Near-miss hints
When you click a pattern that is almost right, Runic whispers a hint and marks the wrong blocks with smoke and enchantment particles. The hint tells you what kind of mistake you made. It never names the rune or the block it wanted, so keep the rune's diagram handy.
When a hint appears
All of these must be true:
- You clicked where a heart would be. Runic checks for patterns around the heart, the same way it does when a rune wakes.
- The pattern is nearly complete. At least 95% of its cells must be right. Patterns of fewer than 40 cells allow a single wrong block; larger ones allow one wrong block per twenty cells.
- Enough of it is built. At least four of the pattern's blocks must be in place, so random terrain never earns a hint.
- Nothing else used the click. A block placed from your hand, or a rune that woke, means no hint.
Hints come at most once every four seconds per player, and up to three of the wrong blocks get particles.
What each hint means
| Hint | What to fix |
|---|---|
| The pattern stirs, but the magic recoils from a block that sits wrong in the weave. | A key cell holds the wrong block. Check the legend for the blocks that key takes. |
| The pattern stirs, but a stray block breaks the flow of the Tier weave. | One Tier block is a different material from the rest. Every T must be the same block. |
| The pattern is drawn true, but these Tier blocks cannot carry it — the weave calls for a different Tier. | The shape is right, and the Tier blocks have the wrong Tier for this rune. Look for a Tier cap in the legend, or swap to blocks of Tier 1 or more. |
| The pattern stirs, but one light burns out of step with its kin. | A lamp, torch, campfire, or similar block is lit when it should be dark, or dark when it should be lit. |
| The pattern stirs, but something crowds a space the weave demands be empty. | A cell that should be empty holds a block of Tier 1 or more. Clear it, or fill it with a Tier 0 block such as stone or dirt. |
| The pattern stirs, but the Tier material repeats where the weave forbids it. | The Tier block sits in a cell that must hold something else, such as a signature arm or a cell marked any block except the Tier block. |
| The pattern stirs, but its signature arms disagree — the magic cannot read one name from them. | One signature arm with several cells holds two different blocks. Every filled cell in an arm must match. |
| The pattern stirs, but twin blocks in the weave do not stand identical. | Keys that must match are different, perhaps in how they face or what they hold. Copy one block into every matching cell. |
When a pattern has several flaws, the hint describes the most common one.
For server owners
Hints are on by default. To keep failed clicks silent, set this in plugins/Runic/config.yml:
near-miss-hints: false
Each hint is a message in every rune's file, under keys beginning with near-miss-, so you can reword them per rune or silence one by setting it to none. See Rune files.