The Loupe

The Loupe is the only instrument that brings the Codex knowledge. With it you read the currents of things, scout the flux of the land and catch the hour in the sky. Its recipe is in the first Codex entry; opaline for the glass lies deep underground.

How to readCopy Anchor Link

Take the Loupe in hand and hold it on a target: after a second and a half (30 ticks) it reads it. The reach is 5 blocks. Anything with flux in it can be read:

A first reading is a New reading: the card by the crosshair shows the currents and their numbers, how many notes came and to which chapters, and which current was revealed. A repeat is just a Reading: the Codex remembers what it has seen, and the line Already in your Codex says so. A thing with a current new to you teaches a second time too: two skeins of one kind can hold different threads.

Notes and revelationsCopy Anchor Link

• Each current of a thing gives notes to its chapter — half its number, at least one; at most 12 from one thing in total.
• A current you have never met is revealed and brings 3 notes of Basics.

Short of notes for a chapter? Read things with its currents. The Intellect aptitude adds to the notes of first readings (Aptitudes).

Reading in a windowCopy Anchor Link

A thing in a chest need not be taken out. In any window with slots — inventory, chest, furnace, creative inventory — pick up the Loupe on the cursor and hold it over a slot: after the same second and a half the thing is read just as in the world, with notes and revelations. Move the cursor away, put the Loupe down or close the window, and the reading breaks off.

Under waterCopy Anchor Link

The water you swim in does not stop the Loupe's ray: through it you read fish, squid, seagrass, coral, the sand of the bottom. If nothing is within five blocks, the water itself is read — look into open water. Standing waist-deep on the bottom, you look at the surface from above and read the water, as on the shore. A waterlogged block (grass, kelp, a stair) is always read as the block.

Flux by the crosshairCopy Anchor Link

While the Loupe is in hand, the crosshair shows Flux N / M of your chunk — how much living flux there is now and how deep the riverbed is — and murk, if any has settled. Look for places where the flux runs full: work goes easier there. If the murk grows, work more gently or move the workshop. What the numbers mean is in Flux and Murk of the World.

On a device the Loupe tells you its state: what a Crucible or a vessel holds, whether a siphon flows and where, what a Purifier lacks, how tight a Snarl is wound. On a block that quickdust will wake, it names under the block what sleeps inside.

The Loupe and the Diviner's SpectaclesCopy Anchor Link

Two instruments, two roles:

• The Loupe in hand — reading and scouting: the chunk's flux and murk, the riverbed, the currents of whatever you look at, readings with notes.
• Diviner's Spectacles on your head — only what a device with currents inside holds when you look at it: the Crucible's distillate, vessels, siphons. No chunk flux, no currents of ordinary blocks, no readings — the spectacles do not get in the way as you run about the workshop. With a slots mod they can be worn in an accessory slot, without one — in the helmet slot.

Further and fasterCopy Anchor Link

The Acuity aptitude adds a block of reach and 3 ticks of speed per rank: at the fifth the Loupe reads from 10 blocks in 0.75 s — in the world, in a window slot and in the sky.

What nextCopy Anchor Link

• Currents and the Wheel — what exactly the Loupe reads.
• The Codex of Currents — where the notes go.
• Flux and Murk of the World — the numbers by the crosshair.