by them the Heart knows its altar.
• Once it is built, throw a pinch of quickdust on the Heart: it wakes, and golden veins run from the columns and plinths to the center.
• The whole altar is on the diagram in the Codex (layer by layer); "Place ghost" sets it in the world where you look.

How a Confluence runsCopy Anchor Link

1. Lay out the things and look at the Heart with the Loupe or the Diviner's Spectacles: it tells what will come out, how much distillate it needs, which tier the Confluence is and whether there is enough calm — "needs …, the altar gives …".
2. Distillate is drawn from vessels and Gyres within twelve blocks — two parts a second. If no holder has the needed current, the Confluence waits.
3. Touch the Heart with the Conduit — the things leave for it one by one: they rise over the bowl and fly along the arc of their stream. While a Confluence runs, the stream holds the things — they cannot be taken off.
4. Once everything is gathered, the thing on the central plinth becomes what came out.

If calm is short, the Heart warns you and starts only on a second touch. An empty hand during a Confluence gives a progress line: how much distillate and how many things are gathered and how much calm is left.

TiersCopy Anchor Link

The tier grows with the number of plinths, the distillate and the power of what comes out. Every weaving on top of earlier ones is a tier higher: the third weaving is already great. The first Confluence a bare altar holds any day or night is Sharpness I on a sword (Inscription).

Calm and turbulenceCopy Anchor Link

Calm is the Heart's store of steadiness: once awake, it gathers up to 30 (full in half a minute), calm stones raise the limit to 80. During a Confluence calm is quenched and spent every second:

Below zero come eddies: a thing is knocked off its plinth, a stream lashes out, distillate flows back. Put a knocked-off thing back on the same plinth — the Confluence picks it up again.

It always endsCopy Anchor Link

After any ending but success, the Heart's calm drops below zero: you can try again once it has gathered it anew.

Keeping the altar steadyCopy Anchor Link

• A Weir quenches one stream — the one it stands by: put it within a block of the line between a side plinth and the center, at the altar's height. The first on a stream quenches 0.8 calm a second, the second 0.4, the third nothing (Weirs).
• A Flume is a chain of troughs from a weir to a plinth: if an eddy would knock a thing off that plinth, the weir holds it — once per Confluence.
• Float lanterns by a stream quench it too (0.25), a lantern of its current's color twice as much; no more than two per stream.
• A Rapids Stone under a column hurries the distillate (with four — three parts a second), but the streams churn more; a Reach Stone is the opposite: slower, down to a part a second, but up to 15% less distillate and a calmer altar. Stones of different kinds cancel each other (Rapids and Reach).
• Calm stones (Calm Stones): a floor of Backwater Flagstone within eight blocks raises the calm store (up to +30); a Calm Stele quenches 0.3 a second (eight count); a Weirkeeper Figurine quenches 0.4 and adds 5 to the store (the four nearest count).
• Reckoner plinths and columns (Reckoner Plinths): the stream of a side plinth of their stone is a quarter calmer, and all four Reckoner columns cut the distillate by a tenth.
• Still plinths (Still Plinths): the stream from a side still plinth does not churn at all, but each one slows the Confluence; all four still columns make it half again as fast, but take 15% more distillate.

Fittings and boonsCopy Anchor Link

Two give to a Confluence: the gear of whoever started it (while they stay within sixteen blocks of the Heart) and the altar's fittings. There are ten boons: calm and calm per second, distillate thrift, a double result, quieter eddies, a softer collapse, longer reach, faster distillate, sparing a thing, and an easier mid and great Confluence. Each source has its own limit, the sum a shared one. Entry — Altar Fittings.

A double result falls only to a steady Confluence — without a single eddy — and only to a thing that stacks. The Loupe on any fitting tells whether it counts and what it lacks.

WeavingsCopy Anchor Link

A weaving is a property of flux that enchantments do not have: put the thing on the central plinth, the weaving's things around it, vessels of its distillate nearby. No enchanted book is needed. Every further weaving of the same thing costs a third more, and the third makes the thing tense. Entry — Weavings.

Tuning Pegs switch a thing's weavings and enchantments off and on — each one separately: hold the "Gear Details" key (H) over the thing and click a peg. A switched-off weaving does not strain the thing (Tuning Pegs).

What else Confluence makesCopy Anchor Link

• Game enchantments at the level you need — Inscription.
• The Lens Blank and the Fluxsteel Conduit — The Conduit and Lenses.
• Waders, belts, settings and trinkets, Spring tools, wootz and freshet gear, the Full-Moon Apple, the Self-Rising Loaf — entries of the Confluence chapter.
• Every recipe — the Confluence reference.

What nextCopy Anchor Link

• The first Confluence — Sharpness on a sword: Inscription.
• Distillate for the altar: Vessels, Siphons and Distilling.
• The Conduit's touch: The Conduit and Lenses.