Flux and Murk of the World

Flux is what a fluxionist works with: the Flux Workbench, the Conduit, Confluence and devices draw it from the land around them. Where the flux runs full, work goes on; where it is drained, work stops. Every chunk has its own store of flux and its own murk, and both show by the Loupe's crosshair: Flux N / M and murk.

The riverbedCopy Anchor Link

The riverbed is how much flux a chunk holds when left alone: the second number by the crosshair. It depends on the place:

That is the middle: each chunk has its own riverbed, from three quarters to five quarters of this number. Places from other mods without their own tags are read by their climate. Fluxion's own places hold their own riverbeds — up to 160.

Flux flowsCopy Anchor Link

• It seeps to the neighbors: every second a chunk gives each of its four neighbors 6 % of the difference in fullness — from full to empty, like water through sand. Rivers, valleys and Gauge Stones are its beds: along them it runs faster.
• It refills by itself: every second a chunk gains a hundredth of what it lacks up to its riverbed.
• An overfull chunk spills: a chunk filled above five quarters of its riverbed gives the surplus to its neighbors twice as fast.

So a chunk drained at once among full ones is 90 % full again in seven or eight seconds, while a chunk held right at the floor keeps giving for a long time — about 13 flux a second: the neighbors two or three chunks around feed it. A device that drinks less than a couple of units a second holds up anywhere.

The riverbed floorCopy Anchor Link

The lowest tenth of the riverbed is the floor: the Flux Workbench and gear top-ups take only what lies above it. Devices cannot dry a chunk below the floor: the land stays alive. What the land lacks, the Flux Workbench takes from the shards in its sockets.

MurkCopy Anchor Link

Flux drawn roughly does not vanish — it stagnates into murk: in Crucible remelting, in a broken confluence, in a cheap lens. Murk does not seep to the neighbors but settles where it was spilled.

• Murk takes the place of flux: a chunk refills only up to "riverbed minus murk". A murky workshop is not just dirty — it has less flux.
• Above a third of the riverbed, settled murk grows mire; above half, if flux keeps being drawn, a Snarl may rise.
• Murk flakes in the air show even without the Loupe: the murkier the surroundings, the more of them.

How to clear murk and what to do about mire is in Murk and Mire.

The willow gathers, the lumenash cleansesCopy Anchor Link

• A weeping willow by water — a willow trunk in the part of the chunk where or under which there is water, with its leaves or strands in the chunk — raises its chunk's riverbed 1.35 times. Even the poorest chunk with a willow holds no less than the place's average. One willow per chunk: a second adds nothing; a felled trunk puts the willow out at once.
• A lumenash with living leaves turns its chunk's murk into flux — 0.02 a second per trunk, up to three trunks per chunk. One lumenash clears a plains chunk from the mire threshold in about 15 minutes: it keeps a tidy workshop clean but does not save a rough one. Every few seconds sparks of Gleam flash over a cleansing lumenash.
• Mire in the riverbed — silted blocks where there is water — lowers the chunk's riverbed by a fifth: a workshop by a river has reason to clean up.

Willow, Ash and Herbs

Where to set a workshopCopy Anchor Link

Other worldsCopy Anchor Link

• The Nether and the End have riverbeds of their own (45 and 18); climate is not read there.
• The Stillness is a world where nothing flows: there is no flux in it, and devices run on what you bring along.
• The Lees are the bottom of the flux: murk flows there, and every chunk's flux is only its own.

Omens of the fluxCopy Anchor Link

Now and then the world changes the flux for a while. The Roll Call of Gauge Stones on a clear midnight gathers the surrounding flux to your workshop, the Spillover of the Quickstream deepens the riverbed under the race 1.4 times for eight minutes, a Murk Storm strikes murky chunks, and the Tollkeepers' Toll Collection dries three chunks around your Gauge Stone to the floor. An omen you witness is written into Omens.

What nextCopy Anchor Link

• Murk and Mire — what murk threatens and how to clear it.
• The Codex of Currents — the path through the entries.
• Aptitudes — Finesse makes the Flux Workbench thriftier.
• The Flux Workbench and Devices and machines — who drinks flux, and how.